Games Inbox: Will the Xbox reset work for Microsoft?

The Tuesday letters page thinks the Nintendo Direct plan is a mistake, as one reader defends Valve’s record in terms of making console games.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Casual disregard
I’m not sure what anyone can say about Xbox now, after this latest price hike. It almost seems like a joke, except it’s not even a little bit funny. I don’t know how anyone would ever think to buy one after just the last year or so of bad news, but now with a £150+ price rise? You would have to be an ultra casual gamer, who has heard absolutely nothing of what’s going on, to even consider it. But I don’t feel that sort of person would go for Xbox at the best of times.

I’m genuinely curious though, to hear if anyone reading this is, or knows anyone who is, planning to get an Xbox this year. I’m not saying this to have a go at Microsoft (although I’m not sure they don’t deserve it) but I just cannot see any way that any of their ‘reset’ is going to work. Gears Of War: E-Day is never going to make its money back, nobody wants to buy an Xbox anymore, and definitely no one wants Project Helix if it costs £1,000.

It’s time for Microsoft to pack up the shop and admit that Xbox didn’t work out. More importantly, it’s time for someone else to step up and provide an alternative to PlayStation. They’ve only had free reign for a few months and you already see what they’ve been like. Imagine what they’ll be like in a year or two with no competition.
Xane

Video game bubble
I’d be curious to know if this one-Direct-per-game approach is working for Nintendo, because it definitely isn’t for me. When they had more general topic Directs I used to watch them all, from beginning to end, but there’s no way I’m watching one for Fire Emblem, just like I didn’t for Splatoon Raider or Tomodachi Life, and how I won’t for the new Wii Sports game either.

Life is short and I’m only going to watch the ones for games I’m interested in, but isn’t that bad for Nintendo or any company following the same plan? If Fire Emblem was in a general Direct I would’ve watched its bit, but now I’ll never have any idea what it’s about (the same old, I imagine). Surely encouraging people to get interested in things outside their comfort zone is very much in Nintendo’s interest?
Porko

Endless hiking
As if the recent announcements about Sony going digital-only was not bad enough, and Microsoft increasing the price of the Xbox, now both Nvidia and AMD have announced GPU price increases for PCs.

I guess my old Radeon RX 6650 XT GPU is going to have to last longer.

Hopefully the rest of my PC will be as reliable as the wireless Xbox 360 controller I still use to this day for it.
Commodore Fan
Currently playing: Indiana Jones And The Great Circle via Amazon Luna. So far so good…

GC: Nothing will be spared from the effects of the component crisis, as we heard from Samsung on Monday.

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

A funny kind of love
RE: Valve and consoles. Valve, along with various partners, have shown a fair bit of love to consoles over the years. Half-Life was on PlayStation 2 and Half-Life 2 on Xbox, this was the way I first played both those games.

The Orange Box was excellent and released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Portal was also released standalone on Xbox Live Arcade. Portal 2 was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and as recently as 2022 as part of Portal Companion Collection on Switch, which also included Portal 1.

There was even a Dreamcast port that was cancelled weeks before release. I think due to Sega having officially discontinued the console.

Portal 2 and The Orange Box are backwards compatible on Xbox Series S/X and receive some visual improvements, though still locked at 30fps.

But it would be nice to see some native releases for all the games on PlayStation 4 and 5, Switch 1 and 2, and Xbox Series X/S.
Simundo

GC: If that’s showing love, we think Valve needs to upgrade their romantic aspirations. Apart from the anomaly of the Switch port the most recent of those releases was 14 years ago.

Priced out
So I read your article about the £150 price rise and concerns for next gen prices… I just don’t see how it’s going to work. They make a console so expensive that very few can afford it and then the cost of making a game for the new console, which won’t sell well as few have the console, is never got back.

On top of that my son, who is now 30… they were all console gamers in their teens but now all of them have migrated to PC gaming as games are much cheaper. Feels like the end of console gaming and I for one will be greatly saddened by that and my gaming days shall end.
TWO MACKS

Some are more equal than others
Per last week’s letter on reviews, I’d say that while reviews are just opinions, not all opinions carry the same weight. I’m much more likely to trust an independent reviewer whose job it is to play and write about a wide variety of games.

The writing is a key part of a review too. While I don’t always agree with GC’s reviews, I know them well enough to figure out from the text whether I might enjoy a game that they haven’t, or vice versa. It’s not necessarily about a reviewer matching your opinion, though that can be helpful too.

Inexpert views can still be useful though. A detailed verdict from a gaming friend whose tastes you know well is worth quite a lot. A score with no words from someone you’ve never met – not so much.

Just to clarify my letter on Monday, I was just suggesting that instead of digital related boycotts, comments, or articles, of which there have been many, it might be more productive to focus on the terms and conditions.

Shaking our metaphorical fist at digital gaming feels a bit like tilting at windmills rather than addressing the actual issue. Would people be as anti-digital if the terms were like Steam’s? If not, do Sony know that? (I’ve not seen it raised anywhere). It is hard to affect Sony, but I feel we have more chance of success by pointing to the actual issue and proposing a practical solution.
Matt (he_who_runs_away – PSN ID)

Lost the receipt
I can’t believe nobody else noticed how dodgy that Zelda: Ocarina Of Time rating is on Metacritic. Not that it doesn’t deserve the score, but I’ve seen indie games with more scores than that and they left out so many obvious ones they easily could have included, such as Edge – which you mentioned.

I’m not saying they need to go back to every old retro game and give them a score but if you’re going to include something that old, and say it’s the best game ever, you’ve got to have the receipts.
Tacle

Legal trouble
I have just sat and read the morning Inbox and again I have seen letters about Sony and their system for digital purchases, and it has got me thinking.

I no longer own a PlayStation 5 and when I did, I tended to buy physical. This isn’t because of anything more sinister than this was my second console bought purely to play Sony games. I had no intention of keeping the games, it was as simple as buy them, play them, sell them. With this attitude I never got involved with the digital market.

I do, however, own an Xbox and PC and I do buy all of my games digitally. What I have found over the years is that there is always a cheaper offer somewhere online. Loaded do some good deals, even on day one releases, and if you can resist FOMO [fear of missing out] these deals get better as the weeks pass.

I have just looked at Loaded to see what they’re offering is for PlayStation games and to be fair it’s not great when compared to Xbox. It seems the games on offer there are much older. That suggests to me that Sony are keeping things back to force you into using their store for the latest releases.

This raises a question for me.

Will the EU be looking into this situation? If there is one thing the EU hates, it’s a monopoly. To my very limited knowledge this seems very much like a monopoly. The EU took a dim view on the Apple store and are certainly not afraid of taking on Sony. If the EU succeed it would certainly affect us in Blighty.

In my view this is where the fight needs to happen. A petition? Utterly pointless. I believe less than 1% of PlayStation owners signed up. A boycott? Equally as pointless. There are just too many users across the world for it to be effective. Most users couldn’t care less that they have to buy digitally through the PlayStation store.

The route to change is through the lawmakers.

Physical discs for gaming is a dead donkey. It has been for years. There will always be people out there that want to have things in their hand, but that ship has sailed. Get over it. What we should be fighting for is the protections that a disc gives us on digital transactions. As much as some people won’t want to hear this but the EU is our only hope.

Thanks GC have a good day.
Dirtystopout

GC: We’ve wondered this ourselves, as the ‘walled garden’ of consoles is little different, in theory, from the stores operated by Apple and Google. The EU seems to have washed their hands of it though, saying, in regards to PlayStation, ‘Companies are free to offer games and services in the manner they see fit.’

Inbox also-rans
Great interview with Chris Smith on The Spectrum White Edition, his work at Retro Games and everything around it. I really enjoyed it!
Bodhi

GC: Thanks.

I can exclusively reveal the character that’s caused the Wolverine game to be rated 18 for nudity is Seymour Butts. I forget what his superpowers are.
Bendai

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

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