@Dilandau88: Yep, shovelware is a great description.

Nah, no thanks. I believe Gameloft, primarily a mobile developer, has never once set out to make a great game; their mission loop is to make a cash shop disguised as a game, which is often mediocre or atrocious. I bought my wife Dreamlight Valley. The game is a microtransaction hellscape that would make King mobile games and 2K games proud.

Hahaha. I was thinking "of May" like Cinco de Mayo, but yours is better.

2K24 is one of the worst entries of an already mediocre grind-fest. How 2K, in the last 10 years, mutated this once beloved basketball series into a live service game with irrationally slow incremental progress and unnecessary online-gated and time-gated content needs to be studied.

Just to change your body type requires players to wait a minimum of 3 weeks (average is 4 weeks). In previous iterations, you simply change your body type upon your myPlayer creation screen for free. There's also progress decay this year, meaning if you don't use your badges, it downgrades. The speed of degradation is far too fast compared to how slow you gain progress on a badge. This encourages micro-transaction purchases to "floor set" the badge from degrading. Drills still feel like a chore, but you do them anyways because the gameplay loop demands it for badge progress. On top of this, 2K is offering a game pass system and card purchases to advance through the season faster.

At this point, 2K did not make a video game at all, they made a dreadfully dull platform where you just feed it real money so that it would be less boring.

Ghost of Tsushima was a masterful piece of gaming. I've been waiting for another samurai action game to come along.

RIP Toriyama, a legend in anime, manga, and gaming.

Seriously, Spencer, you cannot pout here. While I'd applaud some companies bringing IPs to multiple platforms, I also understand that companies need to preserve their platform by having exclusive features, in this case, software. This is no different than Microsoft holding onto Forza, Halo, Fable, and now Starfield, Fallout, Wolfenstein, and Elder Scrolls by way of ZeniMax. Or, Nintendo holding onto mainline Zelda, Metroid, and Mario games.

Vanillaware? Instant buy for me.

@olddadgamer: I agree. That's a strong possibility. I could see Microsoft licensing their brand to another hardware manufacturer.

I agree that people should not "ride hard" for any of the platforms. Gamers fighting the console war for multi-billion or even trillion dollar corporations is silly. None of these corporations -- be it Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft -- are our friends.

With that said, I am concerned about Xbox inching its way towards the hardware exit. Removing one major hardware platform could stifle innovation and competition. Regardless of how Microsoft approaches multi-platform, I hope they remain in the console hardware business.