Microsoft has revealed the first wave of Xbox Game Pass titles coming to the subscription service this August. While we already knew about Creatures of Ava and Mafia: Definitive Edition’s impending additions to Xbox Game Pass, we also learned that another Activision Blizzard game is coming: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
Originally a PlayStation 4 exclusive, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy revamped Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot games for what were then current-gen platforms. It toed the line between remaster and remake as the visuals got a complete overhaul, but it was extremely faithful when it came to gameplay and level design. Regardless, the first three Crash Bandicoot games are fantastic, so N. Sane Trilogy is as well.
It’s the third Activision game to come to the service, following Diablo IV and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. It appears to be the first Activision game to be playable through the cloud on Game Pass, according to its listing in the Xbox Wire article.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy will be available on Xbox Game Pass on August 8. A day before that, Creatures of Ava will be a day one addition to the service. It’s an enjoyable sci-fi adventure in which players survey and collect creatures on an alien planet. Then, on August 13, 2K and Hanger 13’s crime game remake Mafia: Definitive Edition will be added to the service’s catalog.
While Xbox Game Pass will add these three great new games throughout the first half of this month, the following four games will leave Microsoft’s subscription service on August 15.
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.”