After a few weeks of major showcases, this week brought with it some big industry changes. What will the future hold for Xbox with Phil Spencer departing and a new CEO coming in who has little to no experience of the gaming market? It’s been a downward trend for Xbox through this generation as a platform, and we’ll have to see if Microsoft is intent to accelerate this for their broader gaming approach, or if they’ll turn things around.
In the News This Week
- Phil Spencer retires from Xbox with CoreAI exec Asha Sharma taking over as Microsoft Gaming CEO
- Sony to close Bluepoint Games
- Bungie delay Shadow and Order, Destiny 2’s next big update, until June
- Pokémon Fire Red & Leaf Green are coming to the Switch next week!
- Battlefield 6 Season 2 is live, but DICE can’t make more than two maps a season
- Avowed Anniversary Update has arrived alongside the PS5 release
- Call of Duty advert banned due to ‘implied painful penetration of a man’
- Skyrim Switch 2 Update 1.2 brings proper performance fixes and a 60fps mode
- Christopher Judge (Kratos) briefly talks about God of War remakes and his next game
Support TheSixthAxis with Ko-fi
With the current landscape of the games media, we’re exploring more direct reader-funding so we can continue to invest in the site, and support our writers, allowing them to continue to pen the news, features, and reviews that you visit us for. To that end, we have launched a Ko-fi page earlier this month.
Support TheSixthAxis on Ko-fi
Games in Review & Featured Articles
Another pretty heavy reviews week is behind us, but there was little that managed to stand out, unfortunately.
- Crisol: Theater of Idols – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 9/10
- Styx: Blades of Greed – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 7/10
- Aerial Knight’s Dropshot – PS5, XSX|S, PC – 6/10
- Don’t Stop Girlypop! – PC – 6/10
- The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest – NSW, PC – 6/10
- Gear.Club Unlimited 3 – NSW2 – 5/10
- The 9th Charnel – PC – 5/10
We also had some scored hardware reviews for the Corsair Vanguard Pro 96 keyboard and the enhanced Gamesir G7 Pro Wuchang Edition gamepad, before I delved back into the highs, lows and weirdness of 90s VR with the Virtual Boy for Nintendo Switch.
For upcoming games, I had the chance to checkout Milestone’s anime racer revival, Screamer, as well as the latest tycoon sim, Transport Fever 3, and Dom opined that Battle Vision Network will be the culmination of Capybara’s puzzle game craft, and called Arkheron the battle royale lovechild of Diablo and Hades. Intriguing!
We also had an interview with the developers of Abide, to talk about its new style of horror experience
Rounding out the week, What We Played featured Sons of Sparta, Planet of Lana 2 & Overwatch.
Trailer Park
Slay the Spire 2 is dropping into Early Access in March
Battle Robo-Betty in the latest Mouse PI for Hire trailer
Surprise! Xenoblade Chronicles X just got a Switch 2 upgrade with up to 4K 60fps performance
Your Achievements
Checking in with your gaming, Andrewww has got a few more runs into Blue Prince, but is yet to have it really “click”.
That’s all for the round up this week. Enjoy the weekend and we’ll carry on carrying on on Monday.
