As fan I don’t really care about the wait, because I play ESO. Which imo, it started out rocky, but it’s already the best game in the series.
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I know Todd is possessive of Elder Scrolls and Fallout, and good for him, but Bethesda should never have been allowed to get into a situation where there are decades between (single player) franchise titles. Whether that means expanding the BGS team, creating more teams, or assigning other studios to do spinoffs. This is one of Phil’s biggest lapses in my opinion. Comparable to Sony wasting Naughty Dog for an entire generation.
Now Asha says she’s hitting the accelerator on Elder Scrolls and Fallout, great, it should have happened years and years ago… But they’re laying off people and shrinking the teams instead of growing them? 
How does that work.
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None of what Asha is doing is going to get any game to arrive faster, specially is she’s cutting staff.
I’m pretty sure people from Zos, id(I remember them helping for FO4), Arkane and other Zenimax studios already helped out with BGS games in between updating and making their own.
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Yeah i don’t get that at all either. I honestly expected for BGS to remain untouched, but I read that even some QA folks are being let go.
Two or more years is just ridiculous, wtf man!
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I mean before TGS there’s Gamescom. After boasting Xbox’s biggest Gamescom presence ever last times it’ll be more dour I imagine. Gamescom might have induce some tough conversations for Xbox. We also have Xbox’s own major anniversaries across Xbox, Bethesda, and Blizzard this year still to come. Ouch. The id layoffs are insane to me with how great that team is (even if they say doom dark ages under performed then move them to other projects). But we also have Quakecon still. That’s gonna be rough.
I feel like we (and Microsoft) are acting like Zenimax wasn’t bought just about five years ago. That’s not even really a proper dev cycle anymore. If Xbox really wanted to force more Fallout and Skyrim they’d have to find a studio and then it’d be years. Plus At the time when first purchased Bethesda was treated like a subsidiary because the process to integrate is long and for legal hurdles it’s better to keep things separate initially. Then Microsoft went on to buy ABK and management was super distracted. Starfield and the other Zenimax projects what they could hope for. It wasn’t until after the ABK acquisition closed in 2023 that there was a big organizational shift that saw Zenimax studios more under the oversight of Xbox and the company start to integrate more. Even more so after the 2024 layoffs and Arkane Austin closed. After the Fallout TV show did well they also said they’d put more resources into getting a new fallout game sooner. But like… when were they supposed to have already had one ready? Even a double AA game at this point probably takes at least four years with pre production included. Say Microsoft closed Zenimax in Spring 2021 and somehow super sped the integration process and strategically moved resources toward having at least one studio make a new fallout game for the TV show, that game would still be at minimum probably a 2026 game. Probably 2027 or later. Xbox’s studios were all already on projects and those games kept facing internal delays at the time as we were still in lock down. Obsidian for example had been working on Avowed even before Xbox bought them. Then they had that and Outer Worlds 2 (before Zenimax closed) and pentiment and grounded as side projects.
Sharma can say now that they should’ve focused more on franchises like Elder Scrolls, but the way it’s written acts like Microsoft bought Zenimax more than half a decade ago. The integration process for an entire publisher is LONG and before they’re integrated it’s hard to “move resources” around. Microsoft and Xbox themselves both commented on this and stuff like even basic file sharing took time to setup. It’s why I’m also not understanding the apparent lack of patience from Microsoft. Zenimax acting independently was more necessity than choice.
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As I’m waiting for Black Flag Resynced to launch, like you guys, I was checking my achievement from the 2013 version and saw it was playable on the cloud, so I launched it, loading my 2014 save data and I managed to finish it, as I had stopped at the last mission for some reason.
So I finished Black Flag right before Resynced launch because of Xbox cloud gaming. Pretty cool if you ask me.
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That’s a good point. I guess it just feels like longer. 
Everything with development moves at such a glacial pace these days.
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The original Black Flag is still a pretty decent looking game too, despite the low resolution.
Cloud saves going back decades, and the way that makes it so easy to pick back up a game you haven’t touched in forever, remains one the coolest features of the Xbox ecosystem IMO.
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A friend of mine asked me to check my NAT type on Xbox, because he and a few friends of his had a moderate NAT for a few days now.
Same story for me. Anyone here have this as well? This while it has been open for as long as I can remember, same goes for my friends.
First of all, nice surprise drop in the time of need.
Second, good for social crew to post again and fortunately nowhere near as bad as PS. I mean over there it’s so bad, when they repost Doom Revelations, they still attack it like it’s from PS directly. Now that’s angry.
…I myself don’t like the direction Xbox is going, so I just decided to stop buying things on Xbox and let my Game Pass lapse.
Companies don’t care how upset we get, so I’m choosing to continue my hobby on GoG(as much as possible) and Steam. Probably will make an Epic account in the future for any game they make exclusive.
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Okay, making hatred known. But thinking of investing on steam and epic, as both have issues that make me avoid buying anything from them compared to xbox or gog, when gog exist is crazy.
You may not like a direction from a company, but god forbid others enjoy using it.
I just overall dislike the notion that being on xbox is this thing that makes its players satanic or something out of a steven king novel. I have critized pcusers with that kind of atidude already and they apologies already for the mistakes PLAYERS did not make but a COMPANY did.
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It’s not about being Satanic or thinking Xbox is worst, I just don’t like the direction Xbox is going. I’m not calling anyone out, I just don’t think the platform is for me anymore.
So I’m investing in GoG as much as possible(even rebuying games once they hit the store even if I own them on Steam or Xbox), with Steam as a second and Epic as a maybe. Though generally nothing Epic has had as exclusive has made me even consider them yet.
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This is exactly what more people should do. Social media responses are all well and good but money talks. If companies do things we don’t like but then we keep buying their consoles/games anyway, we’re voting for nothing to change.
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While it’s not working with PS with physical, though they are getting ratio’d, based on posts, it doesn’t look as bad as them, which according to you is bad. I’m not saying it’s all good, because it’s most definitely not, but this is where it “eliminates” and/or even “gain” people. Call it surprising, but I see it as “Yeah, I can see why.”
It helps that I don’t stack too much Game Pass and it will expire this November, I know it’s something that holds people back, so even if they wanted to leave a platform they maybe waiting for their subs to end.
I see a positive in that it means I can take a long term view and see how things play out without having to invest further - I’ve often not liked Xbox’s changes of direction and eventually come round or at least can ignore it and play the games.
Of course that changes if they alter the rules of Game Pass…
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Same. My GPU will be up March of next year. That’s after the end of this year which still has several big gaming events and Xbox celebrations. It’d also be after next year’s dev direct. Plus there’s just a ton of games I’ve already bought and life is only getting more busy. I’ll hold off buying new Xbox related stuff and then see where we’re at then. Or if I need to wait longer July (so after another showcase and layoff month) will be right around the corner and the Helix release date also right around the corner pending major delays.
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Probably the worst move so far, any company out there would have been glad to acquire Id software. Cutting the brains is far worse pretty much tells me they just looked at the spreadsheet and demanded a number.
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