Microsoft’s big Xbox event saw the reveal of Tell Me Why, a new project by Dontnod, the creators of Life is Strange. Like previous games by the French studio, Tell Me Why is a narrative-focused adventure game. Dontnod boasts that this game has “the first playable videogame hero from a major studio and publisher who is also transgender.” The game stars a set of Alaskan twins, Tyler and Alyson Ronan, who have a troubled childhood. Dontnod says it worked closely with LGBT advocacy group GLAAD to he

It’s next game is called Grounded, a cooperative survival game that shrinks players down and sets them loose in their own backyard. It will be released in an early access state as part of both the Xbox Game Preview and Steam Early Access programs. Grounded will also be available on day one through Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service, both for Xbox One and Windows PC. “It’s a cooperative survival game where you play as a teenager shrunk down the size of an ant. But what makes the game

Halo: Reach, Bungie’s 2010 prequel to the original Halo: Combat Evolved, is coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Dec. 3. Halo: Reach will be available on the Xbox One version of The Master Chief Collection, and will come to Windows PC the same day. PC gamers can purchase the entire Master Chief Collection, which will include six games, for $39.99, or they can purchase Halo: Reach separately for $9.99. Microsoft announced The Master Chief Collection for Windows PC — and Halo: Reach for

Microsoft showed an Age of Empires 4 trailer at X019, but has still not announced a release date. Age of Empires 4 was first announced at Gamescom in 2017, but Microsoft has been quiet about the game since then. Microsoft also released its Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition today, an updated version of the game that was first released in 1999. This follows the release of the original Age of Empires’ Definitive Edition last year. We’ll have more on Age of Empires 4 in the months ahead.

Toady at its annual X019 presentation, Microsoft previewed a handful of additional aircraft coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator. They include Boeing’s massive 747 commercial jetliner, the fan-favorite Citation twin-engine jet, and a tiny aerobatics airplane. Flight Simulator is the oldest franchise in the Microsoft catalog, older than Office and older than Windows itself. Flight Simulator is expected to enter a closed alpha soon. The game is coming to Xbox One and Windows PC in 2020, and will b

For years now, Sega’s beat-em-up/virtual tourism series, Yakuza, has been known as a PlayStation-exclusive. Well, today, Microsoft and Sega announced that Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and follow-up Yakuza Kiwami 2 are all headed to Xbox One and Game Pass sometime in early 2020. In our original reviews of the games, Polygon gave props to Yakuza 0 for having plenty of “heart,” while Yakuza Kiwami is hailed as a “great update to an old game.” The sequel, Yakuza Kiwami 2, meanwhile, includes many of the

Microsoft is pushing hard for new Xbox Game Pass subscribers, sweetening its offer to first timers with three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $1, plus free time in other subscription services for all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members. Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers — this is the combination of Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold — will get one month of EA Access, three months of Discord Nitro, and six months of Spotify Premium. Xbox Game Pass is $9.99 a month. Xbox Game Pa

Wasteland 3 has a release date: May 19, 2020. inXile Entertainment head Brian Fargo announced the date on Thursday at Microsoft’s X019 presentation in London. Fargo debuted a new Wasteland 3 trailer, showcasing new gameplay in the “’80s-inspired post-apocalyptic world.” It’s the biggest Wasteland game in the franchise, with a budget three times larger than Wasteland 2, according to inXile. Polygon played a Wasteland 3 demo in August and called it a “snowier, sleeker, and more substantial version

The announcement raises a ton of questions that aren’t yet answered — what will it run like on a console given how challenging Rust has been for PCs? And what the heck is Player Review and why are they giving so many testimonials for Rust? A news release from Facepunch and publisher Double Eleven said Rust on consoles will support worlds of up to 100 players. Rust launched in Steam Early Access in 2013 and Facepunch boasts some 8 million players of the unforgiving survival game, based on DayZ, s

Microsoft’s game streaming platform, Project xCloud, is coming to Windows 10 PC in 2020, the company announced Thursday at X019 in London. The first part of the expanded public test is the addition of more than 50 titles to the Project xCloud preview. The game streaming platform will also expand geographically. Microsoft said it plans to roll out Project xCloud to Canada, India, Japan, and Western Europe in 2020. Finally, Microsoft said Project xCloud will support Xbox Game Pass for titles that

Rage 2 has a new zombie-themed DLC expansion coming, just in time for Thanksgiving. In TerrorMania, players will take on hordes of racist uncles, canned gravy mutants, and Durkee fried onions, and — oh wait, that’s next month’s DLC. TerrorMania pits the player against “skeletal forces of darkness,” apparently bargain hunters scarfing up this year’s stale Halloween candy and decorations at the local Big Lots. Bethesda Softworks announced its post-launch DLC ambitions for Rage 2 back in July, but

For some, High School Musical is Star Wars. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has pride of place as the only other original non-reality TV titles on the site at its launch. The 10 episodes of the first season of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series follow the students at the “real-life” version of the high school seen in High School Musical as they put on a production of High School Musical for their theater program. These are the fans who watched the original High School Musi

Disney Animation became synonymous with American animation through technical wonder. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first-ever feature-length animated film in 1939. So we asked the staff: which of the animated movies sticks with you most today? I hated everything else in that movie as a kid, and it’s even worse to return to now, but that song is still one of my favorite things in any Disney movie. As a kid, Alice’s journey was an animated film drawn from my perspective.

After years of hinting and hoping, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has confirmed that he’s officially bringing Black Adam to the screen, in a blockbuster due in December 2021. A solo Black Adam was subsequently floated. even referenced this, explaining that after gaining the power of the lightning, Black Adam freed the Seven Deadly Sins and nearly destroyed the world. Functionally, Black Adam is every bit Billy Batson’s equal, with all the same powers — making him strong enough to go toe-to-toe with S

Legends of Runeterra, Riot Games’ new card game, is in its second test weekend and this time around it has a draft mode. The mode is called Expedition and it brings a few new ideas to the draft formula from other collectible card games. As with most draft modes, this mode will start with players building a new deck from random cards. Trade rounds select random cards from your deck and random cards from a shopkeeper. This is the first time that Expedition mode has been available for public testin

Stardew Valley is getting a large (and free) endgame patch that, creator Eric Barone says, will “finally ‘polish’ the game to the degree that I’ve always wanted.'” The first is the ability to take a screenshot (in PC versions) of the player’s entire farm. Posterity is very important in a game like Stardew Valley, and for longtime players it’ll be nice to have a sampler-size accounting of all their work. Barone, in a blog post also marking the arrival of the long-awaited patch delivering multipla

At first glance, the furor is a refute against Game Freak’s development decisions for Pokémon Sword and Shield. Curiously, Game Freak has said multiple things on the subject — picking one quote as the reason seems suspect. Detractors who are upset at the culled Pokédex cite, above all, animations and re-used assets as the smoking gun that proves Game Freak “lied” and has actually produced a subpar game. It’s even more exhausting to love video games at all right nowAnd, more broadly, the controve

Microsoft is holding its semi-annual X0 event this weekend in London, and will kick off the gathering with an episode of Inside Xbox that promises to deliver big news about Xbox One and Windows PC games. Inside Xbox is Microsoft’s in-house web show that focuses on new and existing games — Xbox’s version of a Nintendo Direct or State of Play. The X019 episode of Inside Xbox is touted as the live show’s biggest ever, promising “new game announcements from Xbox Game Studios and others, never before

Ghost Recon Breakpoint’s sizable title update arrived on Tuesday. Related The new Ghost Recon leans into survival and a grim Black Mirror futureThe canteen is, or was, an expression of that. But in Breakpoint’s PvP, it seems that stamina was way too low to keep things competitive, hence the stamina buff. Ubisoft Paris, the designers of Ghost Recon Breakpoint, may be queueing up that kind of split experience. “In line with this vision and the feedback we received, we are working on a more radical

Ahead of Google Stadia’s launch on Nov. 19, Google is hosting an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. As that AMA reveals, Stadia will be missing some key features on launch day; those will start rolling out “as soon as one week after launch,” according to developers. “Of course there are many more cool new platform features on the roadmap,” Stadia developers said. Developers also announced something new, a Google Pixel and Stadia accessory designed to mount a phone to the Stadia controller. Stadi