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Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, a battle royale game unlike any other, is coming to Xbox this summer. It will be available on Xbox One, as well as Xbox Series X|S, but a specific release date or price has not been announced yet.

Lead game designer Joe Walsh from developer Mediatonic made the announcement on the Xbox blog. “Our whole team cannot wait to welcome Xbox players to the Blunderdome for all sorts of bean-based mayhem. It’s certainly been a while coming, but we’re here and couldn’t be happier,” Walsh said.

Fall Guys coming to Xbox is no big surprise, as Microsoft previously said on social media that it was happening, but the game is not coming to Xbox Game Pass.

This is just the latest expansion for Fall Guys, as Mediatonic announced during the February Nintendo Direct that Fall Guys is also coming to Nintendo Switch this summer.

Developer Mediatonic seemingly had a deal with Sony to keep Fall Guys exclusive to PS4 on console, but that pact is now coming to an end. Fall Guys was free on PS4 at launch in August 2020 for PS Plus subscribers. The game is also available on PC.

In Fall Guys, up to 60 players compete across a variety of minigame modes to be the last jellybean-thing standing, and the silly randomness and ragdoll physics further differentiate Fall Guys from the military- and shooting-focused battle royale games on the market.

Fall Guys is currently in its third season, which has a wintery theme. The first season started just after the game launched and ran through October 2020, while the second season, which introduced medieval-themed costumes and new maps, ran from October to December 2020. Season 3.5 is currently going on now.

There is no word yet on if there will be cross-play support between the new console editions of Fall Guys when they release this summer. We also don’t have specific release dates for Xbox or Switch yet, beyond “Summer.”

It’s a good time to get into Fall Guys, as the base game is a lot of fun and lots more content is planned for the future.

Dave Bailey, the co-founder and CEO of Mediatonic, said the team has only “just scratched the surface” of what’s possible for the battle royale title. The original pitch for the game was to create the “greatest game show on Earth,” and Mediatonic plans to deliver on that ambition.

“When you think about it in that way, there’s a million different ways we can take this and I hope people will see that come through in future,” Bailey said.

Microsoft’s swashbuckling pirate game Sea of Thieves is bigger than it’s ever been. Developer Rare has announced that January 2021 was the game’s biggest-month ever in terms monthly active users. Executive producer Joe Neate commented in video about the “incredible” achievement that the game has reached, nearly three years after it launched in March 2018.

Neate also revealed that Sea of Thieves just recently saw the highest concurrent user figure ever since the game’s initial launch period.

“To be nearly three years into the journey of Sea of Thieves and to be in that position is just incredible,” he said. “So thanks to everyone who has been here since the start or has joined us more recently. It’s an amazing moment in time for us.”

Looking ahead, Neate predicted that 2021 will be the biggest year ever for Sea of Thieves. The launch of the new Seasons schedule–whereby new content and activities are released every few months–is just the beginning. There is a lot more to come, Neate said.

To support Sea of Thieves’ growth, Rare has ramped up its staffing. Right now, the company employs more people than ever before on the Sea of Thieves project, and the growth in headcount is meant to reflect and support the growth in players, Neate said.

Additionally, Neate said Rare continues to work with external development partners to support the continued scaling of Sea of Thieves. “We want to make Sea of Thieves as big as it can be,” he said.

The next update for Sea of Thieves arrives today, February 18, introducing a series of quality-of-life improvements. There is a new accessibility feature that allows players to select mono versus stereo. Additionally, Sea of Thieves will connect more seamlessly with Steam’s framework to support things like inviting friends to your match and joining them.

There is also now Japanese localization in the game, while a new in-game charity campaign has kicked off to help support a local children’s hospital. Check out the video above to catch up with everything that’s new in Sea of Thieves.

Stubbs is coming back from the dead again, with the news that 2005 game Stubbs The Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse is due for a re-release in 2021. Initially announced for Switch on Nintendo’s latest Direct, the game was subsequently confirmed for PS4 and PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, as well as for PC via Steam.

Stubbs the Zombie released for the original Xbox and PC in 2005, with a quirky take on the zombie genre that sees players masterminding a zombie apocalypse at the head of a zombie horde. The original game was generally well received, with GameSpot’s original review giving it a score of 7.8/10, saying: “Eating the brains of the living to form a massive army of the undead is extremely satisfying, often hilarious, and, unfortunately, almost painfully brief.” The game was never a big hit, however, which is probably why Stubbs is only getting a re-release and not a full remaster or remake.

The Xbox announcement page keeps expectations low for the re-release, with an introduction written from Stubbs’ perspective reading: “That’s right, baby. I’m back and better than ever. Well, I’m actually exactly the same as I was back in 2005. I was already pretty great though, so there’s that.”

The PS4 announcement reads in the same tone, announcing Stubbs The Zombie as “the port that nobody asked for”–despite this being Stubbs’ first ever appearance on a PlayStation console.

The original game was the debut game from Wideload Games, a studio that was shut down in 2014 after being acquired by Disney. Publisher Aspyr is still around, and are responsible for the re-release.

Stubbs The Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse will be re-releasing for Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam on March 16.

In the latest patch for Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, developer Mediatonic has removed some problematic stage variants including the “vertical” see-saws and the version of Fall Mountain with a spinner at the end. The update is live now for all players.

The new changes were announced in a brief tweet, updating players on the variants that had been removed from rotation.

In a reply to a tweet asking why the studio didn’t simply fix the vertical see-saws instead of removing them altogether, it explained that the team couldn’t come up with “a good solution on how to keep them but solve the problem.”

While players have enjoyed the new twist of the vertical see-saws, it turns out the design is too easily abused by griefers to prevent an entire lobby of players from completing the level within the time limit. A Reddit post from a few days ago illustrates the problem perfectly.

Commenters on the post suggested that the “Big Yeetus” hammer should always spawn in this variant of the stage to ensure that players have another way of getting through, while other players said the see-saws should just be removed–which is the solution Mediatonic went with in the end.

In other Fall Guys news, the adorable battle royale game was confirmed for the Switch in the most recent Nintendo Direct, with the port intended to arrive this summer.

Nintendo has announced a new tournament for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate starting on Friday February 19 that will run for three days. Named the “Grand Slam” tournament, the event will only allow characters who use their body in special attacks.

The tournament follows on from the “Ballistic Barrage” event in early February, which was a tournament where only projectile-using characters were allowed. The new tournament flips the script, favoring melee-heavy characters such as Kirby, Yoshi, Bowser, Wario, Incineroar, and more.

The event will start on February 19 and last for three days, with winning players being awarded with Spirits for their Spirit Board. “The further you advance, the better the spirit you’ll win,” the official event page reads. You can also see the full list of available fighters on the official page.

Smash Bros. Ultimate fans have also received some exciting news from the latest Nintendo Direct, with two new characters arriving from Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Pyra and Mythra. Like other DLC characters, Pyra and Mythra will also come with a brand new stage from their game. They won’t be here in time for this weekend’s tournament, however: the new character DLC isn’t expected to drop until March.

Up until now, Supergiant Games’ Hades has only been available to purchase digitally. That will change next month when a physical edition for Nintendo Switch launches on March 19. Revealed during the latest Nintendo Direct, the Hades physical edition will surely delight dedicated fans, and preorders are starting to go live now.

Hades is one of the rare roguelikes that places a huge emphasis on story as well as its satisfying action gameplay loop. With each run, you learn more about its captivating world and the characters that inhabit it.

It was one of our favorite games of 2020 and earned a 9/10 in GameSpot’s Hades review. “I’m sure there’s a point where, after running through hell enough times, I’ll have seen all Hades has to offer, both in its clever and endless fights and its many alluring characters, intimate moments, and rewarding quests,” critic Suriel Vasquez wrote. “The story does end. But what matters so much more are all the moments between the start and end of a story, and the people who help us see those climactic moments but also stick with us between them. They’re the reason we keep trying, and the reason we keep coming back.”