We've already had these discussions and beaten them to death, the majority have moved on, it is what it is and it's happening whether you like it or not or whether you think it's a good idea or not and no amount of complaining is going to change the situation so all you would end up doing is repeating the same discussion over and over again, peoples opinions on the matter have already been said, over and over again and now we simply wait for the future to see who was right and who was wrong, Lol.

The problem is your comment reply to Basil was simply weird, all Basil was doing was posting a rumour about a Gears Collection coming and you went on a rant. Downplaying the Collection's release itself for Xbox users, then trying to throw an odd dig at users of the thread, it looked like you was looking for an argument, Lol. That's why I responded with the GIF.

Basil is the weirdest person to respond like that too as well, the dude plays on literally everything and buys on literally everything and he even said in his very first that he will still be playing Gears of War on his Xbox Series X but you was all "It shouldn't bother most of you, since most of you own a PS5 anyway!" Lol. Pretty sure most of the thread actually still play on either an Xbox or PC.

Don't care what they play on though, if they're enjoying great videogames then cool, I welcome PS users too.

Basil's post was questioning about the Collection itself too, he was trying to generate a discussion about if it would have Judgement, what changes they'll make, if they'll just use Ultimate Edition, etc. But you chose his post to latch onto for your moan about Xbox's new strategy overall, if I was Basil I would have rolled my eyes and left the thread at that point, Lol.

Then you're all "Then come here and tell me why I should just be happy about the state of Xbox" When it's only you coming in here and complaining about the state of Xbox and nothing else, okay fine, you don't like the state of Xbox, we aren't telling you to be happy about it but just move on, Lmao. Your complaining won't change a thing and some people are fine/happy too, can it not be flipped on yourself and stated that you're coming in here and trying to tell people they should be upset about the state of Xbox even if they aren't?

And the rest is a bit eye rolling too, Stellar Blade was published by Sony, it isn't coming to Xbox. Sony and Microsoft have different strategies. Final Fantasy literally has multiple very strong and credible rumours of coming to Xbox this year, both FF16 and FF7R so be patient, not to mention Square Enix has been banging the multiplatform drum. More publishers are becoming multiplatform than ever before, Xbox still has the best 3rd party support it has ever had despite these rare case scenarios.

Bloober Team and Konami just announced a new partnership on another Konami IP...Which has straight up been confirmed for Xbox launch on day one, I wonder what that IP could be...Pretty obvious it's something Silent Hill related and likewise obvious that Silent Hill 2 Remake is coming to Xbox and we likely know when so again I don't see the point in complaining every month that it isn't here yet when we know the release is almost certainly October 2025.

I think we'll see less moneyhats moving forward by Sony but publishing deals aren't moneyhats so Stellar Blade is a write off. You aren't getting it. Play it on PC. Xbox titles are coming to PS whether you like it or not, every single one, they have a different business strategy in mind. You don't like it. Fair enough. You don't think it will work. Fair enough. What more is there to say? Lol.

Player count on TA before Balatro was added to Game Pass.

Wayback Machine can help here. Sadly the site was only captured mid 2024 but I roughly remember the player count for Balatro before it came to Game Pass. Roughly 4 times less than Stray.

If you hope MS will make changes that benefits the xbox community you will only get heartbroken..

Uhh, you sure you quoted the right person? I didnt say anything about the state of Xbox.

I didn't mean to respond to Basil, I was just trying to quote the Gears rumour.

You're right that complaining doesn't change anything. I don't want people to suddenly become upset over nothing either. But the Xbox news I see is generally negative. Most of the time I just ignore them. My recent complaints were about a game that I was disappointed in, and again, I'll state that it wasn't a bad game, but you can't deny that the general sentiment among people was underwhelming. It's only in this thread where I'm forced to either stop talking about it or only find something positive to say.

Whether people like to play on PlayStation or not, it's just glaring how many regulars here actually feel the need to own a PS5. If you were to go into any PS community thread on any forum, how many regulars would own an Xbox?

Outside of Final Fantasy, I'm not exactly desperate to play many of those PS5 titles. It's moreso the general principle for buying a product. If they want to continue pricing at the same level (even raising their price to match PS5 just before Starfield), should they not be matching the offerings, or trying to? How long do we wait for them to do that? Seems like every year we say the production is finally catching up, then half the games are delayed, many of them are disappointing, and the great ones get put straight on PlayStation.

You don't want me to complain so much, fine. I don't really like bringing the mood down and making it uncomfortable. I just don't like being told it's not as bad as I try to claim, when I can see the numbers and what people are saying. Only owning an Xbox, I can see the disparity with PS5 owners and wonder what exactly I'm waiting for.

I'm not sure about Stray vs Balatro, they're both definitely far bigger than Kena but versus each other is complicated. Balatro has 5m sales but I can't find any confirmed data for Stray. Balatro has 106k reviews on Steam, Stray has 136k on Steam so they're both huge on Steam. As for TrueAchievements, Balatro had 7k in September 2024. Stray has 39k today.

But bare in mind that Balatro released in February 2024 and Stray released in July 2022 for PS/PC and August 2023 for Xbox. Stray has 1-2 years on Balatro for data. Plus Balatro received a boost due to TGA's so I wonder what its TrueAchievement data was in January and if that caused an increase. Either way, Stray still has a year head start on Xbox versus Balatro when it comes to TA data.

Point is they're both huge indie titles, Lol. Balatro is currently one of the hottest indies right now.

Well I think that's part of the problem, even Basil has responded a bit confused, Lol. Part of the reason it comes across poorly is precisely because it was Basil's post that you latched onto and it simply looks like it's looking for an argument for argument sake.

Idk what to tell you, the Xbox news I'm seeing lately isn't "generally negative" so we have different views there.

You said you was disappointed in Avowed, I do object to how you frame your criticism at the time, it was very forceful and came across like only your opinion is the correct one, but you expressed your disappointment so I don't see how you was forced to stop talking about it, folk simply didn't like how you framed your criticism. But even so, nobody has told you to post positive about Avowed, you have not posted a single positive comment about Avowed (and that's fine, I'm not telling you to? Nobody is...) but I don't see what more there is to add? What are we forcing you to stop talking about? You already said you disliked it? How many times can you post that you dislike it in different framing? Lol.

It's just glaring how many regulars here actually feel the need to own a PS5. - I straight up don't "feel" this at all, Lol. I don't feel the need to own a PS5 and there's plenty of people in here still playing Xbox, even before the strategy shift, a large portion of this thread was on PC anyway due to Xbox releasing on PC. After the shift, a few more have moved to PC. Then there's those who own all platforms.

How long do we wait for them to do that? Seems like every year we say the production is finally catching up, then half the games are delayed, many of them are disappointing, and the great ones get put straight on PlayStation.

Aside from the fact that every Xbox title this year is releasing on PlayStation which fits with your last point, I straight up can't see how you can look at Xbox's release schedule for 2025 and be disappointed, Lol. Their 2025 is absolutely jammed with releases and Avowed was not disappointing to me or many others but we're not all going to agree on every single release. 

It does just feel like Xbox isn't for you anymore if you can look at 2025 and be not excited at all about anything.

So, let me see if I understand this, you don't want to use data that we can see updated on real time because you have more trust on a data from half a year ago..?

Okay, let me give you another bit of "useless" info:

At this exact moment Balatro is on the Steam top 100 best seller games worldwide, and it has been there for the past 15 weeks, and Stray is nowhere to be found.

Look, even if we concede that Stray was bigger at some point, the truth is nobody is playing it anymore, so I think investing in a game nobody is playing instead of a game that clearly people are still playing daily, would be a weird decision.

At this point, the only reason you are playing on Xbox hardware is

1) Legacy (Friends list, digital game library, achievements, etc)
2) Game Pass

That's really it the way the current console generation is going. Phil has said that they want to win on hardware going forward based on hardware capabilities/uniqueness. We obviously don't have a clear picture as to what that will look like right now, so until that day comes, we just need to accept what the current Xbox landscape is and move on.

I primarily game on PC, and the last thing I play on PC for is exclusive games. PC used to have a shit ton of exclusives back in the day, but that has almost entirely gone away at this point to only legacy franchises that have not moved over to console yet, or some indie games. And that is continually looking like what Xbox is moving towards.

Maybe it didn't sound positive, but the initial thing I said about Avowed was it would have been good if it was actually marketed and sold for what it was-- an action-adventure game with some nice exploration and streamlined gameplay. And it should have been priced correctly to fit that. The main problem was they never addressed the early expectations for the game and just quietly released it thinking people would somehow re-adjust those expectations on their own.

The only thing I believed as fact is that Avowed wouldn't do well and that the ongoing sentiment would be poor. I wanted people to enjoy the game despite that. Even though I found it disappointing I still had some fun with it. Can you really tell me with a straight face you believe it's a success? If so, that's fine. Xbox won't give us any hard numbers so there's nothing more to even say there.

There's some games I'm excited for, sure. It's not that they're going to PS5 that bothers me; the likes of DOOM, Oblivion, Tony Hawk and the later Ninja Gaiden games were already third-party titles to begin with, even if they're published by Xbox now. I didn't buy an Xbox just to play those or I wouldn't have bought one. If they have some Final Fantasy ports on the way to fill the gaps, then obviously that would be great, but those rumours have been circling for a while now without anything concrete. Do you even remember how far into this generation we are?

Unless you're an avid GamePass user, Xbox isn't for you or me. There's nothing wrong with GamePass either, just that if I knew that was the only reason for owning an Xbox, I wouldn't. I'm pretty sure others, even some active GamePass users, wish that wasn't the case either.

Maybe that reality was accepted much earlier by others than me. I just hoped they were still trying even if it's too late.