‘LUNAR Remastered Collection’ Marked for Play Anywhere

As spotted by one of XboxEra's community members, it would appear that publisher GungHo Entertainment Online America's coming 'LUNAR Remastered Collection' will support Xbox's Play Anywhere programme as you can see above in the featured…

[image or embed]

— XboxEra (@xboxera.com) 24 January 2025 at 17:10

2025 looks like a great year for Xbox. A steady stream of new games are hitting Game Pass throughout 2025, and it looks like Microsoft is delivering what Xbox fans have been waiting for. All of this and more in Notepad 📒 this week, live for subscribers 👇 www.theverge.com/2025/1/24/24...

[image or embed]

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren.co.uk) 24 January 2025 at 17:03

Tom has also heard Gears for 2025 but wonders if it will make it. He has heard Oblivion Remaster is late Spring - early Summer.

So Tom Warren has heard Gears for 25, Nate is speculating about it and Tom Henderson straight up tweeted it before deleting it. This would be such a fucking insane line-up, Lol. Maybe Gears E-Day could be 2025 if it's SP only? 

Tom also hearing Oblivion for Spring/Summer lines up with Nate's leak of June.

Xbox in 2005

Xbox in 2025

WELCOME BACK 2005 XBOX

Introducing the Xbox Excellence Awards, Honoring the Studios Behind the Games You Loved Most in 2024

Amazing games are at the heart of our mission to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet. Now, more screens than ever can be an Xbox, and those screens are lit up by the incredible portfolio of games brought to life by talented developers around the world. These teams create unforgettable gaming experiences that engage and inspire players of all ages. As a thank you to the creators of those games, and to shine a light on the games that players loved in 2024, today we’re announcing the recipients of the 2024 Xbox Excellence Awards.

With over a thousand games launching annually on Xbox consoles, PC and cloud, this could be a case of simply picking a panel to decide – but the Excellence Awards are all about how you engaged with Xbox over the last year. To assemble the list, we selected four key categories which are indicators of players’ passion, engagement, and love for these games. Those four categories are:

• Store Rating: Highest-rated content across our stores released in 2024, with a minimum of 500 ratings.
• Player Engagement: Games with the highest average hours per player within the first six weeks of release.
• Daily Active Users: Games, expansions, or major updates with the highest single-day active users in 2024. You may notice games that weren’t released in 2024 in this list – that’s because they got a significant update last year.
• Units Sold: Top-selling content across Xbox and Microsoft stores.

The final list represents a diverse collection of titles produced by studios comprised of anywhere from tens to thousands of developers, located in 15 different countries worldwide. You can find the titles for each category – listed alphabetically – below.

Developers and publishers will receive their trophies shortly, so be on the lookout to see how they celebrate!

Introducing the Xbox Excellence Awards, Honoring the Studios Behind the Games You Loved Most in 2024 - Xbox Wire

Sticking to this now that full year results are in. Black Ops 6 in 2024 actually outsold 2023's MWIII in full game dollar sales, with sales share shifting to PlayStation.

Subscription spending did see a bump (+11% in Dec, +4% for the year), and Xbox Series hardware did not get a significant boost.

[image or embed]

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 24 January 2025 at 17:13

All-in, it looks so far (to me, in my opinion, based on what I have, my own subjective opinion driven from available data that you in no way need to share nor tell me why you disagree) that putting Call of Duty on Game Pass led to a moderate improvement in the reach and size of the property.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 24 January 2025 at 17:16

Here's what Tom said exactly, as I don't have access to the Notepad but saw someone else post it.

There's a long-running joke in the Xbox community that Microsoft will finally hit its stride with Game Pass and Xbox releases "next year." The joke has been going around since 2018, when Microsoft made a series of big studio acquisitions to create more Xbox games and make Game Pass more appealing. Year after year, Xbox fans have been waiting for a solid 12 months of new games to play, and it now looks like 2025 is going to be that "next year" everyone has been waiting for.

Published by Xbox Game Studios, Ninja Gaiden 4 is the latest entry in a long-running franchise that's seen a lot of success on Xbox in the past. South of Midnight finally got a release date and a deeper dive into the gameplay and story, too. It's heading to Game Pass on April 8th and will be joined that month by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — the debut title from Sandfall Interactive on April 24th. It looks like Doom: The Dark Ages will have some unique gameplay that sets it apart from previous entries in the Doom franchise, and I'm really looking forward to playing this one on May 15th. These three new games now make for a packed series of Xbox Game Pass releases in the coming months. Obsidian's Avowed is arriving on February 18th, just weeks after Sniper Elite: Resistance, Eternal Strands, and Citizen Sleeper 2 appear on day one in Game Pass.

Microsoft's Xbox summer showcase will then set the stage for the rest of the year and beyond. Ninja Gaiden 4 is coming in the fall, but Microsoft announced that The Outer Worlds 2 and Fable are 2025 releases. It will also be interesting to see if Gears of War: E-Day will make the 2025 release date I'd heard Microsoft was planning for last year.

There could be some more surprises on the way, too. In recent weeks, rumors have pointed toward a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I first heard about this remaster last year, and at the time, Microsoft was tentatively targeting a release in late spring or early summer 2025. I'm also hoping we hear more about Contraband or Clockwork Revolution at the Xbox summer showcase.

The Verge

A new Canon Fodder has dropped, Halopedians! This one covers various subjects such as the name of the next Halo novel, details from the previous Waypoint Chronicle, and a brand new Armory Infinitum.

www.halowaypoint.com/news/canon-f...

[image or embed]

— Halopedia (@halopedia.org) 24 January 2025 at 19:40

Absolutely love how wild you can go with Avowed's character creator, Lol.

To the Motorsport Community,

We love seeing your reaction and excitement to the updates we have been releasing. Between the return of fan favorite tracks such as Sunset Peninsula and Bathurst to features like Spectate, Drift Mode, and Challenge Hub – alongside the debut of Next Gen NASCAR and most recently, new-to-Motorsport BMW cars – there has never been a better time to jump into Forza Motorsport.

We recently finalized our plan for the updates we will be making available to you in the first half of 2025. This includes a content update in May that will include a fan favorite track. Leading up to that, we will continue adding new-to-Motorsport cars and events into the game, themed around Daily Racers, Velocity, and Porsche Motorsport Icons. We will showcase these updates in more detail as part of our blogs alongside their release.

As we’ve been working through all this new content, we’ve also been continuing to look towards future updates. This means that our work on some of the features we previously announced for early 2025 may be re-evaluated as we complete our new plans. Until then over the next three months our updates will be new content only. That was a very difficult decision, however we are excited to continue to bring new content and experiences to you.

While we are working through our plans for the second half of the year, we hope you have fun playing the updates we’re working on for the next few months, and we look forward to seeing you on the track in Featured Multiplayer.

A Message to the Motorsport Community – January 2025