Mark this under the “posts I meant to write weeks ago”. But here we are. A great little game called CrossCode leaves Xbox Gamepass on July 15th. And this is my pitch to get you to play it before it does.
What is CrossCode?
So CrossCode is a 2D, top-view sort of action RPG. Like Secret of Mana but made for our modern-day gamer sensibilities. There’s a ton of combos and special moves, and I never found any that were so broken that I’d exclusively use those. There’s a lot of variety here. Like, seriously, this thing is huge.
You have four elemental powers, and every enemy has a weakness to one of them. It’s not a particularly puzzling combat system, but it’s pretty fun. Combine that with some genuinely tough enemies, melee and ranged combat, and a slick dodge move, and you’ve got a pretty great combination.
The setting is really cool, though not necessarily breaking any new ground. In the story, CrossCode is a MMORPG played by thousands of real players. You are one of them. While the game is actually single player, pretty much every “NPC” you meet is actually a “PC”. They’ll reference real-world stuff, like having to go to bed, or school, or jobs. Personally, I found it very refreshing after playing one too many fantasy games that vomit a bunch of confusing words and lore at me. Because the story isn’t contingent on you understanding a bunch of ancient legends, but instead, just real life. I know real life pretty well. It’s nothing new, and it’s something I think Sword Art Online did better, but it’s not a concept that’s been trodden to death.
The actual story of the game isn’t bad. It’s perfectly serviceable, though a bit…conceptual towards the end. But the characters are the best part, especially as you forge relationships with them over the course of the game. While you do have some of your basic RPG party stereotypes, many of them are just people playing a character they think is cool.
But What’s the Gameplay Loop?
I’m glad you asked. So in a very SNES-like RPG way, the majority of the game has you going to get four main items. You explore different areas, collect special items, and attack enemies. One pretty great addition is the Botanics Menu.
Every area has different plants, which have a certain chance of dropping items. This log keeps track of how many of each plant you destroy. If you get enough of every plant in each area, you’ll get some really cool items. For a collector nut like me, this is a great way to get me to engage with a level. Instead of looking for a chest that may or may not exist, instead, I’m scanning the environment looking for specific types of plants. And some of these plants are actually really damn hard to grab. You’ll have to get clever with how you move around the level, as well as how you use your bouncy ranged attack.
At the end of each area is a dungeon. You’ll either love these or hate these. Personally, I think these are on the same level as the best Zelda dungeons. While they might be pretty plain visually, the puzzles in here are honestly really tough. They’ll force you to engage with the environment and your different elemental powers. Although, sometimes they can get a bit tiring in their length. For instance, one of the last challenges in the game takes this long to beat perfectly:
This is an RPG, so What About Sidequests?
Oh, we’ve got sidequests. A bunch. A ton. Some of them are really cool. Some of them are fetch quests. But there’s a great variety. One that stuck out to me was a tower defense-like area. You had to balance energy maintenance with enemy weaknesses. All of a sudden, it was like I was playing a totally different game.
The point is – there’s enough unique optional content here that you won’t get too bored with a gameplay loop, because of how much the game switches it up.
Conclusion
So, yeah, that’s my pitch. Like the best RPGs, it’s not annoying, and has plenty of content to reward you if you take your time. It leaves GamePass in a few days, so I say give it a chance. If you don’t get hooked, no problem. But if you do…well…hit me up on the Discord after you beat it and let’s talk about it.
Donut County is the quintessential Xbox Game Pass game. It’s short, it’s simple, and I didn’t buy it outright.
The cold indifference of people being swallowed is my favorite thing about this game.
It’s got a very Katamari Damacy / Untitled Goose Game vibe. You play as a hole, sucking stuff up and growing larger. There’s not much more to the game than that. Hop in a level, swallow everything in it, next level.
BK is the best.
What really makes Donut County fun, and what kept me invested enough to beat the game in one sitting, is the presentation. In between levels, you learn about the wacky characters of the world, all stuck at the bottom of the hole. BK, the troublesome raccoon who keeps sending people “donuts†(holes), gets blamed by everyone, and constantly reflects the criticism with some ridiculously stupid answer. It’s genuinely funny, and I always loved seeing what excuses he could come up with next.
Gameplay isn’t much more than swallowing stuff. There are a few tweaks thrown in: filling the hole with water, a catapult to shoot things out, swallowing a campfire to set things on fire. It adds a veneer of a puzzle game, and it’s inventive enough in the level design to change up the “swallow stuff up†formula.
But beyond that, there’s not too much to this game. I think I beat it in an hour. It’s funny, it’s satisfying, that’s about it. I do wish the game had a bit more, because it’s extremely gratifying to swallow things.
If you’ve got Xbox Game Pass, check it out. Otherwise, it’s $5 on every other system. Like, seriously, every other system. iPhone, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Android.
The Medium is boasted as Xbox’s first true “next gen†(or is it this gen?) game. And it’s certainly true, graphically. You’ve got raytracing, reflections, and the game basically running two different scenarios at once.
You can practically hear my computer chugging.
You might have some questions about that last point. The concept is this: a Polish woman has the power to exist in two worlds at once. The world of the living (real world) and the world of the dead (Hell, I guess). So for the bulk of the game, your screen is split in two. On one side – real world. On the other – dead world.
My computer does not like this concept. It chugs down to a solid 20 fps whenever the game runs these two scenarios at once. And experiencing a game at such a low framerate is not really something I’m into. So I stopped playing, and put on the backburner for whenever I get an Xbox or a better GPU.
But the hour or so I played had some promise, even if it was bogged down by graphical glitches and a flat main character.
My inventory was empty for 95% of my playthrough.
It’s fairly obvious that The Medium takes heavy inspiration from classic Resident Evil games, though it seems to grapple with balancing both the puzzle box aspect of RE games with the more linear story is wants. You have an inventory to combine objects, but you pick things up so rarely that there’s none of the inventory management that makes Resident Evil so personal and wonderful.
At the same time, the game really wants you to keep moving. There’s hardly an exploration, and what little there is rewards you with a newspaper or something to read. Hardly worth it, especially with how slowly the character moves. For instance: in the second chapter, you go to an abandoned hotel. I thought the game was going to stick here for a while and let me really explore around, like a Resident Evil game. But, nope, it’s extraordinarily linear. All doors except the ones you need to go through are locked or blocked off. So, I shrugged and just decided to abandon exploring. But maybe that’s on me – I insinuated too much about this game based on Resident Evil.
I do like her outfit, though.
The main character is…not my favorite. She’s one of those characters who always talks. Like, with everything. In a way that isn’t realistic at all. I don’t find her annoying; it’s more that she’s so rarely quiet. I also wish there was a way to have her use Polish – since the game’s set there. She also has a fairly monotone voice, which can work sometimes with the melancholy tone of the game, but when scary stuff happens, or she’s getting chased, I’d like a little more energy. Again, maybe I’m spoiled by Resident Evil 2, where characters react to horror situations, you know, like people. It’s not the end of the world, and maybe The Medium’s main character changes by the end of the game.
The Medium is one of those games all about spectacle, that really benefits from the best visual settings you can give it. The problem is, it runs really badly, especially when you’re playing in the dual scenarios. There’s some potential here, and I’m pretty intrigued to see where it goes. Right now it seems to be stuck between Resident Evil and Alan Wake, and I think it needs to commit to one side to really shine. If I can ever run the damn game, I’ll do a write up with my findings.
Plus, it’s on Xbox Game Pass, so, you know, it’s basically free.
Something new I decided to do this year was review games a lot more. Like, weekly. I play a lot of games, and damn it, I want to talk about them!
So let me take the next few minutes of your time to pick on a 20 year old game.
Halo has such a prestige to its name. It’s Microsoft’s headliner. You have people my age who grew up playing these games. Master Chief is an instantly recognizable mascot. Even my parents know him, albeit as “that Army guy from the games we didn’t let Eric playâ€.
Going into Halo: CE, it’s hard for me to separate all that mystique from the game in front of me. Especially because, without it, you’ve got a somewhat mediocre first person shooter.
Wait! Wait. I know, that’s a privileged opinion, in a time with games like Titanfall 2 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Shooters have come a long way since 2001, and it is completely unfair for me to compare Halo: CE to modern day games. So I won’t. I’ll contrast it to a game from 1998.
Drawing comparisons between Half-Life and Halo are not difficult. Both feature zombie-like creatures. Neither have you aiming down sights like in a modern day shooter. And both have one man, for the most part, wandering around facilities, killing monsters. Yet, for my money, I’ll take Half-Life over Halo:CE any day of the week. Why is that?
Level design. Where Halo: CE fails, and Half-Life succeeds masterfully.
THE LEVEL DESIGN
Halo: CE’s levels are long. Like, incredibly long. And boring. Man, are some of these boring. Uninteresting architecture, fighting the same creatures in the same room layouts for anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes. Some of these levels quite literally repeat entire stretches over and over, like in The Library. You follow a glowing little orb of light through giant hallway after hallway, which have no visual distinction, fighting hordes of monsters. I honestly thought after a certain bit that I had backtracked. I hadn’t. It’s just that repetitive.
Let’s compare these levels with Half-Life. Half-Life is set in a science facility in New Mexico. Easy to understand architecture, room layouts, yet with plenty of variety to really spice up the scenarios. Hallways can lead to giant elevators which can lead to vents. It’s a masterclass in early FPS level design.Â
But, ok, Halo is set on a…Halo, not an Earth facility. A big ring with trees and mountains and stuff, and with temples all across its surface. You’ll be diving into those, fighting monsters, and discovering a giant security facility within the ring. It’s a great concept, and yet, time after time, instead of really stretching the idea of what a weaponized alien ring could have on it, you walk through rooms like these:
Ew. It’s as if the level designers and world builders had no communication. Nothing about this screams “alien templesâ€. It screams “concrete parking garage in downtown Little Rockâ€. Instead of dazzling us with what a Halo could be, the game prefers to stick us in the mundane.
For my money, there are only two stand out levels in this game: The Silent Cartographer, and The Maw. In The Silent Cartographer, you storm a beach, searching for the control room of Halo. There’s a wonderful contrast in scenery between the picturesque beach and the gray facilities. But even within the facilities, you’re introduced to mechanics like invisible enemies, which keeps you on your toes while you navigate the dark hallways. There’s driving, shooting, heavy weapons, and the introduction of a new alien, called the Mgalekgolo (Good God). The variety is refreshing.Â
The latter of the two, The Maw, is very similar. You return to the ship you escaped in the very first level, fighting your way back through it. It’s always nice to see how much more powerful and skilled you’ve become over the course of the game. Then, you get to the “final bossâ€, where you blow up four engines to destroy the ship for good. It’s nothing revolutionary, but the hordes of Flood (zombies) chasing after you keeps things moving. Then, an exhilarating escape via car, ignoring enemies in your way as you try not to get caught in an explosion. It’s great, and you have real motivation for what you’re doing. Mainly – finishing the game so you won’t have to wander through boring gray rooms anymore.
GAMEPLAY
Which bring me into my next point – the gameplay isn’t that great. But this is where perspective is important. I pretty much hold Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) as the gold standard for FPS gameplay, but that was 18 years after Halo’s release. So I’m trying my best to look at the gameplay from that perspective.
For what Halo was – a FPS on a console, using a controller, it’s actually pretty damn good. You don’t aim down sights, but instead just move your cursor towards the alien of choice. With how inaccurate a controller is, and with the aim assist in the game, I don’t hate this. I played Halo: CE with a mouse and keyboard, and unfortunately it got pretty frustrating to be so inaccurate. But, again, perspective. 2001 gamers didn’t have that luxury.
The variety of weapons are pretty good. There’s a human and Covenant (alien) variant of each weapon, with some interesting variety between the two. The Needler shoots a bunch of slivers of crystal at enemies before they all explode, dealing big damage. The standard pistol is powerful, but doesn’t have much ammo. The Fuel rod is basically a one hit kill for everything, but it shoots extremely slow. What adds to all this is how quickly you burn through ammo. Throughout any one level (which, remember, are very long), you’ll be swapping between 10 to 20 different weapons. It’s kind of a double edged sword, because on one hand, you never get attached to a weapon, but on the other, we’d probably all just be using the assault rifle from the first level for the entirety of the game without using any of the other cool guns. So I get why Bungie made this choice.
My biggest issue with the gameplay is a lack of punch. Shooting an assault rifle doesn’t really feel like anything. Part of that is larger enemies have shields, so your guns really don’t do anything for a few seconds, but even then, impactless. I believe this adds to the larger feeling of slogging through levels.Â
However, this all changes when fighting the Flood, especially with the shotgun. They go down so easy, but there’s so many of them. It’s therefore very easy to see the effect of your gunplay.
GRAPHICS
So I played Halo: CE through the Master Chief Collection, which has these “updated†graphics. But, Jesus, they look bad. The graphics look really muddy, and there’s just random designs on a bunch of these walls for no clear reason. It’s awful. The biggest offender? You can barely see the shields of enemies. So you’ve got no clue when their shield runs out and you’re actually damaging them. Luckily, the game offers you the option to switch simultaneously between the regular graphics and the “updated†graphics. It’s astounding how much of a better job the older graphics do than the updated ones.
CONCLUSION
Halo: CE has its issues, but you’ve got to respect it at the same time. It pretty much single handedly sold the Xbox in its first year. The FPS genre is built on this game’s back. I think Halo: CE symbolized the end of classic FPS games like Goldeneye, Quake, or Half-Life, and led into a far more homogenized genre. Nowadays you can pick up 90% of FPS games and the controls are exactly the same. Halo’s to thank for that. And that’s not a bad thing.
I’ll give Halo a 3/5. Did I enjoy my time playing it? Not really. It’s an archaic (by today’s standards) game, but so much of what this game did led to the games I love today.
Yeah… two console launch preorder days in the past week, and they were both a cluster nightmare moist dumpster fire. They were just a mess for different reasons. The PS5 was a mess because Sony lied, contradicted itself, and clearly didn’t plan out the release well. It waited far too long to announce anything, due to a big game of chicken with Microsoft I guess as to their next gen dates and prices, and that seemingly forced it to turn around on everything to try and deflate what Microsoft had going in. Of course, in hindsight, Microsoft kind of had an ace up their sleeve before they opened preorders.
Microsoft tried to get in front of it, announcing the date of the preorder during their conference (compared to Sony’s tact of leaving that out entirely), and in response to Sony pantsing it hard with their launch lies on Twitter, came out with a bit of shade that the Xbox Series S and X would go up for sale at 11 EST on Tuesday the 22nd (yesterday, at the time of writing this). As they say though, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and the Xbox Series Whatevers preorder launch went… poorly.
From ArsTechnica… where are we even going to put these damn things?
The ball was seemingly dropped by retailers with the Xbox, rather than Microsoft directly, but since one of those retailers was the Microsoft Store, they aren’t blameless. The worst offender in all of this has got to go to Amazon, which didn’t list the console until hours after the fact, and was constantly giving 404 message pages with various pictures of dogs if you tried to go to the product pages. Apparently, it worked on their affiliate partnership site, smile.amazon.com, but by the time it was fixed on Amazon, they were sold out. Who knows who actually got them, most likely bots, but it was an absolute tire fire.
Walmart was the only retailer who seemed to get their crap together and get a working site ordered… which is a bit shocking. I know a lot about Walmart’s internal workings, and while they have a lot of talented people working for them, their website is pretty terrible. Try to go look up a product and determine if it’s in a store near you… yeah, any luck? Didn’t think so. Even though their site worked, they sold out within ten minutes or so.
Target was my first choice to order, and I ran into this exact problem.
Target had the most frustrating problem, which was explained very well by Penny Arcade. You could see the console, click preorder and then… you were screwed. It supposedly went in your cart, but you couldn’t see it. If you went to your cart, it was empty or it errored out. If you tried to add it again, it told you that you had the maximum number already in your cart. Apparently, if you used the mobile app, you were able to preorder, so long as you hadn’t tried to use the website first.
Best Buy was late to the game, not putting them out until an hour or so after everyone else. They had a weird throttling that prevented people from starting the checkout process, and kept giving an error message. No idea how random it was, but I was never able to get through with it. Best Buy would have been a nice choice, since I could have done store pickup for my console from there.
You know how I know what happened at all of the various websites? I tried to purchase a system at each one of them.
GameStop, being the terrible and backwards company that they are, had the “solution” to the problem that I find the most humorous and creative. In the real world, I do web development for enterprises, and I’ve polished my fair share of turds in the many, many, years I’ve been doing that. But nothing I’ve ever done matches the engineering solution that Gamestop came up with.
When you hit their pages, you got a screen prompting you to wait. You were in queue, and you just had to be patient and you’d get your chance to order. The most important thing, though, was to not refresh, because you’d lose your spot in line. Which cool, that’s some fun tech that – yeah, Gamestop didn’t do that. They added a small bit of HTML markup to the page that just automatically refreshed the page every 30 seconds, not an actual queue.. it just randomly served up the correct page so you’d have a chance. Which would be funny, if it didn’t also drop you on a page that didn’t have the console, that required navigating around, often to broken pages that would not load.
If you were a dog person, you might have enjoyed failing to get a console from Amazon
I ended up securing a console, by going through the Microsoft Store, which was just having old fashioned load issues. You could start the process, but trying to add it to your cart would give you a 404 error more often than not, or time out getting to checkout. But if you could get to checkout, you could get it… it was just painfully slow.
I’ve talked a lot about FOMO, skipping the generation, or just waiting… and honestly, I could have done it. The only reason I jumped on it was because I’ve had Xbox Game Pass for ages, and my Xbox One has been having issues. So I wanted to replace it, and doing that with the latest console made more sense. I’m glad I got it, but could have survived if I didn’t.
This Is Getting Worse
That being said… this is a worrying continuation of a lot of things. There were similar problems around the launch of the nVidia 3080 graphics cards last week, with the markup on those reaching 300% higher than the already high SRP. LEGO fans are obviously familiar with how stupidly fast sets come and go when they launch. We covered the Nintendo pins for Mario 3D All Stars last week, and they were gone within 4 minutes of Ace posting that and me going to redeem my code.
Man, the Terminator films really missed the mark on what would happen with Skynet
The PS5 and the Xbox Series X were always going to sell out during their preorders… but what we’ve seen is just ridiculous. The biggest problem behind this, and so many other issues lately, seems to be with bots. It’s why we haven’t been able to find a Switch, Xbox One, or PS4 online since the pandemic started, why LEGO sets sell out immediately yet flood the aftermarket for jacked up prices, and now why most people never got a chance for a new console. The computers were able to hit the sites and order instantly the moment they were there and flooded out everyone else.
What’s frustrating is that this is a mixture of things that can be fixed, things that can’t be fixed, and the general incentive of companies to not bother fixing it. Consumers have the “easiest” fix here, and that’s don’t pay stupid markup for things on the aftermarket. A loss of demand will dry up some of this stuff right away… but FOMO is at absurd levels so I have no faith in our collective self control. There will always be people with more money than sense willing to pay, which is how these schemes stay propped up.
Efforts are ongoing to identify the problem at eBay
Companies could fix some of the issues just by closing off the ports and tools that bots and scrapers are using, adding mechanisms to prevent the automation and hammering. They do it all the time on non-commerce things, like adding the annoying reCaptcha checks to logins, making you prove you are a human, asking you to rotate images, or just putting in DDoS checks on a page. Yet when it comes to sales, they don’t want to do these things, because, ultimately, they don’t care who they sell it to so long as they get their money. eBay doesn’t care if people are angry at scalpers because enough people still buy.
Microsoft, LEGO, Sony, and Nintendo care about selling the units to retailers, and don’t care if the retailers keep customers happy. Because it probably doesn’t even matter if we are happy. What alternatives do we have on where to go when the paths in are controlled by so few. It would be an arms race in trying to fix it, to be sure… bots are always going to improve and get better, and so long as there’s profit in the aftermarket, there are going to be people to exploit it. There wouldn’t be a fix that works forever, maybe not even works all that long… but doing nothing has just pushed it out of control.
There’s a parallel that’s been thrown around, something I know nothing about, and that’s with the collector’s shoe market. I know that there were people who collected shoes… I am not one of them. I’m very much a middle class suburban dad when it comes to shoes, and I have no interest in them. Scalpers and aftermarket sellers are an issue there, with so many limited runs and special editions… but there’s also a difference: the shoes are a limited run product. The consoles and graphics cards most certainly are not. They’re going to be in stock eventually, and nothing will come out between now and then that you really needed it for.
Okay, maybe I understand shoe collecting a little bit… but these were the only ones I was ever able to purchase
I get it… I obviously wanted and went after an Xbox Series X, but this all feels like FOMO run amok to the point where this could all just implode. I know it won’t, and I know some are probably sick of reading all my anti-consumerism screeds on a site that’s pretty much all consumerism… but this all feels wrong. Like we’ve lost something, or given something up, and we aren’t going to get it back until it crashes and takes the things we love with it.
You know what, I’ll tie it back to LEGO… what’s going on feels a lot like what drove me out of collecting in the first place. I also know it’s what drove a lot of others out of collecting. It stopped being special, and the fun and uniqueness of the sets and figures was replaced by rampant FOMO that wore off quickly. For me, it was seeing LEGO start cranking out a half dozen CMF lines, slapping together garbage like the Hoth UCS set, and raising the price and complexity of the Modular buildings while also turning out more of them a year.
I know we had some former Bothans that left, some who had been collecting since Star Wars was first released, because things like the Comic Con exclusives and limited release sets made it impossible to keep a full collection. The rarity in that case ended up making it less special, and the number of things coming out, and demanding your money and attention, just makes you tune out eventually. I’m probably going to do another article on that, and how LEGO has devalued their own product in how they release now, but it still feels so much like it. The VIP early releases, the pre-orders, the exclusives… it all hits like things that we’re seeing play out more and more with video games.
Maybe we already lost the battle, or even the war. The bots aren’t going to go away, and the only thing we can do is make sure we don’t feed them any more than you shouldn’t feed trolls. I don’t have any good solutions, I just know that a lot of people who were excited to pick up something new are left with very sour tastes in the past week or two…
Well, the PS5 preorder was a cluster, and most likely, the Xbox is going to sell out quickly. Luckily, we know there are set times for this one… it starts in an hour 11 EST / 10 CST / 9 MST / 8 PST. Good luck to everyone who’s going to try one. The links below should work for the various sites, and purchasing through these is a great way to support the site!
Here’s a simple fact: Sony cannot win in an arms race against Microsoft when it comes to purchasing studios and sweeping up talent in the west. Microsoft is simply a bigger company, with more value and a bigger warchest, and has the infrastructure and assets in place to purchase and support a lot of studios. Sony can fund exclusives, get access, and purchase studios that make their content… but they’re never going to be able to go and drop $7.5 billion to bring in the largest private video game publisher out there. It’s also not clear that most companies would want to take that offer from them if it was there.
Say what you want about Microsoft, and there are many things to say, but how they treat game studios has seemingly been overwhelmingly good… especially when compared to companies like EA and it’s consume and destroy approach, Activision with it’s gut and restock, or WB with it’s layoffs. Microsoft has ended a couple of big studios, like Lionhead and Ensemble Studios, but for the most part, let their studios continue to do their thing. I know a lot grumble about the fact that Rare hasn’t done much outside of Sea of Thieves, but it’s also hard to imagine other publishers letting a studio just keep trucking like Microsoft has with them (and Everwild looks pretty cool).
Let’s take a moment to look at the pretty impressive roster of studios that Microsoft has tucked under their belt (not putting in founded first party studios), and some of their franchises:
Compulsion Games – The meh at best We Happy Few, which was an interesting idea with poor execution. Presently working on undisclosed projects
Double Fine Productions – Psychonauts series
inXile Entertainment – Wasteland and Bard’s Tale series, including the new Wasteland 3
Mojang Studios – Minecraft
Ninja Theory – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and the upcoming Hellblade 2
Obsidian Entertainment – The Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity, Grounded, and the upcoming Avowed
Playground Games – Forza Horizon and the upcoming Fable game
Rare – A lot of old classics, Sea of Thieves, and the upcoming Everwild
The Coalition – Gears of War
No, there aren’t any games in there that are going to stand toe-to-toe with something like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, or Uncharted… yet. With a few exceptions, most would be more mid-tier games that add spice but don’t move consoles. So let’s talk about what IPs Microsoft now owns with their purchase of Zenimax and it’s IP brings.
Arkane – Prey, Dishonored, and the upcoming Deathloop
Bethesda Game Studios – Fallout, Elder Scrolls, the upcoming Starfield
id Software – Doom, Rage, Quake
Machine Games – Wolfenstein
Tango Gameworks – The Evil Within and the upcoming Ghostwire: Tokyo
Zenimax Online – Elder Scrolls Online
Interestingly, there are two PS5 timed-exclusives in there, in Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo. That won’t change… history has shown that Microsoft keeps the contracts and allows studios and subsidiaries to operate pretty independently. According to multiple posts from Bethesda, they’re still going to act as “publisher” on existing titles and stuff that’s coming out soon, but who knows if that will change.
The Game Pass Future
Right now, and in the immediate future… not much is likely to change. Bethesda titles that are on Xbox Game Pass (Fallout 76, Fallout NV*, Rage 2, Dishonored*, Dishonored 2, etc) are now likely to just stay there; the Dishonored titles say leaving soon but who knows. Other stuff is likely to show up in the near future as well… and eventually, I’d expect to see the whole back catalog on game pass where available.
Stuff that’s already on other platforms, or scheduled to go to other platforms… is going to remain there. Those timed exclusives on the PS5 will stay on the PS5, though the minute they can come out on the Xbox they’re gonna show up. The biggest change we’ll probably see is that both games, which were coming to PC, are likely to hit Xbox Game Pass on PC on day one as well. We saw this with Wasteland 3 and the Outer Wilds, and it will probably continue.
I need to buy the DLC for Outer Worlds, still… but don’t own the base game because Game Pass… which I won’t be getting rid of anytime soon
Microsoft already makes its games available on other platforms on PC… and orders will likely be there for some time. I’ll go so far as saying the big games that are coming soon, and by soon, I mean sometime in the next twenty years, like Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6, are likely going to be cross platform as well. After that, who knows… we know Avowed is an Xbox and PC title, and that will likely be the thing in the future as well.
Xbox Game Pass is already a fantastically good value with everything that’s on there right now. The PC version just doubled in price to $9.99, though the combined version is still $14.99, but that’s still amazing. This just makes it better for the same price. Sony’s new PS Plus Collection was already kind of meh, but the PlayStation Now and PS+ are asking the same or more, and delivering a whole lot less.
Everything we know about Starfield so far: it’s name, it’s a video game, it’s… uh… space?
This is ultimately the question that’s going to be asked when looking at a console… do you want games included in the price or do you want to pay more for them? You can pay $60 or $70 for Deathloop, or you can just get a subscription and play it on PC or eventually on Xbox. The same will apply for Elder Scrolls and Starfield. Xbox doesn’t have the power of Sony on first-party exclusives, still, but they just made the amount of cross-platform exclusives shrink.
What’s Not Likely to Change
Unfortunately, one thing that’s not likely to change is Bethesda’s bad behavior on games like Fallout 76… Microsoft has it’s own microtransaction-laden games (Forza and Sea of Thieves come to mind); they don’t do loot boxes, typically, but they do stuff like that. It’s not across everything, so I don’t see it suddenly exploding everywhere (unlike, say, if Activision or EA got these titles).
Fallout 76, and its monetization schemes, were often seen as a way to start courting a buyout of the private company by a bigger corporate parent. A lot of the old guard in Bethesda is going to be taking a big payout on this buyout, and making some real bank (remains to be seen if the rank and file make anything, depends on what their equity stake was like there)… so we could be seeing some of those guard taking their leave in a few years.
Microsoft needs to fix their stupid Perks site… I’m tired of it prompting me to join Xbox Game Pass, something I’ve been part of since it launched
What we are probably going to see is some things, like subscriptions, perks, and releases, folded directly into Game Pass. Elder Scrolls Online has an optional subscription / pass system that I could see become a perk; same with the Fallout One subscription. Bethesda has always released games with DLCs and expansions, and those aren’t included in game pass, but they are baking in a discount just for having game pass, so now DLC becomes a “if you want to play more” proposition.
Microsoft isn’t a taskmaster owner, as we’ve seen in other consoles, so they’re also not going to start turning these studios into a churn factory. In other words… we’re still gonna be waiting forever for Starfield and TES6. Historically, they’ve given studios pretty wide latitude to do their own thing and run their own show, so that’s going to be there.
Playing a Long Game
The only silver lining in this, right now, is that Microsoft isn’t looking to deny players access to games and support. The Xbox strategy has been inclusivity all along, not exclusivity; there are exclusives on Xbox, but they’re also showing up on PC at the same time. The Xbox Series X goes up for preorder later today, with the promise and potential of day one games in game pass for the whole generation.
Xbox had pretty incredible mod support for Skyrim and Fallout 4, while Sony crippled a lot of them with size and access restrictions
It’s possible, though not assured, that Elder Scrolls 6, Starfield, Fallout 5, Dishonored 3, the next Doom, and all the other franchises out there become Xbox exclusives to sell consoles. There are a few statements from sources at MS and Bethesda that say they will be published by Bethesda, but games will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. If they do come out on other platforms, the question will be “do I pay $70” or just use the subscription on PC or Xbox Series X the same day.
This has been Microsoft’s strategy for some time, and this is both a flex and showing off the massive financial power Microsoft has compared to either Sony or Nintendo. It’s also likely that they’re not done yet, as well… there are plenty of other studios out there they could look to snap up (like, say, Gearbox). Microsoft has never managed to break into the APAC market and Japan, but now has a studio based in Japan (Tango Gameworks).
Microsoft isn’t going to dethrone Sony any time soon, and the PS5 will sell tens of millions in the next year or two. It’s also clear that Sony and Microsoft are playing for different things here, and that the more you try to compare offerings, Sony is starting to be in a harder and harder place. For my own take, this looks like it could be a reverse of what we got in the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Sony had some amazing games in that generation… first party exclusives like God of War 3, Uncharted 2 and 3, Last of Us, and Demon Souls… but none of those were enough to claim the crown.
Man, I miss making off color jokes about the Wii
The Wii buried everything back then, before it sort of vanished, and technically, the PS3 outsold the 360 in the end by a couple of million units… bolstered by being for sale well after the Xbox 360 left the market. Software wise, it was also kind of a wash, though most of that generation on the Sony side remains locked on the old console, while a lot of the 360 is available to play on the Xbox One and upcoming Series S and X.
Part of this is our bias and perception as well, that really clouds the success and failure; the Xbox underperforms in APAC regions, while the Xbox overperforms in North America and Europe. However, as I covered in the next gen FOMO article I did last month… console sales are somewhat deceptive. The real value for Sony and Nintendo have been Software sales, while Microsoft has relied on 3rd party publishers to really deliver value on a system. Game Pass, and the studio purchases, are changing that… and now, they’re going to get a cut of software sales on other consoles as well.
Obsidian is setting up to elate us and/or break our hearts
It could also be argued that Microsoft lost this generation by focusing on publishers instead of gamers and customers – the Xbox One was a publishers dream and a consumer’s nightmare when it was first announced. The “death of the console” has been declared for years and years, as technology advances faster than developers and studios can push them, and the gains in graphics become less and less. Microsoft, without ever saying it, is giving a compelling case for the post-console future, where the service is what matters more than selling the box that delivers the service. We’re not going to see Game Pass suddenly show up on Switch or PS5 any time soon, but this move puts Sony, in particular, in a spot to justify how it’s still doing business.
Make no mistake, this is a shakeup that’s going to alter gaming going forward, and I’m kind of curious to see where it goes.
Hey, so… you know how the complaint about Microsoft not having a lot of exclusives? Yeah, about that… Microsoft just bought some of the arguably biggest franchises in gaming to bring into their stable. Details of the agreement aren’t public yet; Zenimax, the parent of Bethesda and the various studios that make their game were private companies. There was a lot of whispers that their move into live service and microtransaction fare in the past few years was specifically to court of buyout.
Needless to say, this was likely a multi-billion year, and if history is any indication, those studios will continue to operate as their own thing under the Microsoft umbrella. I’ve had more than my share of issues with how Bethesda has been as company, and Fallout 76 was a wet turd of a game… but there’s still a lot of talent and ideas in there. By all accounts, the new Doom game was great, Skyrim is still one of the best open world RPGs ever made, and they are bringing in series like Dishonored, Wolfenstein, Prey, Starfield, and many others.
The strategy of Microsoft in this is pretty obvious, they are about bringing gaming everywhere. The immediate impacts won’t be felt with this… but in the future, when all of Bethesda’s releases show up on Game Pass first, it will be hard to deny the value of what Xbox is doing.
Side note… Microsoft now owns Bethesda, and also owns Obsidian, a company that Bethesda famously screwed over with Fallout: New Vegas, and who made the best not-Fallout Fallout game. Just saying…
Edit: Jason Schreier just detailed some things on Twitter, and the deal is reportedly for $7.5 billion… which honestly feels like a steal. Also, Microsoft is now publishing two PS5 timed-exclusives in Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo… so there’s that.
Right before Moviepass sunset, I wrote an article lamenting the end of a great service. One point I never managed to put in was how I would be willing to double the subscription price to keep the service as was. That would have been $20 a month for unlimited movies.
(That’s exactly what I did with Regal Unlimited, by the way. $20 for movies.)
But it brought something up that both Microsoft and Sony are currently doing – raising prices on their services and games, and it really forces me to put my money where my mouth is.
If you missed the news, a few weeks ago, some AAA games announced a new, $70 price tag for their next gen games. There was worry around the Internet that other studios would take this approach. And now, we know they are. At least a few.
The Demon’s Souls Remake is one of those.
Many times I’ve talked about my love of the Souls / Bloodborne / Sekiro series, and seeing a remake of a 2009 game touting a $70 price tag is…difficult to grapple with. There’s not much precedent as we move into a new gen. Yet Bluepoint Studios, the studio behind the remake, also remade 2018’s Shadow of the Colossus. The asking price? $40. Now, to be fair, Demon’s Souls has way more content than Shadow of the Colossus. But still, I mean…it’s a remake.
It’s a difficult position to take, because I don’t want to denigrate game developers intentionally. God knows it’s a messy industry, but I don’t doubt there was time, effort, and passion poured into this Demon’s Souls remake. Making a game is a monumental task and I applaud anyone that tries (as long as they don’t sexually harrass people, Ubisoft). But you have to ask – what does that $60 / $70 pay for? If it’s a large enough game (as these $70 games are), they already make fat bank. The two best-selling games of 2019 – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and NBA 2k20 – are made by the two studios who took the first jump to $70. So I think it’s legitimate to ask – are these games’ raised prices a product of necessity or corporate greed? (I think we know.)
But that was why it was somewhat heartbreaking to see Sony do this. Sony, who has sold a gagillion PS4s and sells pretty damn good numbers of their exclusives, seems to be only doing this because they can, not out of need. Yeah, I know, bemoaning corporate greed is useless, but it’s my rant, so shut up.
It feels like Sony has been building up to raising the price on their games over the last few years now. To say they’ve had some good exclusives come out on PS4 is to say it completely incorrectly. Sony has been knocking it out of the park. Uncharted 4. Bloodborne. God of War. Spider-man. The Last of Us Part II. Horizon Zero Dawn. Persona 5. If you’re like me, you’re love at least a handful of these games. And you want more, right? And dear old Sony is saying “look! I have more! Demon’s Souls, Miles Morales, Horizon: Forbidden West, God of War 2 Logo.” You reach out your hand, more than willing to pay $60 at launch as always, and Sony retracts their hand a bit. “Well…gonna need you to cough up just a little bit more this time around, bud.”
It feels scummy, and god dammit, I’m going to keep buying those games, but I won’t be happy about it. Sony has these extremely high quality games, but wants us to pay more to get them. On top of a $500 console at that.
I don’t even want to think about our poor friends in Europe, where the price is not only rising, but rising higher in value than in the States. It’s all just a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario, and Sony’s got us on their fishing line, seeing what they can put us through. Is this the breaking point? Not at all, probably not even close. But it’s a step towards it, a step that I’ll be watching closely in the years to come.
But let me talk about the other word in my title – inclusivity. The underdog Xbox (never thought I’d write that), who completely bungled the Xbox One’s launch, has done an incredible 180. I love how Chris Plante at Polygon put it:
At the beginning, time and again, Microsoft centered itself. Everything needed to be done on Microsoft’s terms. Execs wanted players and developers to play by their rules, rather than meeting players and developers where they’re comfortable.
The new Xbox strategy, by comparison, is designed with its audience, for its audience.
Xbox Game Pass, as with Moviepass, is unbelieveable and fantastical. It’s too good. Over 400 games on console. Over 200 on PC. Streaming on Android. Cloud saves. Xbox has created a platform that I can’t see as anything but the future of gaming. While Sony has tried its best to ramp up exclusivity, Microsoft is perfecting inclusivity. And with the announcement of EA Play games coming to Game Pass, adding a TON new games, it’s more inclusive than ever. But the comparison (or contrasting, I suppose) of Microsoft and Sony doesn’t end there. Last week, Microsoft announced a price hike for Game Pass. Game Pass Ultimate will be $25, and Game Pass for PC will be $10. And yet…I will happily pay it. Because Game Pass gives me AAA games Day One at no additional cost, like Crusader Kings III and the upcoming Halo: Infinite. I’ve found some great gems on there, like Crosscode and Moonlighter. And with the addition of EA Play, Microsoft’s message is simple, and I understand it: More game, higher price. It makes sense to me. Sony, on the other hand, is saying “same game, higher price.” The math doesn’t hit at hard.
But it doesn’t matter, does it? The $70 games will sell well. Better than ever, probably. And, in time, $70 for a game will become a norm. But if the question is who will win the console war…I wonder what wins, exclusivity or inclusivity.
Electronic Arts may be one of the scummiest video game companies out there, at least in our opinion, but there’s no denying on my part that I’m extremely interested in Star Wars Squadrons. EA released a new trailer for their upcoming game today. There’s also a note that you’ll be able to get some skins as pre-order bonus content. That alone has me wary that it’ll be another Star Wars Battlefront II and be just rife with microtransactions. Considering the game is listed at $39.99, I would not be surprised if that were the case.
I’m okay with pre-orders most of the time. I’m drawn in usually by the art books, SteelBook cases, or some other physical goods. Skins? Not really my cup of tea. And as excited as I am about this game, I am holding off on this one.
Star Wars: Squadrons will be released on October 2, 2020 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
