Xbox Game Pass Summer Releases Are Heating Up

Xbox Game Pass has had a rocky few months, seeing it lose major games and failing to add marquee additions to plug the gaps. But on the heels of Xbox’s big marketing blitz — including a promise that 50 games will hit Xbox over the next year, many on Game Pass — the popular games-on-demand service is picking up steam.

Here’s everything coming to Game Pass through the rest of the month, plus two games that were quietly added over the long weekend.

June 16

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Cloud, Console, PC)

June 17

• Omori (Cloud, Console, PC)

June 21

• Shadowrun Trilogy (Cloud, Console)
• Total War: Three Kingdoms (PC)

June 23

• FIFA 22, via EA Play (Console, PC)
• Naraka: Bladepoint (Cloud, Console, PC)

July 1

• Far Cry 5 (Cloud, Console, PC)

The (Microsoft Edge)lords giveth, and they taketh away, so the following games will be unavailable as of June 30:

• FIFA 20, via EA Play (Console, PC)
• Jurassic World Evolution (Console Cloud)
• Last Stop (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• MotoGP 20 (Cloud, Console, PC)

All told, it’s a solid crop. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is easily the beat-’em-up of the year, a lovely homage to genre classics that folds in modernised sensibilities. Omori, an acclaimed turn-based RPG with status effects based on emotions, has been out on PC for a few years, and makes its way to console via Game Pass. (It’s also out on Switch.) Both are already live, and worth checking out.

My bosses have forced me via blood oath to check out Shadowrun, so while I can’t personally recommend it, I have been told to pass the word on: It’s good.

The games on the horizon are nothing to write off, either. Far Cry 5 might be the worst modern Far Cry, but the gap between “good” and “bad” Far Cry isn’t very wide. Naraka: Bladepoint is a moderately popular parkour-based battle royale; it’ll presumably see its audience expand with the leap to console (just watch out for the bots). It’s unclear yet whether or not a lineup like this is enough to stem reported subscription churn — or to head off competition from Sony’s now-competing PS Plus service — but it’s a solid start.