Every now and again, the topic of cross-play between consoles and PC comes up. And just about every time, the same argument gets rolled out: it's a nice idea, but console players will get stomped, so it's not worth doing. Still, that's not stopping Gears of War 4 from merging PC and Xbox One players in their competitive modes.

It's almost as if the gods of competitive gaming knew we'd all be sitting around, so they made sure it was jam packed with tournaments to check out. DreamHack Winter 2016 kicked off in Sweden, with competitions for almost every game under the sun. There's also a big Heroes of the Storm event going on in Europe as well. But I want to start this weekend by highlighting the action going on in the world of competitive Gears of War 4.

This week on Kotaku Splitscreen, I'm joined by deputy editor Patricia Hernandez to talk about Pokémon, Fallout, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Today on Highlight Reel we have WWE Belts, FIFA celebrations, Gears glitches and swearing!

I've been playing Gears of War 4 for a few dozen hours now and a good portion of that time has been spent waiting for the game to find someone to play with.

One of the most surprising things about Gears of War 4 for me was the discovery that, after all these years, shooting wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies could still be really fun.

Earlier this year Microsoft released the DX12-powered Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on PC, and it was a stuttering mess. Looks like Microsoft and developer The Coalition learned a lot from that debacle, because the Windows 10 version of Gears of War 4 runs like a proper PC release should.

Making a movie out of the hit video game Gears of War has always sounded like a no-brainer. However, despite multiple attempts over the past decade, it's never come to fruition. Now, Universal and Microsoft have announced they're once again going to try and bring the sci-fi action franchise to the big screen.

If you wanted to get a sense of how the new Gears of War plays out, here's the first 20 minutes to get you started.

Video: Gears of War 4's new Horde 3.0 mode looks sick thanks to new classes, enemy types, maps and even vehicles (!). It's been too long since we've had a Gears game with this type of co-op goodness, eh?

And no, I'm not talking in terms of popularity or potential quality.

Spotted at the end of the Gears of War 4 trailer from E3 today: Would you look at that? Marcus Fenix is still alive in Gears of War 4! Unless this was just a dream or something. Still though, he's lookin' pretty good, huh?

Hello darkness my old friend. Gears 4's new trailer premiered during today's episode of Fear The Walking Dead in the US, but thanks to the magic of the internet you can already watch it right here. The trailer really wants to shove it in your face that the main character JD is Marcus Fenix's son, showing flashbacks to his idyllic upbringing with Marcus and Anya.

It's time for Gears of War: Son Of Marcus Fenix.

A teaser for the Gears of War 4 reveal happening during tomorrow night's Fear The Walking Dead features the second statue of Gears hero Marcus Fenix since the marketing team's gears started turning earlier this week.

The next chapter in the Xbox-exclusive shooter series will be hitting this spring, and players will have to opportunity to sample a multiplayer beta on April 18.

Gears of War fans are set to get a taste of a new era of Gears multiplayer when the beta opens this April on Xbox One. For a game series that has built a strong community around its multiplayer, and is currently in the process of growing its eSports footprint, the two week beta is an important step in development of the first game from The Coalition Studio.

Okay, maybe they're only realistically proportioned in comparison to some of the characters from the previous trilogy, but you have to admit that they're a far cry from the military beefheads we're used to seeing in Gears games. Newly released details have given us a look at the world, the characters and snippets of the plot for Gears 4 -- most notably letting on that the mysterious 'JD' from Gears 4's E3 demo is actually 'JD Fenix', the son of Gears' biggest hero, Marcus Fenix.

2016 is looking to be an odd one for game releases, at least from this side of the year. Big AAA releases are few and far between, with no hugely anticipated games like last year's Fallout 4. Even Assassin's Creed is rumoured to be giving it a miss. In fact, one of the year's most anticipated games is No Man's Sky, being developed by a small team over in the UK. 2016 could easily turn out to be a great year for both indies and new IPs.