Hellblade And Starfield Sum Up Modern Xbox

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stacey Henley

Published May 27, 2024

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Summary

Starfield was one small step rather than a giant leap.
With Xbox still behind, Hellblade's divisive reception was the last thing it needed.
I'm still not sure what Xbox is overall goal is this generation.

It's odd to think back now to the time before 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3 rushed its 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:release date forward to avoid 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bethesda’s space saga, while Sony hung fire with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2 until it knew the webhead had a clear path to swing through. It was seen as the game that would define the year, the only thing to challenge 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom's Game of the Year procession. In the end, BG3 was a worthy victor, while 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man likely came a respectable 🎶fourth, though was the casual pick for a loud corner of gaming. Starfield was not even nominated, and nobody found that too controversial. I'm thinking about that again in the wake of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade 2.

2023 was a strange year for Xbox. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush won huge praise after it was shadowdropped, but there were rumblings about how 'successful' it really was against sales figures in a Game Pass world. Meanwhile, Redfall would have been the disappointment of the year but for the existence of Gollum. But none of this ꧙mattered. Starfield fixed everything. It was the game that would get Xbox back on top. It would wipe away all those near misses, all those disappointments, all those also rans. It would break the so-called Xbox tax. With Starfield, Xbox's former failures didn’t simply not matter, they did not exist. And then it launched. And it was only okay.

Starfield Falling Below Expectations Has Major Ramificiations For Xbox

Sam Coe with a little smile in Starfield

So Xbox's problems were not solved by a single, generation-defining game. But hey, Xbox i🎉s all about the Game Pass model anyway, right? Affordable prices, fans invested in their ecosystem, shorter and more readily available games with variety - not the one stop blockbuster shop the blue guys are running down the road. Except they just closed up Tango Gameworks after Hi-Fi Rush was the perfect Game Pass Model title, so really, how much does any of it matter?

That's where Hellblade 2 comes in. 2024 was always going to be aꩵ very 🔴interesting year for Xbox. Though it lacks the generational tent pole 2023 wanted in Starfield, it is peppered with sizeable releases. Meanwhile, both Nintendo and Sony are taking the year off - the former as it hangs back 🌱for a Switch 2 launch and the latter as its long development cycles finally run into consequences. Hellblade 2 was the table setter for the year, but I'm still not sure what that means.

Starfield has an 85 on OpenCritic, and Hellblade an 81. But they feel more than four points apart. Starfield's score is mainly derived from 7s, 8s, and 𝔉9s, while Hellblade goes as low as 5 and nets 🍷a considerable amount of 10s. No one really knows what to make of it - its biggest critics concede that the first game had similar gameplay and that it looks fantastic, while its biggest fans shrug in acknowledgement when confronted with the miniscule runtime and rote, repetitive gameplay.

Does Hellblade Fit In Xbox's Current Strategy?

Senua's Saga Hellblade 2 - Senua Solving A Rune Puzzle Under The Cover Of Northern Lights In The Sky.

Clocking in at six to ten hours (in🅷cluding all the opt𒈔ional extras), it's a Game Pass Model game. But that model doesn't exist anymore. It's surely not profitable for Ninja Theory to have taken five years to make this game, more than a year per hour of the game for some players beating it inside four, and to have spent the cash to make it look like this, only for everyone to pick it up for free on Game Pass. Is Hellblade 2, already, the product of a bygone era?

With a mixed reception from critics and players, how is that translating into 'sales' - or however copies sold is tracked in a subscription model. Xbox is still targeting 2024 for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Indiana Jones and Avowed, while Microsoft Flight Simulatoꦛr is heavily expected to join them. Together, they mean no game bears the burden of Starfield. But it's hard to know what dir𒐪ection Xbox is heading in.

Speaking purely critically, since sales are difficult to track with Xbox so reliant on subscriptions, Hi-Fi Rush is Xbox's only unqualified success recently. 168澳𝔉洲幸运5开奖网:The studio that made it was killed off. Redfall, a total failure in part because of moving Arkane out of its area of expertise into a money spinning looter shooter, also resulted in its s🌱tudio being shuttered. Starfield was below expectations, and is now drifting out in space as just another game. Hellblade is the most divisive of the lot, and wherever you stand on it, is too niche and too short to offer any sort oౠf guiding light to Xbox's future.

It seemed like Xbox's strength was in its varied approach - a stark difference to the third person over the shoulder actio𝓀n adventure stoic protagonist nihilistic yet moving formula of Sony. It needed Starfield t🌃o take it into the stratosphere, but that variety remains. However, as each different type of game fails, it starts to feel like being a jack of all trades means being a master of none.

Of course, Xbox's answer cannot be to make all of its games the same, and things are not so simple that it must merely make each game 'better'. It felt like Hellblade slotted into Xbox's line-up as its dramatic game, its answer to 'are games art', its third person over the shoulder action ad🌄venture stoic protagonist nihilistic yet moving masterpiece. I'm not sure whether a game this divisive fits into Xbox's i❀mage, especially after Starfield already stands front and centre as an example of Xbox falling short. I'm not sure what Xbox's identity is, but with each new game, it earns a louder and louder reputation for games that don't quite hit the mark.