The company makes its biggest case yet for why gamers should choose the Xbox over a Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Switch.

It's an island full of dinosaurs and you've got to survive.
No, it's not Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and no, you are neither Chris Pratt nor Bryce Dallas Howard (condolences).
It's Ark: Survival Evolved, out on iOS and Android right now. James and Ric find out if it's any good, and try to work out why Sony hates Switch Fortnite players so much.
Download episode 445:
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Here are the E3 2018 Dates if you're only interested in the big three console maker's press conferences. This page lists the E3 2018 Microsoft, Sony & Nintendo Press Conferences. Nintendo will actually live stream a Nintendo Digital Event again this year. Additionally, several big publishers are hosting their own big Press Conferences, including EA,...

Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced the June 2018 lineup of free games for PlayStation Plus subscribers. Check Out the PlayStation Plus “Free Games Lineup June 2018” Trailer:: PS Blog: Well, here we are folks! Summer is just around the corner: the season of long, lazy evenings, outdoor eating and sun-soaked family holidays. We hope you’ve...

Sony's announced the PlayStation Plus titles for July.
From 3rd July, PlayStation 4-owning Plus subscribers can download Absolver, the RPG / fighting game hybrid : "A one-of-a-kind blend of blood-thumping martial arts, combo curation and grindy multiplayer set in a ravishing wasteland," he wrote.
Plus subs can also download Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain from 3rd July. We gave that one 9/10 in .

Sony has commented on the thorny issue of PlayStation cross-play, suggesting it's working on a solution.
At the Gamelab conference in Spain today, Shawn Layden, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America and chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, and PS4 system architect Mark Cerny delivered a presentation about the legacy of PlayStation. At the end of the talk, Eurogamer reporter Robert Purchese put the cross-play issue to Layden. Here's what he said:
"I thought it was fascinating you talking about PlayStation 3 flying too close to the sun - your Icarus moment you called it, and then PlayStation 4 coming back to be more back to basics, to be more about the players. But there seems to be an issue at the moment, that Sony isn't listening to its players - or doesn't seem to be - and that's cross-play, Fortnite particularly. And I wondered if there were any plans to open it up? It seems to be Sony's not listening."

Is there anything more wonderful in gaming than those rare moments where hardware and software come together in perfect unison? Call it synergy, if you must, but really it's some fantastical alchemy at work where both parts help elevate each other, until you've got something truly special. Back in 2004, Q Entertainment and producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Lumines offered up one of those moments, arriving in tandem with the PSP and becoming an unexpected highlight of the handheld's launch line-up.
Perhaps it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise. The PSP was billed as nothing less than Sony's attempt to do for portable gaming what the Walkman had done for portable music players, though that message got lost in a muddy mob of ill-advised attempts to get big console gaming on the go. Mizuguchi got it, though, and set about creating something in tune with that ideal: a puzzle game for the MTV generation, complete with pulsating pop art visuals and its own impeccable sense of style.
Lumines was to be to the PSP what Tetris was to the Game Boy, or at least that's how the theory went. And at least that's how it played out in my house, where an import PSP left wanting for new games in the fallow first few months for the handheld became, quite simply, the Lumines machine. Other great games eventually came along to the PSP, of course, but an indelible connection had already been made; that glorious 16:9 TFT LCD screen was always meant to be paired with a decent set of headphones for a serious Lumines session.

Minecraft's Better Together version finally launches today for Nintendo Switch, and a new trailer has dropped to play up its cross-platform capabilities.
Xbox One and Nintendo Switch owners can now play Minecraft as if they were on the same platform but notably - as the trailer hammers home - it is just Nintendo and Xbox on board. Not Sony.
Minecraft's Better Together Update (which is in fact an entirely new game, although free to existing owners) is also compatible with Minecraft on Windows 10, iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

In all honesty, we weren't expecting much from E3 this year. Ahead of time, it bore all the hallmarks of an E3 the year before people start talking about new consoles. With the platform holders manoeuvring behind the scenes and the biggest games in development quietly readjusting their schedules as production managers try to suss out the logistics of going cross-gen or even fully next-gen, the big press conferences become exercises in misdirection. We knew Sony would have nothing new, we suspected Microsoft would have little and we knew Nintendo was focused on Smash Bros. and Pokémon.
And yet still, E3 2018 delivered. We can partly in owning up to the next generation of consoles, and its brisk showcase stuffed to bursting with colourful and enticing games. It certainly set the tone, and the reliably straight-talking CD Projekt followed up with a cheeky admission that Cyberpunk 2077 was due out on the current-gen consoles "", which was refreshing, even if it did take the fun of out the old "which of these games is actually next-gen" guessing game. (It was that one.)
Perhaps we had also forgotten the great thing about the late period of a console generation - it usually means lots of good games. Most of the big publishers turned up with something genuinely and uncynically great in their line-up, there was hardly a loot box in sight, and there were only a couple of hastily tacked-on battle royale modes. Well done everyone.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is softening its language when it comes to cross-platform multiplayer. While the publisher has spent the last few years defending its choice to prohibit people on PlayStation from playing with their friends on Xbox or Nintendo systems, PlayStation boss Shawn Layden now claims that his team is looking into it. In response ...]