'Forza Horizon 5' had the largest launch for any Xbox Game Studios title

 

Playground Games/Xbox Game Studios

Microsoft's game development teams are having a banner year. The company's gaming head Phil Spencer has revealed that Forza Horizon 5 had the best launch day of any Xbox Game Studios title. There have been over 4.5 million people playing the arcade racer across all platforms (Xbox, Windows and cloud) to date, and its peak concurrent players were three times those of its predecessor.

Horizon 5 is enjoyable, as you might have gathered from our hands-on, but it also helps that the game had one of Microsoft's widest releases yet. The new Forza launched simultaneously on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, the Microsoft Store on Windows and through Steam. It's much easier to pick up the game this time around, and it's a major showcase for both Microsoft's latest consoles as well as PCs with high-end video cards.

All the same, it's a significant moment for Microsoft after years of buying and fostering developers to make Xbox Game Studios a well-known brand. There's a real chance the company will eclipse itself, too, with Halo Infinite poised to launch in less than a month. It's just a question of whether or not these standout launches will translate to better Xbox sales.

Xbox PC app will soon let you use mods and custom install folders

 

Microsoft

Much like Steam and the Epic Games Store, the Xbox PC app will soon let folks install games in any folder of their choosing. Xbox insiders (i.e. people who've signed up to test new features) will be able to pick a default drive and folder for game installs. 

The Microsoft Store hosts both games users can buy individually and Xbox Game Pass titles. Until now, all apps and games have shared a single install location. It's not uncommon for PC gamers to have more than one storage drive. They might use one as a boot drive and for day-to-day apps, and a solid state drive for games. So, after this update rolls out more broadly, installing games on a secondary drive should be a cinch.

Insiders "will also find that downloads of those games have improved over time, so it's even easier and faster to get to your next game," Jason Beaumont, Xbox's partner director of experiences, said in a video discussing the updates. What's more, players of many Xbox Game Pass titles will soon have access to local files, so they'll be able to install mods and move files. The Xbox app will show whether a game is moddable.

A Steam update released in September made it straightforward for players to move an installed game and all of its files to another drive. The process is a little more convoluted for games installed from Epic's store, but it's still possible. These are welcome moves, as they give players more choice over how to manage their games, and it's good to see Microsoft offering folks more flexibility too.

Elsewhere, the Xbox PC app now has a cloud gaming tab, giving Game Pass Ultimate subscribers a quick way to find cloud-enabled console games. Beaumont added that Microsoft is continuing to improve the app's performance, including "making it more reliable to download and play your games." The team's also trying to make it easier for developers to add features like cross-saves and achievements. 

'Rainbow Six Extraction' will arrive on January 20th

 

Ubisoft

Ubisoft announced in July that it was delaying Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction from its planned September 16th release date to sometime in January. The publisher has now narrowed down the timeframe: the co-op shooter will arrive on January 20th.

What's more, Ubisoft has reduced the price of the base game to $40 and the deluxe edition to $50. In addition, the publisher is including two Buddy Pass tokens with every copy. You'll be able to invite two friends to play with you for a 14-day trial period, though those who use a Buddy Pass won't have access to Assignments, the ranked Maelstrom Protocol mode or the in-game store.

The game will have cross-play, cross-progression and cross-save support, so players can team up with friends across Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Amazon Luna, Google Stadia, PC and Ubisoft+. The Buddy Pass will work across all platforms.

Rainbow Six Extraction, which used to be known as Rainbow Six Quarantine before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, is based on a Rainbow Six Siege mode called Outbreak. Teams will take on waves of aliens that have invaded Earth, and players will be able to take on the guises of some Siege operators.