If you’ve never had Ultimate, be sure to extend your Gold subscription as much as you can (you can only do it 3 years out), and then convert your Gold/Game Pass into Ultimate.
All your remaining Gold time and Game Pass time will be turned into Ultimate time. It only works on a 1:1 ratio the first time you do it, I think.
I recommend it. You’ll get the expansion content for Gears 5, sure, but even if you never use xCloud or Game Pass for PC, there’s still EA Play. Surely there’s something by EA that you meant to try out but never did that’s in their vault.
(Plus I’m pretty sure you won’t be paying any more money than you do getting Gold and Game Pass for Xbox separately, I bet you save money).
If you already have both, yeah I think Ultimate is a better deal even if you don’t play PC games. And as Rock8man mentions, there’s a conversion factor the first time you switch over, it will take the months you currently have purchased for both services and roll them into Ultimate - so if you stock up on Gold, for instance, you can get up to 3 years of GP Ultimate. That may not seem worthwhile to you, but you can only do this when you initially convert to Ultimate, is the only reason we mention it.
Microsoft’s wording around the release of Hivebusters for “free” to Ultimate subs, made it sound like they intend to do more of that in the future (make expansion content for Microsoft-published games free to Ultimate subs). But yeah, regular Xbox or PC Game Pass users have to buy it separately.
In reality, if you have XGP and a Gold subscription, Ultimate is a no-brainer anyway. You get a bunch more stuff, at effectively no extra cost to what you were paying before.
Also, the Hivebusters DLC for Gears 5 is actually pretty good. It’s really beautiful looking, and it’s a bite sized chunk of classic linear Gears gameplay. Won’t last you longer than a few hours though. It’s essentially a prologue to the Escape mode in Gears 5.
Thanks for the clarification, guys, and the tips on how to get the best conversion value.
Yeah, I’ve played a ton of Gears 5, so would just like to play some different content, especially stuff I can play solo, and it sounds like conversion to ultimate would be smart anyway so it’s essentially free.
Oh wow, I totally forgot about Hivebusters. Yeah, looks like it’s included with Ultimate but not the base Game Pass, I didn’t know that. I’d be curious to hear your impressions, Desslock.
Well I did the upgrade (I don’t have to pay anything until March 2023!), so I’ll definitely dive in. If anyone every wants to try multiplayer, feel free to ping me.
Is there a consolidated site somewhere that describes all the various headset/headphone options for Xboxen? There’s just a ton of shotgunned info out there that’s always very vague and / or narrow in focus.
So there’s a bunch of different audio formats (MS Sonic? Dolby?) a bunch of different connection options (3.5mm jack on controller, usb, Xbox protocol?) and apparently a bunch of different driver styles (3d audio, ect?).
Not that I’m aware of. There’s been a fair bit of discussion in this thread about audio formats and how they related to headphones. Maybe some about specific audio hardware.
In the Xbox One era, Microsoft was very resistant to licensing their wifi-based wireless protocol out. They did not make a wireless headset themselves. Eventually Microsoft did license their tech for audio, but it was prone to connection problems and no headsets are still sold using it as far as I know. So third party headsets generally work one of two ways:
HDMI or optical for game audio and a USB dongle for voice chat. Game and voice audio are handled separately by the headphones. Sometimes a mixer between the two, sometimes separate volume adjustments for each.
A 3.5mm TRRS AKA “4 pole” AKA “3 ring” connection to the controller. Both game and voice audio are mixed by the Xbox console and sent to the headphones.
Some headsets would take the Dolby Digital 5.1 output from the Xbox and convert it for the headphones while trying to preserve the positional information. This was 2D positioning and the precursor to 3D positional audio.
The Xbox added 3D audio processing which was applied in the Xbox OS. Microsoft Sonic, Dolby Atmos, and DTS:X for Headphones are the software options today. They all process 2D and 3D positional audio down to a two channel headphone signal. They try to preserve the positional data through lots of tricks that fool our ears when wearing headphones. This works because our ears are relatively in the same spot relative to the headphones’ speakers. Better speakers in the headphones will generally offer better sound, which make these processing tricks more realistic sounding.
The Xbox Series X|S consoles dropped the optical port. Doing HDMI passthrough on 4K@120 signals is expensive. So Microsoft added the ability for headphones to present multiple speakers to the console over USB. Headphones compatible with the new consoles are using this instead of optical and USB. What this means is the “Game” and “Voice” are separate audio devices. Game sounds - processed by an 3D positioning sound driver or not - are sent to the “Game” virtual output via USB. Voice chat is sent to the “Voice” virtual output, also via the same USB connection.
When buying headsets, the differentiation is in several areas (in no particular order):
Wired or wireless
Wireless battery life
Speaker size and quality
Bluetooth support - not for the Xbox, but for another device like a phone
Multi-platform capabilities - note that no licensed headset can work with both the Xbox and Playstation consoles, although there are some workarounds like multiple base stations or using the TRRS cable to the controller
Comfort
Price
You need to decide which features are most important to you and seek out the right headset. It’s a little daunting unfortunately.
The other factor for me which renders so many options moot is that I use the headset mainly for MP comms, and like my surround sound system better, so the default which comes with the console is the one I like the best.
Of course, one of our kittens chewed through the cable on mine, and I’ve been looking for a good one-ear, comms only headset for awhile. I’ll probably just bite the bullet on a replacement (but I’d like to make sure it works with the current One X, as well as the planned Series X).
Wow, that’s very cool. I have one that I have assigned only to my phone (for xCloud) because it would be a pain in the ass to switch back and forth. But no longer!
Out of curiosity, what do you use a clip attachment or something to play on your phone? I’ve been wanting to setup something like this on my phone. I tried to get my xbox x controller to work but it won’t connect, I REALLY hate bluetooth. However I do have a xbox one controller I haven’t tried yet that might work.
Yeah, my brother gave me that clip thing last summer for my birthday, and I attached that to the controller, you just pull on it and the phone clips in, and you let go.
But yeah, for the Pixel 3 at least, for most games, the clip makes it that the phone is too far away from your face to make out details. So you can only play games that have a huge interface, or ones where you don’t need the HUD.
EDIT: I think it’s this one. Personally I wouldn’t recommend it. Find a way to connect it to something bigger than a phone. Like when xcloud finally comes to PC browsers.
I’ve been flirting with the idea of getting a new Android tablet, currently have an original Ipad Air that is showing it’s age, and getting something like this to play games on it.
I’m now at my new place in the Series club. Yay! This is also my first time having better than phone-line internet… now on fiber. A little underwhelmed by the machines so far, but I don’t have good TVs to test out HDR on yet. Dead by Daylight looks amazing with the update.
I just wanted to make this post to complain about the battery covers. Felt like I’d have to break my controllers to get them off. They took me twenty minutes and a plastic knife in my mouth pushing in the bottom-center hook to pop out.
I think you might have a defective controller or something. All you (should) really have to do is apply a little pressure and the battery cover slides right off.
