They seem to be already on board or getting close to fully on board. Sega is a bit picky but Persona or maybe Atlus seems to be all in. Bamco and Capcom are more picky about it, mainly the latter. I think they’re cool with it if it’s an old game. New titles, they choose to. At most, stream your game is a nice option.
4 Likes
I was going to say Eden’s Zero instantly came to mind. That’s a Konami game that Xbox secured for not only Play Anywhere, but also Xbox Cloud Gaming without it being on Game Pass. I thought it was a big deal with Eden’s Zero being exactly the type of anime game that’d usually skip Xbox entirely. The problem with Konami and all of them is that it’s just not consistent: wagon is a good analogy because we really need a play anywhere locomotive that’s fully boarded and passengers are unable to get off.
1 Like
Forza Horizon 6 is gonna be a huge release next year, 5 is still 11th most played 4 years later, it actually has gotten more popular over the years, it was top 10 for a very long time but then dipped to around 15th and now for months I have been seeing it consistently in the 11th-10th spot, probably has over a million unique weekly players with this consistency near the top 10, FH6 which I have no doubt will be another masterpiece by Playground will be something else, I wonder how much better the visuals will be too considering this is the updated engine, I hope they pursue more photo realism but they probably won’t, since that hasn’t been a thing they’ve seemed to care about from the beginning, crazy that they will also probably have Fable that same year, so the dream of two amazing Playground games in the same year will probably happen.
If you would’ve told me in 2021 that Forza Horizon 5 would be more popular than Halo Infinite 4 years later and would be near the top 10 most played while Halo Infinite is like 31st and Halo MCC 28th I would have been skeptical about that.
2 Likes
Was talking to my nephew, who turned 14 last Friday about FH6 and we’re both hoping they put some kind of challenge into the game. Meaning, let us “work” for amazing cars.
I’d love it if for example in story mode you start with a trash ass car that barely drives, so to speak. Then work your way up and get better cars. So for example you start with this(imagine it all rusty, damaged, barely hanging together etc)
And you do races with it, earn money and eventually either you get this as reward or buy it yourself…
And from there on you get access to stuff like…
I think FM does that, right? I doubt they will do this though but I do think they give and reward you with crazy fancy cars way too early on. Give me something to work towards, motivation to do certain races and that way be able to get a certain car.
I guess we’ll see, but hopefully it offers new things.
8 Likes
Agreed Forza has broken into that GTA like genre. The next one is certain to do numbers, and I’d imagine that from here on Xbox would be looking at a way to have mobile version. Games like this and SOT really make me believe there is a plan for a handheld that’s different from what we are seeing now.
1 Like
I’d love it if they got back to something a little more like this, rather than giving you a Lamborghini Huracan for like the third race. 
3 Likes
Maybe it’s just me but I’m a little surprised that BF6 player count on Steam didn’t explode further than Friday with the weekend, long one if one is off due to tomorrow’s holiday. A late boom can occur. Either way, strong start is strong.
2 Likes
It might be nice if they tried something like their spin of a Mario Kart like racer for Xbox. It would certainly be something to see Doom Guy and Master Chief racing.
They weren’t kidding about next year is the year of fighting games.
5 Likes
Hold on, Gears of War too? As in E-Day? Somehow I expected that to be a next gen launch title. I’d love to have the new one next year.
Halo though, I can’t see that being the brand new mainline game.
Very strong start, especially for Battlefield, I think this game brought back a ton of people that were disappointed with Battlefield 2042 and never bought it, the early numbers seem to indicate that, also probably some people who have been disappointed with COD lately, I don’t think this will be the COD killer I saw so many saying it would be though, not even close, it will probably do better than the new COD but that’s about it.
I think a proper remake of Halo CE can be considered a new game, especially if they also remake the multiplayer, which thinking about it now, I would love it so much if they did, Halo CE has by far my favorite Halo maps to this day, would love a remake of that multiplayer with some modern gameplay touches, I don’t see a world where Gears skips the current gen consoles, that would mean PS5 as well, they won’t just skip on that huge install base of 100+ million between the two consoles.
That is an interesting idea. What if they held all 4 games for next gen release? They would still have to be cross gen, but those 4 games launching with next gen would really create some hype.
My fantasy scenario was Gears E-Day/Fable/Forza Horizon 6/Halo Remake to all come out next year cross-gen of course but with best version on new powerful hardware (and that new haptic controller) releasing in holiday 2026, and all timed exclusive so they come to Xbox/PC first and other platforms later, but alas thats not happening
Yeah, i don’t think new hardware is coming at 2026. 2027 seems more likely, mostly speaking on the fact that i think it should be given time to mostly see what happens towards the rog ally handheld and see what they learn from it on the hand of customers and all that and see what works and what doens’t.
Also, i do think that maintaint either timed exclusive or full on exclusives don’t really matter so long as the game is really good. Playstation should have adopt the day one pc just like xbox to get their moneys worth and while there are doing that for some others are loosing out by a lot. Same for nintendo cause their glory days are being numebered day by day by both black hole games and the rising surge of pc and mobile gaming.
No more robots, chuclefish, thunderful, atlus, sega and now suqare enix seem more and more interested in playu anywhere than ever before and i do believe that both Konami and Koei Tecmo will join this bandwagon one way or another, even though the latter is slow on the uptake while the former has only just started so we will see.
1 Like
They have over 40 games in the works and their anywhere and everywhere brand is the push now. Having those 4 games pushing XPA and Game Pass would be huge for them especially with the constant punditry attacks. Not to mention GTA may do better for them if looked at in conjunction with these games. Before going NextGen it would be best to end this gen with a killer-line up that possibly one shot the negativity. Don’t forget ABK and Zenimax also have their own killer-line ups like Star Craft, War Craft, Elder Scrolls and so on some of which are already in development.
1 Like
Killer lineup for 2026 25th anniversary to create some goodwill, then 2027 Xbox Series PC launch with Elder Scrolls 7 and the much awaited sequel to Viva Pinata!
4 Likes
So, when you go Microsoft’s page for Xbox in The Netherlands and you search for consoles like the X and S it all says out of stock, not only that , it’s for Spain, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Austria as well, it says the same thing. Even refurbished ones.
Now I get that Xbox does shitty in my country and that some big stores would be like…nah we’re good, get one at Microsoft. Except that all of it is out of stock, even the 2TB one. With holidays coming up, with a 2026 filled with heavyweights like GTA 6, FH6, Fable, CoD coming… I just find this odd. That’s putting it mildly.
Anyone know why this is the case now? It’s not like next gen is around the corner. So wtf. Hope maybe Jez can shine some light on this.
1 Like
My guess is it’s just the way you see it. The consoles are just too expensive to make, and Microsoft isn’t cutting Xbox any slack on subsidizing anymore. Over here the president just announced an additional 100% tariff on China which would only make Xbox more expensive. They seem to be pushing the Cloud now and probably want to give the Xbox Rog Ally a breather before any restocking.
3 Likes
Sounds great to me.