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GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

In a Xbox Wire blog post, Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald wrote about backwards compatibility support for Xbox Series X. Microsoft’s next-gen console will support backwards compatibility for original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games and Ronald promises that thousands of those titles will be playable on Xbox Series X on day one. New backwards compatibility techniques will allow the games to run at higher resolutions and with HDR support they originally lacked, too.

“With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites,” he wrote. “Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless. By the time we launch this holiday, the team will have spent well over 200,000 hours ensuring your game library is ready for you to jump in immediately.”

Series X won’t just play your old Xbox games–it will also improve how they look. “The team was not content to just rely on the increased hardware performance to improve your playing experience,” Ronald wrote. “Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR.”

Ronald added that Series X will incorporate innovations that backwards compatibility on Xbox 360 and Xbox One didn’t, including “brand new techniques that enable even more titles to run at higher resolutions and image quality while still respecting the artistic intent and vision of the original creators.” The Series X will have the ability to double the frame rate of certain games as well, upping titles that run at 30 FPS to 60 FPS and 60 FPS to 120 FPS.

All backwards compatible games will support Series X’s quick resume feature as well, allowing you to quickly navigate between multiple games across all four generations of Xbox. Quick resume will be a console feature–so all games that release for Series X will automatically be able to take advantage of it without developer input.

Of course, a new console needs new games too and Microsoft wants to assure its playerbase that it isn’t skimping on exclusives when it comes to the Xbox Series X’s library of games. “Led by Halo Infinite, our 15 Xbox Game Studios teams are hard at work creating the biggest and best line up of exclusives in Xbox history,” Ronald wrote. “We are incredibly excited to show many of the new games in development for Xbox Series X soon.”

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A Zoolander animated miniseries, which was released in the UK back in 2016, has finally made its way to the US after a long wait. The series is called Zoolander: Super Model, and has a total runtime of 84 minutes.

The series is available now on CBS All Access (disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company).

The show, which was created by Augenblick Studios (Ugly Americans, Superjail), features most of the original film’s cast, including Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Christine Taylor. The one exception is Will Ferrell, who played villain Mugatu across both Zoolander movies. It also features guest stars such as Tim Gunn, Jenny Slate, Nick Kroll, and Jon Daly. It’s also the final voice performance of Jerry Stiller, who passed away earlier this month.

You can watch the trailer for Zoolander: Super Model below.

2016 also saw the release of Zoolander 2, which was not well received. The sequel earned a mild $56 million worldwide, which makes a Zoolander 3 unlikely.

Cliff Bleszinski, the designer of the original Gears of War games, has reflected on the closure of his latest studio, Boss Key. Appearing on the Animal Talking show with Star Wars writer Gary Whitta, Bleszinski said the closure of his studio affected him personally in a serious and significant way.

“I was deeply, deeply depressed for about a year,” he said. “My doctor put me on Lexapro for a little bit. That messed me up, so I got off that. It was one of the hardest things to happen to me in my entire life. It was almost harder than losing my father when I was 15 years old.”

Bleszinski recalled that he had high hopes for Boss Key and their debut title, LawBreakers, but it did not all go to plan.

“I was cocky, I was brash, and I was just assuming if I faked it until I made it, even though I had already made it, that the game would be a hit. I’ll never forget, watching the concurrent users start to plummet,” he said. “We were trying to be AAA on a AA budget.”

Overall, Bleszinski pointed out that the failure of LawBreakers and Boss Key can’t be pinned down to one element or another. He’s spoken about how the game being “too woke” was one of the reasons why the game struggled. In his discussion with Whitta, Bleszinski said he wished he could have provided more backstory and lore for the game’s various characters.

After the closure of Boss Key, Bleszinski said he was unlikely to return to game development, but recently, he shared an idea for a new project involving dogs that could be a game, or something else. In his conversation with Whitta, Bleszinski said if he ever made a game again, it wouldn’t be a large-scale endeavor like LawBreakers or his previous titles. In his response, he also possibly teased the story of his dog game.

“If I were to make another video game ever again, it would be something small. The whole, kid-with-a-lost-dog thing. Where you’re the dog trying to get back to New Jersey from the Grand Canyon,” he said.

Overall, Bleszinski said he is feeling “a little bit disillusioned” and jaded about the gaming industry, adding that, the way he sees it, luck and virality is more of a factor than ever in terms of if a game is successful or not.

“This industry has been really, really good to me, but I also see the damage it can bring on game developers,” he said. “I’ve seen families ruined. I’ve seen people with substance abuse issues. I’ve seen people having to go to therapy.”

Bleszinski left Epic after 20 years in October 2012, prior to the release of Epic’s massively popular battle royale game Fortnite. He started Boss Key with former Killzone boss Arjan Brussee in 2014; the team shipped LawBreakers in 2017 and the early access PC game Radical Heights in 2018 before closing down later that year.

Bleszinski is now pursuing one of his other passions: theatre. He is an investor in the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Hadestown, which he is also co-producing. Hadestown earned a whopping 14 Tony award nominations, winning eight–including Best Musical.

Bleszinski is also writing a memoir with Simon & Schuster, and his pages are due in January 2021, he told Whitta on the show. In addition to the book, Bleszinski said he has ideas for new IP, but he’s not sure if it would be a game or a graphic novel or something else. He also said he’s writing a script for what could be a TV show or a movie, but he did not share any details about it.

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With the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this year, a new generation of gaming consoles begins. Both systems are stacked with a multitude of improved features and capabilities, but there is one in particular that Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon believes that people are underestimating. This feature could radically change how we experience games, but it’s something that doesn’t immediately jump off the page when you think “next gen.”

During a recent livestream, Boon said the first thing people tend to ask about with new consoles is how much better the graphics will look. But he believes it’s the dramatically improved loading times that might end up being the bigger differentiator between the current generation and next-gen.

“It’s funny when these new consoles come out and everybody goes, ‘OK, what do the graphics look like?’ I think people are underestimating the impact that the almost zero loading time is going to have,” he said, as reported by Twinfinite. “That’s suddenly going to open doors that weren’t considered possible before and I think we haven’t even scratched the surface of what will eventually be done with those systems.”

Boon went on to say that, with any new console generation, improved graphics are “a given.” He’s personally more excited about the under-the-hood features like loading and memory handling. “Stuff like that is going to be huge,” he said.

Sony has already demonstrated the PS5’s dramatically improved loading times–and it’s very impressive. (It’s also rumored to be showcasing the console during a PS5 event on June 3.) Microsoft, meanwhile, has an overall goal of basically eliminating load times altogether.

A demo, which you can see above, shows off how State of Decay 2 loads the first level in just 10 seconds on Xbox Series X, compared to 50 seconds on Xbox One. Both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 have new internal SSDs that are helping to improve speed and reduce loading times.

Despite ongoing concerns around COVID-19, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are slated to launch later this year. For more, check out GameSpot’s list of titles for each console in the links below.

Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.