Xbox Game Pass: Last News

Grand Theft Auto 5 is making a return to Xbox Game Pass later this month.Grand Theft Auto 5 was released back in 2013 and first made an appearance on Xbox Game Pass in 2020. Since then, it’s been available sporadically on the subscription-based service for console gamers.In January 2024, Grand Theft Auto 5 was removed from Game Pass but now Microsoft have confirmed the upgraded version of the game will be rejoining the service later this month.

Xbox Game Pass next month.Xbox Game Pass is a monthly subscription service that gives Xbox and PC players access to a massive library of games. To keep the service fresh, new games are regularly added.Last month Obsidian’s new role-playing fantasy game Avowed was added to the service alongside the viral card-game Balatro.

Xbox Game Pass this March including a a couple of big Day One releases.Xbox Game Pass is a Netflix-style streaming service for Xbox consoles and PC that allows subscribers access to a rotating library of titles. Last month Obsidian’s new role-playing fantasy game Avowed was added to the service alongside viral card-game Balatro.On March 18, Game Pass Ultimate and PC subscribers will be able play 33 Immortals as a Day One release.

Xbox Game Pass.Balatro was released last year for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles and was also available to play on PC. A reworked take on Poker, the additive card game went on to sell more than 3.5million copies and received rave reviews across the board.

Xbox Game Pass is a subscription service that allows you to play all its games for a monthly fee, but games don’t stay there forever. Here are the games leaving the service this month.As reported by GameRant, the biggest game leaving Game Pass in September is FIFA 23. The football simulator was only added in May 2023, but as it’s part of the newly named and yearly EA Sports FC series, the next iteration, EA Sports FC 24, is already on Game Pass.Also leaving is Payday 3.

Xbox Game Pass will be welcoming another new day one release on its subscription service when Train Sim World 5 arrives onto Xbox Series X|S next month.There are already four big games confirmed for September on Game Pass, but Train World Sim 5, which has been going since 2017, will come as a free upgrade for existing owners of Train Sim World 4, for the first 30 days of its release on September 17.For those that don’t own the previous game, Train Sim World 5 will come at no extra cost if you’re already subscribed to Xbox Game Pass. The game will feature three playable routes: West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Milton Keynes, Frankfurt–Fulda Kinzigtalbahn line, and Los Angeles–San Bernardino.Otherwise Gematsu reports that the standard version will cost £39.99, the deluxe version will be £59.99, and the special edition will be £104.99.

GSC Game World has announced it is pushing back the release of Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl.Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl has faced a number of challenges throughout development. The post-apocalyptic horror shooter was originally announced in 2010 with a 2012 release date, but the dissolution of developer GSC Game World meant that the game was cancelled the same year.GSC reformed in 2014, with work starting up again on Stalker 2 in 2018.

Xbox will be changing the pricing on its Game Pass subscription service for new players, as well as introducing a tier that doesn’t come with two of the best benefits, and players aren’t happy.Game Pass Ultimate is going up from £12.99 per month to £14.99 per month in the UK, or £49.99 to £54.99 per year. The PC Game Pass is also rising from £7.99 per month to £9.99 per month.

Doom game is in our hands.During the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 (June 9), id Software unveiled a brand new Doom title in the form of Doom: The Dark Ages.As revealed via the game’s trailer, and the official Doom website, Doom: The Dark Ages will serve as a prequel to Doom‘s 2016 reboot and Doom Eternal. It will follow Doom Slayer’s origins in the Dark Ages as he becomes the demon-slaying hero we’ve all come to know and love.In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one stood…Announcing DOOM: The Dark AgesLaunching 2025.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been revealed – you can watch it below.Today (June 9), Activision kicked off the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 with the campaign gameplay trailer for Black Ops 6. In the action-packed trailer, we get a healthy mix of gameplay and in-game cutscenes, as we gain more information about the game.Black Ops 6 will be set after the Cold War, instead taking place during the Gulf War.

Square Enix has made both Octopath Traveler games available for all consoles, PC and Xbox Game Pass.Previously, Octopath Traveler 1 was only available for Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles, while only Switch and PlayStation users could play the sequel, Octopath Traveler 2.In a surprise update yesterday (June 5) Square Enix announced that Octopath Traveler 2 would be available for Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One users immediately, while the original would return to PS4 and PS5. Both titles are also available to play via Xbox Game Pass while PC players have always had access to the titles.To celebrate the launch of Octopath Traveler on PlayStation 5 and PS4 and the launch of Octopath Traveler II on Xbox Games Pass, please enjoy this incredible artwork by artist Yasushi Hasegawa.

Manor Lords released in Early Access last week, and developers are already looking to the fanbase to help shape the future of the game.Manor Lords is the work of one-person developers Slavic Magic and is already proving to be a hit on Steam. Over 170,000 users were playing the game concurrently over the weekend (according to SteamDB), and Manor Lords is currently the second most popular game on Steam based on sales, with close to 18,000 positive reviews.However Slavic Magic’s Greg Styczeń has taken to Discord (via PCGamesN) to ask fans about the future of Manor Lords’ trade system.“When press and content creators got the build two weeks ago, they often said that the trade is OP and that it’s too cheesy/exploity to just sell one type of good and make your town rich that way,” Styczeń said in a post.

Persona 3 Reload is receiving several pieces of DLC this year, it was announced yesterday (March 6), and will be available through an expansion pass.As was announced during a Xbox Partner Preview, three separate pieces of DLC will be available through an expansion pass this year. The expansion pass is included at no extra cost to subscribers of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, though will cost £28 ($35) on other platforms.The expansion pass will include background music from Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden, releasing on March 12, new costumes and music from The Velvet Room in May, and a full epilogue in September titled Episode Aigis: The Answer.

11 Bit Studios has confirmed the release date for Frostpunk 2, with the game set for release this summer.Originally announced in 2021, the sequel to the original city-building survival game is set 30 years after the apocalyptic blizzard devastated Earth.In Frostpunk 2, players will take on the role of leader in a resource-hungry metropolis, where the expansion and search for new sources of power is an unavoidable reality. A gameplay trailer was shared earlier this year.Now though, it’s been announced Frostpunk 2 will launch Day One on Xbox Game Pass and will be available on PC from July 25.

Microsoft has confirmed that Diablo 4 will be the first Activision Blizzard title to come to Xbox Game Pass.Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard was finally approved in October 2023 after being announced in January 2022 via a deal thought to be worth £50billion.Now the first of Microsoft’s new franchises is coming to its subscription-based Game Pass service. Head of Xbox Sarah Bond confirmed the news during an official Xbox podcast last night (February 15).Diablo 4 will be available to play via Game Pass from March 28 and is said to be the first of multiple Activision and Blizzard-developed titles coming to the service.Elsewhere in the podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced that Game Pass now had 34million “fully paid” subscribers compared to 25million in 2022.

Atlus has announced that Persona 3 Reload is the fastest-selling game in the history of the company.Atlus West posted on X (formerly Twitter) that Persona 3 Reload has sold over a million copies in the first week of release, making it the fastest-selling game that the company has ever published.The game was launched on February 2 across all platforms. The game was originally revealed by Xbox in June of last year, along with the reveal that the game would be launching on Xbox Game Pass at no additional price to existing subscribers.As reported by Persona Central back in 2021, the Persona series had hit fifteen million sales by the end of Fiscal Year 2021, meaning that Persona 3 Reload has already sold roughly a fifteenth of what the entire series had sold in by the end of its 25th anniversary year.NME reviewed Persona 3 Reload, with our reviewer calling the game a “must-play marvel”.“As the sums of its parts, Reload is phenomenal as both a remake and a standalone game.

Palworld has sold five million copies in three days, despite increasing concern over potential AI use in the game.The title launched in early access on January 19, and since then, it has shot up in Steam charts to the point it had more concurrent players than games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Call Of Duty.Those users don’t include the number of players who are playing the game through the Xbox Game Pass release, and neither do the five million copies sold, meaning that the actual total number of people who have downloaded the game and played it could be much higher.The conversation around Palworld, however, isn’t focused on sales. It’s instead focused on similarities that beasts in the game have to popular Pokemon characters, and the fact that the company openly released a title in early access last year named AI: Art Imposter which uses artificial intelligence in gameplay to generate images.Several posts have circulated on X (formerly Twitter) showing similarities between Pokemon creatures and Palworld creatures, with previous comments from the CEO of Pocketpair discussing AI art, and specifically how to use AI art in order to create new Pokemon, leading people to wonder if the game used the technique at all.There’s currently no confirmation as to whether or not there’s any credibility behind these claims, however.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or Modern Warfare 3 are on their way to Xbox Game Pass this year, Microsoft has confirmed, as there wasn’t enough time to sort out a “secret celebration drop”.Activision Blizzard stated that there were no intentions for its “upcoming and recently launched games” like Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Diablo 4 to be playable through Xbox Game Pass this year.Yet, rumours swirled that there was something in store. In the latest episode of the official Xbox podcast, Microsoft CEO of gaming Phil Spencer explained that there simply wasn’t enough time to arrange the games’ arrival on Game Pass.The acquisition of Activision Blizzard was only finalised last week following repeated revisions to the terms of the agreement.

Microsoft has nixed the Xbox Game Pass offer that introduced new customers to the subscription service for £1, one week before Starfield‘s launch.According to Games Radar, players realised that the offer disappeared over the weekend (August 26) and that the timing appears to be related to the upcoming launch of Starfield.Originally, players were able to get their first month of Xbox Game Pass for £1 in order to see the benefits of the service, such as playable first-party launches on day one, discounts and backwards compatible classics from the Xbox 360 era.In March, Xbox’s head of global communications Kari Perez said that the offer had been killed off as it “[evaluates] different marketing promotions for new members in the future”. The company then rolled out a system where current users could invite five of their friends to free two-week trials of Xbox Game Pass.Following that, the offer was resurrected in July, but it was shortened to 14 days of Xbox Game Pass for £1 for new customers just a month later.Xbox Game Pass is available in three different versions – console, PC and Ultimate.

Xbox leadership wanted Microsoft to make an acquisition bid for Sega, while a “watchlist” also marked the likes of Bungie, IO Interactive, and Niantic as studios to consider buying.Currently, Microsoft is in court to defend its proposed £50billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is fighting to block.As part of the case, a number of internal emails from Microsoft have been unearthed.

Planet Of Lana, developer Wishfully and publisher Thunderful have told NME that it was the right call to make the platformer a day-one Xbox Game Pass title.Planet Of Lana launched for Xbox and PC on May 23, and was available from day one on Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service — joining the likes of Redfall, High On Life, and Hi-Fi Rush in doing so.While there have been questions on whether Game Pass cannibalises the sales of games on its catalogue, Adam Stjärnljus — Planet Of Lana’s creative director and Wishfully’s co-founder — says it was the right choice for his team.“For us at Wishfully, being an indie studio releasing our first game, it has been invaluable,” Stjärnljus tells NME. “It lowers the entry bar for players to discover and try our game with a huge potential to bring over players that normally might not gravitate towards the puzzle platformer genre as well.