Xbox Game Studios Stupidity Hate Thread Game Pass Edition

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

You and I are tech savvy enough to set up a computer to a TV, enlarge the mouse cursor, get a nice trackpad, set up scaling so that all the elements and text are nice and big for the TV, but is Joe Fucko?

You literally just have to plug in an HDMI cord. Even women can do it.

 

[gmax alcremie]

You literally just have to plug in an HDMI cord. Even women can do it.

Woman here. My computer didn't have any HDMI out ports so I had to A). Look up wtf port my PC actually had because I hadn't used a desktop since 2005. B). Go to Amazon and buy a DisplayPort to HDMI cable. C). Mess around with settings a bit to set it as a dual display rather than a duplicate display. It wasn't that challenging but I remember it being slightly more frustrating than it should have been.

Moral of the story is that the micro desktops are really, really cute but cuteness is not the best metric of which to buy a computer. DisplayPort smdh...

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Woman here. My computer didn't have any HDMI out ports so I had to A). Look up wtf port my PC actually had because I hadn't used a desktop since 2005. B). Go to Amazon and buy a DisplayPort to HDMI cable. C). Mess around with settings a bit to set it as a dual display rather than a duplicate display. It wasn't that challenging but I remember it being slightly more frustrating than it should have been.

Moral of the story is that the micro desktops are really, really cute but cuteness is not the best metric of which to buy a computer. DisplayPort smdh...

I still don't understand the point of having two nearly identical standards that both seem to update their spec and adopt the same features and improvements at roughly the same rate.

 

[Pissmaster]

You literally just have to plug in an HDMI cord. Even women can do it.

This is one of those situations where I could sit here and burn an hour typing up a bunch of small reasons why that's completely wrong, because there's no concise way of explaining how an OS with a desktop environment isn't nearly as user-friendly as something completely controlled with a remote or controller.

Joe Fucko buys a gaming computer at the store, brings it home, realizes it doesn't fit in the little console underneath his TV set. He sticks it on the floor next to it all. All of the RGB LEDs light up like a disco ball. He wants those turned off, because this is something in his otherwise tranquil living room. Already, he's got a problem where he's gonna have to go to the trouble of updating his RGB software, just so he can turn off the lighting, which cannot be done from a game controller. He already has a computer problem right from the start that requires a keyboard and mouse.

Computers are a lot more work to set up and use than game consoles, with flexibility and a much better dollar-to-power ratio as the tradeoff. So much more can go wrong, but we accept that because people like you and I know what we're doing with these things. Joe Fucko doesn't. Joe Fucko plugs his HDMI cable into his 4K TV set, and then wonders why his games run like total garbage because the computer he bought had a midrange GPU. Half of his games default to borderless fullscreen, and the other half do that thing where they launch in 1024x768 for some godforsaken reason, and now he needs to dig through pajeet and AI articles to learn what resolutions are, and how to change them on every single game he starts.

Joe Fucko has a horrible full-time job where he gets three hours a night to himself. He has spent the last two nights troubleshooting his computer, learning all sorts of technical bullshit you and I learned as teenagers, and don't consider most people don't know. Joe Fucko barely understands how a file system works because he is 20 years old and the first computer he ever used was an iPad. He laments his purchase, so he returns the PC and buys a PS5 and a Macbook.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

DisplayPort smdh...

Didn't want to go the old VGA route?

or lemme guess, it has no VGA?

 

[gmax alcremie]

Didn't want to go the old VGA route?

or lemme guess, it has no VGA?

Hahaha correct, it has no VGA, you will use DisplayPort and you will be happy! Funny enough the old square monitor I dug up for my primary screen is VGA so I also had to convert DisplayPort to VGA. For that one, I got a converter dongle.

All this for a """desktop"""" computer with the guts of a laptop so it's never going to be a gaming PC. I was really irritated setting it up thinking this is why people don't get desktops but on the bright side it doesnt take up much space!

 

[Michael Wade]

I don't understand why they went out of their way to move two of their flagship series into a direction that no one wanted and essentially ruining them. I remember when Halo and Gears were two of the biggest series in gaming. Now I don't know anyone who cares about them other than casual players who will try anything that's on Game Pass and then quickly move on before even finishing the storyline or learning how to play multiplayer and old timer fans who complain about them being crappy compared to the originals but still play them anyhow.

It's kind of sad because there aren't any other online multiplayer series similar to Halo and Gears in their prime to replace them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both died out entirely eventually.

Honestly moving this stuff to PSN might seriously rejuvenate them. Playstation simply does not have anything that compares to them.

EA's pretty much got the market cornered on multiplayer and as decent as battlefield is, it doesn't hold a candle to halo. Im not as familiar with Gears multiplayer, but it looks like a violently fun time and I dont know of any other multiplayer game where you get to chain saw people in half on the regular.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

So did the Series X get a permanent price drop to 450 dollars and I missed it or what?

Cause I was out shopping today and I noticed at both Walmart and Target it was 449.99, and looking on Gamestops website it's also at that price now.

 

[Übertroon]

Honestly moving this stuff to PSN might seriously rejuvenate them. Playstation simply does not have anything that compares to them.

EA's pretty much got the market cornered on multiplayer and as decent as battlefield is, it doesn't hold a candle to halo. Im not as familiar with Gears multiplayer, but it looks like a violently fun time and I dont know of any other multiplayer game where you get to chain saw people in half on the regular.

Bringing Halo and Gears to PSN is not going to rejuvenate anything. Both those franchises have been run into the ground and being made by people who dislike the original games.
Halo Infinite for example is all about selling microtransaction in a F2P multiplayer mode, being made by a studio that needed 12 months to add a slayer mode playlsit, and still can't figure out what made the original weapon sandbox fun.

 

[The Last Stand]

As @DocAwe mentioned, Microsoft allowing Windows to be installed on an Xbox and used for general purpose computing would be yet another watershed moment in the inexorable unification of consoles and PCs.

Horrible idea. Operating systems change over time with compatibility and usability. There are many PC games and software out there that cannot run (natively) on Windows 7/10/11 for whatever reason. What if the console OS conflicts with the Windows OS and vice versa? Consoles weren't meant to replicate personal computers.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Consoles weren't meant to replicate personal computers.

Modern consoles ARE personal computers with a proprietary, gimped operating system. There hasn't been anything special or custom about Xbox or Playstation hardware in a decade.

 

[DocAwe]

Modern consoles ARE personal computers with a proprietary, gimped operating system. There hasn't been anything special or custom about Xbox or Playstation hardware in a decade.

Literally off the shelf PC hardware.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

What if the console OS conflicts with the Windows OS and vice versa?

How likely is this to happen when I can, right now, play every modern Xbox game and like 95% of Playstation games on my Windows PC?

 

[Michael Wade]

Bringing Halo and Gears to PSN is not going to rejuvenate anything. Both those franchises have been run into the ground and being made by people who dislike the original games.
Halo Infinite for example is all about selling microtransaction in a F2P multiplayer mode, being made by a studio that needed 12 months to add a slayer mode playlsit, and still can't figure out what made the original weapon sandbox fun.

I was thinking more of master chief collection myself

 

[Pissmaster]

What if the console OS conflicts with the Windows OS and vice versa?

Xbox's system software is quite literally a fork of Windows. Like, why bother developing a whole different OS from the ground up when you can just fence off anything it doesn't need to run games and UWP apps?

Operating systems change over time with compatibility and usability. There are many PC games and software out there that cannot run (natively) on Windows 7/10/11 for whatever reason.

Operating systems used to come boxed, so what you had was what you had. PC games that don't run out-of-the-box are a result of PC always being an open platform, so nobody had a set of standards to ensure that your game would run on everything. Consoles used to be super appealing because a Super Nintendo you bought in 1991 would be able to play every game ever made that had the Super Nintendo branding, but an expensive PC bought in 1991 wouldn't be able to play anything released in 1996, due to the rapid progression of technology.

That has since slowed down, considerably, and now a decade-old midrange GPU can still run modern games on lower settings.

 

[The Last Stand]

Operating systems used to come boxed, so what you had was what you had. PC games that don't run out-of-the-box are a result of PC always being an open platform, so nobody had a set of standards to ensure that your game would run on everything.

So why bring an "open platform" to a closed ecosystem? What if I wanted to play a 00s era game that does not work well with the modern Xbox/Windows OS? Wouldn't that be the developer/console's responsibility to maintain compatibility? I'm sorry I'm not understanding. I'm not a PC gamer.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

So why bring an "open platform" to a closed ecosystem? What if I wanted to play a 00s era game that does not work well with the modern Xbox/Windows OS? Wouldn't that be the developer/console's responsibility to maintain compatibility? I'm sorry I'm not understanding. I'm not a PC gamer.

It wouldn't be their responsibility any more than it's Microsoft's responsibility to maintain Windows compatibility with old software now - decades of stability and legacy support provides tremendous value to the platform, but there's never a contractual guarantee that anything will work.

I think the real reason they don't do it is, similar to Sony with Linux on Playstation 3, it creates an enormous potential attack surface for hacking and game piracy.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

Article about Forza devs complaining about crunch on development time:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/forza-motorsport-developer-shares-exhausting-experience-making-the-game?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=deals

Adrian Campos was employed by Forza developer Turn 10 Studios as a Senior Environment Artist on a contract basis from June 2022 to October 2023. Campos was tasked with building the terrain and scenery surrounding the circuits, "essentially everything not on the track," in his words. His tenure began with work on Mugello and Spa-Francorchamps, but just a month and a half in, he learned that the other environment artist on the team who was showing him the ropes had to leave because their contract was ending. This, unfortunately, would become a theme of Campos' employment.
In time, Campos says Microsoft hired three additional artists to assist him. His description of "crunch" to meet Turn 10's target of 20 environments on launch day, particularly during the period when he was working solo, is regrettably all too common in the realm of triple-A game development. But the key here is what Campos describes as the "18/6 Rule." Basically, the developers that Microsoft would hire on a contract basis—that is to say, for a fixed term without healthcare or benefits—could only work for a maximum of 18 months before being required to take six off.
Putting aside the obvious concern that this is generally a poor and offensive way to treat people and their livelihoods, particularly for the world's richest corporation, the policy's effect may also be observed in the quality of Microsoft's releases as of late. The existence of the 18/6 Rule isn't news—Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported on it way back in 2020. Halo Infinite, Xbox's big first-person shooter tentpole for 2021, also suffered through serious problems in its first year. Not unlike Forza Motorsport, it was also known to rely on a lot of contract work. There have been reports of "steady attrition" at Halo developer 343 Industries, as the team consistently turned over contract hires and therefore couldn't build institutionalized knowledge, which took a predictable toll on a once proud franchise. Now, the same appears to be happening to Forza Motorsport.
As for Campos, he stuck through his contract, hoping to transition it into full-time employment as many people in his situation do. "Fast forward to around June of 2023, I received an email from the contractor company that really stun-locked me. It said 'hey, your contract is almost up.'" Campos thought he was contracted for 18 months rather than a year, and all Microsoft was willing to do for him was extend his term by a few more months.

They started hiring people this late on development, the auto-pilot policy is working wonders.

 

[The Last Stand]

Xbox has proven to me that whenever a developer adds "social" features to their ecosystem, it only means trouble for the end user. Example: their Looking for Group feature basically boils down to spam or solicitation. Gaming now is more antisocial than ever thanks to extensive moderation.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

The great return of the AoE franchise:

Be careful what you wish for.