Every little piece of information we learn about video games can’t be classified as a story in itself. While we’d love to talk more about everything, the fact is that resources don’t permit us to discuss titles beyond ones we feel will resonate with our readers. Keeping that in mind, the stories still deserve attention so we’ve invented the daily briefing to get you up to speed.
Backward Compatibility
Lego Indiana Jones is coming to backward compatibility today.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered
A new patch for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered is now live on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The update includes Sniper Collateral Damage, bug fixes for the camera, invisible weapon issue and other enhancements.
Fallout 4
Appearing on the Kinda Funny Gamecast, Bethesda marketing executive Pete Hines said, “Fallout 4 has gotta be the most successful game we’ve ever launched in our company’s history. More than Skyrim, in terms of what we did.” I guess he must mean in terms of overall revenue because there’s no way it beat Skyrim in terms of sales. I think it probably has to do with the insane season pass price and DLC.
Final Fantasy 15
About 70% of the Final Fantasy 15 team is still working on the game to make it better and support it for a long time.
Forgotten Anne
ThroughLine Games is a Danish independent games studio focusing on developing story-driven games with high artistic ambitions. The team is currently developing Forgotton Anne, a 2D cinematic adventure game for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, releasing in 2017.
Gears of War 4
Arriving today, the Gears of War 4 February update adds a week-long Valentine’s event, new Gear Packs to collect, two new maps and further improvements to the game. Gears has always embraced the holidays, and this Valentine’s Day is no different. February 10 marks the beginning of over a week of Valentine’s Day celebrations, with new Gear Packs to earn, daily Valentine’s themed bounties, another Craftable Character to collect, and the much-requested return of Torque Bow Tag.
New multiplayer maps include Impact Dark and War Machine. Both maps are available to play today in the Developer Playlist for Season Pass Holders, featuring Team Deathmatch, Guardian and King of the Hill gametypes with double experience and 20% bonus credits.
Speaking of Guardian, The Coalition have got new surprises in store for fans of the mode. Based on fan feedback, they’ve changed the spawning system from the original spawn swap solution to something entirely new–Leader Spawns. Now, you’ll respawn in a location close to your Leader adding a new tactical edge–Leaders now need to position themselves in beneficial areas of the map, while other players will have more opportunity to get back to their leader and come to their aid.
Core and Competitive lobbies will arrive next month in the March update. The developers will also tweak weapons and playlists according to the Gears Feedback Program survey. Legacy Characters will also be added next month. Apart from that, future updates will include a new Inconceivable difficult setting, IronMan Mode, more skills for existing classes and achievements.
Ghost Blade HD
Calling all shoot ’em up fans! Ghost Blade HD will deliver its own version of extreme bullet-hell on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Wii U on February 28, 2017. The Steam version will follow hot on its heels on March 8, 2017.
The Golf Club 2
Video game publisher Maximum Games, in partnership with developer HB Studios, has today released a brand-new first look trailer for their highly-anticipated sports game, The Golf Club 2. Further expanding upon the popular first installment, The Golf Club 2 aims to hit a hole in one with its huge community of players, as well as newcomers to the franchise, when it releases this spring on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam.
Grand Theft Auto 5
Grand Theft Auto 5 sold more units in 2016 than 2015. The game has now shipped over 75 million copies and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. For a reference, Mafia 3 has now shipped 5 million units while Civilization 6 has now passed 1.5 million units. Despite all that though, Take-Two posted a loss of $29.8 million for the quarter, which is better than the $42.4 million loss they posted last year.
iO
iO is coming to Xbox One soon. It’s a brain challenging game that will make you feel smarter as you finish each stage.
Microsoft
According to Windows Central, sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans have told us that Mike Ybarra and Kareem Choudhry are both set to become corporate vice presidents at the company. Mike Ybarra is the Head of Program Management for Xbox, with Kareem Choudhry heading up development at Xbox Software Engineering.
Milestone
Italian developer and publisher Milestone and distributor Koch Media have announced a new partnership, which begins with the release of the next entry in Milestone’s celebrated MXGP franchise. Alongside MXGP3: The Official Motocross Videogame, Koch Media will exclusively distribute Milestone’s upcoming 2017 titles, including MotoGP 17 and an unannounced game due later in the year. The release of these upcoming titles will be supported by Koch Media’s experienced marketing and communication teams across its local offices.
Overwatch
Overwatch is getting a server browser.
Rainbow Six Siege
Today, Ubisoft announced that Operation Velvet Shell, the first free update of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege: Year 2, will be available for Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 4 and Windows from February 7, 2017. Year 2 pass holders will instantly receive the two new Operators of the Spanish Counter Terrorist Unit as well as their four signature weapons skins. Non-Season Pass owners will be able to unlock them using the “Renown” in-game currency or R6 Credits from February 14, 2017.
Switch
Threye Interactive today announced Switch, a brand new touching puzzle platformer, to be released on Steam on March 7 and on Xbox One later this spring, where players embody the letter “I”, on an adventure to redeem lost friendship. Featuring over seventy challenging levels that span across five visually soothing worlds, Switch is a 2D puzzle platforming game with a heartwarming narrative, that mixes classic platform mechanics with a nimble “switching” twist. Leisurely paced, challenging, and addictively fun, Switch will keep players’ palms sweaty and thumbs fatigued.
Xbox Rewards
Anime Month is here again…but this time, Microsoft’s adding even more supercharged rewards. Choose from a power-packed roster of the hottest anime games, movies, and shows, and you’ll get 4,000 rewards credits. And don’t forget to check back every week for great deals on featured titles.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.