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The lower retail sales could be chalked up to a larger trend in the UK (and here too). But the bigger story is that "Packaged software + full game downloads of Gears 5 are much lower than prior entries of the series." Expected? Not totally. Throughout last year, Microsoft's stance was that their own games were selling ahead of expectations due to the added exposure Games Pass brought. Sea of Thieves in particular was a poster child, followed by more success stories. This is what the Games Pass effect was: The turning point came this year, with Crackdown 3, which was marketed heavily as a Game Pass project. Live-action advertisements focused on just that. $1 subscriptions. It was a cheap rental essentially, and gamers treated it as such. The game failed to chart on NPD top 20 (like Control ), but made it to #3 most played on the weekly Xbox One charts, behind Apex and Fortnite. I think that's when the public consciousness of Games Pass reached a critical mass. That could be expected to have an effect on Gears 5. By how much in the US? We'll have to wait for NPDs. But if it performs similarly to the UK, that marks a change for a big ticket franchise for them. Games Pass is obviously a longer term investment than the sale potential of a single AAA title. I don't think it'll be as much of factor for Halo Infinite - lots of people will want to own that I'd guess. But this all raises questions for how long honeymoon period with Games Pass promotions can last. Or if Netflix-style price hikes are on the cards for next-gen (with or without more competition).

There are now two ways to stream Xbox games: the previously revealed xCloud, and now, console streaming. With xCloud, it's a Stadia like, cloud based streaming service to various devices. With Console streaming, your Xbox One becomes a streaming server, allowing Xbox games to be played anywhere. They didn't really give a lot of details on how this will work, or what exactly is launching in October (is it xCloud and console streaming, only the latter?). Personally, I like the idea of console streaming, but I mostly want it to work on other TVs in my home.

Have to be a new member and new to Spotify premium though. US and UK only Link to details

Did the Skeletons thrones last night with @Emblazon and @kittykat. Man it's weird how such a simple task can become an adventure especially when dealing with other online players. We had to find another crew to help us find and sit on the thrones but had no luck. The first sloop we approached to help us was out at sea. It looked like he was all for cooperating. When we got to the island to search for the Throne, Kitty Kat and Emblazon went on the island while I stayed on the boat to look out for other pirates, the ship we thought was gonna help us out start shooting cannon at our galleon. I didn't realize it was him that was sinking us as I went down to the bright to repair our boat. Then he boarded the boat and started slashing at me yelling "arrrrg". Our boat sank so we spawned elsewhere to look try again to find a friendly crew to help us. The second sloop we found was in the middle of digging up some treatsure. We slowly rolled right next to them using our megaphone stating our intentions and they freaked out and booked it. We had the winds at our back so we caught up quick and we yelled at them that we don't want to loot them but they just kept sailing away so we just let them go. We switched servers and found a sloop out in the distance. As we tried to sail towards it we get attacked by the Kraken. This would be the second time we gotten attacked by the Kraken in the span of 1 hour or so. The sloop just sailed around us watching the Kraken tear up our ship. We managed to get away but then a storm fell right on top of us. We were running low on planks and felt the game really didn't want us to complete this event. We managed to find our way out of the storm and as the sun came out we see the sloop anchored at a sunken ship. Me and Kitty Kat hop on their sloop with treasure. We see one of the players AFK. Kitty Kat waves at Kim and I'm just jumping around with the treasure in hand to show that we are friendly. He comes back to and he thinks we want his loot. We explain that we want thrones and they agree to help us. In return we would give them a mauraders and captains chest for their services. As we pull up to a nearby Outpost so they can turn in their loot before we head off for the Thrones another galleon apporached us. We try to communicate to the that we are friendly and are on our way to do the weekly event. Well they fired their cannons at us so it was on like Donkey Kong. They had no chance against us and the sloop working together. We fired away and did a good amount of damage to them. So they retreated. We continued with offloading our loot and they decided to come back for seconds. But once docked it was an all out battle for the island. We killed most of them and suck their ship. They spawned back and we left stranded at the Outpost with no ship. It didn't have to come down to this if they hadn't fired on us Well after a total of 4 hours we completed the weekly event. I had a blast and working with another crew is definitely the best aspect of it. Nothing like sailing with like minded pirates. Here are some picks of our adventure.

I finally finished Horizon Zero Dawn last night. Great game. A very solid 8/10. While I was playing I dl Outer Wilds because the reviews seem great. I'm just a bit confused in what type of game it is. Any of you guys play it?

Xbox One August 1 - 31: Gears of War 4 August 16 - September 15: Forza 6 Xbox 360 August 1-15: Torchlight August 16-31: Castlevania Lords of Shadow

Halo was a seminal series for me growing up. The first game is probably among my all-time favorites, and it's hard to overstate what a huge impact it had on games at the time. Halo 2 was probably my most anticipated video game release ever, and I still fondly remember getting it at midnight and playing a good portion of the campaign through the night. However, it seemed to lack some of the magic that the first game had. I felt the same about 3 when it came out in 2007 - as much as I anticipated the end of the trilogy, it failed to capture the elusive magic of the original. I finally bowed out when I played 4 and found it completely lacking. I recently got an Xbox One to take advantage of Game Pass, and the first thing that I downloaded is the Master Chief collection. I know that this package has had it's fair share of issues, but I've been utterly entranced by Halo again for the first time in over ten years. I am blown away by how well the gameplay has aged, and I can't think of a single FPS from this era that would still feel as immediate and engrossing as this does. Fast forward to a few weeks later, and I've completed the campaigns of CE, 2, 3, and ODST. I also picked up a second hand copy of Reach, and plan on getting to 4 and 5 after. I know that Halo has been eclipsed and left in the dust by bigger and more popular shooters, but there is something that is still very resonant about Bungie's vision. All of these years later, I'm having just as much fun in these emergent combat sandboxes as I did when I first played them. If anything, my opinion about 2 and 3 have improved greatly, and I found ODST to be a bold change of pace atmospherically and thematically. While it may be lacking in relevancy these days, Halo still represents one hell of a collection of video games.

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Over 100 titles will be available on the service with more info to be provided at E3.

Microsoft Cloud Powers Record Fourth Quarter Results I think it is going to be a rough year for MS, until they are able to launch a new console. Their hardware sales have (apparently) collapsed, and were down 48 in the last quarter. It looks like lower Fortnite revenue could not be offset by higher GamePass (and Live) revenue -- and software/services revenue is down 3%. Hopefully they can turn this around with a new console launch.

Xbox One: Inside: Big Crown Showdown Xbox 360: Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Meet the Robinsons

So Basically Lockhart will not be needed due to Xcloud Lockhart never made any sense in my book anyway the original rumors said that it would have a gpu weaker then the one in the 1x. why not just add the 1x gpu to the zen2 soc. That should have been the way they did it

PM me if interested. You can still do the ultimate games pass stacking for another 2 weeks if you haven’t gotten around to it

This means that the Galaxy 2.0 client could be used to manage PC Game Pass titles.