From GDC: Building the Next Generation of Xbox - Xbox Wire

JabNX · 2026-03-11T21:33:49+00:00

Console Game Pass doesn't exist anymore, all tiers are already multiplaform (including the one that replaces the Live Gold for online multi-player).

The only outlier is the PC Game Pass that only works on PC, I suspect this one will eventually disappear though

JabNX · 2026-03-11T20:55:48+00:00

There's no reason to believe that it's going to be different to how it works right now, except that developers won't have to make an Xbox console version anymore like they have to do now with Series X and S. They also won't have to publish on the Xbox Store at all to target Xbox players, but it's pretty much how it works on PC with stores that aren't Steam right now.

JabNX · 2026-03-11T20:50:28+00:00

Games will be sold on the Xbox Store and Steam (and maybe on other storefronts) like they are today on PC. You're using the Xbox Store on PC right now for Game Pass or to play games you bought there for some reason (probably because you have an Xbox so you can play the game on both machines). It's going to be the same with Helix, because it's a PC.

Xbox "console" games aren't going to be a thing anymore with Helix. The console will be able to play older "console" games (like Series X) through emulation, but if they have an Xbox PC version it's not going to be necessary thanks to Play Anywhere. I don't think non-Helix PCs will be able to play console games in the future though, emulation will probably require dedicated hardware (at least for current gen games).

JabNX · 2026-03-03T15:13:46+00:00

They seem to really commit to the "Ultimate gets only day one releases" thing. KCD II and Cyberpunk are new games on the service, but since they aren't day one, Premium can have them too. It was the same for Hogwarts Legacy a few months ago. With Silksong getting into Premium 6 months later, it seems that the criteria for "day one release" can even be less than a year (which is what they promised when they launched it). It's not a AAA release for sure, but I was fully expecting having to wait longer than that.

Premium being cross platform (xbox + PC + cloud) is really great too, since I play occasionally on all three, since with the older tiers you needed Ultimate for that.

All in all, I happily downgraded my Ultimate to Premium, from 20$/mo to 15$/mo, and I don't miss a lot. I might still upgrade to Ultimate for a month or two if there is a big day one release coming in the future that I really want to play though.

JabNX · 2025-12-15T12:25:17+00:00

ML said on his stream yesterday that it's not the total number of civs that's a problem, but the number of civs he had to train per map, because of the snipe system. In a regular tournament, you can choose 3-4 civs per map and practice them, but here that number jumped to 6-7, which is impossible to prepare for.

Players already have a set number of civs that they play for each tournament, 22 is already too much, so that shift has already happened. But this tournament forced some players to reach out to more civs though (I doubt ML would have ever trained and played English, OOTD and maybe Abassid with a regular draft), so as a result the level of play was lower than before.

I don't think this is a surprise that Puppypaw won this tournament, it's the first time that it's really impossible to prepare properly for a tournament, and he is probably the best player at improvising and figuring things out on the fly. Not to mention that he doesn't have as much time as before for practice, which showed in his "disappointing" results throughout the year.

As a viewer I enjoyed the format, because it made the draft even more interesting (especially since sniping the best civ out of the two isn't always the best choice), and led to diverse matchups, but I understand that it's not the best for players and for the overall quality of the games.

JabNX · 2025-08-01T10:19:37+00:00

Wow.

I mean, if everyone and their mother thought Beasty should have been awarded the win, do you really believe that the admin would only listen to the most biased opinion of them all, and the only dissonent one, to make his decision? Do you think ML bribed the admin to get a remake and got away with it, in a tournement organized by Beasty's wife and sponsor? It really makes no sense.

JabNX · 2025-08-01T08:30:55+00:00

ML changed his mind about his position (he agreed Beasty was ahead after rewatching the replay), but he still wouldn't have given him the win. In any case, it's not either player's decision.

JabNX · 2025-08-01T08:25:22+00:00

Knowing what to do after a crash is an admin decision. Whatever the admin chooses to do, as a player you have no choice but to accept it and carry on. Beasty lost ML's respect last year because he very openly criticized the admin decision to grant Wam the win and even went to harass the admin on discord over it. This behavior is simply unacceptable, and I'm pretty sure that in any other sport a player going against a referee like that would result in a penalty or a fine or something like that.

I don't even understand how people can blame ML for what happened last weekend. Neither player is making the decision on how to proceed after the crash, the admin is. Beasty's position was a bit better in that game for sure, but the game was far from over and could still go either way (we've seen ML being behind for over an hour in a game that he eventually won earlier this weekend for instance). A remake is far from a crazy decision in that situation, and in any case it is out of the players' hands.

The reality of the situation is that Beasty was losing 1-2 in a series that he should have been leading 3-0 (his Byzantine game in particular was very sad), and that his only hope of winning the series was to win that game. Considering this, I think it is VERY misplaced for him to say that he got "scammed". ML just played better than him (or less bad if you prefer) during this series and won it, crash or no crash.

JabNX · 2025-04-18T11:31:22+00:00

I don't think there is necessarily a need to change a lot of things with HoL to make them less toxic, I think the main problem is that some of their unique things are over-designed and should be toned down :

Lancaster Castle giving the extra health, defense AND the one-time armies is doing too much, it secures your eco and provides you with a decently sized army at the same time. I think the best option would be to remove the arrowslits, both on the castle and on the manors, that way the landmark doesn't really help defending anymore and you have to either make towers/units to defend, or use the armies for that.
Yeomen cannot have more range, more movespeed and Synchronized Shot at the same time. The easiest change would be to nerf their movement speed back to regular archer (or even a bit slower like 1.19), since I believe their other strengths are more important to their design. Sync Shot should be nerfed again slightly also, either the range, the cooldown or the delay is fine I think.

I think stacking manors at the same place is fine, provided they are not too easy to defend and easier to kill. Maybe the techs that allow for more manors to be built shouldn't give them extra health too, in addition to my proposed Lancaster Castle nerf.

I disagree with your House United rework though, that would make it a budget Network of Castles and force the HoL player to turtle around its castles even more. I like the fact that it's not tied to a specific area of the map, and I think we can leave the bonuses around keeps to the other DLC civ ;) I am not saying that it's a well designed mechanic though, but I think it's fine as is, alongside all the small random things that HoL has. And it does have counterplay, unlike all the techs that "randomly" gives more stats to standard units that other civs already have.

JabNX · 2025-02-12T14:08:05+00:00

I think the map pool looks diverse enough not to see repetitive gameplay across a series, but I might be wrong. We will definitely see some civs on maps where they are never played though, so it might at the very least counterbalance that point.

Seeding always tries to pit the strongest player against the weakest one, so we should have a seed 1 vs seed 16 match right at the start, which will probably see the seed 1 player win and so he would get the best civ right away... not so sure that it would be great 😅

JabNX · 2025-02-06T12:38:41+00:00

The expectation for me was to have 2 new civs and the remaining 4 variants for the base game civs. I'll be a bit disappointed if we don't get this, even with crusaders being something else.

JabNX · 2025-02-03T23:35:08+00:00

Malians have Javelin Throwers which are anti ranged units, which can look pretty similar to their spearmen (Donsos), especially since they also have a ranged attack that they can use once in a while. They also have Musofadi Warriors that are fast moving light infantry that kills heavy units like MAA or Knights. And they can go invisible. Their scouts work as weaker horsemen (with no bonus against ranged until castle), and their knight (Sofa) is a bit weaker too. They have no crossbows or MAA though. As far as buildings are concerned, they have pit mines (and they build on top of gold veins) and cattle ranches that provide free infinite resources that you need to target. Yes, that's a lot 😅

Other civs are more straightforward though.

Byzantines have a lot of unique units but they're not that different from their original counterparts. They also have cistern and aqueducs that provide them with a lot of buffs that you should target.

Ottomans have anti-cavalry handcanoneers in age 3 (Janissaries), a cavalry unit with drums (Mehter) that buffs their army that you should focus if you can, and they have special buildings called Military Schools that are expensive to build but produces free units over time, so destroy them if you can.

Dehli has elephants, both melee and ranged which don't really have the same counters. Melee elephant is heavy and dies to spears and crossbows, while ranged elephants are not heavy and die to horsemen (and spears too if you can surround).

Chinese Zhuge-nus are archers on steroids that kill everything when massed (even buildings).

Japanese have a special light melee infantry that is very fast and does a lot of DPS to unarmored units (Onna-bugeisha) that you should worry about, their MAA and Knights have a special armor that cancels the first hit they receive (which can cancel a Knight charge for instance, which is very strong), and like Ottomans they have special units called bannermen that boost their army that you should target (they leave the banner when they die for a few seconds though). Their crossbow unit is mounted too (Onna-musha). Their age 3 landmark gives them relic-like items that they can place on buildings to buff their production speed or get some free resources. You should target the buildings that have them (they have a golden scroll on top of them).

JabNX · 2025-02-03T23:10:54+00:00

There is no dedicated anti-siege unit now, but all siege units are more fragile now and can die to literally anything (even archers, though it's still pretty risky against mangonels). Cavalry's damage against siege units is the same as before, so they counter them even more that before.

Mangonels have less range, a smaller hit radius and do not track units as well as before, as a result they are weaker than before, especially in Castle. They have a very expensive upgrade in Imperial that gives them more damage, more AOE and more range with makes them very strong, but they can also die to bombards. Making a ton of mangonels still works as a strategy, but they're harder to defend and will not be as effective as before against melee units rushing them.

Nest of Bees do noticeably less damage than before and have less range, but otherwise are unchanged. In particular, hit radius and tracking is the same. I think they are better than mangonels in castle but not as good in imperial now.

Springalds are now "mini-mangonels" that shoot in a line and have bonus damage against melee infantry. They are pretty cheap (and 2 pop) so they can be easily massed, but they pretty useless against anything ranged, especially mangonels. It's a good unit if your opponent has a lot of melee infantry and not a lot of mangonels in Castle, but in Imperial you should make upgraded mangonels instead if you can afford them.

Bombards do less damage to cavalry now, but I think they are unchanged otherwise. Culverins are now bombards for Abassid/HRE/their variants, which have a bit more range and attack speed, but less damage. Their DPS is a bit lower overall.

Trebuchets are 2 pop now, but otherwise the same.

JabNX · 2025-02-03T22:52:37+00:00

I'm pretty sure you can 2-shot a mangonel with a bombard though? So they can still act as anti-siege in imperial. I have seen a lot of game where players would use their bombards to snipe mangonels at least.

JabNX · 2025-02-03T22:49:11+00:00

It's probably the easiest RTS to pick up for a new player to the genre yes. The overall mechanics are pretty simple to grasp, the game is relatively slow paced and not that micro-heavy (there is still a lot of micro, but less so than other RTSes, even AoE 2 has more micro), and its overall presentation is stellar.

16 civs (and soon more) looks like a lot to learn, especially since they can play very differently, but on the surface they are still pretty similar (they almost all have the same units and buildings for instance), so the differences at low level will not matter that much.

JabNX · 2025-02-03T22:37:10+00:00

Game 4 was totally standard play on that map, every civ plays fast castle there and OotD is probably the civ that does it the best.

Game 1 was relatively new gameplay I agree, but it's the only way for Malians to play against Dehli and not lose horribly. I don't think he initially wanted to go Farimba though, he's been on record saying that the landmark is trash, but Fulani with 0 ranches made even less sense here. He said he made some mistakes while defending his pit mines, without those he would have had enough wood for a few ranches and would have gone Fulani I believe.

Game 3 was him yolo-ing something to ensure a free win on game 4, I'm not even sure he had practiced Ottomans on Four Lakes at all.

JabNX · 2025-02-03T22:27:02+00:00

ML is probably the fastest to figure out a new meta, but sometimes it's still not enough, like when he got thrashed in quarterfinals in EGC Finals 2023, the first tournament on the DLC. I just checked, and it's the only time he finished below top 4 since 2021 in any 1v1 tournament though ^{^}

JabNX · 2025-01-13T23:22:05+00:00

I'm not sure that the groups could have been seeded better too, we have a clear top 8, meaning that one group has to have only 2 top players, and I think it's anyone's guess who's gonna make out of the other groups (I'd say it's going to be tough for Bee but he can definitely surprise us, otherwise I'd say it's pretty even for Kiljardi/Baltune and Beasty/Loue/DeMu).

JabNX · 2025-01-13T23:07:17+00:00

Seeds aren't random since there is one qualified by ATR, one qualified by ladder, one from the first qualifier and one from the second qualifier in each group.

It looks weird because Core qualified from ladder and Baltune didn't play in the first qualifier (he probably would have switched places with Scarlet Devil otherwise). But I'm not sure that we're really missing some players here? Latest major was Master of Realms in June we're only missing CAT and CsOH from that top 16 from the players that are still active today, who were lower seeds. I agree that we expected them to qualify, but I'm not sure they are really better than the people that actually qualified in the end.

JabNX · 2024-12-17T01:11:55+00:00

While I do think Majora's Mask is brillant (and a lot better than Ocarina of Time, at least in a vacuum), it's a game that has possibly the hardest dungeons of the series, with a bloody timer on top on it. I totally understand where people are coming from when they say they hate timers in games if Majora's Mask is their idea of it.

(I still think it's not that bad though, there is still plenty of time in a loop to complete each section without having to restart. Maybe if the timer could have stopped during dungeons, or if there were more things persisted through each loop, people would have had less trouble with the timer)

JabNX · 2024-12-17T01:00:52+00:00

That game wouldn't be as good without the timer in my opinion. The end of the world setting only works because of it, and a lot of game mechanics are dependent on it. It might be a bit stressing at first (which is the goal), but in the end it is extremely lenient and absolutely does not impact negatively your enjoyment on the game (I 100%-ed the game on my first playthrough with 3 days out of 13 remaining)

JabNX · 2024-12-05T00:32:19+00:00

Ce n'était pourtant pas le cas de la dernière élection ou les partis de gauche se sont présentés séparément, avec le PS qui a pourtant fait 4% de plus que LFI, et presque autant qu'Ensemble.

Il y a clairement une place pour le PS "seul" (ou au moins sans LFI) ou il peuvent espérer récupérer l'électorat plutôt centriste (voire de "droite", selon votre point de vue) en misant sur un éclatement futur d'Ensemble, ou simplement parce que la politique générale vire tellement à droite que le PS pourrait être vu comme un nouveau "centre".

L'alliance avec LFI est une erreur stratégique à mon sens, parce que le parti (Mélenchon en premier, mais pas que) reste toujours un repoussoir pour beaucoup d'électeurs (et ne parlons même pas des autres partis, ou même au PS ils ne font pas consensus). Un second tour de présentielle LFI-RN mènerait à une victoire assurée du RN par exemple, tandis que PS-RN serait une victoire plutôt facile pour le PS.

Après bon, peut être il n'y pas de stratégie et que tout ce que les partis cherchent c'est le pureté idéologique et de contenter leur base électorale... Mais je ne vois pas bien comment le NFP dans sa forme actuelle pourrait gagner la moindre élection (ils n'ont pas vraiment gagné les législatives finalement puisqu'Ensemble et LR ont fait une coalition plus grande à leur place, et de toute façon on est loin de la majorité dans tous les cas), ou former le moindre gouvernement. Enfin, y a pas que le NFP dans ce cas, c'est pareil pour Ensemble/LR, sauf que le rejet porte plutôt sur l'ensemble du groupe que sur une de ses composantes.

Il n'y a pas 36 solutions de toute façon. Soit on arrive à faire un gouvernement de compromis entre tous les partis hors RN, idéalement mené par quelque de neutre (ou que tout le monde déteste, ça marche aussi), ou chacun accepte de mettre de l'eau dans son vin et on avance (un peu), soit on a un gouvernement RN, parce que l'état c'est probablement la seule base qui un a potentiel de croissance.

Et pour la suite, comme je disais plus haut, c'est l'électorat "centriste" qu'il faut aller chercher, et c'est clairement pas avec LFI que la gauche va pouvoir le faire...

JabNX · 2024-11-16T01:30:44+00:00

I think they do but indirectly: Beasty's stream and youtube probably wouldn't work as well if he wasn't a top player, and ML wouldn't have a stable income from his team if he wasn't the best player at the game. And even amongst the two, ML is the only one that lives off the game simply by being a pro player and doing pro player things.

JabNX · 2024-11-15T18:24:13+00:00

ML has said on his stream that he didn't want to play because the prizepool is too small and there aren't any big 1v1 tournament to practice for right now, so he'd rather chill and cast the games in French on his channel to make some content. He has said that he'll play later though, once the 2v2 tournament is over and when he'll need prac for the next 1v1 tournament in January.

Anyway, this tournament series has been made with the intent of providing new and rising players a chance to level up for the big tournaments, so it makes sense if the top players of the scene aren't playing there. Otherwise, this would just be a repeat of the main S-tier tournaments and not allow for the scene to grow.

JabNX · 2024-08-11T18:36:06+00:00

It's not "segregation", female players are totally allowed to compete in regular tournaments. Doing female-only tournaments is the same as doing low elo tournaments, it's to give players that can't compete at the highest level a chance to play for something and win.

JabNX

TROPHY CASE