Xbox turns 25 on November 15, and with less than a month to go, the celebrations remain curiously quiet. The milestone has been acknowledged throughout the year, but Microsoft has said remarkably little about how it intends to mark the actual anniversary date. That silence is what makes the next few weeks interesting. A 25th birthday is a natural moment to look back at a console line that reshaped online console gaming, popularised the built-in hard drive, and introduced a generation of players to Halo, Forza and Gears of War. It is also a natural moment for announcements, which is exactly why expectations are running high. The options range from the safe to the spectacular. A curated Game Pass collection of original Xbox and Xbox 360 classics would be easy to deliver. A documentary or a proper retrospective showcase would cost more but land harder. And then there is the perennial hope: some kind...
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Eight games are on their way out of Xbox Game Pass in late October 2026, and the list includes a couple of genuinely popular favourites. Microsoft has confirmed the departures, and all eight are now flagged as leaving soon in the official Xbox mobile app. Leading the group is LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the sprawling retelling of all nine films that remains one of the most approachable Star Wars games of the past decade. It is a long game by any measure, so anyone hoping to finish it before it leaves will need to commit some serious hours this month. The other headline exit is Deep Rock Galactic, the cooperative mining shooter that built a devoted community around its four-player teams and procedurally generated caves. It is the kind of game that rewards a regular group, which makes its departure from the catalogue a particular loss for players who use Game Pass...
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Insignia, the fan-run replacement for the original Xbox Live service, is back in the news, and for a good reason. The project has resumed expanding its list of supported games after a quiet spell, with a fresh batch of original Xbox titles now able to go online again. Among the additions is Burnout 3: Takedown, one of the most fondly remembered arcade racers of its generation. Its online mode was a big part of why the game built such a following, and it has been inaccessible through official channels for well over a decade. For anyone unfamiliar with the project, a short history helps. The original Xbox Live service, sometimes called Live 1.0, was switched off in 2010, taking online modes for hundreds of games with it. Insignia exists to bring those servers back, allowing original hardware and some emulation setups to connect to them again. Progress has always been uneven. Some supported games...
Read MoreWe have made it to the weekend, and after a comparatively quiet few days, Nintendo news picked up pace again. The biggest talking point was the arrival of previews for Ocarina of Time on Switch 2, which early impressions have described in glowing terms. It is an unusual position for a game that first released in 1998 to be in. Rather than a simple re-release, the Switch 2 version has been positioned as a proper showcase, and the early coverage suggests the work that has gone into it is substantial. For a generation of players who never owned an N64, it may end up being the definitive way to experience one of the most influential games ever made. The wider week had its own smaller stories, as it always does, but Zelda clearly dominated the conversation. That is hardly surprising given how much affection there is for the game, and how long fans have...
Read MoreCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is already in the hands of anyone who pre-purchased it, and the Switch 2 version has thrown up an interesting technical question. The game offers two different upscaling options, and choosing between them is not quite as straightforward as it first sounds. Upscaling is the technology that lets a game render at a lower internal resolution and then reconstruct a sharper image before it reaches your screen. On Switch 2 it matters more than on most platforms, because the console has to balance image quality against a power budget, especially in handheld mode. Getting that balance right is often the difference between a game that feels responsive and one that looks clean but sluggish. The two options in Modern Warfare 4 represent the classic trade-off. One setting will favour a crisper, more detailed picture at the cost of some responsiveness. The other will prioritise frame rate and input...
Read MoreWe are past the halfway point now. As the Switch 2 launch of Ocarina of Time creeps closer, this weekly crawl through the N64 classic has reached its fifth instalment, and there is no turning back. If you missed the earlier entries, the premise is simple: one dungeon per week, in order, revisiting a game many of us have not properly played in years. This week took us into the Fire Temple, which means the Megaton Hammer finally entered the picture. It is one of the most satisfying items in the game, and it arrives at the point where the difficulty curve begins to firm up rather than flatten out. What stands out on a replay is how confident the design is. The Fire Temple does not simply repeat the pattern of earlier dungeons. It layers vertical navigation, timed elements and a genuinely earned sense of scale on top of what you have already...
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