Ninja Gaiden 2 Black - Price Prediction

Yesterday marked the beginning of Microsoft’s initiatives for the year with the grand Xbox Developer_Direct 2025 event. This annual mini-event in January usually showcases significant upcoming Xbox games for the first half of the year, featuring occasional appearances from third-party developers. In this year’s event, we got a comprehensive look at DOOM: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and an unexpected peek at Ninja Gaiden 4, a game published by Xbox itself.

During the celebrations, Koei Tecmo unveiled an updated version of Ninja Gaiden 2, titled Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. This revamped game displays its intense hack-and-slash action with the latest Unreal Engine enhancements and offers 4K resolution at 120 frames per second on Xbox Series X and PC. If you’re interested in owning Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, it costs $49.99, but Microsoft and Koei Tecmo have made it available for immediate play through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscriptions.

It appears that PC Game Pass subscribers have discovered that the Microsoft Store edition of the game lacks several significant features.

Observing from a distance, I’ve observed that John Linneman from Digital Foundry has pointed out a significant difference in features between the Steam and Microsoft Store versions of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black for PC, as seen on BlueSky. For instance, when you play Ninja Gaiden 2 Black via PC Game Pass, you won’t benefit from NVIDIA DLSS, but the Steam version does. Given the game’s demanding nature, having access to NVIDIA’s super sampling technology would greatly improve performance on many PCs. It’s a shame that the PC Game Pass version lacks this feature, and it seems to underscore an ongoing issue I’ve noticed: Microsoft Store versions of PC games often fall short in terms of features compared to their Steam counterparts.

The Microsoft Store offers significant benefits, especially considering Xbox Play Anywhere. For instance, you can move your Persona 5 Royal game across to your phone using Xbox Cloud Gaming, or play it on your Xbox Series X, various PC gaming devices, or laptops – all with the same save file. Steam Cloud functions similarly, but lacks a robust cloud service for now (except NVIDIA GeForce Now separately). Therefore, I find myself preferring to play my compatible PC games on the Microsoft Store. However, it’s unfortunate that there are frequently differences in game versions between the Microsoft Store and Steam versions.

A more current title I examined is Forspoken, found to be multiple versions behind on the Microsoft Store compared to Steam, lacking comparable features. Similarly, Death Stranding, prior to its recent Xbox port, was also lagging behind Steam in terms of versions and missed out on additional content as well. It appears that many developers find it unprofitable to update the Microsoft Store version of their games due to low user engagement. However, Microsoft finds itself in a catch-22 situation – if the quality isn’t present, users won’t be either, but if users aren’t around, developers won’t be, creating a vicious cycle.

Microsoft faces a complex challenge in resolving an issue they’ve encountered before (the well-known app gap on Windows Phone). By making Xbox game development more similar to PC game development, developers could potentially streamline their work by updating just one package for a larger user base. However, this won’t immediately address the current problem at hand. On the contrary, as more games are added to PC Game Pass, Microsoft might inadvertently widen the gap in quality between titles.

2025-01-24 20:09

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