Interesting. James Gunn has just confirmed that WB Games will be making games that directly connect to the DC movies. Not just a cinematic universe but a……entertainment universe?

I use the Xbox app on PC to play PC Game Pass. 

Microsoft has improved the Xbox app, but it still has a ways to go to match Steam. 

Not sure I like that idea, I mean I watch movies and TV shows from DC but you'll be limited to what you can do if they all share the same universe.

Like would you kill/introduce a major character in a video game over a movie?

I prefer they go the Batman Arkham/Spider-Man route where its separate.

I just completed my first playthrough of Pentiment. The game may cost only $20, but the story and heartfelt connection you have with the characters by the end plays out like a full-priced game! I cannot stress enough that this is truly still an Obsidian game in terms of its storytelling. Josh Sawyer, whatever you make, I will always play!

Overall, I do give it a 10/10. I have very minor nitpicks, but it's towards the nicheness of the game and wasn't something that took away from my enjoyment of the game. I was able to complete 27 out of the 41 achievements as it's definitely impossible to unlock all the achievements on a single playthrough. There are several achievements that are not entirely known as to how to get them and they're very vague in their description to where not even TrueAchievements has any guides on them yet or there's a guide, but the comments talk about all the different ways it took to unlock it lol. 

As far as the nitpicks, very minor, but I do have a brief mention of the ending, so I'll add a spoiler tag even though I won't mention what actually happens.

Definitely a game I highly recommend. Like every review has said, it's a niche game. You may get bored of it because of the gameplay loop, which is why it's so perfect for Game Pass. But if you are able to get through that, you're in for an experience.  

Currently on Steam, it has 870 reviews and it's sitting at a 97% Overwhelmingly Positive. So those that are playing it, are loving it. And it's player count has not dropped as fast as you'd think. Not huge. Most concurrent players ever were a little over 1,200, but after almost 2 weeks since launch, the game had nearly 1,000 concurrent players in the past 24 hours. So players are not only sticking through it to the end of the story, but they're already replaying it. It only took me 16 hours to beat. And that's with seeing quite a bit of everything in the world. 

Eh. While I love James Gunn and as someone who couldn't care less about the current DCEU, I have 100x more faith in Gunn than the previous leadership of Hamada and now I'm actually looking forward to DC stuff again. However, I don't love this idea and have a few issues with this approach already.

Firstly, it's hard enough keeping up with the MCU, all of those films and tv shows that we need to watch, now DC is doing the same but adding games on top of it, I don't want to have to play games to understand certain things. Plus, based on history, the best DC projects have been the standalone ones whilst the worst have been the shared universe ones, by a significant margin.

The current DCEU is already damaged goods, both in quality itself and the actors connected to the projects. I think at minimum if they are going to do this then they should do a reboot whilst keeping the good stuff intact somehow but I'm fairly confident that this isn't what they're going to do and they're going to try to salvage the current DCEU.

If this is what they want to do then fine, but if it were up to me, I would at least do a Flashpoint to soft reboot the universe whilst keeping some things, such as Henry as Superman (but dear God no more emo Superman, we have Batman for that), Momoa as Aquaman, keep Peacemaker and bring Doom Patrol into the DCEU.

But as for the games specifically, I really can't be bothered to have to also play games to keep up with a story and it's also really restrictive for the developers to have to follow someone else's canon, an example of that would be Shadow of War, another WBIE project, the ending Imho was absolutely awful and clearly done because they wanted to make it stick to the canon of Return of the King.

Also, what happens if Rocksteady wants to do another Batman game? Will they be allowed? Or is DC going to get protective and say you can't since it's the same Batman as our movie Batman? What villains can they do without clashing with future films? Will they be mocapping the film actors? Lol. Or will WBIE have Batman games in a standalone universe and the games connected to the films/shows will be irrelevant characters?

I'll end by saying that my favourite things from DC have been Doom Patrol (Not Canon to DCEU), Peacemaker (Canon to DCEU), The Sandman (Not Canon to DCEU) and Legends of Tomorrow Post Season 1 (Not Canon to DCEU). I've also seen a dozen or so episodes of Harley Quinn (Not Canon to DCEU) and it's great and I've heard good stuff about Superman & Lois (Not Canon to DCEU).

I've heard a lot of high praise for The Batman & The Joker too, neither being canon to the DCEU and not even each other, Lol.

On the plus side, at least WBIE will be safe from layoffs or being sold off.

Flops on PC will only matter to devs who make exclusive PC games. The devs who develop for PS5+Series x consoles means as long as them consoles last the flops on pc wont matter. Pretty much the Series S will always be the same amount of flops under the Seres X and PS5 till the end of the gen. Trust me the Series S wont hold back the console gen anymore then consoles are holding back them high spec pc's.

I totally disagree, I actually believe from what I am hearing that this deal will definitely go through and that it will go through without any real problems for MS.  Way to much concentration on things that this deal really doesn't matter to MS which they can easily provide concessions for.  If anything I believe MS is happy about the current discourse going on because I believe it plays right into their strengths and what they will have to give up will be not of importance to what they want from this deal.

All this pretty much is my answer too so ill just repost gto's reply instead of retyping it all out .

Eh...FTC may sue to block and while Microsoft can beat them easily in court, it's the CMA who is the problem here, if CMA blocks the deal, then Microsoft has to appeal to CAT who ultimately throw the decision back to CMA who can then just block the deal again, the CMA has very little legal oversight and very rarely loses.

By comparison to the FTC, who don't actually approve anything, they just let it pass, nor do they actually block anything, they get the courts to block deals, the CMA doesn't do either of those things, it's CMA who approves or blocks things without any court oversight, that's at least my understanding from what I've read.

So, we need to be careful that if FTC sues to block it doesn't encourage CMA to block because if it does then the deal is likely dead.

I think it's still more likely to go through than not, but I doubt Microsoft wanted to make concessions this extreme, a 10-year guarantee to a competitor is an extreme concession, Hoeg spoke on this that he thinks it's the absolute maximum that Microsoft is willing to offer and they're doing so in the hope that they get the issue out of the way.

Plus, if FTC does sue to block, which is a strong possibility regardless of the reasoning as they've sued to block a lot of deals lately and are very eager to look like they're cracking down on big tech, it would very likely mean that Microsoft has to renegotiate the acquisition with ABK as the court case will likely delay the closure date beyond July 2023.

If a renegotiation does happen, it means that the acquisition has to be redone, if ABK still desires to be acquired, and that will almost certainly lead to ABK asking for an even higher sale price than $68bn and Microsoft used that cash when interest was at shit levels so who knows how much higher than $68bn they're willing to go now that interest is back at decent levels.

There could be two angles at play from the FTC here even if their arguments don't make any sense.

1. Sue to block and hope that CMA also blocks, effectively killing the deal.
2. Sue to block and hope it delays things long enough that it extends beyond the July closure date, causing either Microsoft or ABK to back out of the deal.

Either option would make FTC look like they won against big tech even if they didn't technically win in a court of law, Lol. I'm at about 60% that the deal passes, it will likely still pass, but Microsoft definitely didn't expect this level of scrutiny from regulators, hence why Brad Smith is openly complaining a little too.

However! FTC could just be formulating a complaint/lawsuit to ask for concessions as that is the usual process, that would still make them look like they had a win against big tech, they can frame it as them strong arming Microsoft into concessions, this is more about politics lately than actual legally sound market arguments.

If FTC is only asking for concessions, then they'll pass as I doubt CMA will solo Microsoft.

Xbox app now allows modding on PC. You can install the game to any folder you want now and access the files without having to do all them shitty steps needed a few months back. I used mods on valheim so 100% mods can be used now.