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Daily Briefing: Wednesday 14th April
🕑 Added 2021-04-14 13:00:06 +0000 UTCXbox Game Pass now has Amazon Echo support
This means that Xbox users with a linked Alexa can have the digital assistant download games directly from Xbox Game Pass simply by saying "Alexa, download [game] from Xbox Game Pass." The feature also doesn't require a new skill to be immediately installed on the Echo device, so it's a little more expedient than other integrations.
- Users can also ask Alexa for information on what's new on the service, as well as what games are leaving it soon. The integration comes a few weeks after the new Alexa app debuted on Xbox, with Microsoft becoming Amazon's first gaming partner to support this Alexa-enabled direct-download functionality.
Sony add an additional $200m to their ongoing Epic Games investment
Sony's contribution is part of a larger $1bn from investors which, on top of raising Epic Games' estimated value to around $28.7bn, will apparently go towards strengthening what Epic refer to as their "Metaverse" - a virtual environment for sharing real-time experiences.
- Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says the money will also be used to "accelerate" the building of "connected social experiences" in games like Fall Guys, Fortnite, and Rocket League - as well as improving Unreal Engine, Epic Online Services, and the Epic Games Store. Sony's $200m is in an increase on their $250m investment from last year, which increases their minority stake in Epic.
Nier: Automata's busted Steam version is getting patched soon(ish)
The Nier series' official Twitter account confirmed yesterday that a new upgrade patch is "currently in development" but didn't really give any details beyond that. More information will instead be shared "at a later date" and, while it would have been nice to have an actual timeline, a fix coming at all is a big win.
- The announcement comes a few weeks after the game's Become as Gods edition launched on PC via Xbox Game Pass with a suite of improvements to the resolution and stability issues that had plagued the Steam version since it launched in 2017. Players have since called for the Steam version to be updated according, and it looks like they were heard.
The PS5's "first major system software update" is finally here
The PlayStation 5's first system upgrade has been a pretty long time coming, but Sony have announced that it will be released globally today. The list of updates doesn't address all of the console's most glaring issues - there's still no fix to make it easier to differentiate between PS4 and PS5 versions of games - but it's certainly a start.
- The biggest upgrade is that players will now be able to store PS5 games on external USB drives, albeit with a couple of caveats - PS5 games cannot be launched from these drives, nor can they be downloaded directly to them. The update also improves Share Play and the console's Control menu to make it easier to switch between Friends and Parties.
