Xbox keep raising the prices of their Game Pass service and consoles, while owning a very large percentage of the worlds game developers, undercutting said developers abilities to get their games in the hands of fans due to the fact that nobody wants to pay for their expensive consoles or Game Pass service anymore.

It’s a big dumb circle of stupidity, like a metaphorical red ring of death.

This is all very reminiscent of SEGA during the Dreamcast era. They beat Sony to the market with very little exclusive games to go with it, Sony kicked their ass in sales, SEGA stopped making consoles and went third-party with their games.

While Microsoft denies that they’ll be getting out of the console business altogether, we can absolutely make an inference that they won’t be releasing a traditional console when it comes to the next generation.

With the release of the Xbox ROG Ally handhelds, I think we’re looking at the future of the Xbox hardware market. Microsoft have shown that they’re willing to partner up with third party manufacturers for their devices now, rather than creating them entirely in-house, and they’ll be focusing on Windows PC as a platform.

Why else would they be so focused on giving these handhelds a new front-end UI? They’re so expensive and niche, they surely wouldn’t be doing it just for these handhelds.

This is all to say that Microsoft need to turn this ship around sooner rather than later and here are my top 5 ideas on how they can do that, totally free of charge. You’re welcome Microsoft.

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1. Lower Your Console Prices

This is an obvious one, but it seems like the folks over at Xbox are oblivious to the most obvious things. I understand that tariffs are a thing and the cost of living is going up (blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit) but we’re talking about a trillion dollar company here.

TRILLION

It used to be that console makers like Sony and Microsoft would make a loss on the cost of the console because they knew they’d make that money back in accessories and games. Lose a little money now for future profits. Simple.

But now these companies (Sony included) are so money hungry that they release their hardware at a price that allows them to make money from day one. Not only that, but they never lower the price when the manufacturing costs go down, so they’re making even more money now than they were at launch. Then you add on the fact that they’ve actually put the prices up and it’s obvious that they’re just money hungry.

I understand that you’re in the business of making money, but I promise you’d make a lot more money if people bought your consoles, and the easiest way to do that is to sell them at a loss, like you used to.

If that’s too much for you…

2. Stop Selling Consoles

Just go entirely third party with your games. You have 40 studios under your banner that you spent billions of dollars to acquire and you’re not doing them any good by spending your time and money on hardware that nobody wants. If you’re releasing games that people want, they will go wherever you put them.

Whether it’s on a currently competing console or streaming on Game Pass, people will play them if they want to.

3. Stop Putting Games Day One On Game Pass

This is going to be a contentious one, but hear me out. It was always a bad idea for Xbox as a company, whose main goal is to make money, to release their brand new games on Game Pass day one. Game Pass as a concept isn’t good for making money, it’s just not. It’s great for consumers who pay a monthly fee to have a whole bunch of games to play, but they’re not even paying the price of one full game. Even if they only play one game a month, they’re getting that game for either one third or one half of the price through Game Pass, even with the new pricing structure.

It’s also bad for developers because Microsoft only give them a licensing fee to put their game on the service and the devs don’t receive any cut of the Game Pass subscription. They could have the most played game on Game Pass in a month and they still won’t receive any of the back end profits.

They’re being robbed.

And with the game being on Game Pass, they get lower sales of their game outside of the service. In the long run it won’t even be good for the consumer, because we’re the ones who will eventually have less games to play once development houses are shuttered due to lack of game sales.

4. Re-release Your Older Games On PC Or Other Consoles

They don’t have to be full ground-up remakes, just the most basic ports to PS5 or Switch will get you sales. There are rumours of a full Halo Combat Evolved remake coming to PS5 and that’s great, but you could just port the Master Chief Collection, the latest Forza Motorsport or how about Sunset Overdrive?! A little team-up between Insomniac, Microsoft and Sony? That would be pretty crazy, but also cool.

You have all of these exclusive games that you can currently only play on Xbox consoles (that people aren’t buying) and you’re not doing anything with them. You’re leaving money on the table.

5. Sell Some Studios Or Allow Them To Go Independent If Possible

A lot of people said it from the announcement of the Activision Blizzard merger, and some even before that when Xbox acquired Zenimax, but Microsoft own too many development houses and it’s just not sustainable for them to keep pumping money into every single one. It’s also not possible to give each of those studios the attention they deserve to release quality titles.

I don’t understand why Microsoft was allowed to buy all of these studios. The fact that both of these mergers went through is insane to me. Then you add on the fact that Microsoft told the FTC that Game Pass prices would not go up due to the Acti/Blizz merger, nor would there be mass layoffs.

Both lies.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say they weren’t lying and actually believed what they were saying at the time. If that’s true, then stay true to your word, Microsoft, and do what’s best for the developers under your umbrella. Save them from the axe that’s been aiming for their necks for the past two years and sell them to somebody that will actually take care of them.

I don’t know who that would be. Spinning them off independently would be preferable.

So what are your thoughts on the current Xbox situation? Agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments.

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It’s been a crazy week where I live on the coast of NSW. There are flood waters all around us. My kids have been kept home with me all week due to the schools being closed. My day job has also been closed all week. Maybe “crazy” is an understatement.

ANYWAY, we’ll be back to making content soon. I’m working on a review for Doom The Dark Ages, the podcast might be back on Tuesday and I’ll be back to streaming once the rain stops ruining the audio in this tin box I stream from.

I just want to say thank you for any support you’ve given us the last couple of months. I’m so happy with the site and channel content right now, but there will be more stuff soon that’s even better, I promise.

Be safe and I’ll see you again soon!

Aaron

That’s right, Giant Bomb is now independent, creator owned and user funded.

This is a rare shining light in the current media hellscape where big corporations typically buy things just to run them into the ground. Fandom are still shit, but they’re a little less shit for doing this. Props to whomever it was at Fandom that allowed this to go through, because this is the best possible outcome for the site and the people who work there.

I can’t fully put into words how proud I am of these guys for pulling this off and I’m so happy for them and the future of the site. It truly is a lock down, baby.

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Next up on the issue list with the Nintendo Switch 2 is that it's not exciting or different enough and it's "Just a 2" console. You know what else was "Just a 2"? The PS2, one of the greatest consoles ever made in the history of video games. A console that defined a generation with classic games and technology, it also made SEGA give up on making anymore consoles. That's how powerful a 2 can be. Now, I'm not saying that the Switch 2 is going to be an amazing generation defining console, but this idea that just iterating on a previous generation console is in some way a bad thing is provably false. Sony have done it 4 times and Nintendo themselves have done it multiple times in the handheld space.

It's so sexy, omg.

Next issue? "How are we going to use the Joy Cons as a mouse if we're not near a desk?" That's a great question, but I have a simple answer for you, JUST FUCKING WAIT UNTIL NINTENDO TELLS YOU HOW YOU'LL USE IT! IS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO JUST WAIT A COUPLE OF MONTHS FOR ANSWERS!?

The internet was a mistake.

It's shitty.

Understand that I'm not saying you can't be critical of a game. You can review a game and point out the things you do and don't like about it, and you can advise the game-buying public of whether their hard-earned money is worth spending on a product and give it an arbitrary number that pertains to the quality of the product, but singling those developers out and calling their art "the worst" is reductive and doesn't help the industry in any way. It's just clickbait, simple as that.

This also includes categories like "Most Disappointing" and the ilk, because I can guarantee nobody was more disappointed in your pick for that category than the people who made it. It's just not constructive in any way to say "Hey, developer, we sure did hate your game. Maybe try harder next time?" when that developer was under time crunch for however many months just to make sure you had something to keep you occupied for a few hours and distract you from whatever sad shit is happening in the world.

If you'd like to be more constructive with these kind of articles, may I suggest going with articles like "Worst Publisher Of The Year" or "Worst CEO Of The Year"?, that way your outrage is pointed in the right direction - at the company that put out the game - rather than the developers who made it, because the higher-ups are the ones pushing for these overworked engineers and artists to get their "product" out as fast as possible to both save money and also make back as much money as possible, as fast as possible.

So a hearty FUCK YOU to Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot, Xbox's Phil Spencer and Matt Booty, Playstation's Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino and WB's David Zaslav. These people were responsible for some of the biggest cluster-fucks this year when it came to pushing games out that were unfinished and having the devs take the fall, like any good little CEO does. Enjoy your piles of money, fuckheads.

Journalism, in my opinion, should be wholly separate from the subject it’s writing about. A gaming journalist needs to report facts, regardless of backlash from the industry they’re reporting on. I understand that can be difficult when you’re talking about a product that releases on a particular date and you want to inform people about said product before they buy it, which means you need to make your way into the industry to gain early access to that product, but that would make you a reviewer, not a journalist.

When it comes to Australian independent gaming sites, the biggest ones I can think of are Press Start and PowerUp Gaming. Press Start is a fine website if you’re looking for deals and endless ads, with a few reviews sprinkled in. They don’t really report any news outside of “You can buy/play this thing” and that’s ok if you’re in the market for a website that can just let you know how to spend your money, but the site is totally devoid of any kind of articles about the industry as a whole.

PowerUp at least has fluff-piece interviews with industry professionals and start-up studios in this country, so that’s commendable. Of course, that’s all mixed in with the typical clickbait articles and “guides” about what shows they think you’d like to binge on Netflix and “How Many Chapters Are There In Callisto Protocol” – things you could probably figure out for yourself by searching Netflix or playing Callisto Protocol.

Look, I understand that these websites are just trying to make money and if that’s how they think they’ll make the most money to stay afloat then fine, but games journalism in this country is in a sad state of affairs now that there aren’t any local websites willing to report the actual news.

This is all my long-winded way of saying that I’m aiming to make this website more than just fluff pieces and fake ad articles, I want Total Badness to be the place you come to get the real news about the gaming industry in Australia, because nobody else seems to be doing it. Right now I won’t be making any money from this site and I probably will eventually need to put ads on the site (or maybe start a subscription service?) but for now, I’m just going to concentrate on making this a site you can come to for news about the Australian game industry and the people in it.

I also won’t be afraid to call out other outlets and creators for their bullshit, so this is going to be fun!

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below and subscribe to the Youtube channel for upcoming videos. Let’s have a great 2025 together!

Aaron

I'm not going to act like I haven't been a part of this system - I have made my fair share of "Best Of Current Year" lists over the years - but I feel like we've reached a point where making these kinds of lists is arbitrary and adds nothing worthwhile to the medium of video games or games media. These lists exist to get clicks and have people flood comments sections with messages about how you're wrong and they're right, but it's ok, because Yummy ad revenue!

Anyway, here are the best games of 2024 as voted by me, some guy on the internet. (We don't have ads)

10. Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom!

People think Astro Bot was the savior of platformers this year, but Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom did it first. It's a combination of classic PS1/N64 inspired platforming levels in-between Crazy Taxi inspired Crazy Taxi levels, what's not to love? Well, there are a few things. It gets a little monotonous after a while, even though it does ramp up the difficulty and adds in complex levels, but the gameplay stays relatively the same all the way through, and that puts it at the bottom of the list.

9. Dino Crisis

People love those Resident Evil games. Zombies are very popular. You know what else is popular? Dinosaurs. Dino Crisis takes the survival horror gameplay of the classic RE games and replaces the walking dead with giant lizards. The dialogue is just as cheesy and the storyline is somehow more convoluted than it's zombie brethren, but it's a fun time and one of the most underrated Survival Horror games ever made. It's available now for PS+ members (this is not an ad, I swear).

8. Helldivers 2

I love how unabashedly the team behind Helldivers 2 made a Starship Troopers game in all but name. It takes balls to make a thing based on another thing and change nothing but the name and bug designs. The only reason this game is this low on my list is because I just didn't play as much of it as I would have liked, but I enjoyed (almost*) every second that I played of it. *I didn't love all of the dying.

7. Tekken 8

Fighting games have made an incredible comeback the last two years, and after Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1 last year, Tekken 8 had a high bar to meet. While I don't think it quite reached the heights of those other two games, it was a great new entry into the series. I only wish it had a more robust training mode like SF6, because out of these three new fighting games, this one is the hardest for newbies (and long out-of-practice players) to get into.

6. Thank Goodness You're Here

Comedy in video games is hard. Jokes rely on timing and it's hard to time jokes in a game when somebody else is in control, but somehow, surprisingly, Thank Goodness You're Here stuck the landing. It's a silly game full of silly people doing silly things and it's super simple to play, which is nice in this modern age where games feel like they're overly complicated for no reason. If you've got a funny bone that leans towards silly walks and coconut horses, you should definitely give this game a look (AND it's short too!)

5. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind

As a child of the Nineteen Hundred And Nineties, I was a huge fan of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and played my fair share of the MMPR games that released on the SEGA Mega Drive back then (my personal favourite was the fighting game) so I always enjoy seeing newer games based in that universe and this one was right up my alley. It's based on the original show, while also being a new storyline that allows us to revisit those old storylines, and it's full of retro-style beat-em-up gameplay, along with boss fights that play like Punch Out and levels that have on-rails shooting mechanics. It's a whole mish mash of different retro game styles and they somehow all gel into a cohesive bundle of nostalgic joy. This game is so rad.

4. Marvel Rivals

Over the past 5 years I've been gradually falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of online GAAS games, with all of the nonsense that comes along with them, and Marvel Rivals is my latest addiction. Goodbye 'The Finals', you were a good friend to me, but here comes Marvel to take over my life and I'm pretty happy about it. As somebody that tolerated Overwatch for about a month back when it came out, it's good to see a game come out that scraps all of that stuck-up "balancing" nonsense and just let's you have an unfair advantage whenever you get the urge, without being punished for it. Yeah, the paid cosmetics are a tad overpriced, but the free character skins are still some of the sickest designs I've seen in a recent game. Whomever the character designers are over at NetEase, please, just keep cooking, I love your work.

3. Balatro

If you've never seen Balatro and didn't know what it was until you saw that above image, believe me when I tell you that you still don't know what Balatro is. As addicted as I am to Marvel Rivals right now, there was a good two month period when Balatro was my drug of choice and I chased that dragon all around until I ended up owning it on EVERY available platform. I own 4 copies of this game and I'm not ashamed to say that I'd buy it again, that's how insanely good it is. It's not just a poker game (that's reductive and literally not even the point of the game), it's a way of life.

2. Astro Bot

Team Asobi deserve every award and praise that they have received for Astro Bot. It's a masterpiece of platforming that takes us back to a time when games were simple without being boring or feeling like you were having your hand held the whole time. You enter a level, you're given a new fun gadget, and you get to figure out how you'll make it to the end of the level using said gadget. As somebody whose early Playstation life started with games like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Croc and Ape Escape, Astro Bot is everything that I've missed about Playstation for the past... like... 20 years?! Yeah, Ratchet And Clank were holding the 3D Platforming fort (platfort?), but Astro is the kind of Playstation mascot I've been waiting to see make a return, and BOY what a return it is!

1. Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown

Speaking of returns... holy shit. When this game was announced I thought it looked really cool and I was looking forward to playing it, but I wasn't super hyped about it. I don't have any real affection for previous Prince of Persia games, except for the original game that I played on my friends Macintosh back in the early 90's (as good as the Sands of Time trilogy may have been) so I was just looking forward to playing a cool-looking Metroidvania game. Then I played it. A lot. Until I finished it. I REALLY have to be invested in a game these days to feel compelled enough to finish it, and The Lost Crown is very compelling. It has nothing to do with the story, either, because I skipped probably 80% of the thin cookie-cutter plot points. This was all about gameplay for me and the devs nailed every moment of gameplay that was offered. This game reminded me of a time where games put gameplay first and story second (not that there's anything wrong with games that are heavily story focused, if the story is worth telling) and between this game and Astro Bot it really does feel like the time is right for classic gameplay-first games to make a return. Although, with the sales of The Lost Crown being as low as they were, I doubt Ubisoft will be footing the bill for any of those. PLEASE GO BUY THIS GAME! IT'S INCREDIBLE!