Author: Trafficblast

Xbox One, Microsoft’s successor to the Xbox 360, turned five-years old in 2018. This year, Xbox One still lacked the sheer volume of quality exclusives that its competitors produced. However, Microsoft took steps towards improving Xbox One’s future by increasing the appeal of the console for anyone who already owns one.

So as we say goodbye to 2018, let’s look back at the type of year Xbox One had.

More Controller Options Makes Games More Accessible For All

Xbox One still has one of the better standard controller designs out there, but Microsoft’s decision to expand on what people can use to play games in 2018 is an excellent step towards appealing to players who don’t like it or can’t easily use it.

Of the major strides Microsoft made on the controller front this year, the release of the Xbox Adaptive Controller is the bigger of the two. First announced in May 2018, the Xbox Adaptive Controller released on September 4 for $100 USD. Although it’s nearly double the price of a standard controller, the Adaptive Controller fills a void that’s existed in gaming for far too long. There have been third-party devices before, but the Adaptive is the first official modern-day game controller for those with limited mobility. It’s pretty forward-thinking, and an important piece of game tech for the industry as a whole (the controller can be used on other platforms). Microsoft even designed the Adaptive’s packaging to be easier to open for those with mobility considerations. It’s a shame the company hasn’t taken the same steps with the boxes for the One S or One X, but at least Microsoft is moving in the right direction.

In 2018, Microsoft also added mouse and keyboard support to Xbox One. Developers still need to decide whether or not they’ll implement the control scheme in their game, but adding the option opens up new play styles that Xbox One can support in the future. Some computer role-playing games, like Divinity: Original Sin II, have been adapted to work with a standard controller on Xbox One, but those games are originally designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard and it stands to reason that they handle better that way. Both InXile Entertainment and Obsidian–recently acquired by Microsoft and responsible for computer RPGs like Wasteland 2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II respectfully–are sure to take advantage of the new control scheme in upcoming titles.

If anything, this announcement hopefully paves the way for more developers to consider porting their PC-exclusive games to Xbox One. Despite how powerful the One X is–it could theoretically play certain PC titles the original Xbox One can not–it still has the same game library as its predecessors. Giving the One X an extended library of games that include PC titles might motivate some more players to upgrade to Microsoft’s more powerful console.

Some Good Exclusives, But Not Enough To Compete

The divide in quality exclusives between Microsoft and its two main competitors, Sony and Nintendo, is a bit smaller this year than it was in 2017. But that’s mostly because both Sony and Nintendo had fewer exclusive games this year. In terms of quality, Microsoft still feels like it’s pulling up the rear.

It would have been difficult for Sony to match the number of quality exclusives that launched on the PS4 last year, but 2018 still saw a few Game of the Year contenders like God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man. Nintendo had some strong exclusives in 2018 too, such as Octopath Traveler and Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu / Let’s Go Eevee, not to mention what looks like a very promising game in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Meanwhile, Microsoft went another year without a new Halo or Gears of War, and Crackdown 3 was delayed again. Halo Infinite and Gears 5 were at least announced at E3 2018, but we don’t even have scheduled release dates for them yet.

2018 saw the release of Forza Horizon 4, as well as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds leaving Early Access–both of which are pretty good games. However, Xbox One’s other big 2018 exclusives, State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves, were not as well received, and PUBG has been overshadowed by the far more popular Fortnite and Black Ops 4 Blackout mode. Xbox One did have some good-looking console exclusive indie titles lined up this year, but for whatever reason Microsoft did little to market or push many of them. Games like Pit People could have done more for Microsoft’s console with additional marketing, and titles scheduled for 2018 that still haven’t come out and are probably being delayed to 2019–such as The Last Night–are an unfortunate loss.

True, in 2018 Microsoft did manage to secure ports of some of Sony’s 2017 exclusives, like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice in March and Nier: Automata in June. Getting more first-party titles would have been better than playing catch-up, but at least securing these games is a major plus.

Games As A Service Is Finally Worth It

Microsoft started its Game With Gold program back with the Xbox 360, first supported EA Access in 2014, and implemented Game Pass last year. 2018 saw dozens of quality games offered through all three programs, allowing people to play new titles for a fraction of the retail price. For the first time, Microsoft’s promised dream of a Netflix-style library of games seems both practical and desirable.

Although Games With Gold had a weak start in 2018, it ended Q1 with Crazy Taxi and Superhot and then went on to offer quality games like The Witness, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Forza Horizon 2, Overcooked, Battlefield 1, Dead Space 2, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, and Dragon Age II. Including For Honor as a Games With Gold in August–a few months after Ubisoft announced its Marching Fire DLC and one month before the expansion actually released–was an especially nice touch.

Xbox One is still the only console to support EA Access, which lets people play whatever they want from a collection of 50 plus games after paying a subscription fee. Subscribing also gets you 10 percent off all digital purchases for EA games on Xbox One and early access to certain new titles. This year, that includes games like Madden NFL 19 and Battlefield V. Next year, EA Access members get early looks at titles like Anthem and Sea of Solitude. Respawn’s Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and third Titanfall game will probably have early access through the subscription too.

Xbox Game Pass was the true star, though, as Microsoft announced in January 2018 that the service would now include all first-party titles on the day the games launched. So not only were older Xbox One console exclusives added to the service, like Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but new 2018 games like Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, and Forza Horizon 4 all launched on Game Pass on day one. When Crackdown 3, Halo Infinite, Gears 5, and Ori and the Will of the Wisps launch, it will be the same thing. Plenty of excellent third-party games from 2016 through 2018 joined Game Pass as well, such as Laser League, OnRush, Fallout 4, and Doom, with more titles like Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice scheduled to be added this December.

Smart Acquisitions Could Spell A Promising Future

Disappointingly, Microsoft spent most of its E3 2018 presentation showcasing games that wouldn’t release until 2019 or later. However, it was a pleasant surprise to hear that the company had acquired four game studios and established another. Later in the year, Microsoft followed up with an announcement that the studio had acquired both InXile Entertainment and Obsidian as well. That’s seven more studios developing games for Xbox One.

The four acquired studios that Microsoft announced at E3 2018 are Undead Labs, Playground Games, Compulsion Games, and Ninja Theory, which are responsible for this year’s State of Decay 2, Forza Horizon 4, We Happy Few, and the Xbox version of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, respectively. The fifth studio, The Initiative, is established by Microsoft and based out of Santa Monica. It’s led by Darrell Gallagher, who’s best known for heading up 2013’s Tomb Raider and working in the past for Rockstar, Sony, and THQ. As stated before, InXile develops the Wasteland series, but it also created Torment: Tides of Numenera and The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. Obsidian is responsible for plenty of solid RPGs, but its most well-known titles are Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, South Part: The Stick of Truth, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

That’s a lot of new talent working for Microsoft. It doesn’t do much for this year, but it does mean we can probably expect more first-party titles at the end of the Xbox One’s lifespan and on whatever console Microsoft has planned next. Of course, there’s no way of knowing if these studio acquisitions translate into good exclusives for Xbox One until we see what games are being developed, but given some of these companies’ track records–especially Playground, Team Ninja, and Obsidian–it inspires a hopeful future.

Other Matters, In Brief

• As more studios begin honing in on player’s nostalgia, Xbox One is still the best when it comes to playing older games. Xbox One features an ever-growing list of backwards compatible Xbox 360 and original Xbox games–some of which are freely offered through Games With Gold, EA Access, and Game Pass. This allows you to play older titles if you still have the disc or by downloading them. Some classics, such as Final Fantasy XIII, are even Xbox One X-enhanced so their more noticeable flaws are patched away for a superior gaming experience.
• Rather than improve the Xbox One UI–which the console desperately needs–Microsoft’s October 2018 patch implemented updates that added new Avatar customization options as well as Cortana and Alexa voice support. Neither changes how confusing it is to navigate through the Xbox One dashboard, with the latter only making things slower since you have to speak specific phrases instead of press buttons.
• In 2018, Microsoft has seemingly left behind its consoles’ 500GB standard and instead switched to mostly selling Xbox One S and One X with 1TB hard drives. With game sizes getting larger–and X-enhanced assets being a mandatory download on Xbox One regardless if you have a One X to utilize them–this is a welcome change.

Verdict

Everything Microsoft did for Xbox One in 2018 is all well and good if you already own one of the consoles, but it might not have been enough to convince people to go out and buy a new Xbox this year. The Adaptive Controller opens up gaming to a new audience, but since it works with other systems, you don’t need to buy an Xbox One to take advantage of its unique design. Despite how good Xbox Game Pass has been in 2018, the heavy hitters–the console exclusives for Microsoft’s major IPs–are primarily scheduled for 2019 or beyond. And, as stated before, the studio acquisitions mostly set a stage for future releases that could be years away.

Microsoft spent most of 2018 looking forward. That’s great, as it could mean Xbox One has a chance to have a really good 2019 or 2020. But as it stands, 2018 was mostly a repeat of 2017. Microsoft doubled down on its attempts to improve its relationship with its existing player base–and it succeeded–but players were faced with another year where Xbox One doesn’t have many exciting exclusives to point to.

A strange mutation has made one of the world’s ugliest real animals look like one of the cutest fictional ones. A brushtail possum was brought to a clinic in Melbourne, Australia, with unique golden coloring. The caretakers there affectionately named her Pikachu, after the famous Pokemon.

The Age reports that Pikachu (the possum, not the Pokemon) has low levels of melanin which causes the fur color abnormality. She also happens to have large ears, which helps the comparison. She was found lying on the ground and vets say she probably fell off her mother’s back. Though she’s in good health now, the vets say she probably won’t be released into the wild because her unique coloring makes her an easy target for predators.

The golden possum abnormality isn’t unheard of, but they usually don’t live long due to their vulnerability. Caroline Dazey from Wildlife Victoria says the state has “little pockets” of the critters, but they try to keep their location secret.

The family resemblance makes sense. Pikachu the Pokemon is classified as an “Electric Mouse,” so its design was loosely based on a member of the rodent family. Possums are similarly rodents, so all it takes is a little coloring and a cute complexion to bear some similarity.

Pikachu has been the breakout star and mascot of the Pokemon franchise since the early days. Most recently, he’s getting a starring role voiced by Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming Detective Pikachu film, and was one of the two mascot characters to appear on the cover of Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee.

Video game spending in the US increased in the third quarter of 2018 over the previous year, according to a report by the NPD Group. The sales tracking firm said the games having the biggest impact on the figures were Candy Crush Saga, Fortnite, Madden NFL 19, Spider-Man, and NBA 2K19.

Altogether the firm says that total spending on video games increased 24% from July-September, over the same period in 2017. It reached a total of $9.1 billion. “Video game content” accounted for $7.9 billion, but that broad category includes full games, DLC, and subscriptions. Mobile games and digital content sales had the highest growth.

Hardware grew by 11% to $737 million, while accessories like headsets grew by 44%. Game cards had a particularly sharp increase of 63%, marking the first time they’ve beaten accessories during this period of the year.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of games like Spider-Man and Fortnite lifting the industry up. Earlier this year NPD announced similarly rising figures on the back of Fortnite and God of War. Similarly, Sony boasted in September that Spider-Man had broken sales records set by God of War, and sales have apparently been so strong that the PlayStation business lifted Sony’s financial forecast as a whole.

“The Video Game market in the U.S. continues to thrive with compelling gaming content expanding the market, driving higher spending of hardware, accessory and software,” said Mat Piscatella, games industry analyst at The NPD Group. “And with the sales strength of recent releases such as Marvel’s Spider-Man and NBA 2K19, combined with cross-platform titles such as Fortnite, there appears to be no slowing down as we head into the final stretch of the holiday shopping season.”

An online, multiplayer-only Fallout game, Fallout 76 was roundly criticised at launch for a number of reasons, one of which was its lack of meaningful events and interactions with NPCs–which do not exist in the game.

In a new GameSpot video, Jess McDonell covers the many ways that Fallout 76, in its current state, fails to deliver an interesting post-apocalyptic world. In short, the way Fallout 76 delivers quests and story elements simply isn’t all that interesting or engaging, Jess argues.

Fallout 76 is of course not the only game that lacks other human characters, and in the video piece, Jess examines the ways in which titles like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Tacoma, Return of the Obra Dinn, and The Division do a better job than Fallout 76 of telling stories when the world’s other humans are dead and gone.

Be sure to watch the full video in the embed above to get the rundown on the failures of Fallout 76’s storytelling elements and how things could have been different using one of the many alternate approaches. And once you’re done, leave a comment below about what games you think handle the post-apocalypse or minimal characters best and whether or not you’re a fan of how Fallout 76 handles it.

For more on Fallout 76, check out GameSpot’s review and all of our previous coverage here.

There’s a good chance you still have holiday shopping left to do, either for someone else or–ahem–for yourself. If the person you’re buying for is into video games, Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, or other things of the sort, here’s a tip: For four hours, today only, between 1 PM – 5 PM ET (10 AM – 3 PM PT), you can get half off anything on Thinkgeek’s online store. All you have to do is visit the site during that time, and you’ll find a promo code you can enter at checkout.

You can peruse Thinkgeek at your leisure to see what you might want to get with this generous discount, but we’ve highlighted some of our suggestions below, along with their prices after the discount.

Pokemon Snorlax Bean Bag Chair

Sure, you can sit on any old chair. But when you could be sitting on this enormous Snorlax bean bag, why would you want to rest your body on anything else? (You wouldn’t.)

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Harry Potter: Hagrid’s Lantern

This human-sized version of Hagrid’s lamp lights up the room with a low-power LED candle that flickers realistically. Just note that the three AA batteries it requires are sold separately.

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Captain Marvel Crossbody Purse

The Captain Marvel movie is slated to hit theaters on March 8. If the superhero fan in your life is in need of a purse, you can’t go wrong with this stylish one.

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Game of Thrones Jon Snow Fur Hoodie

For anyone in the northern hemisphere, winter is literally coming. Be prepared with this fur hoodie inspired by Jon Snow’s iconic cloak.

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Fallout Nuka-Cola Quantum Mood Light

For the Fallout fan in your life, get the only bottle of soda that comes with its own atomic glow. Batteries are included, but you can also power this nuclear nightlight using a USB cable (also included).

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Star Wars Choose Your Side Cap

Do you want to represent the Empire or the Rebellion? You can pick your side with these simple, stylish caps–or buy one of each so you can switch them out depending on which side of the Force you’re feeling on any given day.

The Nintendo Switch continues to get great games. Developer Campo Santo has announced that its acclaimed 2016 adventure game, Firewatch, is coming to Switch very soon.

You don’t have to wait long at all to pick it up on Nintendo’s hybrid console, as it arrives in the eShop on December 17 in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Japan. It’s being published by the Portland, Oregon-based independent studio Panic. Campo Santo announced Firewatch for Switch earlier this year, at the time pegging it launch in spring 2018, so the wait has been longer than expected.

Set in 1989, Firewatch takes place in the Wyoming wilderness and puts you in the role of Henry (voiced by Mad Men‘s Richard Sommer), a man with a troubled past who seeks a new life as a fire lookout. The other main character is Delilah (Cissy Jones), whom Henry speaks with using a walkie-talkie. The game was originally released in February 2016 for PC and PlayStation 4, before landing on Xbox One in September of that year.

It was Campo Santo’s first title and reviews were positive across the board. Here at GameSpot, it was one of our favourite games of 2016. It was also a commercial success, selling more than 1 million copies in its first year.

A Firewatch movie is currently in the works at Good Universe, the film company that also produced the well-received horror movie Don’t Breathe and Last Vegas.

Campo Santo’s next game is the intriguing-looking In The Valley Of Gods, which was announced during The Game Awards last year. In other news, Valve acquired Campo Santo earlier this year for an undisclosed sum.