consoles have mods these days, though they do need developer support
not everyone cares about mods, I’d go out on a limb and say most pc players don’t use mods
this new Xbox thing is not an OS, it’s an app. The device still has full windows in there and it is accessible. But when you’re using the Xbox app windows suspends many of its functions.
The next Xbox will simply be a prebuilt PC and it won’t be subsidized (or it will be subsidized less) so expect a $700-$900 price tag for the Series X, and a $500 for the Series S. It wouldn’t make sense any other way. Steam et all will be usable, as it is usable in the Xbox Ally as well.
Now tell me what would you rather buy? The PS5, which is absurdly locked down (even more so than the current Xbox when it comes to mods)? Deal with the gpu market shenanigans? Or buy the prebuilt Xbox PC that lets you play all your Steam games as well?
I mean my problem is that they didn’t learn from Fallout 4 and furthermore they went and doubled down on it in the worst ways possible. Radiant quests on FO4 were kinda lame, but at least I can say that they sent you into unique dungeons. In Starfield no only are the quests repeated but also the locations. It’s a huge step back.
On the positive end though I do have to say that the Faction quest for the Federation (I don’t remember the name) is one of the best quests lines Bethesda has written hands down. It felt like it could have been the main quest all by itself.
Wait until you realize that there’s like 5 dungeons and they are literally copy pasted all over the galaxy. Not like Oblivion were the rooms were copy pasted but had different mobs in it etc. These are literally the same dungeons, some of them even have a little narrative told through terminals, and not even that changes.
I used to be a Bethesda fan and a huge Todd apologist, but he’s literally out of touch with what made his games good for the core audience and instead panders to the audience who buys games based on the laundry list of features they never get to see because they don’t finish or play games after the hype is dead one week later.
It’s a shame because they actually got a lot of things right like going back to the TES conversation style, and having actual builds and the ship building which is pretty cool.
My last hope is that they actually learn the lesson with this game and stop this bullshit they’ve been trying to pull of since Arena of having endless content.
I gave the only instance in which piracy is permissible in the comment you replied to. When there are arbitrary restrictions on how and where you can consume the content that you purchased. But a purchased must have had happened, because that’s what entitles you to access to the content. That’s literally the only instance in which piracy is valid. I’ve seen all the other arguments and they really don’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny because games, movies and books are not necessities and you are not entitled to access to anyone’s work while everyone is entitled to price their work however they like. If you want access to the content you pay what the gatekeeper is asking for, and if the content is not good enough for you to pay for it then surely it isn’t good enough for you to spend the most valuable resource that you have on it which is time.
You do you, but to me 99% of pirates are just entitled parasites who’ve never created anything in their lives and as such do not understand why content has a price. For me piracy is only justifiable when you have paid for the content but are being barred from accessing it via bullshit like Adobe DRM.
But pirating shit just because you disagree with the pricing is entitled behavior and I cannot condone it, as someone who thinks I have the right to price my property at whatever price I want. It’s not essential to your survival so you can just not consume it and move on.
I don’t think it was the lack of open world that put me off from it, as I’ve always preferred hub based games ever since Dragon Age Origins. I think it was just the writing honestly. I don’t like the whole “le soooo epic zany & ttlly rndm” writing that it shares with Borderlands. I don’t find it funny, endearing nor entertaining. It’s just annoying to me and it was everywhere at the time because millennial culture was at its height.
I think tech is far along now that there’s a space for something that is “best of both worlds”. Something that Valve has been trying for a while yet was only successful with the Steam Deck because tech just wasn’t there yet.
Think about it like this: instead of making a whole Xbox based build, devs simply make the PC version of their game and within that PC version they make a series of graphical presets that are the Xbox version, and another one that is the handheld version. This would lower costs for them while Microsoft focuses on building a windows OS that is gaming focused and suspends all the crap that hogs performance. For you the Xbox would work pretty much the same as it always has except you can now also play Steam, GOG or Epic store games if you want (with the risk of jank). The downside of this is that the next Xbox will 100% not be subsidized if it uses this model, so be ready to pay $700 for it.
Microsoft’s track record is not great at this type of “fork” but I think for them as a company this path makes more sense than selling subsidized hardware that doesn’t move software because it doesn’t sell well. They can now sell software everywhere and if you want a more optimized experience you can buy their box.
You’re clearly not understanding Microsoft’s strategy. They are no longer interested in the hardware market that had been losing them money since forever. In fact Microsoft has been wanting to kill Xbox since like the second year it existed, so this is how they more or less managed to do it while making money instead of just losing all market share. Xbox is now a software platform, and the next Xbox in all likelihood will simply be a prebuilt PC running the Xbox app that they developed for this handheld. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise to be honest.
There’s not many Xbox (console) only games either. And none come to mind that are from this generation. All of them are also on PC.
I think this will play out well for them. What would you prefer, the locked down platform that also sells their games on PC (PlayStation) or the more open platform that lets you play anything anywhere?