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The closed beta for Rare’s Xbox One and PC game Sea of Thieves kicked off on Wednesday, January 24, and it offers players an early chance to explore mysterious islands, sail the seas in a decked-out pirate ship, and even battle against monsters using swords, pistols, and cannons. Your pals at Digital Trends managed to snag a few keys, and we’re excited to show you the game in a live-stream event!
Join Hanif Jackson, Brendan Hesse, Gabe Gurwin, and Phil Hornshaw as we embark on a nautical adventure and learn about scurvy, bananas, skeletons, buried treasure, and possibly even the true meaning of friendship. We will try out some of the game’s quest-like “voyages” and venture off into the unknown, using maps and landmarks to guide us around Rare’s gorgeous world.
Sea of Thieves is the largest project we have seen from Rare in years, as the developer was relegated to Kinect exclusives for much of the Xbox 360 generation. Its whimsy and creativity were on full display in that system’s game Viva Piñata, and that same charm and humor separate Sea of Thieves from more serious online games — just find another game where you can jump into a cannon and fire yourself as a projectile toward an enemy ship. It’s also playable as a solo experience, but the game’s best moments come when players are working together, and with a robust non-verbal communication system, you can still get things done without a headset.
As with the majority of Xbox One “exclusives,” Sea of Thieves is also available on Windows 10 PCs, and the game supports the Xbox Play Anywhere program as well as cross-play. For those looking to try it out without breaking the bank, it will also be available on launch day through the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, along with every new Xbox One game that Microsoft publishes in the future.
Sea of Thieves releases for both Xbox One and PC on March 20. The closed beta runs through Monday, January 29, and it’s available to anyone who pre-ordered the game. Those who signed up for the game’s “Insider Program” are also eligible to participate, as is anyone who participated in the technical alpha test.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”