Following a limited trial in the Xbox Insider Program, all Xbox One owners with a subscription to Xbox Live Gold can now check out Xbox Game Pass early. It is the company’s new monthly subscription service for playing 100-plus Xbox One and backward compatible Xbox 360 games. Game Pass doesn’t officially launch to the masses until June 1, thus Microsoft is now giving Gold members a sneak peek and a headstart on the 14-day free trial.
Microsoft’s subscription service may appear to compete with directly Sony’s PlayStation Now service, but the two are completely different animals. On the Sony front, gamers on the PlayStation 4 and Windows PC can stream more than 450 PS3 and PS4 games for $20 each month ($50 for three months). Meanwhile, Microsoft’s new service provides just over 100 games for $10 a month, but they are downloaded for local play on the Xbox One console.
For the Xbox One, Microsoft’s new subscription service dishes out a number of popular titles including Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Halo 5: Guardians, Mad Max, and Sunset Overdrive. So far, there are 40 titles developed for the Xbox One console in the subscription, addressing multiple genres spanning action, simulation, platforming, and so on.
As for the Xbox 360 titles, Microsoft’s library is substantially larger with 72 games. This portion includes big hitters such as the BioShock trilogy, Borderlands, Fable III, all four Gears of War titles, LEGO Batman, Sacred 3, and XCOM: Enemy Within. There are a lot to choose from, as the library covers a wider range of genres including RPG and Action/RPG.
Here is the full Xbox 360 list:
Note that both libraries are not set in stone, as Microsoft plans to swap out games each month so the two libraries remain somewhat fresh. Subscribers who want to continue playing a game before it is pulled from the subscription can purchase a digital copy with a 20 percent price reduction, and a 10 percent price reduction on all related add-ons.
Microsoft plans to offer a “retail” version of the Xbox Game Pass later this year.
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.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.