Imagine you’re 12 years old – for some of you that’s more of a stretch than it is for others. It’s also the early ‘90s and everyone is wearing a fire hazard because it’s fashionable. Video games are a luxury, and rightly so. They’re expensive and you are happy for what you get given by your parents - maybe two new games over a year. Think hard about what you’re going to choose as you’ll be playing it many, many times....

The news comes from an official blog post published by Xbox, which notes that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will launch for Android phones and tablets on September 15, 2020. “Cloud gaming as part of Xbox Game Pass is the next major step in our ongoing vision to put you at the center of the experience, to give you more value from your games and membership, and to remove the barriers from play,” reads the post....

Just a month ago, I wrote about how “playing Xbox Game Pass through xCloud feels like a next-generation experience” - and since then, game pass on mobile has become a regular staple of my video game diet. I’ve done a few more play-throughs of Streets of Rage 4, played a shed load of Halo, and rekindled a love for Forza Horizon 4 while finally getting around to digging into that game’s Lego-themed expansion, something which is a solid combination of my interests....

Microsoft has been sending review units of the consoles out over the past few weeks and months, and now – finally – we can see what everyone thinks of the upcoming next-gen hardware. There are a few themes running through the reviews; there’s almost universal praise of the actual hardware itself. It’s fast, it’s quiet, it’s well-designed and it just works, straight out the box. But many critics have an issue with the lineup of titles available at launch....

According to the NPD, total videogame industry spending declined 15% year-over-year to $4.9 billion. Declines were seen across hardware, software, mobile, and accessories, with first-quarter 2022 spending down 8% to $13.9 billion compared to the same period in 2021. In hardware, sales declined by 24% year-over-year to $515 million. Sales reached $1.2 billion during Q1 2022, which is a 15% decline compared to Q1 2021. Xbox Series X/S was the best-selling console for March 2022 in terms of dollar sales and for Q1....

Microsoft has announced a demo event as part of the Summer Games Fest 2020. During this time, July 21-27, you will be able to play demos for around 60 upcoming, unreleased Xbox games. You will be able to find them as a Game Fest Demo tile on the Xbox One Dashboard. By the time “the dust settles,” there will be “somewhere between 75 and 100” game demos made available. Many of these demos “are early,” and some are for games that won’t be out for a while, so expect the game to evolve and be polished as they near release....

The best classes in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will probably change depending on your progress in the story, though there are some stalwarts that do you well throughout the entire game. As you make your way through Aionios, it’s a good idea to keep a balanced party with two of each role at any given time. You can technically get by with just one attacker, but having two defenders – to keep enemy attention away from the more vulnerable classes – and two healers is almost essential, especially on higher difficulties and during boss fights....

The game, which is actually called ‘New Football Game Online Performance Test’ (because of course it is) can be downloaded and played without PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold (thanks, Eurogamer). The launched overnight on June 23 and will be available to play until July 8. A cursory look at Konami’s social media channels has no mention of the demo, nor have we received emails or press releases about its existence....

Enter, then, Black Flag. Eschewing the heady streets of Italy or Constantinople, and removing itself as much as possible from the frigid wilds of Frontier America, this new game promised something different – something gamers hadn’t really seen since Sid Meier’s Pirates! (and wouldn’t see again until Sea of Thieves). Black Flag – as you’d probably guess from that evocative moniker – promised a sea-faring pirate adventure. It promised treachery, plunder, terror on the high seas....

“The situations that some of you have experienced or witnessed are absolutely not acceptable,” wrote Guillemot. “No one should ever feel harassed or disrespected at work, and the types of inappropriate behavior we have recently learned about cannot and will not be tolerated.” “To those of you who have spoken up or have supported colleagues, I want to be clear: you are heard, and you are helping drive necessary change within the company....

The post was published on R Talsorian Games’ official blog and is a follow-up to the company’s statement from last week, in which Pondsmith was credited as having said, “Cyberpunk was a warning, not an aspiration.” “First, I’ll answer the question you think you want to ask me but really don’t want to ask me,” Pondsmith writes at the beginning of the most recent post. “Yeah, I’ve been pulled over by cops more times than I care to remember....

That’s according to data from local games mag Famitsu - via GamesIndustry.biz - which reports that 87% of consoles sold in the country during 2020 were Switches. The regular version of Nintendo’s hardware shifted 3.9 million units, while just over two million copies of the more recently-released Lite edition were sold. Overall, Switch sales increased by 30% year-on-year. In total, 6.85 million consoles were bought in Japan during 2020. Second place went to PlayStation 4, which shifted 543,000 units....

Coming to life as a Resident Evil 4-inspired horror title, Dead Space morphed into a co-op action shooter over the course of its own trilogy in an effort to meet EA’s sales expectations, as the company wanted necromorphs to go mainstream. The series’ mechanical and thematic changes are most dramatic in 2013’s Dead Space 3. As the third entry, it has so many overlooked ideas that it set up for the cancelled Dead Space 4, and with the reboot set to release next year and the entire trilogy on EA Play and Xbox Game Pass, there’s no time like the present to try out the maligned – but inventive – title....

Publishing giant Activision Blizzard says it has more remastered games in the works. That’s according to chief financial officer Dennis Durkin, who told investors that it has a few more updated versions of its classic titles up its sleeve. This has been a popular strategy for Activision Blizzard in recent years. The publisher has rolled out remastered versions of titles including 2020’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 – which was the fastest entry in the series to hit 1 million sales – as well as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon games....

The stress test will kick off this Friday, September 17 at 10am PT, 1pm ET, 6pm UK, and run through Monday, September 20 at 10am PT, 1pm ET, 6pm UK. The technical stress test will differ from the closed beta that was held in August in three ways. First, the goal is to scale test the servers and systems in preparation for the game’s release. The reason the test is being held over a single weekend is so as many people as possible can participate during this window to make sure that matchmaking, lobbies, and additional systems hold up....

During the E3 2021 kick-off presentation, the developer showed off a new trailer for the game that confirmed a host of new content is coming for the explosively popular title. In terms of substantial updates, InnerSloth announced that two new roles are coming to the game in its next big update: the Sheriff and the Doctor. Further to that, you’ll be able to put your deceitful cunning to work in a new mode – Hide and Seek – that’ll see one player search rooms for hidden players (and assumedly avoid a grizzly end)....

But as with any datamine, it’s best taken with a grain of salt. This datamine comes from Twitter user Ninji, who states that while code exists for a number of unreleased features, this could simply be leftovers from cancelled content. Still, the code hides some intriguing secrets which you may want to avoid if you are wary of spoilers. Ninji’s efforts have dug up evidence of two new museum upgrades for the game, as well as art sections for all three levels following the tent....

The announcement was made via a tweet from the studio’s official Twitter account, where it explained the reason for the removal in a frank and clear statement. If you’re unsure what tap-strafing is, it’s essentially a high-level in-game technique that allows a player to perform fast movement changes without impacting speed and momentum. To put it simply, it’s a trick that can be used to make you harder to shoot (especially in the air), whilst providing all the advantages of being mobile....

Not just that, but this trailer also comes with an announcement for the next season of Apex Legends - Defiance - which will be receiving a official launch trailer January 27. The cherry on top of all this, Apex Legends: Defience will be launching worldwide Febuary 8. Via the Apex Legends website, we can also get an early look at other major new updates coming with season 12. This includes Control, a new game mode where nine-player-teams face off to control certain locations with infinite respawns....

Apex Legends and Titanfall studio Respawn Entertainment is working on a new IP. According to a tweet from Respawn programmer Steven Kah Hien Wong, the game is in the early stages, and the current team is very small. The studio is looking to hire a coder. The tweet was retweeted by Respawn boss Vince Zampella who said the new project was “super exciting stuff.” New IP means this particular team isn’t working on the Titanfall or Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order IPs, obviously....