Category: Games

One of the new game reveals at Microsoft’s E3 2018 briefing was for a new skateboarding game called Session. The game was released on Steam Early Access earlier this year, but the Xbox One version has now been delayed to a later point in 2019.

In a Facebook post, developer Creature Studios said the team needs “more time” to finish the Xbox One port. The game is now slated for release in late November or early December.

“We know this sucks and we totally understand as we know you have been waiting to play the game on console for a while now,” the studio said. “We know it’s not great news to hear, but it’s not particularly fun to announce either, especially for a small studio like ours.”

“It is never easy to make such decisions as we know it can have an impact on several levels, so these decisions are never taken lightly,” the studio added. “We thank you for your understanding and hope you will stick around for the Xbox One release!”

Session was originally slated for launch on Xbox One’s Early Access-style Game Preview program in October. For more, check out GameSpot’s recent impressions piece, “In A World Without Skate 4, Session Makes Me Feel Better.”

Session was originally funded on Kickstarter, bringing in some CA$ 163,716, which was more than double its funding target. The game has a unique control setup where each stick represents one of your feet. Unlike the Tony Hawk or Skate franchises, there is no scoring system and the game has a day/night cycle.

Full HD 60Hz gaming monitors are so 2010, it’s time to get current with a 27-inch QHD 144Hz gaming monitor and we’ll help you make the right choice to meet your needs.

A tablet is a great learning tool for kids, and there’s plenty of options. Here’s our picks for the best tablet for your little one(s).

HBO has revealed that 1.5 million people tuned in to the debut of Watchmen.

As reported by Variety, Watchmen’s premiere was “up 21% in linear on last week’s “Succession” season finale, and up 20% from the 1.2 million multi-platform figure posted by the “Succession” season 2 premiere.”

It was, however, down almost 30% compared to the season 2 premiere of Westworld that drew in 2.1 million viewers.

Watch our spoiler-filled discussion/review of the first episode of HBO’s Watchmen!

For comparison, Watchmen was well behind the phenomenon that was Game of Thrones, which saw 17.4 million tune in for the first episode of the eighth and final season earlier this year.

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Another Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker trailer has arrived, but nothing has yet disproved this theory of where Rey began and where she’s headed. In fact, in light of the history of misdirection in Star Wars trailers, hearing Palpatine’s voice say “your coming together… is your undoing” suggesting that Rey and Kylo Ren uniting against a common foe actually points to it meaning something completely different. It could, for example, mean that Rey and her fellow clones meeting is what Palpatine had planned… ever since his previous plan resulted in him being tossed down a garbage chute.

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The final trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is here, so let’s dive in to uncover all of the Easter eggs, plot clues and cool details within. This includes what appears to be the return of Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine (with a familiar throne), the strange Darth Vader moment between Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, our first looks at Kerri Russell’s Zori Bliss and Dominic Monaghan’s new character, a potential cameo from Star Wars Rebels’ beloved ship, The Ghost, and more.

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Microsoft only just recently released Gears 5, and to be clear, no sequel has been announced. However, one of the game’s developers, art director Aryan Hanbeck, has now spoken at a very high level about some of his ideas for Gears 6.

He said on video game composer Hamidreza Nikoofar’s podcast, Wassup Conversations, that he’s telling his art team to watch The Handmaid’s Tale for inspiration. Hanbeck said Hulu’s dystopian show is shot beautifully and creatively, and the next Gears game could benefit from taking some inspiration from it.

“One thing–the guys here will probably laugh if they see this–but I’ve been telling all the artists nonstop to go watch Handmaid’s Tale… The composition, the color, and just the cinematography and symbolism actually is just off the charts,” Hanbeck said (via IGN). “So, I watched that and I’m like, ‘Wow we gotta find a way to get more of this stuff in Gears 6.'”

The Handmaid’s Tale has a sort of grainy and dark presentation style. It is eye-catching, for sure. Gears 5, meanwhile, expanded on the franchise’s traditionally dark and grimy art style with its introduction of more bright and colorful sequences.

Gears 5 was a big critical and commercial success, so it is expected that Microsoft will eventually make Gears 6. It likely won’t be released anytime soon, however.

While fans might have to wait a while for Gears 6, developer The Coalition plans to update and support Gears 5 with lots of extra content–including free maps and more–over time.

In other news, Gears 5 recently rolled out a new penalty system for quitters and one offending player faced a nearly two-year ban.

The big changes to Xbox Live gamertags announced back at E3 in June have now gone live more broadly on console, it seems. As announced previously, players on Xbox One can now choose gamertag you want, even if it’s already taken. If you choose a gamertag that is already claimed, Xbox will auto-generate an ID suffix of numbers after an # symbol.

For example, if you wanted CoDFan1 and it’s already taken, you could be CoDFan#107 or some other variation of that. The suffix font size is smaller and the color is different, so the name you want will stand out. You can see an example of this in the image below.

These changes are seemingly inspired by similar systems already employed on Battle.net and Discord. Importantly, this is only a new option. Existing gamertags will remain intact and no one will be able to take your exact name (unless you relinquish it).

It’s also worth mentioning that Microsoft’s code of conduct still applies to the new gamertag system, so you won’t be allowed to use hate speech or other offending terms. There is a max character limit of 12.

The first gamertag name change is free, and you can do that on Microsoft’s website here. Players will see their new name on the dashboard immediately, but any new title you choose won’t show up in games until 2020, according to VentureBeat.

If you’re looking to change your gamertag, there are many more options than there used to be. Gamertags now support more alphabets to work with more than 200 languages from around the world. The newly supported character sets include:

• Basic Latin
• Latin-1 Supplement
• Hangul
• Katakana
• Hiragana
• CJK Symbols for languages in China, Japan, and Korea
• Bengali
• Devanagari
• Cyrillic
• Thai

These gamertag changes were rolled out months ago through the Xbox app on PC.

The new gamertag updates come amidst the first public trials for Microsoft’s new game-streaming platform, xCloud. Additionally, Microsoft will release a next-generation console, Project Scarlett, in 2020 with Halo Infinite as a launch title.