By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Ryuu96 said:

In fairness to Platinum, they don't blame Xbox either, they've gone on record saying they feel bad about Xbox only receiving the blame and that they share the blame, shit happens, I think a combination of Xbox's lack of budget at the time + It being Platinum's largest game ever, they bit off more than they could chew and it was just too much for them too soon.

Still I think Platinum do spread themselves too thin and despite it being 50/50, it'll still be Xbox failing in Japan with one of the most well known developers there which will likely put others off regardless of who is to blame.

On one of the recent Xbox Two podcasts Jez Corden literally said that Scalebound fiasco is on Microsoft for the most part. He didn’t want to go into the details (probably because this stuff is under NDA), but he said that the people responsible for that doesn’t work at Xbox anymore (thankfully). But still, it’s a fact. Of course Platinum are not clear either, but definitely not a 50/50 situation. They don’t publicly blame Microsoft simply because it’s Japanese culture and mentality - they don’t like to criticize someone publicly. I would still say that they are holding a grudge against Xbox though. It is evident simply by looking at how they refuse to put their games on the platform.

Ryuu96 said:

I'm going to say what folk might not want to hear but I think the best thing for Platinum would be for them to sell to someone, like Nintendo. I think their issue is that they're spreading themselves too thin because they always need the next piece of work to keep them afloat when it would be better for them to focus on 1-2 projects or significantly expand which they likely can't do without big funding.

I have to agree here. Unfortunately after Scalebound they’ve been on a downhill as a studio. Babylon’s Fall is some shitty GaaS thing and shaping up to be an awful game. Wonderful 101 remaster was very lazy port with technical issues. Bayonetta 3 might be in development hell. Was announced back in 2017 I think and still nothing except logo. They have also upcoming Sol Cresta game which looks good but it’s more like a smaller title - a sequel or spiritual successor to one old 80s arcade shmup game - obviously way smaller than anything Platinum has worked on before. The only good thing to happen with Platinum in post-Scalebound era was Astral Chain. I would even go as far as to say that it is a second-best Platinum game ever. Which shows that Platinum can deliver high quality games under Nintendo’s supervision. So, I really see only two scenarios from now on - they either sell to Tencent - which is bad, because we already see Tencent’s effect on them - focus on smaller games and GaaS, or to sell to Nintendo and make good games. Nintendo sadly doesn’t have that much money to compete in big acquisitions game so this scenario is quite unlikely. 



 

Around the Network
derpysquirtle64 said:
Ryuu96 said:

In fairness to Platinum, they don't blame Xbox either, they've gone on record saying they feel bad about Xbox only receiving the blame and that they share the blame, shit happens, I think a combination of Xbox's lack of budget at the time + It being Platinum's largest game ever, they bit off more than they could chew and it was just too much for them too soon.

Still I think Platinum do spread themselves too thin and despite it being 50/50, it'll still be Xbox failing in Japan with one of the most well known developers there which will likely put others off regardless of who is to blame.

On one of the recent Xbox Two podcasts Jez Corden literally said that Scalebound fiasco is on Microsoft for the most part. He didn’t want to go into the details (probably because this stuff is under NDA), but he said that the people responsible for that doesn’t work at Xbox anymore (thankfully). But still, it’s a fact. Of course Platinum are not clear either, but definitely not a 50/50 situation. They don’t publicly blame Microsoft simply because it’s Japanese culture and mentality - they don’t like to criticize someone publicly. I would still say that they are holding a grudge against Xbox though. It is evident simply by looking at how they refuse to put their games on the platform.

Ryuu96 said:

I'm going to say what folk might not want to hear but I think the best thing for Platinum would be for them to sell to someone, like Nintendo. I think their issue is that they're spreading themselves too thin because they always need the next piece of work to keep them afloat when it would be better for them to focus on 1-2 projects or significantly expand which they likely can't do without big funding.

I have to agree here. Unfortunately after Scalebound they’ve been on a downhill as a studio. Babylon’s Fall is some shitty GaaS thing and shaping up to be an awful game. Wonderful 101 remaster was very lazy port with technical issues. Bayonetta 3 might be in development hell. Was announced back in 2017 I think and still nothing except logo. They have also upcoming Sol Cresta game which looks good but it’s more like a smaller title - a sequel or spiritual successor to one old 80s arcade shmup game - obviously way smaller than anything Platinum has worked on before. The only good thing to happen with Platinum in post-Scalebound era was Astral Chain. I would even go as far as to say that it is a second-best Platinum game ever. Which shows that Platinum can deliver high quality games under Nintendo’s supervision. So, I really see only two scenarios from now on - they either sell to Tencent - which is bad, because we already see Tencent’s effect on them - focus on smaller games and GaaS, or to sell to Nintendo and make good games. Nintendo sadly doesn’t have that much money to compete in big acquisitions game so this scenario is quite unlikely. 

Are you forgetting NieR: Automata? That both released on Xbox and is one of the best games from last gen. Yoko Taro might be the creative genius behind it, but all the heavy lifting for gameplay and core development was Platinum afaik.

None of the previous Drakkengards/Drag-on-Dragoons or Nier were anywhere near as good or successful.



Shaunodon said:
derpysquirtle64 said:

On one of the recent Xbox Two podcasts Jez Corden literally said that Scalebound fiasco is on Microsoft for the most part. He didn’t want to go into the details (probably because this stuff is under NDA), but he said that the people responsible for that doesn’t work at Xbox anymore (thankfully). But still, it’s a fact. Of course Platinum are not clear either, but definitely not a 50/50 situation. They don’t publicly blame Microsoft simply because it’s Japanese culture and mentality - they don’t like to criticize someone publicly. I would still say that they are holding a grudge against Xbox though. It is evident simply by looking at how they refuse to put their games on the platform.

Ryuu96 said:

I'm going to say what folk might not want to hear but I think the best thing for Platinum would be for them to sell to someone, like Nintendo. I think their issue is that they're spreading themselves too thin because they always need the next piece of work to keep them afloat when it would be better for them to focus on 1-2 projects or significantly expand which they likely can't do without big funding.

I have to agree here. Unfortunately after Scalebound they’ve been on a downhill as a studio. Babylon’s Fall is some shitty GaaS thing and shaping up to be an awful game. Wonderful 101 remaster was very lazy port with technical issues. Bayonetta 3 might be in development hell. Was announced back in 2017 I think and still nothing except logo. They have also upcoming Sol Cresta game which looks good but it’s more like a smaller title - a sequel or spiritual successor to one old 80s arcade shmup game - obviously way smaller than anything Platinum has worked on before. The only good thing to happen with Platinum in post-Scalebound era was Astral Chain. I would even go as far as to say that it is a second-best Platinum game ever. Which shows that Platinum can deliver high quality games under Nintendo’s supervision. So, I really see only two scenarios from now on - they either sell to Tencent - which is bad, because we already see Tencent’s effect on them - focus on smaller games and GaaS, or to sell to Nintendo and make good games. Nintendo sadly doesn’t have that much money to compete in big acquisitions game so this scenario is quite unlikely. 

Are you forgetting NieR: Automata? That both released on Xbox and is one of the best games from last gen. Yoko Taro might be the creative genius behind it, but all the heavy lifting for gameplay and core development was Platinum afaik.

None of the previous Drakkengards/Drag-on-Dragoons or Nier were anywhere near as good or successful.

Of course I'm not forgetting Nier:Automata. It's one of my favourite games. I just don't count it as a post-Scalebound game because it literally released a bit more than one month after Scalebound cancellation, which means that it was more or less finished at this point. If we talk about it's release on Xbox, Platinum had no word here because they were contracted by Square Enix for this game, so Xbox port was a Square's decision. I'm not even sure that Platinum themselves worked on Xbox port. It could have been done by third party.



 

Ryuu96 said:

Anything from XGP/2nd Party would fall under 1st Party Exclusive so that would be ruled out.

Maybe some Game Pass stuff but he says regionally relevant updates so...Not sure why they would downplay something like Persona/FF7 Remake as only a Asian relevant update, so I would rule that out too. Honestly all I would expect is localisation of certain things (xCloud, Games), maybe some Japanese themed updates to certain titles (They spent like 30 minutes on a Minecraft Japanese update last year, Lol).

Some new Game Pass titles, if we're lucky, but minor ones.

First of all, it's Greenberg who said that, wouldn't trust his words 100%. I do agree though that FF7R definitely not happening there, it's way bigger announcement than TGS-tier. Persona has a slight chance, because Atlus will also have some announcement at TGS and as far as I remember the first announcement for Persona's 25 anniversary is scheduled for September as well. I still think that Xbox wouldn't hold such announcement for TGS, so the only way I can see it happening there is if Atlus announces it in advance and it just makes appearance on Xbox show afterwards.

Now as for realistic expectations - Xbox has a timed exclusivity on Japanese hand drawn indie RPG, don't remember it's name. It can have release date announcement there (I think it hasn't been confirmed yet). Falls under "exclusive content" category which was teased. I also expect AI: The Somnium Files Xbox port at some point as we already know that the sequel is coming to Xbox. I would be surprised if they don't port the first one to Xbox and I think announcing it at TGS makes sense as it's not a very popular game and it's been two years since it's release I think. Would fit for TGS-tier announcement. What else? Who knows. But to temper expectations - it would be better off not to expect anything other than indies in terms of exclusive content and maybe a couple of old AA games ports announcements - with all of them coming day one to GamePass obviously.



 

Ryuu96 said:

What big fp game is coming in Octoboer?



Around the Network
shikamaru317 said:

Inti Creates seem to be all in on Xbox these days, another new game of theirs announced for Xbox today:

That's unexpected and really nice surprise. Considering they are working on Gunvolt 3 which should also release next year, I never expected Luminous Avenger iX 2 releasing before Gunvolt 3. The first one was good so I'm definitely picking this one at launch. Now hopefully they will just port the two main series games as they are on everything but Xbox at this point.

shikamaru317 said:

The Xbox turnaround in Japan sure is huge, this kind of niche game wouldn't have touched Xbox One at this point in it's lifecycle, not even close, even most of the bigger JP publishers and developers were skipping Xbox One early gen. Phil has done a remarkable job of improving the image of Xbox in Japan. But there is still much work to be done, many Japanese series that are still skipping Xbox, series such as Persona, BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, Legend of Heroes, Atelier, Senran Kagura, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Danganronpa, and more.

Xbox One did have even more niche games like Psycho Pass and Chaos Child in 2014-2015 which even were exclusive to the platform. And one BlazBlue game in 2015 which I even have on disc. But, I think it has more to do with the 360 legacy rather than Xbox One itself as the support has dried out completely after 2015.



 

Finished Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

I've played this game nonstop for the past two weeks. It's easily the most immersive medieval game out there (Plague Tale probably coming in second).
It also reminds me alot of Skyrim but it's quite different at the same time.

What this game does best is world and character design and even more importantly, quest design. Everything about these things I just mentioned are great.
The game features roughly 30 main quests and at least 50 side quests that are just as good. Some of them even come with their own pre-rendered cutscenes just like the main quests.
You can basically complete these quests however you like. There are tons of different possibilites to choose from. For example:
Get a quest item by directly pickpocketing it from someone, by breaking into his house and lockpicking it from a chest, you could try to talk to the person and persuade him to give it to you if you have a high speech skill,
you could knock him out and steal it from his body, the person might be addicted to playing dice so you could get it by winning a game, but maybe just talk to some other person who might know how to get the quest item from somwhere/someone else etc.

The game is incredibly impressive for an indie-like studio but it also has plenty of issues.

Visually, the game can look good and meh. It's made using CryEngine so you'd expect awesome visuals but that's only really true when it's raining or around dusk/dawn. Texture quality is probably the biggest issue here. That and the locked 30 FPS.
There's actually not that much action where 60 FPS would be mandatory but it would be good regardless.

Combat: oh boy it's easily the worst part of the game. Thankfully there's not even that much combat in the game. I played it for over 70 hours and I haven't even killed 100 enemies. (and most of them came from the very last main quests)
You can finish the game by killing only one guy and it wouldn't even be that hard as there are mostly other ways to solve issues.
Archery is pretty bad. You have no crosshair so you can only guess where the arrow will land. Don't expect to hit anything that's more than a few meters away.
Sword fighting is also not really fun. It's very clunky, all strikes feel delayed and most enemies are better than you are. Combos rarely work as enemies usually block or counter almost every single hit.
The enemies during the main mission are usually easier but the ones in side missions or the bandits you fight when travelling the road can be absolutely brutal. Furthermore if there's more than one you are as good as dead.
The lock on mode is also incredibly annoying. Sometimes you just want to run away but when you see an enemy it will suddenly auto lock on and instead of running away you're suddenly dancing around him and thus getting hit.

Traversing the world can be a pain. Expect to get stuck at even the smallest rocks. Many bushes that look like you could go through are completely untraversable. They might as well be stone walls.
Small differences in height will cause you character to fall and inflict huge damage. Therefore watch out when running down stairs and never try to scale down a somewhat steep hill. If you sit on your horse you will still receive damage.

Bugs: I'm playing the latest version of the game and AFAIK there won't be any more updates. When the game came out it seemed to be a buggy hell that crashed constantly.
Thankfully, it's not nearly as bad now. Crashing is almost completely gone. I had one or two freezes during loading screens but that's okay for 70 hours of gameplay. Bugs are still there though and can be annoying but not game breaking.

Skills: You earn skill points by leveling up a skill but you only get one skill point for every ~4 levels of that skill which is fine. The problem is that most of the unlockable perks suck. Many don't even give you an advantage because they also include a disadvantage.
"Sprinting is 20% faster, but costs 20% more Stamina", "The beer you get is 50% weaker, so you can drink more, but wine is twice as strong and will make you drunk faster.", "Your attacks will demand 30% less Stamina, but will also cause 20% less injury".
Others are just completely useless because they're so specific that the majority won't care:
"You move almost silently in the rain. The noise of your footsteps is reduced by 70%." You wanna play stealthy? Better wait for the shitty weather!
"Penalties on stats following release from jail are 20% lower." Never been to jail once in my 70 hours. As long as you don't murder someone on the streets you can just pay a fine to the guard and leave.
Often times I had 2 skill points in each category and just didn't know what to spend it on because all the choices were so meh.

In conclusion, the studio has enormous potential and if they were given a bigger budget, they could probably make a game that truly rivals an Elder Scrolls title.
To me the story and quest design was awesome enough to overlook the abysmal combat. However, the game could've been so much better if these issues weren't present.
7.5/10.



dx11332sega said:
Ryuu96 said:

Xbox Series sells another 5,669 units in Japan this week.

  • Series X - 2848
  • Series S - 2821

Did Xbox Series finally beat Xbox one and Xbox Original

No and NO. Give it some time. Not so fast.



 

Made in Japan.

Looks like a combination of many games into one. 



...to avoid getting banned for inactivity, I may have to resort to comments that are of a lower overall quality and or beneath my moral standards.

shikamaru317 said:

It passed Xbox One launch aligned a couple months ago, and can possibly even beat Xbox One's lifetime before the end of 2021. Xbox Series has a long road ahead to catch up to OG Xbox though, either launch aligned or lifetime. OG Xbox had JP exclusives like Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Otogi, Phantom Dust, and many more, Microsoft is going to need to invest in Japan more heavily than a single Japanese studio (Tango) who makes games that are more way popular in the west than they are in Japan, if they want any chance of catching OG Xbox I think, especially since Tango's first game of the generation is going to be PS5 timed exclusive thanks to Sony hatting it before MS acquired Bethesda. 

Even despite Series X|S improving positions in the Japanese market, Xbox original is still the target that is gonna be hard to reach simply because of the Japanese market being completely different these days and dedicated home consoles not really being that popular over there. It will outsell Xbox One for sure, but most likely will still fall short behind Xbox original.

shikamaru317 said:

I wish we knew what the heck the Xbox back compat team was doing right now. Originally, when Xbox 360 and OG Xbox BC updates were suspended in June 2019, we were told the reasoning was because the Xbox BC team needed to concentrate their full efforts on ensuring 100% BC for all Xbox One games on Xbox Series. It was implied at the time that the BC team would resume working on 360 and OG Xbox BC after Xbox Series released. Xbox Series released in November 2020, and then the BC team was quiet for a few months, then in February they announced that the team was now working on FPS boost for Xbox One games on Xbox Series. However, the last new FPS boost update was in May, the Xbox BC team hasn't announced anything since then, no FPS boost, no 360/OG Xbox BC, nothing.

Hopefully they announce something soon. FPS boost is nice and all, but I'd rather see them return to 360 and OG Xbox BC updates, there are still quite alot of games missing there, especially on OG Xbox, which has just 42 of it's 996 game library on BC, not even 5%, compared to 577 out of 2154 on 360, roughly 25%. 

They are focused on FPS boost and xCloud from what we know. And as I’ve already said, continuing B/C program is not about technology and resources, it’s more about getting rights to put the game on B/C program. There aren’t really a lot of games left that are possible to be added.