Even the biggest company in the world at a 3 trillion dollar market cap, after spending nearly 100 billion dollars on all of these studios needs a return on that investment.  I'm in the camp of lets wait and see what happens, if its Hi-Fi Rush which is fantastic but small game and a multiplayer game in Sea of Stars that could use an injection of new players it's not a big deal.

Agreed. Everyone should just wait and see what happens. Jez Corden is now saying he expects Starfield to be on Playstation eventually lol. In reality we don't know what the strategy will be but there will still be Xbox consoles to game on and games to enjoy on them regardless.

Split Second is such a gem of that generation along with Blur. It's weird how more games are released than ever and generally the industry is quite diverse now yet that seems like a hole that still isn't filled.

There was one thing I never got to do during the original xbox era and I wish I could do it! Was be part of a Halo Lan party. My question is has anyone here ever done an halo lan party?

Hell yeah! Summer 2002 I got the OG Xbox from my cousin. Halo came with and I played ALL the time! By the time school started, several classmates also played Halo, but up to that point I had only played the single player. They told me that they were playing LAN parties all summer, which I had no idea what that meant. I went over to one of their houses on the weekend and I couldn’t believe my eyes! 

4 Xbox’s setup throughout the house and hooked up to the same modem. Spent many weekends going to each others houses to play Halo. Definitely a magical time! Halo 2 somehow managed to take that experience online, but we still made time for LAN parties. 

Based on all the rumors it kind of sounds like Microsoft’s plan for the Xbox is to make it something like their Surface lineup on PC: basically exists to promote MS software and also gives MS a say in hardware standards, but absolutely not meant to compete 1:1 with other OEMs and ultimately in service of protecting and promoting windows.

I have a feeling the next gen Xbox is going to be something more akin to a quasi-PC, kind of like the steam deck. Less a platform, more just one device among many.

If this really does come to pass, I think they will be my final exit from console gaming. I genuinely do not like PlayStations first party studios, nor do I like their controllers, and Nintendo doesn’t really make the types of games I want to play anymore. To the extent that I am going to continue to play video games I will be full time PC I think, there will just be nothing left on the console side for me

The entire discussion about Xbox multiplatform is interesting. 

Sony has been talking a while about how exclusives have less value past two years. They start giving away the games through PS+, and port it to PC at around that point, because they aren't selling as much anymore.

But if you take that a step further, is there another point where it makes sense to put your game on competing platforms?

Would it make sense to bring God of War to Xbox? Especially if the plan was not day 1, but say 4 years later.

Xbox players could play God of War for $70, whereas PS owners at that point would be playing it for "free" through PS+. So there are still exclusive benefits. Or even ignoring PS+, it might be $20 on PS at that point. 

Similarly, PS players could be playing Starfield for $70, whereas XB owners are paying $20 for the game or they're getting it "free" through Gamepass.

Maybe there's some kind of situation like that, where players can still benefit from being in a platform, but other players are still able to experience the same games. You still practically have exclusives, but patient gamers could still play whatever game. 

I played Halo 2 Lan parties and that was a wonderful time. I played Halo 1-3 splitscreen a lot growing up. I still play games with friends on Halo Infinite here and there, but it's not like how it use to be as a youngster. 

A lot of noise suddenly in the past couple of hours from various places, it seems MS may be making an announcement tomorrow. If you wish to avoid drama you may want to take a break from social media.

https://xboxera.com/2024/02/04/exclusive-microsoft-plans-starfield-launch-for-playstation-5/

"According to sources, we understand that currently Microsoft are planning a launch for Starfield on PlayStation 5 post the release of the already announced “Shattered Space” expansion for Xbox and PC, which is on target to arrive at some point later this year. We’ve also been informed that Microsoft have made additional investment into PlayStation 5 dev kits to support ongoing development efforts"

It’s wild, at the end of 2021 I was so optimistic about the future of Xbox, just 2 years and a full publisher purchased later it looks like they are throwing in the towel.