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Buckle Up, Xbox – Pacific Drive Launches Today with Game Pass - Xbox Wire

Pacific Drive and its new expansion Whispers in the Woods are out now. Upgrade your ride and face the mysteries of the Olympic Exclusion Zone.

news.xbox.com

Summary

• Pacific Drive is now available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC, with the base game included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass.
• The new Whispers in the Woods expansion launches alongside the Xbox release.
• Explore eerie forests, uncover strange anomalies, and survive the Zone in your trusty station wagon.

Attention, Breachers: Pacific Drive is now available on Xbox, and the base game is included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, and PC Game Pass from day one.

We're also thrilled to announce that the Whispers in the Woods expansion is launching today — bringing even more mystery, danger and anomalies to discover in the Olympic Exclusion Zone.

 

[Branded]

I should really get back into this. Only played it briefly on PC but didn't stick around too long because the performance was still very meh on decent hardware.

 

[Mr Moose]

I'm confused, I thought it released last year?
Edit: Apparently not on Xbox. Weird.

 

[Punished Miku]

I'm confused, I thought it released last year?

It wasn't announced for Xbox until today.

 

[Kacho]

Weird.

 

[Punished Miku]

Edit: Apparently not on Xbox. Weird.

We'll probably have a similar Silent Hill 2 remake thread in a week or so.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Bought the expansion, havent played the main game, but it was next on my list to play after im done with Hades 2 and Bloodlines.

 

[Tobimacoss]

Two things:

They included a Day 1 Xbox release in the Premium tier. Maybe a special deal with the publisher in order to push the DLC sales.

And in the Playable On section: there's a 4th tag that is a placeholder for the Handheld tag.

Basically Handheld Optimized Play Anywhere games will become a new separate platform similar to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

When you take a GDK created Xbox PC game, and optimize it to fixed spec hardware via the GDKX, that becomes a Console game.

So by optimizing the game for Handheld spec, they are basically slowly turning a PC handheld into a Handheld Console. Very similar to Steam Deck.

It's a Console platform hidden within a PC platform, without mandating dev support, but simply encouraging it. This is MS long term strategy with handhelds, IF the next gen hardware for handhelds doesn't have BC+FC. Regardless, this strategy would be separate as it covers Intel/Nvidia hardware too.

So Play Anywhere with handheld support on one hand, and possible BC+FC with a lower S tier console to cover AMD Magnus powered devices, so as the devices become more powerful every iteration, more games become playable.

And MS wouldn't have to mandate dev support for the handhelds. Let's see if Sony mandates it for Canis.

 

[adamsapple]

Two things:

They included a Day 1 Xbox release in the Premium tier. Maybe a special deal with the publisher in order to push the DLC sales.

It's not exactly a new game, came out on other platforms last year. Makes sense it isn't on Ultimate.

 

[Tobimacoss]

It's not exactly a new game, came out on other platforms last year. Makes sense it isn't on Ultimate.

Yes, however, they have always counted any Xbox release as Day 1. So this is an exception to the rule. If it had been on Xbox already for few months, then it wouldn't count as Day 1.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

This is the one game that really ran like shit for me on Steam Deck. I didn't try and tinker though.