Destructoid Checkpoint: Is Xbox going to do something interesting?

I’m very happy to open this week with genuine surprise. After being convinced that changes at Xbox and worries about the cost of Game Pass would merely result in some balancing of perceived value, the company did the one thing I never thought they would do: reduce the price. 

This means that gaming might just be entering an era where it gives us a feeling we haven’t had in a while: positive uncertainty.

I’m down on the current generation

Heaven help me, there have been lots of excellent games this gen, but in many ways it feels like Sony, Microsoft, and even Nintendo have been a little disappointing. It’s hard to put my finger on “why,” but the closest I can get to is that the vibe of gaming has just not been what it used to be.

There are likely many reasons for this, and not all of them are within the control of console makers. Launching into a worldwide pandemic meant that we all had other things on our minds at the time, and a weirdly inflated economy appears to have led to massive overreach regarding predicted profits, now being painfully corrected by layoffs and canceled projects.

The games that are launching are often disappointing, and we are running into a growing problem where performance, even on powerful PCs, can feel lackluster and just plain bad if you don’t have access to the seemingly more and more foundational box of NVIDIA tricks to make things run well on PC.

The vast majority of my best gaming memories from this generation come from third-party and indie games, when previously there were so many tremendously exciting first-party games to play. 

I hate to say it, but the intangible magic that I associate with the art of gaming has just felt a little diluted this generation. 

I say all this to give some context to why I will be so hard on Microsoft sometimes, the company that I perceive to have made the most egregious missteps this generation. General confusion about who Xbox is and what they want to do has filtered through to the userbase, to the point where there was some actual worry from some quarters, no matter how unfounded, that the brand would be wrapped up and Microsoft would exit the console market entirely.

This made sense in a way, as money spent on the burgeoning AI scene would promise Mother Microsoft greater returns than further investment in their wayward child, Xbox. That $60 billion infusion to pick up Activision Blizzard felt like it had made Xbox too noticeable to the rest of the Microsoft business, resulting in a change of tone and focus in an attempt to justify itself—and there has been, if we are honest, some fumbling around with what they want to do with those games.

It would seem, especially due to the new Xbox management walking back the decision, that putting Call of Duty onto Game Pass was an error. New titles in the series will no longer appear on the service for a full year after release, because Call of Duty prints money. I can only imagine the absolute battering the company would have taken had they followed the whims of the less sensible portions of the internet and pulled Call of Duty from PlayStation, its biggest source of revenue. 

This news came hand in hand with the price drop, so we might just see other major titles not release on Day One on Game Pass going forward. Is the reduced price and loss of Call of Duty releases still a value proposition? I believe so, for the vast majority of people.

It’s the little things

The Verge, who were bang on the money with the price reduction rumor, has also reported that Microsoft Gaming is no more, as the company sheds the rebrand and goes back to just calling itself what it is: Xbox. This is what we call a good thing. Xbox is not a bad brand and has a lot of positive associations in the minds of gamers. They’ve released some bangers, and have been an important player in a dynamic and exciting entertainment industry, chucking that all in the bin always felt bad.

It’s interesting that these little things, such as the rumored switch to a slightly more visually arresting logo, are enough to spark even a little excitement in me at the moment. 

I wouldn’t call myself a fan of any of the gaming brands, inasmuch as I play none of them exclusively. I have always done my best to pick up the latest and greatest consoles, where finances allowed me to. Also, as I approach my 45th birthday, I am eager to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that everything was better “back in my day.” 

Gaming is as interesting, exciting, and vital as it has ever been, it is just the bigger companies seem to be stuck in the mud, trying to offer broader entertainment systems that I frankly don’t care about, rebrand themselves as more than “just” gaming companies, or focus too heavily on one area of the market at the sacrifice of others, like Sony and its ill-fated live-service push. 

The next console generation has three main issues to overcome. First is the price problem. Everything is so expensive right now, and it feels like consoles will really feel the heat of the hardware manufacturers' desire to profit as much as they can from the current AI boom. 

The second is the graphics problem. After years of it being the most obvious improvement generation to generation, we are now at the point where games look about as good as they are going to look anyway, and are actually running worse than they should. A part of this is the industry's fault, focusing too much on the concept of graphical improvements as a benchmark of hardware quality, but some blame lies at the feet of consumers too, who sometimes focus way too much on how games look instead of how they play. 

Thirdly, and most importantly, the console makers need to shake off the malaise that has settled in on this generation and launch with good lineups of exciting games. First-party projects need a strong showing to prove that there is a reason to buy those consoles in the first place. Bring back some of the magic, be a little less about business and a little more about the pastime.   

It’s good to see Microsoft identifying mistakes, even minor ones, and not being afraid to enact quick changes, because it gives hope that they will also identify bigger issues and work on changing them, too. Hopefully, as we move into the next generation, we all have a reason to feel excited about what is to come, instead of just predicting disappointment again.

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Andrej Barovic dove into The Expanse: Osiris Reborn to find out if the game can live up to the big, magnetic boots that it is trying to fill. - “As the title of the game suggests, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is set in The Expanse universe invented by James S.A. Corey for his eponymous series of novels. The game puts you in the shoes of a Pinkwater Security employee who survived a viral outbreak while working on Eros Station. It turns out the outbreak was started by a strange group known as Protegen, whom the player fights throughout the campaign. While it shares a universe with the books and TV show, it’s an isolated story that doesn’t overlap much with them.”

Scott Duwe jumps in the time machine to revisit one of the more interesting snafus of PlayStation’s history, the Great Big PSN Outage of 2011. Okay, only I call it that, but it’s a nice name. - “Today is April 20, a holiday that many celebrate the world over by sparking up and having a smoke-up. But for me, it’s a bit more somber. It marks the 15th anniversary of one of the darkest days in PlayStation history. On this date in 2011, Sony was forced to take the PS3’s PlayStation Network offline due to an “external intrusion” and data breach affecting over 77 million accounts. The infamous 2011 PSN hack.”

Tiago Manuel breaks down one of the more engaging stories in the MMO world right now, the death of Ashes of Creation, and the implosion of the studio that was developing it. - “In 2025, after raising over $3 million via Kickstarter and a nearly 10-year-long development cycle, Ashes of Creation, a medieval fantasy MMO in the vein of WoW, finally reached early access for $50. Many saw promise in the title, with Destructoid even making a few guides for it. Sadly, nobody really got the time to put these to much use, since the game went under shortly after, leaving its entire development team out of a job. “

And that’s it for this week!