Xbox has confirmed that another Developer_Direct will take place later this month, offering use new looks at games like Doom: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Plus, we’ll see a “brand new game” from a mystery studio sometime during the showcase.
January 2025’s Developer_Direct will take place on official Xbox social media channels at 10 a.m. PT on January 23. It’s the latest iteration of a type of showcase that Xbox began in 2023, which is meant to give us a deeper look at upcoming Xbox games and the studios behind them. Hi-Fi Rush famously shadow-dropped after the first Developer_Direct, and previous shows have also featured games like Indiana Jones and the Great Ciricle, Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsport, Redfall, Avowed, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Visions of Mana, and Ara: History Untold.
This show focuses on titles we know are coming later this year, with an Xbox Wire post teasing details on each. We’ll finally get the “full reveal” of Doom: The Dark Ages, iD Software’s latest shooter, first announced at 2024’s Xbox Games Showcase. A “deep dive” into South of Midnight is also confirmed, giving us another look at the American Deep South folklore-inspired action-adventure game that impressed Digital Trends when we saw it in action at Complusion Games’ studio last November.
On the third-party front, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will also show up. This gorgeous RPG impressed at the latest Xbox showcase, and developer Sandfall Interactive is poised to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the game and “will share more about the game’s creation and how they plan to deliver an incredible story in a gorgeous fantasy world.” Hopefully, we get release dates for these highly anticipated Game Pass titles.
The most exciting part of this Developer_Direct is that the Xbox Wire post teases that it will “visit a surprise location to see another studio’s brand new game.” Although Xbox isn’t saying anything more about it, rumors suggest it could be an Unreal Engine 5 remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The phrasing of “brand new game” seems to dispel that possibility, though, so we’ll have to tune into the show when it takes place in a couple of weeks to see if that’s true.
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.