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The ultimate Xbox experience. We can build it. We have the technology. Xbox fans might want to keep an eye out for this month's PlayStation State of Play, and we are getting the heroes we both need and deserve on Game Pass this month. Let's discuss. So February was an up-and-down month for Game Pass. It's probably going to be best remembered for Crossfire X, and whether or not you liked Crossfire X, the general consensus was that it was trash. But despite all that, March is turning out to be pretty cool for Game Pass subscribers. A couple of days ago on March 1st, we got Far, Changing Tides, and this is a vehicle exploration game that puts you in charge of this really sick-looking ship and has you just exploring this very beautiful world, solving puzzles, and upgrading your ship as you go along. Now this seems like a very chill, relaxing sort of game. I feel like this would be a very good break if you're playing Halo Infinite, sweating it out and ranked, trying to make up for the de-ranking that just took place, or you've been playing a little bit too much Elden Ring like myself, and you're tired of dying to the same boss over and over and over and over again. I could see how this can be a very nice alternative, a nice break. March 10th is definitely going to be Game Pass's big day this month. We're getting Kentucky, Route Zero, and I just love the name of this game. It's described as a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway running through the caves beneath Kentucky and the mysterious folks who travel it. We're also getting this game called Young Souls, and immediately this game stuck out to me because of the art style. I'm a big fan of Western animation, anime, all things animated, and immediately this art style resonated with me right off the jump. Looking at gameplay of this, this looks like a beat-em-up RPG, kind of similar to Hades, kind of similar to Nobody Saves the World, which I just played through as well. I'm really into these kinds of games, so I'm interested. I'm definitely going to be checking this out. Apparently this was a Google Stadia exclusive up until now. I'm very glad that Google was generous enough to allow gamers on other platforms to experience this title and to bring it to Game Pass. That's really cool as well. And of course the game that everyone is talking about, everyone is excited for, Lawnmowing Simulator. It's finally my Xbox One brethren are going to be playing this natively with their Game Pass subscription. Up until then, Xbox One players had to play via the cloud in order to mow lawns in Lawnmowing Simulator. You know, again, I'm being a little bit sarcastic here, but this seems like a chill, relaxing game like I was just talking about with far-changing tides. So if you want to take a break, like I said, from getting killed over and over again in Elden Ring fighting the same boss, this might be the thing that you need. Just mow some lawns in the great British countryside. If you want to do that, more power to you. But the real headliner here is definitely Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Now this is a game that I always was like, I'm definitely going to play this. It looks cool, but I never got around to it. I got too deep into Forza Horizon 5, but now is the perfect time to jump into this game because it's coming to Game Pass. It's going to be free as part of your subscription and nothing's better than that. Now this is a game that my friend Jimmy Champagne really, really enjoys. Now a lot of people have been asking me in the comments of my videos on other social media platforms, like, how do you know Jimmy? Like, how do you get him in your videos? He's a friend of mine and he's been really helpful in my own journey as a YouTuber. He's been essential in making this channel what it is today. And the thing about Jimmy is that when he's not talking about PlayStation News, when he's not talking about Steam Deck News, he only really talks about two games that he really enjoys, and that one of them is Destiny 2. He loves Destiny 2. And the other one I feel like was this game, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. He could not recommend this game enough. He really enjoyed the wacky nature of it, he was saying. And surprisingly, the story, he said the story was really entertaining as well. So if Jimmy Champagne's stamp of approval means anything to you, then here you go. Now is your chance to jump into a Jimmy-approved game as part of your Game Pass subscription. But seriously, it's always cool when any Marvel thing comes to Xbox, right? You know, Sony gets a lot of praise because they have Spider-Man. And over on Xbox, it took us a while to even get in Marvel's Avengers. Now Marvel's Avengers was, I know people enjoyed it for me, it was sort of so-so. There was a lot of, I want to say, drama in terms of the development and Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix. So it's really cool to see that a Marvel game that has such critical acclaim is making its way over to Game Pass for us to enjoy. They're also updating their Game Pass Ultimate perks this month as part of your subscription. If you are a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, you can get a new skin for your Mongoose in Halo Infinite. It's part of the Past Tense bundle. In the past, the Past Tense bundle, it is just this specific green skin that you are able to put on your weapons. I have the Past Tense green on my AR right now, and they're bringing it to your Mongoose. So you can trick out your Mongoose, make it look really nice. And as we all know, Game Pass giveth and Game Pass taketh away. Yes, on the 15th of every month, Game Pass usually loses a couple of titles, and on the 15th of this month, they're losing Nier Automata. If you haven't played this game, I highly recommend it. If you were on the hype train of like, oh, I hope Platinum Games brings back Scalebound, but you're not really familiar with Platinum Games, I feel like this is a really good introduction of who they are as a studio. So possibly one of the most anticipated titles coming out this year is Hogwarts Legacy. Now, a franchise like Harry Potter, it just commands such a huge fan base, a very loyal fan base, sometimes rabid fan base, I would say. So whenever content comes out in the Harry Potter universe, whether it be a new movie, there was a stage play that came out that everyone was very interested in for a while, a new ride at Universal, any Harry Potter thing gets a lot of attention, a lot of hype. Very much so like any Marvel thing, Disney thing, Star Wars thing, two of those things belong to Disney, I'm just realizing now. And especially for this game, I feel like hype is at an all-time high because it's allowing people to explore the Harry Potter world in a way that previously you could not do. It's an open world RPG, you can make your own character, explore areas from the books and from the lore that you couldn't do in previous games. There have been a lot of Harry Potter games over the years, I very fondly remember my time with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer of Stone on Game Boy Color, but none quite like Hogwarts Legacy. Now, there hasn't been a lot of news about Hogwarts Legacy over the past couple of months, but the last time we talked about it, at least on this channel, people were speculating that it was going to be released in September. Now, that was a big deal because people were worried that it was going to be pushed back into 2023, but people are sort of theorizing that it's going to be released in September because there's this art concept book that is a tie into the game that is releasing around that same time, so people are thinking quarter three before the holiday season, September 2022. And there have been rumblings on Twitter saying that this month's PlayStation State of Play is going to be the show where they release the release date for Hogwarts Legacy. SpecialNick tweeted out, happy to add to what's already out there, yes, they've got a show in March, referring to PlayStation State of Play. This is supposed to be quote, the good one, and that was retweeted by AccountNGT, who is a very popular leaker on Twitter, with just a wand emoji. Gee, I wonder what that could mean. Are they talking about Halo? Are they talking about Breath of the Wild? Probably not. Now, if the game is indeed releasing in September, a March announcement would make a lot of sense, and NGT posted this tweet in January earlier this year. He says, after I roll past this ad for Caribbean, vacation to the Caribbean. Yeah, in January he says, as I said a few weeks ago, according to my info, Hogwarts Legacy will be released on quarter three of this year. The development is going well. He followed that up with, on Hogwarts Legacy, because some people have asked about that, expect a September release. Next trailer based on skills and abilities in February and March, PlayStation event in any case. Now again, this is all very exciting, right? Me, myself, I am not a huge Harry Potter guy. I read the books growing up, or at least the first five, I think. I watched some of the movies, you know, I've been to the parks, the universal world of wizardry, or whatever it's called. You know, it's kind of become a running joke when talking about millennials or people my age, how we're just obsessed with Harry Potter. We based our whole personality on it. We're talking like, of course you would say that. You're such a Gryffindor man. That's such a Gryffindor thing to say. Me, like I said, I'm not that deep into it. I'm not that big of a fan. But even if you're not that big of a fan of Harry Potter, I still think that this is an exciting title. The way that it looks, it just looks like an interesting RPG open world experience. So if you're a fan of that genre, then I highly recommend that you keep an eye out for this month's PlayStation State of Play, even if you are an Xbox fan. I assume you are because you're watching an Xbox channel. You're watching me rant about all things Xbox. But still, I encourage you to keep an eye out on the other platforms and what they're doing because sometimes cool things happen that relate to you because this game is going to be multi-platform. It's not just PlayStation. They have the exclusive rights to the leaks and the reveals and stuff, but it's coming to Xbox as well. Hello, it is me again. I'm here to talk about the Series S once again. This thing has been on sale a couple of times in the past couple of weeks. A couple days ago, it was $250 on Woot.com. Woot.com. I love that name. It was also on sale over at Staples randomly for $45 off if you did like this weird like stacking coupon hack deal. A couple of videos ago, it was $20 off for $280 on eBay. So this thing is going on sale all the time. I also talked about in my last video how the Seagate 512 gigabyte expansion card for your storage was on sale for $140. So it got me thinking like if you picked up an Xbox Series S for $250 and combine that with the Seagate expansion card, you have what is essentially like a beefy, beefy Series S for even cheaper than the digital version of the PS5. Still obviously cheaper than the Series X and it has just the same amount of memory with that expansion card. It's like a Series W because the Series S is always winning. What was I going to say about this? Now, a lot of people hate this thing. They always make fun of the Series S. It's an easy punching bag for a lot of people in the gaming community. But I still think it's a really good machine. Obviously, if you beef it up with the Seagate storage card, it's still not on par with the Series X in terms of its overall console power. It's going to run games lower at a lower resolution, sometimes even a lower frame rate. But still, I think this is a good machine. Number one, because this is available. You can buy this right now. A Series X or a PlayStation 5, it's just not getting any better out there with this console shortage. But I walked into Target the other day and they had Xbox Series S consoles. And if you're like me, and you have been gaming on a base Xbox One for years and years, almost a decade, then this represents a significant cheap upgrade over that experience. And it got me thinking because whenever I talk about the Seagate stuff, there's always people in the comments like, boo, Seagate, it's too expensive. I hate it. So I just thought I would highlight some of the accessories that I think would elevate your Xbox Series S or your X. All of these you can use for your Xbox Series X as well. If you buy the Series S and you think further down the line, this isn't for me. I need more power. I need more. And you want to trade it in and you get a Series X or an Xbox Series X Pro double eight, 10 hundred point gigabyte thing, then you can use all these accessories with that too. So whether or not you get a Seagate card, I highly recommend that you pick one of these guys up. This is just an external SSD. This one's a Samsung one, 500 gigabyte. I don't use this for games. I don't store any games on it. Obviously you can't play games off of this if you plug it into your Xbox, but I only use this for capturing gameplay clips and screenshots. Obviously you can capture those things on your internal storage, but here's where it represents a significant advantage. There's a couple of things on this. If you have an external drive, if you're recording gameplay clips, you can record for a lot longer. If you're doing it on your internal storage, there's a limit. I think it's only one minute, no matter what quality you're filming at. I filmed gameplay clips on this thing up to like an hour and a half, and I'm pretty sure I can go even further than that, depending on the space that I have. Another thing I really like about having this thing is that whenever I capture a gameplay clip, whenever I capture a screenshot that I really want to share, I just unplug it from my Xbox, plug it into my laptop, I'm able to edit, I'm able to trim the video, and then post it to social media very, very easily compared to if I captured all that stuff on my internal storage and then transferring it over to my phone, uploading it to the Xbox Live Network. It's a whole thing. And whether or not like you are into sharing clips on social media or screenshots of your game, that's something that I enjoy about the gaming community personally, especially all the stuff with Elden Ring. I've loved seeing everyone's characters, everyone's armor, everyone's gear. I love people sharing their clips of just the hilarious ways that they've died, or the heartbreaking ways that they've died. Every now and then, people upload a clip of them just absolutely destroying a boss, like not even getting hit, parrying like a pro, dodging like a pro, scoring all these critical hits. I love that. I definitely find that a lot more enjoyable in the gaming community versus like all the petty like console war stuff. I'm like, God, I get burnt out on that so easily. I also wanted to bring these on because this is the official Xbox wireless headset. And I had been needing an upgrade to my headset for a very long time. And I picked these up, I had to wait a little bit, they were sold out pretty much everywhere, Best Buy, Target, the Xbox store. So I had to do a little bit of waiting, but it was worth it. I definitely recommend these if you are looking to upgrade your audio experience, your audio immersion, and they're just overall very cool. I will say these made Elden Ring like a million times scarier. I was like jumping at the sound of every little footsteps. I was going through this cave, this like river well, where it was just infested with a bunch of giant ants and like ant-wasp hybrids. And I can hear them crawling around making gross noises. I was like, oh, this is disgusting. It brought a whole new level to my Elden Ring experience. I did try out the Dolby Atmos technology on these, and I very much enjoyed it. Again, it elevated the Elden Ring experience. Also, I found them very comfortable too. I have ginormous ears. I have giant, awkward ears, and they are super comfortable. Other headphones, I find that I get fatigued with them. They start to hurt my ears, start to hurt my head, cramp like the top, like the crown of my head. These were overall very comfortable. They have these really nice knobs. On the right ear, you control the overall volume, and on the left ear, you control the balance between your game chat and the in-game audio. I thought that was very nifty. I haven't tried this out yet. I didn't play anything multiplayer with these yet, so don't quote me on that just yet. Also in that same vein, I haven't used the microphone yet, so I can't really speak to how well it performs. But the major reason why I wanted these was because I can connect it to my Xbox via the sync button and also my PC, so I can hear my Discord guys talking to me, chatting with me in my ear, and at the same time, hear my in-game audio. It was a very specific use, but it was awesome for me. And the last thing I will say about this is that yes, there are fancier headphones out there, but for the price, I think for what you get, these are the best headphones that you can get for your Xbox right now. These are $100, and yes, you can get the Steel Nine Arctis, or you can get the Bang and Olufsen ones I've talked about that are like $600, but I feel like for what you get out of these, these are the best bang for your buck, essentially. These are probably the most like moderately priced accessory that I've recommended on this channel or I've talked about. Definitely would highly recommend to anyone looking to get a new headset for their Xbox. If you can find them, they're very rare right now, and I think that speaks to the quality of it. Next up, I have a USB microphone. This is a Blue Yeti Pro. Now, if you have either a Blue Yeti or any other USB microphone, it is a great way to upgrade your sound either in the party chat or whether you're streaming. But the frustrating thing is is that you can't just plug this thing in and have it work. There's a couple of extra things that you need in order to use something like this with your Xbox. First off, you're gonna need one of these. This is a 3.5 millimeter audio splitter. Next up, you're gonna need one of these, a 3.5 millimeter mail-to-mail cable. And then finally, you're gonna need one of these, an Xbox headset adapter for your controller. Now, here's what you're gonna have to do if you want to use a USB microphone with your Xbox controller. I talked a little bit about this on my Instagram, on my TikTok, but I'm gonna do it right here for the channel. So what you do is you're gonna take this and plug it in to your Xbox controller. Bam, right there. Take that audio splitter that I was showing you, plug that in to your adapter. Next, you're gonna go and take this little dongle right here that has a picture of a microphone. This is very important. Plug that 3.5 millimeter mail-to-mail cable into that as well. This is becoming a bit of a monstrosity right here, but trust me, it's going somewhere. Take that USB microphone, take all that stuff you just plugged into your controller, and plug that into the headphone jack on your USB mic. Boom. After that, take your microphone's USB cable and plug it into the Xbox, and you should have crispy, clean audio for your party chat, for any of your multiplayer endeavors, and even if you're streaming. It's kind of frustrating that you have to have this weird workaround. Hopefully, in the future, Xbox adds native USB mic support, but if you want to upgrade your audio for your Xbox, this is the way to do it. Next up, I have this. This is a Google Home Mini. Ray, what does that have to do with Xbox? Well, I'm about to tell you. So a lot of people probably already know this, but for those who don't, you can use any digital assistant with your Xbox, your Series S, your Series X. I'm pretty sure it works on the Xbox Ones as well. There's a special thing that you have to tick in your Xbox settings that says, hey, allow digital assistants with my Xbox before you can try this, so make sure you do that before you hook up your digital assistant, or try to. But once that is done, you can yell at your Google to turn on your Xbox. You can yell at it to turn on specific apps. You can go and navigate and adjust the volume, take screenshots, and things like that. Turn on my Xbox. Bring up Elden Ring on my Xbox. Okay, that device has been updated. Bring up Twitch on my Xbox. Okay, launching Twitch on the Series Flex. Unfortunately, for those who lived through the Xbox One generation, it is a bit of a step back from what the Kinect was capable of back in the day. This thing, it's kind of like a middleman, right? I yell at Google, and then it tells Xbox to turn on. Back in the day with Kinect, you could just say, hey, Xbox, turn on. You can talk directly to it, and you had a lot more finer controls with the voice commands. You can navigate whole menus. You can bring up Netflix and say, hey, select this show, and it would play, and then you can adjust fast forward with just your voice and motion controls if you wanted to. That's enough about Kinect. That's something I just have to move on from. The dream is dead. Kinect is dead. I'm pretty sure you could still use a Kinect with your Xbox One consoles, but not on your Series S or your Series X, and it's a small thing. Obviously, you can turn on your Xbox with your controller just by holding down the guide button. I get it, but it kind of makes me feel cool. I'm just like this lame version of Batman sitting down in my chair telling Google to turn on my Xbox and pop open Elden Ring like some gamer version of Batman. I don't know. It feels very cool to me. It's a nice feature I thought it would share. Again, this started out as me spitballing ideas of how to upgrade your Series S experience, but all of these things I just talked about, you can use with your Series X as well if you're one of the lucky few that has one. Anyway, guys, that's all the news I have for today. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next video.