Kojima Productions made a surprise announcement Thursday that Death Stranding Director’s Cut is now available on Xbox Series X/S, as well as Windows PC, just one day ahead of the game’s five-year anniversary.
“It is my pleasure to finally announce that Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be delivered to Xbox players. I would like to thank all the fans who have stayed connected with us as well as everyone in the Xbox community who have been patiently waiting,” Kojima told press (as reported by IGN).”Kojima Productions (Death Stranding) will continue to connect more and more players around the world, so please stay tuned.”
Death Stranding was originally a PlayStation 4 exclusive in 2019 before Death Stranding Director’s Cut was released on PC and PlayStation 5. Since then it’s also been ported to Apple devices on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. It’ll also be available on Amazon Luna starting Thursday, which means Prime subscribers can play it for free for one month starting on December 1.
This is the first step in a continued Xbox and Kojima Productions collaboration. One of the company’s next games, called OD, is being published by Xbox Game Studios. Despite this, the studio still has a good relationship with Sony and PlayStation. Kojima made an appearance during Sony’s January State of Play to announce that he’s working with Sony Interactive Entertainment on the mysterious stealth game Physint.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is currently only announced for a PlayStation 5 release in 2025, but in a subsequent announcement, it was revealted that Kojima Productions has gotten the full IP rights for Death Stranding back from 505 Games. It’s been five years since release, so it’s possible that the rights just reverted back to the original developer. That does mean the sequel could potentially come to other platforms. Now all we need is a Death Stranding Director’s Cut release on the Switch 2, and you can play the absurd and obtuse social connections game just about anywhere.
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.