Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@Ravix nice, glad that it worked itself out. How does it compare on an enjoyment level compared to the Elder Scrolls and Fallouts of this world?

@colonelkilgore for me, enjoyment is pretty decent. I don't feel like I've truly gotten into the meat of the game yet either, I've just been making my own fun, testing out the systems, doing random side content.

It's hard to compare the games, as this is really more FPS than the others, Fallout is VATS heavy, and this is just all out shoot everything in live action. The FPS elements are maybe not great, it feels a bit like a much worse cyberpunk at times in that regard. But I'm going to unlock the stealth ability next to add some variation to combat, as at the moment it seems like as soon as I turn up to a place, the enemy all know where I am and it's a 1 vs 30 fire fight, fun in its own way, but lacks any tactical enjoyment.

I went in expecting it to be not great in terms of gameplay, excitment or writing, but I've enjoyed the parts that others may not have, so far. I quite like looking for the resources and exploring a planet, without expecting anything more than that, but it usually leads to emergent gameplay, which I love. And I've been sidetracked a bunch, in a good way because of that. There are also dialgue options, but I'm not really sure how deeply they impact anything, sometimes you can pursuade someone with a really stupid statement, sometimes the actual smart reply will fail, I think it is just a hidden dice roll.

It can be a bit overwhelming how it throws side quests at you, as all you need do is walk past someone and an overheard conversation will go into your quest log for you to later see and have no idea what the quest is about as it just says "talk to this dude", but if you pick and choose and go with the flow how you want to, it is okay.

Peak gameplay will be: a main quest leads you to a new system/planet. You then head to a settlement and treat it like any other RPG where you can help or hinder the locals on your way to doing what you came for, this may even lead you back into space for a while, you will then either do some sneaky spy stuff, manipulate some people, steal stuff, or go somewhere for all out combat, until you come back to wrap up a part of it and move on, selling all your space loot and upgrading your ship while you are there. Clear anything else you want, or explore the surface for hidden areas or to collect resources. Then head back to wherever you call home where you can either head out for more quests you've picked up, or spend a bit of time plotting upgrades and making your own path to go and find what you want/need.

I made myself a little bio at the start just to help digest the game, as there is no real drive to go and do the main quests early and I want to avoid just going along with stuff just because it is there. It's not like there is impending doom, or dragons, it's just "I touched a thing and some people want to investigate it some more" and as my character is not a science geek I'm not that bothered about going to do that, i'm more so taking advantage of the fact that someone gave me a spaceship to go and be able to make a name for myself, or get myself in to a position where I'm established in the Galaxy, before going to do what this organisation want of me.

9 months of GP Ultimate for a shade under £34. Seems like good value to me 😱 cheers Big Phil, you trumpet 😛

I very much enjoy people realising the BS that comes out of Xbox HQ. Compulsive liars in court, and to the community. No price increase because of Actiblizz buyout. Two price increases in a year 🤡

@Ravix What's hard to believe is that anyone actually believed them in the first place. Gotta love the people who defend them at every opportunity.

@render it also means the deal I got is even better value, and so long as you can get their services for a pittance, I will take advantage of it. Basically, increasing the prices is just punishing kids/families and people that don't know they don't have to sub monthly, everyone else is subbed long term for cheap anyway.

As soon as they sell a billion call of duties on PS they will be happy enough, for a while, but their own ecosystem doesn't seem set up to succeed for many more years. Every good game they release to GP increases the value in stacking subs cheap or subbing for small amounts of time and eats into their margins and future game budgets. And that won't really grow anything.

I think they are clearly scrambling around looking for ways to get away from their promises and make the MS overlords as happy as possible before they get slapped down hard 😅 and that is going to mean more lies and broken promises in the future

@render
The only people defending two price rises of this magnitude in just over a year are Xbox ambassadors or people with a vested interest in MS. Didn't Phil swear to the mergers commitee that prices wouldn't go up because of the Activision deal? Well they clearly have so perhaps he should be dragged back and start pleading.

My only concern is that PS will increase their prices to fall in line, I'm starting to think that PC is the only way forward.

And to think they used to say that Jim was full of it.

@Ravix @CaptD It's quite amusing how they've pretty much reneged on every promise they made. This statement was made by them only two months ago...

https://www.eurogamer.net/call-of-duty-black-ops-6-wont-be-lo...

I can't imagine they only decided to make these changes in the last month so they likely knew about it when that statement was made. By the fact that they've gone back on all these promises they should probably be made to de-merge ActiBlitz but it's unlikely to happen. I'm sure those ambassadors can also defend that as well though, after all they will do anything for Uncle Phil.

@CaptD @render

I do think people are starting to wake up. People on PureXbox are quite annoyed today, on the whole. The turn around between lie/promise and truth coming out/promise broken is getting to be so fast people haven't forgotten about the initial lies 😅

And each department has told so many lies in public that they can't keep track of which one is supposed to be true each week

@Ravix About the only thing that I think made some sense was the re-orginisation of the 'tier' structure.

The Game Pass Console tier - which basically nobody subscribed to because it didn't have Online Access so a lot of content in Game Pass was 'useless', it would offer Day 1 games but would also require Game Pass Core too to play online. Game Pass PC or Game Pass Cloud doesn't require a 'online' Subscription. Now 'Standard' is ditching Day 1 but including Game Pass Core. PC Game Pass can't charge for Online access so instead Get Day 1 and only need 'Ultimate' if they choose to play on Cloud/Console too. Console gamers can Subscribe to ultimate for Day 1, play anywhere and EA Access.

The way I see it, its now more akin to Sony's PS+
PS+ Essential/Game Pass Core - offers Online access and 24-36ish Games - Sony's are offered monthly and MS's are always available but will get rotated out.
PS+ Extra/Game Pass Standard - offers a large Collection of old and 'newer' games but won't get the big First Party AAA games Day/date (nothing to say either won't offer indies or some 3rd party games day/date, maybe Online games with other monetisation built in - like Season passes etc) but neither offer their biggest 1st party games day/date.

The 'Premium/ultimate' tier is different in that Sony offers PS1-PS3 titles where as MS will offer Day 1 new Releases. You do get Game Pass PC, Game Pass Cloud and EA Access too with Ultimate but its the 'top' tier in both Services and more tailored to each individual platform holder.

I'm not happy about the Price increase either - especially after it went up relatively recently and they did say they wouldn't put prices up. We all know though that you can shop around to get 'better' prices than stated. PS+/Game Pass Core is now $10 a month on BOTH, although Sony say 1 yr is $80 as MS have raised their annual $60 price to $75. PS+ Extra and Xbox 'Standard' are both $15 a month and now PS+ Premium is no longer the most expensive at $18 a month as 'Ultimate' will now be $20 a month instead of $15.

So whilst I am NOT happy with the Price increase, it would still seem to be in-line with the Market Leader (as in Sony). Game Pass Core and Standard have the same monthly cost, Game Pass Standard and PS+ Extra have the same monthly cost and neither offer 1st Party Big releases day date and their Premium sub services is where they differ - one offering really old games, the other offering new releases day/date but slightly more expensive a month.

Again NOT justifying MS's price increases but trying to put it into perspective. You can often shop around and/ort find loopholes to get things cheaper on both platforms so I'm only comparing based on both Sony and Microsoft's own Blog posts on pricing. Therefore I can't see Sony raising prices to 'fall in line'.

I've also been seriously considering not buying the 'next' gen of Consoles as PC's don't charge for any 'online' access negating the need for any monthly Subscription. You don't 'need' to buy an Xbox because all their games are released day/date on PC anyway and Sony seem to be releasing all their games on PC, some day/date too. You can save $75-80+ a year on not requiring PS+/GPC just to play some games at all because of 'online' access required. Instead of spending $1k+ on both Consoles, invest in a new GPU or CPU and get better performance than either Console offers. OK so you may have to wait to play the next Spider-man or God of War game on PC, but you'll have 1000's of other games - many of which won't be on the next Xbox/Playstation consoles and can play on the go to with Handheld PC's

So after Microsoft’s decision earlier this year to release their first party games on PlayStation and now paywalling their first party releases day-and-date behind an additional Gamepass tier on Xbox at $20 per month… it’s about time I’ve finally seen the light and see the error of my assumptions… Gamepass clearly is profitable, what a fool I’ve been 🥸

Quite disappointed by today's news. Game Pass for Console was a huge appeal for me because of the day one releases. The question is now if new releases will come to Standard after a year or so. In that case, the best option for me is to wait for new releases in order to play as many of them as possible during one month for the cheapest option. Unless it's a game I really want to play. Simply put, all this does is make me more selective of which day one releases I want to subscribe to play for. I'll probably pay for Ultimate just to play Indiana Jones since it's still cheaper than buying the actual game. But €20 is a lot of money just to rent one game. If the experience is worth it, then I'll most likely pay that amount.

@LtSarge yeah, it means sub numbers could decrease quite significantly for large parts of the year as people make decisions similar to this. And then MS bosses will slap Phil again and force more cuts or reduce budgets for gaming division, or punish the user base again. But if you want to be the netflix of gaming that was always going to be a risk, it's basically digital capitalism, and numbers can only go so high before they crash down. And at some point the content to value ratio reduces for everyone that signs up anyway.

I know I will get whatever value I can from Ultimate until there is nothing of interest coming up, and then simply stop. So maybe 1/2 years, and evaluate what else is coming, whilst making my way through stuff that's on there already.

@colonelkilgore
I can't believe you ever doubted it.

@LtSarge
tbh I look at this slightly differently, and this might (i.e. Is) the intention and that is to boost sales of games on the platform either by people buying the game rather than waiting or most likely (imo) that people will simply cancel GP and go back to the old way of buying games. I think both situations will help Xbox make money and publishers make money and more importantly bring their games to Xbox.
So I think it is good for future of Xbox although bad for consumers who wanted a GP cheapish future unless you go PC and then Xbox look at you differently.

@LtSarge Well they did have Game Pass for Console ONLY that did offer Day 1 games before, but everyone went for the higher tiered 'Ultimate' option because Game Pass Console didn't have 'Gold' included in that price. At the time you had Gold (which became Game Pass Core), Game Pass (for PC, for Console, for Cloud - each with Day 1) and the Game Pass Ultimate which combine everything into 1 sub.

Now the Game Pass 'Console ONLY' tier has changed to include Game Pass Core for online access but has substituted that in for Day 1 releases. If you subscribed to Game Pass for Console, you'd still need to also then subscribe to Game Pass Core otherwise games like Sea of Thieves, Forza, Halo etc would be limited in content if playable at all. So Game Pass Console didn't include the benefits of the tier below when they changed Gold to Game Pass Core.

Arguably this restructure is just bringing it in line with Sony's PS+ Sub model - certainly in pricing now. Sony's PS+ Essential is $10 a month - so is Game Pass Core, Sonys PS+ Extra is $15 a month So is Game Pass Console - neither offering their big First Party releases Day and Date. Game Pass Ultimate is $20 where as Sony's Premium Tier is $18 but that will get you Day 1 games on Xbox but only PS1-PS3 games on Sony's hardware.

I don't know if PS+ Essential/Game Pass Core members will opt to pay more for Extra/Console for a large range of older games or whether Ultimate subscribers will now opt for a lower tier - sacrificing Day 1 for a 'cheaper' option. In the UK for example, Ultimate is going by £2 a month.

At the end of the day, these Sub services are optional although I do think PS+ Essential/Game Pass Core are necessary to play every Game and/or mode released on Console. Any tier above that is pretty much down to individual choice/preference - would you rather put that money into 2 or 3 big new releases every year or rather have access to '100's' of games that are only playable whilst you stay Subscribed - inc 'Day 1 releases' on Ultimate? Its not as if those games are 'exclusive' to ANY Sub Service and you have a 'choice' of how to access these days - regardless of whether you play on Playstation or Xbox

With the basic tier, you get a small handful of games you can play, but arguably you feel forced to Subscribe for access to content you paid to play. With the next tier up, the newest games are available to buy but you can wait for them to come to that Sub service to play or use it as a way to play games you missed at launch. Its only the Premium tiers now that are 'different'.