Games Inbox: Do you want an Xbox handheld?

The Tuesday letters page thinks Hideo Kojima should stop obsessing over Metal Gear, as one reader tries to guess when Resident Evil 9 will be revealed.

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Bad timing
I think I can give a pretty detailed insight into Microsoft gaming policy at the moment: throw everything at the wall and hope that something sticks. An Xbox branded handheld coming out this year, at the same time as the Nintendo Switch 2, is the most deluded thing I’ve ever heard.

The Switch has been around for eight years. They’ve had all that time to ask Asus, or whoever, to slap an Xbox logo on one of their portable PCs and they wait for now to do it?! If they hadn’t bought Activision Blizzard I do believe that Xbox would’ve been sold off or shut down at the end of this generation, it’s just one disaster after another. And now we’re hearing that Call Of Duty might not be doing so good? That would be very awkward timing, to put things mildly.

The last Xbox I owned was the Xbox One, which I sold after a couple of years. It would need a lot for me to ever buy another one and a PC handheld like all the others is not that. In fact, I’m not sure what they could do to make me come back. I don’t care about Call Of Duty and I certainly don’t want to encourage them into making AI slop instead of real games. I might get Indiana Jones And The Great Circle on PlayStation 5 though.
Heathcliffe

No escape
Hideo Kojima really needs to get over Metal Gear. As far as I’m concerned, he’s wasted too much of his career with that franchise, when he could have been doing other things. It’s not even as if the games are very different and he’s just using the fact that it’s a successful series to play with different ideas.

People complain that Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studio are spending too much time on one game or franchise, but they’re limited by what Sony wants and how long games take to make nowadays, so they’ve at least got some kind of excuse. Kojima doesn’t. Even if we don’t know exactly what kind of leverage he had at Konami he never seems to have made any real effort to get away from it, always saying the latest game would be the last and then making another one anyone.

But let’s assume he was made to stay on Metal Gear, he’s not now so why is he making a spiritual sequel and putting not-Solid Snake into Death Stranding 2? I just feel it’s a shame. He’s a talented, if misguided creator and I just feel he’s throwing opportunities away even now. He’s in his 60s now, how many Metal Gear homages is he going to make?
Curzon

Too hype to fail
I feel that I should be cynical about this, but I really can’t imagine the April Direct being anything but a slam dunk. At the very least, to mix my sporting metaphors, it’s an open goal that Nintendo should not miss.

I can’t see why they would hold back any important details, especially if it’s going to come out in June. So we should get a date, a price, a bunch of games, and full details on the console. Considering Nintendo invented the whole Direct format this really is theirs to lose.

You would’ve said that about the follow-up to the Wii as well but what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?
Raleigh

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Game of the show
So, since Resident Evil 9 wasn’t at any of the Direct showcases this year (I notice that Switch 1 dedicated one never materialised) when are we thinking it’ll appear? I can see it being at the Nintendo Direct, since Capcom and Nintendo get on, but would the Switch 2 be able to handle what is presumably a state-of-the-art game?

Will it be at a not-E3 event instead? Capcom have their own little Direct style shows but I don’t think they ever announce anything new in those, just give more details on things that are already known. I’m really hoping to hear something now that Monster Hunter Wilds is out, and I really hope it’s co-op related too.
Justin Time

GC: Who can say (literally, there’s been no rumours one way or the other) but if we were to guess, we’d say it’s more likely to turn up at Summer Game Fest than the Nintendo Direct.

Trivial concern
I will never understand people getting upset about having to sign up to accounts or to use different launchers in a game. I literally cannot think of any more minor a problem than that. Who cares? You sign-up then you never think about it again. Oh no, Microsoft has my gamertag! Guess what? They already had it! They issued it!

Now, the issue of Forza Horizon 5 disappearing after a few years, that is a serious problem and yet it’s not that people are up in arms about, it’s the taking two seconds to sign into an account that gets people upset. Never mind about having bigger issue in the world right now, there are much bigger issues in gaming and yet people only ever seem to care about the trivial stuff.
Blobby

Age old problem
RE: Game completion. I have also noticed how often games are bought, played very briefly then abandoned, but again it may be an indication that often time is the limiting factor these days?

I try and give all games a reasonable shot, and complete most of the ones I’ve made good progress in. That said, I had to abandon Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth right at the final phase of the final fight because it was too tough for me.

It’s a real shame having got that far, and having completed Bloodborne/Dark Souls, etc. I like to think I’m not a complete lightweight! I just got increasingly frustrated by having to restart back at the first phase of a ridiculously lengthy boss fight if I needed to turn off the console, or respec any of my materia to try a different strategy, ‘assess’ materia stops working, and none of the cut scenes in that lengthy sequence of fights were skippable.

I largely enjoyed the game to that point, but not sure I’ll be back for the third. Still, trying Dragon Age: The Veilguard now, as it’s free on PS Plus, and enjoying what I’ve played so far.
Matt (He_who_runs_away – PSN ID)

GC: We’re sure the time pressures of modern life don’t help but people not completing the games they play has always been true.

Two month plan
I don’t think there can be a worse managed developer or franchise in gaming history than 343i and Halo. All this time and they’ve made so few games and so many mistakes. Halo Infinite was make or break for Halo and… it broke, almost immediately.

Reading the details of their 10 year plan is just said considering the game barely lasted a couple of months before it cratered, and all because they couldn’t knock out the most basic of new content. I don’t know how anyone could possibly be optimistic about them making a new one.
Focus

Battlefield experience
I feel like the time for Battlefield to finally beat Call Of Duty was 15 years ago, but if it really is as good as the early tests say then maybe this is the big moment for EA, considering Call Of Duty is suddenly seeming a bit vulnerable.

I can’t see it though. I’ve enjoyed Battlefield in the past, but it’s always been difficult to play and overwhelming for non-fans, with the higher level of realism, huge maps, and hard to control vehicles. Getting shot from a mile away, by a sniper you never saw, or run over by a tank are the classic newbie experiences for Battlefield and yet if they don’t happen it’s not really Battlefield.

When EA were really pushing the Call Of Duty rivalry they made the fatal error of trying to be more like Activision rather than emphasising why Battlefield was better or different. People already had Call Of Duty, they didn’t need another one, and so Battlefield faded away to the point where it’s lucky Battlefield 2042 even got a sequel.

So I am encouraged by the feedback, especially stuff like the big maps, which suggests they haven’t changed that much and are sticking to the classic formula, but I’m not getting excited yet. This isn’t 2013 anymore and Battlefield needs to prove it still has a place in the genre.
Jim

Inbox also-rans
The first golden age of gaming was SNES vs. Mega Drive. The second golden age was PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360. Dis/agree?
LeighDappa

GC: The only time the phrase golden age is commonly used in video games is the golden age of arcade games, which runs from the late 70s to early 80s – well before the Mega Drive.

I’m not going to lie, that Lego Mario Kart model is pretty amazing. There’s no way I’d pay that much for what is essentially a toy but if I was going to be tempted into Lego as an adult… that’d be the one.
Septimus

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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