Thumbsticks at E3 2015

Microsoft’s Game Pass service gets bigger in November by assimilating the basic version of EA’s rebranded subscription service, EA Play.

The news was announced earlier this month, but EA Play’s inclusion with an Xbox Game Pass subscription Ultimate at no additional cost has been confirmed for November 10. (There’s something else important happening on that date, right?)

The PC variant of Game Pass has slightly longer to wait with a final December date to be confirmed.

The Microsoft’s FAQ clarifies that this complimentary EA Play subscription can’t be upgraded to EA Play Pro. This is the PC-only tier of the service that offers access to brand new releases, all additional/season pass content, and early access to games.

Additionally, the FAQ clarifies that:

“If you’ve purchased both Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play through the Microsoft Store when the EA Play member benefit unlocks for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members, your EA Play subscription will be cancelled, and any remaining time over 50 days will be rounded up and converted to the nearest month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at a ratio of three to one.”

You needn’t worry about your active EA Play subscription, then.

Microsoft is betting big on Game Pass with their recent purchase of ZeniMax Media and Bethesda committing all future Bethesda releases to the service and adding previous blockbusters like Doom Eternal on October 1.

Game pass surpassed 15 million subscribers this month. That’s up from 10 million in April. It shows the sheer momentum the service is getting, which will likely only now increase with recent announcements.

It’s easy to imagine a subscription-only future wherein every other service has been folded into Microsoft’s. Whether that’s a veritable gaming apocalypse or utopia is up to you!

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Sony is celebrating some of the best video games of the generation with a new sale of PS4 and PS VR games.

With the release of the PlayStation 5 rapidly approaching, Sony is highlighting some of the best games of the PlayStation 4 era in a brand new PSN sale.

Many of the PS4’s best exclusives are reduced, including a 25% discount on Ghost of Tsushima, the well-received feudal Japan epic from Sucker Punch Productions. Other discounted games to make Xbox One owners jealous include Marvel’s Spider-Man, Bloodborne, and Horizon Zero Dawn. But probably not Days Gone.

Third-party picks include Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Monster Hunter: World, and Red Dead Redemption 2. PS VR owners should also ensure they don’t miss out on Astro Bot: Rescue Mission or Blood & Truth. If you are upgrading to a PS5, most of these titles should be playable via backwards compatibility.

Somewhat amusingly, several older games are also on offer in remastered form. Bluepoint’s thoughtful update of Shadow of the Colossus comes recommended, as does the Batman: Arkham Collection, and L.A. Noire.

Here’s a selection of the games on offer from the North American and European sales. Visit the PlayStation Store in your country for the complete lineup of discounts. The promotion ends on October 14, 2020.

PS4 Games of a Generation Sale Highlights

• A Way Out
• Apex Legends – Bloodhound Edition
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
• Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered
• Astro Bot: Rescue Mission
• Batman: Arkham Collection
• Blasphemous
• Bloodborne
• Borderlands 3
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III – Zombies Chronicles Edition
• Cities: Skylines – PlayStation 4 Edition
• Conan Exiles
• Dragon Age: Inquisition – Game of the Year Edition
• Dragon Ball FighterZ
• Dying Light
• F1 2020
• Far Cry New Dawn
• Ghost of Tsushima
• Hello Neighbor
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Journey to the Savage Planet
• L.A. Noire
• LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
• LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens Deluxe Edition
• The Last Guardian
• Marvel’s Spider-Man
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite – Standard Edition
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Monster Hunter: World
• Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
• Overwatch: Legendary Edition
• Payday 2: Crimewave Edition
• Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Sniper Elite 4 – Digital Deluxe Edition
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
• Shadow of the Colossus
• Tekken 7 – Ultimate Edition
• Totally Reliable Delivery Service
• Tropico 6
• TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 2
• Unravel
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus – Digital Deluxe Edition
• Zombie Army 4: Dead War – Deluxe Edition

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Stifle those yawns and prepare yourself for some Halloween scares with October’s Xbox Games with Gold lineup.

October’s Xbox Games with Gold freebies are entirely average, but there’s more quality on offer than you might think at first glance.

Headlining the Xbox One selection is Maid of Sker, the 2018 first-person survival horror set in a remote hotel. The game plucks its scares from Welsh folklore, and although it doesn’t rank among the best in the genre, it’s an effective and spooky experience.

Likewise, Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut is not the best puzzle game you’ll ever play, but it has some visual style and pays homage to the ’80s horror movie genre with lots of comic moments.

Octobers Xbox 360 games are Eurocom’s 2003 action-adventure game Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, and Double Fine’s fine tale of childhood trick-or-treating, Costume Quest. Both titles are also playable on Xbox One via Back Compat.

The latest Games with Gold titles will be available to download and keep for Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members from the following dates.

Xbox Games With Gold – October 2020

Xbox One

• Maid of Sker – October 16 – November 15
• Slayaway Camp: Butcher’s Cut – October 1 -31

Xbox 360 and Xbox One

• Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy – October 1 – 15
• Costume Quest – October 16 – 31

Of last month’s games, The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is free until October 15.

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You’ll find big discounts on classic Final Fantasy games – including 7 through 10 – in a sale on the Nintendo Switch.

The Nintendo Switch does feature new games – every week! Bookmark our new releases page to stay up to date on that front – but it’s the console’s credibility as a retro machine that gets people excited.

Everything is getting ported to Nintendo Switch. Everything. Even PC games at both ends of the joke – Doom at the low-end, to Crysis at the high – are getting a run-out on Nintendo’s little handheld that could.

It’s a combination of that lovely form factor and the ease of portability, with a little help from a lovely 720p screen, that makes the Switch feel so good as a remaster-wielding retro machine. (And of course, Nintendo’s stellar back catalogue, from a raft of NES and SNES games with Nintendo Switch Online to the recently-released Super Mario 3D All-Stars.)

At the top of my list of things I wanted to see on the Nintendo Switch was “every Final Fantasy game ever, please,” and, sure enough, Square Enix and Nintendo are obliging. But they’re rarely cheap. You’d think for all the times I’ve bought and re-bought Final Fantasy VI, VII or IX over the years, I might get some sort of loyalty discount. Maybe a Final Fantasy equivalent of Nectar points? But no. They cost quite a lot, even if Square’s ports aren’t always that hot.

Which is why a Square Enix sale on the Nintendo eShop – featuring a bunch of Final Fantasy games, but also, more! – at discounted prices is so exciting. There’s up to 50% off, as well, which is a cracking discount.

Here’s everything included in the Square Enix Nintendo Switch publisher sale.

Square Enix Nintendo Switch publisher sale

• Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon EVERY BUDDY!
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII Remastered
• Final Fantasy IX
• Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD
• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
• Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD
• Final Fantasy Explorers (Nintendo 3DS)
• I Am Setsuna
• Lost Sphear
• Oninaki
• Romancing SaGa 2
• SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions
• Spelunker Party!
• Star Ocean: First Departure R
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call (Nintendo 3DS)
• World of Final Fantasy Maxima

The picks of the litter are obviously the mainline Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy VII is obviously brilliant; the remaster of Final Fantasy VIII is splendid; Final Fantasy IX is secretly the best one; Final Fantasy X/X-2 is another excellent remaster; Final Fantasy XII isn’t great (but the Zodiac Age remaster makes it much more bearable); and Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition is… also on sale. There’s a reason the Final Fantasy VII Remake is so great, and it’s because it steals its best ideas from these earlier iterations.

The recent remake of Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon – subtitled EVERY BUDDY!, their emphasis, not ours – is also well worth checking out, even if it is a bit of a peculiar curio. Romancing SaGa 2 is also well worth checking out, while I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear are modern-developed indie games published by Square Enix.

These deals are only available until September 30, so you’d better get on that.

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An almighty 198GB of Xbox Series X is earmarked away from your game storage purposes.

If there was ever a doubt in your mind that new consoles are PCs at heart, then look at the storage space reserved for the operating system and system files on the Xbox Series X in IGN’s preview.

Whilst you expect a Windows 10 storage requirement of around 32 GB at most, expect the Xbox Series X to reserve a positively eye-watering 198GB. This is an increase on the Xbox One’s sizeable consumption by its OS of 138GB. This encapsulates the OS, first-party apps, and space for updates, but why in the name of Phil Spencer is it so much?

It’s for the best, then, that director of project management for the console, Jason Ronald, stated in an IGN interview that they were going to keep Xbox Series X game file sizes “as small as possible”. We’ll have to see if this becomes a differentiating factor between the consoles, since it was recently revealed that PS5 install sizes were going to be sizeable.

Many players might need an expanded storage solution, then. You can currently buy a Storage Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X that offers an additional 1 TB of external memory whilst promising no decrease in “peak speed and performance” compared to the internal SSD. The price of that speed-boosting shared Velocity architecture is a hefty £220 in the UK.

Alternatively, VentureBeat ran some transfer speed tests and found that transferring Assassin’s Creed: Origins from a much cheaper (and larger) external USB 3.0 HDD to the internal SSD took 7:46.03 minutes and seconds compared to  2:18.53 for an external SSD. As an infamous install juggler myself, this seems to be a good compromise. Certainly better than outright redownloading games.

It’s rumoured that within those 200GB is the lost city of Atlantis, the holy grail, and the meaning of life. At least, that’s the only justification I can see for its size.

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