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More Xbox Game Pass Titles Announced, See All Six Here
The Xbox Game Pass catalog continues to grow in March and April. Microsoft today announced six more games headed to the library today, including some very big names.
Arriving on March 21 are the action role-playing game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and the adventure game What Remains of Edith Finch, while Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Michonne hits Xbox Game Pass on March 28. Also out that day is the action RPG Vampyr, while dungeon-crawler Operencia: The Stolen Sun lands on March 29.
On April 1, the fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite hits Xbox Game Pass. After that, Microsoft’s sandbox game Minecraft comes to the platform on April 4.
If you’re not among the millions of Xbox Game Pass subscribers already, you can sign up and get the first month for only $1. After that, it’s $10 USD/month.
Xbox Game Pass Upcoming Titles:
- March 21 – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, What Remains of Edith Finch
- March 28 — The Walking Dead: Michonne, Vampyr
- March 29 – Operencia: The Stolen Sun
- April 1 – Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite
- April 4 – Minecraft
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/more-xbox-game-pass-titles-announced-see-all-six-h/1100-6465741/
Fortnite Reaches Huge New Player Milestones
The massively popular battle royale game Fortnite continues to grow. Epic Games announced at GDC 2019 this week that the title has now reached 250 million registered players, which is up from 200 million in December.
In terms of people actually playing the game, Epic also revealed that Fortnite reached a new concurrent player record of 10.8 million. That’s up slightly from February when 10.7 million people logged on at the same time during the Marshmello in-game concert.
While Fortnite is one of the most popular games in recent history, it may still be behind Minecraft on one metric. Microsoft’s sandbox game reportedly has 91 million monthly players, which is ahead of Fortnite’s 78.3 million. However, these figures haven’t been updated in some time, so it remains to seen if anything has changed.
Remarking on Fortnite’s massive success, Epic boss Tim Sweeney told Engadget, “It’s a real game. It’s a shooter. It’s worldwide. It’s the first shooter with a huge female population. Somebody estimated it at roughly 35 percent, which is unprecedented–why isn’t it 50?–but it’s unprecedented for anything like this. It’s because it brings together players in a social experience.”
In other Fortnite-related news, Epic announced at GDC that it’s created a $100 million fund for developers that was made possible thanks to the success of Fortnite. What’s more, Epic announced that Quantic Dream’s PlayStation-exclusive titles including Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human are coming to the Epic Games Store this year.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fortnite-reaches-huge-new-player-milestones/1100-6465739/
Google Reveals Stance On Exclusive Games For Stadia
Google’s Stadia is a service that allows players to stream video games via the cloud across a variety of different devices. With most of the finer details about Stadia still under wraps, we sat down with Google VP Phil Harrison at GDC 2019 to further dive into the service.
During the interview, we asked about game exclusives on Stadia. “It was a conversation that I had with Google leadership before I joined the company.” Harrison said. “[My] point of view was in order to really deliver on the promise of this platform, we had to build our own games. We had to build our own experiences, and that was a very fundamental, strategic direction that we needed to move in.”
He continued, “I understand that [for a gamer] the word ‘exclusive’ can sometimes be a challenging terminology. [I would] rather we moved the narrative towards [games] that are built specifically for a data center. And if those games also show up on other streaming platforms, that’s okay, because what that means is that the developers are starting to innovate and think about the future and [build] a 21st century game, rather than a 20th century game.”
Harrison further clarified that any game that Google makes will “obviously only” be on Stadia. At GDC 2019, Google revealed it has a new first-party studio that’s being led by Jade Raymond, a former head at both Ubisoft and EA. The new studio hasn’t announced any specific games or projects it’s working on yet.
We also asked Harrison about Sadia’s pricing model. Apparently, one already exists, but Harrison said Google just isn’t ready to talk about it yet. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot predicts Stadia will launch with a “multitude” of pricing models. “Either you buy full price and you play; or you will be able to also register, possibly, to play either one hour or two hours a day. There will be plenty of ways,” he said.
Harrison did confirm that Stadia will never support offline downloads. It’s just “not technically possible,” he told GameSpot. “It would be a compromise of our vision if we were to do that.”
During its GDC 2019 keynote presentation, Google announced Stadia will release within 2019, and come to the US, Canada, UK, and “most of” Europe. The only games confirmed for the service as of this time are Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Doom Eternal.
We have more information on how cloud gaming works, and have outlined the top companies investing in gaming’s possible cloud-based future.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/google-reveals-stance-on-exclusive-games-for-stadi/1100-6465738/
