keyword: Xbox

everything-we-learned-about-age-of-empires-iv’s-new-civilizations,-campaigns,-and-wololos

Everything we learned about Age of Empires IV’s new civilizations, campaigns, and wololos

We haven’t heard much about Age of Empires IV since it was announced in 2017, but we’ve finally been given a look at the game, which includes the Mongols and Delhi Sultanate as playable civilizations. Microsoft and developer Relic Entertainment showed off a healthy amount of gameplay footage as well as new features and civilizations coming to the series in a “Fan Preview” event. The game also has a release window: fall 2021.

The last main entry in the long-running historical strategy series was released in 2005, and the new game looks to build on the formula created by previous entries, while adding features made possible by 15-ish years of technological improvements. That includes the obvious things — like 4K and HDR — to more strategy game-centric upgrades, like new pathfinding that will accommodate tons of units.

According to the team behind the game, there will be eight civilizations in the initial release of the game. So far, we know four of them: the Mongols and Delhi Sultanate are making their first appearances in Age of Empires, and the Chinese and English will be returning. So far, there hasn’t been a lot of information about the unique abilities and traits of each civilization. However, we did get to see that the Delhi Sultanate will include elephant units and that the Mongols will have the ability to pack up and move their buildings and towns (which is mind-blowing to see in action).

A highly portable Mongol camp.
Image: Microsoft

During a Q&A, Relic talked a lot about adding asymmetry to civilizations; the team wanted to make sure that each played differently, with the randomly generated maps playing to different civilizations’ strengths and weaknesses. For example, a wide-open map could benefit the Mongols with their highly mobile units and towns, while a map with a lot of chokepoints could benefit the defense-heavy English. There will still be similar classes of units, but the developers wanted to make sure that players could switch up the gameplay style if they wanted to and even main a certain civilization if they really like its mechanics.

The game’s creators also talked about the evolution of campaigns, which act as a sort of story mode in Age of Empires. They revealed that there would be four campaigns in the game but only shared details about one: the Norman conquest. I’m not enough of a history buff to know anything about that, but it seems like the game will be trying to teach me. The team talked extensively about the fact that campaigns would include documentary footage with narration about the real-life historical events that you’ll be playing through.

I bet this campaign screenshot is really cool if you know the historical context.
Image: Microsoft

The game will also include some new mechanics. The studio showed off a very interesting feature called stealth force, which allows players to create ambushes where enemies will not be able to see their units hiding and waiting. It’s a feature the creators hope will not only add excitement and tension to gameplay, but will actually give you a reason to keep scout units around, as you’ll need to make sure there isn’t an entire army hiding along your route.

The event also showed off wall combat, where units were able to fight both in front of and on top of castle walls, and siege mechanics, where a base could be surrounded by units and — as the name implies — siege weapons. These two mechanics should help to make raiding and defending castles more strategic. We also got a brief glimpse at an area-of-effect wololo, something that’s very intriguing for fans of Age of Empires and memes alike.

Wololo.
GIF: Microsoft

Fans of older entries in the series also have things to look forward to. The developers talked about Age of Empires IV being a spiritual successor to AoE II, while still incorporating some elements from III, such as the addition of choice into the aging-up mechanics. The Definitive Edition of Age of Empires II and III are also getting updates.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is getting its second expansion pack, titled Dawn of Dukes, which will focus on Eastern Europe. Co-op will also be coming to the game at some point this year, which will allow you to play through certain campaigns and battles with friends.

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is getting the United States added as a civilization in an update. Cleverly, the update will be free if you play through a challenge, but players who don’t want to go through the effort will be able to purchase it from Steam or the Microsoft Store. It was also revealed that the first AoE III: Definitive Edition expansion is being worked on and will feature African civilizations.

As someone who played hundreds of hours of Age of Empires II, I’m excited for the tech tree advancements in Age of Empires IV. Of course, I’d also love more details, especially after such a long wait since the announcement. What other civilizations will we get to play? What do the plans for future expansions look like? Will there be fun cheat codes? These questions are unanswered for now, but it seems like it won’t be entire age before we find out. I look forward to finding out that I forgot everything about how to play the game and immediately getting crushed by an easy AI when it finally releases.

Age of Empires IV will be available on Windows 10 PCs through Steam, the Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass for PC in fall 2021.

three-questions-that-will-decide-epic-v.-apple

Three questions that will decide Epic v. Apple

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

New filings show both sides’ legal strategies at work

On May 3rd, Fortnite publisher Epic Games will finally have its day in court, forcing Apple to defend kicking Fortnite off the iOS App Store last year. Epic’s antitrust lawsuit is bigger than a single game; it’s a direct challenge to the App Store model, the most significant legal challenge Apple has faced since the Xerox days.

Last night, both sides filed a document called a “proposed findings of fact,” essentially laying out every factual claim they’ll rely on in their arguments. The documents run more than 650 pages in total, giving a detailed roadmap of how each side sees the case — from the early days of the iPhone to Epic’s specific preparations for picking this fight with Apple. But the filings also bring the case into focus, raising three questions that will be central to the trial over the coming months.

The heart of the case is the so-called App Store tax — a 30 percent surcharge Apple collects on purchases made through the App Store. Fortnite was kicked off the App Store for dodging that tax by installing its own payment system, which is forbidden under App Store rules. Now, Epic is making the case in court that the rules should never have been put in place.

You often hear that this case is about whether the App Store is a monopoly — but Epic’s argument is more subtle than that, drawing on antitrust ideas around legal monopolies and abuses of market power. As Epic sees it, Apple’s monopoly over iOS is legal, but it’s using the market power from that monopoly to dominate the secondary market for app distribution. Epic compares the situation to Microsoft’s antitrust case in the ’90s: a legitimate monopoly over Windows, extended illegally to the secondary market in web browsers.

It’s a good theory, but it only works if you see the App Store model as fundamentally separate from iOS. In its statement of facts, Apple describes the exclusive App Store as a fundamental part of the iPhone, part of the broader offering that makes the devices valuable. “Apple wanted to ensure that iOS devices were more protected from those malware and instability issues and quality issues that the PC world was used to,” Apple claims in its filing. App Store exclusivity is part of that, but so are security measures like the code-signing and hardware root-of-trust systems. On the software side, there is a range of private APIs and OS-level entitlements that are only enabled after App Store review, tying the systems that much tighter together.

Of course, it’s inconvenient for this argument that Google is offering a competing mobile operating system with none of these restrictions — to say nothing of Apple’s own macOS, which allows side loading. Clearly, it would be technically possible to allow competing app stores on iOS. The question is whether the court sees that as changing Apple’s business model or changing iOS itself.

One of the biggest challenges for Epic is that the App Store model is fairly widespread. Consoles like Xbox and PlayStation operate on basically the same playbook, delivering games digitally through an open but curated digital store that’s locked to the hardware and controlled by the manufacturer. That alone doesn’t make it legal, but it adds credence to Apple’s claim that the App Store lockdown isn’t trapping consumers. If you don’t want to play Fortnite on an iPhone, you can play it on a console or a PC. Some devices come locked into a specific distribution channel and some don’t, giving users the chance to vote with their feet.

Epic’s counter to this argument, as explained in the filing, is that “video game consoles operate under a radically different business model than smartphones.” Development for console games is slow and expensive work, and consoles are useless without a steady supply of those games, so console manufacturers are under immense pressure to attract developers. That means hardware itself is often sold at cost, leaving App Store commissions as the primary source of profit.

Apple is different, Epic argues, because most of its profits still come from iPhone sales. “Developers do not participate in those profits,” the filing argues, “even though the availability of apps contributes greatly to the sale of devices.”

On some level, this boils down to the argument that console companies are nicer to developers, so their platform power is less of an issue. The constant competition between Xbox and PlayStation gives game developers leverage to extract more favorable terms. But iOS and Android don’t compete for app developers in the same way, and the lower cost of mobile development means the competition happens on vastly different terms. Apple has given people lots of reasons to buy an iPhone, which means there’s less pressure on any given line of business. But that’s well short of the standard for monopoly power, and Apple ultimately comes away from the console comparison looking pretty good.

Underneath everything else, Apple is facing a profound question of how much control it can exert over its own devices. For critics, this is Apple’s original sin, using industrial and graphic design to lure customers into a walled garden, then locking the gate. For fans, it’s Apple’s genius, integrating hardware and software to deliver a more purposeful and powerful user experience. But it all rests on Apple’s ability to maintain a closed stack, using hardware integration to control what happens in software.

This trial won’t undo that stack, but it could limit what Apple can do with it. The Epic Games fight started over payment processing, but the same legal standard could allow for alternative app stores or limit the restrictions Apple can place on rogue apps like Parler. It’s a first step toward setting regulatory limits on how tech companies operate, similar to the regulations on wireless carriers or banks. At its most basic level, Epic is arguing that Apple’s ecosystem has grown too big and too powerful for it to be run entirely out of Cupertino, and it’s time for it to be directly accountable to antitrust law.

Hundreds of pages in Apple’s filing are devoted to the benefits of that system for developers and iPhone owners, much of it undeniably true. There really is less malware on iOS devices because of Apple’s software controls, even if scam apps sometimes slip through. The system really does generate a lot of money for iOS developers, many of whom couldn’t compete outside of Apple’s walled garden. The shift to digital distribution really has saved money for developers who don’t need to distribute their product through brick-and-mortar retail anymore.

But in a sense, all of that is beside the point. Abuses of market power aren’t excused just because they’re sometimes helpful, and classical monopolies like Standard Oil or Bell Telephone had lots of side benefits, too. The bigger question is whether courts are ready to dive into the mobile software stack and start dictating the terms of how tech companies can set up their marketplaces. That’s a hard question, and it won’t be settled by a single ruling or a single case. But one way or another, it’s a question this court will have to take on.

ps5-exclusive-deathloop-has-been-delayed-again-until-september-14th

PS5 exclusive Deathloop has been delayed again until September 14th

Deathloop has been delayed again, with Arkane’s timed PS5 console exclusive moving from its previous May 21st release date to a fall release on September 14th. The news marks the second big delay for Deathloop, which was originally supposed to be out in the 2020 holiday season alongside the then-newly released PS5.

As with the earlier delay, Arkane’s Lyon studio is once again citing COVID-19-related delays, with an increased difficulty in development as it works to ensure “the health and safety of everyone at Arkane.”

Deathloop is the latest title from Arkane’s Lyon studio, best known for the Dishonored franchise and the rebooted Prey from 2017. Players assume the role of Colt, an assassin stuck in a time loop who must fight his way out by assassinating his eight targets using a variety of weapons and mystical powers — all while being hunted by a rival assassin, Julianna (who can be controlled by other players over the internet).

As a next-gen exclusive title, Deathloop is only set to be released on the PlayStation 5 (for a one-year exclusivity period) and PC — despite the fact that publisher Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft. Xbox studio head Phil Spencer told Bloomberg back in September that it’ll still be holding to that timed exclusivity for both Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo. That means, with the current delay, Xbox owners will be waiting even longer before they’re able to head to Blackreef.

you-can-now-play-every-classic-halo-on-xbox-with-a-mouse-and-keyboard

You can now play every classic Halo on Xbox with a mouse and keyboard

Today, you can fire up an Xbox game console and play Halo with a mouse and keyboard. It’s hard to believe I’m writing those words.

Five years ago, I asked a small room of first-party Xbox devs how they felt about supporting mouse and keyboard (now that their boss Phil Spencer had confirmed they were on the way), but they were seriously skeptical. It took two more years for the Xbox One to get even a handful of keyboard and mouse titles in a November 2018 update. Even though games like COD: Warzone and Fortnite have paved the way for controller parity, the industry is still understandably wary about mixing console and keyboard players.

But now, keyboard and mouse is a native part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection (including Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4) as of a new April 2021 patch, and it’s not alone: every Xbox that can play the game will let you adjust your field of view, crosshairs, and bind controls across multiple inputs, like any good competitive PC-grade shooter should.

Not only does that mean parity with PC, but it might actually make the Xbox version of Halo: MCC preferable for some. As my colleague Tom Warren points out, it’s easier to avoid cheaters in console games:

seeing mouse and keyboard support in Halo on Xbox makes me wish Destiny 2 had this. I’d switch immediately from PC, which is full of hackers, aimbots, and other exploits that ruin the PvP experience

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) April 7, 2021

The full patch notes also mention new accessibility options, a new “Escalation Slayer” game variant, a new map for Halo 3, and you can easily set your in-game chat and audio devices separately now on PC. And of course, there’s a new season of content dubbed “Raven.” More info on that here.

Me, I’ve played Halo with a mouse and keyboard almost since the beginning. The first copy I owned was the Gearbox port for PC. It’s been a longtime favorite at LAN parties. Ah, do I miss LAN parties.

apple-arcade-finally-got-the-boost-it-needed

Apple Arcade finally got the boost it needed

Last week, Apple Arcade received its biggest update since launching back in 2019. More than 30 titles were added to the subscription service, including much-anticipated games like Hironobu Sakaguchi’s roleplaying epic Fantasian. But while the quantity and quality of titles added were impressive, the most important part of the announcement was a change in direction. Among those big-name exclusives were a number of classics, ranging from Monument Valley to chess to Threes, that help round out the service. Apple Arcade has finally matured into something close to a Netflix for mobile games.

Since the beginning, the pitch for Apple Arcade has been entirely centered on quality. While the App Store continues to devolve into a space dominated by free-to-play games, Arcade provided an alternative where some of the most talented developers in the world could create great mobile games without having to worry about monetization. It launched alongside new games from the likes of Zach Gage and Ustwo, and it has continued to add titles on a near-weekly basis. Subscribers get all of those games for a flat monthly fee. It’s been a solid service — but it’s always felt like something was missing.

When you sign up for something like Netflix, it might be because of one of the service’s big exclusive titles like The Witcher or Bridgerton. But that won’t necessarily keep you hooked. Part of what makes Netflix so compelling is everything else, from reality shows to classic sitcoms, that give you something to watch after you’re done with the big tent poles. Frequently, these aren’t traditional exclusives: think of how important Friends and The Office have become in the age of streaming TV.

Those kinds of experiences are something Apple Arcade didn’t really have before this shift. Now, though, when you’re done playing a short narrative game like, say, Creaks or Assemble With Care, there’s a lot more to keep you invested with recent additions like Good Sudoku or Threes.

Wonderbox.

Even better, while many of these games are available on other platforms or through the App Store, the Arcade versions are generally improved because they feature no form of in-app purchases or monetization. You won’t find puzzle or card games saddled with ads or have to open loot boxes in NBA 2K21. There’s even Star Trek: Legends — essentially a character-collecting gacha game — which almost feels strange to play without being prodded to spend money. (This lack of microtransactions makes Arcade a very family-friendly service.)

It’s also important to note that this change in strategy is additive. Apple has introduced two new categories to Arcade — one for older App Store hits, another for classic games like chess or solitaire — but it’s still releasing those big exclusive titles. In addition to Fantasian, last week’s update included Wonderbox (think Minecraft meets Zelda for younger players), World of Demons (the latest action game from PlatinumGames, the team behind Nier: Automata and Bayonetta), and Taiko no Tatsujin: Pop Tap Beat (a new entry in an excellent long-running rhythm game series). It’s a great and diverse lineup of experiences; sometimes scrolling through games on Arcade can feel like heading into an alternate reality version of what mobile gaming could have been if the race to free-to-play never happened.

Obviously, none of this is a guarantee of success. And if previous reports are to be believed, the shift appears to be a result of Arcade’s inability to keep subscribers hooked. While the subscription model is now dominant for the music, film, and television industries, it’s still relatively nascent for games. Outside of Xbox Game Pass, there hasn’t been a major success to date. Apple Arcade arguably faces a greater challenge being on mobile, where users have long been conditioned to expect games for free. The Netflix of games still feels inevitable, even if we’re not there yet — but Arcade feels closer than ever.

dell’s-new-gaming-monitors-support-variable-refresh-rate-for-consoles,-not-just-pc

Dell’s new gaming monitors support variable refresh rate for consoles, not just PC

Dell has announced four gaming monitors, three of which are curved, that are releasing in the US between late May and late June. It unfortunately isn’t sharing prices for them yet, but the company says that all of them support AMD FreeSync Premium or Premium Pro, as well as variable refresh rate (VRR). VRR should make them as good of a fit for consoles like the Xbox Series X and PS5 (though the latter console hasn’t actually received its promised VRR update yet). This feature limits screen tearing as the frame rate adjusts due to hits or gains to performance.

Starting off big, the company has a new 34-inch ultrawide, curved gaming monitor (pictured above, model S3422DWG) that has a 1800R curve, which won’t envelop your peripheral vision as much as Samsung’s extra-curvy 1000R Odyssey G9 monitor. This model will release first in China on May 7th, then North America on May 27th, and finally on June 22nd in Asia-Pacific regions. It has a WQHD (3440 x 1440) resolution, VA display with a 144Hz refresh rate. Dell touts that it has DisplayHDR 400, though that’s not the spec you should be looking for to provide a bright, vibrant HDR image. This one supports 90 percent of the DCI-P3 color range.

Here’s the 32-inch curved screen Dell will release on June 22nd.

Dell’s also making a 32-inch curved QHD gaming monitor (model S3222DGM) that has a VA panel with a 165Hz refresh rate and a 2ms response time. It’s making a 27-inch version (model S2722DGM) that has the same specs, except it’s actually slightly more curved at 1500R than the 1800R 32-inch model. These will both release in China on May 7th, and availability will open up globally on June 22nd.

Dell’s 24.5-inch monitor seems like an awesome choice, but we don’t know the price.

It might look similar to the last image above, but the fourth monitor being announced today might especially appeal to people who have an Nvidia graphics card. It’s a non-curved 24.5-inch FHD gaming monitor (model S2522HG) with an IPS panel with G-Sync compatibility in addition to FreeSync Premium. It has a 240Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time. This one will release in China on May 7th, and it’ll be available in other regions on May 27th.

As usual, each of Dell’s new monitors have have stands that offer a full range of motion, including height, pivot, swivel, and tilt adjustments.

outriders-review:-a-lootin’-shootin’-good-time

Outriders review: A lootin’ shootin’ good time

(Pocket-lint) – If you were to pick out a gaming genre that’s hard to break into right now, online looter-shooters would be high up on the list. High-profile attempts like Anthem have shown how difficult it can be to upset the hierarchy. 

That’s just what developer People Can Fly is trying to do with Outriders. And to its credit there’s clearly a solid foundation here. It’s built a looter-shooter that feels punchy and rewarding, with an endgame that has promising depth as it stands.

A survival story

Outrider’s framing story is refreshingly straightforward and intelligible. Escaping from a dying earth, your colony ship reaches its destination, a lush new planet called Enoch. However, all isn’t well and, after a scouting expedition on the surface goes awry, you wake up to find that decades have passed.

Enoch hasn’t been the welcoming paradise that was promised, and is instead home to a bizarre anomaly that’s altering the planet and its animals to fight back against the invasion of humans. The world you wake up to is war-torn and fractured, with factions battling over resources and a scarce few mutants gifted extraodinary powers by the anomaly, yourself included. 

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It’s hokey stuff at times, but anyone who’s tried to understand just what on earth is going on in the Destiny universe will appreciate that simplicity can be a good thing. 

People Can Fly previously made the raucous shooter Bulletstorm, so some of that game’s brash humour can be traced through to Outriders – but it sadly doesn’t always land. Your player character is, straightforwardly, a bit of a misanthrope. That attitude can make for pithy lines, but it can also mean a baffling lack of empathy and/or sympathy for non-playable characters (NPCs) that you’re supposed to care about. 

People Can Fly

With acres of extra lore added into your codex at all times, there’s plenty of world-building to dig into here if you like, but keeping things simple in broader story terms is a welcome choice, in short. That said, Outriders could do without so many interrupting cut-scenes, given the hitch in loading that these seem to entail at present. 

Class warfare

The core of the Outriders value proposition, though, isn’t really in how it delivers its side quests. It’s in how it feels to play, and this is an area where you can feel People Can Fly’s experience shining through. 

Given the studio also worked on Gears of War Judgement, it’s no surprise that this is a third-person cover shooter that feels polished and fluid. After the game’s prologue, which you can later skip to create new characters quickly, you choose one of four classes.

People Can Fly

Pyromancers have flaming abilities that mark enemies for death; Technomancers can create turrets and heal allies; Devastators can tank loads of damage and hold areas more easily; and our personal favourite, Tricksters, can zip around the battlefield slicing and dicing foes. 

There’s no swapping between classes other than by changing characters entirely, but running more than one character is very straightforward and well worth trying. This will help you get to grips with which you most enjoy, and each path offers up multiple skills to choose from to tweak your loadout. 

Then you’ve got the actual guns, which are multitudinous and offer increasingly enjoyable modifiers as you progress. Things start off grounded but pretty soon you’ll be freezing enemies with bullets, or shooting an SMG that has explosive rounds, or any number of other variables.

These can be relatively easily mixed-and-matched using the in-depth crafting system, too, letting you find your favourite mods and keep them in your arsenal. One miss at the moment is the lack of transmogrification, a big word that basically means letting you keep exotic weapon skins while changing what they do, but it’s reasonable to hope that might come with time. 

For now, guns and powers come together to make for a cover shooter than can also be plenty mobile and reactive, and kinetic when you find a power-set that agrees with you. That said, if you’re playing alone, we’d recommend you opt for the Trickster for your first character. Some of the other paths are a little harder to manage early on without backup keeping you healthy.

People Can Fly

There are periodically large bosses to contend with, which do a decent job of offering a different sort of battle, at scale, even if they can tend to be slightly bullet-spongey in practise. These fights still give a climactic feel to key moments. 

It’s also up to you to decide what level of difficulty you want to set your game world at, with rewards corresponding to how far you can push yourself. This is another smart choice that lets you easily strap in for a more chilled session if you want to kick back with some friends, or make it tough as nails if you’re in it for top-tier loot. 

Playing in solo mode is plenty fun and fairly well-balanced, but the game is really aimed at trios, where three players can pick loadouts that complement each other and dominate the chest-high cover battlefields that most fights take place in. Played like this, Outriders can be frantic good fun. 

Smooth in patches

As with many cross-generation releases, the visual side of things is a mixed bag for Outriders, which largely depends on your platform. Playing on PlayStation 5, we had nice quick load times and the whole game plays at a smooth 60fps with only very rare stutters, just as it should on Xbox Series X and S.

On older-generation consoles the game runs at 30fps, something that’s hardly new for those platforms but still feels signficantly more sluggish when you try it. However, there’s no difference in what you can do and how you do it – it’s purely a visual disparity, also reflected by lower resolutions. 

People Can Fly

In art direction terms, though, Outriders posts solid results without much to write home about. Enoch might be a raw alien world but the spaces it offers up to fight in, at present, aren’t the most visually ravishing you’ve ever seen.

Its encampments and forts are straight out of Gears of War, as are the chunky oversized weapons and, while you’ll fight across different biomes, none of them are all that fresh. You’ll see ice levels, forested areas, built-up ruins and lava-strewn wastelands, and it’s all serviceable without being memorable. 

That’s not helped by the fact that every arena will inevitably need to feature the age-old maze of chest-high walls to fight around, something that really hamstrings any attempt to make levels feel really naturalistic.

Enemy design is also pretty ho-hum, with a whole bunch of burly blokes in armour sets charging at you for most of the game’s span, interrupted by occasional beasties. 

People Can Fly

Still, the particle effects that your powers summon up look vibrant and jazz things up, and running on next-gen hardware the game can look great in big battles, especially when you’re in the more colourful locations.

As an always-online title, though, Outriders launched with some technical issues that were disappointing to say the least. With player numbers presumably inflated by its late-notice inclusion on Xbox Game Pass, server outages have been frequent since release, although the situation is improving all the time. Launch problems are nothing new for online titles, but that doesn’t make them acceptable, especially for those who paid full price for a game they couldn’t access. 



Top PS4 games 2021: Best PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro games every gamer must own


By Rik Henderson
·

Verdict

As it stands (and assuming the servers straighten out after the launch troubles), Outriders is a good bit of fun for anyone who’s into third-person shooters or light role-players.

In a time when co-op experiences are thin on the ground it offers up a lengthy campaign you can play through with a couple of friends, and there’s a bombastic, if simplistic, time to be had while doing so.

With a loot and crafting system that can potentially offer up real depth for those who want something to sink into, there’s also plenty of promise in the endgame here, even before you unlock expeditions that offer up high-tier loot for the most dedicated players.

The fact that it’s a complete package is also a tonic compared to a full live-service offering, although whether it’s enough to keep people playing much beyond the campaign will remain to be seen. 

Writing by Max Freeman-Mills. Editing by Mike Lowe.

gta-v-returns-to xbox game-pass,-this-time-with-xcloud-support

GTA V returns to Xbox Game Pass, this time with xCloud support

After being removed and replaced by Red Dead Redemption 2 nearly a year ago, Grand Theft Auto V will return to Xbox Game Pass for consoles on April 8th, and it will also be coming to Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, xCloud.

Despite being almost eight years old, Grand Theft Auto V is still widely popular and one of the bestselling games of all time. Since its release in 2013, the game has been ported to PS4 and Xbox One, and it will receive a next-gen port for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S later this year.

The release on xCloud will allow players to play the game, including the GTA Online mode, on the go without being tethered to their console. xCloud is included for users subscribed to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, though the service is only available on Android devices at the moment.

Microsoft also confirmed in a blog post today that more than 50 games available in the xCloud library support touch controls, allowing you to play games on Android devices without a controller. The feature debuted last September with support for Minecraft Dungeons, but now, some of the biggest titles on xCloud, including Gears 4 and Sea of Thieves, support the feature.

e3-2021-will-be-all-digital-and-free-of-charge

E3 2021 Will Be All-Digital and Free of Charge

(Image credit: Electronic Software Association)

E3 2021 will be an all-digital event. The Electronic Software Association has announced that this year’s event, which will be free of charge, will take place from June 12 to June 15.

Last year, the event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still ongoing. For the virtual event, Nintendo, Xbox, Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Games and Koch Media will participate, with promises of “more to come.” It is likely that other companies will have adjacent events, much like they have during in person E3s.

“For more than two decades, E3 has been the premier venue to showcase the best that the video game industry has to offer, while uniting the world through games,” said Stanley Pierre-Louis, president and CEO of the ESA said in a press release. “We are evolving this year’s E3 into a more inclusive event, but will still look to excite the fans with major reveals and insider opportunities that make this event the indispensable center stage for video games.”

The exact format has yet to be unveiled, though it will likely feature a number of pre-recorded presentations and interviews, and possibly some game demonstrations. And surely, there will be a lot of world premiere trailers.

E3 typically makes the ESA a lot of money, so this is yet another hit for the trade group’s budget. But at least, for the fans, everyone will be able to attend. ESA ended its announcement by saying, “ESA looks forward to coming back together to celebrate E3 2022 in person.” Let’s hope that actually happens.