Everything Games & More

Phil Spencer’s recent comments about Xbox’s third-place standing in the video game marketplace have created quite a stir in the Xbox community. We play Phil’s quote and then spend a LOT of time reacting to and discussing it. Plus: it’s the First Annual Xbox Games Showcase Draft! We compile a list of the games we think are most likely to make an appearance at next month’s Showcase. Some of our choices might surprise you!

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As Diablo IV inches closer to its June launch date, Blizzard has revealed battle pass pricing and how the RPG will handle its seasonal content.

As detailed in its latest livestream developer blog, Blizzard outlined the Diablo IV season basics with a breakdown on rewards and progression. The first season begins in mid to late July, with four seasons planned per year–one per quarter, each set to last for three months.

Seasons aren’t meant to expand upon Diablo IV’s main narrative; that’s being left to its expansions. Instead, it’ll focus on separate, themed content iterating on the base game and introducing “fresh concepts and ideas into the world of Sanctuary.

Square Enix has announced that online servers for the Bravely Default games on Nintendo 3DS will shut down on June 30.

Producer Tomoya Asano said that there will be a second announcement later this month about how the shutdown will impact Bravely Default and Bravely Second: End Layer. He explained that the team expects Net Friend Invites and that sending Nemeses will no longer work. However, players can still enjoy the game offline and see their stories to the end after the shutdown. Additionally, StreetPass between 3DS players will still be available.

Among the many new features of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, one of the most interesting is its building system via the Ultrahand mechanic, which lets players build vehicles and other structures out of parts. It’s a fascinating new mechanic, and we just got a look at some of its early development footage that seemingly shows the prototype system in action not in Tears of the Kingdom, but Breath of the Wild.

The footage comes courtesy of Nintendo, which has been posting a series of developer Q&As leading up to Breath of the Wild’s launch, along with some images and videos.