Could This Really Be The End For Xbox?
No. Also, achieving dumb milestones in games, a cozy coffee shop simulator and Tomb Raider
Hello friends!
Welcome to a new issue of Press Any Button.
This week Tim has some thoughts on the future of Xbox, and the history of Tomb Raider, and Alice has made some poor gaming decisions and has found a new board game to become addicted to.
Plus, we have recommendations for what to play once you’re sick of enjoying all the sunshine/extremely intense storms.
Enjoy!
The end for Xbox? Nah.
By Tim
Emotions ran high in some corners of the internet last week amid rumours that Microsoft-published games could soon appear on the likes of the Switch and the PS5. Soon, people were saying that Microsoft would leave the console business, and that people’s digital games would cease working. A cryptic tweet from Xbox boss Phil Spencer basically saying “wait for an official statement” did not have a calming effect. But now it’s been revealed the statement will happen on the Xbox podcast later this week, I’m guessing it’s a message of reassurance for fans rather than a big business update for the public at large.
So, how should Microsoft handle this?
First off, I think it’s clear that publishing on all platforms is the only place Microsoft can go. It has invested billions in gaming, including building up and purchasing studios, creating and refining the software and infrastructure that powers Xbox, funding Game Pass, creating an entire game streaming ecosystem, and most recently purchasing Activision Blizzard for an obscene sum, and it needs to make that back.
You might suggest it does as Sony does, locking down exclusives and making sure it sells a lot of consoles. But the kind of revenue the PlayStation arm of Sony brings in is not the kind Microsoft wants. Xbox needs to get bigger and, despite Microsoft’s best efforts, there aren’t that many people buying Xbox consoles. Modern game development is incredibly expensive, so selling your games only on the third most popular platform won’t do.
The only reason I can think of not to bring Xbox games to Nintendo and PlayStation is that it will upset some dogmatic Xbox loyalists. Microsoft doesn’t want to do that, but it also clearly can’t grow by pleasing only those people.
Ending Xbox consoles seems very unlikely. We were already prepared for the next generation to more or less be powerful PCs with no disc drives, and that would still be beneficial in a world where Microsoft published on all systems. In fact recent rumours point to even more Xbox hardware, including streaming sticks and a handheld Steam Deck competitor. The best Xbox can hope for, and what I assume it will be aiming to do, is to keep its biggest fans happy with new hardware and a strong Game Pass proposition, while also making as much money as possible on every release by selling on every platform.
What to play
This week on Apple Arcade you should play Disney Dreamlight Valley. It’s perfect for both Disney Adults, and people who like life sims more broadly. It doesn’t quite live up to the standard set by Hello Kitty Island Adventure or Stardew Valley, but it’s just different enough to them that it might scratch a different itch for you.
Those hankering for a new Metroidvania should check out this week’s Ultros, an incredibly presented adventure which takes place on a giant psychedelic uterus. It’s a bit baffling and I got lost a lot, but the world and writing is all super interesting and it’s cool to cultivate plants and eat alien organs.
New on Game Pass this week is the excellent Resident Evil 3 remake, plus the Castlevania spiritual successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Later this week the service adds home organisational puzzler A Little to the Left and cooking roguelite PlateUp!
I reached a pointless milestone, now what?
By Alice
I have spent the last couple of months working towards a deeply stupid goal – reaching level 200 in a Fortnite season. 200 is the last level where you get stuff from the battle pass. 100 gets you everything from the base pass, but 200 gets you all the bonus rewards.
Why did I want to do this? I couldn’t tell you. This Family Guy-themed battle pass was not good. But sometimes you just want to climb a mountain to see how tall it is, and because of the new Lego mode allowing you to just leave your character in the mode for two hours to gain 5 levels, this seemed like the only season where I could realistically achieve level 200 without making it my full-time job.
Yesterday, with a little under a month to go, I made it to 200. The trick to making it seem satisfying still was to not use the Lego exploit too much. I still played way more Fortnite than was healthy, but the Lego exploit meant I didn’t have to go too far overboard. The other thing that helped is that Epic seems to have tweaked the algorithm to give you lobbies with more bots after you’ve had a few solid losses, so I knew I was never too far from a win. This season my win percentage was a little over 10%, much higher than the 1% you’d expect from an average player, reflecting the bonus of the bottier lobbies.
The bonus of this is that it shows that anyone can do it, if it’s something they’re interested in, without having to watch videos of a random YouTuber’s ‘Insane Hidden XP Creative’ Fortnite worlds. Finally, you can look vaguely cool to your little cousins, assuming they are still into Fortnite and haven’t completely fallen down the Roblox rabbit hole.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Friends, I have found a new board game addiction: Coffee Rush. You know those mobile games where you have to produce various foods/drinks with different ingredients in a set time or the customers get angry and you lose points? It’s like that, but without the in-app purchases, and with adorable little tokens.
The premise of the game is that you own a café and each round you can only move three squares to collect three ingredients. Some ingredients (coffee, steam, milk, ice) appear on the board multiple times, so it doesn’t matter as much if another player’s meeple is blocking them, others (water, tea, chocolate, caramel) only appear once, so you have to be more strategic. After each round, your orders move down a space on the four-space track and then drop off to the failure zone (not the official name) if not completed. When you complete an order, your opponents get an extra order to add to their track, increasing their stress.
I played it in a group of four the other night, and it was ok. Not a perfect experience, but still pretty fun. But I’ve been playing it a fair bit with my wife ever since and we both love it. I’m not sure if it’s because the two player game is superior (I actually think the 3+ experience might be a bit more interesting), or just because you need the right group or mood or environment to enjoy it fully.
Either way, while there are a few things I wish I could tweak about the game, it’s still really fun. It’s a good casual game for afternoons with friends, with a similar vibe as Steam Up (even though it plays quite differently to Steam Up, it’s all about the adorable food tokens). I strongly recommend it.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
With new Tomb Raider remasters out now, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on the series as a whole. Or at least, the main eight games that proceeded 2013’s reboot into the current continuity.
Tomb Raider - 1996: Inarguably a landmark game, the original Tomb Raider took the cinematic pulp adventure style that had previously only been seen in game form in two dimensions or heavily abstracted RPGs, and turned it into a fully explorable 3D world. Part Indiana Jones and part Prince of Persia, the game follows the instantly iconic Lara Croft on an archaeological adventure increasingly steeped in mythology and the supernatural. (Dinosaurs! Midas! Atlantis!) While the platforming, puzzle-solving and acrobatic shooting made an indelible impact on game design, Croft’s impact on pop culture was arguably just as great. As a rare strong female protagonist, and also one of the first prominent 3D-rendered women, she became a global obsession overnight.
Tomb Raider II - 1997: From the largely underground and mediterranean setting of the first game, the sequel opens up with outdoor levels set in China, Italy and Tibet as Lara faces the prospect of a reincarnated dragon wreaking havoc on the world. Released just 13 months after the original, the gameplay is understandably very similar, but with a few new tweaks such as lightable flares and — in a few memorable sequences — driveable vehicles.
Tomb Raider III - 1998: After an even tighter turnaround this time, the third game follows an alternate history plot involving Charles Darwin and a powerful meteorite that can cause mutations, passing through India, London and Area 51 in the American desert. While it is improved in some ways (including sharper graphics and better lighting), you can also feel the thoughtful puzzle design slide into overly-difficult drudgery at points here.
The Last Revelation - 1999: The fourth Tomb Raider game for PlayStation in as many years. Members of the development team have famously said in the years since they were tired of the series at this point, and that they conspired to kill Lara Croft off at the end of this game without letting their supervisors know. Originally, as the story goes, she was to be decapitated. In the game as released, her fate is left ambiguous as she’s seemingly buried under a collapsing tomb. The Egyptian-themed adventure here harkens back to the original game with mostly undercover tomb-like environments, but the gameplay remains largely unchanged and was really showing its age by this point, especially in the port to Dreamcast in early 2000.
Next week: The cash cow, unsurprisingly, does not die so easily