Microsoft is making a digital-only Xbox that's designed as a low-cost gateway to its lucrative services, and sources say it'll release in May.

Sources tell Windows Central that Microsoft's digital-only Xbox One S (dubbed the rather awful Xbox One S All-Digital Edition) will release May 7, 2019. The system will come with a 1TB hard drive and three first-party games that're all designed for long-term monetization: Forza Horizon 3, Sea of Thieves, and Minecraft. The games won't be pre-loaded and must be downloaded with codes.

The new disc-less system is Microsoft's attempt to push gamers permanently into its billion-dollar digital empire. The console isn't an underpowered box though: it has the exact same slim frame as the retail Xbox One S, and the exact same specs. It's not a hardware refresh. The only thing that's different is its missing disc drive, and a lower retail cost. Nothing's been confirmed, but we expect the digital-only Xbox One S to retail for $150 or thereabouts.

Unlike Steam with its laissez faire policies, Epic Games says it won't let just any game onto its platform. Your game has to be good to show up on the Epic Store.

Epic has caught lots of flak for its exclusivity deals that pulled major PC games like The Division 2, Metro: Exodus, and more recently Control and The Other Worlds from Steam. The latter three had been pre-orderable on Steam for months before the switch. Publishers and devs are enticed by the Epic Store's 88% revenue split, but that offer won't extend to all games. No, your game has to be a certain level of quality before it can be sold on the Epic Store. This goes for AAA games as well as indies.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney said crappy games aren't welcome on the store. "We'll have a quality standard that doesn't accept crappy games. We'll accept reasonably good quality games, of any scale, whether small indie games to huge triple-A games, and we'll take everything up to, like, an R-rated movie or an M-rated game."

Steam's library pane is about to be get more visually appealing and user-friendly.

As Epic's new storefront aims to copy Steam's best features, Valve too wants to evolve Steam's look and feel. At GDC 2019, the games titan gave a preview of what Steam's new library UI will look like. The visuals are more reminiscent of Twitch's games launcher interface and have panes for each game. There's a recent games section, one for updates, and vertical slices for your complete library. It's pleasing to the eyes compared to Steam's current UI setup.

New Steam features include an advanced search option that lets you type in tags like "RPG" or "shooter" to narrow down your games. This will be helpful for those with massive backlogs. We may even be able to make custom columns to sort and clump games together.

By bringing AAA games to any device without downloads or console purchases, Google's new Stadia streaming service wants to disrupt the world of gaming. But there's one feature that really stands out as a social game-changer: save state sharing.

Google Stadia makes some big promises. The company wants to stream high-def PC-quality games to phones, laptops and TVs in 2019. But what about engagement? Any digital platform needs strong engagement to keep players "stuck" to the network. Google has a plan for that, too. It'll use its potent YouTube framework to create easy clip sharing and broadcasts--subscribers can even launch games right from a YouTube trailer.

But that's not it. Stadia will let users share their in-game moments in a different way with state share. Here's how it works: Let's say you beat a tough boss, and want to challenge a friend to beat your progress or your time. You can create a link to your singleplayer game save and share with a friend, who can click it and enter your game session remotely. In a sense, you're handing off the controller to a friend digitally. Your friend can play as you with your character's loadouts, skills, and the particular world state at that time--all the conditions match your session, and the only thing that's different is the player.

Tencent, the world's largest video games company, today announced its full year earnings for 2018...and they're absolutely massive.

Tencent is one of the most diverse, powerful, and unique companies on the planet. There's a lot of moving parts to its business, and Tencent has fingers in many pies--its wide net of mobile franchises, social media platforms, and investment stakes in games-makers like Epic Games (Fortnite) and Riot Games (League of Legends) always makes for tremendous billions-strong cashflows. This year is no different.

In 2018, Tencent earned a total revenue of $45.56 billion across all segments, the company revealed in its latest earnings report. That's a mighty 35% year-over-year increase, a direct result of Tencent's move to "step up" its investments across the board. But like any company, Tencent has to spend money to make money. It only kept $11.65 billion of those earnings as profit, a margin of 26% versus last year's 30%.

Can't get enough of Capcom's Devil May Cry 5? The official soundtrack for the game has now been made completely available on a range of different platforms.

At the beginning of this month Capcom debuted their latest installment into the Devil May Cry 5 series, Devil May Cry 5. The game has been very well received by the community, and has even had the second best launch on Steam for Capcom, falling behind Monster Hunter: World.

In celebration of the games release, Capcom have decided to release the games soundtrack so fans of the series can enjoy the sweet tunes of Devil May Cry 5 wherever they are. The soundtrack consists of 136 tracks, now that might sound like a lot of tracks but many of them are short instrumentals. Regardless of the length of some tracks, the soundtrack as a whole manages to clock in at around 5 hours in length which is plenty of listening time for Devil May Cry 5 fans. If you would like to check out the Devil May Cry 5 soundtrack, it is available on Spotify, Steam, iTunes, Amazon and Google Play.

Bandai Namco has decided that they simply can't get enough of one of their favorite mascots, as yet another iteration of Goku will be added to the Dragon Ball FighterZ roster.

At the moment there is already five different playable versions of Goku that are in Dragon Ball FighterZ, so how about one more? Arc System Works seems to agree, as they will soon be adding the Dragon Ball GT version of Kid Goku to the roster. Kid Goku (GT) will be apart of the FighterZ Pass 2 and will be arriving with his very own set of moves so at least he will feel unique.

Just like in the TV show, Kid Goku will be arriving with his very iconic power pole and will be able to unleash the power of the Super Kamehameha, Reverse Kamehameha and Super Ultra Spirit Bomb. The announcement also teases that there is one last secret move that is yet to be revealed. If I was to speculate what this move is, I would assume it would be Kid Goku's ultimate move. What move is it specifically? I think it could either be the 'Dragon Fist' attack that was used on Super Android 17 in the TV show, or the 'penetrate' move that was used on King Piccolo in the original Dragon Ball TV show.

NetherRealm Studios has released another reveal trailer for the lead up to the debut of Mortal Kombat 11. This time round we have Kotal Kahn going up against Jacqui Briggs, and it doesn't end has you would expect.

The Emperor of Outworld has made an entrance in the above reveal trailer that is titled "Official Kotal Kahn Reveal Trailer". Why mention the videos title? Because Kotal Kahn gets absolutely torn apart by Jacqui Briggs in this reveal trailer, he doesn't even do fatality in his own reveal trailer.

Instead we see Jacqui Briggs kick the living hell out of Kotal Kahn, she does a large selection of moves with many bonebreaking moves and even finishes off Kotal Kahn with an epic fatality. In other news about Mortal Kombat 11, if you happened to miss the character reveal for Kabal catch up on that here. Want more news on Mortal Kombat 11 for the Nintendo Switch, check out this article on the 'geometry reductions' that the Switch version will have here. There is also the possibility that Mortal Kombat 11 will feature cross-play, more on that here.

Most PS4 gamers would know that Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls as PS4 exclusive titles. Well not anymore, PC gamers can rejoice as they are exclusives no more!

PS4 clearly takes the lead for having an absolutely fantastic library of exclusive titles for its user-base to enjoy, but now it seems that PC gamers are going to get some of that love aswell. Heavy Rain, Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls developer, Quantic Dream have decided to share these titles with PC. What platform will they be released on? Well, lets just say it isn't going to be Steam (yet), yes, that is right, all of these fantastic titles will be coming to the Epic Games Store.

For the first year of release the above titles will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store, after that they will become available on other platforms. The announcement comes from Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere; "We are so grateful for 12 fantastic years of collaboration with Sony Interactive Entertainment and all they have allowed us to create and produce. With this new partnership with Epic, we can now expand our products to a wider fan base and allow PC players to enjoy our titles." At the moment there is no release date for these titles, but Epic Games has said that we could expect them sometime later this year.

Epic Games is throwing some serious benjamins around to entice developers from all backgrounds to use Unreal Engine, with the Fortnite creator announcing a new "MegaGrant Program" that really started back in 2015.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said this new grant program is a way of giving back to the community in the wake of Fortnite's mega success, with the grant varying between $5000 and $500,000. It's not just about game development either, as Unreal Engine is used in countless fields so the grant program will seed out money to teams who make tools that integrate UE4, such as a CAD program.

Media and entertainment creators that use Unreal Engine can apply, with the same going for students and schools that use UE within their curriculum. Creators keep their IP, as Epic is giving out the money with "no-strings-attached" meaning the company will not have any power over what content comes from its grants.