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UPDATE: Kojima Productions has confirmed that they now own the Death Stranding IP. This could mean that we see Death Stranding 2: The Beach on Xbox and PC a lot sooner than initially anticipated.

In a very surprising move this morning, former Playstation exclusive Death Stranding was put on Xbox Series X/S. The former exclusive is a Playstation IP and the sequel, which is set to be released next year, is still planned to be a PS5 exclusive, but that may change. A few months before the first game came out Hideo Kojima, the game’s creator, announced that it would only be exclusive to the PS5 for a limited time and then would go on PC. The same might happen for Death Stranding 2.

While the game has never been available on Xbox consoles before, it was available on Game Pass PC for about a year. 505 Games has published the game on PC and Xbox, while Sony Interactive Entertainment published the game on Playstation.

This is surely a surprise move as it was published on Xbox and no announcement was made before hand. Exclusives seem to be dwindling down as it seems both Sony and Microsoft are becoming more open to putting their IPs on other platforms. Indiana Jones and Doom The Dark Ages are planned Playstation releases and those IPs are owned by Microsoft. Sony is putting their Lego Horizon Zero Dawn game on Nintendo Switch and while no Xbox version has been announced, given today’s shadowdrop, it coming to Xbox does not seem out of the realm of possibility.

What do you think about this exciting new drop on Xbox? Is it a game you’ve been wanting to play? Right now it is on sale. I played it on PC and I will say it’s a unique experience. It may not be for everyone as there’s a lot of walking and playing delivery man, but it was a great story.

In a blog post from November 4, 2024, Sony has listed all the PS5 Pro Enhanced games that will be available on day 1 for the upgraded system. While the list contains some obvious first party Playstation games like God of War Ragnarok and all 3 Spider-Man games, the list also contains some impressive and unexpected third party titles, including Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is impressive because it just came out last week and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is unexpected because Sony’s rival, Microsoft, owns Activision. During the court cases regarding their merger last year, Sony noted their fear that Microsoft could strategically or incidentally degrade the quality and performance of Call of Duty on PlayStation. Clearly their fears were unfounded as they’ve enhanced the game for the Pro console.

Alan Wake 2
Albatroz
Apex Legends
Arma Reforger
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Baldur’s Gate 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
EA Sports College Football 25
Dead Island 2
Demon’s Souls
Diablo IV
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon’s Dogma 2
Dying Light 2 Reloaded Edition
EA Sports FC 25
Enlisted
F1 24
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Fortnite
God of War Ragnarok
Hogwarts Legacy
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
Kayak VR: Mirage
Lies of P
Madden NFL 25
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Naraka: Bladepoint
NBA2K 25
No Man’s Sky
Palworld
Paladin’s Passage
Planet Coaster 2
Professional Spirits Baseball 2024-2025
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Village
Rise of the Ronin
Rogue Flight
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
Star Wars: Outlaws
Stellar Blade
Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown
The Callisto Protocol
The Crew Motorfest
The Finals
The First Descendant
The Last of Us Part I
The Last of Us Part II Remastered
Until Dawn
War Thunder
Warframe
World of Warships: Legends

That is a lot of enhanced games for the PS5 Pro. Players will enjoy advanced ray-tracing, better load times, and even more polished visuals on the new console. Does this list sway your opinion of it and make you want to get one?

UPDATE: Here is the PS5 Pro spec sheet in english

The PS5 Pro has already been getting delivered to some lucky people and with that, we have the official specs of the upgraded console.

CPU – x86-64-AMD Ryzen Zen 2 8-core/16-thread
GPU – An unspecified RDNA GPU at 16.7 TFLOPS
RAM – GDDR6 16 GB (for graphics) + DDR5 2 GB (for operations)
Power Supply – 390W
Storage – 2TB SSD

PS5 Pro vs PS5
16.7 TFLOPS vs 10 TFLOPS
2TB SSD vs 825GB SSD
Added 2GB DDR5 Memory
Added WiFi 7 Support
Extra USB-C port replaces a USB-A port
390W Max Power vs 350W Max Power

Sony says that the new hardware means that the PlayStation 5 Pro will render games up to 45% faster than the original PlayStation 5. It will have 2-3x the ray-tracing. They’ve also announced that the PS5 Pro will have PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling), which improves resolution and quality on compatible games.

While this isn’t as big of upgrade that some gamers have been saying it would be, (it’s not the rumored 33 teraflops) it is a big upgrade and with Grand Theft Auto 6 coming in 2025, that game alone could be a huge system seller. With all the other upgraded games already announced for the system, it’s sure to sell well. Will you be picking up the PS5 Pro or is it not worth it for you? Are you going to wait for next gen? What about Grand Theft Auto 6? Where will you be playing it?

Clearly Tifa is the favorite, but then again, are we really surprised? Has any other Final Fantasy character come close to the popularity that Tifa has?

At New York Comic Con, Insomniac and Sony announced that Spider-Man 2 would be coming to PC on January 30, 2025. This is just the latest Playstation exclusive coming to PC, while it also joins the other two Spider-Man games that previously came to PC. Insomniac also announced that there was no additional content planned for the game.

Last year Insomniac Games data had been breached and a lot of confidential information was leaked. That information included DLC for Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, a Venom game that was supposedly aiming for a 2025 release date, and a multiverse game. Given that the third and final Venom movie is coming in a few weeks, NYCC would be the perfect time to officially announce the Venom game. It’s possible that the game isn’t coming in 2025 or that it is cancelled all together, like the DLC appears to be.

Also in the leak was the Wolverine game that was announced years ago. If the rumors are true, then Insomniac is gearing up to officially show more of the game relatively soon. Speculation has been that it will be shown at the Game Awards in December, if not before hand. If true, then Wolverine could be the next game from Insomniac Games and one of the next Sony games to be published to the Playstation 5. Given that the Playstation 5 Pro is set to be released in a few weeks, maybe Wolverine will get an early 2025 release date to bring more interest to the upgraded console.

Are you excited for the Wolverine game? What about Spider-Man 2 coming to PC?

Spider-Man 2 is coming to PC

It’s been announced that future Halo games will be using Unreal Engine. Up until now, Halo games were on a custom engine. First it was the Blam engine from Halo Combat Evolved to Halo 5: Guardians and then it was rewritten to be the Slipstream Engine for Halo Infinite. Rumors of 343 Industries using Unreal have been around for a few months now, specifically that Halo Combat Evolved would be remade using the engine and will be released on Xbox Series X, PC, and PS5. So far we don’t know what the next Halo game will be or if it will be released on Playstation at all.

While a Halo Combat Evolved Remake inside of Unreal Engine could be a good start for the next batch of Halo projects, it would make more sense that Halo 3 would be the next game to get a remake. The original Halo as well as Halo 2 were both remade on Xbox One, with the latter coming with the Master Chief Collection. If they were going to continue the tradition, then Halo 3 would be the next in line for a remake.

Halo won’t be the only game using Unreal. Gears of War has been using Unreal since the beginning, though that makes sense, considering they were both initially products of Epic Games. Sea of Thieves has also been using the Unreal Engine since its release.

The new engine wasn’t the only thing announced recently, at the same Halo World Championships that the new engine was announced at, they announced that 343 Industries would be rebranded as Halo Studios.

While Halo Infinite’s launch was less than spectacular, it has evolved into a great multiplayer experience. Every few weeks game modes are added or replaced, playlists are mixed up, and new maps are put up. While initially 343 Industries was reluctant on releasing older maps, the community created older maps in Forge and the company has since embraced them. The future of Halo certainly does look bright.

Are you excited for the future of Halo?

New Halo projects will be using Unreal Engine

People are waiting for the Switch successor to be announced, but what does Nintendo do instead? They announced a clock. That’s right, Nintendo is making an alarm clock called Alarmo. Below is the trailer for it.

In a time when Xbox had a refrigerator and a toaster, this doesn’t seem too weird and actually has some unique features to it. I like that it tracks your movement and the music is more intense the longer that it takes you to wake up. This year it seems Nintendo is giving us everything we want and even some things we didn’t even know we wanted, as is proof with Alarmo. Question is, does Nintendo have other surprises up its sleeve before the Switch 2 (or whatever it will be called) is officially announced?

We know that it is set to be announced before April 1, 2025 and that it will more than likely be released in 2025. We also know that Call of Duty will be coming to the new console. Not much else is known about it. This is the first console that will be released without Satoru Iwata’s involvement in a while. The last one was the GameCube and ever since that, the consoles have focused more on fun aesthetics rather than raw power. The GameCube was the most powerful console of its generation, could the Switch 2 be more powerful than the PS5 and Xbox Series X? Some rumors say yes, but others say it will be as powerful as the Xbox One and Playstation 4. Could Nintendo have other hardware surprises between now and the announcement for the Switch 2?

Will you be buying an Alarmo? I am tempted and I don’t even understand why, it just seems like a cool different kind of clock.

I love gaming, I always have, but growing up there was no game streaming like Xbox Game Pass or Playstation Plus, so the games I played were either rented from Blockbuster Video or bought from Game Stop. This meant that I played a lot of the same video games over and over again, but also that I missed out on a lot of games. Now between Steam sales, subscription services, free games, etc. I have access to a lot more games I couldn’t play before. While this is great in theory, it also means that my backlog has grown exponentially. Now the biggest problem is having enough free time to play them all.

To combat the lack of free time, I decided to bundle my time playing games and streaming. That is why I stream games like Banjo-Kazooie and Crash Bandicoot. I get to have a recorded playthrough of the game as well as create different kinds of content for my site and social media with it. It’s also nice because while I love single player games, it can be hard to focus on them, streaming helps maintain that focus for me.

I have a large list of games on my backlog. They games that I play aren’t in any particular genre and also don’t make much sense sometimes. Currently I am playing Banjo-Tooie, but also on the list are games like the Final Fantasy VII remake, the Metal Gear Solid series, and a bunch of others. They range from Steam games to Xbox to Playstation. While I have a preference for Xbox for a variety of reasons, a good game is a good game.

While there are tons of games that I want to play, I know the amount of time it would take to finish them all is improbable. It sucks, but that is life. I will keep at it though and will have a blast doing it.

It’s been years since we got a new Fable video game. I played the original game a lot on Xbox. Fable Anniversary and the first two sequels I only recently played a few years ago, but I loved them. I loved 2 so much that I was in the middle of a massive heart attack and tried playing through it. They were great for their time, but a lot has changed since then and I think it could really benefit from the changes. This time around it won’t be Lionhead Studios making the game, but Playground games, who are known for the Forza Hotizon series.

First of all modding it on PC could be great. Chicken kicker? What about Barney the Dinosaur kicker? How about raptor kicker? The possibilities are endless for what a chicken can be modded into. The visual mods for this game are going to be a game changer for the series.

Second is the upcoming cast. I love the IT Crowd, so when Richard Ayoade was in the first Fable trailer, I was excited. I wish he would have been the main character, but him being a giant could make his character even better. We never really saw giants in the original series, so their addition could be a really interesting change to the world. I am dying to know if they will be designated to one area or if there will be times a giant just is randomly walking down the road or through a town.

Finally, with Richard Ayoade coming into the series, it’s bound to take the humor to a new level. Even the trailer he appeared in was hilarious and I am hoping we see a lot more of him in the game. His humor could be a game changer and maybe it will be a more humorous game than the previous ones. Either way, it’s sure to have a lot of laugh out loud moments.

Fable is set to be released in 2025 published by Xbox Game Studios for the Xbox Series X/S and PC. It should be on Game Pass on day 1. Are you excited for the new Fable at all?

The 2023 Xbox Game Showcase trailer

The 2024 Xbox Game Showcase trailer

Call of Duty is a game that has a new version every year. At one point in time I would buy it every year. It’s weird that I would do that because I never played the campaign modes and I barely ever played the core multiplayer modes. I would play the horde modes though. Ghosts had aliens which was a lot of fun, but every other COD had zombies for the most part and I played a lot of them. Some years zombies might have been the only game I played.

I tried the Zombies mode in Modern Warfare 3 and it seemed like a giant open world, it reminded me more of Day-Z or 7 Days to Die more than the traditional mode I was used to. Black Ops 6 is supposed to have zombies again and I have been playing the beta for the game, but so far zombies has been locked. From what I have seen with this year’s game, it looks like the mode will be more like the classic mode I used to love.

With Modern Warfare 3 on Game Pass, I decided to try out the other modes and I got hooked, especially on PC. First person shooters just feel so much better to me with a keyboard and mouse. This was the first time in any COD that I got to level 55 and had the ability to play ranked. From what I see with Black Ops 6, I will probably play a combination of multiplayer and zombies. The new movement where you can run and dive in any direction is fun and taking people hostage (or being taken hostage in my case) is just hilarious. The maps also look great, personally I am very excited and October 25 cannot come soon enough.

If you’re a fan of Call of Duty or have Game Pass and not a fan of Call of Duty, I suggest checking out the beta and the game, it might surprise you. Are you excited for this year’s COD? I know I am.

For a while now, Towerborne was being touted as a day one on Game Pass game. It was set to release in 2024 and it would launch on the service when it did. The plan has since changed to launching on Steam in 2024 with Xbox launching in 2025. According to Xbox Era, <a href=”https://xboxera.com/2024/08/27/why-is-towerborne-launching-on-steam-before-xbox/” target=”_blank”>one of the main reasons why is because it does not require certification to push out builds</a>. Even though Xbox has an early access program, each update needs to be certified and that can take up to a week to process. My question is, should Xbox be more like PC?

Yes, when a game is fully released then maybe there should be a certification process to ensure that it will work, but early access games are basically in beta. A game that isn’t fully released yet is going to have bugs, so isn’t it better to push updates as fast as possible and not have to wait for them to be certified? Some games will release updates on console and they will run worse than before the update, so what does the certification process even do? The idea behind them is that the update will not disrupt the existing game. I’d argue that having the game run worse, would be disrupting the game. Xbox isn’t the only one that has them, Playstation and Nintendo does too, but they don’t typically have early access games on their systems.

If Xbox allowed patches to be uploaded, then they could have multiple updates a week or even in a day, getting the game to be updated and fixed faster. Microsoft has always wanted a PC in the living room and with Xbox being their living room PC, then maybe it’s time they start treating it more like a PC and less like a console when it comes to game updates.

What do you think about the way Xbox handles game updates? Should they forego the certification process for early access games?

Gamescom has come and gone. There were some really exciting announcements, including a remaster of Goat Simulator, Dying Light: The Beast, and Mafia: The Old Country. I haven’t played the Mafia games yet, but it is a series I am looking forward to playing. Goat Simulator can be hours of mindless fun, so that is something I will probably be playing. It will be on Game Pass on day 1, so it will be included in my Ultimate subscription.

What about those rumors? Well Final Fantasy 16 did not get announced for Xbox. There was an Xbox game announced for Playstation though. Indiana Jones will be coming to Playstation 5 a few months after it comes out on Xbox. Xbox has been adding games to Playstation starting earlier this year and it has had some mixed reactions. Some say it’s a sign of things to come for Xbox, that all exclusives will be going to Sony’s platform. Others say that it is going to bring in more money for Xbox so they can keep Game Pass affordable. Personally, I think that Disney had something to do with Indiana Jones not staying exclusive. Sony and Microsoft are opening up to putting their games on other platforms. The industry seems to be changing, so it may look completely different in 5 years than it does now. Only time will tell.

Next up for sure is Tokyo Game Show. Death Stranding 2 is expected to be shown off, but the big question on everyone’s mind is what about the Playstation 5? There is rumored to be a separate State of Play in September, some say September 12th, so it’s possible that we could be seeing the rumored device sooner rather than later.

Are you excited for TGS? What about the potential State of Play?