Xbox Series X [XBSX] [Release November 10 2020]

I will be sorely disappointed in you if you don't immediately play Ori and the Will of the Wisps it is so Gdamn gorgeous.
I played the demo on Switch and it's not my thing. I grew up in the 8-bit era where a huge portion of what was released was side-scrolling exploring-fighting games things. Even decades later, I'm utterly burned out on these. It's certainly pretty, even on Switch, but graphics won't pull me through a game I'm not enjoying and there's not enough time to play things I don't actively want too.

I may well give Sea of Thieves a look-see though.
 
I played the demo on Switch and it's not my thing. I grew up in the 8-bit era where a huge portion of what was released was side-scrolling exploring-fighting games things. Even decades later, I'm utterly burned out on these. It's certainly pretty, even on Switch, but graphics won't pull me through a game I'm not enjoying and there's not enough time to play things I don't actively want too.

I may well give Sea of Thieves a look-see though.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the XSX when you've got a minute to write things down. I wouldn't mind getting one myself, but it'd more likely be when there are some more exclusive (next gen) games available.
 
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the XSX when you've got a minute to write things down. I wouldn't mind getting one myself, but it'd more likely be when there are some more exclusive (next gen) games available.
No probs.

Depending on what time it arrives I may not set it up until tomorrow and I have no games I want to play it anytime soon on as I'm working my way through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition on the PlayStation. The Xbox comes with 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate though.
 
I played the demo on Switch and it's not my thing. I grew up in the 8-bit era where a huge portion of what was released was side-scrolling exploring-fighting games things. Even decades later, I'm utterly burned out on these. It's certainly pretty, even on Switch, but graphics won't pull me through a game I'm not enjoying and there's not enough time to play things I don't actively want too.

I may well give Sea of Thieves a look-see though.
Aw..
 
Yes please play sea of thieves. Me, my six year old son and next door neighbor play together whenever there is time. One of the best games on Xbox IMO. I play on Xbox sade and can't imagine how it is on xsx. You're in for a treat!
 
Ha! Now that you mentioned it, I must take my turn at endorsing Ori 2!

I think the only reason preventing Ori and the Will of the Wisps from being everyone's GOTY last year is just that it's 2D, and game journalists seems to favour big AAA narrative based game.

The levels and mechanisms are so well designed, the visual is beautiful and the music are joyful. If you play it on XSX you can choose to play 6K supersampled to 4K xor 120 Hz, either way it looks glorious.

To those who don't have an Xbox, you should play it too, it's also available on Switch and it's should be able to run on just about any modern PC.

I tried it on PC, it’s also on Gamepass, I do like the style but I liked Rayman Legends a bit more so far, sections like with the Wolf are actually pretty annoying and searching keys and stuff, it doesn’t quite seem to have the charm or polish of Legends in terms of graphics, multiplayer fun etc, but I’ll try it a bit more before I make up my mind definitively.
 
I tried it on PC, it’s also on Gamepass, I do like the style but I liked Rayman Legends a bit more so far, sections like with the Wolf are actually pretty annoying and searching keys and stuff, it doesn’t quite seem to have the charm or polish of Legends in terms of graphics, multiplayer fun etc, but I’ll try it a bit more before I make up my mind definitively.
Ori 2 is a rather punishingly hard game, even more so when you're playing on hard difficulty (where even clearing all the side quests doesn't quite prepare you for the final boss). I do find the wolf to be the least intuitive boss too, the other bosses clearly point you to the direction of improving your skill.
 
Ori 2 is a rather punishingly hard game, even more so when you're playing on hard difficulty (where even clearing all the side quests doesn't quite prepare you for the final boss). I do find the wolf to be the least intuitive boss too, the other bosses clearly point you to the direction of improving your skill.

I don't know, I found the wolf to be incredibly obvious in what you have to do as soon as I saw him for the first time. You have a stick of fire. Just like regular wolves this one doesn't like fire. Smack him with it and as expected he retreats. Wait until he comes back and smack him again. Repeat until he goes away. For me, he was not only the easiest boss (expected as he's the tutorial boss) but the most easily understood.

Regards,
SB
 
I don't know, I found the wolf to be incredibly obvious in what you have to do as soon as I saw him for the first time. You have a stick of fire. Just like regular wolves this one doesn't like fire. Smack him with it and as expected he retreats. Wait until he comes back and smack him again. Repeat until he goes away. For me, he was not only the easiest boss (expected as he's the tutorial boss) but the most easily understood.

Regards,
SB
Ha! To me it was the exact opposite, so much I had to look up videos of how others did it. Perhaps such pattern is more commonly present in action games, and I don’t play a lot of them.
 
Ha! To me it was the exact opposite, so much I had to look up videos of how others did it. Perhaps such pattern is more commonly present in action games, and I don’t play a lot of them.

When watching people play, the ones that have the most problems are the ones that try to follow the wolf and want to try to kill it immediately. For me, since it was my first time playing I start off with a sort of Dark Souls approach of being patient and looking for what attack patterns the enemy will use. So the wolf was very obvious after the first couple exchanges and its behavior doesn't change.

The later bosses, some of which change their behavior based on what you are doing were far more interesting and challenging. :)

Regards,
SB
 
When watching people play, the ones that have the most problems are the ones that try to follow the wolf and want to try to kill it immediately. For me, since it was my first time playing I start off with a sort of Dark Souls approach of being patient and looking for what attack patterns the enemy will use. So the wolf was very obvious after the first couple exchanges and its behavior doesn't change.

The later bosses, some of which change their behavior based on what you are doing were far more interesting and challenging. :)

Regards,
SB
Yup, that’s me!

Overall I think this is one of the best games in the last decade, and a must play if you own an Xbox, especially on X|S where you get to play in 6K supersampled or 4K 120 Hz. It’s refreshing when a lot of games nowadays try to be movie.
 
I think series stock issues should be coming to an end soon here. Seems like a lot of people who wanted them are getting them finally.
 
I think series stock issues should be coming to an end soon here. Seems like a lot of people who wanted them are getting them finally.

Not sure about the Series X, but the Series S appears to be doing better WRT supply vs. demand. It's down to 411 USD on Amazon US. The Series X is still over 1100 USD.

Interestingly, the Series S must be selling quite a bit in the US. It's the only next gen (PS5, XBS-X/S) console that is charting on Amazon US' 2021 best sellers for the year.

Amazon.com Best Sellers of 2021 in Video Games

So, it's selling more than either the PS5 or XBS-X in the US (#58 for 2021 as of this post) on Amazon for 2021. And this doesn't even count the EU versions that are sold here (different listing with different sales ranking). Wish the other global Amazon sites gave yearly best sellers also, but they seem to be limited to just hourly best sellers which are kind of useless.

Regards,
SB
 
Not sure about the Series X, but the Series S appears to be doing better WRT supply vs. demand. It's down to 411 USD on Amazon US. The Series X is still over 1100 USD.

Interestingly, the Series S must be selling quite a bit in the US. It's the only next gen (PS5, XBS-X/S) console that is charting on Amazon US' 2021 best sellers for the year.

Amazon.com Best Sellers of 2021 in Video Games

So, it's selling more than either the PS5 or XBS-X in the US (#58 for 2021 as of this post) on Amazon for 2021. And this doesn't even count the EU versions that are sold here (different listing with different sales ranking). Wish the other global Amazon sites gave yearly best sellers also, but they seem to be limited to just hourly best sellers which are kind of useless.

Regards,
SB

Is that based on price or unit sales ?

Anyway the Series S is a great value for people who want to upgrade from a one s for next gen features but don't need the power of a ps5 or xbox series x. Its also great for secondary consoles regardless of having an x or ps5
 
Has someone else testet Dolby vision for games?

The problem I have with this feature is, that the TV (Sony x900h/xh900) has no game mode for Dolby vision. I had to deactivate the feature on my xbox because of the much, much higher input lag. E.g. Mafia remastered look really, really good but than I noticed that I can no longer give any commands without half a second (just a feeling) input lag which made the game unplayable. 1st thing, the "brilliant" mode for dolby vision was active which looked really good but had really hard ghosting. This is especially visible when you drive below powerlines in that game. Those are "ghosted" over half the frame. Deactivated "brilliant" mode and went with "Dolby vision dark", set "sharpness" to zero (as this is just a post-filter) and the ghosting was gone, but the lag was still largely increased but the picture still looked great.

Is there any TV out there, where the Dolby Vision mode does not increase the lag? It is a really nice feature, but I now have my doubts if MS didn't promote the feature a bit to much, because the TVs are just not there yet. But again, if MS did not invest in this feature, there will be no TVs supporting it in the future (chicken-egg problem)
 
Is that based on price or unit sales ?

Anyway the Series S is a great value for people who want to upgrade from a one s for next gen features but don't need the power of a ps5 or xbox series x. Its also great for secondary consoles regardless of having an x or ps5
I expect there's also more supply of it. I'd think it has fewer manufacturing constraints.

I do have to wonder how many more Series Xes MS could have sold if they weren't pulling chips for server blades though.

Also SB is wrong, the PS5 is #15 on that list, far above the Series S. It's just the X that isn't charting. Which, again, likely low allocation, especially to Amazon.
 
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