Welcome in the New Year with a wealth of new additions in Sea of Thieves’ first free monthly content update of this decade, Legends of the Sea! Now live for all players across Xbox One, Windows 10 PC and with Xbox Game Pass, Legends of the Sea shines a spotlight on player immortalisations, sends adventurers in search of all-new Reaper’s Chests and introduces a fresh yet familiar face.

Seek Out the Legends of the Sea

Umbra, the skilful scribe who escaped the clutches of Captain Bronzebeard, has made her way through the Devil’s Shroud with a plethora of new Commendations in tow. Players may have noticed certain etchings and recognisable names dotted around Sea of Thieves’ world that refer to the accomplishments of players from the community. With Umbra’s assistance, these can now be located and interacted with to earn exclusive Commendations, Titles, tattoo sets and Doubloons!

Get Yourself Gilded

That charming scallywag Duke has made his return as leader of the Bilge Rats, and despite looking slightly the worse for wear, he has a list of Gilded Voyages for pirates to tackle. Players can also choose to deliver their rewards to an excavation site for double gold rewards at the cost of the reputation reward. Head over to The Reaper’s Hideout to find this excavation site dug deeper than ever before, where the Masked Stranger will claim your loot hauls for some extra coin.

There’s also a new set of Ashen Tomes ready to be collected, with accompanying Commendations and Xbox achievements. And Duke’s return means new sets of cosmetics for pirates to parade themselves in, including the Aristocrat Ship Set and new variants of the Parrot Clothing Set and Corsair Sea Dog Set!

Reap New Rewards

Sporting a gold decal, the new Reaper’s Bounty Chests work in much the same way as their Doubloon-awarding counterparts, except these ones reward brave buccaneers with 25,000 gold! The beacon emitted from Reaper’s Bounty Chests has a golden hue indicating its contents, and is trackable on the ship’s map like any other Reaper’s Chest.

As per Duke’s request, all Reaper’s Chests and Bounties are now to be taken to The Reaper’s Hideout, making for a more high-risk turn-in.

Celebrate 10 Million Seafarers

RARE Ltd announced last week that Sea of Thieves has now passed 10 million unique players! To celebrate this incredible milestone, players who dive into Legends of the Sea within its first week will be granted an entitlement to a free ‘X’ Marks the Spot emote and matching ‘X’ Marks the Spot Sails. Play during the first week of the January update (eligibility period ends on January 22nd, 4pm GMT) to earn the entitlement, then the gifts will become available to you later as part of February’s update!

Learn more here: https://www.seaofthieves.com/news/10m-players-gifts

For more information on the Legends of the Sea update, including full release notes, visit the Sea of Thieves website. The update is available for free to all Sea of Thieves players who have bought the game on Xbox One or on Windows 10 PC, or players who have access to it with Xbox Game Pass. Simply download and install the latest Sea of Thieves update to get access.

New to Sea of Thieves? Join the fun with our all-new Maiden Voyage, a narrative-driven tutorial experience separate from Adventure and Arena modes. New Sea of Thieves players will begin their travels within this scenario, which provides guidance and information to fledgling sailors.

The Cross-play Opt Out Preference has also finally arrived for Adventure mode after coming originally to Arena Mode. This optional preference will allow Xbox One Console players using controller, to set a preference to only be placed in game servers with other Xbox One Console players instead of the full cross-play pool of Xbox One Controller, Xbox One Keyboard & Mouse and PC Players of Sea of Thieves. Now this is only a “soft Crossplay opt out” which means if the game is unable to place you in a server with other Xbox console players who have selected the same preference, you will be placed in the general pool. But so far, each time I have tested the preference, though it took a little longer to get in the game, it did put me in an Xbox One Console with controller only server of players. Simply go to Settings at the games main menu and find the preference option and set it to yes to apply the preference in both Adventure and Arena modes.

To see everything that’s been added to Sea of Thieves since launch, head to the official What’s New page: https://www.seaofthieves.com/whats-new

Links
Sea of Thieves website: https://www.seaofthieves.com
Sea of Thieves Forums: https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum
Sea of Thieves on Discord: https://discord.gg/seaofthieves
Sea of Thieves on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SeaOfThieves
Sea of Thieves on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeaOfThievesGame
Sea of Thieves on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/SeaofThieves
Sea of Thieves on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/SeaofThieves
Sea of Thieves on Mixer: https://mixer.com/SeaofThieves

Watch the all-new official trailer and RAZE HELL when DOOM Eternal launches on March 20th 2020.

Hell’s armies have invaded Earth. Become the Slayer in an epic single-player campaign to conquer demons across dimensions and stop the final destruction of humanity. The only thing they fear… is you.

Pre-Order DOOM Eternal to get a free digital download of DOOM 64.

Pre-orders of DOOM Eternal also include the Rip and Tear Pack, which comes with: – DOOT Revenant Skin – Cultist Base Master Level – Throwback Shotgun Weapon Skin.

Join the Slayers Club, the official DOOM fan club, at SlayersClub.com for exclusive rewards.

For more information on DOOM Eternal, follow these channels:

• Twitter – https://twitter.com/DOOM
• Instagram – https://instagram.com/DOOM
• Facebook – https://facebook.com/DOOM
• Website – https://SlayersClub.com

Get to know more about the heroes, villains, and the overpowering Nemesis of Resident Evil 3 in our latest #RE3 trailer.

• For more official news and updates, follow on:
• Twitter – https://twitter.com/RE_Games
• Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/residentevil/
• Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/re_games/

It has just been announced that the MARVEL’s Avengers game from Crystal Dynamics under Square Enix, has been delayed until September 4th 2020 to allow for more “fine tuning and polish”

In a statement posted to Social Media:

After playing the hands on demo at EGX 2019, got to admit that this does not surprise me, it is a very ambitious project that is supposed to run for years as a continued service however it certainly has had some less than positive reactions since its announcement and if they were to release and get it wrong, I do not think the MARVEL Big names would be impressed!

Now to wait to see if the wait will be worth it!

E3 does seem to becoming less and less vital to major gaming platforms, with Xbox holding their own briefing as well as Publishers Ubisoft and Nintendo. But with 2020 being the year of the next generation of console gaming, many had expected to see E3 as the launch pad for both the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5, something Sony have yet to really reveal anything about.

However, much like in 2019, Sony has confirmed to the site gamesindustry.biz that they have no plans to attend E3, but instead plan to hold their own event, most likely the reported ‘Experience PlayStation event.

A Sony Interactive Entertainment spokesperson said:

“After thorough evaluation SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020, we have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year.

We will build upon our global events strategy in 2020 by participating in hundreds of consumer events across the globe. Our focus is on making sure fans feel part of the PlayStation family and have access to play their favourite content. We have a fantastic line up of titles coming to PlayStation 4, and with the upcoming launch of PlayStation 5, we are truly looking forward to a year of celebration with our fans.”

Now I really cannot say that this is actually a surprise, E3 over the years has truly struggled to decide the kind of event it wants to be, from the original industry only event to the more public faced of recent years. But the major leak of press personal information last year was very damaging with little really done to try and put minds at ease over it. With platforms such as Sony PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox both happy to do their own events away from E3, it is hard to really see where this event fits into the grand scheme of things going forward.

Sony announcing they are skipping the event for the second year in a row probably highlights what many now see, that E3 is no longer the major gaming event it once was.