Xbox Series X Launching In November, But Halo Infinite Is Delayed Until 2021 (theverge.com) 35
Microsoft isn't providing a specific release date for its next-gen Xbox Series X console, but the company did reveal it will launch in the month of November. Sadly, Microsoft and 343 Industries also announced today that Halo Infinite is being delayed to 2021. The Verge reports: The lack of Halo Infinite does mean there's no big launch title for the Xbox Series X later this year. Microsoft is choosing to highlight Xbox Game Pass, alongside "more than 50 new games" that are launching this year with optimizations for Xbox Series X. More than 40 existing games will also be optimized for Xbox Series X, which can include anything from hardware-accelerated DirectX ray tracing, 120fps frame rates, faster loading times, and Quick Resume support. Existing backward compatible games across Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One will also run on the Xbox Series X when it launches in November. We're now waiting to hear exactly when the Xbox Series X will be available, its price, and when people can start preordering the next-gen console. In addition to Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft is also highlighting its Project xCloud gaming service.
"Project xCloud will enter a beta stage from August 11 as a new version of the Xbox Game Pass app will launch on Android devices," reports NME. "While the full service won't be available in the beta phase, users will have the ability to test a smaller selection of titles ahead of the launch next month. [A]round 30 games will be available in the beta stage, with the full 100+ titles added next month (September)."
"Project xCloud will enter a beta stage from August 11 as a new version of the Xbox Game Pass app will launch on Android devices," reports NME. "While the full service won't be available in the beta phase, users will have the ability to test a smaller selection of titles ahead of the launch next month. [A]round 30 games will be available in the beta stage, with the full 100+ titles added next month (September)."
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*history
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Why is that understandable? (Score:1)
Then COVID-19 hit and caused all sorts of delays. It's understandable
Why is it understandable, for games by small teams to have any delay at all?
In fact, what would be understandable is if schedules got pushed UP, not back.
It's all computer work, and at my own company with a number of planned vacations I had no longer possible, I ended up spending WAY more time working over the past few months than I would have otherwise.
I don't understand why computer games would not be the same, there are no vacations to
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Very Wrong (Score:1)
Hobbyist developers who also have a job wont want to be sitting in the same room all day every day.
Why not? Computer programmers do this all the time. That seems very unlikey.
People who work from home are a bit less productive, because they have home things to deal with
That is utterly false.
You have those same home things to deal with, regardless of if you are going anywhere or not.
If you are working at home, you save all the commute time, time figuring out what to do for lunch. You spend the same amount
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You might have been working from home more, but were you REALLY more productive? I'd imagine that a lot of us office workers ended up spending that extra time at home being part-time teachers for our kids and bitching about the new lockdown regulations on social media.
Halo needs a win (Score:2)
I will be frank. As a long term fan of the series, I was feeling a bit let down with the recent entries. Even the RTS spinoff (Halo Wars 2) was not as good as the original. So, any further polishing is welcome.
I don't like the situation, neither would the team working on it. However if the additional delay would make the game excellent from barely okay in this state it would be worth it. The good thing is at least they are not going to be financially distressed because of this situation.
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What's incredibly stupid about Halo Wars is its an RTS for consoles.... That has never worked. Yes technically there is a windows version but its a redeem code for the Xbox version of the game. There is no way to just buy it for PC. They've released MCC on Steam no idea why they didn't do that for Halo Wars or at least put it in the Windows Store like every other cross platform game they've developed.
Then there's the narrative issues with the newer games where its very apparent 343 don't actually know what
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I'm not sure when you last looked for Halo Wars but it's most certainly available on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com]
You can also get Halo Wars 2 on the Windows Store for PC too so I don't know why you think that's not the case.
It's been available for Windows for quite some years without simply being a code unlock, in fact, Halo Wars 2 was released simultaneously on Xbox and Windows supporting cooperative cross play from day one, in that respect it's never not been available on Windows post-release.
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Never heard about the Steam release. Thanks for the correction.
As for the windows store, I checked it before posting my comment and for me the only option was entering a redeem code from the xbox release. The store did not let me purchase it.
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Weird, maybe it's a regional thing? I bought Halo Wars 2 via the Windows Store in the UK when it was on sale a couple of years ago.
Failing that I think it's on Xbox Game Pass as a cross play game, you could use one of the £1 deals and play through it in a month I guess :)
Even more details (Score:1)
Also announced, is that a single digit of the release price will contain a zero!
The announcement however was quickly retracted when a stony-faced Sony refused to offer even a digit of their own price in return.
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He said it would cost a minimum $1280! and still wouldn't do as well as it would have slower memory and NVME. If MSFT sells this for $500? Man they must be taking a bath
They probably aren't losing anything, or at least, not much. Converging the GPU onboard reduces cost, and they're going to have the benefits of scale. You can't build it for the same price because you've got to pay for the retail profit on all of the components.
Sony can't get into a price war? (Score:2)
The one that is gonna be hurting is Sony as they don't have the warchest to get in a price war with MSFT
Sony has 30 *billion* cash on hand [macrotrends.net]. How much do you think MSFT plans on burning exactly?
And it's not like Sony does not ALSO have around as many people subscribing to PSNow.
Sony can easily manage any price war Microsoft cares to engage in.
Also more anecdotal but I believe Sony in the past has been way better about driving manufacturing costs down over time, it's how they have thrived even releasing conso
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Actually, they don't. PSNow rates are abysmal compared to GamePass. That's because only until very recently, PSNow was a pure streaming service. It's only recently had the ability to download games, but it's not something heavily promoted because well, PSNow has a history that you would think Stadia inherited from - you pay a subscription fee to PSNow and you can't stream all games - you get a selection.
If you want to play
Maybe thinking of PSPlus (Score:1)
It's why GamePass is more popular - instead of streaming, you download the games and play them,
Maybe I am thinking of PSPlus, which I do subscribe to - in part because I can do exactly that (they have four or so games every month you can download and use forever) but also because it backs up all my game save files (really saved my bacon one time when the PS HD died and I hadn't done a manual backup in months).
I imagine it does have somewhat lower than GamePass subscriptions, but probably not much lower as a