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Once a PlayStation exclusive, Death Stranding is coming to Game Pass next week

George Yang
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505 Games has announced that Death Stranding is coming to PC Game Pass on August 23. The publisher has confirmed that the version coming to the subscription service is the original 2019 game and not its Director’s Cut.

The game will have ultrawide support, a photo mode, and high framerates. 505 Games also mentions that it will get cross-over content, which presumably refers to the Half Life and Cyberpunk 2077 collaborations. Additionally, players will get some unlockable items:

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DEATH STRANDING - PC Game Pass Announcement Trailer

Notably, the game is not going to be included in Xbox Game Pass for console, presumably as PlayStation is the publisher for the console version, while 505 published the PC version. A sequel to Death Stranding is reportedly in the works, as Norman Reedus casually mentioned that he was working on motion capture for a second game for the series.

Related

Kojima Productions is currently working on a game with Microsoft, as he appeared during the Xbox and Bethesda showcase back in June to give some details about it. Hideo Kojima states that it will utilize Microsoft’s cloud technology. The studio has also confirmed it is hard at work on actual tangible projects and not NFTs.

Death Stranding isn’t the only game to join PC Game Pass recently. Yesterday, Bethesda added some classic games to the service, such as Wolfenstein 3D, Quake 4, and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard.

Death Stranding is available on PS4 and PC while the Director’s Cut version is available on PlayStation 5 and PC.

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George Yang
George Yang
George Yang is a freelance games writer for Digital Trends. He has written for places such as IGN, GameSpot, The Washington…
PlayStation Portal misunderstands remote play and cloud gaming’s appeal
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Sony finally revealed more details about its upcoming handheld, now called PlayStation Portal, but these announcements have soured my opinion on the device rather than hyped me up for it. I enjoy cloud gaming and have used a variety of services like Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, and Xbox Cloud Gaming - across my phone and even dedicated devices like the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld. Because of that, I was really excited to see what PlayStation could do as it entered the space. Unfortunately, some specific exclusions from PlayStation Portal's functionality that make it more of a remote-play device rather than a cloud gaming handheld indicate that Sony has a fundamental misunderstanding about what people would want out of a PlayStation game streaming handheld.

Namely, the device's positioning as primarily a "remote play dedicated device" and the exclusion of PlayStation Plus Premium cloud gaming compatibility drastically shrinks the number of reasons people should pick the device up. Cloud gaming and devices built around it have been around long enough to show that an inclusive approach to the number of services, games, and kinds of game streaming available is vital to success, and for a $200 handheld, PlayStation Portal seems like it's excluding way too much.
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Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
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Death Stranding

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It's all connected
Death Stranding follows the journey of Sam Porter Bridges, the adopted son of the President of the United Cities of America, as he attempts to reconnect what's left of America with a Chiral Network and save his sister. Of course, this game has Kojima's signature eccentricity, as Sam also carries around and starts forming a deeper connection with a baby in a pod (called a BB) that helps him avoid deadly creatures called BTs and gives him visions of a mysterious figure played by Mads Mikkelsen. On that note, Death Stranding has a stacked Hollywood cast as it stars people like Norman Reedus, Lea Seydoux, and Margaret Qualley and features characters modeled after Lindsay Wagner, Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn, and more. 
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