This week the folks at Microsoft revealed a new Xbox One X (and One S) update, complete with mods for Quick Resume. This update should be available to the masses soon, and to Xbox Insiders immediately. As Xbox Insiders receive the update this week, the wider public gets an idea of what will more than likely come to their gaming console in the next few weeks.
Microsoft has been charging for multiplayer through Xbox Live Gold since the days of the Xbox 360, but today it's making a major change to the way that works. Earlier in the year, in response to pushback over a planned Xbox Live Gold price hike, Microsoft announced that not only would Xbox Live Gold subscriptions stay at the same cost, but also that it would start allowing online multiplayer in free-to-play games without an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Today, Microsoft did as it promised, enabling free online multiplayer in a ton of free-to-play games.
There's a gaming controller in the mix this week made by Thrustmaster that'll make all your other gaming steering wheels look pathetic by comparison. This is the Thrustmaster Formula Wheel Add-On Ferrari SF1000 Edition, and it's absurdly detailed. This game works with the game F1 2020 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, right out the box - including the wheel's own built-in display. It'll work with more games in the future, too.
The most major all-encompassing Xbox Update for April 2021 delivered several new ways for players to involve their lives in the gaming universe. One way this took effect was a new ability to view leaderboards and achievements in the Xbox mobile app on game detail pages. That may seem like a small change - but the implications are huge.
This week Microsoft's bringing Xbox Cloud Gaming to a variety of machines in a limited Beta. Information comes from Catherine Gluckstein, VP and Head of Product, Cloud Gaming at Microsoft, who announced this new limited beta release. According to Gluckstein, there'll be a limited beta in Chrome and Edge browsers, to start - so it'll roll with as wide a variety of devices as possible right from the get-go.
Yesterday, Capcom revealed new details about the Resident Evil series, announcing that Resident Evil Village will be getting a demo and Resident Evil 4 will be coming to Oculus Quest 2. Today, we're learning even more about Resident Evil Village, as Capcom has revealed the expected resolution and frame rate of the game on consoles and PC.
Apex Legends launched at a time when there was some very stiff competition in the battle royale space, and back then, there were plenty of people wondering if it had the legs to compete with giants like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (myself included). These days, it seems safe to say that it did indeed have those legs, as it's celebrating a massive milestone this week: 100 million players.
Of all the different types of bugs you're likely to encounter in sprawling open world games, perhaps the most frustrating are quest bugs that stop you from progressing in some way. Many open world games have been home to these bugs, and Cyberpunk 2077 is no different. A ton of those quest bugs were fixed in Cyberpunk 2077's big version 1.2 update that launched late last month, and even more of them are being fixed today in hotfix 1.21.
Last week, BioWare talked about the gameplay changes it's implementing in the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, with the promise that it would be back sometime this week with a look at how the graphics are changing. The big day is apparently today, with BioWare publishing a new trailer that shows off the differences between the original games and the remasters included in the Legendary Edition.
On the heels of the Expeditions update for No Man's Sky - which launched a couple of weeks ago - Hello Games has released a new update for The Last Campfire. As Hello Games worked to build on the content in No Man's Sky, a small team within the studio started working on The Last Campfire as something of a passion project and released it in September of last year. It seems Hello Games is going to continue the trend of releasing big content updates for free, as The Last Campfire received just that today.
It's been a long time since we last heard from Path of Exile 2. The long-awaited follow up was first revealed at ExileCon - Path of Exile's yearly fan convention - in 2019, but since then we haven't really seen anything new from the game. That all changed today as Grinding Gear Games not only gave us a new Path of Exile 2 trailer, but also published a new gameplay walkthrough for the game.
It's safe to say that Outriders has suffered something of a rocky launch. While there seems to be a lot of interest in Outriders, there was a bit too much for the game's opening weekend and its first week of availability, with players reporting connection issues that were only recently resolved. No one likes to experience connection issues in games they were looking forward to playing, so as something of an olive branch to a frustrated community, Square Enix has announced that it will be giving all Outriders players a "Community Appreciation Package."