Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: xbox

The Highlights of Xbox Series X

Posted on by Viljami

In this blog post I am going to go through how I actually feel and think about some experiences of Xbox Series X. We are going to take a look at this console while its lifespan has lasted right now almost five years. There are new consoles going to get released, some this year, some later, and it is a good time to take a look back on what this console, Xbox Series X, had to offer. Soon it will not anymore be the newest console.

I remember back in 2020 that I was thinking about how my PS4 would not be the newest console anymore. In the fall of 2020 we saw PS5 and Xbox Series S/X released. Being the newest gaming console can be a sort of a responsibility. We are used to seeing new consoles getting released every about seven years or so. While PS4 hasn’t been the newest console in years I, and many other gamers, have been playing on their PS4s during these years. I am very glad, since I haven’t to this day bought a PS5, that the newest games for PlayStation were also available for PS4. Some of these games are Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man (the first and Miles Morales) and God of War (the first game and Ragnarök).

Back in 2021 (I wasn’t the first one to absorb this time) I first bought Xbox Series S. We were well in the pandemia which begun already in 2020. There was a huge shortage concerning about PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. There were lots of consumers that would had liked to buy a console but couldn’t. I would have bought an Xbox Series X at first but it just wasn’t available. I finally got my Xbox Series X maybe a year later or something like that. Nintendo, in the mean time, was selling lots of Switch consoles as the shortage didn’t affect it so much.

I ended up buying also Xbox Series X because I already had a 4K capable television and I liked the thing that Series X had more space for installing games and it provided the means to watch actual 4K movies through optical 4K discs. I also ended up buying the official disk space upgrade. I always thought it was very expensive. I did buy the option that included 1 TB of extra space. Xbox Series X also provided a better screen resolution and was more powerful in running the games.

Besides playing games Xbox Series X provides the ability that actually lacks in PS4 of playing music CDs. It is also capable to watch DVDs, Blurays and 4K movies that are sold as optical discs. You can also enjoy games and movies in digital format. I have had a smart television so I haven’t actually used my Xbox Series X as a media center. I do watch video content on my TV and I don’t actually use my Xbox console in that way.

I would like to mention and give some thanks to the Xbox app that I installed on my Android smart phone soon after I had installed my Series X. It is very nice. The way you can share and save your actual screenshots is very nice. I have to say that PS4 performs poorly in this manner. Using PS4 you have to have a USB memory stick to move your screenshots to your PC where you can then transfer them to some social media whenever you have a need like this. Nintendo also doesn’t perform so swiftly in this field. The Xbox app is very functional and many of these Series X screenshots I have shared at Instagram or in this blog have been processed using the app. You can also see from the app how long have you been playing a game and also track your overall Xbox gaming score.

What about the games? Lets first talk about the backwards compatibility. Series X i compatible with 63 out of 989 original Xbox games, 632 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games and all of Xbox One games. This makes the game library very strong. The console already has almost 3000 games that you are able to play. There is an idea also that if you like to play more Xbox 360 and/or original Xbox games you would actually like to have a dedicated and original console also. There are options to emulate the hardware also. But when it comes to Xbox Series X is does provide a nice, although not complete, support for older Xbox games.

Some good older games that can be played on a Series X are old Call of Duty series’s games, original Alan Wake, first three Bio Shock titles, some Silent Hill games, Max Payne series (first three games), Quake I and II, Split Second, Skyrim, Halo series and the Master Chief Collection, just to share some of my favorites. Some best new games, in my own opinion, include titles like Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport, Resident Evil 8, Alan Wake II, Diablo II Resurrected and Control.

All in all I have enjoyed Xbox Series X. Would I have done without it? In have to say maybe. I could have utilized an old Xbox 360. I could have bought only a new 4K movie player. There were only so few actual new games that got released. Right now my thoughts are into the soon to be released Nintendo Switch 2. It is getting its release 5th of June. It is very soon. Switch 2 then becomes the first game console in this new generation of consoles. I think Xbox Series X did well.

Today and also yesterday I have spent some time playing Hogwarts Legacy with my Series X. I finally found some time to do this. Also I am not going to  buy a new game for Series X for a while. I am going to wait for Switch 2 to get released. If I am a fortunate one I will buy Nintendo Switch 2. But that means that it is very much available soon after the launch. Happy Sunday to you my dear blog reader!

My Latest Purchase

Posted on by Viljami

This the beginning of my new blog post. As the title says it is dealing around my latest purchase. I ordered three games for my Xbox Series X. I bought these three games for a little under 100 euros with the shipping included. What games did I get? I bought Endless Dungeon, a game released by Sega, Lies of P and also Tekken 8 that is the latest game in the well-known series of three-dimensional fighting games.

I am very happy fellow now. I just got to my home and away from some bad weather. It is raining right now but just a moment ago it wasn’t. It is also, again,  Friday and the week-end is here. I am probably going to play some video games. I do have time for that and this weeks work is done.

I almost wrote a blog post some days ago about two Xbox Series X games that I managed to install. I didn’t that time write about it but I went and installed Hogwarts Legacy and Cyberpunk 2077. Now I have played about four hours of Cyberpunk 2077 while Hogwarts Legacy is still not played at all though I have it now installed. I do have lots of space still left on my Series X since I don’t keep so many games installed. This hasn’t been a problem for me. I have almost always space for the games that I am currently playing. I just uninstall a game or two that take too much space and that I am not so into at this moment. That is my strategy and it seems to be working.

What did I expect from these games that were included in my latest purchase? Tekken is very familiar. Te latest Tekken game was so cheap that I just had to buy it. It cost me only sixteen euros and it was the cheapest game from this latest purchase. I think it is a good fighting game and a decent game when it comes to the Tekken series. It does take some space. I am not sure if I am able to install all these three games and try to play them immediately. I probably have to pick which one I am going to concentrate on.

I read just some few words about Lies of P. This game cost me 45 euros. It is not the newest game. It was released already some time ago. I have read that it is a decent game. It can be finished in 29 hours. I got this information from How Long To Beat that is a website that has a database of almost every popular game out there including every abandon-ware game as well. It is actually a very good site and I use it regularly (as you may have seen).

Endless Dungeon was 31 euros. I just felt somewhat interested in it. I actually have been looking for it in case it would be available in a cheap price. I think 31 euros is a good and nice price for a game like this. It is actually developed by Sega. It also came in a huge box. It is not a big box, like PC big box, but it is comfortable. Right now all these three games are sealed. I am not very keen on keeping games sealed so that they would be valuable later but sometimes I leave them sealed while I am not going directly into them and starting to play them. We’ll just have to see how long they are going to keep being sealed copies. I think that the time would be too long for me to get a proper profit for something like this. But there a sense in handling your games like this (keeping them sealed) if you have the patience required. After all a sealed NES game, be it a Super Mario Bros 3 or some other decently valuable game, would actually be very valauble in deed.

But what am I still talking about here? It is Friday after all. I should open these sealed games and give them a good run. I might play some Cyberpunk 2077 first or try to get into some Hogwarts Legacy type of action. Whatever my game of choice will be I am going to have some fun, right? After all that’s what these weekends are perfect for.

Some Reasons for the Success of Nintendo Switch

Posted on by Viljami

Today Nintendo Switch is the third most sold video game console. Only some legendary and popular devices are above it in the statistics. Those consoles are PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS. I am talking about the global top list of consoles sold. The statistics of a specific region, like North America, Europe or Asia, might differ from the ones that I here am writing you about.

The most sold consoles, huh? PlayStation 2 has held this position for a long time now. It dominated the statistics being the first DVD player for many gamers. It has also a very wide selection in a form of a game library. People were expecting something like this already when only PlayStation 1 was available. During this period we saw a great increase in the number of gamers worldwide as new players and groups were starting to get interested in video games.

What about Nintendo DS and its success. Why did it take place? I guess this has everything to do with it being a portable gaming device. You could take it everywhere and it provided solid library of games and a decent three-dimensional environment for these new types of video games. I guess that before the era of smart phones (I think Apple begun this era by releasing the first iPhone in 2007) this was something very attracting for a gamer.

We are taking now Nintendo Switch in to account while we are having a conversation about the most sold gaming consoles. And actually why is it so? Well, there are some quite clear matters that we can think for a while. One of them is that Nintendo Switch has a gaming library that has a very good quality. There are several Nintendo exclusive games being still released that are very good ones and that you cannot play on another console.

We have to take in count also these delivery problems that Sony and Microsoft faced during the pandemic. This is a reason you cannot underestimate in these talks. There was a long period of time that Xbox Series X and both PS5 models, the one with the disc drive and the one without, were totally unavailable. You could find a Xbox Series S if you were lucky but there was no serious lack of Nintendo Switch consoles. The availability might be the biggest reason that Nintendo Switch climbed to such high levels of units sold during these times.

Why is the Nintendo Switch so cheap? The price is today about 300 euros here in Europe while PS5’s and Xbox’s pricier models wear a price tags way higher. You have to consider that Switch doesn’t come with a proper controller so you might have to spend like 70 euros for Pro Controller. This is of course optional. One factor of the low price seems to be that Nintendo Switch is very underpowered especially when compared to its main competitors of this generation of consoles. It is compared to Xbox 360 when we are discussing about pure performance. The upcoming Switch 2 that we are going to get more information from Nintendo by 2nd of April is said to be as powerful as PS4. So, the pure power is not the case when dealing with success here.

We also cannot forget the appeal of Nintendo’s brand. They are known to be a “mega” huge gaming company since the early days of Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES for short, back in the beginning of 1980s. It was the video game console that made home video gaming popular again while many consumers were very disappointed in Atari’s 2600 and especially their games and overall quality that finally caused a big depression of video games consuming and playing in the first years of 1980s. NES was definitely the console that made gaming popular again. You could trust Nintendo and it was something considered to have a good quality.

Today PS2 has sold wolrdwide over 160 million units. Nintendo DS has sold 154 million units. Nintendo Switch is behind these two with 150,8 million sold units. It is very exciting to see how is the Switch ending up to sell as the sales might dive down after or even before Switch 2 is getting released. How many people are going to buy Nintendo Switch if the Switch 2 is already available? The price of this new Nintendo console is predicted to be somewhere between 400 or 500 euros. However the price or other details, like release date, are not yet officially announced.