And it’s not for the reasons you’d expect.
Online activation and check-ins are anti-consumer. Always. There is no current format in which consumers should expect to be accepting of a once a day online checkin. Microsoft realising this and “adapting” their Xbox One online policies is, unreservedly, a good thing. For us, and for them, since it opens up the remaining 35% of the American population that don’t have a broadband connection as a potential market.
But Microsoft have also removed the few exceptional things about the Xbox One, for no good reason at all. Not needing the disk in the tray to play a game, and being able to share digitally downloaded games – are gone. And why? Because the console is unable to do so without a connection at least once a day?
Square Enix launches Final Fantasy X 25th anniversary site, revealing new Nomura art, books, music releases, and merchandise.
Look I know VIII has its issues and all that but how on earth can the do big anniversary events with new artwork and merchandise for VII, IX and X yet VIII got sweet f*** all.
They could have given it something during its 25th anniversary yet all it got was a single Happy Anniversary post on their social media.
they should know that we are OG fans of VIII as it sold truckload as well. not as much as VII or X. I personally didn't like IX but X and VI are my personal fav.
Shadow Hearts 2 covenant is another game I love. I hope one day someone can make remake, I would be delighted
Final Fantasy VIII is great and you are always the first to defend it in the comments
Xbox boss Asha Sharma has discussed how component shortages will impact the company's plans for Project Helix.
When does this end? Its killing everyone. Consoles and PC. And for what? AI? The benefits of AI are completely outweighed by the negatives. And the government should have never allowed one company to buy up all the RAM.
This kind of proves this is an after thought product, most products like this are in r&d 5 years before they start mass producing. So they typically have the cost of components and things worked out long before assembly starts.
This is an assumption still, but I wouldn’t be surprised if project helix is similar to Scalebound,perfect dark and sod3. They had an idea but no actual execution other than concept stage. Being impacted by the ram shortage likely would also put this device 3-4 years out.
I’m not even sure MS has that endurance with Xbox yet
I mean.... what?
We're at a point that Samsung wont even provide their own phone department ram because they can sell it at higher prices to 3rd parties (AI). Its more profitable to sell the ram than make their own devices with it.
You think because R&D starts 5 years ago the 3rd party component manufacturers will honour that price? They'll sell it to whomever is paying the most today, not some gentlemens agreement they made years ago. AI farms will buy more volume at higher prices than any console manufacturer will. It'll be the same for Playstation.
Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.
They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.
If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.
It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie
Helix is going to be stupidly expensive
Instead of leaning into smarter upscaling techniques they're brute forcing hardware that will cost them dearly and it remains to be seen if it's genuinely going to provide a meaningful differential
I know in the oc.doace people like to brag about not using frame gen or dlss to get to high on a game but for the majority of players they happily use those technologies without a second thought
That's going to be ps6 vs Helix
While this does seem to be the case, I am encouraged by the statement from Microsoft about wanting to provide affordable options. If this means a Series S style Helix, at least there will be something affordable being offered.
It's called systematic inflationary. Yes we get it Microsoft, keep raising in the name ofall kinds of stuffs
Honestly if there was thing I learned from this generation is that new consoles arnt day one anymore.
I can wait 1-3 years.
Another important lesson from this generation: while Nintendo showed us that prices don't necessarily need to ever drop, we've now learned that waiting 1-3 years does carry some risk that prices increase. This generation is just bizarre in all the wrong ways.
The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.
Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.
Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.
LucasRuinedChildhood,
For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:
1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.
2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".
LucasArts gave Jango Fett his own game in 2002, and it pulled Star Wars into a much dirtier, rougher, and more interesting corner of the galaxy.
IS this guy serious? Microsoft tried to be like Steam and totally got trashed for it, now they go back to how it always was done and that is bad? Steam requires you to be 'online' and logged in for verification to install games on your computer, if the author is forgetting.
Obviously the disc needs to be in the tray to prevent people from installing the game and selling the disc while still being able to play it. Steam does not have to worry about discs because it 100% digital download. But even then games digitally downloaded to PS4 and Xbox can be accessed and played by all accounts/users on the same console, like it has always been done
A good majority of people on the internet have been asking ms to go back to xbox 360 policies for the x1 and now that they have done so, it will alienate consumers?
I guess there isn't pleasing everyone.
i don't think the reversal of XBone's policies change much it just give people who were unsure something to think about. what it does do however is give MS a chance to turn thing around later on in the years much like the ps3 has done this gen. if they supply great games in bucket loads i can really see the XBone atleast being somewhat more competitive later on. i do worry about the emphasis on cloud processing though. i worry that MS will instead make it so that all games will require the "cloud" therefore requiring a constant internet connection like sim city and try to sell it to consumers as "cloud processing gives more powers and endless opportunities" when really its just another form of drm, heck if they did that from the start they could have gotten away with it in the eyes of the mainstream media
If they can no longer play the game with out a disk, its because now it needs to be downloaded to the actual HDD and not the "Cloud". With all those TV functions and apps 500gb would fill up rather quickly . Call me cynical, but this might have a lot to do with over promising on the whole "Cloud" issue. Why else would you take away all the "powerful" features of it??
First DRM was a bad idea. Now not having it is bad? Why not write write an article defending DRM when the Xbox One still had it?