X looks understated and professional, the PS5 looks ridiculous.
Genuine LOL at this. So true. I see they've just announced a neon pink PS5 which is hands down the most revolting-looking piece of consumer electronics I think I have ever seen - you have to admire that kind of commitment.
I'm all in on Xbox this gen so that would be my recommendation but I'm a bit less down on the Series S than cav is, I think it's a really capable machine and honestly if it can run Flight Sim and that Matrix demo then I think it stands a good chance of being a contender for the entire generation. Either way you want Game Pass, it's just so ridiculously good it's hard to recommend anything else.
(Top tip for Game Pass is to stock up on as many months of regular Xbox Live Gold as you can afford before doing the initial one-time £1 conversion, it'll convert them on a 1-to-1 basis so you can effectively get up to 3 years' worth of Game Pass Ultimate for less than half the regular price. But that does depend on having a load of cash up front of course).
Yeah, we were kind of learning towards the S anyway. And we have now bought the Xbox Series S and a year of XBL Gold. It'll be here in two or three weeks!
Series S plus a year of Ultimate for 35 quid has to be one of the best deals in all gaming.
Not that you need my input now, but I'd have recommended S/X too. Microsoft have completely flipped my expectations from 12 months ago. With games at £70 a pop, the PS5 has become this weird enthusiast console that I love dearly, but couldn't recommend to many people.
I feel sorry for the me in the parrallel universe I created when I chose to not to follow through on my PS5 pre-order because there's an alt-universe me out there that did and I can't even imagine what he's doing with it. I think the only thing that can make me want one soon is if Final Fantasy XVI is good.
Final Fantasy XVI is extremely tempting, but I'm not convinced it won't make its way to Xbox eventually. Not like I could A. afford a PS5 right now or B. find one for sale anywhere, so it's pretty academic at this point anyway (especially with no release date in sight).
I can't even imagine what [alt-universe Alastor]'s doing with [a PS5]
He's probably completed every game that's been released for the thing already.
Our local GAME had a massive shipment of One X's in the other day. Worth the occasional pop in to see (especially as you actually live in civilization).
EDIT: Answering a post on a previous page and you've already bought a One S. My usual excellent timing.
Series S plus a year of Ultimate for 35 quid has to be one of the best deals in all gaming.
Not that you need my input now, but I'd have recommended S/X too. Microsoft have completely flipped my expectations from 12 months ago. With games at £70 a pop, the PS5 has become this weird enthusiast console that I love dearly, but couldn't recommend to many people.
I mean, to be fair, I've not spent £70 on any game for it. As long as you go for the disk version games tend to be selling for a similar price to last gen. Gamepass has totally skewed the value for games and ultimately no matter what Sony do the PS5 is going to look like a poorer value proposition, but it is worth saying again - you can sub to EA Play (3 quid a month), you do get the PS Collection and then the free games on PS Plus through the year for £25 which is a pretty big library. Pick up R+C for £25 and you're pretty sorted for entertainment. Again, it's no Series X and Gamepass competition but it's not a totally done deal - as ever with any free game service if it hasn't got the games you want to play on it, then it's of limited value (though Gamepass has a fuckton of games on it).
PC + Gamepass and then the torrent of free games on Epic and cheap keys is probably the greatest value proposition of all though. If you can get a GPU (you can't).
I have already forgotten the entire conversation. We did buy some though and the eldest child used it on both her CPU and her GPU without breaking anything.
There's a six-part documentary on the history of Xbox on YouTube now - it's actually very good and surprisingly honest. I've only seen the first two episodes which have all been about the design and launch of the original Xbox but I'm looking forward to future episodes discussing the Red Ring of Death and the Don Mattrick years.
The Xbox arrived! After digging through the stuff on gamepass I decided to start with Crackdown 3, Crackdown was the first game I played on my 360 after all. When one of the police goons I was shooting ran out of health and said, "GAH! I've been killed." I knew I had made the right choice. Also green orbs.
I have also downloaded Control, Doom 2016, Firewatch, Goat Sim, Hollow Knight, Nier Automata, Slay the Spire and Mirror's Edge 1. That should keep me going for a bit.
I have also downloaded Control, Doom 2016, Firewatch, Goat Sim, Hollow Knight, Nier Automata, Slay the Spire and Mirror's Edge 1. That should keep me going for a bit.
Oh that's a great selection of games, come on. Crackdown 3 is marvellous, Slay the Spire and Hollow Knight are pretty much the peak of their genres, and Goat Sim will keep the kids entertained for hours.
Bear in mind Control is the "last gen" version at 30fps, if you really want to play a shiny version then you need the Ultimate Edition which isn't on Game Pass (yet).
If you owned anything digitally on the 360 then it's probably still available for download on your new Series S, in one of the tabs on your Game Library thing.
Incidentally, even as a (very happy) PS5 owner, I would've echoed the XBOX recommendations. My old (near enough launch) PS4 was really starting to struggle/sound like the deck of a helicarrier, so it made sense for me, with my lapsed gamertag and massive PS4 (and Switch) library, but in other circumstances I do think I'd have gone back to the other side again this gen.
Forza 4's weird empty Edinburgh will probably take you back to the height of the pandemic. I think it's probably less convincing if you live there as it's compressed and looks odd in bits - but I'd still say the novelty of racing around the UK beats out Mexico for a first one to try.
It gets better as you learn more of the combos and enemy patterns, as you unlock more cards and relics and characters. I found it a little bit underwhelming for the first couple of runs, but once it clicks you'll be set.
Forza is indeed free on Xbox - make sure you're looking at the Standard version.
M7 was delisted entirely. I bought it as I thought, while it was largely boring, it's reasonably divertingwith a wheel and the rain effects are still stunning.
The first character, the Ironclad, is a little dry. At least stick with it until you have unlocked the third character, the Defect, as that was the point the game really grabbed me.
If you like the basic idea of Slay the Spire but want something a bit punchier, try Monster Train - also on Game Pass.
Turns out Of have to pay for Forza so it can wait.
Does Slay the Spire get better?
Do you play TCG/CCG games or deckbuilder-style boardgames? If you don't of have never liked them, you'll probably get nothing out of Slay. If you have and enjoy the challenge of card selection, deck thinning, combos, sequencing and managing resources then Slay is a very good vehicle for experiencing that buzz.
I have played a bunch of those games. I love Star Realms. Most of the rest I found a little dry but that's mostly because there isn't much interaction between players. I'll still with StS for a bit.
Firewatch is annoying. The protagonist is an arsehole and the game's checkpointing is crap.
Hollow Knight looks good.
Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order is surprisingly good. It gets the Star Wars vibe with at least one cool new spaceship and a lightsabres which is fun to use. Gameplay is fun so far, if very linear. Reminds me of Odyssey.
I really like Fallen Order. It never quite decides whether it wants to be Metroid or Dark Souls but it’s a pretty good mash-up of the two and it absolutely nails the aesthetic. If you’ve recently watched Star Wars Rebels it’s a particularly good companion piece.
I died in Star Wars Jedi this afternoon and there was a big dialogue box I skipped while I was trying to restart, is there some catch involved in dieing and respawning that I need to know about?
Every time you die, you get a monologue from George Lucas about something else he'd change in the original trilogy if he was given the chance. The filthy tease.
I tried fallen order when I first got my SS. Thought it really nailed the universe and mood, and looked/sounded great, but could not get into the combat at all. It felt unresponsive and treacley as soon as you started trying to do anything too tricky. Bouncing bullets with a light sabre was fun. Failing to dodge a big dinosaur to get behind it for the fiftieth time - not so much…
Have you tried Minecraft on the SS? I nearly got one the other day for the living room, not found any stock of Xs and can't really justify the cost of that at the moment, but was tempted by the 230 deal on the S. We have been playing a lot of Minecraft on the Original Xbox One model and notice its painfully slow to load compared to the Xbox One S we have upstairs.
It's a real shame there isn't someway of converting games you have on discs to run on the SS, otherwise I would already just get one, but I do have a backlog of Xbox One games on discs I want to at least have a go on.
The loading speed is the best feature of the new consoles, it's really hard to go back once you're used to it. I've got my old Xbox One X connected to an old telly in another room and for the most part it's perfectly fine to play on and the performance in games is perfectly acceptable but the incessant loading and the glacial slowness of the whole OS is very off-putting. Never used to bother me at all but now I'm used to basically having almost no loading times at all on the Series X, it makes the older machine feel positively archaic.
Yeah I can imagine that, I gave my old laptop to my missus which was a 7200pm drive, and occasionally if I have to go on it I can't believe how slow it feels compared to my desktop I built that just has ssds except for one storage drive.
Apologies if this has already been discussed to death in this thread (although that's never stopped us before - returning to the well is what we do) but if you've got a decent PC is there much reason to get an Xbox Series X?
I have a PC with a RTX2060 graphics card, which is permenantly connected to the TV and has a wireless dongle that allows me to use Xbox controllers which playing on the couch. I also have the PC subscription to Gamepass which has largely the same library as the console subscription as far as I can tell.
Would there be any point to getting a Series X? I've always liked the hassle-free nature of console gaming, but switching the TV over to the PC channel and fiddling about with the occasionally cumbersome process of launching a game aren't exactly a problem. Are there other benefits to owning a console that I'm not seeing? Is there a load of exclusives that you can't play on PC?
With PC Gamepass being a thing, there isn't really much point in owning an xbox especially given that things are still very cross generational and we're not seeing much in the way of things that really take advantage of what those consoles can really do.
Social integration with your xbox friends list maybe? The xbox app on PC isn't great.
The only reason to buy a Series X is probably marginally better versions of games, as it'll likely outperform a 2060, but not by a huge amount, a slightly slicker front end and it'll probably be quieter and quicker to turn on. The downsides are - more expensive games, paid for online, single point of failure, expensive storage and lack of upgradability.
Works the other way too of course - I don't feel the need to upgrade my elderly gaming PC because there's not much it'll do that isn't already covered by my Series X. I mean each has a handful of exclusives but overall they pretty much occupy the same space in the ecosystem.
