Looks like another bad move to screw over console users for no reason, after we just saw their console revenue fall 13% for the year and now Series' sales are supposedly behind Xbox One launch aligned.

I actually noticed about a week ago when I managed to find my free month of Ultimate for my One X in the settings menu, going over the T&S babble it actually mentioned the rewards system that I assume people here have been using to convert Gold to Ultimate; well apparently that stops working after 36 months, so at some point you will be forced to pay the full price of Game Pass Ultimate.

With more premium games coming day one and the usual business of gradually increasing subscription prices i wont be surprise dif MS can get away with charging $25 for XGU by the end of the generation.

Yeah, they partially closed the loophole, but it is still cheaper than paying for Gamepass Ultimate by itself. I had let my Gamepass Ultimate expire back in June because there wasn't much to play that interested me and I knew I would be busy with Diablo 4 for awhile, but now that Starfield is right around the corner and the Gamepass price is about to be hiked it was time for me to resub. I spent 120k rewards points on 18 months of Xbox Live Gold and then paid $13 for a single month of Gamepass Ultimate on Amazon (it's on sale there right now). When I did the conversion it gave me 13 months of Gamepass Ultimate, so I'm good through September 2024. Would have been nice to get the full 18 months converted like we used to be able to under the old loophole, but it's still way cheaper than paying for 13 months of Gamepass Ultimate straight up would be, especially after the price hike next month to $17 a month.

A possible former employee at Virtuous Games Paris has leaked that Virtuos is remaking TES 4 Oblivion over on the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit, before deleting the post later. It's worth noting that a former Virtuos employee previously leaked that they were working on the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake back in 2021 via their LinkedIn account, 2 years before Konami officially announced it. 

This new leaker claims Virtuos currently has 5 games in development:

• The 1st is a remaster/remake of TES 4 Oblivion where art assets are created in UE5 and then ported to Oblivion's Gamebryo for physics/gameplay (and presumably the maintaining of modability). He says he is unsure if the game will end up being classified as a remaster or remake in the end, as right now it seems to be a graphics only upgrade with gameplay and systems untouched, but he says there are discussions that it could become more of a remake, prompting a delay if that happens. He indicates release is planned for late 2024 if it stays a remaster, but could be pushed into 2025 if the project becomes more of a remake. He says development is mostly being handled by Virtuos Paris, but that Black Shamrock in Ireland (which is owned by Virtuos) is assisting on the UE5 art asset creation. 
• The 2nd is a new IP early in development with plans to become a full-on AAA, which he likens to a combination of Shadow of the Colossus and Monster Hunter, with giant bosses. The setting is post-apocalyptic and it will have multiplayer/co-op and a stamina system for melee combat.
• The 3rd project is the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake that Konami announced back at Keighley's summer gaming showcase, which is confirmed to have Virtuos assisting Konami with development.
• The 4th is assistance on the next expansion for Amazon's New World MMO, with plans for Virtuos to fully develop the next expansion after that one instead of just assisting.
• The 5th is in very early development and is a narrative rock climbing game. 

Hopefully this Oblivion remaster/remake is legit; with it now looking like TES 6 is at least 5 years off from release (2028), possibly longer, we could really use a remaster/remake of either Morrowind or Oblivion to help tide us over on the long wait for TES 6. I hope they do decide to turn it into more of a remake than just a remaster though, if they keep the old gameplay/systems/animations/etc like he seems to suggest is the current plan with it just being a remaster, everything except for the graphics is going to feel super dated.

Hopefully they decide to go the full on remake route with some assistance from Bethesda, improve the graphics via UE5 as planned but use Creation Engine for the gameplay/physics instead of the original Gamebryo Engine, modernize the UI, update some of the gameplay systems, do all new animations to make combat, 3rd person movement, facial animations and more look much better, re-do the voices with a larger voice cast while also getting as many of the original actors back as possible (just have them voice a lower number of characters this time, as some of them voiced quite alot of characters in the original leading to a very noticeable lack of voice variety) and of course fix the doubled up retake lines that shipped in the original game, etc.

I can believe this. Zenimax is a subsidiary so i'd imagine if they weren't bought out they'd have remakes/remasters in the works to fill in the gaps between starfield and es6 and then fallout 5 which might be a decade away.

They’re working on 5 different game, that doesn’t fill me with confidence tbh.

Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Virtuos is huge, they have like 3500 employees across 21 studios. The Paris studio may be working on 5 games at once, but he basically says 2 of them are in pre-production still, while the MGS 3 Remake and the New World expansion are most likely in collaboration with multiple other Virtuos studios. He also says that they are collabing on Oblivion remaster with another Virtuos studio, Black Shamrock. Between Black Shamrock and Virtuos I'd guess there are at least 60 devs working on Oblivion Remaster (Black Shamrock has about 120 devs while Virtuos Paris has 80+), which is plenty of devs for a remaster that seems to mainly just be improving the graphics (Oblivion itself was made in less than 4years with around 80 people). He also suggested that he left his job at Virtuos Paris awhile ago, so this Oblivion remaster may already have been in development for awhile, Bethesda may even have greenlit it before the Xbox acquisition closed. Also because Virtuos is so big I'm sure they will just assign more of their studios to assist in the last several crunch months before release.

He says they are considering turning it into a full on remake, and if that ends up happening I'm sure that Bethesda will end up assisting and Virtuos will assign more of their studios to assist as well.

Yeah, I think after Age of Empires IV on Xbox, they should try to do a Xbox/PC launch at the same time for Ara.

Mobile is also included in this goal though which doesn't have Game Pass attachment, things like Candy Crush alone have over 200m MAU.

Or it's so small capacity that it gets server slammed easily

Microsoft admitted to the CMA that xCloud in UK only has a 5,000 concurrent user capacity and that is their 2nd strongest market...

This is being read wrong, Imo.

The context is specifically talking about Cloud Gaming and only Game Pass Ultimate offers that. I believe the EC is using Game Pass Ultimate interchangeably with xCloud because GPU is essentially xCloud and the only way to access it. The point being made is that Microsoft would have only released on Game Pass Ultimate and not other Cloud services.

See above.

I've my doubts it's real, especially since Todd seemed against the idea of remastering the older Elder Scrolls titles and I doubt Microsoft would go over his head.

Todd Howard Doesn't Really Want to Remaster Bethesda Games – Destructoid

But you make a good point, Zenimax was sort of struggling recently until the buyout, Bethesda Game Studios arguably carries the entire Zenimax division with how small sellers Arkane/Tango are and now MachineGames is God knows where on Indiana Jones. ID Software is a strong seller though.

But after Starfield (which according to Phil, if not for the buyout would have released a lot earlier than 2023) they'd be waiting years for the next Elder Scrolls and there's no guarantee that Starfield (a new IP) has the same legs that Skyrim has until then.

I do wonder how well Oblivion will sell in todays age though, Skyrim definitely feels like the moment Elder Scrolls went mass market, I've actually had to explain multiple times to people in the past that Oblivion and Skyrim are the same franchise, Lmao. Somehow they miss "The Elder Scrolls" part of the title.

Presumably they're using Unreal Engine for the graphics and keeping Gamebryo the same for the mechanics underneath is because Virtuos has no experience with Gamebryo/Creation Engine and Bethesda is too busy to help them out so I wouldn't expect a huge full on remake of all the systems. Maybe they'll update a few things under the hood of Gamebryo but they'd have to learn it first.