This holiday season will see the Xbox Store’s “biggest sale ever,” according to an official video, and as confirmed by Microsoft Director of Programming Larry Hryb. From December 22, 2015 through January 7, 2016, daily and weekly deals on hundreds of games, movies, television shows, and apps will see savings of up to 40-60 percent, and more in some cases. On top of this, Xbox Live Gold members will be able to save an additional 10 percent. That’s a whopping 17 days of savings running from just before Christmas through a week into the new year.
This will mark the first time that all Xbox players can get in on deals for the biggest games, including Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Forza Motorsport 6, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Rare Replay-plus, Fallout 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. In addition, those with Xbox One consoles can find discounts on more than ten backwards-compatible games. The sale will apply to Xbox One as well as Xbox 360 digital games.
Movies and TV shows will also see price cuts, with titles including Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Mad Max: Fury Road, and the first five seasons of the animated hit series Archer.
Look for deals on apps as well, such as Sling TV, Crunchyroll and CBS All Access, all of which will be offering one-month free trials. And now is also the time to pick up an Xbox One console bundle, which sees a price drop to $300 through Dec. 26.
The full list of games, movies, and more has not yet been revealed. You’ll have to wait and check out the Countdown Sale on Xbox.com as well as MajorNelson.com starting Tuesday, Dec. 22 to see what will be available.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.