I recently built a PC and have been using Steam as that’s all I know for right now. However, I also subscribed to Xbox Game Pass and have used the Xbox app for Forza and Call of Duty. Earlier, my buddy showed me the disc-to-digital feature by adding Deadpool to his library, and I thought that was the coolest thing, and now I’m debating on moving over as my main.

I figured the Steam machine is covered because we have the Series X and I can play from my phone or cloud if I’m on the go as well. Just looking for advice as a newbie since I don’t have a Series X yet but plan on buying one for GTA 6.

I was looking into getting a new Elite s2 because I love thsee controllers, but didn't wanna spend too much with the rumored Elite S3 possibly being right around the corner. I stumbled on best buy and noticed they have pre-designed Design Lab controllers, and they're like half the price they would be on design lab, and still cheaper than a normal Elite Controller.

I was able to snag this transparent green one, which is cool because I tried checking out the design lab today and it is BARREN. Almost every color option is either discontinued or out of stock and the only transparent option they still have for Elite controllers is pink, and it'd be over $200 through there.

I happened to have a best buy gift card lying around so I wound up paying only a couple bucks more for this than I would have for the X25 controller I was considering getting. Not a bad deal for me!

Anyway, if anybody's interested, here's a link. They have other color options, too.

Edit: just noticed the typo in the post title. Oh well!

Xbox has spent the last decade pouring resources into keeping Halo as the face of the brand, while 343/Halo studios has consistently stumbled with launches, live-service delays, and fragmented storylines and many, MANY books (why? wtf?)

Meanwhile, Gears of War has quietly maintained top-tier gameplay, Unreal Engine graphical benchmarks, solid literature that complements the world, not a must read in order to know what´s happening, looks like FINALLY a good campaign.

The hype around E-Day proved there is way more genuine excitement for a gritty Marcus & Dom prequel than anything Halo has teased in years.

If E-Day is the homerun everyone expects it to be, Xbox needs to shift marketing priority and make Gears the primary spearhead for the platform until Halo actually gets its house in order.

So I've had the privelege of playing Onimusha for the last week already as I get sent copies to review, and so I thought I'd give a bit of my quick review thoughts here around it.

Going in as someone who’d somehow never played an Onimusha game before (I know right, don't you judge me) despite being a gamer since 1988 and game critic for like... 18 years, I’ve come away seriously impressed.

The combat is great, and I liked that it sat somewhere between an action game like DMC and Souls-like games, the more I think of it the more I think that it's sort of like a more-focused linear version of Ghost of Tsushima/Yoteis sword combat, but with a bunch of extra fun bits and abilities.

The main hero (who I found out was based on a real dude - but also modelled after Toshiro Mifune from the old Samurai films) and story have a surprisingly fun, playful side to them that I wasn’t expecting. Some of the intro sequences and cutscenes had me laughing out loud because of his almost anime-like goofy faces mixed in together with some seriously bad-ass fight scenes. It's damn good looking too, and has a lot of graphics options on Series X especially if you have a 120hz monitor, like 60hz mode and 120hz modes, but with sub-options like 40fps cap, 30fps cap, 60fps cap, unlocked, etc. I ended up using 120hz quality mode with unlocked framerate which worked really well (I assume thanks to VRR).

But for boss battles I switched it 120hz performance mode for all the help I could get. That's mostly because biggest frustration is definitely the boss encounters, which can sometimes feel more frustrating than challenging, especially compared to how precise the regular combat feels and how spoiled we are with the combat design in games like Elden Ring and Sekiro. But thankfully, that hasn’t been enough to spoil what has otherwise been a really great time.

Between Resident Evil Requiem, Pragmata and now this, Capcom really does seem to be going 3 for 3 this year. So impressive.

I don't usually do scores these days and rather say if I recommend a game or not, but if I had to score this I'd probably say its an 8.5-9.0 out of 10, with only a few points knocked off for some of the boss battle frustrations and other tiny nitpicks.

I’ve noticed there’s a new profile badge called the ‘Minecraft Community Champion Badge’.

Does anybody know how to obtain this?

Will we also be getting new backwards compatible games?

Guys PLEASE do not pay the scalpers on eBay. Walmart still has them available online. I just purchased 2 of them! Link is below. Lmk if you were able to grab !!

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Xbox-Accessory/20039069634

Hey, so I have an og Xbox One and have had it for over a decade at this point. I never really got a lot of games on it, but with the announcement of Xbox Disc to Digital, and knowing it works on Xbox One, what games would you recommend I try to get physically?

I’ve already ordered Sunset Overdrive which I’ve heard was a great game from Insomniac for years. Also considering Gears 5 and a few others, any other recommendations with this system?

I live in the Netherlands and it seems to be sold out pretty much everywhere here, but luckily Amazon UK still had some available for pre-order.

Got two, one to open and use, and one to keep sealed for the collection.

Anyone else in Europe managed to get one?

In 2024, I sold my Xbox One S to buy the PS5 I bought in 2025. After a year of use, I'm not happy with either the console or the decision to remove the discs. That's why I'm going back to Xbox, do you recommend any Xbox games that are worth catching up on? Or what's interesting in the game pass?

First, let me make it clear that I think DtD is a great move, and I appreaciate that Xbox was so generous by granting us the ability to transfer physical licences into digital copies.

However, here is a thing - DtD opens up all benefits of digital copies, including Play Anywhere...

...which means that (in theory) you could digitalize your entire collection and start playing these games on PC instead of Xbox... In practice, not all games are Play Anywhere, so it's not that perfect, but I think you might see where I'm getting with this.

MS must percieve Xbox hardware as liability and financial burden (given the sales figures this gen). Especially now that they own so many dev studios, they must have at least concidered getting rid of it entirely at some point, and going full publisher/pc store mode.

I think in the future we will se a family of "Xbox" PC-devices that will be produced by 3rd parties and licenced by MS, and Xbox will become a gaming-optimized operating system based on Windows.

And Disc to Digital combined with Play Anywhere will enable a transfer of the large portion of gaming libraries from Xbox One/Series consoles to PC, to avoid fan backlash.

Witcher 3 complete is currently 80% off in-store until tomorrow (AUS), with it leaving game pass tonight.

Perfect time to snatch it up before the free upgrade on the 29th

Had my series X for a few years now and love it but one thing I just find missing is any sense of colour, was considering picking up the new X25 model but just can’t get my hands on any. Does anyone know of any decent looking skins or wraps or even shells i can purchase to introduce a bit more colour?

There seems to be different approaches in how the program works with bundle discs:

Injustice 2 legendary edition claimed digital license includes all DLCs.

Alan Wake 2 Deluxe edition claimed digital license does NOT include the DLCs (the deluxe upgrade must be installed from disc).

Any other cases?

In a first-of-its kind premiere on Netflix, Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look topped the English film list with 31.1M views and hit No. 1 in 87 of the 93 countries tracked globally.

Does anyone know an easy way to see disc to digital games on steam deck (Xbox gamepass in a browser)?

I have gone to the “stream your own game” section and then filtered by “purchased” but not sure if it will show up in a different section.

Also how’s everyone finding it? Only about a third of my games are available, which I was a bit disappointed with but it’s early days.

It's a lot of information to read through but...... needless to say, a lot will change between now and into the future.

To quote this very article - "People often say to me, Amir, when are we going to go back to normal?" Satvat said. "I don't think, unfortunately, we're going back to normal. I think we're evolving to something else, and what that something else is hasn't been decided yet." (Amir Satvat creator of ASGC )

I have to say something. I realise a lot of gamers like this game and that gamers often are bizarrely defensive and emotionally crippled (oh come on), but my god.

It's like a DnD session DM'd by Q from Star Trek, cosplaying as THE most banal pedant who ever sat behind a DM screen, punishing you for not guessing his clever tricks that he doesn't prepare you for. Choose a, nope should have chosen b. Choose b, nope should have chosen a.

It's a game where you are meant to explore and have your own non linear adventure, you can follow equests, except those you find out brutally you are not levelled for. But if you explore incorrectly, you are punished. It's crazy.

The RNG is insane. At no point did the devs think to limit this. Every interaction isn't roleplaying, it's rolled for. I have an interaction with Voss (no spoilers) that ould have gone badly for me. No tension at all though, because it was just roll d20 several times. Yawn.

To wit, case in point (SPOILERS):

I'm in the Shadow Cursed Lands setting an ambush for some cultists. I know not who they are. Ambush starts, i have my melee guys on the ground and my rogue and healer on the roof above. There really are no other choices. The NPC allies just go where they will.

Cultists appear. One of them is a giant spider dude with a magic lantern which, it turns out, makes him invulnerable to damage. Initaitve in this game is rubbish. The result is always the same: rogue goes first, all the enemies go next, everyone else on my team goe last. aas you can imagine this can be brutal.

I taget one o fthe other cultists and critically miss. Hooray!

The big spider dude one shots my healer. It goes downhill from there. My melee fighters are outnumbered but do their best and take a few guys out but because abilities only recharge between combat if you rest, they are tuckered out. The NPC allies are....well not much use. One of them casts an AOE attack that hits both my melee guys. The spider dude's invulnerability temporarily pauses, and we attack him. He has over 150 hp and Karlach, despite being supposedly invulnerable in rage mode, still takes damage. She hits twice with a massive sword for...5 damage.

You can see where this is going. .

The game is a boring tedious slog of RNG, bizarre interactions, strange whimsical "tee hee aren't we clever" writing and not much else. Quests are barely explained, some you can do, some you can't - and you find out the hard way which. Your characters can be helpful, providing you've levelled them correctly for situations you couldn't have known about. The map is awful. The constant dice rolling a huge distraction.

I will say the writing, despite its tendency to be clever for its own sake, is decent. But it feels very childish at times (oh look a troll having £$**" with an ogre! ho ho ho!). Voice acting is good. But there's no sense of a meaningful quest, just a series of often whimsical interactions I increasingly don't care about.

Mizora, I'm done now.

We have multiple xboxes in our house but still buy physical games so that we can play them on either one with under anyones account.

You can allow anyone in the household to play your games on one console but then on the other they have to login as you to do it.

They need something more like family sharing on Steam where you allow people in your family group to all share your games. The recent disc to digital doesnt seem to solve this unless I am missing something.

Edit: Not sure why people seem to think I am asking for something for free. All I want to do is share my digital games as easily as my physical disc. With the physical disc someone can take it to the xbox in either room and play it under their account.

This is why I dont buy digital games, because they can only be played on the home xbox.

Unfortunately, I don't see this game being talked about enough - which means few sales which means no chance for next game and this makes me sad.

I didn't complete the first 2 games mainly because I hate the rats but they were really well made and looked great.

This game however has it ALL. Very well done dialogue and story. Great voice acting. Outstanding music( seriously it is otherworldly). Well paced. 0 technical issues ( no fps drops or stuttering for 14 hours ). Well placed puzzles that are not challenging enough but not boring. Great combat, it felt like every hit matters.

I genuinely clapped when the credits rolled. I know that there are plenty of games releasing now but please give this a chance, it is seriously amazing and my only hope that this studio continues to delight us with new stories.

Disc to Digital has come at a great time for me. I was subbed to Game Pass from 2019 before finally letting it lapse back in December. I felt burned out on the whole subscription model, even if I still think it's a good option for gamers. Personally, I wanted to get back to the fun of actually collecting games, which was further reinforced by the PlayStation news this summer.

Since I go back and forth between my living room XSX and office PC so often, I really want to prioritize games that are opted into both Disc to Digital and Play Anywhere. Since both were holes in my current-gen gaming, I figured Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 were a good place to start. Was able to get both new for $30.

Now I'm getting started on the PC version of MK1 while my son, who's getting over a cold, enjoys some TV time in the next room. It feels wild having a disc sitting on my bookshelf for the PC game I'm currently playing. It's like having physical PC games again.

Going forward, the emphasis Xbox should have is on getting the most entitlements possible for their users, in contrast to PlayStation, who's aiming to reduce entitlements and maximize per-unit revenue. As we're seeing with https://xct.live/disc2digital testing so far, not every publisher is going to be on board with D2D from the jump, but I think the ones that do are going to have a real opportunity to stand out among gamers who appreciate getting more mileage and flexibility out of their game purchases.

Is anyone else prioritizing D2D and XPA games going forward, or are maybe some of you into cloud? Do we think more publishers will opt in over time, or are some going to draw a hard line?

I don't know if it's Stockholm syndrome or if there are real ripples of change happening here but I am starting to feel fairly positive about the direction and future of Xbox.

I absolutely just finished converting like 20 titles over to digital and wow, my library is currently at 70 games and it feels good knowing it is all coming with me moving forward.

Love seeing how many are available on cloud, how many are play anywhere. I'm starting to believe.

The Xbox ecosystem has the potential to offer something that no other platform can match if they can deliver without fucking it up somehow.

Does this still work https://gamingpromax.com/xbox-game-pass-ultimate-ea-play-trick-cheap-2026/

I see conflicting articles about whether it still converts to 1:1 ratio...

Thanks

The pricing really damages how much devs make off of their games in the long run, and raising the price craters the membership of the platform. I think it needs to end, then rebrand as something else. Maybe a membership club that gives you half-off digital games, or gives you back the difference in store credit if you buy new physical games.

This solves a lot of issues people have with gaming right now, like games being too expensive and there being practically no incentive to buy games at full price at launch. It could even be tied to the license, so that whoever activates the game first is the only one to get the half-back, while eventually giving the player another free game they can get at launch and would probably still be more financially viable than giving out a shitload of games for 40 bucks a month.

Infinite Subscription-based content always damages the industry, just like Netflix clearly has for the film industry.