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Even as consumers struggle to pick up a new console, Microsoft is looking towards the future. Today, the tech giant has announced that new Xbox hardware is currently in development, although we won’t see it for quite some time.

That’s according to Liz Hamren, Microsoft’s CVP of Gaming Experiences and Platforms, who also said in a press briefing that cloud-based development would be essential to the company going forward. “Cloud is key to our hardware and Game Pass roadmaps,” Harmen said, “but no one should think we’re slowing down on our core console engineering. In fact, we’re accelerating it.”

“We’re already hard at work on new hardware and platforms, some of which won’t come to light for years.”

With the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S just half a year old at this point, it’s more of a surprise that Microsoft is already publicly acknowledging its new hardware. Until the company is ready to reveal that new tech, it will be doubling down on cloud-based and streaming services. Along with revealing that new hardware is in the works, Microsoft also revealed that it will be building Xbox streaming tech into TVs, and producing Xbox streaming devices.

It should come as no surprise that, with the success of Game Pass, Microsoft and Xbox would want to make its streaming services widely accessible, even to consumers that don’t necessarily own an Xbox console. In a video released today, Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, said that Game Pass is “transforming how our entire industry thinks about Xbox and how we can reach a wider audience.” Naturally, part of Game Pass’s success has been the constant addition of games the first day they launch. That won’t be slowing down anytime soon, as Microsoft has said that it wants to launch at least one new first-party title every three months.

While Microsoft is working on new Xbox hardware, the company is clearly pushing for Xbox to be something much larger. Whether that’s a larger gaming service of some kind has yet to be seen. Regardless of how Xbox changes its approach to gaming in the coming years, it still seems like players will be able to put a console down next to their TV.

While we probably won’t see any new Xbox hardware soon, we will get a peek at some of the new releases coming from its first-party developers. The joint Xbox & Bethesda Show is just around the corner, set to air on Sunday, June 13. If you’re not looking forward to Xbox’s showcase, there’s a ton more to expect from E3 in terms of shows and games.

In the plot of the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter, a teenager is recruited to fight an interstellar battle after unknowingly proving himself worthy by means of a high score on an otherwise unassuming arcade cabinet. With the Mario Maker series, and now Game Builder Garage, I feel like Nintendo is doing something similar, but for future game designers. Game Builder Garage gives us a powerful collection of tools to create our very own games, but based on my output so far I doubt Shigeru Miyamoto will appear at my doorstep to invite me to join the team anytime soon. Even so, it’s impressive that by the end of Game Builder Garage’s seven interactive lessons I already had ideas for half a dozen games and the knowledge of how to build them.

Going in I was expecting Game Builder Garage to be fairly limited in the types of games you create, in the same way Super Mario Maker is powerful but limits you to creating… Super Mario levels. However, after completing all the lessons, which range from a simple single-screen “tag” game to more complex, fully 3D games, I see now there’s almost no limit to the type of game you can create. Yes, you’re stuck with the objects and graphics Game Builder Garage gives you, but how you build them and interact with them is incredible in its scope. Just as people constantly come up with new and novel ways to make Super Mario Maker levels, I fully expect to see some truly astonishing games being created with Game Builder Garage and its much more robust tools and feature set.

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Its programming system offers a visual representation of all sorts of programming concepts: comparisons, subroutines, and conditional statements, all of which are presented through little creatures known as Nodons. And while it’s fairly technical, Game Builder Garage just oozes charm from its smart, fun writing and a finely honed edge that only Nintendo could provide. The engine is not without its limitations, naturally, but for the uninitiated, it’s a great place to get started building real games. When your games are finished, you can share them with friends, although I haven’t been able to test this functionality. (No, not because I don’t have friends! It’s just not out yet.)

Simple Complexity

Learning to program can be a daunting task, but Game Builder Garage’s lessons are great at walking you through the steps required to build seven different types of games. Each lesson grows increasingly complex, but at no time during any of the lessons did I ever feel lost or frustrated. Your host, Bob, walks you through the steps for each part, introducing you to the Nodons responsible for each bit of logic or subroutine. There are Object Nodons for simple things like boxes, cylinders, and spheres. There are also Nodons for operations like arithmetic and counting, as well as the Boolean operators AND and NOT. There’s no OR operator, but its existence is implied through the connections of Nodons. For example, you connect two different inputs to your AND Nodon (say, a constant like the integer 1 and a constant 0 to the same AND Nodon creates a de facto OR). 

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It reminds me of old computer magazines, which often contained long programs in BASIC. You’d spend a few hours inputting the code into whatever crappy home computer you had at the time, and if you managed to enter a thousand lines of BASIC so you could make your screen turn a bunch of different colors you’d also absorb some programming concepts without you even realizing it. Of course, it’s important to point out that Game Builder Garage is not going to directly teach you how to code anything outside of it. Instead, it teaches you how to build a game using a custom game engine. That said, while you’re arranging your Nodons and their flows, you’re learning how games work under the hood, and that understanding can translate to game design beyond Game Builder Garage’s interface. 

Here’s a quick example of how the Nodons work: You place a Person object Nodon on your edit screen. A quick glance at your game in action and yup: there’s a person. But that person is just standing there, looking charming, unable to do anything beyond its simple standing animation loop. So you go back to the edit screen and call up Input Nodons. Drop the L-Stick onto your screen and drag its left/right connection to the horizontal connector on the Person object. Check back on your game screen and now you can control your Person object’s movement. No muss, no fuss – and it only gets more complex and interesting from there. 

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The concepts don’t quite translate 1:1 to actual coding, but doesn’t mean Game Builder Garage doesn’t have a robust set of tools. Quite the contrary: you can build a simple platformer or a complex, 3D maze complete with moving platforms, complex randomization, and giant aliens that shoot apples at you.  It just means you won’t be pulling up Sublime Text or Notepad++ and debugging line after line of code. To be honest, I kind of wish there were a way to view the code involved with game creation, even if it’s in some special Game Builder Garage programming language rather than a common game development language like C# or C++. It would help connect the visual workflow of the game engine with the concepts of writing actual code. I understand it would be messy, but for amateur coders like myself, seeing the code would be a great tool in helping me improve and understand some of the more complex logic involved.

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The lack of a requirement to learn the syntax and peculiarities of a coding language works in Game Builder Garage’s favor. It makes creating games much more accessible, but it’s still no walk in the park. If you’re expecting Super Mario Maker levels of what-you-see-is-what-you-get, you’re going to be disappointed. The Nodons are great at giving you a visual representation of the game you’re building and the pieces and parts that make it work, but its edit screen is largely an abstraction. It took me a little while to force my brain to think of how my games’ various components will appear in the play screen rather than the edit screen. The lessons help out enormously in that regard. 

Test Your Skills

After completing a lesson, which can run anywhere from 20 minutes to 80 or more minutes, Game Builder Garage requires you to finish a series of puzzles before you can unlock the next lesson. It’s basically a quiz of the concepts you just learned, and there are five different puzzles to solve that helped to cement them into my mind before they could be pushed out by something new. There are clues embedded in each puzzle, mostly hints about where to connect Nodons and whether or not you need to edit their properties. Any property not associated with the correct answer is greyed out, so you can’t get hopelessly lost chasing down a wrong answer.

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My problem with the puzzles is that many of them are solvable at a glance, while others… not so much. I like a challenge, but 10% of the puzzles required some manner of constant or numerical range that came down to educated guesses. With the other 90%, any time I was stuck it was something obvious I overlooked. Anyone who’s ever spent an hour debugging actual busted code, only to find out you forgot to close a parenthesis knows the weird mix of relief and embarrassment when you finally figure it out. 

Its entire presentation, from its adorable Nodons to your tutors Bob and Alice, is just so fun and brimming with personality. The writing is also great, something I never thought I’d say about a piece of educational software, with distinct identities given to each “character.” I found game creation to be a challenging, but rewarding experience, and this is exactly the sort of software a parent raising a hopeful game designer should try. It’s probably a little too complicated for a pre-teen, but with some parental guidance it’s a phenomenal way to teach kids the basics of game design. 

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My one beef with building came when I messed something up, to a large degree. There’s no bulk-select, so to delete two dozen Nodons meant having to select them individually rather than all at once. A way to select multiple Nodons would help enormously in copy-paste and mass-deletions. I guess the lesson here is “don’t mess up.”

As for me, a grown man with a little Perl, Python, C++ and Excel formula knowledge, I was charmed the entire time, and now I want to look into more robust game development engines. At the very least I can finish that RPG Maker game I started in 2015. For now, I’m content with my Game Builder Garage creation Super Falling Man Fantasy, which I’ll be sharing with the world once I finish update version 2.0.

Developer Navegante Entertainment and publisher Team 17’s Greak: Memories of Azur is an upcoming 2D platformer with charming hand-drawn animation and a lovely orchestral soundtrack. It looks to scratch the same itch as games like Hollow Knight, along with other classic action-games and metroidvanias. In this exclusive trailer for GameSpot’s Play For All, highlighting the latest news and events of the Summer games season, we not only get a more detailed look at the game, but also its release date, set for August 17.

In the trailer embedded below, you can also see Memories of Azur’s main gameplay conceit–that you play as three siblings, Greak, Adara, and Raydel–all of whom work together. The titular Greak seems to take on the role of a rogue, while Adara is more of a mage, and Raydel is a warrior.

Sometimes you’ll play as a sibling on their own, but you’ll mostly be controlling multiple characters at once, swapping between them when their skills and problem-solving abilities are needed. This opens up new avenues of play in both combat and exploration.

For example, in combat, Adara excels at long range while Raydel can tank attacks and fight up close. With the press of a button, you can switch between who you’re controlling, and you’ll regularly be doing so in order to tackle different enemies and solve environmental puzzles.

Greak: Memories of Azur is scheduled to release for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Switch, and PC (Steam).

With Founders Editions out the door, it’s time to start exploring aftermarket versions of the RTX 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti graphics cards. Today, I’m looking at the MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X 12G. It’s bigger, better, and brighter than the original RTX 3080 Ti but at expected pricing of $1299 to $1349, is it worth the high cost to upgrade?

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MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X 12G – Design and Features

MSI’s Suprim line-up represents the company’s top of the line. From design to cooling to performance, the RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X just drips quality. On the exterior, the card is downright gigantic. At three slots wide, 13.2 inches long, and weighing in just over four pounds: GPU sag, thy name is Suprim X. Thankfully, MSI includes an adjustable GPU bracket to hold its weight and protect your PCIe slot.

The card itself is gorgeous in its aluminum and RGB backlit glory. The front shroud is trimmed in brushed metal, offset with two different shades of grey. Two RGB strips surround the middle fan to add that touch of flair if you’d like to mount it vertically. Around the back there’s a thick metal backplate to help dissipate heat, but it’s also trimmed in two different hues of gray and has a brightly backlit MSI dragon icon to catch the eye. Along the edge is another customizable RGB strip and logo. Many high-end cards seem clearly designed to to mount vertically but the Suprim X looks best in a normal horizontal mount. If RGB isn’t your thing, you can turn the lighting off and it will still look good but, in my opinion, this is one of the best-looking cards so far this generation – if you can fit it in your case. 

Being so large does have its benefits in cooling. The Suprim X uses MSI’s TriFrozr 2S cooling system. This combines three Torx 4.0 fans with a high contact nickel baseplate for the GPU running into heatpipes through that massive heatsink, and a dedicated heatpipe and heatsink just for the VRAM. The fans feature combined blades to push more air. The fins on the heatsink have also been customized to reduce airflow noise and lower the sound profile of the card. 

It works well, too, even in the Gaming BIOS mode. Near the three-pin power connector, MSI has added a BIOS selector switch that lets you choose between Gaming and Silent modes. Both have the same clock speed, but Gaming Mode allows the fans to ramp a little higher to keep the card cool. In this mode, the card peaked at 68C after repeat runs of Unigine Heaven and hovered closer to 65C when playing actual games. This was also in a hot 26C office, so I would expect the card to run cooler in an air conditioned setting. In Silent Mode, this ramped to 72C but I honestly didn’t find it necessary. The cooling system is performant enough that it never needed to ramp the fans up obnoxiously high and was on par, if not a bit better, than the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition in acoustic performance. 

All of this plays into the high-performance design of the card. As you might guess from the ramped up cooler and extra PSU plug compared to the original, the Suprim X is all about performance. It increases the power draw from the Founders Edition a full 50 watts, bringing it to 400 watts total. The added power in combination with high quality components for delivery and regulation make this an exceptionally good choice for gamers looking to overclock and squeeze some added performance out of their card. It has thermal and electrical headroom to spare. 

Of course, you’d expect a card of this caliber to come with its own factory overclock and it certainly does. The original RTX 3080 Ti features a rated Boost Clock of 1665 MHz. The Suprim X turns the dial all the way up to 1845 MHz in Extreme Mode (enabled in the Dragon Center software). Nvidia’s GPU Boost technology automatically pushes cards beyond this under load, assuming it’s not burning up or starved for power, but even here the Suprim X outperformed the original. The Founders Edition peaked at 1935 MHz and hovered closer to 1880 MHz in games. This card, on the other hand, peaked at 2025 MHz and hovered just over 1900 MHz. This means the Suprim X will more frequently pull in those extra few frames of performance without ever needing to worry about a manual overclock. 

For a full breakdown of the RTX 3080 Ti, read the original review here. The core specs are the same, including 10,240 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR6X video memory, and the core architecture of Nvidia’s ampere GPU. Also carried over are the three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and single HDMI 2.0b with a maximum resolution of 8K across all four outputs. 

MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X 12G – Performance

Test system: Z390 Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme Motherboard, Intel Core i9-9900K CPU (stock), Corsair H115i PRO RGB 280mm AIO CPU Cooler, 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200, 1TB Samsung EVO Plus NVMe SSD, Corsair HX1200 1200-watt power supply.

What really matters most is how a GPU performs, so let’s take a closer look. We test our GPUs using a mix of synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. All games are set to Ultra settings unless otherwise noted. To get an eye on how this card performs the Founders Edition original, I limited the scope of testing to focus just on the most relevant cards. 

Beginning with synthetic benchmarks, the MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X 12G performed admirably. In 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, it managed to beat the RTX 3090 by a significant margin. The 3090 maintained its lead in Unigine Heaven but only by a hair. 

Turning to ray tracing specific tests, the Suprim X just dominates. The results in the FPS tests are close between both RTX 3080 Tis and the 3090 but the MSI lands on top. In 3DMark Port Royal, it again bests the RTX 3090.

Let’s see how it performs in games. 

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Starting off, we have our usual selection of five core games at all three major resolutions. Here the card averaged 4% faster than the Founders Edition at 4K, 3% faster at 1440p and was less than 1% off at 1080p. Compared against the RTX 3090, it was within 1% in average FPS at 4K but 2% slower at 1440p and 1080p. When put against AMD’s RX 6800 XT (reviewed here) which has an MSRP of roughly half that of this model, the Suprim X was 36% faster at 4K, 19% faster at 1440p and 10% faster at 1080p. With Metro Exodus and the inflation of DLSS removed, those averages drop to 17%, 9%, and 1% respectively.

With only five titles, you can only glean so much, so I put each card through an expanded series of 4K testing across 10 games. Since the 3080 Ti is very much a “4K Gaming Card,” this is an apt area to dive further in. Here, the card averaged 1% faster than the RTX 3090, 4% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, 16% faster than the standard RTX 3080, and 19% faster than the RX 6800 XT in rasterization titles.

This is definitely an improvement from the Founders Edition. While it beating the RTX 3090 is impressive, it’s not surprising given how close the FE was to that mark anyway. Does that make it a better buy? If you’re looking at sheer FPS and overclocking potential, it is a better choice than the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition. Consider, however, that pricing at $1,299 – $1,349 would position it closer than ever to the RTX 3090’s $1,499 – which has double the VRAM for content creators. Both cards are incredibly expensive, halo products if ever there were any, but in that light paying extra for the added VRAM seems to be the smarter buy, especially to future-proof against the memory-hungry games sure to release over the next several years. 

That makes this a rather confusing card to position. Like I opined in my original review, most gamers would absolutely be better served picking up an RTX 3080 as soon as they can find one at MSRP. Yet, if you have your heart set on a 3080 Ti, there is no mistaking that this is an excellent choice that is clearly ready to be pushed further with a custom overclock. It’s just a shame that pricing is so high because while this card may just be the best “gaming” card on the market right now, it’s so cost-prohibitive that it’s hard to recommend to anyone other than high-level enthusiasts. That said, price to performance value has always gone out the window when it comes to the upper echelons of graphics cards, so those looking for the best of the best typically are prepared to pay for it.

Since From Software released a trailer for Elden Ring at E3 2019, the developer has been fairly quiet on what’s going on with the upcoming game. We don’t know whether Elden Ring will make an appearance at E3 2021, but we sure hope it does.

Below, we go over everything that we currently know about Elden Ring (spoiler alert: it’s not much) and list what we hope to see of the game at E3 this year.

What We Know So Far

We know precious little about Elden Ring–its announcement trailer, in traditional From Software fashion, was not very straightforward in explaining what’s going on or what the player will be doing or why the player will want to do it. The developer is keeping details very close to the chest.

We do know that From Software is developing the game in collaboration with Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin when it comes to the construction of its story and world. That world will seemingly be a bit more open than past From Software titles–you’ll explore an open environment composed of different kingdoms, each ruled by a powerful entity.

Whether your overall goal is to defeat each of these rulers is unclear, but we do know that you can fight them, and beating them will allow you to claim their unique powers for yourself (not unlike how you can transfigure boss souls in the Dark Souls series to acquire special abilities and weapons).

In an interview with GameSpot, Xbox head Phil Spencer said, “As somebody who’s played all of Miyazaki’s games over at least the last decade, [Elden Ring] is clearly the most ambitious game that he’s done. I mean, I love his games, but seeing some of the gameplay mechanics stuff that he’s tackling, he and the team are tackling this time, of the setting, working with another creator in terms of story. I love it.”

Elden Ring is currently only scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC, though we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the game is also coming to Xbox Series X|S and PS5.

Related News:

What’s Confirmed For E3 2021

Currently nothing Elden Ring-related has been confirmed for E3 2021. That said, the game’s publisher, Bandai Namco, is hosting its own livestream during E3. Elden Ring could make an appearance there.

Elden Ring was also first teased during Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference, so we could see the game make an appearance during this year’s Xbox & Bethesda E3 showcase. No way of knowing until it airs.

What We Hope To See At E3 2021

At this point? Anything.

We’d love to see a deep dive gameplay showcase of Elden Ring which explains whether the game embodies a similar structure to From Software’s Soulsborne games or whether it takes a page out of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice‘s book and is only loosely inspired by what the developer has done before. Getting a concrete look at Elden Ring in action would be so cool!

Barring that, another cinematic trailer that’s not as opaque in its symbolism would be nice–we’d love to get a little bit of concrete information about what we’re actually doing in Elden Ring and why we’re doing it.

Honestly, at this point, we’d settle for a 10-second teaser that simply confirms whether Elden Ring is scheduled to come out this year. We just want to see something.

Polybius is an urban legend that has been around for a few decades, with stories detailing a supposedly mind-altering arcade game planted by the government in Portland, Oregon. No evidence exists to actually prove it was real, and in fact there is evidence to the contrary, but a cheeky scaled-down replica is available to preorder now.

Available from Numskull via its Quarter Arcades line, the Polybius replica costs $144 via preorder with an expected release date this August. It was previously available via Kickstarter (I backed it after trying to convince myself I didn’t need it) and because it’s not based on a real game, it doesn’t contain an arcade ROM like the other Quarter Arcades cabinets.

Instead, it plays spooky visuals and sound effects to hypnotize you and the back functions as a USB power hub. You can power up to 10 other cabinets via the ports, meaning you’ll only need one outlet on your wall in order to make your entire tiny arcade playable. It also comes in a “mysterious black box” as a nod to the urban legend.

Polybius is such a popular urban legend that it has made its way from arcade obsessives to mainstream pop culture, appearing as an Easter egg in shows like The Simpsons and The Goldbergs. YouTuber Stuart Ashen liked the story so much that he even made a feature-length film about it.

Numskull’s other Quarter Arcades games include Pac-Man 40th Anniversary, Galaga, Galaxian, and Dig Dug. You can check them all out on the official website.

Despite announcing a number of upcoming ways to play Xbox without a console or PC, a Microsoft exec insists that Xbox consoles remain its “flagship experience” – and says work has already begun on “new hardware and platforms.”

In a video shown for press, CVP of Gaming Experiences & Platforms, Liz Hamren explained that, despite the company’s growing interest in cloud streaming for gaming, “We’re already hard at work on new hardware and platforms, some of which won’t come to light for years.”

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In the video, Microsoft execs repeatedly make clear that the Xbox experience can, and will, expand beyond traditional platforms. As Phil Spencer puts it, by the company’s calculations, there are a potential 3 billion gamers on Earth, but only 200-250 million will consider buying a console. But Hamren makes clear that the company is putting emphasis on those console owners:

“While we continue to expand in PC and mobile, console remains our flagship experience. We want to deliver the most powerful, capable consoles in the world, devices that empower our players to enjoy amazing games for years to come, including gameplay we can’t even imagine yet.”

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It’s clear that Microsoft sees a new, multi-pronged strategy in its future – providing high-end experiences using traditional hardware, while offering multiple options – from TV apps to streaming devices – to those who would prefer to stream their games.

It’s a mjor moment not just for Xbox, but Microsoft as a whole. After years treating Xbox as something of an island, the tech giant is now “all in on gaming”.

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New-school RPG Monark will be making its way West in 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, and Switch, developer Lancarse and publisher NIS America have announced. Developed by a studio made up of several people who previously worked on the Shin Megami Tensei series, Monark will feature English and Japanese voice acting and is set in an academy that contains the demon-filled dimension of Otherworld.

To survive in this realm, you’ll need to harness their Authority of Vanity, which can be used to conjure a battalion of Fiends who are powered by their master’s “Ego” according to Lancarse. To power up your Ego, you’ll have to develop it through various psychological tests and gain enough power to stand against the seven Pactbearers who have corrupted the academy. Basically, the madder you are, the more powerful you’ll become at the risk of permanently losing your sanity.

Fortunately, various allies and faculty staff will stop you from going off the deep end entirely, and you can unlock different Fiends to command in battle through the use of a freeform tactical system. Preorders are now open for the game, which will also be available in a $100 limited edition that includes a collector’s box, hardcover art book, VANI limited soundtrack, Seven Sins cloth poster, and a Pieces of Ambition set of five acrylic stands.

Announced at the beginning of June, Monark’s website originally contained a mysterious phone number that you could dial and then listen to screaming in the background while a Japanese voice delivered a creepy message.

The National Music Publishers’ Association is suing Roblox for $200 million in damages, claiming that the MMO has been allowing unlicensed use of songs by users.

As reported by Variety, the Association’s president and CEO, David Israelite, announced the company’s lawsuit against Roblox at the NMPA’s 2021 annual meeting. Israelite said that Roblox has earned “hundreds of millions of dollars by requiring users to pay every time they upload music onto the platform — taking advantage of young people’s lack of understanding about copyright — and then they take virtually no action to prevent repeat infringement or alert users to the risks they are taking.”

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The NMPA say that the artists affected by Roblox’s copyright infringement include Ariana Grande, Imagine Dragons, deadmau5, Ed Sheeran, the Rolling Stones, and others. The lawsuit seeks a minimum of $200 million to cover damages “for Roblox’s unabashed exploitation of music without proper licenses.” The money “will ensure songwriters are fully paid for their works on the platform and that Roblox takes seriously its obligations to those who have made its service so popular and profitable.”

The Roblox name is still unfamiliar for many gamers, but it is colossally popular with younger players, so much so that Roblox is now worth more than Ubisoft and Take-Two combined. The platform, which allows for user-created games, has led to successes such as Roblox creators opening their own studios, and established indie devs making the new games in Roblox.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Xbox is going to start building its services directly into TVs, create Xbox streaming devices that negate the need for a console, and will add cloud gaming directly into PC and Xbox console experiences. It’s the surest sign yet that Microsoft is now thinking beyond traditional devices for gaming, although it insists that consoles remain its “flagship experience.”

In a pre-E3 2021 briefing, head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced a number of improvements and extensions to the Xbox ecosystem, including its Game Pass subscription service, All Access payment service, and Game Streaming capabilities. The main takeaway is that, as it’s hinted before, Microsoft is beginning to think of how to reach platforms other than Xbox consoles and PCs.

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The headline additions are:

• Xbox is working with TV manufacturers to build Xbox experiences directly into internet-enabled TVs, with only an extra controller required to play. This would presumably use Game Streaming services, rather than seeing games stored on TV hard drives.
• Xbox will also build ‘streaming devices for cloud gaming’, which will allow players to play Xbox games on TVs or monitors, without the need for a console. Phil Spencer previously hinted that streaming sticks could be bundled with a Game Pass subscription, but that wasn’t mentioned in the new announcement.
• Later this year, cloud gaming will be added to Xbox consoles and the Xbox app on PC, meaning you can play games before you buy and download them. This could also mean that you could begin playing games while they download.
• Microsoft datacenters are being upgraded with Xbox Series X hardware, meaning cloud gaming players could see better load times and frame rates (depending on internet connection).
• Xbox cloud gaming in a browser will soon open to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members, supporting Chrome, Safari, and Edge.

The company added that it’s also working on new subscription offerings for Game Pass, working to expand Xbox All Access (which offers a console and Game Pass for a monthly fee, rather than an upfront cost), and will add cloud gaming for Game Pass Ultimate members in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan this year.

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Speaking about the company’s philosophy going forward, Spencer said, “We want everyone on Earth to be able to join in [on gaming], no matter what device you have access to, or where you are, and without spending a lot of money on every bit of individual entertainment.

“Achieving our mission is not going to be easy, and we have a long way to go, but we believe that only this company, only Microsoft, can bring to bear the global scale, the vast wellsprings of technical innovation, the financial resources, and the deep, decades-long legacy in video games required to truly bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone.”

It’s been clear for some time that Xbox, and Microsoft as a whole, now views Xbox consoles as a piece of its gaming business, as opposed to the extent of it – but this might be its most confident step forward in a new direction so far. Despite that move, Xbox’s Liz Hamren insists that consoles are its ‘flagship experience’, and says that it’s already working on new hardware, although some will likely be years away.

Few specific dates have been given, but it seems this year should see the extension of Xbox as a name for how you play your games, not just on what device.

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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].