TGO Daily | December 10, 2020 | xCloud Heads to iOS and PC
The Game Awards are tomorrow! It is likely that the full newsletter will be dedicated to the event, which means that I’m staying up pretty late to make it happen. I hope you’re excited for it though!
If you’re watching it live, feel free to join us in the Discord, I’m sure we’ll be chatting about it live. Otherwise, I’ll have all the biggest notes for you as a recap :)
In the mean time, there’s plenty of news to cover today as well. Hope it’s helpful!
Adrian
In The News
Xbox Streaming
Xbox Game Pass subscribers will soon have cloud streaming features on iOS and PC starting in the spring of 2021.
Streaming has been available on Android devices for a while, and due to various roadblocks Microsoft was unable to get it on Apple phones. Then some other streaming services (like GeForce Now and Amazon Luna) found workarounds to be available on iOS, and they will now be implementing that.
It also marks the debut for PC streaming, which will instantly become a major competitor in the market with its Game Pass service. Stadia doesn’t stand a chance against them if it works well enough.
Halo Infinite Update
Following its delay before the launch of the new consoles, Halo Infinite was in a state of flux without a new release date. We now know that they’ve pushed it to fall 2021, almost a full year after the initial planned launch.
If you’re interested in what they’re doing with the game, take a gander at their blog post. They provide updates on the art direction, multiplayer, and customization options. Of note, they address head-on the criticisms of the gameplay they showed off last summer, talking about graphical fidelity and character models. They also confirmed that the game will not have randomized rewards in its free-to-play multiplayer.
The significant delay may seem surprising, but I’m glad they’re doing it. Evidently they rushed their progress in order to hit the launch of the Series X, and now that the milestone is passed, they can take the time they need.
Remedy Update
Remedy Entertainment’s Control has now been confirmed to have sold two million units since its release last year. That makes it their fastest growing new IP since Max Payne in 2001. They attributed this to the game being multi-platform from the start, with Xbox getting exclusivity on a lot of their previous titles. They also said that November was their best ever in terms of sales, out the 15 months that the game has been available, which is pretty cool.
They also teased their upcoming game codenamed “Vanguard.” A smaller team within the studio are going to be tackling a free-to-play live service multiplayer game. It’ll be interesting to see how they tackle that.
The Game Awards
If you head over to Steam you will have access to The Game Awards Festival, which gives you a bunch of demos for upcoming games which will presumably be shown off at the event itself. Geoff Keighley likes to do this with many of the events he’s a part of.
There’s some interesting games there, but I’d especially like to point out Little Nightmares II, which is coming out some time next year. The first game is absolutely fantastic — if you like games like LIMBO and INSIDE, this one is for you.
Holiday celebrations!
The final update of the year has just hit Sea of Thieves, and it is celebrating the holidays with some new challenges and cosmetics. I imagine there’s going to be a lot of these kinds of things happening over the next few weeks — please send them my way if you know about any! I would love to do a wrap-up of all the games doing it at some point. I was going to do it for Halloween but never got around to it.
Say Hello!
That’s all for today :) If you want to get in touch, you can always reply to this email. You can also DM me on Twitter, or come join the community on Discord (it’s awesome)!
This newsletter is a companion/alternative to a mini-podcast I produce. The show is archived on YouTube, with most people listening on Amazon Alexa devices — but it’s also available on all podcast hosts.
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