I don’t think a ton of people would care enough in the first place, and those that do would probably prefer SetamOS or PopOS or something else that isn’t affiliated with Microsoft.
those that do would probably prefer SetamOS…or something else that isn’t affiliated with Microsoft.
For whatever reason, millions of people obviously still prefer XBOX, in addition to or in place of, PC, Sony, Nintendo, etc. All this does is give those people more options.
or PopOS
PopOS does not deliver the console experience that I’m referring to.
I guess I’m confused about what you’re proposing then. Why would anyone - consumers, Microsoft, or Nintendo/Sony - want an Xbox operating system on a non-Xbox console?
Not having lots of SKUs and a user-managed OS is kinda what the console experience is about. Steam OS does not deliver a console experience. Steam Deck kinda does (except not really), but Steam OS is just a part of that.
Not having lots of SKUs and a user-managed OS is kinda what the console experience is about.
I dunno what a “user managed OS” means. There’s no reason MS couldn’t port the exact same experience, considering current and past XBOXes are both built on x86.
As far as SKUs, I agree, but that’s only part of the console experience. The rest of it is a controller-first interface and streamlined processing. The various SKUs is also what attracts so many people to PC gaming, and in case you haven’t noticed, it is an incredibly quickly-growing segment.
I have been saying for a few years now that i think Microsoft is getting out of console hardware, and pushing cloud gaming and Game Pass to the switch and PlayStation marketplaces.
We’re already seeing game pass on certain Samsung smart TVs, all you need is a Bluetooth controller, which means the mobile phone market is right around the corner.
The Series X|S combined has sold less than half the units of the PS5. I can’t find sales numbers on the X vs S, but it seems like a lot of studios have determined it’s just not really profitable to do that level of optimisation unless you can also squeeze the game onto Switch, which does not have as much overlap in demographics as the Xbox and PlayStation do.
The article cites Larian having similar issues with Baldur’s Gate 3 and Remedy with Alan Wake 2. This isn’t just one shitty lazy dev studio- this is Microsoft forcing hard decisions on devs by insisting on walking the Series S like they’re in Weekend at Bernie’s.
The Series S is so underpowered it can’t run backwards compatible games enhanced for the Xbox One X, it can only run standard Xbox One/Xbox One S games.
Let that sink in for a minute… the last gen Xbox One X is more capable than the Xbox Series S.
That’s not a financial decision. That’s just them lacking technical expertise. And let’s be real - the S is not some kind of potato. It’s perfectly capable. You need ever so slightly less detailed 3D models and textures than on the X but I don’t remember this being a huge issue during the PS4 generation.
It’s a ton of work for a tiny bit of revenue, why bother. I’m sure they’re just fine where they’re at. I’m not coming to Microsoft’s defense here whatsoever. The burden of affordability should not be thrown onto game devs
It will probably need to run DLSS ultra performance mode to do 1440p@60fps. So that image will look like shit since it would upscale from a 480p base resolution.
Souls games are nowhere near “yearly”, and there’s been massive changes throughout the games. How do you get anything close to “yearly FIFA slop” from that?!
Meh, on average more than 1.5 years between games doesn’t qualify as yearly for me, especially if you’re counting DLC.
It’s also simply not “the same monotonous bullshit”. Each game has variations and improvements, sometimes leading to drastically different gameplay (compare Sekiro and Elden Ring). Otherwise, why not also count Armored Core?
Now they are releasing an experimental spin-off that again drastically changes a bunch of mechanics, but that’s also somehow not good enough? Seems like you just don’t like their games, irrespective of how much they evolve from the Dark Souls formula.
Sekiro and Elden ring are literally just a demon souls reskin, I already played that game for free with ps plus on the PS3 and it was an ok time waster in school
I’m sorry but literally no. There are exactly 3 Dark Souls games, the first came out 14 years ago. Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and maybe Sekiro can be considered Soulslike, but your comment reeks of naivety.
They’re all individually some of the most mechanically unique games, with a ton of variety between each other. It’s not even remotely the same as a FIFA, Madden, or Call or Duty level of cut / paste.
See my comment above, there are 10 souls games and only one of them was any good and it was just mid jank at best but at least it had Soul™
They’re not unique and are the standard for action games with the likes of jedi fallen order and jedi fallen 2 order or whatever ripping the formula off.
Idk I think it’s exactly like FIFA and madden in terms of actual artistic value, but I wouldn’t compare it to COD because they at least have some pretty standout evolutions now and again, these souls games, new zelda games and new mario games etc are all designed by committee.
I’m just bitter that games that actually evolved action across the spectrum be it the high complexity and style of DMC4 and 5, Bayonetta series, the fun mechanics of MGR:R or even the speed of something like Warframe didn’t catch on nearly as much as the slow paced slog where you navigate boring generic fantasy environments where you fight some poorly animated big guy once in a while for the umpteenth time.
Even worse, these games are labeled as RPGs, which yeah they’re really no Fallout or Mass Effect, JRPG maybe, but it’s led to more and more shoving of RPG elements into what should be normal action games. It’s all so tiresome.
Jedi fallen order is not souls like at all. People saw the “bonfire/leveling system” and proclaimed it as being soulslike. The gameplay is more akin to the Spiderman or Arkham Knight games
Lmao no. I played all three insomniac Spider-Mans and all the Arkham games and fallen order is nothing like any of them, it is literally a dark souls reskin, from the level design to bonfires and progression to the combat and even little details like respawning enemies after a bonfire rest etc.
It’s a shame good games like jedi knight/academy and SWTFU didn’t get modern sequels and instead we get this slopfest.
I agree that the bonfire mechanics and level design resemble dark souls, but the mechanics are nothing like dark souls to me. I’ve played all the games as well. Fallen order isisn’t 1:1 with those games, but closer to them than dark souls. Combat is very forgiving and cinematic. It was made to look like darksouls, but the combat didn’t come close. Maybe kingdom hearts combat would be a better comparison. Still easy to get fucked up if you don’t know what your doing, but once you get the hang of it you can just mow down everyone no problem
Every game you have mentioned enjoying involves a lot of hand holding. I get why you are not a fan of Fromsoft. You have a strong opinions but I assume it’s just because you are likely older and jaded like myself. Nobody under 30 has played Jedi Knight/Academy.
That being said all of those games are very different from one another. Sekiro is a completely different beast. The only thing tying them together is above average difficulty that can be (mostly) alleviated by grinding.
You have to face that we aren’t the target demographic anymore.
Jedi academy and DMC4 has hand-holding? Delusional. They’re just good games. Souls games are shit games, slow and boring asf. Idgaf about forntire demographic they need to learn what games are good before they’re allowed opinions fr fr
Sekiro is a much better game than both Jedi Academy and DMC4. It is in no way slow or boring. My opinion and also the opinion of the majority of reviewers.
Yeah but just because IGN gave it 10/10 doesn’t make your opinion valid, all those souls series are very very slow, you die, you go way back to some location from an hour ago and slog through the same generic fantasy level again just to get another shot at the guy who killed you, and it just gets more boring each time, especially when the locations don’t stand out from any other generic fantasy place.
It’s extremely punishing and discourages free player experimentation and creativity and fun with the mechanics and encourages reading the wiki to cheese a boss so you don’t have to do it again or going somewhere else to level a stat or get the right gear like some lame ass MMO or ass creed, which makes it all tedious and boring.
The reason people focus in on how these games are hard is because they assume they’re not meant to die much at all, if ever, because who tf wants to sink in all that time repeating the same boring bullshit journey over and over, so they rightfully bounce off the design.
The real difficulty of souls games is having the stamina to make it through the repetitive slog, but if you really think about it why should you bother when you’re meant to play games to have fun.
“If it’s not fun, why bother” as satoshi iwata famously said ;)
Compare that to a fast game like Doom (original, not the shitty reboots), you die, there’s that wipe effect and you’re going a mile a minute, less than a minute and you’re right back in the action to give it another shot with a new tactic or strategy. It’s not that death isn’t punishing or doesn’t matter because you lose all your weapons, it punishes you with difficulty, not boredom.
And more fundamentally those games just are very slow which doesn’t help the boredom, there’s no significantly faster way of traversing a thing the second time compared to when you just walked the first time, sure you can roll and whatnot like the speedrunners and time it perfectly but compare it to something like Ultrakill with it’s fast stylish action and expressive movement mechanics and a difficulty a good bit higher than any of the souls games by a good mile.
The only game that doesn’t have this problem in the series is the OG demon’ souls, idk about the remake since I hadn’t played it yet but the levels themselves being physically smaller obscures the issue at the core of the design.
And all this is coming from someone who loves “boring” games like the paradox strategy games or sims like Arma or MSFS, the difference is these games don’t force you to repeat the same bullshit over and over, sure you might have to go back to a pretty early save in a HoI4 campaign to fix your mistake by the time it comes up but that’s on you, the game doesn’t force an arbitrary retread of the same ground over and over.
DMC4 didn’t have the best level design either, precisely because there was too much of it, and DMC5 went in the right direction and made everything a corridor of monsters so you can get right to the combat and quickly, because that’s the fun part of the game.
Souls combat can be fun too when you’re really in there rolling about the place with some huge dragon or some shit but to actually fucking get to it isn’t worth the time investment of navigating some bullshit maze over and over.
All the aforementioned games can be pretty dang hard, Doom on UV or DMC5 on DMD are both tougher than most Souls encounters, but they are fun and encourage you to try harder and souls doesn’t, and that’s the point of course, with it’s story and atmosphere lining up perfectly with that vibe that the world is indifferent to your journey, but all of this doesn’t make it good game design and certainly doesn’t make it a template other games can copy-paste willy nilly when it doesn’t fit the tone, i.e. Jedi Fallen Order.
I reccomend you give Sekiro a try or watch a let’s play. You clearly don’t know what the game play looks like. Bosses should be hard but I never had to watch a video or read a guide to beat something in a souls like game.
Bruh can you try reading my comment before you write some dumbass surface-level already-addressed shit next time?
It’s not about having to read a guide because souls games aren’t really that hard, it’s about the fact that everything around the boss fight is such a painful slog that it’s not worth the time investment required by slow, boring traversal across generic fantasy environments to get to the boss every time to actually freely experiment and find a strategy that works well naturally, y’know, something that is fun to do in action games, because it’s far more satisfying than copying what some guy on gamefaqs did, and fun is what games are meant to be about, right?
Look at the hardcore classic God Hand, does it make you navigate some eternal hellfuck boring maze over and over so you can get to being absolutely destroyed by demons, circus clowns and vampire women? No?
Yeah that’s because it’s a good game that lets you get to the fun part fast.
I’ll grant that Sekiro is probably the least carbon copy souls instalment, but that is just because the bar for the souls games is so low it’s right down with dinosaur bones, most games change up the gameplay more between sequels than souls games do between it’s series.
All that endless traversal you do in souls games is really just like a long loading screen for the good stuff and I have better things to do with my time and so should you.
What? Fallen Order is much closer to Dark Souls than it is Spiderman or Arkham. It’s all slow, methodical combat encounters instead of flashy combo beat 'em up mechanics.
For something many consider soulslike but actually is much closer to an Arkham or Spidey game, see Ghost of Tsushima.
That wasn’t my experience with fallen order at all lol. I could mostly rush into any group of enemies because enemy attacks were predictable and very easy to dodge. The iframes felt more like the combo beat em up games and enemies generally attacked in turns unless they were all shooting then all you had to do then was hold the block button. On second thought I’d say it was maybe closer to kingdomhearts combat
I appreciate the reminder that beauty is subjective. It’s been a good while since I’ve seen an opinion so inflammatory that had nothing to do with politics.
What is this animation style called? It’s the same style as in World of Warcraft and Overwatch (both Blizzard games, so I’ve been thinking of it as “Blizzard style”).
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