I like Spencer, and I think XBOX was right to reverse course on the Kinect and always-online requirements with the XBOX One.

That said...... What in the world happened?

It's been failure after failure, with the occasioanal gem like Hi-Fi Rush, Psychonauts 2 or Battletoads sprinkled in. Halo Infinite had its moments but mostly bombed. And despite buying all of these developers.... what does Microsoft have to show for it

There were a few games I had on PS4, and several I never got to play, that piqued my interest. I made sure to get these. This includes games like Knack, Concrete Genie, and Horizon Zero Dawn. From there, I looked at what is on the PS5 (there isn't a ton in the way of exclusives, but enough.) I got the Spiderman games, Final Fantasy VII remake and Demons' Souls remake, among other things. I simply had to get both Dark Cloud games and Okage Shadow King when I knew that was a thing. Special shout-out to the Gravity Rush games.

I might get the God of War games at some point. Hell Divers was cool on PS4, so the new one coming out could be fun.

I remember when the PS4 was coming out and procedurally-generated content was the word. Don't Starve comes to mind in particular. Now that an XBOX game has it, it's a bad thing? Hmmm, me dunno....

My buddy from the West coast is pretty amped for this game. As for me, well, I don't think it will really be my thing. I have Splatoon 3 and that's enough liquid FPS for me for now lol.

I like Microsoft and the XBOX brand. But since the XBOX One days it seems as though the software is struggling while the hardware is pretty dang good.

Microsoft should really lean into that. Give us a Hololens altered reality gaming device. Bring back the Kinect, new and improved. Stop throwing money at everything expecting that to heal all wounds.

@BassMan: I guess for me, older styles of graphics aren't necessarily something that ever becomes "outdated". I finally got an offcial translation of a once Japan-only NES game yesterday. I am more excited to play that than just about anything right now. In fact I want to wait and start it whenever I have a whole day to play it with nothing else going on, in a long gaming session.

But honestly, graphics could and have been static images or even non-existent, and I've still enjoyed games. Generations of gamers have played Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder and Warhammer and had fun, no video required. They could make games with blocky 64-bit graphics these days and I would probably be charmed by them. The more realistic games are, the less I tend to be interested in them.

Everytime I hear people complain about graphics in games, I have to think they are under 30 years of age. They didn't grow up with early PC games and the NES like my generation did.

I only buy digital on XBOX, so this isn't an issue for me. I like that it will be cheaper than a typical game.

I still haven't sat and played the first Hellblade and I bought that ages ago.

I'd say for the simple fact that Nintendo can unveil things on their own terms, and not have to wait for a singular event that their competition is also going to be unveiling things at, it was a wise move.

They were also some of the pioneers of these developer/publisher live events that a lot of others now also do. It was probably especially helpful for indie devs trying to get news out about their games.

That's a pretty fair rule of thumb. Except I would say 3rd-party games PC, XBox and PS. (I don't give a bone about PC gaming.)

The Switch does surprisingly good for what it is with system exclusives. That said, I really hope its successor is at least on par with the XBox One and PS4 in terms of power and graphics.