I'm really looking forward to Horizon: Forbidden West and Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Returnal looks interesting too, along with Stray, which both have SF settings.

@goobermcdermit: I'd say that's more of an issue for retailers, particularly online retailers who did precious little to combat bots and scalpers when pre-orders opened. I think they should just accept all pre-orders with a proviso that you may not get the console on the official launch date. At least then people would be in a queue to receive the hardware.

The Changeling and The Haunting are two of my all-time favourites in the genre, and some of the others in the list that I've seen were suitably chilling. A couple of others I would have added to the list are The Woman In Black (2012) starring Daniel Radcliffe (or a 1989 TV film adaption of the same name that always stuck in my mind), and Stir Of Echoes (1999) starring Kevin Bacon that had a different spin on what a haunted house means for the occupants.

I'm planning a horror movie marathon for October, and half of the movies above are definitely on my watch list.

@pworam: I agree with you that 'The Woman in Black' deserves to be on the list. A great adaptation, with some chilling scenes.

It all looks very promising. When it comes to load times, I'm not so bothered about initial start-up time for a game, but in-game loading between areas can become tedious when it is overlong. Also, the Quick Resume is probably useful for some people who often jump between games, but I always play one at a time.

I look forward to hearing more about the backwards compatibility for previous games, and whether or not they will have any enhancements for next gen (though that is a question for the developers).

Lastly, I really hope the XSX controller is very durable. I've lost track of the number of Xbox controllers I've had to replace over the years (for both Xbox and PC). Maybe I'm just unlucky, although by comparison I'm still using the original Dualshock 3 and Dualshock 4 controllers that came with my Playstation systems (and that's after dropping them several times on a hard wood floor over the years).

@illegal_peanut: I now expect someone to make a can-crushing game. :D

"the usable space in the SSD is 802GB. That roughly cuts your usable space by 1/5 right from the start."

Not really, because you never had a full 1Tb (1024Gb) or even 1000Gb of usable space to begin with. Drive manufacturers use the metric system, so to them a 1Tb drive is actually 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. When you convert this to actual Gigabytes (dividing by 1024, NOT 1000) it translates to 976.5Gb before partitioning or formatting. So the manufacturer already short-changed you by about 48Gb before you do anything. After partitioning and formatting your mileage may vary. Some SSDs can manage around 950Gb of formatted space, whereas most platter hard drives leave you with around 930Gb.

Yes, I'm probably a nerd. :P

So what this confirms to me is that the OS/System Files on the Xbox Series X probably take up around 150Gb, which is basically the same size as on the Xbox One X (which had 780Gb available out of a potential 930Gb). Personally I was hoping they would manage to downsize and/or streamline the system software, to make more space available for the user.

As others have already commented, an additional drive for storage is pretty much going to be essential for next gen, unless you don't mind reinstalling/redownloading your games.

As someone with significant hearing loss in one ear, I do find myself relying more and more on subtitles in games. I can't think of any that have not offered that as an option in recent years, at least for speech. Captions for sound effects and/or in-game music is another matter. Nevertheless, I do agree with some of the issues outlined in the article, and better communication of accessibility options for games prior to release would be welcomed.

@tlpina: More disturbingly, does this mean users of the service will become Luna-tics? ;P

This 'trick' reminds me of two other games that must have done essentially the same thing: Thief Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex Invisible War. I remember they had to cut up the levels with transition points due to the memory limitation, and when you passed from one area to another, it put up a loading screen, and essentially shut down the game and restarted it with the new level loaded. It was more noticeable on the PC editions of the game, though.

On a side note, I'd love to see a full remaster/remake of Morrowind in a modern engine. I know there are mods, but still, it would be great to see.