No way loving the return of ridiculous skaters!

July is a nice month for a Tony Hawk remaster, it's nice to see releases in July too.

Thus far they have 5/12 months slotted out for first party Game Pass launches, that's including only one of the generic Fall dates, I think we'll end up with around 8/12 by years end, January/March are obviously out now and December is always uncertain but that would be a pretty damn good rate, 1 AAA release per quarter with 3/4 quarters also having AAs sprinkled in.

Oh, I almost forgot that Oblivion is speculated to be announced this month on the anniversary, it makes sense if it's a June release, also, I'm not sure there's any point shadow dropping an Oblivion remaster, Lol. So I hope they don't wait until the June showcase to announce it.

I reckon we'll have a Partner Preview this month too, I believe we had one in March last year and Microsoft was pretty much almost the exact same livestream event schedule in 2024 as 2023 IIRC. So a chance there's a similar pattern this year too.

And those fucking Final Fantasy's have to be announced, Lol.

Tony Hawk games were a big part of the US best-selling video game charts in the early 2000s.

You can check out the full list from best-selling games between 2000 and 2023 at the link.

Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

www.circana.com/intelligence...

[image or embed]

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 4 March 2025 at 18:09

If it wasn't for the day one first party games and some select 3rd party ones, I would've cancelled Game Pass a couple of months ago (which I can't since I redeemed it for three years).
It's nothing but indie games lately and usually not the biggest ones either. Where's Kena? Stray? etc. Where are the AA-AAA games that reviewed well but didn't sell a whole lot? One Piece Odyssey, Layers of Fear remake, Company of Heroes 3, Marvel's Midnight Suns, plenty of SE games, Destroy All Humans 2, New Tales from the Borderlands etc.

Still got 4 months left but I'm very unsure if I'm going to continue subscribing...

Tastes and all that and I'd understand if the type of game isn't everyone's cup of tea but they literally just added Balatro which is one of the biggest indies available right now, Lol. It's likely bigger than Stray and Kena combined, it is at the very least, far bigger than Kena. So they did just add one of the "biggest ones" for indie games.

January had Ninja Gaiden 2: Black (not an indie) and Citizen Sleeper 2 which both launched to great reviews. Some of those titles you listed as reviewing well reviewed in line with titles like Eternal Strands and Sniper Elite, both day one on Game Pass in January. February had an AAA RPG from Obsidian with strong reviews.

In the first couple weeks of March, it adds Monster Train and Mullet Madjack, both with better reviews than all of the games that you listed there, Lol. You could have picked some better examples to make your point I'm not really seeing this big decline that some others are implying Tbh. But if it's not for you then simply cancel, Lol.

I'd concede there's a quantity drop but I was expecting that anyway, once Microsoft started to fire on all cylinders for 1st party there was obviously going to be a quantity drop, they'll want to promote their own titles and cut some costs, this would have always been the plan, and we're about at the point of them releasing a title every month and an AAA every quarter, still with 3rd parties sprinkled in but not as many as before.

Idk though, I think Microsoft needs to start announcing monthly line-ups instead of half months, we went through this with January and they ended strong, I find the looking at what is coming to Game Pass and making assessments of it every week a bit useless, it's not like I am running out of stuff to play on Game Pass, but then again, you likely are because of how fast you burn through games, Lol.

I hope you are not trying to imply that Kena and Stray are bigger than Balastro..

Nice to see Avowed providing a boost to Pillars of Eternity but man I wish I liked those types of games, Avowed makes me want to learn more about the lore and world of Eora and I want to play Pillars but at the same time I don't because I don't really find those types of games to be all that fun to actually play, Lol.

Got to love Majima at 60, in the prime of his life, the peak form of human physical fitness, the body of a man in his 20s, the eyesight of a hawk, the man stopped hundreds of bullets with his swords!