Microsoft Consoles and Updates

[Maf]

People are excited about this news but this is one of the bad examples that made me worried when these studios were acquired, that we wouldn’t get variety and new projects and now there are 4 Fallout games coming down the pipe. It’s so boring. These games are already samey as fuck and now there’s going to be an avalanche of them 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think these games and their exclusivity is the only part of their pivot that makes any sense tbh, even if boring.

 

I dont understand the appeal of Fallout 3 onwards, even New Vegas felt very limited to me though it was a valiant effort to actually make an RPG with so e fucking consequence and friction. But they do very well, the TV show is massive, and nothing but disastrous review scores (like, below Starfield) would keep TESVI from being a big hit.

 

Makes more sense than Gears going exclusive, which is just thr first step to more layoffs at that studio imo

[Maf]

I agree it makes sense and I suppose I was more thinking of their other studios. But Bethesda included to a point, Fallout and TES churn is really boring 

[DANGERMAN]

Good Microsoft news for once. They're starting an effort to make backwards compatibility on pc a thing. Which makes sense if their next machine is a pc, so hopefully they actually carry this on

 

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/07/xbox-announces-backwards-compatibility-for-pc-first-four-games-revealed

 

Quote

starting with four titles that are rolling out immediately.

 

Those four games are as follows:

 

BLINX: The Time Sweeper

Conker: Live and Reloaded

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge

Fuzion Frenzy

 

Xbox says the first four games are part of a "broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time", and they're adding new features including up to 4x resolution upscaling, VSync support, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing

 

They've listed specs but I'm not going to bother posting them because no one here is playing pc games on anything that low powered (GTX 1070ti is the recommended)

[one-armed dwarf]

All eyes on Ninja Gaiden.

 

Though I don't want to give them money anymore, so I'm wondering if I can download the version of Black 1 I already have. The emulator jank started to annoy me, when it would stutter 

 

Pretty huge news though.

[DANGERMAN]

I've been locked out of my 360 account, so it'd be nice if they got this fully working 

 

Also if someone then ripped it so you could boot dvds

[Sly Reflex]

Do Metal Arms, you cowards.

[one-armed dwarf]

Managed to recover my old ass gamertag, which has an NGB license on it, woohoo

 

No NG2 but I can wait for the decompile of that one anyway, it's making good progress

[one-armed dwarf]

Maybe this is what you meant, Dangerman

 

 

So it sounds like stuff like Ninja Gaiden could be working sooner than expected. Apparently this 'Xe03' is what they used to emulate Xbox originals on Xbox 360, and I remember that being pretty decent most of the time. 

 

Some stuff less so, I think Jade Empire or Kotor might have been problematic. 

[Sly Reflex]

I love how the outage is preventing people from playing their physical discs. What a clown show MS are.

[one-armed dwarf]

I didn't know that was a thing with Series X, did they just implement the thing people were outraged over with xbox one, and nobody cared?

[Maryokutai]

Anecdotally it feels completely random. Some games work offline and some don't, unrelated to whether they are digital or on disc. I could play Wayfinder yesterday (digital) but wasn't aware of any issue so I didn't think of trying a disc game.

 

It's still nonsense of course, everything should work offline. But I wish there was decipherable information available for the consumer so you can consider it when making purchases.

[Sly Reflex]

MS lost me the moment I couldn't play my game because the save files were in the cloud and I couldn't get them for whatever reason.

 

Apparently the bug also allowed some people to download delisted games for free as well from what I was reading.

[DANGERMAN]

I remember during the Playstation outage of 15 years ago... or 20 years ago? 😬 Marvel Vs Capcom 2 had just come out the week before and I couldn't play it because it required an always online connection that no one knew about until no one could log on.

 

I'm pretty sure Capcom still do that, at least with some of their games, it's stupid, and we've seen why it's such an anti consumer practice 

[Maf]

To become independent Double Fine laid off 25% of it’s staff (around 22 people) 

 

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-speaks-out-after-double-fine-lays-off-25-percent-of-staff-in-transition-to-independent-status

[Maf]

The Xbox disc to digital thing is getting interesting. Still no official announcement, but leaked documents corroborated by outlets like the Verge make it seem like it is happening. 
 

 

The extra thing that makes it interesting is 360 emulator coming to current and next gen Xbox’s. 
 

Maybe I’m missing something but the take aways to me are 

 

- Strong indication the next Xbox will support a disc drive

- Better than Nintendo GKC because if using a disc in an offline Xbox, still works without a download 

- Helix is probably going to have some extensive BC features. 
 

Also will the 360 BC be included in the PC supported launch? It would be interesting to digitise a disc, then play it on PC Xbox app. Obviously this might not happen and people will grumble about the Windows version and such, but better than paying for the game again. 
 

It also seems to have happened out of order, because PC got Xbox game BC support last week or so, which is point 3 on their list 

[regemond]

I'd love it if games that aren't currently BC become BC through this disc-to-digital stuff. Been itching to play Eternal Sonata again for years, but I'm not prepared to put another console under the TV to make it happen.

[DANGERMAN]

same, there's a handful of games I'd like to play again but I'd have to rebuy an old Xbox

[one-armed dwarf]

Asha had some hands on with Elder Scrolls VI

 

https://xcancel.com/asha_shar/status/2087258678000779664

 

 

Either she had a really shit morning, or there's 8 characters in the title. My guess is High Rock, like Daggerfall

 

edit, 4chan leak, so grain of salt but they've leaked things before. Sentinel is the capital city of Hammerfell

 

 

Morrowind's magic would mean you could jump over mountains and fly around the place

[one-armed dwarf]

On 06/07/2026 at 21:10, Maryokutai said:

Also, if anyone finds out about the precise point Compulsion and Double Fine's independency is a done deal, please let us know. I've been wanting to check out South of Midnight for a while and there's absolutely no question now that I'm going to wait with that until the money flows into Compulsion's pocket instead of MS'.

https://gamesbeat.com/compulsion-games-pulls-off-management-buyout-and-separates-from-xbox-exclusive/