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With the announcement of Halo Infinite’s delay to 2021 earlier this week came reassurance that the Xbox Series X console is still set for a holiday, specifically November, global launch. And Xbox head Phil Spencer has elaborated on the tough call to delay the flagship Xbox game, and why the company didn’t consider a staggered release for it.

Speaking on Gary Whitta’s Animal Crossing talk show Animal Talking, Spencer explained that while he and his team had some potential options on the table when it came to the delay, he wanted to make the decision that would have “the best intent, in the long-run, for our fans and our platform.”

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“We made the decision late last week. And I say ‘we’ — Bonnie Ross, who runs 343, Matt Booty, who runs our first-party studios organization, and myself. And they came with some options, things that we could do, maybe parts of the game that we could ship on given dates. It just didn’t feel, to all of us, like the Halo release that we would want. So in the end, I make the call based on the information that they present. I make a call, like I said, with hopefully the best intent, in the long-run, for our fans and our platform.”

And so while Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is still set to be free-to-play, Spencer and his team rejected the idea of releasing it and the other portions of Infinite at separate points, but Spencer believed this was the right call for fans, Xbox, the developers, and the Halo franchise.

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“So when looking at where we were, and the trajectory the team was on and frankly just the amount of effort and emotion that 343 [Industries] is putting into the game, and making sure that we want to be able to get the game out and delivered and have a healthy team after that, this was the decision that we made. And I’ll apologize to the fans, because I never like to set up expectations and not hit them, but I also believe that we’re making the right decision in the long run for both Xbox, and Halo, and our customers,” he said.

Spencer elaborated that the final decision to the posting of the news was about a 24-hour turnaround, noting that in part the urgency comes from how many factors go into the launch of such a major franchise’s new entry — not just for Xbox, but for its many partners, as well.

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“One of the things that pushed us is, when you’re shipping a game like Halo, it’s not just a solo release – we have a lot of marketing partners and promotions that are out there, and you want to be respectful of your partners in giving them a heads-up so that they can plan their timelines for things that they’re doing in conjunction with the launch of the game, which is part of the input as well,” he said. “But in reality, when we know we know – let’s make the decision, let’s put it out so we’re talking to our fans, and be as transparent as we can be.”

As for how this impacts the wider Xbox Series X launch, Spencer noted that the company is really investing in the value that Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Series X offer together for players.

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“Our investment in Game Pass and that portfolio continues to be strong. We’ve got some more good announcements, really great, strong announcements to come about things that will be coming to Game Pass,” he said. “I think what you’ll see from us around the launch of the console, frankly, isn’t going to change too much because you were going to hear a lot about the console and a lot about Game Pass and how we think those two things together are a real great value proposition for gamers going into the next generation.”

You can check out the full interview with Spencer on the latest episode of Animal Talking, which also features Lisa Loeb and Dylan Sprouse.

For more on IGN’s coverage of the Halo delay, be sure to read the op-ed by IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey about why Halo Infinite’s delay was the tough but right call, and check out the latest from our weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked.

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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and is continually impressed by the guest lineup for every episode of Animal Talking. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

The 1997 version of Final Fantasy VII, which was first exclusive to the PlayStation before being ported to a myriad of other consoles, is now available on Xbox Game Pass for Console and PC subscribers.

Anyone who subscribes to Xbox Game Pass–whether it’s the console-specific tier, the PC-specific tier (for Windows 10 PCs), or the all-encompassing Ultimate tier–can add the classic JRPG to their backlog. The game can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store.

There are some new features that come with this Xbox Game Pass version, including a 3x speed mode, the ability to turn battle encounters off, and a battle enhancement mode. These extra features, while not exclusive to PC or Xbox One, are added for free.

With it coming to Windows 10 PCs, Microsoft has outlined the PC requirements to achieve the best possible results. You can check them out below to see if your rig can handle Final Fantasy VII.

Full Final Fantasy VII PC System Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows 10 version 18362.0 or higher
• Architecture: x64
• Keyboard: Integrated Keyboard
• DirectX: Version 11
• Memory: 2 GB
• Video Memory: 2 GB
• Processor: AMD A-Series 2.2GHz / Intel Core i3 2.2GHz
• Graphics: AMD Radeon R7 240 / Nvidia GeForce GT 730
• Notes: AMD A8-Series 3.1GHz / Intel Core i5 2.8GHz.; AMD Radeon R9 370 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 660

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 version 18362.0 or higher
• Architecture: x64
• Keyboard: Not specified
• DirectX: Version 11
• Memory: 4 GB
• Video Memory: 4 GB
• Processor: AMD A8-Series 3.1GHz / Intel Core i5 2.8GHz
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 470 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 960
• Notes: Not specified

Final Fantasy VII isn’t the only Xbox Game Pass addition this month. Alongside FFVII is The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, Darksiders Genesis, UnderMine, Trailmakers, and It Lurks Below. Final Fantasy VII joins an assortment of other FF titles available through Game Pass, including Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XV, as well as Kingdom Hearts Collector’s Pack: HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts 3.

In other Final Fantasy VII news, FFVII Remake is discounted on the PlayStation Store through August 19.

Dead by Daylight has now introduced cross-play, letting you survive the horror game with friends across PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. This follows Behavior linking up the Steam and Windows 10 communities with cross-play.

According to the announcement, this also came alongside cross-friends functionality, letting you keep one unified friends list. The studio had previously mentioned cross-progression on Stadia in September. Cross-play or progression doesn’t appear to be in the cards for the mobile version.

Behavior Interactive says Dead by Daylight has reached more than 25 million players across all platforms, with about 1 million players daily. With most of those communities now able to play together, the share of players who can all join together is much bigger.

Dead by Daylight was released in 2016, and received a 6/10 in GameSpot’s Dead by Daylight review. It has continued to be updated since then with new content and crossovers with other horror games like Silent Hill.

October marks 20 years since the release of Linkin Park’s debut album “Hybrid Theory,” setting the band apart from its contemporaries while reworking the rock genre to fit new audiences looking for genre-bending, mash-up sounds featuring heavy hip-hop, electronic, and hard-rock influences.

Of course, Linkin Park would go on to be one of the most recognizable and influential bands of the early 2000s, cementing its place in the annals of modern rock history. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original Hybrid Theory release, Warner Records is reissuing the album in several different versions, on both vinyl and CD. The absolute must-have edition for Linkin Park fans is the Super Deluxe version, with the Hybrid Theory LP, Reanimation on 2 LPs, a B-side rarities LP, Hybrid Theory EP, 5 CDs, 3 DVDs, an 80-page book, lithographs, a replica tour laminate, a 2-track cassette and download codes for all the albums.

Preorder Linkin Park Hybrid Theory 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition

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As is the case with all Amazon preorders, if the price goes down during the preorder period, and you’ve already put in your order, you’ll get the lower price when the item is released. That means if you preorder now, and hypothetically the price goes down to $179 for a day, you’ll be charged the lower price when the item ships.

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Seth Macy is IGN’s Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS5 will complete the coming of age arc for the fledgling hero that began in Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4.

Slight spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4 follow.

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Marvel’s Spider-Man introduced Miles Morales as an (occasionally playable) side character who’s taken under Peter Parker’s wing. The core game ends with Morales being bitten by a new radioactive spider, while DLC packs featured him taking his first steps as a superhero.

Speaking to EW, game director Brian Horton explained that the upcoming spin-off game is designed to finish the story that the first game started:  “This is a full arc for Miles Morales that started in Spider-Man [on PS4]. We really are completing this hero’s coming of age in our game. It is a complete story.”

Insomniac has already hinted at a fully-fledged Spider-Man 2, and said “we still have much of Peter [Parker]’s story left to tell”, but it feels as though Miles will be a trained superhero in his own right by the end of his starring role.

EW also posted a brand new PS5 shot from the game:

Elsewhere in the interview, Insomniac reiterates that the Miles Morales game isn’t a formal sequel to the first game, and that it’s a “shorter spin-off, likened in scope to the Lost Legacy game in the Uncharted series.”

Horton adds that the decison to have the character star in a shorter game was a way of telling his story in an “impactful” way: “When we started crafting it, we realized that, with a little bit more of a compact storytelling style, we could tell a very emotionally impactful story that would fit really well as an experience that would take Spider-Man 1 and [Miles Morales] and do justice to this character.”

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is due to arrive in Holiday 2020, exclusively for PS5. So far, we know a few plot details, we’ve seen the game’s box art, and learned that the game will feature an optional 4K/60FPS mode. We’ve also speculated about 6 comic book stories that could inspire his next journey.

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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].

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales isn’t a full sequel to 2018’s web-spinning adventure, but developer Insomniac Games is still approaching this standalone project with the goal of telling a complete coming of age story for the newest wallcrawler in New York City.

“This is a full arc for Miles Morales that started in Spider-Man,” creative director Brian Horton said in an Entertainment Weekly interview.

“We really are completing this hero’s coming of age in our game. It is a complete story. When we started crafting it, we realized that, with a little bit more of a compact storytelling style, we could tell a very emotionally impactful story that would fit really well as an experience that would take Spider-Man 1 and [Miles Morales] and do justice to this character.”

The article also dropped more details on how Morales will function in his first solo outing, as Horton described how the unique bio-electrical and invisibility powers that the original Spider-Man’s protégé possesses are also metaphors for the hero’s journey that he embarks on.

“What I think is really compelling about Miles as a character is he has friends that he could actually let into his world — his human world and his Spider world. He’s a little different in the way he approaches it,” Horton said.

EW also revealed a new screenshot for the game in which Morales is outfitted in a costume that blends his comic book costume with the more modern style of Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is launching for the PS5 during Holiday 2020 and features a Performance Mode option that will let you play the game at 4K and 60 frames per second.

Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story will be released on VOD & Digital platforms on August 18 from Wood Entertainment in North America, as well as internationally through Garage (Australia), Sky Documentaries (UK), and Program Store (France).

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Pretending I’m a Superman focuses just as much on video games as it does on the history of skateboarding and the culture surrounding it. Those who either grew up playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater or used to skateboard (and those who still ride) will find fascination in the details of what really went on behind-the-scenes and how the game’s release had a major impact on the growth of the sport worldwide.

The film is grounded in the reality of seeing professional athletes and well-known bands struggle in their respective fields, until the video game industry gave them an unexpected opportunity that changed their entire lives. Tony will be the first to admit the success in his career is due to Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

The opening of the documentary has parallels to classic skate videos, which is a subtle yet appreciated throwback for anyone who remembers watching skate vids on repeat. Punk music blares as the shots highlight the main pro skaters interviewed for the documentary – all household names – including Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Chad Muska, Bob Burnquist, Jamie Thomas, Eric Koston, and Aaron “Jaws” Homoki. Each of these skaters offer valuable insight to what it was like during the beginning and later periods of the game’s release.

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Pretending I’m a Superman flawlessly flows through the eras of skateboarding and effectively chronicles the ups and downs of the sport to lay the groundwork of the progression that leads to Tony Hawk Pro Skater’s success, starting with the popularity of skateboarding in the ’70s and moving through the crashes and rises in the ’80s and ’90s. It wasn’t until the extreme sports event, X Games, launching in 1995, that Tony’s name became recognizable following his gold and silver medals for vert and street skating categories.

Swedish award-winning filmmaker Ludvig Gür does a fantastic job directing a piece that has so many moving parts in various timelines, yet intertwining the older, classic shots on VHS with modern tech and cinematics to pull out the depth in the story so it doesn’t fall flat. There are areas that could use improvement, but are minor in comparison, such as towards the end of the film when the focus gets slightly lost while trying to add in various topics before it wraps.

Tony shares how he’s always been a gamer and was an “arcade kid,” which is when the documentary transitions into discussions around the creation of a skateboarding game. From various publishers pushing back against the idea to Activision ultimately working with Neversoft on the project, you see the nitty gritty of what appears to have been a lengthy process. A common theme from the negative responses were publishers thinking a skateboarding game wouldn’t be marketable enough – something that is clearly proved otherwise throughout the film.

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Mockup illustrations for level designs and characters, along with demo footage, and behind-the-scenes motion-capture bring you into that time and make you more curious as to what the process was like, which continues to be elaborated on between each scene and interview. Walter Day, accurately described as the “father of competitive gaming,” even makes an appearance, going back to the beginning of skateboarding games and what Tony Hawk Pro Skater meant for the gaming world.

The only scattered part of the documentary is the focus on the bands that were highlighted in the original game, including Goldfinger, Primus, and Bad Religion. The discussions are more than captivating and inspiring, but they seem to be edited into random sections throughout, which ultimately interrupts the flow of the film in those parts.

Something this documentary does extremely well is instantly make you want to jump back into playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater (which will be possible on current-gen consoles come September with the remake) or head outside and get back on a skateboard – the latter of which inspired those who played the game originally, including pro skater Elliot Sloan who elaborates on his influence from Tony and the game.

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The film also details the complexity surrounding the sequel and growth of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater brand, including mistakes that were made and titles that died off due to various factors – one of which was when the game Skate released in 2007, which saw a substantial decline in sales for the Tony Hawk games, since they all of a sudden had another competitor in the field.

Civilization 6 has been released for Android devices, nearly 3 years after it arrived on iOS.

The fantastic strategy game will be free-to-start on Android devices from today (available on the Google Play Store), offering you 60 turns of play, before offering a $19.99 USD purchase for the core game.

Add-ons will be additional in-app purchases after that initial purchase:

• Rise and Fall expansion – $29.99
• Gathering Storm expansion – $39.99
• Civilization and Scenario packs – $4.99-$8.99

 

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It’s not clear if this new version will include the New Frontier DLC pass, which delivers new content every two months.

When it arrived on iPad in 2017, we awarded Civilization 6 a 9.1 review, saying it was “about as good of a PC-to-iPad conversion as we could have hoped for. It brings nearly every feature of the single-player version of the outstanding PC game to a much more comfortable tablet, courtesy of intuitive touch controls.”

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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].