Microsoft has some fairly big releases lined up for Xbox Live Gold subscribers in August 2019. First up is The Coalition’s Gears of War 4, a solid third person cover shooter that continues the excellent original trilogy. It’s available to XBL Gold subscribers from August 1st to 31st.

Then there’s Turn 10 Studios’ Forza Motorsport 6, one of the best racing simulators ever made. This becomes available from August 16th to September 15th. Xbox 360 players get some rather good releases as well – Runic Games’ Torchlight (August 1st to 15th) and Konami’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (August 16th to 31st). Both titles are playable on the Xbox One as well, thanks to backwards compatibility.

Overall, that’s more than $94 in game value for all of these games. Giving away Gears of War 4 is actually a pretty smart strategy for Microsoft. The Coalition’s Gears 5 is out on September 10th, and this allows new players to catch up with the storyline before hopping in. We expect more details on the upcoming sequel’s Horde mode at Gamescom in August, so stay tuned.

With all the talking about the upcoming streaming future and how its going to change the industry, and if people are ready for it above all else, it can be kind of easy to forget that Sony has been there long before anyone else. Their PS Now service is, in many ways, a precursor to the upcoming Stadia and xCloud, and it’s still getting content. And it looks like August is going to be a dozy of a month, too.

10 games will join the service next month, and it seems Bethesda has the cake here as they will have three games from three classic franchises joining Now. But that’s not all there is to August’s haul as the fighting hit Tekken 7 is also coming. It’s quite a who’s who even without including the last three major Castlevania releases and MotoGP 17.

You can check out the entire list below or check out the official PlayStation blog for details here. PlayStation Now is available now, and the listed games will be available starting August 6th.

• Castlevania Lords of Shadow (PS3)
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 (PS3)
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate (PS3)
• Doom (PS4)
• Fallout 4 (PS4)
• Monster Energy Supercross (PS4)
• MotoGP 17 (PS4)
• Tekken 7 (PS4)
• The Raven: Remastered (PS4)
• Wolfenstein: The New Order (PS4)

It looks like our report yesterday regarding Just Cause possibly coming to Xbox One via the backward compatibility program was correct. Just Cause has indeed been confirmed to be one of the games headlining the newest batch of titles being added to the service today by Microsoft, as confirmed by Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb on Twitter,.

But Just Cause isn’t the only big game being added this time around, either—in fact, unusually enough, all four of the games that are included in this batch are arguably “big”. Alongside Just Cause, the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow trilogy—so the two numbered games, and Mirror of Fate HD—will also now be playable on Xbox One. While Lords of Shadow 2 and Mirror of Fate HD were pretty disappointing, the original Lords of Shadow was a great and compelling reboot despite its flaws, and fans of the series should take this opportunity to look into it.

As is always the case, all these games can now be purchased on the Xbox Store on Xbox One directly.

https://twitter.com/majornelson/status/1057301141980033024?s=21

Dave Cox, who was the producer of the fantastic Castlevania Lords of the Shadow  has finally revealed why he left Konami after the somewhat disappointing sequel. The reasoning isn’t complicated to be honest. He left because Konami had no vision back then (something that also applies in this age given how they fired Hideo Kojima).

“Konami decided… let’s just say it wanted to go in a different direction in terms of development. It’s one of the reasons why the studio I was heading up closed down. They wanted to move more into mobile. They wanted to do more development in Japan. At that time it was simpler to make a clean break, for me personally and for the studio. I don’t think Konami knew at that time what they wanted to do or where they wanted to go. They still obviously had Metal Gear in development. They still had PES in development. But there wasn’t a vision at the top of the company about where they wanted to go or what they wanted to do,” Cox stated in an interview with EuroGamer.

I honestly don’t find that surprising at all. Konami is a mere shell of its former self. It’s borderline impossible to believe that the publisher of massive IPs like Contra, Metal Gear, Castlevania, Suikoden, Silent Hill and many more will lose its way only in matter of years.

What is more disappointing is that MercurySteam were actually working on the concept of a new Contra game but unfortunately that idea was scrapped. “We talked to MercurySteam about that, and we did have early discussions about Contra. But it just wasn’t to be. The planets weren’t aligned, essentially. That was, essentially, it. But also the guys at MercurySteam didn’t want to move on with that relationship as well. So it was mutually agreed that we wouldn’t move forward with it. We had discussions about it, absolutely. And there were concepts, and a basic idea was drawn up. But that’s as far as it got, sadly,” he revealed.

Absolutely none of this surprises me. I guess I will wait for the moment when Konami will genuinely surprise its fans with the revival of all its AAA game franchises, but given the company’s commitment to mobile games, Pachinko, and not to mention putting next to no effort in Metal Gear Survive, it seems like a distant dream.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow developer MercurySteam has finally shed a little bit of light on their unannounced but often teased new game. The company issued a press release this week which said it had officially renewed its relationship with former Konami Head of Studio and Producer of the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow series, Dave Cox. Alongside the news that Cox is working with MercurySteam again the firm said they will be officially unveiling their new project in April.

MercurySteam’s official website has been updated with new artwork, the picture at the top of this article, as well as a countdown for something called the Lira expedition’s arrival. It’s a safe bet the Lira expedition “arrival” is the day the company will finally announce what this project is. As of today, the announcement is a little over 26 days aways. The website also mentions the Centaurus expedition and both of these groups are listed as “in transit.” While there has been quite a bit of talk as to how much the game looks like Contra, mention of the crew being in “hibernation” alludes to at least part of the story having something to do with deep space travel.

That would appear to mesh with the newest piece of art which looks an awful lot like some kind of alien structure. Until the company actually announces what the game is and what it will be about, all we have is conjecture. Stay tuned in April to see what MercurySteam has up its sleeve, and check out some older art the firm has released.

Konami have announced the release date for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Collection. The game will be released on November 8th for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game will be priced at £29.99. In North America, the game will be released on 5th November at a price of $39.99.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Collection consists of the following games:

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Perhaps one of the best action adventure games ever made, the game tells the story of Gabriel Belmont and how far he will go in order to bring his love back.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow  Mirror of Fate HD – This was initially released on the Nintendo 3DS and is set 26 years after the events of the original Lords of Shadow.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 Demo – The demo of the last game in the series due for release in 2014.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 demo will have voucher codes included in the package. The package also consists of  the Reverie and Resurrection DLC packs for the original game.the Reverie and Resurrection DLC packs.

“I think if you’re going to bring Contra back you’ve got to be able to do something unique and intuitive that hasn’t been done before. You can’t just bring out a generic shooter. You have to have a new idea. I think if we had a new idea and we could combine that new idea with the universe of Contra that would be special. Yeah, watch this space.”

As for how he felt about games created by other developers, such as Hard Corps: Uprising and Contra 4, Cox stated that, “The problem with doing games like that is you are not doing anything new,” said Cox. “You are basically remaking or doing your slant of something that has happened before. You have to have the things that made that game great, like Castlevania, you need to have that, but you have to not be afraid to do something new. The problem with Contra it hasn’t really had anything done new to it so it’s become this hardcore niche game.

“If someone were to do Contra, to say hypothetically, it would be like a new IP in many ways. We are hardcore gamers, we played those games, but there are a lot of people that don’t know what Contra is. They have no idea. There is a massive audience out there, they play Call of Duty and love those games, but they don’t know what Contra is. I think if we were going to reintroduce something to that audience. It has to be new, unique, it’s got to stand out. It’s got to have a new idea, something really cool about it that’s never been done before.”

The Mercury Steam helmed Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games have been the first breakthrough successes the series has had in the third dimension, but they have been unusually divisive, with fans bemoaning that the games are Castlevania in nothing but the name. There are those who hold out for a return to the Metroidvania style of Castlevania gaming, and they may have more than just their own nebulous hopes to hold on to now. Dave Cox, the developer of the upcoming Castlevania: Lords of Shadows 2, has confirmed that the upcoming game will be the final game in the Lords of Shadow saga, and the last one developed by Mercury Steam.

“I think if you’ve got something to say, you should just say it, and when you’re done, just shut up. And we’ve got something to say,” Cox said in an interview with Gamespot.

“And once it’s out there, I think it’s time for somebody else; somebody younger, a younger producer to come in and take up the mantle and do what they think would be right for Castlevania and for us to move on to something else. I think Castlevania is a series that has evolved over the 26 years to what it is today and I think it’s in good shape right now and I think people will really enjoy the last one. There’s a lot of surprises and I think we’re going to deliver something unexpected.”

So that comes as a bit of a double edged sword for fans. Exactly as they wanted, Cox and co. will be moving on from the series once Lords of Shadow 2 is done. However, the games might then go on to ‘someone younger,’ which is the exact opposite of them going to Iga like so many fans seem to want.

It seems after hitting up the consoles that Lords of Shadow may also appear on PC. Records of the game have been found in the Steam Database, updated on March 17th 2013. The territory code indicates that it’s for the US right now. So perhaps the PC version will only be hitting the US and perhaps UK, though it’s also possible that it can release by other means in countries like Japan.

We’re a bit unsure about a PC version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, but hey, why not? If it paves the way for more high-quality releases from Konami, we’re game.

The perspective looks to resemble Kojima’s title, but overall gameplay embodies full 3D graphics while still remaining a side-scroller (making it a 2.5D game). You’ll be able to play as Trevor Belmont, Simon Belmont, Alucard and the eventual Dracula himself, Gabriel Belmont through different times in the game, which is being billed as a 20 hour adventure. The control scheme appears similar previous DS Castlevania titles, relegating the touchscreen to mostly item management and some key touch moments. Mirror of Fate is due to release in early 2013.