Moon Studios finally provided a release date for its gorgeous Metroidvania platformer, Ori and the Will of the Wisps. It’s out on February 11th, 2020 for Xbox One and PC, which seems like a delay, given that it was seemingly scheduled for this year. Regardless, check out the latest trailer full of some frightening new hazards for Ori to overcome.

As a follow-up to Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps features an even more fetching aesthetic. Our minuscule hero comes with new abilities, faces all kinds of new challenges, and explores all kinds of new levels. It’s more Ori, and we’re fine with that.

Prior to this, earlier in Microsoft’s E3 presser, Obsidian dated The Outer Worlds, Ninja Theory revealed Bleeding Edge and Mojang’s Minecraft: Dungeons received a release window. The Xbox E3 2019 presser is currently underway, with expected announcements for Halo Infinite, Gears 5, and much more still to come. Stay tuned for more details.

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity) and inXile Entertainment (The Bard’s Tale 4, Wasteland 2), the latter has confirmed that it has an unannounced title in the works. Not only that, but it’s one that Microsoft is “quite keen on”. Speaking to Eurogamer, inXile founder Brian Fargo shared his thoughts regarding the acquisition.

Regarding daily operation, very little – if anything – has changed. “It’s almost like if my guys didn’t know we were bought, they wouldn’t even realize. Everything literally remains the same.” Fargo noted that being owned by Microsoft would translate to more funds. As such, the developer doesn’t have to rely on crowdfunding anymore. “In some ways we’ve had one hand tied behind our back, and now, no longer.”

InXile will be looking to increase its studio size by 30 percent in the coming days, though it won’t immediately blow up overnight. “In the short-term we talk about increasing it 30 per cent or so,” Fargo said. “We’re not trying to become multi-hundred-person teams but just filling the holes we’ve been desperately wanting to: having a full-time audio person, having a full-time lighting person, having a cinematics person – these things that could help us improve what we’re doing.”

As for the unannounced title, inXile is currently looking at how to improve the title with the additional resources available. It may be a while before we actually hear about it, but it’s good news for Xbox One and PC players that something is already in development. Perhaps Microsoft and Xbox boss Phil Spencer will reveal more at next year’s E3, especially since the latter promised that there is “a lot to share”.

A new patch is available for Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 4 following its release on Xbox One and PC. Along with performance and stability improvements, the patch also addresses specific issues for Xbox One X and PC users.

For instance, stutters encountered on Xbox One X while free roaming have been addressed. The stalls and frame rate drops seen in Initial Drive on PC have also been fixed. Another issue with AMD GPUs where switching to MSAA settings would cause environmental corruption if the game wasn’t restarted has also thankfully been fixed. Nvidia RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti users can also look for the visual presets that have been added.

The full patch notes can be seen below. Forza Horizon 4 is also available for Xbox Game Pass, which offers a 14-day free trial to first time subscribers. To learn more about this, head here. In the meantime, you can read GamingBolt’s official review to see if it’s worth playing (spoilers: It is).

Current Release Notes:

All Platforms

• General stability and performance improvements.
• Ultimate VIP Crown flair fixed.

Xbox

Stutters on Xbox One X while free roaming.

PC

• Fixed issue when changing MSAA from 2x to 4x resulted in improper tree LOD rendering/popping until game restarted.
• Fixed stalls and large FPS drops during Initial Drive. Affected machines where the player had insufficient RAM for their quality settings.
• Fixed AMD GPU issue where switching MSAA settings without restarting resulted in black corruption on the environment.
• Environment streaming improvements for min spec machines.
• Added visual presets for Nvidia RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080Ti.
• Fanatec CSL Wheel – fix for handbrake stuck on.
• Wheel Force Feedback improvements.

If you haven’t heard, Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 4 is pretty good. The newest iteration in the open world racing series has received strong critical acclaim for its gameplay, environmental design, and overall progression systems. If you’re still not sure about taking the plunge, then take heart – it’s now available on Xbox Game Pass.

For $10 per month, Xbox One players can play all the content in the base game. That’s not including over 180 other Xbox One and Xbox 360 titles that are also available (with more added over time). Those who have never signed up for Xbox Game Pass can even partake in a free 14-day trial. Head here for more details.

It will be worth sticking with Forza Horizon 4 for the coming months. The new Seasons system brings new events, cars, challenges, and other activities as the Seasons change. Coupled with everything else present in the game, there’s quite a lot to play through. Forza Horizon 4 is also available for Windows 10 PC as well.

If you haven’t noticed already, lots and lots of rumours gain traction around E3 time. For months now, news for Crackdown 3 has been awaited especially when it was delayed from last year. Microsoft hasn’t said much so when one Reddit user reported that his Amazon Spain pre-order was cancelled (and wrongly assumed this applied for all pre-orders), rumours went around about Crackdown 3 being delayed or possibly cancelled.

Jez Corden of Windows Central said on Twitter that it may have been delayed out of 2018 “based on what I’ve been hearing from a few places”. However, he was ultimately unsure and would ask Microsoft for a response. He added the game wasn’t cancelled at all which led to Aaron Greenberg, general manager for games marketing at Microsoft, providing an update.

“The team continues to work hard on the game for our fans, you should contact Amazon directly for any questions related to orders with them,” said Greenberg. The development team also confirmed to Greenberg that this was a “technical issue” on the side of Amazon and was currently being addressed.

So there you have it – Crackdown 3 is still very much alive, there’s still no release date and not all pre-order cancellations equal game cancellations. Will Crackdown 3 have something significant at E3 2018 to showcase? We’ll find out when Microsoft’s presser takes place on June 10th.

https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1001783079197855749

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/1001862382241464320

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/1001864696029302784

Turn 10 Studios has revealed the minimum and recommended system requirements for Forza Motorsport 7, it’s latest iteration in the vaunted racing sim franchise.

According to the developer, you’ll need at an Intel i5-750, an Nvidia GT 740 or GTX 650 and at least 8 GB of RAM to run the game at minimum settings. The recommended requirements aren’t as harsh on the RAM (8 GB) or CU (an Intel i5-4460 at 3.2 GHz) but the graphics card requirement is pretty hefty. You either need an Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 or GTX 1050 Ti to run the game.

It will be worth it though since Forza Motorsport 7 sports 4K textures and comes with 30 new environments and more than 700 cars to play around with. The Xbox One X version goes a step further by running at native 4K and 60 FPS. If you’re PC isn’t able to handle the game at those settings, then maybe an Xbox One X is the way to go?

Either way, Forza Motorsport 7 is out on October 3rd for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. Check out the full system requirements below.

Minimum
OS: Windows 10
Architecture: x64
Keyboard: Integrated Keyboard
Mouse: Integrated Mouse
DirectX: DirectX 12 API, Hardware Feature Level 11
Memory: 8 GB
Video Memory: 2 GB
Processor: Intel i5-750 2.67 GHz
Graphics: NVIDIA GT 740 or NVIDIA GTX 650 or AMD R7 250X

Recommended
OS: Windows 10
Architecture: x64
Keyboard: Integrated Keyboard
Mouse: Integrated Mouse
DirectX: DirectX 12 API, Hardware Feature Level 11
Memory: 8 GB
Video Memory: 4 GB
Processor: Intel i5 4460 3.2GHz
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 670 or NVIDIA 1050 Ti

Microsoft and The Coalition have released  brand new video for the upcoming Gears of War , the fourth numbered and mainline entry in the Gears of War saga that Epic G ames started out on the original Xbox 360. The new video showcases over nine minutes of gameplay footage from the upcoming game, which is the first entry being developed under the full supervision of Microsoft’s newly formed The Coalition.

The new video which shows over nine minutes of new gameplay footage, is available to watch below, and it showcases more of the game as viewed from a single player’s eye- naturally, it will be substantially different with more players thrown into the equation, and adding more variables into the mix.

Gears of War 4 launches this October on Windows 10 PCs and on Xbox One. It is the first entry in the franchise not to be developed or supervised by Epic Games, who created the series. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage and information.