Joseph Mary Jesus Christ the negativity in here sometimes. Some of you need to play games and stop worrying.

I get what you are saying, and trust me, I am enjoying games right now on Xbox, actively playing HiFi Rush, AoE 2 DE, and Hogwarts as you can see by the Exophase Gamercard in my sig, all 3 fantastic games. However, it's worth noting that the games we get to play on Xbox are directly decided by their performance as a brand. The two are one and the same. If Xbox doesn't do better as a brand, the number of 3rd party games we get to play on Xbox in the future will be limited, 3rd parties will be more willing to take Sony hat money if PS5 is stomping Xbox Series in sales, JP support will continue to drop unless they can stop this current sales slide in Japan, etc.

I miss the big drops too, but maybe they're trying to do quality over quantity which would be a good trade off lol remains to be seen. Jan was pretty great tho, would be nice if they commented on the switch up.

I'm kind of annoyed that I can't access the balanced graphics mode in Hogwarts Legacy. For some reason balanced mode is only available on 120hz screens even though the framerate on it is sub 60 fps, but I have a 120hz screen and the mode still isn't in the options menu for me, just fidelity, fidelity with raytracing, and performance. I'm not all that happy with either performance or fidelity mode, fidelity framerate is sub 40 in testing so even with my VRR monitor it doesn't look great, while performance mode has greatly dialed back draw distance and grass quality among other downgrades. Really hope they patch in balanced mode for all screens soon, it's perfect for me, has the graphical settings of fidelity mode but with a lower dynamic resolution, allowing the framerate to run between 45-60 fps, which is high enough for VRR to work well.

It's not that dramatic. As long as the quality is still there, I'm okay with 10 or so drops in a month. If it's anything like January going forward, that's good.
GP will stay the superior service as long they keep getting the day 1 games. It doesn't really matter how many games Sony has on PS+ in a month. If the games are all older, GP is still the superior service with better value.
I just want to know how they are doing announcements.

You should see ResetEra's Xbox OT sometimes, those MFs are on edge 24/7

But I agree, I don't get it, I think January 23 was one of Xbox's best Game Pass months ever between Persona 3/4 (two very popular Japanese titles), Monster Hunter Rise (an extremely popular Japanese title), Hi-Fi Rush (shadow-drop exclusive which is amazing), Age of Empires 2 Xbox Port (considered one of the best RTS of all time, first time ever on Xbox, actually scoring higher than the PC release) and Goldeneye HD for added nostalgia.

Quantity isn't everything, Game Pass January may have had less titles compared to other months but it was bang full of quality. February seems a little slow but then at the very start of March we're getting Wo-Long Fallen Dynasty, with everything already announced I can easily say that this is Game Pass best year ever.

Although, 2022 was no doubt a bad year but 2020/2021 were great and 2023 so far is great and looking extremely good for the rest of the year. I'd say that Game Pass is doing great looking at this year, their 1st party quality is the best it has been in a long time, it's only missing the big AAA's but they are clearly coming this year.

I do agree though that Xbox needs to step up its marketing, Developer Direct was great but outside of this specific thing they still have weaknesses in their marketing, I also agree that they need to step up their hardware supply for Xbox Series X as that is lacking a lot right now.

But I think we need to stop constantly comparing everything Xbox does to Sony. I'll be honest, I don't know why anyone expected this generation to be much different from last, I was always expecting at least a 2:1 difference, you can't recover from a generation as awful as Xbox One in one gen, not without Sony doing a major fuck up.

Sony has an incredible brand power, a global dominance and infrastructure, an extremely strong 1st party while Xbox had to practically reset (as of 2018) which meant that Xbox would be going into this generation on the backfoot for the first couple years, Sony had no such issue, a lot of what Xbox has acquired won't be releasing their big guns until near midway through the generation and by then Sony will be way ahead.

Especially in the age of online connectivity, a large factor to peoples purchasing habits nowadays will be where their friends are playing, Xbox fucking up in the Xbox One era couldn't have been at a worst time, Lol. Sony/Xbox were only levelling because of stock issues and Sony is better at hardware manufacturing than Microsoft is (not just Xbox) so once the issue is fixed they will start steaming ahead.

Oh and all this is on top of Sony coming off 3 incredible gens, PS2/PS3/PS4, Lol.

That's not to say that Xbox Series can't have an awesome generation too and release a ton of exclusives but it will be extremely hard for them to get anywhere close to Sony in marketshare, that's a battle for next gen at minimum but it doesn't really matter as long as the business itself is healthy and growing which aside from last year, it is.

Anyone who thinks Xbox has a shot at getting close to PlayStation this gen should remove that thought from their heads now, they'll be happier for it, Lol. This generation is very likely to be another roughly 2:1 generation again. I think Microsoft knows that too, hence why they're trying to become platform agnostic with Game Pass.

This...

You sir speak the truth.

Xbox is not going to win above Sony and Nintendo, but we will have better games and services this generation.

It's impossible to keep everyone happy.

Even when things are going pretty good. 

Maybe it's because I'm a huge Age of Empires fanboy, but I feel now is not the time to complain

Surely you mean 4 incredible gens. 

PS1 generation was probably stronger than the PS3 gen by a lot of metrics.

Atomic Heart can now be pre-installed. It requires almost 80 GB.... :/