I have never made a $500 sympathy purchase.
Xbox needs a killer game. Maybe Starfield will do it, but who knows. Halo should have been it, but while it was fun, it was not enough. SW sells HW.
Just one?
My man, Xbox needs SEVERAL killer games over a period of years, if they ever want to get some real positive PR, brand support, loyalty and goodwill. They had a fine year two years ago, to be honest. While Halo wasn't what we'd hoped it would be, things weren't too bad. But since then, we really haven't gotten anything noteworthy, have we. I enjoyed Psychonauts 2 tremendously. I enjoyed Pentiment immensely. I enjoyed Hi-Fi Rush too, but let's be honest here, those games aren't system sellers.
This is beginning to frustrate me because, it's been far too long now. One can only make excuses for them, for so long. They now have roughly 65 billion dollars for the Xbox division (if the appeal falls through, which it might), they better out that money to damn good use. But smaller developers if you have to, to help bolster your offerings. But for God's sake, get the right people to make the right games. That is literally your only job. That's what you're in the market for. You're a gaming company. If you can't do that, then why are you in this business? Diversify then. Do something else that you're good at, because clearly this ain't it.
Forspoken and other Sony blunders are tolerated, because they come few and far between. For the most part, PS has built its reputation on qualify titles - they generally deliver. They've earned their die-hards. MS, for many years, has underdelivered. They've also earned their critics, because of it. People can say many things about Sony, but they can't say they make bad games. And while Xbox doesn't make bad games really (they really aren't bad), their games don't deliver anywhere near what gamers expect. They leave too much on (or off, as the case may be) the table.
Ans for the life of me, I can't understand why this is so hard to nail? If Sony can do it, and Nintendo can do it, and Capcom can do it, and Square Enix can do it, and Activision can do it, and Take-Two can do it, why the fnck can't you do it, when you have more money than all of them put together?
I love GamePass, and I love Xbox. But these days, I don't like them... I don't like them, at all.
Signed,
A Green Rat