What do you like and dislike about Microsoft's direction this generation?

Out of all the years Microsoft has been in gaming, they've never impressed me like they are now. I've always liked PlayStation way more, but they are doing things and making moves that are hard to ignore.

• GamePass
• The best backwards compatibility
• Smart Delivery
• Frontwards and backwards controller compatibility
• Quick Resume
• Free cloud saves
• Great controller battery life and ability to replace li-ion battery
• Great new d-pad
• Expandable storage without opening the console
• Bethesda
• 1440p support

Some of these things are extremely consumer friendly. Things like GamePass are ideas Sony would never implement, and are only trying to respond to it because they have to. It seems like Microsoft's business model this gen is just get an Xbox into as many homes as possible, and bank on GamePass subscriptions while losing money in certain areas. Smart Delivery now gives us our HD remasters for free basically, that's lost money and Sony needs to do the same thing because they have no choice. Backwards compatibility is another feature that Sony wasn't really interested in but felt the need to focus on because of pressure from Microsoft. Again, it's a very consumer friendly aspect. Front and backwards controller compatibility is another aspect that's very consumer friendly and does nothing to make Microsoft any money. They could have easily just said, you need a Series X controller to play Series X games, like DualSense is needed to play PS5 games.

Gamepass, backwards compatibility, Smart Delivery, front and backwards controller compatibility, Quick Resume, free cloud saves, controller battery life, some of these things are very consumer friendly and whether you realize it or not, it's forcing Sony to become much more consumer friendly as well. Sony is working to implement their own GamePass, Smart Delivery, I'm sure they will try to implement Quick Resume in a later firmware update, as well as adding 1440p support.

That's what's so great about competition. Microsoft is forcing Sony to become better, but Microsoft got put in this position because they got their ass kicked due to Sony's greatness.

Not specific to this generation, but mainly just glad they don't wall off "exclusives", it's awesome that they put their games on PC.

And yeah their BC is legit, bought a XBX just to play some enhanced old favs.

Otherwise just dig their controllers.

PC releases, basically.

Otherwise little interest.

They have a lot of positive things going for them, but the build quality of the X is probably the thing that i like the most. Outside of no games, they did everything right.

Positive: Gamepass is a very good deal obviously. Solid, powerful console.

Negative: They have zero new ideas in terms of how you interact with games. They are just offering power and low prices. And then they buy creativity by purchasing studios. But that doesn’t add anything to the industry.

I understand they got burned by Kinect. But get back on the horse MS and try to innovate a little!

Yeah they’ve been doing a lot of good stuff for awhile now and continuing that into this next generation. I love how their backwards compatibility initiative has worked out. Really dig their controller, quick resume, and smart delivery features.

As for what I dislike I would have to say that it would be that they have some great IP’s that they don’t seem to have any plans for. However the same could be said for numerous other companies as well. Still I would love to see more stuff for:

- Killer Instinct

- Banjo-Kazooie

- Kameo

- Perfect Dark

I also think that they could make an excellent Kart Racing gaming utilizing the various IP’s that they own.

Gamepass and mid-gen upgrades are the pluses. Minuses would be not having any exciting exclusives for the last half of the generation, now I have zero interest in Series X. Only motive to buy one would be better graphics, might as well go further and play on PC.

Unifying their platform with PC is great.

Gamepass is the best thing to happen in gaming. Saves me money and allows me to try new stuff.

Lots of studio acquisitions.

The bad is that they are too casual coming into a new gen. They should make sure to come out swinging but covid seem to really have affected every single game they were counting on. But it was up to them to find a way.

I like that they are no longer locking games to the Xbox. That took too damn long to happen. I dislike Gold. Drop that paywall for online. That is about it for me.😁

I think they are doing alot of great things. Its still weird they ask you to pay the sub for F2P multiplayer when PS and Nintendo dont.

Positives: Gamepass is great, having all their games on PC is great. Series X seems to be a good console for people who don't want to buy a PC. Straight choice now between PS5 exclusives (assuming they turn up regularly) and a Series X with Game Pass, they're in with a shout. BC also a big deal if you're playing on console and they've got that sorted as well.

Negatives: Phil Spencer. I don't want to bring this up again but you asked: he's so bad at his job they've had to spend literally billions buying studios and now have to wait years to see the benefits of that. They need to sack that chump, his incompetence is now legendary, probably far too late now though.

Actually Bethesda is a big positive if they can light a fire under them and get them producing games like ES in years instead of decades. Maybe they can help them put together an engine for ES and Fallout that doesn't suck donkey balls, just don't ask 343 to do it.

The way I see it they just can't fight Sony at their own game (quality exclusives will come too late IMO) so Game Pass is all or nothing for them. Putting Game Pass on PC was an important move. We might see a gen where Xbox is seen as a games rental service and Xbox hardware exists solely to push that and Sony, well, just business as usual for them.

Interesting times to come for sure, but I see this as the last competitive console gen with possibly Sony last man standing at the end of it which is a bad thing for gamers but it is what it is. It won't affect me either way as I currently have no plans to buy a PS5, nothing I want to play on it and don't need a Series X as I have a PC. Actually I have two PC's. One of them doesn't have a GPU in it, I wonder why that is. Note to Nvidia and AMD: f*** you, assholes.

So yeah, very unusual gen coming our way. Completely different strategies from The Big 2. I expect some very confused fanboy clowns on here to argue a lot for either side even though both companies want completely different things and give not the slightest toss what the fanboys want/care about.

@blueinheaven: Phil is doing fine contrary to what you believe.

Gamepass is the obvious stand out negatives are the constant interviews with ms saying completely different things month to month.

There’s not much to like about MS’s direction other than game pass. But once you play the 5-6 worthwhile games on there no point in keeping the sub until they put another first party title on there. So expect me to re-sub in 2 years.

Great:

• Renewed interest in pc gaming
• Renewed interest in Age of Empires
• Great controller

Not good:

• State of games, especially on release. They really go for live service games. Some releases are downright broken of half finished. Calling the Infinite reveal either would be a euphemism.

Meh:

• Acquistion of developers. Bethesda was doing fine before. Let’s see how they do under a megacorp.

I'm sure he's doing very well for himself, I imagine he's well paid. Xbox, not so much. MS have had to go on two massive spending sprees in a desperate attempt to bail him out and there's a good chance it will all come too late. He's lucky he's at a company that can afford to just throw money at everything when management fails to produce the goods.

If he had been head of games at Sony for last gen it would have been Sony's last console generation ever. You know it, I know it. Really it should be Sony paying his wages as he does more for them than he does for MS. Maybe he's on a back-hander? Naughty Phil.

Anyway we both know we're not going to agree on this. There are plenty of positives for MS despite NP so let's not derail the thread.

i like:

the whole deal about not locking exclusives behind a console. business wise it's probably bad for the console but great for the platform. its also nice for consumers to have the choice which is the main thing.

The Xbox Series X itself looks like a well designed and robust console. no major mistakes like last gen with the OG X1.

also the BC. i was starky reminded of the consequences of locking games to consoles when my vita died. it died.....nothing i could do but trade in all my vita games. i was really enjoying Ys8 too (must get that again). sony dont supply anything that can play vita games any more and second hand vitas are rare here. its the same with the switch (and nintendo used to be solid on the BC front...a shame :( ). BC gives a consumer confidence that they can get a game and it will work in the future.

I dislike:

The xbox console has 1 big flaw: it's REALLY boring. the controller is basically perfect for what it's a feature set that's looking very old now. Same ol OS UI, same ol controller, even the box looks like a boring office bin.

The vita memory card setup with the expanded SSD. Sony are correct, MS are wrong and its just pants. they should have used M.2. Why didnt they use M.2?

I won't be buying one, as per usual, but I like that they seem to be trying to expand their 1st party studios. That's a potential treasure trove to them.

The plug and play ease of expandable storage without opening the system is nice. It reminds me of the memory card days of PS1, DC, PS2 and GC.

MS is all talk no action all they are doing is more of the same wait till next year approach. The only good thing they are at since mid 360 is not giving players games or new ips where it matters

Until they learn how to make good games it doesn't matter what else they get right because the only reason to buy a console is for the games.

It seems they are going to be taking things more serious by investing in their own IPs and also purchasing new studios. They should come out guns blazing as compared to the Xbox One which didn't really have much of any big hitter first party games.

Like: I'm glad they're getting less restrictive with how you can experience their content and focusing a lot more on overall accessibility. I like that I don't have to buy a $500 piece of hardware if I happen to be a gamer that only likes 1 exclusive title in their catalog.

Dislike: I've long believed MS owns the most high quality IP and has the potential to completely obliterate the competition in terms of first party titles, but generation after generation, their first party offerings consistently fails to raise the bar. With the properties MS owns, they should be outclassing the competition, or at least getting close to meeting it. It's been a decade since MS has released a game and I've thought "I *have* to play that."

Game pass is an awesome deal, PC releases.

However when it comes to exclusives they have nothing really that interests me.

Perfect Dark is really an IP they should do something with. Something good. FPS games with good gameplay and a good story are rare these days, as they're mostly mass produced "tactical" shooters with virtually no interesting story to speak of. Perfect Dark had an interesting futuristic sci fi theme with different alien species.

Rare's entire catalog from the 90s and early 00s is something they should do something with

Likes- smart delivery looks to be pretty cool.

Dislikes- relying on pure power, instead of having really good console exclusives, like what Sony and Nintendo have .

^^^^

Good-

• MS dropped the trying to be your entertainment hub BS to focus just on games.
• Solidly build hardware. Good specs for good price.
• If it works on the Xbone, it works on the Series- controllers, games, accessories (minus Kinect)
• Game Pass is amazing value.

Bad-

• Needs games

You'll get no complaints from me. I'd even buy a new and faithful Banjo game which is easily better than Ratchet and Clank, not to mention my favorite game on the N64, and one of my favorite games of all time, Conker's Bad Fur Day. Microsoft is wasting a lot of good IPs that would be major console sellers.

Because its a vastly better solution. MS have expanded storage that costs little more than standard - unlike Vita memory cards - and the thing is hot swappable, easy to access and working day 1. Save a game to the SSD, take it to a friend's and play. Can't do that with Sony's solution.
Sony don't have an expanded storage solution at launch, and no date for when they will start certifying cards, nor when they will actually enable the bay. When that day arrives, it won't be hot swappable, nor will it be as accessible.

@sealionact: hot swappable is really reaching for a plus point. very very few people are going to use it like that. its a pointless tick box feature at best. the vast majority of people who buy the xbox external SSD will plug it in the back and leave it there for all time.

the price for that is a vendor locked in and costly solution that is completely useless outside of xbox. yes, at the moment an SSD for the PS5 costs roughly as much. but for that money you are getting a faster SSD and you can also use it in other hardware in the future. its not locked to the PS5.

i do agree that sony should have had it ready for launch and made it more accessible to install it (though removing the panels on the PS5 is not hard). but the overall setup of using industry standard parts on the PS5 is vastly better than the vendor locked in nonsense of this and the likes of the vita.

@osan0: Totally disagree. I've taken HDDs over to friends quite a few times, so having a hot swappable drive is a better solution than having to power off the console, open the bay and remove the drive regardless of whether you would do that or not.

Also, removing the ps5 extended SSD, opening up a pc, installing it, formatting it is going to be a miniscule market, especially since so few pcs support it at this time.

Ms controlling the price of their SSD isn't a bad thing either....they've frequently sold peripherals cheaper than at launch, and as the cost of memory comes down then so does the cost of the SSD. Ultimately the proof that it is a better solution is that it was planned and executed well before launch, and I think it's an amazing gaff by Sony that they have released 2 updates and now well after launch we have SSD drives that are compatible on paper, but because Sony haven't certified them and disabled the bay, there's still no drive available and worse - they still haven't addressed the fact that you can't even save ps5 games or even game saves on a usb drive. You literally have to pay money to save your game anywhere else than on your console.

@sealionact: we will have to agree to disagree on this one so.

i see not one single upside. its needless vendor lock in and a reminder of a horrible element of consoles past. There is no technical benefit to it. its not faster. its not cheaper. there is nothing to suggest its even more robust. its like a vita memory card. just needless waste. it costs nearly as much as a PCI-E 4 SSD (same capacity) and the PCIE 4 drive is a lot faster.

There is a bigger market for reusing M.2 drives on PCs than there is xbox consoles. Pcs have supported M.2 for a long long time. PCI-E 4 is also quite popular but the drive you buy for a PS5 will still work on PCI-E 3 M.2 slots also.

your proof is also not proof. it just shows MS were looking to nickle and dime users earlier in the development cycle of the console. Sony did the right thing and held out for PCI-E 4 M.2 to be standardised. this was the correct call.

The cost of the SSD to MS will surely come down. the price? MS have form in digging their heels in for things like storage. the HDD for the 360 was high for a very very long time. in the M.2 space various companies will be fighting for dollars. sony don't set the price or dictate terms. this is as it should be.

The other stuff around game saves is a valid point. i do agree there (no game backups to an external drive is also a bad oversight on sonys part) but its a separate issue that has nothing to do with the SSD setup. thats a software problem not a hardware implementation problem

A very powerful console which is good.

Having no exclusives sucks.

Series S will be holding Series X back.

@sealionact: One of the reasons I'm going with Xbox instead of PlayStation this gen is because of free cloud saves. The fact that there's no way to backup saves to an external drive on PS5 and you have to subscribe to PS+ for cloud saves, considering their tiny size, is total BS and everyone knows it. Nintendo is guilty of this too. Free cloud saves should absolutely be industry standard. I have no interest in even delving into a deep game unless I have free cloud saves.

@Sushiglutton: Sony doesn't innovate much. Nintendo are the Kings of innovation.

I like the overall direction they are going. I just wish they invested in their other franchises outside of the typical ones or that they make a new IP (Sea of Thieves was a start).

It's gotta be placing all 1st-party games on Xbox and PC. It's allowed me to wind-down what I need to buy, and can invest that money into my PC. This new one is costing me about $3500CAD with tax.

I think MS' move to a more unified system was smart. Yeah, they did well as a company with Windows on basically all PCs, but finally properly branching out their gaming division was the right move.