Welcome to our weekly Xbox news recap series, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Xbox. Let’s get started.
EA launches the Throwback Pack for EA Access members
If you’re an EA access member looking for a few new games to try out, EA has you covered. The Throwback Pack launched this week, adding to the EA Access vault a ton of classic PopCap arcade games. This pack is a huge addition to a collection of games that’s already two-dozen games strong, and adds that much more value to a membership that’s already worth the $5 a month. EA also announced that Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, Star Wars: Battlefront, and EA Sports UFC 2 are coming to the vault later in the year.
Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection available for pre-order
Assassin’s Creed isn’t getting another game this year, but there’s still plenty for fans to look forward to. The Ezio Collection, a bundle of every Assassin’s Creed game starring Ezio, is now available for you to pre-order. The collection also comes with a pair of short films: Assassin’s Creed: Lineage and Assassin’s Creed: Embers, adding in a little bit of extra value if you needed some. It’s also important to note that many retailers will give you a free ticket to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed movie along with your pre-order!
New Xbox preview build adds chat history to Clubs
Clubs have been a pretty great addition to Xbox, adding a ton of new opportunities for people to get together in communities and take advantage of Xbox’s social tools. The latest preview build for Xbox One has added the ability to check chat history in your club, expanding functionality that much more. The update also fixed a few issues pertaining to club management and some UI elements.
Original Xbox games may be coming to Xbox One in the future
Backwards Compatibility has been a huge success on Xbox One, bringing hundreds of Xbox 360 games to the newest iteration of the console. Many people are nostalgic about the Xbox 360 and love to have their favorite games make a comeback, but there are still plenty of even older games that haven’t quite made the cut to Xbox One. According to Phil Spencer on Twitter, however, Microsoft hasn’t ruled out bringing back original Xbox titles through Backwards Compatibility. They aren’t working on it now, but this does plenty to create a glimmer of hope for those who want to see Xbox classics on their Xbox One.
Playstation VR works on Xbox One… Kind of
PSVR came out this week, offering a virtual reality experience for console gamers who haven’t been able to get on the Oculus Rift/HTC Vive train just yet. While the headset is, of course, made for Playstation, many people are finding that it’s technically compatible with Xbox One and Wii U as well. Obviously, the headset won’t magically turn an Xbox game into a functional VR game, but you can easily use the PSVR headset as a substitute for a TV set.
Xbox One is the best selling console for the third month in a row
The Xbox One was lagging far behind Playstation 4 sales for a pretty long time, but things have been looking a lot better recently. For the third month in a row, the Xbox One has been the best selling console. The numbers are probably helped quite a bit by the fact that there was a great lineup shown off at E3 this year, giving gamers a lot more to look forward to than they may have had when the console initially launched.
Here are the games that came out this week:
- There’s a new racing video game on Xbox One and it’s called Mantis Burn Racing
- Castle Invasion: Throne Out is a new Xbox One video game with over 50 levels
- Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour video game launches today on Xbox One
- Play classic Lara Croft on Xbox One with Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration, available now
- Xbox One Backward Compatibility list gets four new titles, including Dragon’s Lair and Jurassic Park
- WWE 2K17 is now available for Xbox One
- Gears of War 4, the latest Play Anywhere title, now available on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC
Thanks for joining us. To keep up to date on all the latest Xbox news, keep a close eye on our Xbox One news hub.
