Is it cheating or misguided to say that Phil Spencer has almost taken on that role in my mind? I never want to put too much emotional stock in a company executive, even one as affable as Spencer, but I genuinely think he has done a better job representing the Xbox brand than any character could. I still tend to associate Xbox with Halo and Forza of course, but Microsoft has made a lot of good moves over the last several years to turn the Xbox platform around and it’s always been accompanied by a Phil Spencer interview, or stage appearance, or blog post. He’s like a never-ending good news deliverer.
Outside of that, I don’t know that Xbox really needs one or two platform-defining characters if only because Game Pass allows them to leverage dozens and dozens of characters from all sorts of games. The Xbox platform these days is less about “You can play the latest Master Chief adventure” and more about “You can play an absurd number of games for a single monthly price, many of which are part of existing franchises with characters you’ll recognize.”
That approach has certainly worked for me; I’m not buying a PS5 anytime soon because for as much as I want to see the latest chapter in Aloy’s and Kratos’ story, I cannot justify buying an entire console and then $70 a piece for those exclusives. I love those characters but my wallet doesn’t care quite that much.
Still undecided if I’m into Fire Escape, so for now the Beastcast void has given me more time to dip into Shift+F1 and Tech Pod. If anything it feels nice to expand the podcast subject matter a bit.
@andrewf87462: The lights are relatively new I think. There are a few different ones, and you can adjust their brightness and color and have them turn on for night time only. What's nice is that the machines and belts have enough spots of light on them that you can still navigate around even without these bright light sources (plus you have a flashlight)
@justin258: @ajamafalous: Good points. I definitely appreciate the differences in perspective, and I'm curious to try out Factorio at some point to see this sort of game from above. Satisfactory can become a bit cumbersome when you've got larger facilities with belts and machines taking up space, but I've actually enjoyed the process of navigating around and having to climb to a higher place to get an overview of what I've built. There's a great tangible feeling to climbing around my own creations. They also make use of it in some fun ways, like sprinting down a Mk 5 conveyor belt at super speed or riding on power lines with the zipline tool.
I watched some Factorio videos today and I think I'm coming around on the art style. It's not a game that immediately wins me over visually the same way that Satisfactory did.
@justin258: Tentatively thinking of dabbling in Factorio someday. I'm not crazy about the visual style, but it seems like a pretty different thing and also way more overwhelming.
There's also that Dyson Sphere Program that seemed pretty neat! I wonder how that's doing.
It's not hidden gems for me so much as it is a desire to just keep playing older games. Sometimes it's revisiting an old favorite or it's grabbing something I didn't get a chance to play, and it's way cheaper now. I mentioned it in another thread about the monetary value of games, but these days I have a hard time dropping $60, or god forbid $70, on a single new game when I could get five older games for the same amount of money. And I like the comfort food feeling of playing something I'm familiar with.
Multiplayer games are probably the exception for me. I'll likely get the new Battlefield at launch, and whatever Overwatch 2 is, because I don't like coming into multiplayer games late. But single player games can wait. And like @bigsocrates mentioned, you'll often get a better experience coming to a patched single player game.
I know it's easy to doomsay about the future of Giant Bomb after this news, but until I can no longer type in giantbomb.com and have it take me to this here website, I'm here to stay.
Been a really amazing ride the last 13 years. I've met some of my best friends through this site, gotten through some difficult times, and just generally have made Giant Bomb a daily part of my life from when I was in middle school to now in my late 20s. Vinny, Alex, and Brad have had tremendous impacts on me as a person and I owe a lot to them and the work they've done here. If Giant Bomb pulls itself in a different direction this year, I'm looking forward to seeing what that is.
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