Currently playing...

[MattyP]

You really should try Outlriders. Free with Gamepass. Has the run-and-gun cover mechanics of Gears combined with a "magic"/weapons/armour/attributes system like Destiny!

I've played through the campaign several times experimenting with character class builds, and I'm on my second play through with my mates. It's brilliant.

Great! Thanks for the heads up will add to the list!

In other news Scorn is out on Friday. Looks to be interesting - and exploration adventure game set in a Giger inspired environment. Also coming to GamePass....

[guythp]

The current favourite is 'Spiderheck' - it's on gamepass and is around £14 on switch. not sure about ps4/5 or steam.
It's a multiplayer brawler but the controls are just spot on; fluid, quick and accurate to the point where when I'm playing with younger family members and they get killed, they laugh it off instead of blaming the game or the other person as they know it was their fault.
A great soundtrack by Professor Kliq, clean 'retro' graphics and just an all over feeling of niceness when playing it. That said if you're local multiplaying you really need at least 3 people to make it more fun, as with two-players it can become a stand-off.

[MattyP]

Currently playing A Plague's tale : requiem.

Love the setting and environment beautifully gross Oh the rats too wow the rats! Interesting the first time they appear! I never played the first one so went into this cold. Like a mix of Uncharted, The Last Of Us set in a medieval world. Game not so sure about at times I'm around 3 chapters in and creeping around guards all the time is getting a little tedious now we have guards and rats. You can use the rats to your advantage through and so can approach every situation in a multiple of ways.

Worth a look and it's also on GamePass too.

[VNVObit]

Picked up Brotato this weekend and really enjoying it. Similar in someways to Vampire Survivors mixed with a similar playing arena to geometry wars (i.e. not all visible at once but still a rectangle).

Only 3.99 on steam and really fun albeit a bit frustrating. Start with single weapon and you can buy new weapons at the store at the end of each wave. The store is only 4 items from a long list so no guarantee that same item will keep reappearing. Weapons can be upgraded via combining with an identical weapon and you can have up to 6 at any one time (albeit with various rules). One character may equip more but has a penalty for doing so.

Overall just great fun at a very reasonable price

[Rhythm]

Kicked the GamePass habit, started paying for games instead.

On a bit of a mystery game kick at the mo. Really enjoying:

The Case of the Golden Idol - this thing is just lovely. Basically a new take on those old logic grid puzzles.

You're an unnamed investigator faced with a static final scene of some heinous shit going down. Use clues in the environment to figure out who's who, who's dead, who did it etc, along with a couple of (usually) optional puzzles. The optional stuff gives extra clues as to what may have happened in the main scenario so they're absolutely worth doing. It's all an exercise in "use information to fill in the gaps" and it works great. GF and I have taken to solving one together each evening






Also been playing an older one - Simulacra. You find a phone on your doorstep with a strange corrupted video message on it from what we presume is the former owner. Look through the phone trying to figure out the mystery. The acting is a little hokey but it works incredibly well. There's absolutely something voyeuristic about snooping through someone else's device and that's absolutely part of the appeal.

I believe that one's also available on mobile.

[MattyP]

Kicked the GamePass habit, started paying for games instead.

I keep pondering over quitting GP when my sub expires next March. At the moment though I always seem to find something interesting to play.

Long term not sure how it will impact the industry - positive or not. But from a consumer point of view its great.

[Jonesey]

Looks like that Vampire Survivors game you all like is coming to XBox Gamepass on November 10th. Can't wait to give it a whirl.

[Rhythm]

Kicked the GamePass habit, started paying for games instead.

I keep pondering over quitting GP when my sub expires next March. At the moment though I always seem to find something interesting to play.

Long term not sure how it will impact the industry - positive or not. But from a consumer point of view its great.

It's at an interesting stage. It's intriguing to watch streaming media try to blow itself up after they'd already solved the problem of piracy. From "Here's a one-stop shop for most of the content that you might ever like, all for a fairly low fee" to "there are now 20+ services, each with their own fee and we're not going to make it easy to search across them".

The subs platform for this stuff is fascinating. We have music trying to fall over itself making everything available on every platform. We have movies/TV going down a different path, going out of their way to make sure that things can only be on one platform at once. And we have games where they're all kinda clamouring to get included in Game Pass.

They each come with their own pros and cons for the customer and the creator. We know streaming music pays pitifully for its content, we know Game Pass has been extremely generous, with some indie devs declaring that even the up-front fees MS offer outweigh previous sales (who knows how long that will last).

[Deckard]

I suppose the new piracy is guys like me getting YT Premium and Nintendo Online and Apple TV as part of someone else "Family Pack" or else in the case of YT Premium now buying it from a base in Mexico at 70p a month....

[Rhythm]

I suppose the new piracy is guys like me getting YT Premium and Nintendo Online and Apple TV as part of someone else "Family Pack" or else in the case of YT Premium now buying it from a base in Mexico at 70p a month....

That's a small part of it, sure. But since services have diverged so much, piracy (actual TPB piracy) for all media is way up on the past couple of years.

[Misfit]

Spot on assessment. I'm in a fairly good position (at least until my mortgage fixed rate comes up in May and the energy cap goes in April) so in general, I don't mind paying for multiple services if they are used.

But it's way too much faff finding out if you have access to particular content and browsing/finding stuff is a nightmare (and don't get me started on auto-playing videos as you scroll through).

The justwatch website helps somewhat but there must be a better way.

[Rhythm]

Spot on assessment. I'm in a fairly good position (at least until my mortgage fixed rate comes up in May and the energy cap goes in April) so in general, I don't mind paying for multiple services if they are used.

But it's way too much faff finding out if you have access to particular content and browsing/finding stuff is a nightmare (and don't get me started on auto-playing videos as you scroll through).

The justwatch website helps somewhat but there must be a better way.

There's a significant part I don't think has been fully tested (re: games) - sustainability. It's not too long back that people were paying higher fees (than Game Pass) just for single games. MMOs like Conan and WoW charged for the game and then charged a monthly fee. And where WoW is still going, Conan (and everything not WoW, basically) died a death in the face of not being cost-effective to run.

So at this current time MS are charging £8 p/m and somehow making the return for all involved worth it. But I'd be interested to see how much of the model is based on actual revenue covering actual expenses, compared with how much it's being subsidised by marketing spend.

Case in point - my £1 for 3 months of Gamepass deal ended yesterday. I'm already being offered new £1 for 3 month deals by Microsoft. It's patently obvious my £1 doesn't cover any reasonable income for devs/pubs, so one can only assume my £1 is being topped up by marketing or promo coffers.

Then there's all the people who bought XBL from grey key resellers and converted their subs to Game Pass using that offer MS put out a couple years back. How many of those would renew? How was the money resettled as people converted their XBL to Game Pass? What does the actual balance sheet look like for XBL/Game Pass?

As with the talk about Twitter charging for verification, this isn't about the money. It's about buying into a system where, because MS aren't being transparent with the figures and there are so many cut-price offerings around, you can't be sure that you're not investing in a scheme which will ultimately hurts devs.

[Misfit]

MS was claiming 25 million Gamepass subscribers in January this year.

I'm guessing a large percentage of those are not the savvy repeat trials/use the loophole and stack up years on the side people, and are paying at least $10 a month.

So let's say that half are paying $10 (I think it will be more, but have nothing to base it on), and that the subscribers hasn't gone up in 10 months, and forget some will be paying at a higher level for Ultimate. So that means...

12.5 million * $10 * 12 months = $1.5 billion a year!*

I've no idea on the costs involved but I'd imagine they can be quite generous to studios with that coming in?

*whilst I feel that could be a low guesstimate I'm also aware my logic called by totally out and I'm missing something!

[Misfit]

And some belief they could get to 100m based on the deals with Activision and Riot and the push to cloud to play on any device regardless of having an Xbox:

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/x ... ubscribers

[Rhythm]

MS was claiming 25 million Gamepass subscribers in January this year.

I'm guessing a large percentage of those are not the savvy repeat trials/use the loophole and stack up years on the side people, and are paying at least $10 a month.

So let's say that half are paying $10 (I think it will be more, but have nothing to base it on), and that the subscribers hasn't gone up in 10 months, and forget some will be paying at a higher level for Ultimate. So that means...

12.5 million * $10 * 12 months = $1.5 billion a year!*

I've no idea on the costs involved but I'd imagine they can be quite generous to studios with that coming in?

*whilst I feel that could be a low guesstimate I'm also aware my logic called by totally out and I'm missing something!

They announced figures last year, as it goes. $2.9bn during 2021. Not sure if they've broken out GPU there (to account for what would have gone into XBL) or if they've included the fees earned through that Xbox "complete" package. But still, big sums.

But there are 330 publishers currently signed up on the service. And some of them are much bigger than others so rates to each will vary. We know there are signing bonuses and payments made for time played.... It should all work out hunky dory but I do wonder about the long-term sustainability of it.

The music industry deal with it by not paying artists enough, the media industry have dealt with it by diverging from the single platform concept.... I'm super intrigued to see what happens next in the gaming model. Feels like all the generous signing offers that have built good feelings are about to start dropping off