![]() ![]() If you read Crystal Dynamics' blog post, it talks about the relationship we've built. The one thing people have to know, it wasn't a situation where we looked at a third-party space and just all of a sudden targeted a certain game and said, 'we need to go get that game.' It's a relationship we've built. So the relationship has been built over time. Obviously it's a franchise that has lived for longer than Xbox. They've been on our stage at E3 for a few years now. That's an important point for us.īut if you rewind, we started our relationship on this franchise before this release. On stage you have your moment, with Darrell there, we're talking about the franchise, what it means, how excited we are by the next release and that it's coming to Xbox exclusively. I knew we were going to have to talk about the whole story. Phil Spencer: I don't know that it's been a surprise. Were you expecting the force of the negative reaction to the announcement? Or did it come as a surprise? But it came as part of a sweeping discussion about the deal - and why Microsoft went for it. We reported that confirmation shortly after we received it, as we felt it was important that our readers knew the nature of Rise of the Tomb Raider's exclusivity as quickly as possible. He confirmed to us it had a duration, and after that duration expires, who knows what Square Enix will do. The day after the night before we asked Phil Spencer, the boss of Xbox, about the deal and what, exactly, it meant. How could publisher Square Enix and developer Crystal Dynamics sell out? And wouldn't moneybags Microsoft be better off spending its cash on making its own games, rather than denying PlayStation and PC gamers the chance to play what will probably be one of 2015's biggest games?Īll throughout there was a nagging feeling that Rise of the Tomb Raider wouldn't be exclusive to Xbox for all time after all, and that had to do with the wording of Microsoft's messaging: "Rise of the Tomb Raider, coming Holiday 2015, exclusive to Xbox." In the 24 hours after Microsoft announced Xbox exclusivity for Rise of the Tomb Raider, forums raged. ![]() SEGA provided us with a Sonic Origins Plus Nintendo Switch code for review purposes.It dominated last week's Gamescom and sparked thousands of comments on the internet. Like last year’s base game, Sonic Origins Plus remains a neat trip down memory lane with some snazzy new graphics and a fun storyline cartoon tying it all together, but when you consider that the Sonic Game Gear games perform so abysmally they’re actually a net negative, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t just stick with last year’s original. Is playable Amy enough reason to get you to splurge on Sonic Origins Plus – either as a first-time purchase, or if you’re upgrading from Sonic Origins? That’s harder to say. She’s similar to Sonic, but she has a hammer attack that makes hitting enemies just a little more satisfying. Just like being able to play as Tails made Sonic Origins that much better – since his style of gameplay drastically changed the way you played these iconic games – so, too, does being able to play as Amy. Mind you, if the other half of the allure is getting to play the games as Amy Rose, that’s definitely a better reason to be interested in Sonic Origins Plus. Given that half the allure for upgrading from Sonic Origins is that Sonic Origins Plus features all these Game Gear games, it makes the value proposition seem a little iffy. Still, it’s kind of shocking to play games like the very first Sonic the Hedgehog title on the Game Gear and have everything slow to a crawl whenever Sonic gets hit and his rings go flying, or to play Sonic Triple Trouble and have him float slowly across the screen every time he jumps – and that’s without even getting into how miserable the sound quality of these games is. I mean, it’s possible this is just a Switch thing – we’re clearly at the point in the platform’s life where the system can’t always handle everything you throw at it. While the core games themselves are obviously still fun, and the addition of Amy Rose as a playable character adds a neat wrinkle to them, not all of the new additions are as worthwhile: there are a dozen Game Gear Sonic games, and their performance is shockingly awful. Somehow, though, that’s not quite the case with Sonic Origins Plus. I mean, why wouldn’t it? The core idea behind it is the same: gather a bunch of the original Sonic games, add in a few more bells and whistles, and let nostalgia and improved visuals do the rest. Also on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PCĪs you’d expect, a lot of what I wrote about Sonic Origins last year still applies to Sonic Origins Plus. ![]()
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