Dark Souls and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 are the latest Xbox 360 games to become backward compatible on Xbox One. Microsoft confirmed on the Major Nelson blog today that these games are now playable on Xbox One.
The announcement coincides with Microsoft rolling out an update to Xbox One owners that allows them to purchase Xbox 360 games directly from the Xbox One’s Marketplace. This is a feature that Preview Program members have had access to since earlier this month.
Microsoft announced that Dark Souls would be joining the list of backward compatible 360 titles last month when it offered the game as a pre-order bonus for Dark Souls 3. Those who purchased the upcoming game in From Software’s hardcore action series on Xbox One received a download code for the earlier 360 title, which launched in 2007.
Earlier this week, Xbox 360 games like Assassin’s Creed also became available to play on Xbox One.

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Fallout 4’s first major piece of DLC, the robot-centric Automatron, adds some much-needed variety to the activities your Lone Survivor can take on while exploring the Commonwealth. A lot of the core game’s quest lines feel really similar, requiring you to wipe out nests of raiders or opposing factions to further your progress with your chosen team. Automatron flips that on its ear: It’s a self-contained, unique tale of revenge, during which you’ll find some creative new weapons, workshops and probably my favorite companion in the game so far.
You can watch Justin and me play through some of Fallout 4: Automatron above, or hop in yourself — it’s available now as part of the game’s Season Pass, or as a stand-alone $9.99 download.

Naruto, Death Note and more Viz Media, the biggest publisher of manga and anime in North America, has teamed up with United Talent Agency (UTA) to start production on a few live-action projects based on its library of series.
Viz’s Chief marketing officer, Brad Woods, said in a press release that Viz will focus on bringing live-action entertainment to both national and international markets. Although Viz hasn’t mentioned which properties its interested in planning to adapt as live-action features, the company is home to a variety of hugely successful manga series, including Naruto, Tokyo Ghoul and One-Punch Man.
“Bringing the rich stories of manga and anime to life in new ways is an exciting opportunity with tremendous potential," Woods said.
Lionsgate is currently working on its own live-action Naruto film, although that appears to be completely independent of Viz Media and UTA’s new agreement. A live-action adaptation of Death Note is also in the works at Warner Bros.
Viz Media first entered the world of live-action entertainment with last year’s Edge of Tomorrow, which starred Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The film was adapted from All You Need is Kill, a manga published by the company.
There’s no word on when production on live-action installments will begin, but Polygon has reached out to Viz Media for more information and will update as the story develops.

Blizzard gives players a new reason to keep playing Overwatch Blizzard released a substantial update for the ongoing Overwatch closed beta this week that adds a host of new character skins, new achievements and a new map based on the historic U.S. highway Route 66. The developer also introduced a new gameplay option called Weekly Brawls, which is are inspired by another Blizzard game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.
Weekly Brawls, inspired by Hearthstone’s Tavern Brawls, are rotating game types that feature “a set of unique (and sometimes crazy) rules" from Overwatch’s Custom Game system.
Here’s how Blizzard describes it:

In one Weekly Brawl, you’ll only be able to play Soldier: 76, while in another Weekly Brawl, a random hero will be selected for you each time you respawn. Other Weekly Brawls will restrict you to Support heroes only, or Tank heroes only, or Defense heroes only…

Blizzard calls the new gameplay option "a work in progress and something we consider more of an experiment for now." Currently, Blizzard is rotating the new game type out on a daily basis, so it can test the feature. One of the earliest Weekly Brawls is called "Super Shimada Bros.," which features faster cooldowns for abilities and slower cooldowns for ultimates, and limits players to just two hero choices: Genji and Hanzo.
Overwatch’s latest update also adds a dozen new legendary skins for certain characters. Here’s a look at what’s new.

For a full list of changes, additions and balance update, check out Blizzard’s beta patch notes for Overwatch’s March 22 update.
Overwatch is coming to PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One May 24. The game’s open beta kicks off May 3.

About two years ago Jason Rubin joined Oculus VR to lead software development for the company’s much talked about Oculus Rift. But there was one problem.
“There was no software, really, just VR," he said during an interview last week. "The dev kits were only 14 to 16 months old.
"It was always clear to me, coming from the console side, that you can’t launch hardware without good games."
So over the next two years, Rubin, head of Oculus worldwide studios, worked with developers inside and outside the company to make sure that when Oculus Rift was ready to go on sale it would have a robust, eclectic mix of games to launch alongside it.
"My job is to find content that makes the Rift interesting to consumers," he said. "I have a budget and I went out and found people to makes the types of games that would fill the holes I saw we had in the launch lineup."

Last week’s three-day San Francisco press event for the Oculus Rift, which ran across the beginning of the Game Developers Conference, was in many ways a sign of how far Rubin’s efforts have gone to fix those launch holes.
The day-long events, set-up so that journalists could come in three waves to play through games on the headset, included more than 40 playable titles. Many of those games will launch on March 28 alongside the Rift.
Holes
Early on, one of the biggest holes Rubin found in the lineup for the virtual reality headset were games that played from a third-person perspective.
"The reason why third-person games were a hold was because of VR purists, researchers and university professors," Rubin said. "From their standpoint, VR means a very specific thing. That thing is a holodeck and the holodeck is not in third person.
"From their standpoint, third-person is somewhat of an abomination."
But Rubin saw the value and potential in third-person games.
While the game takes place in the third-person, with players controlling a character typically located on the landscape beneath or around them, the player still views the experience from a first-person perspective.
The player essentially become the camera, but in the case of VR, it feels like you still have a presence in the game, looming over the world in which you are controlling the game’s character.

That’s in part because developers can tinker with the view, making the eyes further apart from each other, for instance, to tweak the scale and make the player feel like a giant.
That third-person perspective can also be used for tabletop gaming. Airmech, for instance, has you controlling the real-time strategy game from the view of someone standing in front of a big hologram table.
"It all just kind of works," Rubin said.
Airmech is also an example of the other sort of work Rubin and his team has been doing.
"Airmech was already working on Oculus," Rubin said. "The developers were going to make this small game and I said, ‘Let’s make this huge.’"
The end result is a full-blown VR game bigger than the original that grabbed a lot of buzz at last week’s event.
In the case of Crytek’s The Climb, Rubin suggested the opposite.
"Crytek had an idea for a massive game," he said. "They were showing me it and then said, ‘Then you’re going to be climbing up stuff.’

"I said, ‘This is amazing, a cliff totally works. Let’s make it a climbing game.’"
Initially, the developers were resistant to the idea, but Rubin convinced them.
"It was this hole," he said. "We’re still not even scratching the surface of what can be done.
"But we do have enough variety and exciting content now so that everyone can say there’s something for them."
Currently, Oculus Studios only owns the IP for two of the launch titles: Hero Bound and Dead and Buried.
"Those games wouldn’t exist without Oculus Studios," Rubin said.
The Zelda-like Hero Bound was developed by Gunfire Games, a studio made up almost entirely of staff from Darksiders’ developer Vigil Games. He said Gunfire was teetering on the edge of collapse when Oculus hired them to create the game.
"They probably would have gone under if Oculus hadn’t stepped in," he said.
Now, that studio is working on Chronos, a darker, more zoomed-in third-person action game that Gunfire owns.
Controllers
Unlike the HTC Vive VR headset, Oculus won’t be launching with its controllers, instead it ships with an Xbox One wireless gamepad.
The Oculus Touch controller will hit in the second half of the year. That creates a sort of second launch for the platform and another wave of games for Rubin and his team to cultivate.
Rubin says he’s not worried that the Rift will lose players to the Vive simply because it doesn’t have its controller hitting with the headset.
"There may be some people who say, ‘I want hand tracking controls today.’ Here is what I would say," he said. "I can say with confidence that this is an amazing launch lineup. Someone who gets has an incredible amount of stuff to do this year and flowing into next year. If I was launching a Touch product this month I wouldn’t feel that way.

"Those are games that need more time. These games are ready. I can look them in the eye and say this is a full launch lineup."
When the Oculus Touch controllers are released, Rubin said, the controllers will have a big event of their own.
Even at last week’s event, there were a mix of early games that use the Touch.
Rubin’s attention is already beginning to shift to Touch games, preparing those titles for a second launch window and looking for holes in that lineup.
"We are focused on having that volume at launch," he said. "And continuing to support innovation and the medium."
While a wave of Touch Controller supported games will hit alongside the controller, that doesn’t mean that Oculus and Rift developers will turn their back on VR games that use the traditional gamepad controller.
"I don’t think the gamepad is going anywhere," Rubin said. "You can play with it for hours. We will continue to support that."
AAA
As Rubin transitions from bolstering the launch lineup, to working with developers on the Touch Controller launch lineup, he’s already thinking about what’s next.
Even after those two launch windows, there’s still plenty to do.
"In the perfect world there wouldn’t be a need for me," he said. "In the real world, with a zero install base, that’s not the case."
Rubin believes that the as more VR games are made and released, more lessons will be learned about what does and doesn’t work.

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Those lessons are applied in two main ways, he said.
Studios with their own game engines use their game development to improve the engines they license to other developers. So the lessons learned by Crytek while working on The Climb go back into the Crytek Engine. The same is true with Epic and the Unreal Engine.
Developers also learn a lot from each other’s games.
Rubin said he spent a lot of those preview days last week bringing one developer over to see other developer’s game.
He showed a lot of developers Ubisoft’s Eagle Flight and how it minimized motion sickness during the weaving movement of flight by reducing the peripheral view in some moments. He pointed people to VR Sports and how it mastered the feel of a throw.
"This is the first time we have shown all of the content in one place," Rubin said. "Devs are seeing each other’s games. The more content that is out there the faster developer improvement accelerates.
"It’s good for everyone."
And that includes other VR headsets as well.
Rubin said he was particularly impressed with the PlayStation VR’s The London Heist and RIGS: Mechanized Combat League.
Those lessons are vital to help virtual reality gaming grow and it still has lot of growing to do, Rubin said.

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"Right now the scale of game we can do and the amount of game we can do is here," he said. "Over time, though, we need to get to triple, triple A games, like Call of Duty.
"We haven’t had enough time to make a Call of Duty yet. Even if we started with the Devkit 2 (in 2014) launch.
"There just wasn’t enough time, not to mention that we don’t know how to make that sort of game in VR. Over time, my job will be moving up the ladder. Smaller indies will fund themselves and my job will be to move into larger and larger titles so probably working with fewer and fewer games."
As quality goes up, Rubin said, depth increases as well, as does development time and the need for experience.
"It wasn’t a hole we could get to," he said of the big AAA game. "If you started developing Grand Theft Auto when we released the dev kits, you’d still be working on it."
Rubin, though, remains confident of the 30 titles that will be available to VR gamers on March 28.
"The most import thing in the launch of hardware is the content," he said. "The reason we’re here today showing all of this stuff is that we have one of the strongest lineups of games."

You won’t be seeing DoA, PapaSmithy and MonteCristo at MSI League of Legends shoutcasters Erik “DoA" Lonnquist, Christopher "PapaSmithy" Smith and Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles will not work the upcoming Mid-Season Invitational in Shanghai due to low freelance rates offered by Riot Games, the three announced in a joint statement today.
The casters said that after reviewing freelance casting rates across esports, they determined that Riot’s initial offer was "approximately 40% to 70% of the rate received by talent for major events." The individuals also rejected a second offer from Riot because, they said, it was still "far below industry standard for 2016."
The group added:
Since we are freelancers and not Riot employees, we rely on these contracts for our income and feel that we would damage our careers in the long term by accepting below-market rates. Furthermore, by agreeing to a significantly lower wage we fear that we may contribute to the regression of standards for freelance casters in the industry as a whole.
DoA, PapaSmithy and MonteCristo regularly cast Korean League of Legends matches, as well as many international events. MonteCristo is also the co-owner of North American organization Renegades.
A Riot Games representative declined comment to Polygon.

Subscribers can check it out before the sequel hits Titanfall is the latest game to be available to members of Electronic Arts’ Origin Access program. Those who use the Windows PC service can now access the game as part of their $4.99 monthly subscription.
Along with access to the full, deluxe version of the game, Origin Access members can check out Titanfall’s expansions. The full season pass and its three expansions are available as part of players’ subscriptions.
The multiplayer-focused shooter launched in 2014 as the debut title from Respawn Entertainment. EA published the game on both Windows PC and Xbox One; it also arrived on Xbox 360 later that year.
A sequel is in the works, EA confirmed, and is targeting a 2017 release. Titanfall 2 won’t be an Xbox One exclusive and will feature a more fully featured singleplayer campaign, according to its developer.
Titanfall is the 17th game to be added to Origin Access, which EA launched earlier this year. The $4.99-a-month service is the PC equivalent to EA Access, which started on Xbox One in 2014.

We’re still a few weeks out from Dark Souls 3’s worldwide release date, but the much-anticipated, hyper-difficult role-playing game launches today in Japan. We’ve had a a review build for a week now, and while we wouldn’t want to ruin the whole game, we’re going to share a huge compilation of footage from our first 15 hours with it.
The video above is over an hour-and-a-half, and it includes a ton of new and never-before-seen stuff from Dark Souls 3. You can check out the challenges that await on the Road of Sacrifice, watch us take out the game’s first of four major bosses in Farron’s Undead Legion and even see us die a few times (naturally).
Again, all of this footage is from our first 15 hours with Dark Souls 3, what we would definitely call the early game. Late-game stuff isn’t spoiled here, but if you’re avoiding any spoilers at all, don’t watch.
Dark Souls 3 launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC on Tuesday, April 12. We’ll have a full review of the game closer to that date.

Yoshi’s N64 adventure makes a comeback Yoshi’s Story arrives on the eShop tomorrow as the latest addition to Wii U’s Virtual Console library. The Nintendo 64 game will cost $9.99 and, like other Virtual Console titles, will offer offscreen play.
Nintendo first launched the game in Japan back in 1997; it arrived stateside in spring 1998. The side-scrolling platformer, which had a unique storybook art style, serves as a sequel to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island for Super Nintendo. Players choose from a selection of Yoshi in the quest to take down Baby Bowser.
Until last year’s Yoshi’s Woolly World on Wii U, Yoshi’s Story remained the latest home console release for Mario’s trusty dinosaur companion. Wii owners got to replay the game when it launch on that console’s eShop in 2007, 10 years after it first launched.

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The first time I saw Line Wobbler, it was at last year’s Game Developers Conference in the alt.ctrl.gdc booth, an area of the show floor dedicated to games played using unconventional input methods. The game stood out immediately — towering more than a dozen feet in the air and controlled with a wobbly spring-based controller, it looked and played like nothing else I’d ever seen. The next time I ran into Line Wobbler was at Indiecade 2015, then again at last year’s Day of the Devs — each time, the game’s controller changed slightly. According to Line Wobbler’s creator, Robin Baumgarten, that’s because the game is constantly evolving — the first few iterations of its controller involved a shoehorn, then a doorstop (he tells me the difference between American and European doorstops has drastic gameplay implications), before he finally settled on a custom controller he produced in collaboration with a spring factory, who he says was very confused by his initial request.
If you haven’t heard of Line Wobbler, it’s a bit hard to describe — which is why we made a video at this year’s GDC, in Double Fine’s Day of the Devs booth, demonstrating what the game is and how it works. For more on Line Wobbler, check out Baumgarten’s website for the project.