About

The Day Before is an open-world massively multiplayer online survival set in a deadly, post-pandemic America overrun by flesh-hungry infected and survivors killing each other for food, weapons, and cars. You wake up alone in a world you no longer remember, setting out to find answers and the resources to survive.

Key Features

• Survive at All Costs – Search abandoned vehicles, houses, and skyscrapers as you scavenge for resources.
• Enter Places No One Else Dares – Crush the infected and other players with realistic weapons, becoming a legend of the new world.
• Discover the Vast Post-Pandemic World – Explore beautiful yet dangerous places with stunningly detailed vehicles.
• Find a Colony of Survivors – Take part in the restoration of the former society before it’s too late. In the survivor colony, you can sell your loot and communicate safely with other players.

About

Batora: Lost Haven combines the features of a hack-and-slash and a twin-stick shooter in a nonlinear interplanetary story-driven action RPG.

What boundaries would you cross to save your home?

Avril used to be a regular 16-year-old girl, not what you’d call a natural-born hero. Until a mysterious event devastated the Earth, and she lost everything she cared for. Now she’s the only one who, with the physical and mental powers that she has been gifted, can attempt to save her planet!

This is how her cosmic journey starts: soon enough, Avril will learn that the line between good and evil is thin. It’s up to her to decide whom to believe: her choices will change the destiny of the universe.

Key Features

• Physical and Mental Dualism – Find the perfect balance between your body and mind to face the challenges and enigmas you will find along the journey, but keep an eye on the double health bar: it tracks both your physical and mental health, and if you lose sight of one of them… you’re dead!
• Defender or Conqueror – Choose if you need to use your wits or strength in your interactions with the factions: decide who you want to become while you reach your goal, but be careful of the consequences…
• Fast-Paced Multi-Layered Combat System – Quickly learn when to switch between physical and mental mode: sharpening your strategic dualism is the only way to keep pace with your opponents!
• Retro Sci-Fi Visuals – Fill your eyes with the original hand-painted visuals inspired by the retro science-fiction art of the 1950s. You will visit colorful and fascinating planets, and meet the most intriguing creatures of the entire universe!
• Responsive, Non-Linear Narration – Your choices will change the fate of the universe and of the creatures that inhabit it. Are you ready to take responsibility for your decisions? Find out all the possible outcomes of the storyline designed by a Writers Guild Award winner!

In the Gates of Oblivion adventure, you can explore a new storyline told throughout all of The Elder Scrolls Online‘s 2021 content releases, including the upcoming The Elder Scrolls Online: Flames of Ambition downloadable content and The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood Chapter. In this year-long saga, you will unravel the ambitions and schemes of the Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon 800 years before the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

About

Biomutant is an open-world, post-apocalyptic Wung-Fu fable RPG, with unique martial art styled combat system allowing you to mix melee, shooting, and mutant ability action.

Key Features

• A New Take on Third-Person Combat – The martial arts style combat system allows you maximum freedom of movement and agility while mixing shooting, melee, and powers from your mutations. Learning new Wung-Fu combat forms through progression and learning from masters you’ll meet, will constantly add to your choices and make sure combat never gets old.
• Evolve Your Gameplay – You’ll be able to re-code your genetic structure to change the way you look and play. This will of course affect your attributes and in addition to this, exposure to bio-contamination in the world will lead to mutations like the Turtleform and Mucus Bubble, while exposure to radioactivity found in bunkers from the old world will affect your mind and unlock psi-mutations like telekinesis, levitation and more.
• Next Level of Crafting – You are totally free when crafting weapons. Mix and match parts to create your own unique 1H or 2H slash and crush weapons. Revolvers, rifles and shotguns and add modifications like cork-screws and battery-powered chainsaw modules to bio-contaminated sludge vials adding to your combat arsenal. There are even characters you’ll meet that’ll craft cool stuff for you, like bionic wings, a jump-pack and even let you modify your Automaton – the scrap-toy sidekick!
• Gear Up for Adventure – You are totally free when equipping your character. Not only when it comes to choosing weapons you created, but what type of gear you wear. Equip a gas-mask and an oxygen tank for exploring the Dead Zones, thermos-resistant clothes for venturing into cryonic areas or protective gear for taking on bio-contaminated creatures, the choice is up to you.
• Survive in a Vibrant Open World – You are free to explore the world and what lies beneath its surface, by foot, mech, jet-ski, air-balloon or area unique mounts. Explore the dying wildland, the tunnels and bunker networks of the underworld, and find your way up the mountains or out in the archipelago. There are lots of discoveries to be made, mysteries to unravel, creatures to confront, and weird characters to meet in this vibrant and colorful world.
• An Unusual Story with an Unusual EndYour actions play a major part in the unfolding of a story where End is coming to the New World. A plague is ruining the land and the Tree-of-Life is bleeding death from its roots. The Tribes stand divided, in need of someone strong enough to unite them or bring them all down… You are guided through the world by a Storyteller that narrates every step of your journey, but it’s your actions and choices that’ll decide how your story of survival ends.

Newell admits some of the ideas may seem incredible, and said some of the discussions he's having around BCIs are "indistinguishable from science fiction" - but according to him, game developers would be making a mistake by not investigating BCIs within the short-term future.

To help them to do that, Newell said Valve is currently working on an open-source BCI software project, allowing developers to begin to interpret the signals being read from people's brains using hardware like modified VR (virtual reality) helmets.

"We're working on an open source project so that everybody can have high-resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headsets, in a bunch of different modalities," Newell said.

Valve has been working with OpenBCI headsets.

OpenBCI unveiled a headset design in November called Galea, designed to work alongside VR headsets like Valve's Index.

"If you're a software developer in 2022 who doesn't have one of these in your test lab, you're making a silly mistake," Newell said.

"Software developers for interactive experience[s] - you'll be absolutely using one of these modified VR head straps to be doing that routinely - simply because there's too much useful data."

That data will generally consist of readings from the player's body and brain, which can be used to tell if the player is excited, surprised, sad, bored, amused and afraid, among other emotions.

The readings can be used by developers to improve immersion and personalise what happens during games - like turning up the difficulty a bit if the system realises the player is getting bored.

Aside from just reading people's brain signals, Newell also discussed the near-future reality of being able to write signals to people's minds - to change how they're feeling or deliver better-than-real visuals in games.

He said BCIs will lead to gaming experiences far better than a player could get through their "meat peripherals" - as in, their eyes and ears.

"You're used to experiencing the world through eyes," Newell said, "but eyes were created by this low-cost bidder that didn't care about failure rates and RMAs, and if it got broken there was no way to repair anything effectively, which totally makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but is not at all reflective of consumer preferences.

"So the visual experience, the visual fidelity we'll be able to create - the real world will stop being the metric that we apply to the best possible visual fidelity.

"The real world will seem flat, colourless, blurry compared to the experiences you'll be able to create in people's brains.

"Where it gets weird is when who you are becomes editable through a BCI," Newell said.

At the moment, people accept their feelings are just how they feel - but Newell says BCIs will soon allow the editing of these feelings digitally, which could be as easy as using an app.

"One of the early applications I expect we'll see is improved sleep - sleep will become an app that you run where you say, 'Oh, I need this much sleep, I need this much REM,'" he said.

Another benefit could be the reduction or total removal of unwanted feelings or conditions from the brain, for therapeutic reasons.

Olija is a game about Faraday’s quest, a man shipwrecked then trapped in the mysterious country of Terraphage. Armed with a legendary harpoon, he and other castaways try to leave this hostile country to return to their homelands.

Through adventurous exploration, narration, and razor sharp combat, the player will discover a strange world and its inhabitants, including Olija, an enigmatic lady that Faraday finds himself bound to over time. Inspired by swashbuckling tales and cinematic adventure games, Olija is a story about facing the unknown in adversity.

Key Features

• Explore a mysterious and handcrafted world inspired by sailor’s legends and Asian fantasy.
• Wield the Harpoon of legend and rethink movement through platforming, puzzle and combat.
• Rescue fellow castaways and meet curious characters to learn more about Terraphage and the enigmatic Olija.
• Beautiful melancholic soundtrack inspired by Flamenco, lo-fi, and traditional Japanese music.
• Craft magic hats!

We messed up today and you were right to let us know. Connecting and playing with friends is a vital part of gaming and we failed to meet the expectations of players who count on it every day. As a result, we have decided not to change Xbox Live Gold pricing.

[...] If you are an Xbox Live Gold member already, you stay at your current price for renewal. New and existing members can continue to enjoy Xbox Live Gold for the same prices they pay today. In the US, $9.99 for 1-month, $24.99 for 3-months, $39.99 for 6-months and $59.99 for retail 12-months.