Xbox is legally required in some territories, such as the UK and, more recently, Australia, to verify the age of its users in order to access certain features.

Whether we like it or not, there's no way around it. Governments will always government. But what most of us objected to more was the use of faceless third-parties that were being used to verify some of our most personal information. In Xbox's case, it was Yoti, a company that's found itself in hot water before over its handling of data.

Fortunately, at long, long last, if you've held out on completing Xbox age verification, it looks like you won't have to. A message is hitting the inboxes of those accounts that haven't yet verified their age through other means but have been determined as having an "adult account" through their activity.

Our own Ben Wilson was one such holdout and got the message himself last night. Here's what it says in full:

Due to longstanding account activity, we've estimated your Xbox profile to be an adult account and updated its age verification status to "Verified." You are no longer required to complete full age verification for uninterrupted access to social features on Xbox. While no further action is required, you can update your privacy and safety settings on Xbox at any time. For more information, click "Learn more" below.

Reddit is likewise lighting up with folks who've had the same message and have been released from the requirements to verify their age for full access.

This seems to be taking place predominantly in the UK, with Australian age verification recently hitting the news as frustrated users see what us Brits were faced with at first.

But since Xbox can clearly identify your age effectively using your account data, why isn't it applied automatically to everyone immediately?

I don't personally care whether I have to be verified as an adult or not, but I do care about being asked to hand over biometric data to companies I have no usual business with. I remember many years ago, being told by a local shop they wouldn't photocopy my passport for me because they wouldn't handle personal information such as this.

Now we're being asked to funnel all that into a computer somewhere, trusting that they're going to behave responsibly with it.

But a win's a win. Even if it's a win that took a little long to get here. Hopefully it can roll out quickly in any subsequent markets that require age verification.

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Sony's decision to kill physical games from 2028 is the discussion that won't go away, and we're still waiting to see what the Xbox stance will be.

But wading in today is Strauss Zenick, CEO of Take Two (via IGN), otherwise known as the company that counts Rockstar Games among its portfolio. The same Rockstar Games that recently printed a ridiculous sum of money when GTA 6 pre-orders went live.

Only this time, and for the first time in the franchise, there will be no physical version at all. If you buy it from a retailer, all you get is a download code. Naturally, Zelnick is all for this.

“Our business is well over 90% digitally distributed,” Zelnick said. “It's already a digital business. So in certain instances, especially if it's a big game, discs just — and note I said discs — don't really make sense for the consumer.

Also, most instances you have to register online to play anyhow. So if you're already connected, who cares if you download digitally? It's all the same and it's much more convenient."

Granted, I'll give Rockstar Games specifically a little more slack here. GTA V came on two discs on the Xbox 360 originally because the game was too big for one (PS3 used Blu-Ray and was a single disc). Likewise, even on the larger capacity discs for Xbox One, Red Dead Redemption 2 suffered the same fate.

Nobody wants to get up and have to change discs. Not to mention more raw materials, manufacturing costs, etc. But I take particular exception to the second part of the quote above.

It's not our fault we have to register online to play a game. It's not our fault we need to have a Microsoft or Sony account, probably also a Rockstar Games account created alongside either of those. A subscription to play online. Alongside an account for every other different publisher who says we need to have an account.

Are digital games more convenient? Of course they are. But let's not pretend that this has anything to do with making our lives easier. Without a physical copy of something in our hands, we know that at any point it could just vanish without a trace.

It's not remotely surprising GTA 6 is digital-only. Even ignoring the likely technical issues fitting much of it onto a disc, it kills the resale market stone dead. Used game stores won't have copies of GTA 6 on the shelves after players are done with it. GTA Online is the cash cow, but there are still plenty of us who will play the campaign and call it a day. Those players can't sell on or trade in their copy anymore.

Curiously, Zelnick also said that "It doesn't mean that we won't have physical additions now and then, I'm sure we will in the same way that there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business." I don't even know where he's going with that one.

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As price rises hit everything thanks to the RAMpocalypse, with SSDs, memory, graphics cards, PCs, handhelds, consoles, and literally everything getting more expensive, let's celebrate when someone beats the system.

Sure, it's only one person, but at this point, I'm so utterly depressed with the state of things that I'm ready to buy this person a beer and shake their hand.

You see the doom and gloom everywhere, so when I was browsing Reddit this morning and came across a post where someone had secured an NVIDIA RTX 3050 graphics card for just FIVE DOLLARS, I have to shout it out.

Is it the greatest deal of all time? Honestly, even before the price rises, I'd have grabbed this, thrown down a $5 bill, and run out of the store before anyone realized what they'd done putting that price tag on it.

Is the RTX 3050 a particularly good graphics card? I mean, it depends what you want to do with it. It'd be pretty good as a budget video encoding card for streaming; it'll play games at 1080p fairly well, too. Hell, I'd have absolutely put it into a machine and given it to my son.

For five bucks I would have found something to use it for. Maybe slap it inside the home server I've been wanting to build again for years to handle video transcoding. I don't care; I'd have found something to do with it.

That's assuming it works properly, of course. The post does show a Windows boot screen, so it would appear it at least gives video output, so that's a start. With a used, mystery GPU like this, you'd have to test it properly, and most definitely you'd want to strip it down, clean it up, and give it some new thermal paste.

But for $5, who cares? Worth a go, right? It's just nice to see someone have a win right now. If you were to buy a brand new RTX 3050 right now, you're looking at paying at least $250 if you went to somewhere like Best Buy. Nobody should pay $250 for a two-generation-old budget graphics card.

It also gets me thinking: What's the absolute craziest deal you've ever found on a piece of hardware? I think I've only ever been so lucky once, managing to get a Surface Go 2 LTE with a price mistake once and securing it for essentially free with an inexpensive data SIM contract.

It should have been a couple of hundred British pounds, and I got it for £8. And even though it was a mistake, it was still honored, and I got my Surface Go 2.

So jump into the comments below and let me know your personal craziest deal. Meanwhile, I'm definitely raising a glass to this person. Hopefully it all works well, and if so, you've definitely beaten the system right now.

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Five years ago back in 2021, a game was released with a famous franchise attached that initially slipped me by. I'm talking about Aliens: Fireteam Elite.

I don't really have any affinity for the movie franchise, so that's likely why I didn't even give it a look. But after catching a couple of streamers playing it, I took a punt, and boy was I in for a surprise.

To this day I think Aliens: Fireteam Elite is woefully underrated. I can't speak to whether it's a truly authentic Aliens experience, but it's a fun game with plenty of replayability, without being too serious or requiring all your time. And it's about to leave Xbox Game Pass in 9 days as I write this, so consider this your notice to check it out while you still can.

You've got various classes and loadouts to build out, perks, different weapons, and hidden caches to find to get yourself some of the better loot. It has mild elements of a looter shooter in its mechanics, but it really isn't one.

It's a run-and-gun action game where your objective primarily is slaying alien creatures. Lots and lots of alien creatures. My former colleague, Miles Dompier, summed it up perfectly in our original 2021 review.

"Aliens: Fireteam Elite genuinely caught me off guard. I was excited about the idea of playing another co-op shooter in the Aliens universe, but I wasn't confident it would be a quality title worth spending a great deal of time with. However, my squad and I are already strategizing our loadouts for the more extreme difficulties. Despite my initial reservations, I'm fully expecting to spend the next several weeks playing Aliens: Fireteam Elite with friends."

This is exactly what happened to me, though I played more solo than with others. While it's more fun with friends, it's perfectly playable solo from beginning to end.

Better still, the Pathogen expansion is currently heavily discounted, too, and I'll be honest, that passed me by. I own the game (and it has Xbox Play Anywhere, too), but with Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 coming really soon, it's as good a time as any to revisit this gem.

But seriously, if you're stuck for something to play right now and you have Xbox Game Pass Premium, Ultimate, or PC Game Pass, take it for a spin. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

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I'm just going to say it as plain as I can: Microsoft customer support really needs to improve. We have, of course, had the recent case where someone being locked out of their account went viral on social media, which seemingly magically prompted some action.

Now, over on the Steam Deck subreddit there's an exhausting tale of a player who has been locked out of playing Forza Horizon 6 for 70 days over an issue with cloud sync. And guess what? Xbox support apparently can do nothing to help.

The detailed explanation goes through the entire ordeal, but the problem boils down to an issue with Forza Horizon 6 syncing to Microsoft's servers, not Steam. The game crashed and appears to have created a server-side block on the sync completing, and now leaves the game unplayable as soon as it tries to connect.

I can already hear some that would point at the Steam Deck being the problem. But for starters, the game is Steam Deck verified, and user reports on ProtonDB for the game are pretty good. But games crash on Windows, too.

The alarming part here seems to be that what's happened could, in theory, happen to anyone who bought the game on Steam and doesn't have access to an Xbox to fix it.

Because the short end to the long story is that the final official support 'solution' is to use an Xbox console to delete the cloud save. Which is fine, if you have an Xbox console. Chances are if you bought Forza Horizon 6 on Steam, though, maybe you don't? Either that or you hate money since it's Xbox Play Anywhere through the Xbox App on Windows.

Part of the frustration seems to be that neither the Forza nor Xbox support teams can delete this data on a player's behalf. I find it very hard to believe that a company the size of Microsoft with such an intricate web of servers and cloud support wouldn't be able to do this. It is, however, more convenient to try and pass it down to us to sort out.

It also potentially highlights a weakness within the Xbox cloud system itself, but that's a discussion for another day. But it wouldn't be a stretch to hope that if a sync fails, the system just falls back to the last one that didn't rather than locking up entirely.

Reading this whole drama is just disappointing. Either there are fundamental problems with Microsoft systems that need addressing, or, and I feel like this is probably more likely, customer support just isn't up to scratch.

I've had my own issues over the years with other areas of customer support within Microsoft, so I definitely don't think it's new. And let's be real, the chances of support agents being replaced by AI loom ever larger.

Fortunately, there is a potential way out, but it's not exactly what you'd call a solution. Many on the Reddit thread have suggested signing up for Game Pass and trying to utilize Xbox Cloud Gaming to see if that can help unblock the cloud sync.

Without an Xbox console handy, this is probably the only thing that could be tried, and it sounds like it could work, but the OP hasn't yet come back with an update. Even if it does, it's still some added expense and effort that shouldn't be needed.

Trying to access the cloud storage via the Xbox web app hasn't seemed to work, either, as if the game hasn't been played through cloud streaming in the last 30 days, nothing appears. Likewise, the original poster hasn't had any joy using the Xbox App on Windows 11.

But it's yet another tale after years and years of tales of poor support from Xbox/Microsoft when it comes to technical issues blocking players from their content. It should not take someone going onto the internet and going viral to prompt action.

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The Nintendo Switch 2 is now a little over a year old, but one game that a whole bunch of owners would have been hoping for an upgraded version of hasn't yet materialised. That game is Minecraft.

The good news is that will end fairly soon, as Microsoft's behemoth is almost ready for it. The Nintendo Switch 2 Minecraft upgrade is currently confirmed for October 27, 2026.

Obviously this is good news for Switch 2 owners, which includes my own impatient son. For existing owners a "digital upgrade path" will be available, with more information to come. It also doesn't say this upgrade will be free, and the wording definitely makes me feel like there will be some kind of cost attached. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The Switch 2 upgrade to Minecraft will bring it more in line with other platforms, with the new Vibrant Visuals experience being enabled as default.

"Let me unfurl this metaphorical scroll a little to remind you why we’re all so excited. First, the Nintendo Switch™ 2 renders the world of Minecraft to lush life with Vibrant Visuals – set as the default visual experience. This means enhanced lighting, shadow effects and more – and you can even enjoy Vibrant Visuals* enabled content across all the supported content in Minecraft Marketplace. "

This also extends to the exclusive Super Mario pack that's only available on the Nintendo version of Minecraft. It, too, will be given some Vibrant Visuals, so have fun with it.

If anything, I'm only surprised it's taken this long. Vibrant Visuals launched around the same time as the Nintendo Switch 2, and it'll be 16 months on when the upgrade is finally made available.

Minecraft has recently been brought directly under Xbox leadership and its CEO, Asha Sharma. It's reported she feels Microsoft has underinvested in Minecraft as a platform and wants to change that in the face of increasing competition from other game-as-a-platform titles such as Roblox.

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GTA 6 + Netflix. Just completely out of nowhere. But it's not a joke.

Announced today by its creator, Rockstar Games, is "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look" and it will be premiering on Netflix on August 27 at 3pm Eastern.

If you're still at work or you don't subscribe to Netflix, don't panic, it will be added to YouTube later.

Netflix has an exclusive on probably the hottest show of the year, but not for long. Later the very same day, August 27, the same show will be uploaded to the Rockstar YouTube channel and the GTA 6 website at 9pm Eastern.

What are we actually going to see, though? That's still a secret. But since December 2023 we've only had two actual trailers, and neither of those has shown us any gameplay. Both were full cinematics showing off some of the characters and locations we can expect to see in Vice City.

So, surely you'd expect an "extended look" to at least show us some gameplay, right?

At this point, though, any information would be good information. We know nothing official about the story, the size of the map, any online plans, gameplay. It's the most hyped game of all time and we know essentially nothing about it.

We do know that it's currently scheduled to release on November 19, 2026, and that to play at launch you'll need to be on Xbox Series X|S or PS5. And that you can pre-order GTA 6 now.

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One thing we haven't had so much of with the Xbox Series X|S compared to previous generations is limited edition consoles. There have been some, like the Halo Xbox Series X and some competition specials, but compared to the Xbox 360 and Xbox One especially, it's been a pretty dry time.

Some of the older limited editions command a pretty penny on the used market these days, and obviously there's a finite supply of them. But there are some real gems, like the Gears 5 Xbox One X (pictured above) or even the blood red Gears of War 4 Xbox One S. Later this year we'll also see the Xbox Series X25, with its classic translucent green shell. Though unfortunately, a vastly increased price, now.

But over on the Xbox subreddit there's a thread rolling right now where folks are talking about these consoles, so I thought I'd bring it on over here, too. So what's your favorite limited edition Xbox console of all time?

There are some incredible choices on the Reddit thread, from the classic Crystal Green OG Xbox through the Halo 4 Xbox 360, the Titanfall Xbox One, and some others that folks like myself based in the UK might not even have known existed.

I didn't know there was a Taco Bell Xbox One X, for example, nor a green Mountain Dew OG Xbox. Granted, neither of these were actually sold, but they still exist, and I'd definitely go for a Mountain Dew Xbox if I could get my hands on one without selling a kidney.

I've never actually owned a limited edition console myself. The closest I've come so far is the Project Scorpio launch edition Xbox One X, which I still have in my office looking pretty.

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If I had to pick, it'd be between two. The Xbox console I always coveted the most was the Crystal Green first-generation. I wish I'd chopped in my standard black console to get one, but given I'd already spent a whole paycheck from a part-time job on one at the age of 17, I decided against it lest I risk the wrath of the parents.

The other might be one most wouldn't pick given some of the wild designs, but as a massive fan of the franchise, I always wanted the blue Forza Edition Xbox One. It didn't help that a friend of mine actually had one, taunting me every time I went over.

So, those are my picks, but I'm more interested in yours. There's no shortage to choose from, so hit the comments below and share your own favorite limited edition Xbox console design from the last 25 years!

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Players of Dovetail Games' popular train simulator, Train Sim World 6, on Xbox One and PS4 have unfortunate bad news to endure.

Currently the game and all DLC content have been made available on last-gen hardware, but that is now coming to an end.

The announcement was made on the developer's blog, alongside information on exactly what it means for players on Xbox One and PS4.

"Train Sim World titles and new TSW Add-on releases developed from this date onwards will only be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC platforms (Steam, Xbox for PC and Epic Games).

This change is essential for allowing the teams that create TSW content freedom to take advantage of current-gen hardware, prioritising the best performance possible, and improving the visual quality as much as they can."

The good news is that this change doesn't affect content you've already bought up to now. It's still there, it's still playable, and it's still supported. The cancellation only applies to any further DLC content for Train Sim World 6 and for future games in the franchise. To play any of that, you'll need to be on PC, Xbox Series X|S, or PS5.

It's sad news for players still on the last-gen consoles, for sure, but credit to Dovetail Games for holding out as long as it has.

Even Xbox has finally had to take the plunge with Call of Duty, with Modern Warfare 4 not releasing on Xbox One or PS4, either. It's particularly bad timing for those still holding onto their older consoles given that both Xbox and Sony have recently increased prices on the new consoles, too.

If you are on Xbox One with Train Sim World 6, you do at least have options. It supports Xbox Play Anywhere, for one, so if you can move to PC, you can take all of your existing content with you so long as you use the Xbox App. You can't transfer your content to Steam or Epic Games. Content does transfer between Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S as you would expect, and PS4 players can also carry over to PS5.

Train Sim World 6 is also supported by Xbox Cloud Gaming, so even though your console may not be up to scratch going forward, you can still keep playing through the cloud if you're unable to move natively to supported hardware. PS4 owners don't have that luxury, as cloud streaming on PlayStation is limited to owners of the PS5 version.

While the timing might not be great, it's understandable. Games are more demanding than ever, and ultimately no experience at all is better than paying for something and having a bad experience.

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