Whether you are rocking an Xbox One or Series X, December is a huge month for you with Game Pass.

Coming This Month

Control (Console) – December 3
After a secretive agency in New York is invaded by an otherworldly threat, you become the Director struggling to regain control. This third-person action adventure game will challenge you to master a combination of supernatural abilities that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Doom Eternal (PC) – December 3
Now coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC! Hell’s armies have invaded Earth and now you must become the Slayer in an epic single-player campaign to conquer demons across dimensions and stop the final destruction of humanity. Experience the ultimate combination of speed and power in Doom Eternal – the next leap in push-forward, first-person combat.

Haven (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 3
Does love really conquer all? Play as two lovers who gave up everything and escaped to a lost planet to be together. Glide through a mysterious landscape, explore a fragmented world and fight against what’s trying to tear them apart in this RPG adventure about love, rebellion, and freedom.

Slime Rancher (Console) ID@Xbox – December 3
Slime Rancher is the tale of Beatrix LeBeau, a plucky, young rancher who sets out for a life a thousand light years away from Earth on the “Far, Far Range” where she tries her hand at making a living wrangling slimes. Attempt to stake a claim, amass a fortune, and avoid the continual peril that looms from the rolling, jiggling avalanche of slimes around every corner.

Va-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (PC) ID@Xbox – December 3
Welcome to Va-11 Hall-A, the original cyberpunk bartending simulator!  Take on the role of Jill Stingray, bartender at the downtown watering hole of Va-11 Hall-A (affectionately nicknamed “Valhalla”). In this story-driven game you’ll influence a myriad of decisions through the drinks you prepare, so listen carefully to your clients and mix the drink that will change their lives.

Yes, Your Grace (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 3
In this kingdom management RPG, petitioners will arrive in the throne room each turn to ask for your advice and assistance. Decide whether to help them with their problems, or to conserve resources for more important matters. Remember: supplies are limited, and not everyone has the kingdom’s best interests at heart…

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition (Console & PC) – December 4
Follow the perilous journey of The Luminary who must uncover the mystery of his fate with the aid of a charismatic cast of supporting characters. This Definitive Edition includes all the content from the acclaimed Dragon Quest XI, and adds extra scenarios, a grand orchestral version of the music, the ability to switch between 2D and 3D graphic modes, a Japanese audio option, and much more!

Call of the Sea (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 8
Dive into an otherworldly tale of mystery and love set in the 1930s, South Pacific. Play as Norah, an enigmatic woman on the trail of her missing husband’s expedition. The search takes place on a strange but beautiful island in the South Pacific, filled with secrets waiting to be unearthed. Call of the Sea is a story-led game with puzzles, where every clue leads you deeper and leaves you questioning everything.

Monster Sanctuary (Console) ID@Xbox – December 8
On your quest to become the ultimate Monster Keeper, you’ll unravel the cause of a mystery that threatens the peace between humans and monsters. With over 100 monsters to encounter and dangerous lands ahead, you’ll need to build a powerful team if you want to save the Monster Sanctuary.

Starbound (PC) ID@Xbox – December 8
In Starbound, you can create your own story! In this space-sandbox adventure you may choose to save the universe from the forces that destroyed your home, uncovering greater galactic mysteries in the process, or you may wish to forego a heroic journey entirely in favor of colonizing uncharted planets. Farm, collect, craft and build – the possibilities are limitless.

Unto The End (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – December 9
Unto The End is a challenging combat adventure game in the style of a cinematic platformer. The story is simple: get home to your family. Master read-react combat in intense sword fights. Spot opportunities to trade and use items. An adventure told through your actions; how will you make it home?

Assetto Corsa (Console) – December 10
Assetto Corsa is the ultimate racing simulator. Featuring legendary circuits such as Monza, Silverstone and Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, each track has been reproduced using Laser scan technology, offering racers the most realistic experience possible out on track. Assetto Corsa features advanced aerodynamic simulation, with each car developed using knowledge gained through collaboration with manufacturers.

Gang Beasts (Console) ID@Xbox – December 10
Gang Beasts is a silly multiplayer party game with surly gelatinous characters, brutal slapstick fight sequences, and absurd hazardous environments, set in the mean streets of Beef City. Customize your character and fight enemies in the melee game mode or fight with friends against the gangs of Beef City in the gang game mode.

GreedFall (Console & PC) – December 10
Engage in a core roleplaying experience with GreedFall, and forge the destiny of a new world seeping with magic, and filled with riches, lost secrets, and fantastic creatures. With diplomacy, deception, and force, become part of a living, evolving world. Influence its course and shape your story.

Superhot: Mind Control Delete (Console) ID@Xbox – December 10
Time moves only when you move. The long-awaited third game in the groundbreaking Superhot franchise, Mind Control Delete gives you more insight into the signature power fantasy world of Superhot with more story, more signature gameplay, more action, more guns. Keep dancing the slow-motion ballet of destruction for so much longer than ever before.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Console & PC) ID@Xbox  – December 10
Get the Royal Beettalion ready to take down Capital B and his Impossible Lair! Join Yooka and Laylee in an all-new 2.5D adventure! Run, jump, and roll your way through a series of challenging 2D levels and explore a puzzling 3D Overworld packed with secrets and collectibles.

As always some games are leaving, so make sure you squeeze in Untitled Goose Game while you still can.

Leaving December 11

• eFootball PES 2020 (Console)

Leaving December 15

• Age of Wonders: Planetfall (Console & PC)
• Infinifactory (PC)
• Metro: Last Light Redux (PC)
• MudRunner (Console & PC)
• Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker (Console)
• Pathologic 2 (Console & PC)
• The Turing Test (Console & PC)
• Ticket to Ride (Console & PC)
• Untitled Goose Game (Console)

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Have you been excited to check out Battletoads? How about being terrified by Resident Evil 7?

Well there is a whole lot of games coming to Game Pass in the next few weeks including the excellent Don’t Starve.

Platformer fans shouldn’t sleep on Super Lucky’s Tale either which is simple, but adorable.

• Microsoft Flight Simulator (PC) – Available Today!
• Spiritfarer (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – Available Today!
• Battletoads (Console & PC) – August 20
• Crossing Souls (PC) ID@Xbox – August 20
• Darksiders: Genesis (PC) – August 20
• Don’t Starve: Giant Edition (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – August 20
• New Super Lucky’s Tale (Console & PC) – August 21
• Hypnospace Outlaw (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – August 27
• Tell Me Why: Chapter 1 (Console & PC) – August 27
• Double Kick Heroes (Console & PC) ID@Xbox – August 28
• Wasteland 3 (Console & PC) – August 28
• Crusader Kings III (PC) ID@Xbox – September 1
• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard (Console & PC) – September 3

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If you needed something quirky to brighten your day, well maybe the demonic adventure Darkestville Castle will help you out.

It is out now on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and will land on Switch soon.

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Xbox and Dlala Studios revealed that Battletoads would arrive on Xbox One, Windows PC and Steam on August 20.

Fans have only been waiting 26 years since the last game, so the 20th can;t come soon enough.

The tenacity and split-second reflexes required to beat the original Battletoads has given it a fearsome reputation among fans.

Dlala’s new approach focuses on maintaining this mayhem while ensuring you have enough options to play at your own pace with plentiful difficulty settings.

It will be available through Xbox Game Pass, Game Pass pre-installation on console, and PC will be available soon, so you’re ready to play on day one.

More information on the game can be found on Xbox Wire.

Steam storefront page!

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The shrunk survival game Grounded is out now in Game Preview on Xbox and Early Access on Steam.

Today, the latest title from Obsidian Entertainment, Grounded, launched on Xbox Game Preview with Xbox Game Pass and Steam Early Access!

In Grounded, players wake up in a suburban backyard after being mysteriously shrunken to the size of an ant. With the help of BURG.L, a friendly robot, players must explore, build, and survive while confronting the dangers and perils that come with suddenly being insect sized.

Go it alone or join up with some friends in this epic garden adventure! Grounded is now available on Xbox Game Preview with Xbox Game Pass and Steam Early Access for NZ$49.95.

More information on the game can be found on Xbox Wire.

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We heard form every corner it was coming, but now it is here. The Fable Announcement trailer below.

I’ll stop writing and you can start watching the stack of trailers below.

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If you’re an old fart like me, then it may be finally time to look into those Emoji things the kids have been talking about so you can get game recommendations.

Xbox ANZ has today unveiled its brand new #AskXboxGamePass Emoji recommendation campaign for Twitter, to help players discover their next favourite game with Xbox Game Pass.

To give players a helping hand, there’s nine different categories of games to choose from, all of which are represented by their own Emoji. After designating your platform (PC or Console), simply start your Tweet with one of the following Emojis to ensure you receive the recommendation your heart desires: Action: , Classic: , Platformer: , Puzzle: , RPG: , Shooter: , Simulator: , Sport:  or Strategy: .

Dan Johnson, Xbox Lead for ANZ said: “Xbox Game Pass is changing the way we play and discover games together. We’ve seen that globally members play 40% more games after joining and more than 90% of members have played a game they wouldn’t have tried if it wasn’t for their Game Pass membership.”

“We hope our brand-new Twitter Emoji service inspires players to get creative with their favourite Emojis and take full advantage of the breadth of genres available on Xbox Game Pass.”

The Xbox Game Pass library includes some of the biggest blockbuster franchises like Halo, Forza, Gears of War, Minecraft, NBA 2K, and The Witcher. Xbox Game Pass members also get access to Xbox Game Studios titles the same day as their global release. It also includes dozens of high-quality games from independent developers, and 30% of its most popular games are family friendly titles like “Kingdom Hearts III,” “Ori and the Will of the Wisps,” and “Sea of Thieves.”

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate includes all the benefits of Xbox Live Gold, including online multiplayer, and unlimited access to over 100 high-quality console and PC games. New members can get their first month for just $1, then $15.95 each month.

For more info about XGP, head to the latest Xbox Wire blog post celebrating the 10 million member mark celebrated in May.

Head to Xbox ANZ’s Twitter and join the conversation by discovering your next game to play on XGP with #AskXboxGamePass.

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One of my personal most anticpated games of the year, Cris Tales, has a demo out now on Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One.

All I can say is I can’t wait to get home and download it, it’s gonna be a long day.

Modus Games announced today that fans of the upcoming JRPG Cris Tales can now play a demo for the game on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch (Switch version available in the Americas today, available July 21 on the Nintendo of Europe eShop). Cris Tales was one of the top demos in Steam’s Summer Game Festival, and now console fans can experience the beginning of Crisbell’s journey for themselves. As players use the protagonist’s powers to not only see the past, present and future simultaneously, they’ll learn how to use this innovative mechanic to their advantage ahead of the game’s launch on November 17.

Today’s console demo launches on Colombian Independence Day, celebrating a country that Cris Tales is heavily inspired by and where it is currently being developed by Dreams Uncorporated and SYCK. Players can see this inspiration first-hand in the architecture, culture, and even character design of the game, allowing for the developers to share their culture through ‘endemic fantasy’ by infusing their personal connections with Colombia into the game itself.

Learn more about the game’s Colombian influences here: https://modusgames.com/news/cris-tales-reveals-colombian-inspirations-launches-console-demo.

Also a part of the demo is a look at the game’s Colosseum mode, in which players will work with party-member Wilhelm to take on eight waves of battles that will increase in difficulty every round, ending in a mini-boss fight and giving players a small glimpse of the full mode they’ll encounter at launch.

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Allan Poore, from the Project xCloud team has given some insight in how they have helped keep developers together.

Read his full blog below:

What I love most about gaming is its ability to bring people to together. Whether playing with your family on the couch or with a group of friends scattered throughout the world, gaming helps fulfil one of our most basic needs: connection with one another. With many of us self-isolating and working from home, this connection is even more important.

Like many people, the Xbox and Project xCloud team has been adapting to the new environment we find ourselves in. We are having to change how we communicate, collaborate and connect with one another to maintain the inclusive environment we have worked hard to build.

The same is true with our developer community and we know firsthand the challenges that working from home presents. Specifically, many developers are unable to access their Xbox development kits. By not having access to their usual tools, game developers, artists, and designers may not be able to maintain the rapid iteration cycles needed to turn out new content for gamers. Many of the traditional Xbox remote access tools are designed to be used within an office environment; bringing developer kits home is often not an option and activities like playtesting and gameplay tuning require high frame rates and minimal latency.

We’ve set out to solve these remote access challenges by re-allocating our Project xCloud resources; going beyond mobile and creating a PC app experience for developers that runs a low-latency 60fps gaming experience that allows for continued game development. By giving developers access to our PC Content Test App (PC CTA) they can remotely connect to their Xbox Development Kits from their PC, allowing them to test, play and iterate as if they were in the office. It also prevents them from having to download daily builds to local hardware in the home, which can often take hours.   

To date, developers across many of the biggest gaming studios have used the PC CTA to significantly improve their remote-working environment. We have received great feedback on the overall quality from those within Xbox Game Studios as well as from several of our third-party partners, including:

·       Eidos-Montréal

·       Infinity Ward

·       Ninja Theory

·       Playground Games

·       Rare

·       Turn 10 Studios

·       Undead Labs​

Many of our partners were early adopters of this solution and shared this with the team:

“xCloud will give the opportunity to dev teams and also internal and external QA teams to put their hands on our latest game builds from everywhere minutes after their release. By allowing the teams to connect remotely to their devkits and take advantage of the high bandwidth LAN network from our various office locations, xCloud will also add another layer of security as the content created will stay on our corporate network.” – Guillaume Le-Malet, Infrastructure Director – Eidos-Montréal

“Our transition to work from home introduced some significant hurdles into our QA and development process. We went overnight from being able to test 2-3 builds daily to being limited to one build for the whole team, downloaded overnight. This was especially painful if that build failed in any way and could wipe out whole days. Using the PC Content Test app enables us to bring back our old workflows wholesale. Installs to kits on-site are now minutes rather than the hours it takes to download remotely, and we have the flexibility to react when something goes wrong.” – Sean Davies, Technical Director –  Rare

Microsoft’s key principle is enabling people to achieve more, and our goal in Xbox has always been to bring gaming to more people. Whether it’s by offering up the latest games on a diverse set of platforms or enabling developers to work more effectively at home, we are always looking at ways to help our partners achieve more. We recently announced a new initiative from Azure to create a fast and secure build transfer solution for game developer working remotely, and now we’re offering even more ways to work remotely by using Project xCloud technology.         

For Xbox developers interested in utilizing the PC CTA, start by contacting your Microsoft Program Representative who can grant you access. Once you have installed the application you can use the Direct Connect functionality to remotely access your Xbox Development Kit. From here you can use all the developer tools needed to develop your game such as performance simulations, network testing, system resource monitoring and general trouble shooting.

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There are some sweet games coming to Xbox Game Pass this month as well as the Jungle Awakenns DLC for Minecraft Dungeons.

Personally I have been eyeing up Crosscode so will be jumping feet first into that one on the 9th.

Out Now

Out of the Park Baseball 21 (PC) ID@Xbox

The 21st version of the award-winning baseball strategy franchise delivers the newest features and improvements in series history! It features unprecedented depth and customization, brand-new guided experiences for newcomers and veterans, authenticity licensed by MLB and the MLBPA, and a bounty of offline and online experiences found nowhere else.

Soulcalibur VI (Console)

Prepare to clash in the retold Stage of History. Soulcalibur VI is the premier weapons-based fighter, head-to-head fighting series with a massive roster of iconic characters and special guest fighters such as Geralt from The Witcher. The heroic 3D battles transpire in a beautiful and fluid world, and now features all-new battle mechanics and characters. Pick your warrior and experience Soulcalibur’s untold history on Xbox One.

Coming Soon

CrossCode (Console) ID@Xbox  – July 9

If you are looking for a game with more than 30 Boss fights, over 120 enemy types, huge dungeons filled up with countless puzzles, combat skills and a ton of quests supported by a handmade music tracks with plenty of playtime, well, in that case you are looking for CrossCode! A retro action RPG set in the distant future in the veins of Secret of Mana and Zelda. Look forward to butter-smooth physics, a fast-paced combat system, engaging puzzle mechanics, all served with a gripping sci-fi story.

Fallout 76 (Console & PC) – July 9

Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76, the online multiplayer role-playing game. Work together, or not, to survive. Under the threat of nuclear annihilation, you’ll experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe.

Leaving July 15

·       Blazing Chrome (Console & PC)

·       Dead Rising 4 (Console & PC)

·       Metal Gear Solid V (Console and PC)

·       Timespinner (PC)

·       Unavowed (PC)

·       Undertale (PC)

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