An absolute Blizzard of news.

Microsoft's Minecraft franchise and the apparel company Puma appear to be teaming up for something. A teaser video posted today hints at a forthcoming partnership between the hugely popular gaming franchise and the German athletic apparel company.

In the teaser video, an ocelot from Minecraft chases a creeper, ending with the ocelot jumping into position to match the Puma logo. "We can't wait to reveal more," the developer said.

That's all there is to go on for this collaboration, so we'll have to wait to learn more. But Puma would become just the latest big-name brand to work with Microsoft on the Minecraft series.

The franchise has previously welcome skins from mega-franchises like The Simpsons and Star Wars, as well as Mass Effect and Skyrim, among many, many others.

Minecraft was in the news recently when it became the first video game franchise ever to pass 1 trillion views on YouTube. The series remains immensely popular and continues to receive big new updates, the most recent of which was Caves and Cliffs in December.

The series is becoming a film, with Peter Sollett (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist) directing. Minecraft has also been making headlines recently as part of Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft didn't stop publishing Minecraft on PlayStation when it acquired the series, and Microsoft will continue to put Call of Duty on PlayStation even after the buyout.

Nightingale won't quite have the "narrative spine" of a Baldur's Gate or a Mass Effect game, but will instead focus much more than other games in the survival genre on world-building, with an emphasis on player choice.

January has so far been a massive month for Xbox Game Pass users, with the likes of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Spelunky 2, and Outer Wilds joining the service earlier in the month. Now, an additional nine games have been announced for the rest of the month, however four games will also be leaving Game Pass at the end of the month.

The four games leaving Xbox Game Pass this month are indie side-scrolling platformer Cyber Shadow, roguelike deckbuilder Nowhere Prophet, construction and management sim Prison Architect, and arena shooter Xeno Crisis.

Game Pass looks to be in for a strong year in 2022, with Microsoft announcing today that the subscription service now has more than 25 million subscribers globally. The news that Microsoft will buy Activision Blizzard may also end up being good news for Game Pass subscribers, with Microsoft saying that it intends to add "as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass."

Here's the full list of Game Pass titles that will no longer be available after January 31.

Game Pass Titles Leaving In January

January 31

• Cyber Shadow -- console, cloud, PC
• Nowhere Prophet -- console, cloud, PC
• Prison Architect -- PC
• Xeno Crisis -- cloud, console, PC

Microsoft has announced the final list of games coming to PC Game Pass for January 2022. The news was nearly swallowed up by the announcement of the Activision Blizzard acquisition. Almost, but I’ve kept my ear to the ground. Earlier in the month, Game Pass subscribers got their hands on lovely games like Spelunky 2, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and Outer Worlds. We cap off the final two weeks with another promising batch. Both Rainbow Six Siege and Rainbow Six Extraction head to PC Game Pass, along with Death’s Door and the Hitman Trilogy. It’s a pretty good list, all things considered. The highly praised Death’s Door is coming out on January 20, but it won’t be alone. Much like in December, the vast majority of games heading to PC Game Pass this month are all arriving on the same day. Alongside Death’s Door is the Hitman Trilogy, Pupperazzi, Rainbow Six Extraction, Rainbow Six Siege: Deluxe Edition, and Windjammers 2. The only outlier of the b...

What will the next GTA, Mass Effect, Mario Kart, and Spider-Man games be?

I don’t expect readers to immediately reserve themselves a VIP table at Afterlife or book a shopping trip to the lower markets of the citadel but Mass Effect Legendary Edition is now on Game Pass for everyone who has a subscription. I wholeheartedly encourage one and all to craft their own path in the beautiful (dangerous) and vast galaxy.

The post Why you should be playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition via Game Pass appeared first on TheXboxHub.

2022 has arrived and, despite bringing some bitterly cold weather with it, I’m sure we’re all hoping for a more positive year compared to the last two! Considering it’s only the first week of January, there was a surprising amount of news, so let’s dive right into our first gaming round-up of the year… In the News This Week E3 2022 will be online-only once again – Summer Games Fest confirms its return Mario Kart 9 rumours fly after analyst states it’s in “active development” PSVR 2 specs and name revealed along with Horizon Call of the Mountain! Just Add Water CEO and founder Stewart Gilray has passed away Insomniac Games are tweeting about the Chimera again, are they hinting at something? Rumour: The Last of Us PS5 remake will launch this year Rainbow Six Extraction will launch on Game Pass, Ubisoft+ coming to Xbox Ghost of Tsushima has swept past 8 million sales Days Gone might have sold 8 million copies in 1.5 years, according to game director A Skull & Bones associate game director has left Ubisoft GoldenEye 007 achievements appear online sparking rumours of remaster Castlevania NFTs to be auctioned by Konami as part of Memorial Series Amazon’s Fallout TV series will begin production this year Final Fantasy 7 Remake mod concept brings back PS1 camera And if you’re subscribed to various gaming services, January’s updates are live: Xbox Game Pass January 2022 includes Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Outer Wilds and more The January 2022 PS Plus games are now live, download links here PlayStation Now January 2022 line up includes Mortal Kombat 11 & Final Fantasy XII Our Most Wanted Games of 2022 Heralding in the new year, our look at the top games coming in 2022 kicked into overdrive as it entered the final five: #5 – Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League #4 – Dead Space Remake #3 – Horizon Forbidden West #2 – Elden Ring Check out the rest of our 50 Most Wanted Games of 2022 here, and keep your eyes peeled for our #1 game coming later today! Games in Review and Featured Articles As you might expect, it was a quiet start to the new year for the reviews: Exo One – XSX|S, XBO, PC – 8/10 Yu-Gi-Oh! Rush Duel: Dawn of the Battle Royale!! – NSW– 3/10 Never-the-less, Aran was on hand with the first preview of 2022 as he looked at My Lovely Wife that makes you question how far you would go to bring back someone you love. Last up, we finished off the week as we always do with What We Played, which featured Deep Rock Galactic, Far Cry 6 & It Takes Two. Trailer Park See the plane fight from the Uncharted movie in a new 2 minutes clip New Horizon Forbidden West trailer reveals the Utaru and Tenakth tribes AVICII Invector Encore Edition announced for Meta Quest 2 Your Achievements Here’s what you in our community has been up to this week: MrYd has made his way to the third area in Ghost of Tsushima and is loving it. He also enjoyed Deep Rock Galactic, Life is Strange 2 and Sniper Elite VR, but was disappointed with the ‘broken’ Alan Wake. willbuchanan got the platinums for Tomb Raider and Donut County. He’s also completed Maneater and the Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens DLC, and has now moved onto Guardians of the Galaxy. TSBonyman wasn’t impressed by Deep Rock Galactic and had mixed feelings for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – while it looks gorgeous he thought it was a bit bare bones. Luckily, the weekly music jams in Dreams are a familiar home. And Andrewww has been continuing through the main story of Days Gone, trying to avoid the open world fatigue from too many side quests. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you again soon!

Dream big

BioWare has confirmed they’re actively working on the next iteration […]

The post Dragon Age 4 Worlds of Adventure Built on Choices That Matter appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Spaced out.

If you’ve been itching for an intergalactic RPG to occupy you through the cold winter months, then you can do much worse than Mass Effect Legendary Edition, BioWare’s trilogy of remastered classics. The game is now included as part of EA Play on both PS5 and PS4, and is available to download at no extra cost if you’re a member.

It joins a growing vault of software, which also includes recent EA releases like It Takes Two. You can find the full selection of All EA Play Games on PS5, PS4 through the link. The download for Mass Effect weighs in at just over 85GB, so is a big’un – but it does compile three monstrous games at the end of the day, so it makes sense.

Read the full article on pushsquare.com

In one hell of a Game Pass scoop, the service is landing Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. That’s all three original Mass Effect games, remastered and re-released, for you to play if you have a Game Pass subscription. If those were the only additions in January we’d be happy, but we have also got previous Game of the Year contender Outer Wilds coming back, while the reasonably recent Embr is on the service and can be played now.

The post Mass Effect: Legendary Edition makes a Normandy landing onto Game Pass, alongside two others appeared first on TheXboxHub.