New Xbox update gives BIG graphics boost

The Design Lab is getting an update, but not the one that I was looking for, and Microsoft Cloud Gaming is getting a little bit of an edge. Also, if you want to pick up any new Xbox gear, or maybe buy a Series X or S console for yourself, I have the links down in the description below. Let's discuss. So, a couple days ago, there was a huge update regarding Cloud Gaming on the Xbox Wire. They had this whole blog post detailing some major changes that were coming to the Xbox Cloud Gaming service. This included better servers up to 125% capacity boost in order to boost gaming performance. They also broke the news, and this one was pretty big, that they're introducing a standalone Cloud Gaming app on Samsung TVs that are released in 2022. So, if you have a model that's previous to that, well, you're kind of tough out of luck. And also, as part of this new wave of updates coming to Cloud Gaming, they're also giving you a reason to finally use Microsoft Edge. I know, I know, guys. Microsoft Edge is like the forgotten stepchild of internet browsers. People I know use Chrome a lot, and Safari, but I've never heard someone say, like, man, I sure do love Microsoft Edge. That's my go-to browser. And watch, everyone's going to be in the comments after I say that, and be like, actually, I use Microsoft Edge, and I love it. It looks like, according to this blog post that they wrote up on Cloud Gaming, expanding it to different countries, boosting the capacity, improving performance, they're also adding in a clarity boost to Microsoft Edge, theoretically making Microsoft Edge the best browser to use Xbox Cloud Gaming. Over on the Xbox Wire, it says the built-in clarity boost makes gameplay from the Cloud look sharper and clearer when playing in the Microsoft Edge browser on Windows. Now, that's a pretty interesting promise. I don't know how it's going to shape up in real life, because the update is not live yet on Microsoft Edge, but it's a smart move on Microsoft's part to further push that ecosystem. Say, hey, if you play Cloud Gaming on our browser instead of Chrome, or Safari, or Firefox, well, it's going to look a little bit better with this clarity boost. Me and Jimmy have talked about this in the past, but the more that they can do to drive people to their products, to their ecosystem, the better it will be in the long run, as they go into this new age of Game Pass Ultimate and game streaming. They're also optimizing games to be played in a windowed state versus full screen. One of the bullet points in this blog post says, optimizations for windowed games are currently being tested in the Windows Insider program. These are designed to significantly improve latency and unlock other exciting gaming features, including auto HDR and variable refresh rate. Now, that's some pretty crazy stuff that's being added in, especially when you're thinking about it from a game streaming standpoint. I mean, PlayStation 5, they didn't get variable refresh rate until, like, very recently, and to think that they're already working on that to bring it to Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming titles, that's pretty exciting. They're also introducing over on Windows 11, the Game Pass widget, which will allow players to browse and discover games from Game Pass and jump back into their recently played titles. Back to the Microsoft Edge stuff, they say the new games menu in Microsoft Edge offers easy-to-access, popular games like Microsoft Solitaire, Atari Asteroids, Microsoft Jewel, and Microsoft's Edge exclusive Surf game, plus helps players discover new ones. And they're also adding in an efficiency mode, it seems, to kind of cut down on your usage while you're streaming games. It says in this last bullet point, efficiency mode helps improve gaming performance on Windows 10 and 11 to keep them running fast and smooth by automatically reducing browser resource usage when a PC game is launched. Overall, I know some people are kind of iffy about cloud gaming. Like, for example, if you don't have a good internet connection, cloud gaming is useless to you, right? That's just the bottom line. But I feel like it's super exciting that they're continuing to pour resources and continuing to improve cloud gaming because I think it could be an important pillar in the Xbox ecosystem. Maybe not the only option, but it's a nice option to have if they can get it up to speed. Next up, let's talk about Design Lab. Now, Design Lab for Xbox, it's a thing where you can customize your own controller, make it a fancy color, engrave some stuff on it, and then they ship it to you. It was shrouded in mystery somewhat the past couple days because it shut down for a hot second. People were like, what's going on? And then so when we saw that Design Lab was coming down, there was all sorts of stories going on. I was like, oh man, we're about to look so cool, like having predicted Elite Series customization in the Xbox Design Lab. That was not the case, guys. I know, I got to take the L on that. Y'all are probably going to call me out in the comments, but sometimes you got to shoot for the stars, be optimistic with this stuff. So yes, they did bring Design Lab back and they did have a few more options, but not the ability to customize an Elite Series controller. They added some new colors, which is always nice. This includes new pastel colors, according to The Verge, soft pink, orange, green, and purple, as well as new camo top cases with matching side caps, mineral camo, arctic camo, forest camo, sand glow camo, and blaze camo. Honestly, they look pretty cool, but the naming, for some reason, it makes them seem like Gatorade flavors. The big story here is that they added in metallic finishes for D-pads, bumpers, and triggers, and that's pretty cool. They upcharge you a little bit, I want to say like five or six dollars if you do the whole thing, D-pad, bumpers, and triggers, but they honestly look pretty nice and they come in different colors as well, so I do appreciate those options. And I want to say they expanded the grip option, so you can have grip on the back plate itself and also on the little handles as well. This is something that I first experienced the grip on the Xbox Series controllers with the Forza controller, and I thought, man, this is so cool. It really feels like you're gripping the steering wheel of a car in Forza, like you're really in the game, but I'm a little disappointed though that you're not able to customize the color of these rubberized grips, it's just black. And I know that they sort of have the capability of doing different colors because it's not the exact same rubber grips that you would see on the Forza controller, but on the Xbox 20th Anniversary controller, they have something similar on the back, but the grips are green, so it's like, I know y'all have the ability to do something like that, why not roll it out into the Design Lab? In addition to all these new customization options, they're also rolling out Xbox Design Lab to 11 new regions. According to The Verge, Xbox Design Lab will be launching in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Slovakia, and Switzerland. Taiwan will also get access to the Design Lab later this summer. So I don't know if you've heard about it, but over the past couple of days, Xbox has had a series of showcases, a total of three hours where they showcase all these games that were coming to Xbox in the next 12 months. And the big joke from that, they absolutely like abuse the title card coming day one to Game Pass. If you made a compilation of just them showing that, it'd probably be like 10, 15 minutes. They did that and then console launch exclusive a lot, which a lot of people were like kind of confused because they were like, wait, like it's only on Xbox, it's not on PC, what's going on? Overall, there is a ton of games coming day one to Game Pass over the next 12 months. But there are three titles coming day one in the month of August that Xbox fans have to look forward to that may not have been highlighted in the showcases. Now, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm gonna tell you these games and the majority of you are probably gonna be in the comments like, I don't care about those games, but I personally like a couple of these. I don't know the third one, but two of them, first of all, Turbo Golf Racing, that looks sick. I'm a huge fan of like games that are golf, but with a twist. Like I loved Gun Golf, I love Mario Golf, anything that's not like regular golf, I'm here for. In game rant, they say, Turbo Golf Racing blends sports and vehicles a la Rocket League. And I'm not good at Rocket League, but I'm already here for that premise because I love the wacky nature of it. And the fact that you're just like using cards to play golf, I'm here for it, I love stuff like that. We also got Two Point Campus coming to Game Pass in August. Now, this has been in the coming soon tab of Game Pass for a long time. For anybody who's played any of the other Two Point games, like Two Point Hospital, it's sort of similar to that, but instead of running a hospital, you are running a college campus. Basically, anyone who's a fan of like simulation games is gonna like Two Point Campus. There has never been a better time to be a Resident Evil fan. We saw at State of Play a couple of weeks ago, a first look at the remake of Resident Evil 4, which is like one of my favorite games of all time. We saw that Resident Evil 8 is gonna be coming to VR on the PSVR 2, but enough about PlayStation, right? Let's talk about some of the other Resident Evils. So Resident Evil 2, 3, and 7 are receiving patches that will include ray tracing, they'll boost the resolution, and they'll support 60 frames per second. These next-gen versions are available on all platforms, so Xbox, PlayStation, PC. But Xbox, we got a little bit of an advantage, right? In order to access these next-gen upgrades, first of all, if you already have a copy of any of these games, 2, 3, and 7, it'll automatically update and give you the patch for this next-gen stuff. And if you're downloading it for the first time, you don't have to worry about it because on Xbox, we have something called Smart Delivery. And that basically just gives you the best version of the game for whatever Xbox console that you have, whether that be the One S, the One X, the Series S, the Series X. You don't have to fiddle with it versus if you're on the PlayStation side, there's always a lot of confusion. I'm like, oh, if I buy this version, I have to spend 10 bucks to upgrade it, or I have to buy this bundle that includes the last-gen and the next-gen versions. And if there's still any confusion about how to download these next-gen versions of Resident Evil 2, 3, and 7, Gamer Revolution actually wrote up a very helpful article on how you can do so yourself if you're an Xbox Series owner. The Xbox versions of Resident Evil use Smart Delivery, so the correct version should automatically appear under the Optimize for Xbox Series X and S list in your library. If the game is already installed, just check for updates, and Smart Delivery will select the correct version for your console. To check for updates on Xbox Series X and S consoles, select My Games and Apps from the dashboard, scroll down to Manage, select Updates. When you enter the Updates screen, the console should automatically check for updates for any installed games. Depending on how many games you have installed, this may take a bit, so have some patience. It should eventually find it. Overall, this is a super exciting time, like I said, for Resident Evil fans or just fans of the horror genre in general. I have very fond memories of Resident Evil 2. I have not played three or seven, and I'm only like a little bit into the beginning of eight, but I feel like now is the perfect time to jump in if you've never played any of those games because you get to play the best version of these games with all the new bells and whistles, 4K, 60 FPS, ray tracing, so overall, super exciting, and I personally cannot wait. So like I said earlier in the video, Xbox had two separate showcases. They had one Sunday, an hour and a half, where they revealed things like Redfall, Starfield for the first time, and then they had one today, literally a couple of hours ago. Now, I was under the impression that it was just gonna be an extended look at the things that we saw on Sunday, but they ended up revealing new games, too, coming to Xbox. First of all, Valheim coming to consoles. I was literally just about to buy it on Steam, and I was like, mm, I don't know. Maybe I'll come back to it, and then all of a sudden, it's like, yo, Valheim coming to consoles. It's gonna be exclusive to Xbox and PC. It's gonna be awesome, and it's gonna have cross-play with Steam, so you can play with anyone who's already downloaded it. For those of you who don't know, Valheim is a crafting survival game, but it's with Vikings. That's the twist on it, and it was huge last year on Steam. On top of that, not only is it coming to Xbox consoles, it's also coming to Game Pass day one sometime early 2023. Now, there are some questions on how the experience is gonna transfer over from being on a mouse and keyboard. I don't think they would bother porting over the game if they did not have a solid plan to make it a good experience on an Xbox controller. They also showed off that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is coming to Xbox Game Pass as well, sort of in the same time, that early 2023. And honestly, that looks sick as well. I don't know if it's too crowded for horror games during that time period. And they also just released Friday the 13th, and people have been playing around with that a lot. This game, while it is coming to PC and Xbox Game Pass, it's going to be multi-platform, so it will also release on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. They showed off Naraka, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing that in a total, like, Americanized way, obnoxious American way, but it was actually pretty funny because people have already started memeing on it, saying that, like, the character model that they were showing off looked like Phil Spencer. They also talked a little bit more about Aura History Untold. Now, when they were showing this off, I thought it was like, oh, Civilization's coming to Game Pass or something like that. But then I was like, oh, Oxide Games. We knew that they were working on a RTS game specifically to maybe push onto cloud gaming. And honestly, it looked pretty cool from the trailer that we saw on Sunday and this deep dive that they did today. Justin Roiland also got to talk about his new game, High on Life, coming out by Squanch Games. He discussed a little bit about how this was his dream game. He summed it up as Blade Runner meets The Muppets, which is an amazing description. Sign me up, I'm here for it. And in a super, super surprise move, we saw our first look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. Now, this has been one of the most anticipated games for a while now. It was supposed to come out back in April and then it got delayed. And in a more surprising move, I will say, they highlighted the developers' experience living in Ukraine right now with all the stuff that's going on. And I thought that was really cool. Usually, I feel like companies shy away from these big, momentous political situations that are going on, but I thought it was cool that they gave the developers that spotlight to tell their story. Obviously, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 looked incredible and it's just amazing how they have brought such a cool-looking product, a cool-looking game, with all the hardships that they've had to deal with. Hopefully, they remain safe. I personally can't wait. I can be patient for the game because I totally understand, man, there are a lot more important things going on than giving a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.