Daily Briefing: Wednesday 23rd June

Overwatch cross-play is now live

The much-requested functionality launched in beta yesterday and coincided with a celebratory in-game challenge. Cross-play applies to players on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch and requires everyone to either create a new Battle.net account or connect their console to an existing one - even if they don't want to actually use cross-platform multiplayer.

• Players have been asking Blizzard for Overwatch cross-play for years now so it's good that it's finally here - though the game's competitive modes will still keep console and PC players separate for sporting reasons. Sadly, cross-progression is still nowhere to be seen but Blizzard recently confirmed it's something they're excited to work on - so hopefully we'll be seeing that alongside full cross-play come Overwatch 2's eventual release.

Xbox are rolling out Xbox Series X hardware for cloud streaming

Microsoft's cloud gaming service had been powered by Xbox One S hardware since launch though the company did confirm an upgrade was in the works. Xbox Series X server blades appear to be rolling out for certain games now, with players reporting significant performance boosts with select titles.

• It's worth noting that Microsoft are yet to make a formal announcement of the upgraded hardware rollout, though players across the internet have already banded together to create a list of the affected games. Titles like Rainbow Six Siege and No Mans Sky appear to be availing of Xbox Series X server blades to provide boosted framerates or improved loading times. With next-gen consoles still extremely hard to find, playing one remotely via the cloud could be the next best thing.

Marvel's Avengers is leaking players' IP addresses after recent update

Square Enix's maligned superhero 'em up really can't catch a break. Its most recent patch introduced a rather worrying bug whereby the game will outright display sensitive player information - including IP addresses. The issue appeared following the launch of Patch 1.8.0 earlier this week which introduced a new in-game event.

• Crystal Dynamics quickly became aware of the problem and issued a rather panicked statement confirming that the team were "urgently investigating." They later determined that the issue appears to be limited to PS5 players, and outlined that they are working on a hotfix that should be deployed some time today. That this happened at all is pretty worrying, but credit to Crystal Dynamics for actually moving quickly to fix it.

Tencent now own a majority stake in Yager Development

The Chinese technology conglomerate first acquired a minority stake in the Spec Ops: The Line developer back in February 2020, and this week confirmed that they have upped their ownership to a majority stake. The reasons for the acquisition appear to revolve around Yager's upcoming title The Cycle, though a new interview with studio boss Timo Ullman also mentioned future unannounced projects and general job security.

• Back when the minority stake was announced Yager released a statement outlining that the funds would be put toward developing free-to-play multiplayer shooter The Cycle - and Ullman basically confirmed that this latest round of investment will be put into relaunching that game following early access feedback. The Cycle now has a seemingly limitless amount of money behind it, so it'll be interesting to see how it does when it gets a proper release.