Microsoft Flight Simulator World Update 3: UK & Ireland AVAILABLE THESE DAYS for Free

Update, January 19, 2022:  Nintendo announced last month that Banjo-Kazooie would be joining its Nintendo 64 library lineup by way of the company's Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription service. However, Nintendo merely said it would be coming in January at the time. Now, we know when.  Revealed on Twitter, Nintendo says Banjo-Kazooie will hit Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack on January 20, or in other words, you can play this classic Nintendo 64 game starting tomorrow! Here's a trailer released by Nintendo to celebrate the news:  Embark on a wild quest with an unlikely pair! The adventures of Banjo and Kazooie begin here! Banjo-Kazooie is coming to #NintendoSwitch for #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members on 1/20! #Nintendo64 pic.twitter.com/R349r8gbvD — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) January 19, 2022 The original story continues below... Original Story, December 10, 2021: The Nintendo 64 library of the Switch Online Expansion Pack gets a dose of Rare next month when Banjo-Kazooie joins the service. The game joins the service sometime in January, but there's no exact date as of yet. The 1998 platformer is widely remembered as a standout game for the N64 (especially for third-party games) and among the most beloved games of the era overall. While the emulation of the Expansion Pack hasn't been universally loved, it's cool to see Banjo-Kazooie making its way back to the house of N. Given that Microsoft owns Rare, the only way to play Banjo was on Xbox, such as in the Rare Replay collection.    Banjo’s on a mission to rescue his sister from the envious wicked witch Gruntilda! Foil her selfish plan to snatch the beauty from Tooty in Banjo-Kazooie, available to #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members in January! #Nintendo64 pic.twitter.com/pvPD4aRvwr — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 10, 2021 As a reminder, Paper Mario joins the Expansion Pack library today.

With Microsoft’s bombshell acquisition of Activision Blizzard announced this morning, on top of its other big purchases in recent years, the Xbox family is well beyond stacked. With its competition’s first-party lineup growing and subsequently shrinking selection of big third-party partners, Sony has a challenge ahead of it, to say the least. However, instead of staying toe-to-toe with Xbox by acquiring studios to keep up, it’s more important right now for Sony to develop a rival to Microsoft’s biggest boon this generation: Xbox Game Pass. On paper, Microsoft has the option to wall off franchises like Warcraft, Diablo, and Call of Duty as Xbox console exclusives. Instead, in reality, every existing game from those massive names is up for grabs to use in Game Pass, as demonstrated by the Bethesda absorption in 2020. PCs, consoles, cloud streaming through browsers and mobile; all can deliver a classic Modern Warfare campaign or matches of Overwatch. It’s easy to compare how many studios and IP are now at the disposal of Xbox compared to Sony, but Microsoft’s real and considerable advantage is the ease of access the average consumer has to its games. Fortunately, Sony already has a lot of pieces in place to implement a Game Pass-like service, and if rumblings around the industry are to be believed, it might happen sooner than later. Games should, of course, be the core offering, and PlayStation Now is a near-decade old way to deliver those games to a wide audience. Through this subscription, you can already stream games to PlayStation and PC. Unbeknownst to many people, a lot of PS Now games are downloadable, though only PS2 and PS4 titles work this way. Ideally, this would change. Sony has one hell of a back catalog of classic games that would convince people to subscribe to an all-access PlayStation subscription service. An essential piece of making a Game Pass competitor work is figuring out the lingering backward compatibility issues holding Sony back from making PS1 and PS3 games available on current hardware. Once that’s possible, the sky is the limit for what enticing products to put on the service. Nostalgia is a powerful weapon, and letting folks play all of the generations of God of War, Twisted Metal, Warhawk, and, if the license is available, Final Fantasy with one subscription is awfully enticing. Next would be an expansion of the PlayStation Plus Collection to include the library of PlayStation Now games and wrapping them into PlayStation Plus pricing. It is no longer acceptable to pay for online play on its own, and that feature should be absorbed into a super service with one cost and one expansive digital library with games that can be streamed or downloaded. A reasonable simplification of the disparate pieces Sony already has available. And we’re haven’t even talked about Sony’s secret sauce for this revamped PlayStation Plus. Remember, Sony isn’t just a games company. Sony movies, TV shows, and music will be the x-factor, bringing the breadth of its content to entice potential subscribers. Catch the latest Spider-Man flick because it happens to be wrapped in the cost of your game sub. Funimation and Crunchyroll, two popular anime companies, are already under the Sony umbrella and could be easily used to flex the unique entertainment available with a membership. It’s not just about games anymore, and Sony should have the foresight to use everything on hand to differentiate itself. All of the pieces are there to compete without spending billions buying another game publisher: A potential killer catalog, game streaming, movies, anime, music. A few technical hurdles and great licensing partnerships may be the few obstacles that stand in the way of having a functional and distinctive Game Pass competitor. Sony’s not out of the game because it may not have Call of Duty in a few years, but it needs to adapt the services it provides before it’s left in the dust.

Microsoft announced today that it is buying Activision Blizzard for a colossal $68.7 billion, and in doing so, it quickly launched itself to the higher end of expensive acquisitions. This brings franchises almost as big as that price tag, such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, and World of Warcraft into the Xbox family. The future of these franchises and whether or not they become exclusive to Xbox consoles remains uncertain and is just one of the many unanswered questions following today’s news.  What’s to become of Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard who reportedly knew for years of the company’s history of sexual misconduct and harassment? Which Activision Blizzard franchises might Xbox revive? Which games will remain multiplatform, and which will become Xbox exclusives? For now, we all must wait and see; and there’s a good chance we won’t get these answers until the transaction closes in fiscal year 2023. However, one known thing is the price - costing Microsoft $68.7 billion, this acquisition quickly rocketed up to some of the biggest in history. But just how big is it compared to others in video games? What about compared to those made in other mediums such as movies?  Here’s a quick look at how this acquisition compares to similar purchases:  Microsoft Acquires Zenimax – $7.5 Billion Microsoft announced back in September of 2020 that it was acquiring ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda. That deal was finalized in March of last year, and now, Xbox is the home of franchises like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Wolfenstein, and Dishonored. It’s also going to be the exclusive console home for new games like Starfield, and while the price to purchase Bethesda’s IPs was quite high, $7.5 billion pales in comparison to today’s acquisition.  Take-Two Acquires Zynga – $13 Billion Just last week, Take-Two became the company behind what was the most expensive acquisition in video game history. It did so by acquiring Zynga for $12.7 billion. While Zynga might not be the most recognized name on the console and PC side of gaming, it’s a giant in the mobile gaming market. Perhaps second only to King, which Xbox now owns after today’s Activision Blizzard purchase. Take-Two’s purchase of Zynga was smart, though – it positions the company to be a leader in the mobile gaming market, which also happens to be one of the largest in the world. The $13 billion price tag was historic, but only for a week due to today’s news.  Sony Acquires Gaikai – $380 Million Sony announced in 2012 that it had purchased Gaikai Inc, a cloud streaming company home to the technology that now powers Sony’s PlayStation Now service, for $380 million. At the time, that number seemed incredibly high, and it still is a massive number, but as you can see, it’s child’s play compared to capital-B Billion acquisitions. Still, Sony acquired a great cloud streaming service that allows gamers to play older generations of games and download new ones with ease (depending on your internet connection). And it didn’t cost them billions, which it might view as a win in and of itself. Today, there are rumors that PlayStation Now might be folded into a new Xbox Game Pass-like service codenamed Spartacus, but for now, that remains a rumor. Only time will tell how far Sony takes that original $380 million investment.  Sony Acquires Insomniac Games – $229 Million Sony announced in August of 2019 that it had acquired Insomniac Games, the studio behind franchises like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank, and others. In February of 2020, it was revealed that Sony paid $229 million to bring Insomniac into the PlayStation family (thanks, CNET) of first-party studios. While that number might seem low for a studio that continually releases great games year after year, it was a rare look at the cost to bring studios into a larger umbrella. Many individual studio purchases occur without a public reveal of costs paid. For example, how much PlayStation paid to acquire Housemarque or Firesprite isn’t known, nor is the price Microsoft paid for Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, or Double Fine Productions.  Disney Acquires Lucasfilm – $4 Billion Those are many of the video game-centric acquisitions that have happened in recent years, but when you widen the pool to include ones in the entertainment industry, $68.7 billion doesn’t seem as wild, although it’s still easily one of the largest costs paid. Disney shook up the entertainment landscape in 2012 when it announced that it had bought Lucasfilm, the fabled movie studio behind franchises like Indiana Jones, The Land Before Time, and Willow, for $4 billion (thanks USA Today). Oh, and Star Wars too. At the time, $4 billion seemed monumental but when Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens hit theaters and soared past the $1 billion box office line, that $4 billion felt a lot smaller. For the price Microsoft paid to acquire Activision Blizzard, it could have purchased 17 Lucasfilms, or in other words, it could have purchased the Star Wars franchise more than a dozen times over.  Disney Acquires 20th Century Fox – $71.3 Billion It took a lot to find an acquisition in an entertainment medium that cost more than Activision Blizzard’s price tag (mind you, wayyyyyy bigger ones have happened in other industries such as Heinz’ purchase of Kraft for $100 billion in 2015 or even AOL’s purchase of Time Warner for $182 billion in 2000)...but we did it: Disney’s 2020 purchase of 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion (thanks, BBC) cost more. Arguably one of the most historic entertainment acquisitions of all time, this brought everything that features the iconic 20th Century Fox brass spotlight theme at the start of it into Disney’s wheelhouse. There’s been plenty of speculation as to how and why this one came about, and we aren’t so sure it wasn’t just so Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige could bring the X-Men to the MCU, but one thing is certain: we likely won’t see an acquisition this expensive for a very long time.  Are there any large-scale acquisitions we might have missed? Which costs seem too low to you and which costs seem too high? Let us know in the comments below!

Now that Microsoft is set to acquire Activision Blizzard for an eye-splitting $68.7 billion, it’s starting to feel like the software and gaming giant owes nearly half the game industry. At the very least, Microsoft could make use of Activision Blizzard’s wealth of underutilized intellectual property. Here are some of our favorite Activision/Blizzard franchises that we’d love to see Microsoft resurrect in the near future. Blackthorne It's time to bring back Blizzard's classic cinematic platformer. While there's a lot of "you had to be there when the original title was relevant back in the ‘90s,” Blackthorne is a brand ready to get back into the game with some fresh perspective and the benefits of plenty of genre slots to fill in. Think about making a third-person shooter RPG with Kyle "Blackthrone" Vlaros dishing out justice. Let's do it, Microsoft! – Daniel Tack Geometry Wars Bizarre Creations’ 2005 arcade shooter Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was one of the early Xbox Live Arcade hits, and it helped prove there was a market for “small” downloadable games. The market has obviously changed a lot in the last decade plus, but top-down multi-directional shooters are still a rush to play. We haven’t seen much from this series since the release of Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions in 2014. I’d love to see this series reinvented for the modern console market. Flashier graphics, persistent upgrades, and customizable ships would be good, but I’m also open to a back-to-basics approach. Either way, it’s time for those classic shapes to do battle once again. – Ben Reeves Guitar Hero The 2015 release of Guitar Hero: Live was the last we heard of the franchise. While Live did some interesting things, it missed the mark on a lot of what made the rock rhythm games special in the first place. With Activision now under the Xbox umbrella, there’s a chance for a special revival and one only needs to look at the current Guitar Hero community to see what’s needed: a return to form. People aren’t interested in realistic takes on guitar chords while music videos play in the background – they want an arcade guitar experience that prioritizes fun over realism.  Ditch the black and white buttons and bring back everyone’s favorite mix of green, red, yellow, blue, and orange. Round up some modern rock anthems to play alongside the classics and toss in “Through the Fire and Flames” for good measure. Give us the stylized visuals of the original three entries and include more ways than ever before to customize the band. Add in a little star power and Xbox could easily have a new classic in its hands. ­– Wesley LeBlanc Gun I’m a sucker for a good Western and prior to Red Dead Redemption, 2005’s Gun fulfilled my cowboy fantasies. It featured many ideas Rockstar would improve upon such as a large wild west to roam, plenty of side quests and mini-games, and a no-nonsense protagonist in Colton White. I loved Gun in its day, but I have no idea how you match the bar set by Red Dead (especially after 2). However, with original developer Neversoft gone with the wind, that’s on a fresh studio to figure out. The point is: we don’t get enough triple-A western games for my liking so let’s dust off Gun for one more ride. – Marcus Stewart Pitfall It’s hard to look at the line-up Microsoft has cultivated and pinpoint a game archetype that’s not already covered. With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Xbox may have just covered a base Sony has had locked down for over a decade: a blockbuster treasure hunt. With Pitfall, Microsoft could have an Uncharted competitor with decades of history and old-school name recognition. Follow Pitfall Harriette, a smarmy explorer with immedicable charm, on a quest to find an elusive, otherworldly artifact. Harriette will be obligated to swing across a river of crocodiles on a vine, of course. It really writes itself. – John Carson StarCraft: Ghost While StarCraft sits with the pantheon of Activision Blizzard franchises, it's somewhat dormant compared to the others. Sure, there have been updates to multiplayer and characters added to the StarCraft II package, but the narrative has been complete for quite some time. My choice for the next direction to take the space fantasy series is a revival of a game that never saw the light of day. I say hand the keys of StarCraft: Ghost over to the Gears of War team at The Coalition. The studio has plenty of chops making third-person shooters with a sci-fi bend and could nail the feel of the guns used by the Terran soldiers. Set the story in the past and play out a critical mission as Sarah Kerrigan before becoming the Queen of Blades. Give us a look at what it's like being a stealth operative in an interstellar war against advanced space psychics and ravenous mutations. Given how pretty Gears 5 looked last gen, I can only imagine how stunning the worlds and set pieces would be in this hypothetical Kerrigan’s Ghost adventure. – John Carson Zork Bring back Zork as an idle text MMORPG. Most people remember Zork. The text. Going North. Being eaten by a Grue. Trying to open trophy cases and wandering into the basement. Now it's time to play Zork: The Idle MMORPG. You basically set it and forget it and your bags fill with loot, but you can watch procedurally generated movement, storytelling, and combat as it plays! I can't wait to check my phone for a ton of go south commands and mailbox openings! – Daniel Tack Let us know what Activision Blizzard franchises you think Microsoft should bring back in the comments below!

The Artful Escape is a trippy and profound musical romp that emerged as one of our favorite indies of 2021. It’s been Xbox console exclusive since launch (and available on PC), but the ballad of Francis Vendetti will soon find a new audience. That’s because the game is launching on PlayStation consoles and Switch on January 25. If you’re unfamiliar, The Artful Escape spins the yarn of Francis Vendetti, a musician and the nephew of a famous folksinger who finds himself pigeonholed to expectations of following in his uncle’s stylistic footsteps. It’s not until an alien ship arrives and whisks Francis off to an intergalactic space odyssey does he begin to discover his true voice. The gameplay itself consists of simple side-scrolling platforming, but the real stars are the killer soundtrack, gorgeous visuals, and top-notch performances from names like Carl Weathers and Lena Headey. There’s a reason it earned an 8.5 review score from us. Click here to watch embedded media Will you be picking up The Artful Escape on PlayStation or Switch? Let us know in the comments!