The wait is finally over—Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment's highly anticipated fantasy RPG has officially launched! Step into the breathtaking Living Lands, a wild and mysterious island located in the Pillars of Eternity world of Eora, and embark on a journey filled with danger, discovery, and adventure. Play today on Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox app for Windows PC, Battle.net, Steam, and cloud, to experience Obsidian's latest RPG adventure. Also available on Game Pass!

A Land in Turmoil
The Living Lands is a frontier unlike any other. This rugged and untamed island has become a haven for exiles, dreamers, and adventurers seeking a fresh start. Its vibrant regions and scattered settlements pulse with life, each hiding untold stories and ancient secrets waiting to be uncovered. But this land of promise is fraught with peril. The Dreamscourge, a devastating soul-plague, is driving settlers to madness and turning them against one another. The very land itself resists colonization, haunted by echoes of lives long past. As an envoy chosen by a foreign emperor and blessed by a mysterious god, you are thrust into the heart of this chaos. With divine powers at your fingertips and the will to shape your own destiny, you'll confront ancient threats, unravel mysteries, and decide the fate of the Living Lands. Will you unite its people or watch as their struggles tear them apart? The choices you make will define the future of the Living Lands—and the person you become.

For those of you that have been exploring the Living Lands in Avowed, thank you for taking a break to check out the latest Game Pass news! We have some exciting new reveals and exclusive Perks to tease your install buttons. Also, mark your calendars and check out the ID@Xbox Showcase during IGN Fan Fest 2025 on Monday, February 24 at 10am PT for even more Game Pass announcements. Let's get to the games!

Available Today
Avowed (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) - February 18. Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
Available on day one! Welcome to the Living Lands, a mysterious island filled with adventure and danger. Set in the fictional world of Eora that was first introduced to players in the Pillars of Eternity franchise, Avowed is a first-person fantasy action RPG from the award-winning team at Obsidian Entertainment. Check out Xbox Wire for Starting Tips to Help You on Your Adventure in the Living Lands.

2024 was a year for Age of Empires and Age of Mythology players shaped by your passion, creativity, and epic moments. Thanks to your dedication, it's been an incredible year not just for the community, but for the franchise as a whole. Together, we've had an incredible year. We kicked things off with the New Year, New Age showcase, crowned champions at Red Bull Wololo: El Reinado, connected with many of you at Gamescom, and celebrated the launches of Age of Mythology: Retold and Age of Empires Mobile. Along the way, we expanded the franchise in new ways and welcomed over 10 million new players—reaching an incredible milestone of 60 million Age of Empires players worldwide. Our players continue to influence the many ways in which the franchise moves forward. Today we're thrilled to start 2025 by unveiling what's ahead. Settle in, because we've got a lot to share!

Immortal Pillars Expansion Launches March 4, Pre-Order Now
For Age of Mythology: Retold players, the wait is almost over! After revealing the Immortal Pillars expansion for Age of Mythology: Retold at Tokyo Game Show, we're excited to announce it will launch on March 4th—and pre-orders are live now! Packed with brand-new content, this expansion introduces the Chinese pantheon, alongside stunning new maps, myth units, and gameplay features. Check out some highlights of all the exciting content here! As a reminder, if you already own the Age of Mythology: Retold Premium Edition, Immortal Pillars is yours at no additional cost—jump in and play on day one!

The Xbox Insider program has outlined a major upcoming feature upgrade for their home console lineup—Tuesday's Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring (2502.250120-2200) release notes reveal newly implemented support for larger capacity external hard drives. Naturally, inside program members get to play around with this early build—we presume that support will eventually trickle down to public level in the near future. The major announcement stated: "we are enabling support for external USB drives larger than 16 TB, so you can be sure your favorite games are always ready to play! Newly formatted drives that are larger than 16 TB will be formatted with multiple partitions to utilize all available space for games and apps. These will appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list."

Xbox-licensed external storage devices are only available with a maximum capacity of 12 TB—Western Digital's WD_BLACK D10 model wears the crown here. Console gaming enthusiasts—with a penchant for storing a huge library of titles on hard disk drives (HDD)—are best served by not selecting official Xbox-branded storage devices. Manufacturers do offer products with 18 TB to 28 TB capacities, but potential buyers will be greeted by hefty asking prices. There are a couple of caveats—for owners of 16+ TB drives—as noted in the Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring notes: "drives greater than 16 TB that have already been formatted will be unaffected by this change and would need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support for larger drives. Please be aware that we have identified an issue with formatting drives larger than 16 TB, and we're working on a fix." Interestingly, the notes do not disclose information regarding a new upper limit for compatible storage devices.

fSeason 02 arrives next week, upending the new order of Avalon. Engage with a massive amount of new content, including five Multiplayer maps, more than six new weapons, a new Zombies map, limited time Valentine's Day-themed modes, and more. Gear up, train up, and deploy to Season 02 arriving Tuesday, January 28. The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Black Ops 6 Season 02 is Here!

Season 02 Overview: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide
As Sevati "Sev" Dumas toasts a new era of Avalon, her short-lived victory over the Luttazzi crime family comes to an abrupt end. During a celebration in the French Syndicate Penthouse, an urgent notice arrives for all attendees: the Luttazzis have placed a lucrative bounty on the entire Rogue Team as payback. This is the price for working with criminals: In the dog-eat-dog world of Avalon, will money speak louder than loyalty?

Developer_Direct returns this Thursday, January 23 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK, and will bring you a deep-dive into some of the incredible games on the way for Xbox players this year. The show will include new, extended gameplay and developer insights for DOOM: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and a mystery fourth game, from inside the studios working on them. We're sure you want to know more, so here are all the details on how to tune in and what to expect.

The show will also be streamed simultaneously on regional Xbox and Bethesda channels around the globe, as well as on Steam. It will also air on China's Bilibili platform. The YouTube stream will be broadcast in 4K/60, and as with any live broadcast, there may be dips in streaming quality based on your bandwidth.

At Xbox, we're continuing to improve how we design, build, distribute, and use our products to reduce our environmental impact and help us reach Microsoft's goal of being a zero waste, carbon negative, and water positive company by 2030. Finding ways to reduce the environmental footprint of gaming not only helps the environment but also creates benefits for our collective community of players.

We've heard from players that they want more options for support when their Xbox consoles need repair. Today, we're expanding our repairability program, giving players even more options to get their Xbox Series X|S console options—the Xbox Series S—1 TB in Robot White, Xbox Series X—1 TB Digital Edition in Robot White, and Xbox Series X—2 TB Galaxy Black Special Edition—fixed should they ever need to, while also reducing and preventing waste.

Halo 5: Guardians has remained exclusive to Microsoft Xbox gaming systems since launching back in October 2015, during the Xbox One era—an approaching ten-year anniversary has fans wishing for a possible port over to PC platforms. Hopes were elevated late last week due to an intriguing image popping up on Lenovo's Legion Go S product page. A certain promo image depicts screen content featuring a Steam menu session with an entry for Halo 5. This discovery (courtesy of Rebs Gaming) prompted much online chatter about the possible PC port being unveiled at the next Xbox Developer_Direct—scheduled for broadcast on January 23.

343 Industries (now Halo Studios) has ported five titles over to PC—neatly compiled in the form of Halo: Master Chief Collection—but the absence of Guardians has been a lingering sore spot. Over the past weekend, Lenovo senior community manager—Ben Green—dampened expectations. In a curt response to a query (on social media) regarding the alleged leak, he shot down the notion that Lenovo had inadvertently leaked the existence of a Halo 5: Guardians PC port. It is possible that Lenovo's marketing department had mocked-up the image in error. Microsoft's gaming division has committed to spreading its most visible IPs to "rival" platforms, so the upcoming Xbox Developer_Direct could harbor a surprise or two.

For the second half of February, we have some surprise games, some not-so-surprise games, Perks, and a DLC—plenty to get you gaming now and to prime your pre-install buttons! Whether you boot up Bluey: The Videogame to play with the family, jump into Madden NFL 24 to try and recreate the big game how you would have played it, or just want to play Maneater to see what it'd be like to be an absolute menace as a shark, we have you covered. Let's get to the games!

Available Today:
Return to Grace (Cloud, Console, and PC)
A daring space archaeologist has just unearthed the ancient resting place of a long lost A.I. god known as Grace. Adventure with various fractured A.I. personalities as you uncover the great mystery of why she was shut down all those years ago in this first-person narrative adventure set in a visually stunning '60s retro sci-fi world.

At the recent Xbox Developer_Direct 2024 broadcast, Obsidian Entertainment shared its most comprehensive look yet at its upcoming fantasy-action RPG, Avowed. But even that only scratched at the surface of what's coming your way this fall. On today's special episode of The Official Xbox Podcast, Avowed Game Director Carrie Patel and Gameplay Director Gabe Paramo shared an extended look at the quest showcased during Developer_Direct, providing more detail on the moment-to-moment experience of the flexible combat system, and where this side quest fits in the larger narrative of Avowed.

This latest look at Avowed gives us a good idea of what to expect from Shatterscarp, one part of the ecologically diverse island of The Living Lands, all in the same universe as Obsidian's CRPG series Pillars of Eternity. But what makes Avowed a very 'Obsidian game' goes far beyond the commonality of setting in the world of Eora. "It's really about our player-centric approach to role play," Patel shared during this week's Podcast. "The way we really approach consequence and choice is giving players the opportunities to define who they are in this world, how they want to behave - what fantasy, what challenges they want to undertake." It's all part of Obsidian's "your worlds, your way" approach, and players will feel the weight of their choices moment-to-moment with every slash, parry, and spell cast.

As you may have seen during our latest Developer_Direct, there's no lack of passion for gaming to be found when walking the halls at Oxide Games. The studio is full of game industry veterans who would probably bleed strategy board game pieces if you were to so much as nick them on the arm. This team has been crafting in this space for decades and has no shortage of ideas on what makes a compelling strategy game experience. Now, with Ara, they're looking to carve out their place at the top table with their own take on one of the most beloved genres in PC gaming. Ara: History Untold bills itself as a grand strategy game that's working to evolve the genre of historical grand strategy. But trying to usher in the next chapter of such a well-established space is a daunting task. Where does one even start? That's easy - look at what bothers you, and go from there.

"One of the first things we did when we started (Ara) was to identify key aspects of the [grand strategy] genre space that have always annoyed us, like areas we could improve upon—one of those is optimal strategy," explains Oxide Games Design Director Michelle Menard. "Something that plagues the genre space is that once you've kind of figured out how to win or how the game works, you've mastered it. You stop playing because you solved the problem; it was a binary problem because one of the key drivers of something like a tech tree is a static, solvable problem."

This new journey starring the legendary archaeologist comes from the award-winning team at MachineGames—the minds behind Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus—in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games and executive produced by Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard. Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is coming later this year to Xbox Series X|S and PC and will be available day one on Game Pass. Check out the full announce from the Developer_Direct and get more insights from the team at MachineGames below.

Set between "Raiders of the Lost Ark " and "The Last Crusade," Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a first-person, single-player adventure that will take you all over the world, uncovering clues and solving an ancient mystery. Become the adventurer in a race against sinister forces. Your journeys will take you from the hallowed halls of the Vatican and the arid deserts of Egypt to the lush and sunken temples of Sukhothai and the frigid peaks of the Himalayas.

AMD and Bethesda have today revealed that Starfield will be best experienced on a Ryzen processor and Radeon graphics card-equipped PC. Team Red has been announced as the giant open world game's official graphics and GPU partner, but its Xbox Series hardware also gets a couple of friendly shout-outs. Todd Howard, director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, stated in the video presentation: "We have AMD engineers in our code base working on FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) 2.0 image processing and upscaling and it looks incredible. You're going to get the benefits of that obviously on your PC but also on Xbox. We're super excited and can't wait to show everybody more."

Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Computing and Graphics Group at AMD, added: "Making this game even more special, is the close collaboration between Bethesda and AMD to unlock the full potential of Starfield. We have worked hand-in-hand with Bethesda Game Studios to optimize Starfield for both Xbox and PC with Ryzen 7000 series processors and Radeon 7000 series graphics. The optimizations both accelerate performance and enhance the quality of your gameplay using highly multi-threaded code that both Xbox and PC players will get to take advantage of."

We at Obsidian Entertainment know players have been anticipating an updated look at Avowed and we're excited to show off what we've been working on with a first-ever gameplay trailer today at Xbox Games Showcase 2023. Expanding the universe that we created for the original Pillars of Eternity games, Avowed brings a new perspective, a new way to fight, and a new land to explore in the world of Eora. The Pillars games are near and dear to us and we can't wait to share Avowed with everyone next year.

In Avowed, you'll explore the Living Lands, a plagued, wild island set in the world of Eora. The Living Lands are full of mysteries and secrets, danger and adventure, and choice and consequences. Unique to the world of Eora, the Living Lands is home to bustling port towns and rolling hills adorned with weird and fantastical plant life. Every part of the Living Lands is home to its own ecosystem. Around every corner there are creatures, sentient mushrooms, or tribes of lizard-like Xaurips looking to make you their next meal…

Dear Combo Breakers - this winter will be Killer Instinct's 10th year on Xbox Live. Throughout that time, Xbox platforms and services have been constantly evolving. We have been able to keep KI operating and adapting to many of these changes behind the scenes. Over the last five years, however, it has become more challenging to deal with issues that crop up due to KI's reliance on legacy services. We have been working on solutions to address these concerns. Thank you for being patient and amazing fans through any bumps in the road.

We have started migrating KI's legacy services to PlayFab services, a process which will happen over the next several months. This is a quality-of-life (QOL) update and does not have any new content or tuning changes: it ensures the game you know and love continues to provide the best possible player experience. Today, we've kicked off the first migration build for Xbox consoles, Windows PC, and Steam.

Microsoft has been quick to respond to a backlash from gamers who have been angered by reports of the company's prevention of a PlayStation 5 version of Redfall being developed by an internal studio - Arkane. The game's creative director, Harvey Smith, has been busy with press duties this week and might have slipped up by revealing too much about the Xbox Division's directives. In an interview with IGN France, Harvey stated that Microsoft held a policy of "no PlayStation 5" in the times following an acquisition of ZeniMax (parent group of Bethesda Softworks) in 2021. He elaborated on the regime change: "They came in and they said 'we're focusing on Xbox, PC and the Game Pass." Smith indicated that he embraced the decision since it was: "one less platform to worry about, one less complexity."

A Microsoft spokesperson provided a statement to Eurogamer: "We haven't pulled any games from PlayStation. In fact, we've expanded our footprint of games that we've shipped on Sony's PlayStation since our acquisition of ZeniMax, and the first two games we shipped after closing were PlayStation 5 exclusives. We did the same thing since our closing of Minecraft as we extended the reach of that franchise. All of the games that were available on PlayStation when we acquired ZeniMax in March 2021 are still available on PlayStation, and we have continued to do content updates on PlayStation and PC. We have always said that future decisions on whether to distribute ZeniMax games for other consoles will be made on a case-by-case basis."

Microsoft is still deep into its negotiations with several international regulatory bodies regarding the buyout of Activision Blizzard, with a deadline looming it seems that tensions are rising. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) needs a lot of convincing since it regards the proposed takeover as a serious threat to Sony's ability to compete with Microsoft, with the ownership of the Call of Duty series being a main focus. Sony has expressed concern about the blockbuster franchise becoming a potential Xbox console exclusive in the future - Microsoft has pledged to continue development on PlayStation platforms for a proposed 10-year period, with no technological compromises and a promise to release all versions simultaneously on launch days.

In its latest testimony given to the UK's CMA, Microsoft has made a (slightly odd) suggestion that Sony should figure out a way to make its own answer to the Call of Duty series: "Microsoft considers that a period of 10 years is sufficient for Sony, as a leading publisher and console platform, to develop alternatives to Call of Duty.…The 10-year term will extend into the next console generation.… Moreover, the practical effect of the remedy will go beyond the 10-year period, since games downloaded in the final year of the remedy can continue to be played for the lifetime of that console (and beyond, with backwards compatibility)."

What is happening in Redfall? Where did the vampires come from? Uncover the mysteries of Redfall as you explore the island. Delve into the dark history of the sinister company that created the monsters stalking the streets and face off against the terrifyingly powerful vampires that some survivors worship as gods.

There's a lot more to the charming island of Redfall than meets the eye. The scientists at Aevum HQ have been working on something world-shattering. People are going missing; there are dead bodies and blood everywhere; the sun has been eclipsed; and vampires rule the town.

Starfield's official launch date has been revealed in a brand-new enigmatic trailer, followed by a special message from Game Director Todd Howard. Players can look forward to the deepest dive yet into Bethesda Game Studios' latest epic at the Starfield Direct, coming June 11, 2023.
Xbox also confirmed its plans for an Xbox Games Showcase on June 11, 2023. It is set to air before the Starfield Direct.

25 years in the making, Starfield introduces an entirely new frontier to explore—space. In 2330, you join Constellation, the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy. Venture through the stars and get to know a memorable cast of characters on a quest to answer humanity's greatest question—what is out there? Where will Starfield take you?
Starfield arrives exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 6, 2023. Play it day one with Xbox Game Pass.

Phil Spencer, head of Xbox at Microsoft, said in an interview that he is confident in the Xbox Series X's hardware advantages against Sony's PS5. After witnessing PS5's reveal, Phil said that he "felt good after seeing their show. I think the hardware advantages that we have built are going to show up as we're talking more about our games and frame rates and other things." Being a good sport as he usually is, Phil Spencer also said that he felt Sony had done a good job with their PS5 announcement.

Of course, Xbox Series X's hardware advantage over PS5 is a hotly debated topic already, so there is not much to see there. However, some might say that Sony's show was much more impressive than Xbox's when it comes to the - well - platform-defining metric - games. PS5 showed some very interesting exclusives during its show, and Sony knows that this a field where they have an historic advantage against Xbox - generally speaking, Sony's exclusives are usually held in a much higher regard that Microsoft's.

Microsoft Game Studios and 343 Industries have released halo 2: Anniversary for the PC platform. Being distributed as a package via The Master Chief Collection (which already includes Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary), the game takes you through the second installment in the Master Chief's saga to protect humanity from the Covenant. The game has been fully optimized for the PC platform, as have previous releases.

The second installment in the sage features dual-wielding, as well as a dual-character campaign where you'll swap between the POV of the Master Chief and the Arbiter, a Sangheili commander fallen from grace in the wake of the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. The new Anniversary remaster of Halo 2 is a remaster in more than graphics, but in spirit as well, featuring added prologue and epilogue cutscenes, in-game terminals for you to bask in the glorious lore of the Halo universe, and reinterpreted cutscenes made by none-other than the amazing Blur Studios. The game and its contained updates for the Master Chief Collection will come in at 41.5 GB. Halo 2: Anniversary is available stand-alone for €9.99, or as part of The Master Chief Collection, which for €39.99, also includes Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and the storytelling masterpiece that is Halo 4.

Reports are circling around the web regarding an imminently/closed deal between Microsoft and Obsidian Entertainment, developers of Fallout: New Vegas and, more recently, the Pillars of Eternity series. Microsoft has been on a roll with its investment in games studios, bringing numerous big development houses (such as Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs) to their fold and putting together new internal studios (The Initiative, for one).

Should the deal go through, Obsidian Entertainment would bring a wealth of new RPG games development experience to the Microsoft Game Studios umbrella - with a specific focus on PC gaming. At the same time, Obsidian Entertainment themselves would have access to resources and tools that would otherwise never be available for them - and have we said this is Microsoft's coffers and resources we're talking about? Even though Phil Spencer is often seen as a magnanimous leader of Microsoft's entertainment division, Obsidian could find themselves working on some specific projects for Microsoft, instead of pursuing their own IPs/new IP ideas. Or that could not materialize at all, and the studio be given free reign (as much as there can be in these things) for their own creativity.

I remember Age of Empires II fondly; it was my first PC game, really. The intro sequence of chess really served to put my young mind racing towards ideas of military movements and countermovements, and led me towards devouring historical romances accompanying the exploits of Alexander the Great (Valerio Massimo Manfredi's novels), and Hannibal Barca (I'm partial to Ross Leckie in this one). Now, Microsoft has announced yet another installment in this PC-exclusive series, after Age of Empires III's somewhat lukewarm reception. Age of Empires IV is coming for all of your medieval RTS needs.

Imagine if friends and families had the ability to instantly watch movies and share pictures, live out their musical fantasies through "Lips" (iNiS Corp./Microsoft Game Studios) and "Rock Band" (Harmonix/MTV Games) and star in their own Hollywood classics with "You're in the Movies" (Codemasters/Microsoft Game Studios) - all from one console, starting at an estimated retail price (ERP) of only €179/£129.99. That is the Xbox 360, and Microsoft today announced the new lower ERP for its Xbox 360 family of consoles in Europe. Now with an entry-level ERP of €179/£129.99 and offering a plethora of exciting and broad entertainment in the living room, Xbox 360 is the true home of mass market entertainment with something to offer for every interest and budget.

From Friday, 19th September, Xbox 360, which includes a 60GB hard drive and one wireless controller, will have an ERP of €239.99/£169.99. The Xbox 360 Elite, which comes with a massive 120GB hard drive enabling consumers to store huge quantities of content downloaded from Xbox LIVE Marketplace as well as their own music, will have an ERP of €299.99/£229.99. The Xbox 360 Arcade console, perfect for those wishing to make their first foray into the gaming and entertainment world of Xbox, will have an ERP of €179/£129.99.