Another busy week in gaming has come and gone with loads of annoucements from Nintendo, Bethesda sharing more details about upcoming projects, new titles in Game Pass, EA paying their CEO the big bucks and Elden Rings DLC getting more love than most full fledged games. Lets get in to it.

Nintendo Direct

Nintendo just held their annual game showcase (tis the season) and they did not disappoint. The full list of games releases can be found on our story from earlier this week, but the highlights are definitely Metroid Prime 4, a new Mario and Luigi game coming November 7th, and new Legend of Zelda game where you play as Princess Zelda. You can see the first screenshots available below. Nintendo are carrying on as they always have, relying on their iconic IPs and prioritising playability and fun over graphics and ultra realism.

Mario & Luigi Brothership coming November 7.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, coming in 2025.

Nintendo has announced the Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, where Princess Zelda is the protagonist.

Starfield isnt done yet

From this story at Windows Central it is confirmed that we will see at least one more big update from Starfield after shattered space. This is a surprise for sure as it was our impression that after Shattered space the game would be complete and they would focus all efforts on Elder Scrolls 6

Sticking with Bethesda Todd Howard has comfirmed in an interview with MrMattyPlays that Fallout 1 and remakes are not in production. Its odd to be reporting on news of games that arent coming out but given the hype and excitement around Fallout after the wildly successful TV show its good to see clarity on these issues, instead of endless speculation.

Elden Ring Continues to Impress – Highest rated DLC in history.

This story was reported just about everywhere but I’ll highlight the report from Insider-Gaming.

With the reviews pouring in, it’s a moment of pride and excitement for the gaming community as FromSoftware’s highly anticipated Elden Ring expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, has already soared to the top, becoming the highest-rated DLC of all time. According to Metacritic, Shadow of the Erdtree has secured an impressive Metascore of 5, based on 56 critic reviews at the time of writing.

Elden Ring is one of those games that I almost feel I need to gear myself up to playing. Im not a massive fan of the genre but this feels like one of those must plays. Unforetunately for my social life the other must play games on my backlog are also ginormous in scope, being Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA V (yes I still havent played it).

EA boss getting a fat wedge

As we like to say in England the CEO at EA Games has paid himself $25M in the same year as the company shed 700 jobs. The full story was reported here at Insider-Gaming . Far be it from us to pass judgement. We are sure he is worth every penny, but the optics of this are bad to say the least, and just another example of how out of touch Executives are from their consumers.

Xbox marketing CEO leaves for Roblox

Reported by The Verge among others comes the story of Jerret West, the head of marketing at Xbox. It seems Phil Spencer will take this opportunity to realign marketing with the studios they support. From the article….

Spencer says the Microsoft Gaming leadership team has “decided to place marketing closer to the businesses they support” as a result of West’s departure. Games marketing will now sit inside the game content and studios division that’s led by Matt Booty. Xbox marketing, led by Chris Lee, will move to the Xbox org and report up to Xbox president Sarah Bond.

What impact this all has on Xbox and how they are perceived in the wider world is unknown right now but we hope to see more consistent messaging, and frankly more of it from Xbox.

Games coming to gamepass

You can read all about the games coming to Game Pass here, or at this story from Xbox Era. In short the games are…

• My Time at Sandrock (Cloud, Console, and PC) – June 19
• Keplerth (PC) – June 20
• EA Sports FC 24 (Cloud, Console, and PC) EA Play – June 25
• SteamWorld Dig (Cloud and Console) – June 26
• SteamWorld Dig 2 (Console and PC) – June 26
• Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – June 27

FC 24 leads six new games into Game Pass

…..and finally Matt Booty, the Xbox Game Studios Chief appeared on the strictly business podcast to reiterate that….

We continue to make those decisions individually on a case by case basis. We are absolutely committed to having launch exclusives on Xbox, it’s part of our core promise. […] The Xbox [device] will always be core to what we do. The console is foundational to what we do.”

So thats cleared that up then. Can we all stop creating rage bait articles about it now? (some hope)