Tomas Franzese

The next batch of titles coming to Xbox Game Pass this month was just revealed. Leading the pack of games being added to the subscription service today is Tales of Arise, a critically acclaimed RPG from Bandai Namco Entertainment that Xbox previously leaked was coming to the service.

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is a new game about getting out of your comfort zone and connecting with others. In many ways, that’s also the story of Riot Forge. The publishing label pushed its corporate parent Riot Games out of its AAA design instincts to expand the world of Runterra. There’s only so much narrative you can weave into something like League of Legends, and all of Riot Forge’s games offered unique perspectives that enriched this world. I found fulfillment in that strategy too, as someone who enjoys the world of Runeterra, but didn’t want to play League of Legends itself. It’s a treatment that few well-known franchises get outside comic book universes, Warhammer, and Star Wars.

Of the three games available for no additional cost with a PlayStation Plus Essential subscription this February, the best game isn’t the highest-profile one. A lot of attention is going to Foamstars, the odd multiplayer game Square Enix launched free on PS Plus, but the real gem of February 2024’s PS Plus Essential lineup is Rollerdrome from Roll7 and Private Division.

The wave of layoffs that has happened over the past year in the video game industry is well-documented. Some of the biggest culprits are Embracer Group, which has laid off nearly 1,400 workers across several of its studios since the start of a restructuring program last July, and Microsoft, which laid off 1,900 developers across Xbox, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard in January. After relative silence around these layoffs, leadership at both companies finally tried to offer more transparently into what happened.

It bugs Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer that Arrowhead Game Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Helldivers 2 is not on Xbox. In a recent interview with Game File, Spencer stated that he’s “not exactly sure who it helps in the industry by not being on Xbox,” even though he understands that “there’s a legacy in console gaming that we’re going to benefit by shipping games and not putting them on other places.”

Helldivers 2 MSRP $40.00 Score Details DT Recommended Product Pros

Microsoft finally gave its fans an update on the future of its gaming business during the Official Xbox Podcast today. It clarified some of the speculation around its first-party games going multiplatform, explaining that this move only applies to four titles.

Microsoft just released the latest episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, and it contained lots of crucial details on the future of Xbox. Microsoft addressed everything from how many games it will make multiplatform to the arrival of Activision Blizzard games on Xbox Game Pass to future Xbox hardware.

Hello Games released the Omega update for No Man’s Sky today and is making the sci-fi game free-to-play temporarily to celebrate.

Apple confirmed three more Apple Arcade titles that will get the spatial game treatment for Apple Vision Pro soon: Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, and Spire Blast.

The February additions to the PlayStation Plus Premium and Essential were unveiled by Sony on Wednesday morning, and it’s a great batch of games for RPG fans. Thirteen games will hit the service on February 20, many of which come from Bandai Namco Entertainment’s Tales Off series. The most exciting addition for me is The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition, which is the complete version of a fantastic sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment.

Most companies like to sweep the bad parts of their legacy under the rug. For Nintendo, that includes some The Legend of Zelda games licensed for the Phillips CD-i platform. Frustrating game design, poor animation, and a terrible controller cemented these games as some of the worst ever made, but that doesn’t mean people have ignored them. Some of the earliest “YouTube Poops” were based on footage and dialogue from those games. And now, the new Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is full-on spiritual successor — and a Phillips CD-i-inspired controller is coming out to go along with it.

The Official Xbox Podcast episode dropping later this week is going to be a big one. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, President of Game Content and Studios Matt Booty, and Xbox President Sarah Bond will finally address rumors that have been tearing the Xbox community apart for the past week. After leaks and rumors indicating that titles like Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Starfield, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would come to Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 5 began to circulate, people got very confused about what this all means for Xbox as a platform going forward.

The survival crafting game genre is in the middle of a renaissance. Players have been drawn to mainstays like Minecraft and Terreria for well over a decade at this point, but the last couple of months have seen plenty of new contenders enter the market. Lego Fortnite, Palworld, and Enshrouded all recently launched and became some of the biggest surprise hits in the industry in recent months. Now, Nightingale is launching and aims to ride this genre popularity wave to success.

Palworld took the world by storm following its early access launch on January 19. It peaked at over 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam, selling over 12 million copies on that platform alone and amassing at least 7 million more purchases via Xbox Game Pass. That means you’ve probably played it at this point, even if you aren’t playing many other video games right now. Thankfully, the melting pot — or derivative, depending on who you ask — design of Palworld makes it a gateway game to several other amazing titles.

It’s only February and 2024 has already another unexpected hit. Helldivers 2 revels in the confidence of knowing exactly what it’s doing, offering up one of the most approachable extraction shooters yet.

Is Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a salvageable live-service game? That question was top of mind as I reviewed the latest DC Arkhamverse game from Rocksteady Studios.

Mobile game controller maker Backbone is releasing a limited-edition version of its Backbone One controller themed around Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding. If you pick one up, you’ll get a free code for the iOS version of Death Stranding: Director’s Cut, will launch alongside the controller next week.

Fortnite is set to come back to iOS in Europe sometime in 2024. This will mark the first time a natively running version of Fortnite will be available on iOS since Apple removed the game from the App Store in 2020.

Apple is easing up on its App Store guidelines so that it’s now possible to “provide access to mini apps and games” within other apps.

The Pokémon Company finally put out a statement addressing the similarities between the designs of some creatures from its namesake franchise and Pocketpair’s viral monster-collecting survival crafting game Palworld. The company says it is investigating the matter.

Microsoft is laying off around 8% of its Gaming Workforce, affecting game developers across Xbox, ZeniMax Media, and the newly acquired Activision Blizzard.

Xbox Game Pass might not be losing a lot of games at the end of January, but the most significant loss is a big one. On January 31, the subscription service is losing Hitman: World of Assassination, which is one of the best stealth gaming experiences out there. Technically, it is a collection of three games’ worth of content, plus an excellent roguelike mode.

The Prince of Persia series made its grand return last week with The Lost Crown, an excellent Metroidvania that learns from and improves upon some of the genre’s best games. It’s got an entertaining story to boot, which plays around with the concept of timelines without defaulting to a contrived multiverse story like Mortal Kombat 1. All its time travel and frequent flashbacks can make the story hard to parse at times, though.

We’re in the middle of a Nintendo DS renaissance on Nintendo Switch, which is fitting as that classic handheld turns 20 in 2014. Coming off the excellentGhost Trick: Phantom Detective re-release from last year, more DS classics are coming to Nintendo Switch this month. First, Another Code Recollection contains a full-on remake of the cult classic Another Code: Two Memories, and it’s out now. In a few days, on January 25, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney will remastered as part of a trilogy collection that also bears its namesake.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a fantastic Metroidvania reimagining of the historic series, but it is far from the first reinvention the franchise has seen under Ubisoft. The most iconic one was 2003’s The Sands of Time, which Ubisoft is currently remaking. That’s not the one I decided to play after beating and adoring The Lost Crown, though. That honor goes to 2008’s Prince of Persia.

Steam’s latest viral hit is Pocketpair’s Palworld, a game that the internet has deemed Pokémon with guns.

Xbox has long struggled with consistency and maintaining a steady stream of exclusives. Some years would be chock-full of exciting new games, while others were barren wastelands outside of a couple of smaller releases. After a turnaround in 2023, Xbox’s 2024 first-party game lineup is looking to be its most compelling in years. That’s thanks to a successful Developer_Direct showcase that set Xbox on the right track this week.

Circana’s Mat Piscatella has released video game market highlights for 2023, and WB Games’ Hogwarts Legacy ended up being the bestselling game of 2023, beating out the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

In The Last of Us Part II Remastered, you’ll experience a brutally emotional action game about how an endless and vicious cycle of violence can slowly chip away at your humanity. In Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, you’re going to play as a god-killer turnip who decides to join a gang and rob a bank.

Harmonix revealed that the January 25 DLC tracks for Rock Band 4 will be the final new ones added to the game.

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is the latest game from League of Legends indie game label Riot Forge, and it’s decidedly different from everything that came before it. While Riot Forge games likeThe Mageseeker, Convergence, and Song of Nunu have been more intense action League of Legends affairs, Bandle Tale is a comedic, cozy adventure with gameplay that shares more in common with Stardew Valley than League of Legends.

Microsoft will hold the first notable video game showcase of 2024 tomorrow with its second annual Developer_Direct showcase. As Microsoft comes off a successful 2023 with games like Hi-Fi Rush, Starfield, and Forza Motorsport, this show is poised to give us an in-depth view of the development of games coming this year, like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and Avowed. Plus, we’ll see MachineGames’ Indiana Jones game in action for the first time.

Over the years, a lot of impressive native Nintendo Switch ports have happened. Games like Doom, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Alien: Isolation all seem like they shouldn’t run that well on the console, but do. With the hybrid console’s more powerful successor on the horizon, only a few of these kinds of ports are probably left. Today, we learned that one of those will be Bandai Namco Entertainment’s Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, which will come to the system on July 11.

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Microsoft unveiled the next batch of new Xbox Game Pass titles, which are dropping between January 18 and February 8. Of the seven new titles coming to the video game subscription service over that time span, four are new games being added on the day of their release. The most noteworthy of those games is Persona 3 Reload, Atlus’ highly anticipated remake of an RPG classic.

GSC Game World’s highly anticipated S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will finally come out this year. The shooter is set to launch on September 5 on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Square Enix announced today that its “foam-party shooter” Foamstars will launch on February 6 as one of the month’s free PlayStation Plus Essential games. At a hands-off preview event held prior to this announcement, Digital Trends learned a lot more about what players can expect from Foamstars at and after launch.

11bit Studios confirmed that Frostpunk 2 will be released on PC sometime during the first half of 2024 and will be on Game Pass from day one alongside the first full gameplay reveal for the highly anticipated survival city-builder.

In October 2023, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and by the end of the year, the latter company’s CEO had departed. Now, this will be the year where we’ll see how Activision Blizzard functions when fully integrated into Microsoft. The most immediate change for those who play games will likely be Activision Blizzard titles coming to Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription service.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is the first critical darling of 2024. In my own four-and-a-half star review, I call Ubisoft’s new game “a monumental achievement in approachable, seamless Metroidvania design.” I definitely recommend you pick that game up once it launches on January 18. And I think that it’s a fantastic fit for Nintendo Switch in particular.

Since it first entered open beta in 2013, Hi-Rez Studios’ multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Smite has been a genre mainstay. Smite 2, a full-on sequel to that game, was announced today ahead of 2024’s Smite World Championship.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s series of post-launch content finally wrapped up on January 11 with the release of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero‘s epilogue. Now, having played through it, I find it to be a fittingly odd end to one of the weirdest generations of the Pokémon series ever.