Extraction shooters are currently taking the world by storm, and Bungie is eager to make its mark on the genre with its fast-paced first-person shooter Marathon. Much like Arc Raiders--another popular entry in the world of extraction shooters--Marathon is a much more accessible experience compared to more hardcore titles in the genre, but it still comes packing plenty of danger around every corner. As such, you'll want to have a team to watch your back--meaning you'll need to bring along some friends you can trust.

If you're diving into Marathon and looking to link up with your pals, you'll probably be asking whether the game features cross-play support. Below, we'll answer that question, as well as share information about Marathon's cross-progression options so that you can know what to expect before you even boot up the game.

If you're hoping to play Marathon with your friends on different platforms, you'll be thrilled to hear that Marathon features cross-play. This means that you can team up with players across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or PC, regardless of where you choose to play.

Team Ninja's super-hard souls-like Nioh 3 lands on February 6 for PC and PlayStation 5, and ahead of its imminent launch, the studio dropped a 17-minute gameplay overview showing off everything you'll do in the action-RPG--from battling historical figures and giant monsters to purifying areas and becoming Shogun.

The gameplay overview takes you on a whirlwind of excursions, revealing that you're a time-jumping ninja-samurai on a quest to understand why your brother stole the title of Shogun--the military leader and de facto ruler of Japan--and betrayed his countrymen. (Probably for power, as is always the case.) You'll go from the Edo period (approximately 1601 to 1868) back to the Heian period (roughly 794 to 1185) through to the Sengoku (1467 to 1615) and Bakumatsu eras (1853 to 1868) to uncover the truth behind the Crucible's emergence.

To do all of that, you'll equip yourself with all sorts of weapons--from claws, fists, and odachis to scythes, katanas, and kusarigamas--to slay or get slain as you battle well-trained samurai and freakishly huge monsters on your path toward cleansing the lands of evil. The Crucible, a horrifying realm spawning and enhancing the monstrous creatures overwhelming Japan, is the source, and Nioh 3 will test your patience and resolve to survive long enough to kill everyone and save everything else.

The "one-person, one-dog action-RPG" Beast of Reincarnation looks like a larger endeavor than developer Game Freak's previous titles--large enough to require support from outside partners to bring the studio's vision to life.

Speaking to IGN, game director Kota Furushima said that Game Freak's team is "quite large," but the studio "managed to seek out a lot of partner companies" and was "lucky to have a lot of people working on it externally as well." A PR representative clarified with IGN that Game Freak's internal team for Beast of Reincarnation is "relatively small" and is still leading the project in a core role.

Neither Furushima nor the PR spokesperson gave any numbers for how large or small Game Freak's team is. Working with external partners isn't unusual for a AAA video game--the credits for Game Freak's Pokemon Legends: Z-A list around 30 partner companies that worked on the project.

Nintendo has announced a new Super Mario Galaxy Movie Direct, and it's not being held on a weekday. Nintendo fans can get an "exclusive look" at the sequel to the Super Mario Bros. Movie on Sunday, January 25, at 6 AM PT / 9 AM ET.

Beyond that, Nintendo is staying tight-lipped about what else you can expect or how long the Direct will run. This will be focused purely on the animated movie, which sees the return of Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad. New additions to the cast include Brie Larson as Rosalina and Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr.

Join us on Sunday, Jan 25, at 6am PT for the #NintendoDirect featuring an exclusive look at The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Please note that no game information will be included in this presentation.
Watch here: https://t.co/gTC114mMLz pic.twitter.com/4DOoFU1fFJ

The first trailer for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie was officially shown off last year, and was followed up by a brief scene where Mario and Luigi chat with Bowser, who is still imprisoned in Princess Peach's castle after he was shrunk down from his monstrous size. The scene ended with the appearance of Bowser Jr., who is aiming to break his dad out of his makeshift prison.

While Microsoft has stated an intention to bring its games to Nintendo Switch 2, Fable won't be one of them--at least, not immediately. According to Windows Central's Jez Corden, a port is "under consideration for the future."

Corden claimed in an X post that a version of Playground Games's reboot of Fable for Switch 2 "isn't 100% definite for now." In a follow-up post, Corden stated that a port is not currently in development because of "purely logistics," but he expressed belief that it'll eventually happen.

Putting Fable on Switch 2 would fit with Xbox's multiplatform strategy--it's coming to PlayStation 5, after all. While the rollout of Microsoft-owned titles on Nintendo's new machine has been slow so far, both Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and South of Midnight are slated to release on Switch 2 this year.

A romanticized slice of Japan is the playground that Forza Horizon 6 takes place in, but if this week's Developer Direct livestream is any indicator, the game looks like it'll have plenty of anime inspiration under its hood. One such example was seen in Forza Horizon 6's Touge Battle mode, which looks like it was pulled straight from the cult-classic street-racing manga and anime series Initial D.

The Touge Battle mode was briefly described by developer Playground Games as a series of nighttime races down Japanese mountain passes, and to hammer home the Initial D influence, the gameplay footage showed a Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 drifting through tight corners. The same car used by the manga's protagonist--and which has become an icon of street racing over the years--the tribute to the series was joined by a very brief glimpse of what appeared to be a full-sized Gundam.

If previous games with their showcase races are any indicator, don't be too surprised if you're tasked with racing a skyscraper-sized robot in Forza Horizon 6.

Cult of the Lamb's massive new paid expansion Woolhaven is out today, marking the biggest influx of new content since the game released in 2022. The $17 expansion takes the cult and its followers to the wintry new region of Woolhaven, the ancestral home of the Lambs.

Devolver Digital and developer Massive Monster celebrated Woolhaven's release with an animated trailer showing the spirits of Lambs past helping the Lamb face off against new enemies in the snowy mountains. Devolver also hosted a live stream where players could watch a Lamb ice sculpture slowly melting--with just a tiny bit of help from a blowtorch.

Players hoping to get stuck into Woolhaven will need to have played the base game to near completion, as the DLC picks up after the end of the game. Continuing the main story of the Lamb and their growing cult, Woolhaven explores the history of lambkind, tasking the player with restoring an abandoned village to its former glory and restoring the power of Yngya, the forgotten god of the Lambs.

One of the biggest stories to emerge out of this week's Xbox Developer Direct was the long-awaited update about the new Fable reboot. It's been 15 years since Fable 3 wrapped up the original trilogy, but one of the franchise's key features won't be returning in the new game.

In the first three Fable games, the physical appearance of player characters changed depending on their moral alignment. This was called "morphing," and players who were particularly bad took on a devilish appearance complete with horns. According to Fable general manager and director Ralph Fulton, that won't be the case in the new game.

"That sort of character morphing feature--obviously a really central part of the original games--it's not in ours," Fulton told IGN. "There is no objective good and evil. And the original games were predicated on there being an objective good and an objective evil, and you were somewhere along that scale, and that's what determined how your appearance changed. But for us, that doesn't really work. The way I've described our morality system working, you're never that thing, absolutely. You're different things to different people based on what they like or what they choose to value. So, that's one reason that it didn't work."

The original Fable trilogy gave players a choice between actions that were defined as either good or evil. Playground Games' Fable reboot is retaining a morality system, but it's not going to be quite so simple and binary. Instead, players will be able to have more nuanced characters who may not necessarily be either good or evil.

"Morality was always such an important part of the original trilogy," said Fable general manager and director Ralph Fulton during an interview with Xbox Wire. "I think that original trilogy is inextricably linked with the concept of good and evil--but I think morality in video games has moved on in the intervening period. How we think about morality in the world today has really informed how we wanted to represent it as a game system in this game. That’s to say: There is no objective good, there is no objective evil. Really it's just about people's subjective opinions and what they choose to value in someone else when they make that judgment."

Fulton went on to explain that the new Fable's morality "isn't a sliding scale." Instead, players will be judged by their actions if they're spotted by at least one other character. He added that players may gain significantly different reputations at each town based on what they've become known for.

Playground's new Fable game will have an "amazing cast," game director Ralph Fulton has said. In an interview, Fulton teased that the new Fable game will carry forward the franchise's tradition of working with popular actors, though he didn't name anyone outright as of yet.

"We have an amazing cast in this game--and we'll talk more about the cast in future," he said in an interview with Xbox. "Again, that's in keeping with the original Fable games."

He said the casting for the earlier Fable games from Lionhead was so strong that it felt like a "challenge" for Playground to live up.

The new Fable game from Playground Games is coming to PlayStation 5, and that's a big deal because the series has never landed on a Sony system. Playground's other big game for 2026, Forza Horizon 6, is also landing on PS5 following the huge success of Forza Horizon 5 on PS5. The new Fable is landing on PS5 alongside the Xbox and PC editions, but Forza Horizon 6 won't come to PS5 until some point after it releases on Xbox and PC. Why is that?

Fable game director Ralph Fulton told IGN that, "Every project team is deciding these things; deciding what's right for their particular title."

He elaborated: "We have two projects which have made slightly different decisions, although the endpoint is the same. And I think as a game developer, the most important thing to me is that the greatest number of people play my games as possible."

During Xbox's Developer Direct, Forza Horizon developer Playground Games more fully showed off its Fable reboot. The game's visuals are impressive, but the real achievement of the dev team may be the open world and people who live in it. According to Playground Games, there are over 1,000 NPCs in Fable, and players can talk to and interact with all of them.

"You can talk to them, you can romance them, you can marry them," said Fable general manager Ralph Fulton. "You can divorce them or be divorced by them. You can have children with them. You can hire them. You can fire them. [NPCs] are kind of a game within a game, but they are such a unique, fundamental part of Fable. And I think one of the things that sets Fable apart from other open-world medieval fantasy RPGs is that it was uncuttable. We knew we had to deliver against this. I love that we've stuck with the ambition that we had right at the start of that."

As part of the developers' stated goal to include so many NPCs, Fulton added that each person has their own daily routine that they follow, as well as their own place to live and sleep. Furthermore, Fulton revealed that every single building in Fable can be entered and explored by the player. In fact, players can even purchase buildings and homes of their own.

A new Fable game is coming this year from developer Playground. It's the first new entry in the series following the closure of original developer Lionhead and the departure of series director Peter Molyneux from Microsoft.

Playground is not trying to "ape" anything that Lionhead did, game director Ralph Fulton said in an interview. Instead, the developer said it was important for the new game to be a reboot so Playground could put its own stamp on Fable--while retaining elements of the original games, like morality and kicking chickens.

The Fable series is known for a lot of things, including the ability to kick chickens and send them soaring through the air. The new Fable, from developer Playground, will continue to allow you to do this, it was confirmed as part of Xbox Developer Direct.

In an interview with Xbox, game director Ralph Fulton said if NPCs in the world see you kicking chickens, you'll begin to earn a reputation as a "Chicken Chaser." If enough people witness you kicking chickens, or if you just do it a lot, your reputation in a given settlement will be that you're a person who likes to kick chickens. "People will react to you based on what they think about that particular reputation," Fulton said.

However, different people will take this reputation to mean different things. "Kicking chickens isn't objectively good or objectively evil in a way everybody will agree on," Fulton said. "It comes down to the unique worldview of the NPC [and] what they think of you because of it."

After last year's critically acclaimed sleeper Keeper, Double Fine is coming back with a new take on an older game. During the Xbox Developer Direct, Double Fine officially unveiled Kiln, a title where players will be able to make unique pottery warriors and send them into battle against each other.

During the much-longer look at Kiln from the Xbox Developer Direct, it was clear that the vase creation has a lot of options for players to shape their warriors and guide their destructive destinies. However, you won't need to be a pottery master to realize your clay visions in this game.

"Making pots in real life is really difficult," said project lead Derek Brand during an interview with Xbox Wire. "It takes a lot of practice, and you can get good at it over time, but it is not an easy thing to just jump into. We wanted to make the pot-making super easy and accessible--it's just a button and a control stick--and you can make any kind of shape you wanted. We wanted people to immediately feel like they're masters at this craft."

The new Fable game that Microsoft showed off during the Xbox Developer Direct takes inspiration from an unlikely source: the popular TV show The Office.

Game director Ralph Fulton said in an interview with Xbox that British humor "manifests in lots of different ways throughout the game." The team at Playground, which is based in England, was inspired by the "rich variety of British comedies" of the past two decades, including Ricky Gervais' The Office, as well as Peep Show, The IT Crowd, and others.

"We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well," he said, no doubt referencing the American version that elevated the series to new heights. "Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularized, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humor which really appeals to us."

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential subscribers can start the weekend a little early, because the next Free Play Days event begins today, January 22 and goes through Sunday, January 25. One of the four games available to players is South Park: Snow Day!, which seems appropriate given the cold weather sweeping much of the US.

Snow Day! is a four-player co-op title that casts players as the new kid in town opposite Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny. A blizzard has blown through South Park, and set the boys off into a fantasy realm of adventure where they get to battle it out to save the world. Or at least some of the world, since they won't be leaving South Park any time soon.

As the name implies, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is an origin story for the world's greatest non-Batman detective. But he hasn't hit his peak of deduction yet. This game puts players in control of a much younger Sherlock as he attempts to unravel the events surrounding the sudden death of his mother.

Following the reveal of its release date, Marathon has seen a surge of interest as PC players have begun locking in preorders for Bungie's sci-fi extraction shooter. At the time of writing, Marathon is the fifth-best-selling game on Steam in the US and 10th globally on the Steam Charts. Free-to-play games like Marvel Rivals and Counter-Strike 2 are ahead of it--only natural, given the low price of nothing for those titles--and Arc Raiders is still in the top spot for now.

This is a positive step forward for the game, considering last year's controversy over alleged stolen art assets and the lukewarm reception since its reveal. It's also worth noting that Marathon will be available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at launch, but sales data for those platforms isn't currently available to gauge player interest. Marathon was originally aiming to launch in September last year--a release date that would have brought it perilously close to the mega-successful Arc Raiders.

It's now scheduled to launch on March 5, which gives it a fairly comfortable window to make its sales mark. The Steam preorders suggest it'll launch on PC with considerable momentum, but it remains to be seen whether it'll be able to hold onto its players in the highly competitive live-service games market.

World of Warcraft lead producer Raymond Bartos has left Blizzard to join Riot, where he will work on the League of Legends developer's upcoming MMO.

Bartos said, "I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to join such an inspiring group of people, and I can't wait to get started." Serving as a senior game producer, Bartos said his job will be to "help deliver an MMO experience players truly enjoy."

Additionally, Bartos said he's excited to join another former WoW developer, Orlando Salvatore, at Riot. "Given our track record on World of Warcraft, I have a feeling we'll be moving fast on day one," Bartos said.

For the first time in series history, the Halo franchise will be playable on PlayStation this year with the release of Halo: Campaign Evolved. Executive producer Damon Conn said in an interview that Microsoft's goal is to "bring players back together."

"There are people who have never been exposed to Halo. Maybe they've always been on Sony products, switched consoles at a certain point, or just missed it at the time. We want to bring players back together," Conn explained to GamesRadar.

Creative director Max Szlagor added that, "Halo is best played when we have a large, healthy community."