News of an all-digital Xbox One S leaked earlier this month, and Microsoft officially unveiled the new console Tuesday during an Inside Xbox stream. The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, which has no disc drive, will release on May 7, and you’ll be able to pick it up for $250 (£200) –about $50 cheaper than the standard Xbox One S at full price.

The digital Xbox One S comes pre-installed with three games developed by Microsoft–Minecraft, Forza Horizon 3, and Sea of Thieves. The new console is identical in functionality to the regular Xbox One S–the only difference is the lack of a disc drive, so there’s no ability to play game discs, DVDs, and other disc-based media. The digital Xbox One S will still be able to play 4K content from Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming sites.

If you’re excited to pick it up on Day 1, save yourself some time and pre-order the new console today. The following retailers have opened pre-orders for the new Xbox One S:

(US):

PRE-ORDER AT MICROSOFT STORE »

PRE-ORDER AT AMAZON »

PRE-ORDER AT WALMART »

PRE-ORDER AT BEST BUY »

(UK):

PRE-ORDER AT MICROSOFT STORE »

PRE-ORDER AT AMAZON »

The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition has been a long time coming; Microsoft has reportedly wanted to launch an all-digital console since 2013. Some gamers still prefer to own a physical disc–and the other Xbox One consoles still exist to serve this audience–but this new console is aimed at those who are ready to go completely digital and want a (slightly) cheaper option. “The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition was created for those who prefer to find and play their games digitally and are looking for the most affordable way to play Xbox games,” said Xbox executive Jeff Gattis.

Timed perfectly with the release of the digital Xbox One S is a promotion for Xbox Game Pass, the subscription service that grants unlimited access to more than 100 Xbox One and Xbox 360 digital games. Microsoft is currently offering three months of Xbox Game Pass for just $1, and that deal will be available until May 13 at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET / 7 AM GMT / 5 PM AET.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pre-orders-for-xbox-one-s-all-digital-edition-avai/1100-6466305/

Overwatch is currently free-to-play to celebrate the start of its latest limited-time Archives event, Storm Rising. If you don’t already own the shooter, you can try it for free on PC, PS4, or Xbox One from now through April 23.

The free trial includes every hero, including the new medic character Baptiste, along with all 27 maps. Blizzard says you’ll be able to “level up, earn Loot Boxes, unlock a variety of different customization options for their heroes, and keep any progress made during the trial when they then purchase the game on the same Blizzard or console account.”

Conveniently, the full version is on sale until April 29. From the Blizzard Shop you can grab Overwatch’s standard PC edition for 24% off or the legendary PC edition for 51% off. Alternatively you can upgrade your standard edition to a legendary edition, which includes some bonus skins, for 78% off the usual price. For console players, the Xbox and PlayStation Stores are discounting the legendary edition to around $20 / £17 / AU $33, while participating retailers have also cut the price of Overwatch’s game of the year edition.

This is all to tie in with Storm Rising, Overwatch’s latest PvE event. Blizzard’s description of the mode states: “The clock is ticking as Tracer, Genji, Winston, and Mercy travel to Cuba to head off a stormfront and chase down the Omnic Talon boss Maximilien in the all-new Overwatch Archives replayable mission, Storm Rising.”

In addition, the Archives event’s previous modes, Uprising and Retribution, are back for a limited time, while more than 160 new cosmetics are available in total. The pair of modes, along with Storm Rising, are available until May 6.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/overwatch-goes-free-to-play-for-limited-time/1100-6466323/

Fortnite updates continue to arrive, and the latest one, v8.40, adds a new dogfighting Battle Royale mode named Air Royale. You can read more about the new LTM in the patch notes below.

Developer Epic’s tease for the mode states: “Pilot the X-4 Stormwing in this Limited-Time Mode as you fight to become the last plane flying! Complete free Challenges to unlock brand new Wraps as you rule the skies.” It’s a Duos-only mode in which each plane starts with three lives. Touching the ground will take one life from you, but you can gain more by hijacking other players’ jets. In an interesting twist, the storm slowly closes in from above, meaning you’ll need to keep an eye on your altitude as battles progress.

A second LTM is also introduced in this update. It’s a variant of an old mode, Food Fight, this time dubbed Deep Fried, which features higher restaurant bases, meaning teams must build up to them to protect their mascots.

Elsewhere in the 8.40 update, the infantry rifle has gained new Epic and Legendary rarities, which each deal 42/44 damage and can be found in floor loot, chests, supply drops, and vending machines. Finally, in the update’s most important change, you can now pet the dog. Good boy.

Epic Games continues to expand its battle royale phenomenon, with another big update coming just last week. That 8.30 patch brought Apex Legends-style Reboot Vans and nerfed The Baller, much to every hamster’s dismay. You can read the full list of battle royale patch notes for version 8.40 below, via Epic Games, or read the changes for the Save the World and Creative modes on the developer’s website.

Fortnite Update v8.40 Patch Notes

Limted-Time Mode: Air Royale

Summary

Climb aboard a plane and take to the skies in this fast-paced mode where players fight to be the last one flying!

Mode Details

• Air Royale is lifting off as a Duos-only mode.
• Each plane has 3 lives, players will respawn until they lose their plane’s last life.
• Touching the ground will instantly eliminate players.
• Parking a plane on the ground for more than a few seconds will cause it to explode – stay airborne!
• Hijacking another team’s plane will add that plane to your existing number of plane lives (and cost the team who lost the plane a life).
• The storm has a ceiling that gradually lowers during the match. Be careful not to fly too high late in the match!
• Loot chests of five different rarities will fall from the sky, allowing players to upgrade the guns they are carrying as well as boosting their plane’s weapons for a short time.
  • To receive the contents of a Chest, simply fly through it.
• If players receive loot from a Chest containing a weapon they already have that’s of the same or worse quality, they’ll receive additional ammo.
  • Chests with higher quality guns will automatically replace the lower quality weapon that’s being carried.
• Floating repair kits can also be found, these heal damaged planes and grant health & shields to players.

LTM: Food Fight–Deep Fried

Summary

• Two teams on either side of the map. A huge barrier down the middle. Lava steadily rising up from below. Build a fort to protect your restaurant mascot. When the Barrier lowers, destroy the enemy’s mascot and then eliminate the remaining enemies to win the match!

Mode Details

• An impassable barrier will be spawned along the center of the map for the first several minutes. Lava starts rising from beneath the map a few minutes into the match.
• Each team will have an under-construction restaurant near the center of the map. Inside is a giant mascot head representing that team.
• If the mascot head is destroyed, that team loses the ability to respawn when eliminated.
• Players should use the time that the barrier is up to construct a defensive fortress around their restaurant.
• As soon as the barrier lowers, fight to take out their mascot before they destroy yours!
• Special red supply drops spawn at match start. These hold a handful of weapons, ammo, consumables, traps and a few hundred metal building materials.
• Players will respawn when eliminated, keeping their inventory & dropping some ammo and resources.
• 100 percent extra resources are gained from farming.
• Building resources found on the ground increased from 30 to 50 per instance.
• No explosive weapons or items are in this mode.
• A small amount of free building materials are granted to each player every second.
• The restaurants are now much higher, requiring players to build up to them.
• May the best food win!

Weapons And Items

• Egg Launcher
  • Everyone’s favorite egg-themed Grenade Launcher skin is back!
  • This is a visual only change for the Grenade Launcher.
• Infantry Rifle
  • Added Epic and Legendary Infantry Rifle variants.
  • Deals 42/44 damage.
  • Can be found from Floor Loot, Chests, Supply Drops and Vending Machines.
  • Uses Medium Ammo.

Gameplay

• You can now pet the dog… and other Pets!
• The Battle Pass Friend XP Bonus has been upgraded!
  • Instead of giving a small XP boost to each friend in your party, you now get a larger XP boost for partying with one or more friends.
  • The overall total XP Bonus remains the same (120%) and will now be much easier to keep active
  • In short, play any match with any number of friends and you’ll be getting the same amount of XP as someone who’s been playing with a full squad of Battle-Pass-owning friends.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the Season 8 trailer wouldn’t play in some cases.
• Fixed an issue where the embers from environmental Campfires would linger if the floor they were attached to was destroyed.
• Fixed issue where Coconuts could not be pinged.
• Fixed an issue where turbo building could stop if you ran out of the current type of material you were using.
• Fixed an issue with Traps being be placed inside walls, making them difficult to see.
• Fixed an issue with Traps being placed inconsistently when auto-placed.
• Fixed ‘Emotes’ not playing when bound to specific keys.
• Fixed an issue when using ‘Replay Last Emote’ before using any other emote, so it now plays the emote in the default slot.

Competitive

• New Tournament – April 20 & 21: Fortnite World Cup Online Open Week 2 ($1,000,000 total prize pool!)
  • Top performers in each server region will qualify to the Fortnite World Cup Finals in New York City. Full Fortnite World Cup details and official rules can be found here: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/competitive/events/world-cup
  • Duos Game Mode
  • Participation in this event requires both players to have reached Champion League in Arena.
  • Region Lock is in effect – players may only participate in the qualifier for a single server region each week of the Online Opens. The server region of the first match entered for that weekend’s tournament will be the one the player will be locked into for that entire weekend.
  • Format:
    • April 20 – Round One: All Eligible Players.
    • April 21 – Round Two: Top 1500 Teams from Round One.
• Added Fortnite World Cup Qualifier slots onto the prize breakout for Online Open tournaments.
• Visual improvements for Lobby panel during Online Open tournaments.
• Updated how Anonymous Mode works in tournaments to provide an improved experience for stream viewers while still protecting streamers.
  • When a player is eliminated, their name will be shown in the elimination feed.
  • When a player eliminates an opponent, their name will be shown to the eliminated player only.
• Maximum Screen Aspect Ratio can no longer be greater than 16:9.

Performance

• Resolved a performance regression occurring on PCs with less than quad-core CPUs.
  • If you’re still experiencing performance issues on PC, try manually adding the “NoRHIThread” to the Epic Games Launcher settings for Fortnite.

Art And Animation

• Increased the size and intensity of the Boom Bow explosion effects to better represent the damage radius.

Audio

• Adjusted the attenuation of the Reboot Van cooldown and Reboot Chip ambient looping audio, so that it’s not as loud.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that would cause the Shotgun equip sounds to occasionally not play.

UI

• Mimic! When bringing up your emote wheel there’s now an option that appears if you’re looking at another player doing an emote you own, to allow you to play the same emote.
• When hiding HUD elements in the options, some of them now collapse to free up the space they were taking up – the minimap for example.
• There’s now a HUD UI option to hide the vehicle control hints.

Bug Fixes

• The Limited Time Mode Victory screen is no longer pushed out of place on mobile/Switch.

Replay

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where drone speed was not saved when scrubbing
• Fixed an issue where scrubbing a replay while in Drone Attach mode would result in the camera being left behind.

Mobile

• Updated the Baller controls on default and custom HUDs.
  • Baller controls are available to be adjusted in the HUD Layout Tool for custom HUD players.
• Audiovisual shot indicators will no longer display for players in the same vehicle.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Android app icon being incorrectly displayed.
• Fixed an issue with Voice Chat while spectating
  • Push-To-Talk button is also no longer hidden while spectating
• Fixed an issue where Auto-run would not activate in vehicles.
• Fixed an issue where the Reboot Card description was missing.
• Fixed an issue where the Arena overview panel was not displaying.
• Fixed an issue with the FPS counter being shown twice.
• Fixed an issue where the weapon icon would not display in inventory hot bar sometimes.
• Fixed an issue where textures would appear stretched when on a Creative Island.
• Fixed an issue that displayed a checkmark icon on certain commands of vehicles.
• Fixed an issue where a second storm wall would appear in the desert biome during the first closing period.
• Fixed an issue where some chests could not be opened.
• Fixed issues where weak wifi halted gameplay and could cause some disconnects.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-840-update-adds-air-royale-ltm-patch-note/1100-6466321/

More details have emerged about the canceled Aliens RPG that was in development at Fallout: New Vegas studio Obsidian Entertainment. Writer Chris Avellone, who worked on the game, told VG247 that the game, Aliens: Crucible, was aiming to be “basically Mass Effect but more terrifying.”

It didn’t work out, in part due to various issues, Avellone said. “It would be like–this is going to be really rough comparison–basically Mass Effect but more terrifying. We wanted to make it. But by that point Sega, I think, was… the publisher/management relations had gotten to a point where they were just tired of dealing with [Obsidian].

“Everyone working on Aliens: Crucible was really excited about it. It was shaping up to be a really cool game. The prototype was really cool. But then Sega’s like, “Nope!'”

Avellone shared that one of the difficulties with Aliens: Crucible was to retain the element of fear in the midst of a conversation. “You can make conversations stressful and frightening. How do you do it so that an alien could be attacking you at any moment?” he said. “You can’t take shelter in a conversation with two talking heads while you try to figure out what to do.”

The Aliens game was announced in 2006 when Sega acquired the Aliens license. It was formally confirmed in 2008 for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC before getting canceled a year later. You can see some footage of the canceled game in the video embedded above.

Game projects are changed or outright canceled often, but we don’t always hear about them, which makes Aliens: Crucible so interesting.

2014’s Alien: Isolation from UK studio Creative Assembly is the latest installment in the Alien video game series for console and PC. The game sold more than 2 million copies. Creative Assembly talked about ideas for a sequel, but it remains to be seen if that will ever happen. A spinoff called Alien: Blackout starring Amanda Ripley was released in January for iOS and Android devices.

A new Alien shooter game for PC and console is in development at the San Francisco-based Cold Iron Studios, which was established in 2015. Cold Iron is staffed by people who worked on titles such as Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, City of Heroes, BioShock Infinite, Borderlands, Doom, and Metroid Prime 3. The new Alien game will be Cold Iron’s first title.

As for Obsidian, the studio was acquired by Microsoft at the end of 2018. The studio is currently working on a sci-fi RPG called The Outer Worlds that will be published by Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead parent company Take-Two Interactive’s new indie label.

Avellone, meanwhile, is among the writers for Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/canceled-aliens-rpg-was-basically-mass-effect-but-/1100-6466320/

The cheeky new advertisement for the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition showed a group of people playing Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer with split-screen. Some took this as a playful tease that the game might, finally, get updated to support split-screen–a feature the game controversially left out.

Unfortunately, it was merely an editing issue. Halo community director Brian Jarrard confirmed on Twitter that the depiction of split-screen for Halo 5 in the trailer was only “a little bit of good old fashioned creative liberty in the editing bay.”

Halo 5 launched without split-screen multiplayer, a staple of the franchise, and fans quickly let Microsoft know about this omission. Developer 343 has said time and again that it will never add split-screen to Halo 5, but thankfully Halo Infinite will have this feature.

A still from the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition appeared to show Halo 5 split-screen

Halo 5 executive producer Josh Holmes said the decision to remove split-screen from Halo 5 was “one of the most difficult ones we’ve ever had to make as a studio.” He added that Halo 5’s new “massive-scale environments,” better visuals, and improved AI might have been “compromised” if split-screen was in the mix. Not only that, but Phil Spencer says the majority of Halo co-op happens across Xbox Live, not locally.

The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition launches on May 7 for $250 USD. For lots more on the pros and cons of the digital-only system, check out the video embedded above.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-new-xbox-ad-showed-halo-5-with-split-screen-bu/1100-6466317/