Xbox Series X event: Assassin's Creed Valhalla and everything just announced

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Microsoft finally treated us to some gameplay reveals for its eagerly anticipated Xbox Series X console which is slated to ship late this year. The highlight was Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which lets you go “a-raiding” with longships, in a far more recent and moody English era than previous games. The gameplay will be a lot more hardcore as well, and you get to build settlements.

This was the first of a series of monthly shows about the Xbox Series X, called Xbox 20/20, the company showed off third-party launch titles, all Xbox Series X optimized. The company says there are at least nine games thus far to bear that honor. In July we’ll get the same for Microsoft’s own Xbox Game Studios games.

xbox-optimized — Games which support the whizzy new technologies in the Xbox Series X will now be badged as “Optimized for Xbox Series X.”

Microsoft

One of the big additions to the console is the 1TB SSD that promises to not only make games load faster but also boasts the ability to let users jump right back where they left off across several games, with a feature called Quick Resume. Another highlight is Smart Delivery — where supported, if you buy a game for your Xbox One it’ll automatically gain the Series X copy and Microsoft will feed your console the appropriate version of the game.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Wave goodbye to sun-drenched locales.

Codemasters’ Dirt 5 shows a lot more locations and seasons. A travelogue with drifting. And new cars, of course. Troy Baker and Nolan North provide voices, and there was an allusion to notable cameos.

Ebb’s Scorn Horror has a creeptastic HR Giger, Alien-like look. The latter will be available on Game Pass, but didn’t show any gameplay, unfortunately.

Deep Silver’s Chorus, a single-player game with a sentient starfighter, is coming in 2021.

Paradox will be giving us Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2. Dead human puppets. Yikes.

Of course, there’s football: Madden 21. Not an Xbox exclusive, but it will support Smart Delivery.

Call of the Sea will also be available on Xbox Game Pass.

The Ascent is a co-op action RPG where you have to stop corporations and gangs from taking over while you figure out what’s going on. Because that’s what you do in cyberpunk.

Bloober’s The Medium is about…a medium straddling the real world and a horror-filled otherworld trying to solve a child’s murder, with music by Arkadiusz Reikowski and Silent Hill’s Akira Yamaoka.

Sega brings its Yakuza: Like a Dragon dials the franchise up to 11 in a most Sega-like fashion.

Bandai Namco’s Scarlet Nexus‘ protagonist is a a psycho-kinetic trainee hoping to become an elite warrior.

Second Extinction offers co-op hunting of mutant dinosaurs.

This is a developing story.

The original post follows.

Since Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X last December, the company has kept a tight lid on what the games for the console will look like. That’s expected to change today when the Xbox maker shows off some of the games coming to its next-gen device.

Thursday’s event will be the first of a series of monthly shows about the Xbox Series X, called Xbox 20/20. Almost everything about the new console has been revealed, with the exception of games. Third-party titles, such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, will be in the spotlight as Microsoft reveals gameplay trailers and sneak peeks of what’s coming to the Xbox Series X.

When is Xbox 20/20?

The series starts at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT on May 7.

How can I watch it?

Microsoft will stream the event across multiple platforms:

What games will be shown?

On April 30, Microsoft said the show would focus on third-party titles, with first-party games, such as Halo Infinite, set to be shown at an event in July according to Xbox general manager Aaron Greenberg Tuesday.

One of the games likely to be touted during the premiere Xbox 20/20 is the recently announced Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The latest entry in the franchise made its debut last Wednesday and will be released on the Xbox Series X. Another possible title is Cyberpunk 2077. The sci-fi RPG is slated for release in September, but it’ll come out on Microsoft’s newest console and will make use of the gadget’s Smart Delivery feature, which lets owners of the Xbox One version upgrade for free to the Series X version.

In March, Microsoft revealed specs for the Xbox Series X, which is powered by a Zen 2 processor running at 3.8GHz and a custom RDNA 2 GPU at 1.825GHz to create 12 teraflops. One of the big additions to the console is the 1TB SSD that promises to not only make games load faster but also boasts the ability to let users jump right back where they left off across several games, with a feature called Quick Resume.

The Xbox Series X is scheduled for release during the 2020 holiday season. Microsoft has yet to reveal the price.