Category: Xbox

Just a few weeks ago at Gamescom we announced that an expansion for Age of Empires IV – The Sultans Ascend – would be coming soon. Today we’re thrilled to let our PC and Xbox console players around the world know that they’ll be able to play this exciting new content on November 14! Pre-orders are available now for everyone wanting to graduate The Sultans Ascend from their wishlist and begin counting down the days.

We’ve been slowly revealing what you can expect from The Sultans Ascend since our announcement and today can share the full package coming on November 14:

• New 8-mission campaign
• 2 new civilizations: Japanese & Byzantines
• 4 new variant civilizations
• 10 new maps
• 2 new biomes
• New unlockable rewards

This new Age of Empires IV single player campaign takes place in the Middle East during the European Crusades. You’ll take on the role of the Muslim resistance to the invasion and follow the story of well-known Muslim leaders, their struggles with the Crusaders, and the battles they fought. Our story begins with the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, when Muslim provinces are mired in rivalry with one another. The Crusaders take advantage of this and sweep through the Levantine coast, taking major cities and capturing Jerusalem leading to their controlling most of the Holy Land. Players will fight against the Holy Orders of the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutons, as well as their old foes, the Mongols. The Sultans Ascend is the first Age of Empires IV campaign to feature naval gameplay! The fight plays out both on land and at sea with new heroes, abilities, and mechanics at your disposal.

As well as a new campaign, by popular demand, we’re bringing two exciting new civilizations to the game. Take command of the mighty Japanese or the illustrious Byzantines! Each civilization brings unique new landmarks, special units, and strategies. The Japanese civilization tells the story of the age of the Samurai and includes special Shinobi units for espionage and assassination. The Byzantines civilization focuses on the Eastern Roman Empire which lasted over a thousand years. Players will be able to build aqueducts and cisterns, harvest a new resource and hire mercenaries.

We’re also adding re-imagined variants of four existing civilizations, with exciting new heroes, units, and strategies. The Abbasid Dynasty, Chinese, French and Holy Roman Empire will receive these new Variant Civilizations and players will have new ways to play as seasoned favorite civilizations.

In addition, The Sultans Ascend expansion introduces ten unique new maps. Each is meticulously designed to offer a different strategic layout and terrain. You’ll need to adapt your tactics to conquer diverse environments and emerge victorious. The expansion also features two new biomes – Japanese Spring and Savanna!We’re excited to expand Age of Empires IV! Get ready for November 14^th now by pre-ordering on Windows Store, Xbox or Steam. Want to ensure you get all the details on the new content? Ensure you’re following Age of Empires on X, Facebook and Instagram, or join the discussion on Steam, official Forums or Discord.

Related:
Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Party Animals, Gotham Knights, Payday 3, and More
State of Decay 2’s New Curveball Update Is a Literal Game-Changer
Idris Elba Interview – How Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Attracted Another Hollywood Superstar

Enjoy deep discounts on Xbox games and DLC with this week’s Xbox Sales and Specials from the Microsoft Games Store. Discounts are valid now through September 25, 2023 (actual end date varies by sale). Visit the official Xbox Sales & Specials site here.

Plus, save up to 75% off select Xbox titles during the Game Awards Sale and Tokyo Game Show Sale.

Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S Deals

Please note: prices and availability are subject to change and may vary by region. Content Type varies by title and some titles may have multiple types not listed. Check the title’s individual product page for specific details about the game.

Xbox 360 Deals

Please note: prices and availability are subject to change and may vary by region. Content Type varies by title and some titles may have multiple types not listed. Check the title’s individual product page for specific details about the game.

Related:
Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Party Animals, Gotham Knights, Payday 3, and More
State of Decay 2’s New Curveball Update Is a Literal Game-Changer
Idris Elba Interview – How Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Attracted Another Hollywood Superstar

Soccer fans: get ready for The World’s Game early with EA Sports FC 24. EA Play members can jump into a 10-hour trial of the game on September 22 – before release – and experience the next chapter in a more innovative future of football.

With early EA Sports FC 24 access, members will experience the ground-breaking realism delivered by HyperMotion V (on Xbox Series X|S), resulting in true-to-football movement and animations. The enhanced Frostbite Engine introduces lifelike detail, reinventing how 19,000+ fully licensed players move, play, and look in every match. In addition, EA Sports FC 24 features over 700 teams and 30 leagues, including the UEFA Men’s and Women’s Champions League, CONMEBOL Libertadores, Premier League, Barclays Women’s Super League, LaLiga EA Sports, Bundesliga, D1 Arkema, NWSL, and many more.

Starting September 22, EA Play members will also be able to score member-only member rewards while perfecting their free kicks. A special Welcome Pack – including Ultimate Team Draft Tokens, as well as the EA Play Football Revolution and Press Start to EA Play kits – will be available on the same day that early access begins.

In addition to EA Sports FC 24,here are even more member benefits available now with EA Play:

• Battlefield 2042 Cloaked Menace Vehicle Skin – Now to October 1
• Apex Legends Juiced Up Weapon Charm – Now to October 9
• Need for Speed Unbound Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4 (2021) – Now to October 9
• PGA Tour EA Golf Polo Shirts – Now to September 20
• NHL 23 WOC September Bag – Now to September 30
• NHL 23 X-Factor Upgrade Perk – Now to October 5
• F1 23 5000 XP Boost – Now to September 30
• FIFA 23 FUT Season 9 XP Boost – Now to September 30
• FIFA 23 VOLTA Hunter Jacket and COINS – Now to September 30
• FIFA 23 Pro Clubs Shadow Right Hand Tattoo – Now to September 30
• EA Sports FC 24 Welcome Pack – September 22 to October 23
• Madden NFL 24 MUT EA Play September Pack – Now to September 30
• UFC 4 Champion Fighter Customization Bundle Perk – Now to October 5

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass PC members receive EA Play at no additional cost with their Game Pass subscription. Members enjoy great player benefits, including in-game challenges and rewards, special member-only content, trials of select brand-new titles like Madden NFL 24, F1 23 and Super Mega Baseball 4, access to a collection of EA’s best-loved series and top titles, and 10% off purchases of Electronic Arts digital content.

Visit the EA Play page for more details, and to stay up to date on the latest from EA Play, follow EA Play on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Please see EA.com/EA-Play/Terms for terms and conditions.

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How do you meaningfully add to a game that’s been in players’ hands for five years? In the case of State of Decay 2, you throw a curveball. This new update, coming to players for free on September 18, is a landmark moment for the game – not just offering a swathe of new content for the game’s most dedicated players and newcomers alike, but marking a new era in State of Decay 2’s development through the work of Wushu Studios.

Wushu, from Liverpool, England, will continue providing support to State of Decay 2 as much of original studio Undead Labs transitions to work on the next entry in the series – but where you might expect that support to be incremental, Wushu is making a very big splash. Curveball is a major update, touching almost every element of the game, and designed to consistently offer brand new challenges, even to those who have been playing State of Decay 2 since release.

Available after the fifth in-game day, curveballs can change the world around your settlement in some very interesting ways. Housed in a new menu, curveballs will periodically appear – each with their own narrative attached – offering new objectives, rewards, enemy types and much more. Curveballs can be positive (like finding increased loot) or negative (like buffing regular zombies in multiple ways); they can be timed or objective based; they can affect enemies, your survivors, or other NPCs. Effectively, any element of the game you may have gotten comfortable with can, and often will, change.

“We basically wanted to address the feedback that over time the game became a bit repetitive relatively quickly,” Undead Labs’ Meg Chaney and Eric Anderson tell me, “so we wanted to introduce something that would shake things up and keep the game changing as players spend more time with the game.”

“For experienced players, the later stages of State of Decay 2 can get a little predictable,” adds Wushu’s John Hollingworth. “That’s why we are introducing curveballs. This feature is designed to keep you on your toes by adding random events and world-changing modifiers to the game. It introduces new layers of challenge and unpredictability to keep the wasteland fresh, exciting and dangerous. These new scenarios help to develop more unique stories around your survivors, so whether you’re a seasoned survivor or just starting out, each session and playthrough will feel different to the last.”

To enforce that unpredictability, curveballs are fairly random – while a few are tied directly to actions you take in the game, many can appear completely unexpectedly – and you can even have multiple curveballs active at the same time. “We think it’s going to be a bit of a rollercoaster ride for seasoned players,” Chaney and Anderson explain. “Some of the curveballs may only require minor adjustments to tackle or will provide new opportunities, but some of them can be pretty vicious and require major adjustments to their tactics.”

Of course, the most obvious of those changes comes in how curveballs can affect your most frequent targets: zombies. “Zombies were the first and most obvious target for modifiers,” Hollingworth tells me. “We wanted to lean into the idea that there is an ebb and flow of mutational outbreaks within the population as a result of events occurring in the world, or the Plague attempting to push back and fight the enclaves.

“Zombie side effects can include lethal physiological changes or heightened senses. Some examples can be things like stronger zombie attacks, improved eyesight, hearing and even smell to zero in on survivors out of sight. Zombies may explode with decomposed bile gunk when killed or carry a stench that suffocates and drains the stamina of any survivor up close. These are just some of the challenging mutational modifiers. However, zombies may also carry side effects that make them weaker. They can become frail, slow down, and in turn be easier to behead and knock down by affecting their center of balance.”

To put this into context, all of this can happen to just a single enemy type – with so many modifiers on the table, it’s clear how wildly different the form of curveballs could be from one player’s game to another. But the point is that curveballs shouldn’t make it feel like you’re suddenly playing a different game, just a warped one (and you can even turn the feature off entirely if you’d prefer to play the base game as it was). “We have touched on a lot of different systems but only to an extent which complements the current gameplay,” explains Hollingworth. “We wanted to ensure it narratively fit and could be justified within the simulation as to not break the immersion.”

And the curveballs don’t end with what’s coming to the game on September 18. “We also are hoping to introduce more player control over the feature over time, so ultimately it should be up to the player to determine how much of an impact they want curveballs to make,” Chaney and Anderson tell me.

This is just the start of Wushu’s work on State of Decay 2, and you can expect the game to see more updates as time goes on – but the team wants to spend some time after its big new feature making sure that its players are feeling heard, too: “We’ll be putting a bit more time into tackling some items from the player wishlist and addressing existing player concerns,” says Hollingworth of the near future. “Some of them may require extensive overhauls to existing systems, but mostly I think we’ll be focusing on improving what’s already there and making sure it matches players’ expectations.”

It’s rare to see such a significant new idea added to a game after five years, and it seems Undead Labs and Wushu have more plans to come: “SoD2 has an incredibly loyal player base and a phenomenal community,” says Chaney, “so our primary goal is to continue to provide them with meaningful content and gameplay updates! This game is 5 years sexy and we’re going to keep the party rolling…”

Make sure to check out the Curveball update when it arrives in State of Decay 2 on September 18.

State Of Decay 2: Ultimate Edition

Xbox Game Studios

☆☆☆☆☆
5997

★★★★★

Get it now

Xbox One X Enhanced

State of Decay 2: Ultimate Edition includes:

• Independence Pack*
• Daybreak Pack*
• Doomsday Pack*

The ultimate zombie survival game

• Build your community and invite up to three friends** to explore an open-world world filled with hostile zombies
• Establish a base, develop your characters and manage resources to survive in a post-apocalyptic world
• In the apocalypse, every decision matters and brings with it lasting consequences.
• How you survive just might surprise you.
• Available on Xbox One and Windows 10.
• Xbox One X Enhanced and supports Xbox Play Anywhere.

*Add-on packs available as released, see Xbox.com for more info
**State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition and add-on content downloads require up to 25GB. ISP fees apply. Xbox Live account required.

State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition may be downloaded to your Xbox One console by selecting “My Games and Apps”, then selecting “Ready to Install”. Included content will automatically be added to Ready to Install, without the need of a download code.

***Xbox Live Gold membership required for online multiplayer on Xbox One (sold separately). Play on one device at a time. PC hardware requirements may vary for games on Windows 10. Enhanced features for Xbox One X subject to release of a content update. Games information at xbox.com/enhanced. Specific enhancements vary by game.

State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition

Xbox Game Studios

☆☆☆☆☆
1254

★★★★★

$29.99

$14.99

Get it now

Xbox One X Enhanced

PC Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass

The dead have risen and civilization has fallen. Not even the military could stop the zombies, and now it’s up to you to gather survivors, scavenge for resources and build a community with up to three of your friends in a post-apocalyptic world – a world where every decision matters, and where you define what it means to survive in this ultimate zombie survival simulation.

State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition re-imagines the popular survival game as a brand-new experience to welcome first-time players… and those who’ve come back from the dead. This edition is packed with new and remastered content for the ultimate zombie survival experience.

Join over 10 million existing players and discover what Juggernaut Edition has to offer:

• The base game plus all three add-on packs released to date, including the all-new Homecoming update:
o Homecoming: a full-size, fully remastered, open world version of Trumbull Valley for the core game, reintegrating the Mount Tanner and Fairfield regions to the map, and adding new sites to scavenge, along with new sights to behold.
o Heartland: an massive story campaign set in a familiar town with new challenges
o Daybreak Pack: a test of teamwork with siege-style, “survive the horde” gameplay
o Independence Pack: a celebration of history that blows up zombies… with fireworks!
• Remastered graphics and an upgraded engine featuring realistic fog effects
• An expanded soundtrack with hours of new thematic musical arrangements
• Providence Ridge: a brand-new open-world map full of forests, zombies, and mystery
• Two-handed heavy weapons with new melee combat moves to bust zombie heads
• A new introductory experience and improved controls to help you master the apocalypse

… and countless other improvements to the classic open-ended sandbox gameplay.

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Not long ago, Idris Elba was just a Cyberpunk 2077 player. Today, he’s a fully-fledged actor in the game, and a huge part of the new Phantom Liberty expansion. Oh, and he’s supervised and created some of the new music coming to the game, for good measure. It’s been quite the journey for the celebrated actor, but it started with a simple chat:

“It was really just an exploratory conversation,” he told Xbox On. “You know, ‘Do like gaming? Are you into games? Would you be interested in being a part of something?’ And then, before we knew it, we were having a conversation about Cyberpunk. And I was aware of Cyberpunk as a game, I played it, but then to be a part of the expansion was quite exciting to me.”

That was no doubt helped by the fact that he’d already seen Keanu Reeves playing the role of Johnny Silverhand and, soon, Elba joined the project to portray Solomon Reed, a key figure in Phantom Liberty, pitched somewhere between sidekick and mentor for player-character V. Reed – and Elba’s part in playing him – has been known about for some time, but we haven’t learned much about Reed himself. That’s clearly been a purposeful decision, as Elba teases, “his storyline really has some twists and turns and it’s deep. I was attracted to it, because it was a dramatic character.”

What we do know about Reed is that he’s a tortured ex-special agent, “someone who is really dedicated to his craft, his profession, to his country. But when you meet him, I wouldn’t say it’s a sad story, but it’s a story that’s got its layers, and you meet someone that’s sort of caged in. But when you get into the expansion with Solomon, you get to understand who he is a little bit. He becomes V’s guide, or protector in some cases, and you’re not sure if you can trust him or not.”

The process of creating Reed has been an interesting one for Elba. While he’s appeared in games before, it’s never been a role quite as large as this – and doing that in the fabric of a game as huge as Cyberpunk already is was its own challenge. Thankfully, he felt the writing on the page was strong enough to get him into character easily:

“It’s so complex. I came in and just inherited the world you know – and the storytelling is deep. And so I just brought my own nuance in terms of, I guess, how he sounds, the emotive spectrum for him – but it’s pretty well written.”

Elba’s work was almost entirely through voice-acting, which meant that his recording sessions were captured on video to use as references for the animators. Putting your likeness into someone else’s hands is a leap of faith for a screen actor, but Elba’s felt in safe hands. “It’s funny,” he explains, “because you could say a line, and you could say it with, you know, the intention of pain. And the animator could make you look like you’re happy while you’re saying it – but if it works, it works. And that’s the beauty of collaboration I think.”

That collaboration, and the sheer depth of the story, has taken three full years to perfect – another key difference from his usual work being that Reed needs to be able to go in multiple directions within a single conversation. “A game like this – you’re basically [acting in] it three times, because you’ve got three different answers,” Elba explains of the lengthy process. “You try to record all the different threads at the same time […] It is a process – hats off to [CD PROJEKT RED].”

He laughs, saying, “I’m not sure I’m going to do another game anytime soon. It’s graft – it’s proper graft.”

But he’s delighted with the results, paying tribute to CD PROJEKT RED’s staff throughout the interview. They’re likely delighted with him too, not least because he didn’t just act in the expansion, but brought experience from his side-career as a DJ to help craft Phantom Liberty’s new musical identity, picking tracks for a new radio station, and even creating his own:

“It kind of crossed the realm of music supervision. You know, trying to pick a ‘sonic’ that is relatable to this incredible landscape – and that was a joy. As a DJ, that’s what you do when walk into a club – you’ve got a thousand people, they’re all different, pick one song that makes them all dance. So it was a bit like a process just to pick stuff out – that was just enjoyable.

“I [also] managed to make three songs. That was also a lot of fun – one’s a really techie house thing, one’s really hip-hop, and one’s just kind of experimental. Because Cyberpunk could be anything – it’s cyber, it’s punk, and punk and cyber are sort of mishmashes in any case. We went wherever we wanted with it.”

We don’t have long to wait to see how Elba’s turn as Solomon Reed changes the game – Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty arrives on Xbox Series X|S on September 26.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

CD PROJEKT RED

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

Phantom Liberty, a new spy-thriller adventure to Cyberpunk 2077, arrives on 26.09.2023 (CEST) for Xbox Series X|S — pre-order now to get in-game access to the Quadra Sport R-7 “Vigilante” when the expansion launches!

ABOUT THE GAME

Phantom Liberty is a new spy-thriller adventure for Cyberpunk 2077. When the orbital shuttle of the President of the New United States of America is shot down over the deadliest district of Night City, there’s only one person who can save her — you. Become V, a cyberpunk for hire, and dive deep into a tangled web of espionage and political intrigue, unraveling a story that connects the highest echelons of power with the brutal world of black-market mercenaries.

Infiltrate Dogtown, a city-within-a-city run by a trigger-happy militia and ruled by a leader with an iron fist. With the help of NUSA sleeper agent Solomon Reed (Idris Elba) and the support of Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves), unravel a web of shattered loyalties and use your every skill to survive in a fractured world of desperate hustlers, shadowy netrunners, and ruthless mercenaries. Built with the power of next-gen hardware in mind, Phantom Liberty offers brand-new gameplay mechanics, nail-biting courier jobs, gigs, and missions — and a thrilling main quest where freedom and loyalty always come at a price.

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