We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!
Tips for Playing Outer Wilds, Available Today with Xbox Game Pass Hello, travelers! As you prepare for liftoff, here are some tips from a veteran member of Outer Wilds Ventures, your local hearthian space program. As a combination of narrative mystery and astrophysics simulation, Outer Wilds can often be counter-intuitive if you approach… Read more
Our Approach to PC Gaming We believe the player should be at the center of their gaming experience and be able to harness the unique benefits of the devices they choose to play on. Nowhere is that belief more important than on the PC. As the creators of Windows, we have a unique responsibility… Read more
New Games with Gold for June 2019 Welcome to another Games with Gold reveal for Xbox One and Xbox 360! In June on Xbox One, it’s a solid hat trick with EA Sports NHL 19, and an all-out brawl in Rivals of Aether. On Xbox 360, and Xbox One via Backward Compatibility, play the popular and award-winning… Read more
Build Your World on PixArk with These Tips, Available Today on Xbox One Snail Games and Studio Wildcard are excited to announce a new adventure within the Ark universe: PixArk. Explore endless possibilities in an open world full of infinite voxel-based maps and a procedural quest system that allows you to build fortresses, discover prehistoric… Read more
Xbox Ambassador and MVP Gives Back to the Community That Has Given Her So Much Imagine waking up early in the morning with the sound of birds chirping outside. You approach your gaming setup with energy drinks meticulously placed in a perfect line and enough snacks for a whole day scattered across your desk. You sit down, take a deep breath… Read more
Crackdown 3 Makes it Extra with Free Update, Available Now It’s been an exciting few months since we first saw Agents band together to take on the cruel and corrupt TerraNova Corporation in Crackdown 3 with Xbox Game Pass and on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, and today we’re excited to release, for free, the Crackdown 3 Extra Edition… Read more
Supermarket Shriek Comes Crashing to Xbox Game Pass This Summer Crashing into stores soon, Supermarket Shriek is the second Xbox One title from us at Billy Goat Entertainment, an obscure Irish video game developer based in sunny Belfast, best known for the biggest nautical disaster of the Twentieth Century… Read more
Next Week on Xbox: New Games for June 4 to June 7 Welcome to Next Week on Xbox, where we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox One! Every week the team at Xbox aims to deliver quality gaming content for you to enjoy on your favorite gaming console. To find out what’s coming soon to Xbox One… Read more
New Combat and Weapon Skills in Black Desert Awakening Update In the three months since its launch on Xbox One, Black Desert has added two new regions, doubling the size of the world, four new classes, and massive world bosses that take whole servers of players to defeat. Today, we’ve added a whole new way for players… Read more
Enter a world of mystery, danger, ancient dinosaurs, mythical beasts, and cubes! Work by yourself or with a tribe of others to gather materials, craft useful items, tame wild creatures, and build huge bases to survive in PixARK!
The next chapter for Destiny 2 will reunite you with an old ally to confront new nightmares. This fall, on September 17, Guardians will return to our moon – twisted, reshaped, and haunted by our past – to confront new threats and uncover new additions to their customized arsenal.
Check out our new vision for the future.
Here’s a rundown of everything we’ve started to talk about, with some links to spaces you’ll want to watch as we roll out new information and updates all throughout the year.
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
New Nightmares have emerged from the shadows of our forgotten Moon. Called forth by haunting visions from her tormented past, Eris Morn has returned and unleashed something that once slumbered beneath the lunar surface – a long dormant power even she cannot control.
Return to the Moon. Journey deep into a mysterious enemy citadel. Help Eris slay these nightmares before they reach out beyond the Moon to cast humanity back into an age of darkness.
Destiny 2: New Light
One of our goals for this year is to make it simpler for new players to join this amazing community and quickly play alongside our veteran Guardians. Destiny 2: New Light is a brand new entry point for newcomers, that puts the worlds of Destiny 2 – and all of its foundational modes, activities, and rewards – into the hands of every player.
It’s coming September 17, and it’s free to download for all players.
Destiny 2 on PC
With all of these changes afoot, we find ourselves in need of a new home for the Destiny PC community. On September 17, Destiny 2 will become available on Steam. Current PC players will be able to bring all of their progress and purchases with them. Their Guardians, their vaults, and all of their progress will make the move with just a few quick steps. We’ll have more announcements on this topic later this summer, and we are committed to ensuring this change is a as simple and seamless as possible.
Destiny 2 on Stadia
Destiny 2 will be available on Stadia this Fall. Stadia is a new platform from Google for playing video games across virtually any screen. To learn more about Destiny 2 on Stadia, to sign up for updates, or to pre-purchase Stadia and Destiny 2, please visit the official Stadia page at the link below.
Cross Save for Destiny 2
With all these new ways to play Destiny, you might be wondering where you’ll want to invest your time. To make that decision easier, we’re excited to announce that Cross Save will become available this Fall.
With Cross Save, you’ll be able to access the same characters tied to one primary account, enabling you to have a unified experience with the same Guardians on different platforms. Your first steps will become available on Bungie.net later on this summer.
Stay Up To Date
Today, we’ve taken our first step down a path that leads to September. In the months that follow, we’ll have more announcements and reveals to share.
We’re excited for what the future of Destiny holds. We hope you’ll come along with us on the next step of this journey. We’ll have more to say about these developments all summer long.
Thanks for playing and thanks for being part of this incredible community.
Stay tuned! We have more updates for Destiny 2: Shadowkeep coming later this year!
Bethesda's E3 2019 press conference is almost here. We'll have a livestream of the entire event, so you can watch along here on GameSpot. However, If you'd rather get the news fast or can't watch the full show, we're liveblogging the whole thing for your convenience.
Bethesda's event begins on June 9 at 5:30 PM PT / 8:30 PM ET (1:30 AM BST / 10 AM AET on June 11), so make sure to bookmark this page and come back when it starts to see our live reactions to the announcements. We'll also be bringing you the breaking news as it happens and will have a full roundup of the most important information after it's done.
While Bethesda won't be talking about The Elder Scrolls 6 or Starfield, the company has its hands full with other ongoing projects out in the wild right now. We'll probably see something new for the recently-released Rage 2, but there's also Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein: Youngblood to be shown. There may be more announcements for Fallout 76 as well.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-08-2019, 06:27 PM - Forum: Windows
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6th annual Education Exchange coming to Sydney March 23-26
Every day, I’m inspired by educators who innovate in the classroom to provide the best learning opportunities for their students and by leaders who continue to pursue new ways to expand access for all, adopt technology and grow economies through education.
Building on the momentum from a fantastic event in Paris earlier this year, today, live from EduTech in Sydney, Australia, I am thrilled to announce that we are hosting our 6th annual Education Exchange (E2) down under for the very first time—in Sydney, March 23-26, 2020.
Bringing the event to Australia allows us to highlight the incredible innovations in education happening across the country, while showcasing how the education system is taking proactive steps to provide technology access to students from the cities to the outback. When I think of the best examples of leaders supporting education and educators doing amazing things in the classroom, those in Australia often come to mind. Microsoft is extremely proud to partner with this system that, according to OECD, is one of the highest performers in education.
With a core focus on computer science, STEM and Minecraft: Education Edition as well as productivity tools, Teams and Artificial Intelligence, schools across the nation are encouraged to dream big and expect more. They leverage technology to achieve more and strive for equity and inclusion. As a nod to their excellence, I see no better place to host Microsoft’s E2 | Education Exchange in 2020.
“I cannot wait to see the amazing achievements of Education leaders from across the world on our shores next year,” said Steven Worrall, Area Vice President, Microsoft Australia.
If you’re not familiar with E2, the event brings together selected Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts to immerse themselves in what many prior attendees have called a “life changing experience.” E2 inspires educators from around the world by offering them the chance to work through problems and collaborate on projects with peers who are equally enthusiastic and ambitious in their use of technology for learning.
Leaders will come together and participate in hands-on workshops and discussions on key topics surrounding education transformation, skilling and technology to help transform today’s teaching systems into learning organizations. They will also gain fresh insight into technology for teaching, learning and administration and share proven strategies to drive more effective learning outcomes across their systems.
Save the date for live, online events during E2
E2 features a number of renowned speakers and education changemakers, so we want to make sure all our audiences around the world can watch live from their homes or schools. To support this, many of the plenary session keynotes will be streamed live on the Microsoft Education Facebook page. Details will be announced on the Microsoft Education Facebook page and on the Microsoft Education Blog as we get closer to the event.
Become a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert
We invite all educators to join the Microsoft Educator Community—there you’ll find on-demand professional development and training courses that can lead you to your certification as a Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE). After becoming an MIE, you can continue your journey towards becoming a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE). Nominations are open from April 15, 2019 through July 15, 2019, and you can apply here.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-08-2019, 11:41 AM - Forum: Lounge
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PS Classic Cheaper Than Ever At $30 For Days Of Play
As another entry in Sony's US Days of Play sale in celebration of E3, retailers are offering the PlayStation Classic retro console for a record-low cost of $30, wholly half off from the current standard price of $60 (which is itself already substantially discounted from the launch price of $100). You can grab the deeply-discounted box on Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, or Walmart from now until Days of Play ends on June 17.
The PlayStation Classic is a retro plug-and-play console in the style of Nintendo's NES and SNES Classics, packing 20 beloved games into one small box. Those include genre-defining originals like Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto, and the breakout RPG Final Fantasy VII, for which Sony is currently deep in production on a high-profile, top-to-bottom remake. GameSpot's Peter Brown was disappointed by the visual fidelity and controller quality at launch in his PS Classic review, but those issues sting a lot less when you're paying $30 instead of $100, as it initially retailed.
Sony's Days of Play event runs from June 7 to 17, offering discounts across the board on PlayStation hardware, software, and services in celebration of E3 2019. Sony is bowing out of E3 this year for the first time in recent memory, instead opting to step back and quietly prepare for the hotly-anticipated PlayStation 5 announcement while Microsoft takes the spotlight in LA. PS4 fans needn't fret, however, since there will be no shortage of games for the platform at the show, even if Sony itself is not.
It’s good to be back, hope you all managed to survive with out me. This week I’ve been making a concerted effort to be pro-active with smaller, news-y bits to break-up the Reviews/Reposts/Weekender cycle that nominated much of May, hope you’ve enjoyed the wider variety of topics. Next week we’ve got a gameplay guide, at least one review and then some other goodies in the pipe for later in the month.
Mystic Vale (iOS & Android) – Full review coming soon!
2019’s conquest of digital board games continue, with Nomad Games bringing another popular table-top experience to mobile. Deck-building is starting to become a crowded genre with Mystic Vale’s Druidic offering, although new twists in the form of card crafting and a ‘decay’ system that can end your turn early promise to keep things fresh. Michael’s already on the case with this review, so look to the East next week for our own verdict. The mobile version comes with the Vale of Magic expansion included at no extra cost, although it’s listed as a separate IAP.
Also on our Radar:
Infectonator 3: Apocalypse (iOS) – The third instalment in a franchise where you play as the zombies trying to destroy the world, this one looks like it could be interesting but early reports suggest it’s quite buggy, so we’re going to wait and see.
Lovecraft’s Untold Stories (iOS) – Lovecraft x Roguelike makes for an interesting, if slightly overdone combination, but the price-tag means this will have to work pretty hard to impress. Take one of five heroes across randomly generated worlds, fighting unspeakable horrors.
SSC 2019 (iOS) – Uprising Games returns with the 2019 version of their free-to-play retro-themed soccer game. Mentioned only because sports releases are so rare, but beware the F2P trappings. New additions include improved AI, Online 2 player matches and a data editor.
While the digital adaptation still doesn’t have async play, the recent update this week now means you do pass and play for up to four players. You rotate the device between players when picking traits but feeding happens simultaneously from multiple edges of the screen. There’s also been some extra optimization work and larger text for tutorials and cards.
Those mad bastards known as the Trese Brothers have updated Star Traders: Frontiers twice this week. The first on added a new Bounty Hunter vignette as well a host of other fixes and clarifications, while the second update added new Steel Song faction modules, a new starting ship that’s great for spying, and some balance tweaks around strike craft.
The beta for the official mobile version of DOTA Auto Chess is well underway, with the app now in the iOS app store under the name Auto Chess: Origins. There’s been an update this week although I’m not 100% sure on the details, but recent big changes include the official introduction of a Season system, a Battle Pass, various Account improvements and optimisations and bug fixes.
Sales
Only a couple of sales of note this week – Ironhide’s sci-fi RTS Iron Marines is down to $2.99 on iOS & Android, while award-winning puzzle game Monument Valley 2 is also $2.99 on iOS.
You may also have spotted that Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lion is discounted on all mobile platforms, although the price is not as good as it was during the Black Friday sale last year. Also, playing that game on mobile kinda sucks. Don’t @ Me.
Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!
YoYoGames have just released the beta version of the 2.2.3 release. In addition to the usual slate of bug fixes and improvements, the marquee feature of this release is TvOS support, which is part of the mobile plan and enables you to target and support iOS based set-top boxes. They have released three documents in support of TvOS with GameMaker.
Desktop targets can now disable the file sandbox from the Game Options for each platform (Windows, macOS and Ubuntu). This permits you to save and load files from anywhere on the target system (within the limits of the OS and any antivirus or other file-permission restrictions on the local machine).
The function surface_depth_disable() has been expanded to include all target platforms. This switches off the depth buffer for surfaces, which will reduce the memory overhead. For 2D games, especially on mobile, this is very useful – although for 3D you’ll probably want to leave it enabled. For more information see the manual.
You can now create Local Asset Packages from resources in your projects. This means that you no longer need to go through the Marketplace to create YYMP files, enabling you to create your own local asset packages of scripts, objects, etc…. You can access this new feature from the Tools menu in the IDE, and the full details can be found in the manual inside the 2.2.3 IDE.
New constants have been added to GML for NaN and infinity, as well as new functions to check these values, is_NaN() and is_infinity().
Drag and Drop™ users can now add comments to their action scripts. This option is available from the Right Mouse Button menu in the active workspace.
The resource tree has new options for sprites and sounds to quickly add one or more resources to a texture page or an audio group – accessed through the Right Mouse Button menu.
A new option in General Preferences > Compiling to disable subst drives. When disabled, GameMaker Studio 2 will not create any virtual drives when compiling most platforms.
Strings now accept 4 byte wide Unicode characters, allowing you to decode and encode Unicode characters in the upper bounds of the standard (including, but not limited to, emoji). This may adversely affect some users who have been using the \u escape character (see the manual for more information).
New error reporting mechanism for submitting crash details to YoYoGames.
You can learn more about future GameMaker Studio releases in the development roadmap available here. Details on accessing the beta channel of releases is available here.
Save The Entire Galaxy When Citizens Of Space Arrives On 18th June
Sega has announced Citizens of Space is coming to the Nintendo Switch later this month on 18th June for $14.99.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because this is a follow-up to the 2015 release, Citizens of Earth. The new game is also being developed by Eden Industries. Below is a rundown of the story:
It’s your first day as the newly appointed Ambassador of Earth! Ah, smell that? That’s the smell of the slow-but-inexorable bureaucracy that keeps this galaxy running smoothly! Well, running, at least.
And now it’s your chance to become a part of that bureaucracy, finally! As you step into the hallowed halls of the Galactic Federation Assembly and give your opening speech, something seems off…no it’s not the smell of the Slorg ambassador, that’s normal. When the video screen lowers so you can show off your homeworld to your gathered Ambassadors…you realize the Earth is missing!
As the Ambassador, you know it’s your duty to save your beloved Earth! Plus, none of the other ambassadors seem to care much for a backwater planet they’ve never heard of. So begins your adventure to find the Earth and unite the galaxy’s Citizens under your banner!
The game will give players the chance to recruit more than 40 citizens, with each one serving a unique purpose. There’s a new battle system in place and multiple worlds to explore as well:
Citizens Unite!–You have access to over 40 recruitable Citizens, all available at any moment in the story, and each with their own role to fill in and out of combat. Everything has been streamlined so you’ll spend a lot less time managing and more time leading your Citizens!
A Brand-New Battle System–Put your skills to the test in a newly-designed combat system where your ability to leverage timing and reflex-based minigames make all the difference between a landslide victory and a concession speech.
New Worlds of Exploration–It’s not just Earth in trouble this time! Journey from your home planet to a variety of humorous, wacky worlds, each brought to life with vivid art and organic environments.
WIll you be picking this up on release? Did you play the original title? Tell us down in the comments.
