According to a new report, French video game publisher Ubisoft has revealed plans to lay off 105 workers from its game development studio Red Storm Entertainment. Additionally, its remaining staff members are being redirected away from game development, and will instead be tasked with support work on the Snowdrop engine used for several Ubisoft games, IT, and customer relations.

The news comes from GamesIndustry.biz, which reported on Thursday morning that a source at Ubisoft confirmed these cuts and adjustments were coming.

Red Storm — formed in 1996, and then acquired by Ubisoft in 2000 — is best known for developing a wide variety of early Tom Clancy's video games, including entries in the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchises. Notably, it also developed the 2023 VR game Assassin's Creed Nexus VR for the Meta Quest 2.

It's most recent projects include a Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell VR game for the Oculus Quest and a free-to-play spinoff of Tom Clancy's The Division named The Division Heartland; both titles were canceled, with Ubisoft axing the former in 2022 and killing the latter in 2024.

These aren't the first layoffs that Red Storm Entertainment has faced in recent years. Employees were let go from the studio in August 2024 when Ubisoft cut 45 workers across it and Ubisoft San Francisco, and again in July last year when 19 devs were impacted.

A source at Ubisoft told GameIndustry.biz that this major wave of cuts was part of the publisher's savings plan that was announced in late January alongside the company's "major reset," which has seen most of its developers reorganized into five "Creative Houses," and the rest become part of a "Creative Network."

That plan entails saving €200 million, which has prompted Ubisoft to launch a voluntary redundancy initiative — AKA, asking workers if any of them would volunteer to be laid off — cut numerous devs from its various studios, and shut down several of the teams under its wing.

It's also resulted in the cancelation of six games, including the much-hyped remake of the legendary 2003 action-adventure title Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, four unannounced projects, and a mobile game that was in development.

The massive restructuring and these large and widespread cutbacks across the publisher's portfolio have come as a result of the poor sales and performance of many of Ubisoft's recent games (which it blamed on players last year) like Skull and Bones and Star Wars Outlaws.

Assassin's Creed Shadows was a notable bit of brightness in the dark, but overall, the firm is struggling — leading to it making a deal with Tencent last year that gave the Chinese conglomerate 25% stake in the company.

Whether or not Ubisoft can recover from years of slumping remains to be seen, but it's tragic that we're seeing even more video game industry layoffs as a result of its fight to save its business. All layoffs are disheartening, and the industry has seen far, far too many in recent years. Ubisoft did say that everyone affected will be given severance packages and other forms of support, at least, but still.

🗨️ When will the layoffs end?

Here I am, yet again, writing about video game industry layoffs. It feels like I've had to do this at least once a week or so for the past several years, and it's very depressing. Reasons for the cuts aside, it's simply tragic that so many have lost their jobs.

Do you have any thoughts about this latest wave of layoffs at Ubisoft? Share them in the comments if so, and on a lighter note, vote which Ubisoft franchise is your favorite in our poll:

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Tom Clancy's The Division — Ubisoft's popular open-world, third-person RPG shooter — just lost one of its lead directors and producers to Electronic Arts (EA) and Battlefield 6. The developer in question is Julian Gerighty, who's helped steer development of the franchise since its creation. He also directed the action-adventure title Star Wars Outlaws.

Gerighty and Ubisoft's The Division studio Massive Entertainment announced the news on Friday morning, with the team expressing appreciation and respect for Gerighty and his time at the developer while assuring fans that "Our teams who built this world with Julian are still here."

"While we'll miss him, his mark will live on at Massive and we'll continue to bring the world he's been part of creating to our players for years to come," the studio wrote. "For our players, don't worry, Agents. Our teams who built this world with Julian are still here, carrying it forward with an ambitious, unchanged commitment for the future with The Division 2, The Division 2: Survivors, The Division Resurgence and The Division 3."

Gerighty himself also made a post on his personal X (Twitter) account: "Agents! Quick update from the Base Of Operations: It's time for me to hang up my go bag (keeping the watch) as I go on another grand adventure. The Division future burns bright, and I can't wait for you to discover what the teams have been working on. Long live The Division and Godspeed!"

Notably, it's presently unclear what role Gerighty is assuming at Battlefield Studios, though part of Massive's announcement post suggests that he's joined the team at DICE specifically; DICE is the primary developer of Battlefield, and one of four teams at Battlefield Studios (the others being Criterion Games, Motive Studio, and Ripple Effect).

Gerighty's departure comes one week after he appeared at the New Game Plus Showcase to talk about The Division 2: Survivors and The Division 3. The former is a new expansion for The Division 2 coming later in 2026 that draws heavily from the Survival DLC of the first game, while the latter is the next mainline entry in the series first announced in 2023.

During the presentation, he confirmed that the sequel is in the works, and suggested that the game will be as impactful as the first The Division release was. With how influential the original game was for the popularity and design of co-op looter shooters, it stood out as a bold claim.

"So The Division 3 is in production, right? This is not a secret, it's been announced. It's shaping up to be a monster," he said in an interview. "I can't really say anything more than that, but this is — within these walls, in Massive, we are working extremely hard on something that I think will be [have] as big an impact as Division 1 was [had]."

For The Division fans, it's sad to see Gerighty leave Ubisoft, as he's been at the helm of the franchise since the very beginning, and has helped shape The Division 2 into what is arguably one of the best action RPG co-op shooters you can play right now across Xbox, Windows PC, and PlayStation.

If you're all about Battlefield, though, Gerighty enlisting in Battlefield Studios' ranks is exciting news. While Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game of 2025, its player retention has fallen off sharply in the last few months, with the devs delaying Season 2 to make sure it launches well and sticks the landing. With more experienced senior talent like Gerighty, hopefully Battlefield Studios can turn things around.

Are you sad to see Gerighty depart Ubisoft, Massive Entertainment, and The Division? Or are you excited to see what he does with EA and Battlefield Studios? Perhaps you're feeling mixed? Let me know in the comments.

Nearly two and a half years after Ubisoft originally announced the game in September 2023, it's now been confirmed that The Division 3 — the next mainline entry in the publisher's popular Tom Clancy's The Division open-world looter shooter RPG franchise — is in development.

Executive producer Julian Gerighty (creative director of Star Wars Outlaws) at Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment studio announced the news during the New Game Plus Showcase on Thursday afternoon, noting that the game is "shaping up to be a monster."

"So The Division 3 is in production, right? This is not a secret, it's been announced. It's shaping up to be a monster," he said in his interview. I can't really say anything more than that, but this is — within these walls, in Massive, we are working extremely hard on something that I think will be [have] as big an impact as Division 1 was [had]."

Released in 2016, the original The Division game was an extremely influential title. Not only was it lauded for its highly detailed open-world depiction of a wintry, post-apocalyptic New York City, but it also stood out as one of the first and best third-person looter shooter-style RPG shooters, and arguably pioneered the extraction shooter gameplay loop with its Survival DLC's Dark Zone.

Thus, to hear the game's producer suggest it will rival The Division in terms of impact is significant, and sets very high expectations for Ubisoft and Massive's third major entry in the franchise. Sadly, Gerighty had nothing else to say about the project, but knowing that it's very ambitious is exciting nevertheless.

Gerighty did, however, have plenty to say about the upcoming Survivors expansion for The Division 2 that's scheduled to release in 2026, which is actually what Massive's segment of the showcase was primarily focused on.

Survivors is drawing heavy inspiration from the first The Division and its Survival DLC, and is being helmed by the original game's director Magnus Jansén. It's giving Washington D.C. a bleak, snowy overhaul with dynamic weather systems, and like Survival, will feature extraction shooter-style PvPvE gameplay with new locations, resource management, and more.

It was also revealed that "there's a team in Paris" working and "putting the final touches" on "a mobile execution of the promise of Division 1." This new mobile game will be set in the original title's setting of New York with the same events happening (the onset of a mysterious pandemic), but tells "a brand new story, with mechanics that are really fine-tuned to a mobile phone."

This isn't the first time Ubisoft has tried to branch out with a spinoff of The Division — it had a free-to-play offshoot named The Division Heartland that was ultimately canceled in 2024 — but based on the advanced gameplay footage of the title shown in the presentation, it seems all-but-guaranteed that this one is actually coming out.

After the positive impact delays had on the performance of Assassin's Creed Shadows, the publisher said it's delaying its other major projects to make sure they launch in a high-quality state, including The Division. That means we may not see The Division 3 until 2028.

The good news, though, is that the first two games are both on Xbox Game Pass, so if you haven't played them yet, you can use Microsoft's buffet-style gaming service to do so on Xbox systems and Windows PC.

Are you excited for The Division 3? Will you be checking out this new The Division mobile game when it releases? Share your thoughts in the comments.

What you need to know

• Ubisoft's looter shooter The Division 2 is having another free play weekend. 
• Anyone can jump in on Xbox, PlayStation or PC from May 18 to May 21. 
• Progress will carry over if you decide to buy the game after (you should!)

The Division 2 is one of my favorite games in recent years and even as we head towards Year 5, there are people out there who haven't tried it yet. If you're one of those people, this weekend is for you. 

From May 18 to May 21 anyone can jump in and play the game for free on PC and console. On PC you'll be able to grab the "Free Weekend" version from either Ubisoft Connect or the Epic Games Store. On Xbox (or PlayStation, no judgment here) just search for The Division 2 and grab the free demo. Only it's not a demo, but you get the idea. You do need to have Xbox Live (or PS+) to access online features, though, which in this case is the entire game. 

If, after the free play days are up, you choose to buy the game, any of your progress will be saved for you to pick up where you left off. The added bonus is that right now, and for a little while after the free days are up, the game is absurdly cheap. It's currently on sale for around five bucks for the base game and not a lot more to toss in the expansion and unlock all the content. 

If you're playing on the Xbox Series X or Series S you also get a delicious 60 FPS which absolutely transforms how the game plays compared to the older consoles. 

I've sunk well over 500 hours into The Division 2, something that would probably be three times that or more if I didn't play so many different games. If you like looter shooters, it's absolutely one of the best you can get. There's an insane amount of content to play, even in just the base game. Plenty of gear to chase, challenges to overcome, and just generally all-around have a good time. The base content can all be handled solo, but you can jump into matchmaking at any time. 

Year 5 is going to be a big one for The Division 2 as well, starting from June. We've got a new game mode on the horizon, a continued evolving storyline and even another DLC expansion to look forward to. And since you can try it out for free, there's really no reason not to finally give it a go! 

What you need to know

• The Division universe is about to expand a lot more, according to a new announcement from Ubisoft.
• Ubisoft and studio Red Storm are currently working on a free-to-play game, The Division Heartland, coming in 2021 or 2022.
• The game will provide a new perspective on The Division universe and come to Xbox, PC, PlayStation, and the cloud.
• The Division 2 is getting new content, there's a mobile The Division game planned, and a book and Netflix film are coming as well.

Tom Clancy's The Division is one of the biggest new franchises to release in the last few years, and Ubisoft intends to grow the franchise to all new heights in the future. Today, Ubisoft officially announced The Division Heartland, a new free-to-play game set in the expanding The Division universe coming in 2021 or 2022. The game is currently being helmed by Red Storm, a studio that has worked on Tom Clancy games since 1997, including The Division and The Division 2.

Ubisoft didn't reveal a ton of information about what to expect from The Division Heartland, other than that it will provide an all-new perspective on The Division universe both for series veterans and newcomers. The game will also head to platforms like Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PC, PS5, PS4, and apparently the cloud.

If you want a chance to play-test The Division Heartland early, you can sign up on Ubisoft's website.

On top of the announcement of an all-new game set in The Division universe, Ubisoft also provided updates and other new announcements. New content is still planned for The Division 2 after the successful Warlords of New York expansion, and a novel and film are both in the works for The Division (the latter being in development with Netflix).

Finally, Ubisoft also revealed that The Division is also heading to mobile devices with a new game at some point in the future. We don't know anything about the project right now, but it looks like it's planned to come after The Division Heartland and new The Division 2 content. We'll have to wait a bit longer to hear more about this mobile expansion of the franchise.

The Division franchise has already established itself as some of the best games on Xbox for fans of the genre, and Ubisoft is planning to make it even greater. We can't wait to see what happens with The Division Heartland.

What you need to know

• Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is an action RPG set in a ruined America, first released by Ubisoft in 2019.
• The game is getting a major content update at the end of 2021 that will include a new game mode.
• In the meantime, the game's Seasons will rerun, giving players a chance to replay them.

Ubisoft Massive just revealed its roadmap for The Division 2's content in 2021. The good news is that the development team will be rerunning its previous Seasons, allowing users a chance to replay previously inaccessible content. The better news is that the developers are working on a big, mysterious update that will add a new game mode.

The development team on The Division 2 first announced it was receiving new content a few weeks ago, and before that the game got a surprise 60FPS update for Xbox Series X/S. Now we know what kind of content it's planning to add. As for what kind of game mode we're getting, the team doesn't say. The only description we get is that it's "entirely new to the franchise."

It'll also apparently be quite large, as the team estimates it won't be finished until the latter half of 2021 at the earliest (which means it could be released in 2022). In addition to this mode, the team is working on new ways for you to level up your agents with an eye towards build variety.

So what will happen to Division 2 while the development teams works on the game mode update? Ubisoft will rerun previous seasons to fill time until we get the big new update, starting with Season 5, which will be a rerun of Season 1. This will give players a chance to "collect rewards and collectibles that you might have missed out on."

The development team also released a list of stats to show off what players have done in the game in the time it's been active. It's not exactly clear if the stats cover both Division games or just The Division 2 -- but regardless, it's rather impressive how much the players have managed to do. According to Ubisoft, the 40 million players across the franchise have managed to land 156 billion headshots. If you want to play The Division 2 on console and score some headshots of your own, check out our list of the best keyboards for Xbox Series X/S.

After some unprecedented hype for The Division, the game launched to relatively mixed responses. The Division is a role-playing game (RPG) shooter set in an apocalypse-in-progress, where a deadly plague has killed thousands and displaced even more. Anarchy reigns on the streets of New York City, and you're part of a clandestine government military organization set up as a last defense against complete societal collapse. Throughout the base game, you and up to three friends work together across a dark reimagining of New York City, battling gangsters, escaped convicts, and rogue military forces.

The leveling experience was solid, sending you into dungeon-like enemy strongholds, as you built up facilities to help survivors and improve your own abilities in the process. Sadly, though, many of The Division's systems didn't live up to expectations. But 2016 feels like an incredibly long time ago, and it's even more true for The Division, which, in 2018, is finally the rewarding loot-'em-up it should have been.

Here are some of my experiences with the new end-game.

Playstyles that matter

Perhaps my favorite improvement in The Division is the sheer volume of playstyles that are now supported via the game's gear sets.

Fairly soon after The Division launched, Ubisoft began adding special themed gear sets that came with unique bonuses that enhanced certain skills. As of 2019, there are now tons of different gear sets that enhance and compliment The Division's fairly-limited active skillset, allowing you to create unique playstyles that go far beyond what was available in the original game.

Want to play as an enhanced combat medic? There's a gear set for that. Want to play as a disruptive tank role with the ballistic shield? Now you can. Fancy taking incendiary seeker mines and a flamethrower turret, becoming a pseudo fire mage in the process? You'll need this set. There are over a dozen gear sets that enhance all sorts of playstyles and rarer exotic off-set pieces and weapons that can create unique and interesting combinations when used in tandem with different set bonuses. Additionally, there are now tons of different activities and ways to get all of these new goodies, too.

Finally, stuff to do

I quit The Division originally when the first Incursion launched because I'd run dry on things to do. The Dark Zone was a bit of a mess, where gear level played far too great a role in competitive PvP combat. Much of the best loot was to be found in the Dark Zone, and unless you wanted to spend hours being ganked, your only other option was to run through a single Incursion raid against a tank, or grind hard-mode versions of dungeon missions you had already completed.

Thankfully, there is now much more to do. The West Side Pier areas are an end-game PvE zone that spawns quest objectives dynamically as you traverse its dangers. It's also full of high-value targets (HVTs), bosses which often provide great loot and a rewarding challenge. This zone also has a Call of Duty Zombies-like "Resistance" mode where players must battle waves of enemies, accruing points to create new fortifications and progress to new areas, in exchange for awesome loot. It also has a PvP area dubbed Skirmish, which functions similarly to Team Death Match.

There are many new Incursions to undertake, which provide a greater variety of objectives than what was previously available, and you can also partake in even harder versions of existing missions. Ubisoft also spiced up general outdoor gameplay, adding daily and weekly missions to hunt down and kill HVTs with increasing difficulty. The most challenging ones offer the best loot, but also only allow for one failure, making the fights particularly nerve-wracking.

Perhaps my favorite part of The Division's 2018 end-game is the Underground, which is often compared to Diablo III's rift system. The Underground is a sprawling reimagining of New York City's subways and tunnels, filled with all sorts of bad guys. As you move through the randomly-generated areas, you'll have to contend with gameplay modifiers that add to the challenge, granting unique disadvantages that require you to change your tactics on the fly.

https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1021405316762750976

All of these activities give you the opportunity to collect gear sets, and the more advanced classified sets, with greater rewards depending on the difficulty you choose.

Ubisoft is also adding new Shield challenges every few weeks that require players to meet certain criteria. These challenges offer cosmetic loot and advanced gear cache crates, as well as content for The Division 2, set to launch in March 2019.

Give it a try, on the cheap

The Division's 2018 endgame feels like one of this generation's best-kept secrets. The game still enjoys a vibrant (and helpful) community on reddit, and it has tons of support from pro YouTubers like MarcoStyle, who produce tons of guides on how to get the most out of the game. It's well worth a look, and it's pretty cheap to get back into it, especially on Xbox One.

The Division's base game is available now as part of Xbox Game Pass, for just $9.99 per month. Some of the features I mentioned such as the Underground are available as part of DLC packs, but the season pass is relatively cheap at $39.99, particularly if you plan to play with friends.

If Ubisoft takes what it has learned throughout The Division's development and pours it into The Division 2, we could be in for a real treat.

• See Xbox Game Pass at Microsoft
• See The Division Season Pass at Microsoft

Though Tom Clancy's The Division was overall a well-rounded success, the game had/has several issues that ultimately hindered the experience for many gamers. The fact that the game recently gained some big popularity over a year after launch, as well as the fact The Division 2 was recently announced, shows that a bright future for the franchise is entirely possible. However, to achieve that, the sequel will need to make some hefty improvements on the first game.

• See on Microsoft Store
• See at Steam

A stable launch

One of the biggest factors that contributed to The Division's fall in popularity after its launch was that the game was extremely bug-ridden and glitchy at release. Everything from falling through the ground to entire characters being mysteriously deleted was a possibility at this time, and it drove many players away from the game.

While it is true that Ubisoft eventually got everything patched up and working properly, only a fraction of the players that abandoned the game ended up returning to it. The rest of them were skeptical, and weren't willing to risk wasting more of their time. When The Division 2 comes out, Ubisoft needs to prioritize polish and performance, lest it ends up suffering in the same way the original did. It's hard to enjoy what a game has to offer if the game doesn't work.

A dynamic open world

The majority of the story content in the first The Division is about helping survivors of a deathly illness in an open world New York City. This includes securing and guarding supplies, assassinating gang leaders, and patrolling the streets for thugs. But the world itself is very static; none of your actions ever seem to have a lasting effect in the areas you watch over.

In The Division 2, this needs to change. Things as simple as civilians being less afraid to walk around in plain sight or a visibly lower amount of criminals that spawn in the area could show you that you're making a genuine difference in the community, as opposed to the first game where you have to pretend that you are. After all, one of the best things about being a hero is getting to fight for a good reason.

A meaningful faction system

There are several different factions in The Division, but all of them are hostiles. Overall, the term "faction" is just another way to say "different enemy types" in the original game. This always disappointed me, as I wanted to learn about the motivations and reasoning behind each group of enemies in this post-apocalyptic urban setting. There's massive potential there for quality world-building, which is something that an open world title can always use more of.

Hopefully, The Division 2 will flesh out the factions of Manhattan and give us insight into what makes them tick, what their ultimate goals are, and more. Maybe we could even have the option of allying ourselves with one in secret, helping them launch attacks and raids on the opposing factions, just like the modern Fallout games. We could also get some faction-themed cosmetics as well, giving us the ability to showcase who we've sided with to other players.

Your thoughts

What do you think The Division 2 needs to do better than the original game? Let me know down below.

The Division is currently available on both Xbox One and Steam for $49.99.

• See on Microsoft Store
• See at Steam

One of the most disappointing launches in recent history for gamers was the highly anticipated Tom Clancy's The Division. Across both console and computer, this Ubisoft title was an absolute trainwreck, and despite initial high sales, players quickly abandoned The Division after experiencing its poor state.

Determined to repair their game, the developers of The Division stuck with it and have been releasing incremental patches over the last two years. With the most recent 1.8 update, it finally feels like a solid experience. Players have been flocking back to The Division, reinvigorating the spirit of the once meager community and turning the game into one of the most popular games in the new year.

Read: Why Tom Clancy's The Division is worth revisiting in 2018

• See on Microsoft Store
• See at Steam

An example to others

Some of 2017's biggest names, such as Star Wars Battlefront II, Destiny 2, and Call of Duty: WW2, all share serious flaws, from invasive microtransactions to a lack of content to poor balancing, among some others. None of these games, however, were quite as bad as The Division was when it launched. Though its microtransactions were less invasive, The Division barely worked on any platform and almost every facet of the game was completely broken, along with balancing problems and lack of content.

These games overall have less to fix than The Division did, and that will make the job of these developers that much easier. If Ubisoft can make The Division succeed this much only two years after its legendary failures, then I believe any game can recover (at least mostly) from poor first impressions.

A game with a brighter future

A great example of a game on the road to recovery is Destiny 2. It's no secret by now that the Destiny fanbase has been incredibly dissatisfied with the game as of late, and because of this they began to demand transparency and information from developer Bungie about when and how things will be improved.

In response, Bungie detailed their development roadmap with Destiny 2, hoping to address and resolve several of the major concerns voiced by players. As long as Bungie sticks to their plan, the future for Destiny 2 looks hopeful.

Read: Destiny 2 is set for major Eververse changes, and more

A game forgotten in darkness

A title that has, sadly, been left behind to rot is Mass Effect Andromeda. The game boasted a large amount of content at launch, but a lot of it was riddled with technical issues. On top of this, the fans found the game to lack creativity in general, which caused the expansive open world to feel bland and uninteresting.

After seeing this, developers BioWare Montreal revealed plans for future DLC content that would improve the game, but these expansions were cancelled when the studio was merged with EA Motive. Instead of giving the developers a chance, Electronic Arts instead chose to end support for Andromeda mere months after its launch. Games like The Division, though, show that if you build it, they will come; it's sad to think about how good Andromeda could have ended up becoming, given some time.

Your thoughts

Do you think that flawed games should receive dedicated support post-launch in order to eventually fix all the issues, or do you think that publishers and developers should cut all ties, like EA did with Mass Effect Andromeda? Let me know your thoughts.

Tom Clancy's The Division is available now for $49.99 on both Xbox One and PC.

• See on Microsoft Store
• See at Steam

Tom Clancy's The Division has been a game defined by failures since its 2016 launch. Though it had a phenomenal opening week, breaking Destiny's record for the best-selling new franchise, it didn't take long for the title's flaws to rear their ugly heads. Between the unbalanced multiplayer, terrible performance, rampant hacker issues, and general lack of content, The Division faced one problem after another. People began to abandon the game only a few months after release, and this urban dystopian shooter role-playing game (RPG) became a ghost town.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2018, and the game now looks much different then it did. The dedicated post-launch support Ubisoft has given this game worked some magic, and while nothing excuses the poor entrance it made into the gaming scene two years ago, The Division is definitely worth checking out now.

• See on Microsoft Store
• See at Steam

Fixing what's broken

Arguably the worst aspect of The Division at launch was the shocking amount of bugs, glitches, and exploits that made the game unplayable. There's nothing worse than a game that doesn't work, and The Division was a terrible offender.

Fortunately, the developers stuck with their project and patched up almost everything wrong with its performance. The game runs smoothly, crashes to desktop or dashboard are non-existent, and the plethora of visual and audio glitches that once plagued The Division are a thing of the past. Anti-cheat systems have been implemented in order to tackle the waves of cheaters, as well.

Quality of life

In addition to fixing up the performance issues, The Division's developers have also made several changes to balance the game and make the overall experience better, both in player-versus-enemy (PvE) and player-versus-player (PvP) scenarios.

In PvE, enemy AI has been tweaked in order to retain the challenge that The Division is known for, while also making some encounters fairer and not overly difficult. In addition, the issue of missions in the game not giving out the rewards promised to players has been resolved.

For PvP, players have to manually select whether they want to go rogue and turn on other agents before being able to do damage. This is a beneficial change, as before a single accidental shot on a friendly agent would turn you into an enemy. On top of this, The Division's weapons, armor, and skills received specific balancing in order to make PvP feel more separate than PvE.

New ways to play

With The Division's latest patch, three brand new types of free content have been implemented into the game. The first of which is a brand new area on the map, called West Side Piers. This location boasts a new dynamic enemy spawning system, a new safehouse social hub, and tons of new missions and commendations to complete.

Secondly, there's a new PvP mode called Skirmish, which is similar to arena shooters like Halo or Destiny. Two teams of four players each battle with each other to rack up the highest kill count. Performing well in the mode increases your PvP rank, and the PvP rank itself has received a higher level cap to compensate for this.

Lastly, there's also a new PvE mode called Resistance, in which a small group of players team up to battle hordes of enemy factions that ally with each other to take them down. Resistance can be played in three different arenas found in the West Side Piers area, and each one is unique and different, making players strategize differently for each.

Conclusion on the state of Tom Clancy's The Divison for Xbox

Though The Division will likely never repair all the damage done by its botched launch, the game has become a solid title thanks to the support it was given by the developers. Whether you're thinking of coming back to the game or considering picking it up, The Division is definitely worth your time in 2018.

What do you think of The Division? Let us know down below.

The game is available for $49.99.

• See on Microsoft Store
• See at Steam

In September, The Division developer Massive announced that they would be overhauling most of the game. This took priority over the expansions they were working on, Survival, and Last Stand, which have both been delayed to get the patch ready. The intention behind this was to strengthen the core game first, before adding new content.

While The Division was given mostly positive reviews, many people found fault with the game and its lack of variety in activities and dynamic encounters.

General initial reactions to this announcement have been mostly positive, with many stating they would be happy to return to the game once the patch has been implemented from the 25th October.

Here are a few highlights from the full patch notes:

• World tiers: When players reach level 30, they will be able to select their World Level Tier which determines the level of the enemies they encounter in the game's overworld, and the quality of loot the enemies drop.
• Many UI improvements: Mark as junk, mark as favorite, buyback from vendors, deconstruct items from The Stash.
• Gameplay changes: Increased Ammo capacity after level 30, matchmaking slots are auto-filled if host's privacy allows it, player health regenerates out of combat.
• Activities, loot and rewards: Roaming bosses and NPCs now respawn every 4 hours, Weekly and Daily assignment loot caches drop items scaled accordingly with players current gear, all mission rewards have been updated, and there are new targets in the High-Value Target contract pool. The idea is every level of play will provide rewards and meaningful gear progression.
• Gear stats: Geat items with a Gear Score of 182 will offer fixed stats in the main attributes. Toughness now takes Resiliency into account. Many Gear Talents have been rebalanced, and various armor items have been overhauled.
• Skills: Hard caps on most skills have been removed. All skills except signature skills now have a 5-second cooldown. First aid healing has been increased, and the majority of skills have seen alterations to promote balance. Previously, certain talents and skills were just far more powerful than others, resulting in cookie-cutter gameplay.
• Weapons: Named weapons are no longer locked to Gear Score. Weapon Talents have been rebalanced, and most guns have seen various tweaks.
• Gear sets: Changes to all Gear sets. See the patch notes for specific values.
• Bug fixing: Bug fixes to UI, Gameplay, Skills, Underground areas, Talents, Controls and Gear sets.

Be sure to check out the full patch notes for the full list of changes you can expect. Will it be enough to get you to try The Division again? Let us know in the comments.

See The Division on the Xbox Store

Ubisoft announced that it will delay the release of the final two DLC packs for its massively multiplayer shooter Tom Clancy's The Division. The decision was made to concentrate first on fixing a number of gameplay issues and bugs for the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 game.

Originally, the plan was to release the second DLC pack, Survival, sometime this summer, followed in the winter by the third pack, Last Stand. In a blog post, Ubisoft says that the Survival pack for The Division now won't be released until sometime later in 2016, followed by Last Stand which will be made available in 2017.

Ubisoft admitted that the game "has been affected by lingering issues that have accumulated since release." In October, The Division will get the free 1.4 update which will include:

• Fixing bugs, including those listed in our Known Issues as well as many other ones
• Making loot drops more relevant to the player
• Enemy difficulty and time to kill
• Gear Sets and weapons balancing
• Solo player experience
• Dark Zone and PvP balancing
• Quality of life additions based on community suggestions (such as weapon skins no longer taking inventory space)

More infomation on what specific changes and improvements will be made in the update will be revealed on September 13.

See at Microsoft Store

Ubisoft has officially released Underground, the first paid expansion for its hit shooter Tom Clancy's The Division. It's available for the PC and Xbox One for the price of $14.99.

Here's a quick summary of the expansion, which has a file size of just over 10GB on the Xbox One:

Underground is also available for people who bought the $39.99 season pass for The Division, which will offer access to all three of its paid expansion packs.

See at Xbox Store

Ubisoft has released the latest free update for its action game Tom Clancy's The Division on the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The update, Conflict, adds a new Incursion into the Columbus Circle part of New York City, along with new Search and Destroy missions and more.

The game's official website has the full breakdown of what's included in the 1.2 Conflict update for The Division. Here are the highlights:

• New Incursion - Clear Sky: This new incursion takes players to the Columbus Circle area, where they face an overwhelming force of Rikers who are now in full control of the Manhattan airspace. Players need to team up to take back the area and secure the supply route.
• Search and Destroy Missions: Once all side missions and encounters have been completed in a named zone, Search and Destroy missions lead players to a group of enemies located in the open world.
• High Value Targets: After completing Search and Destroy missions, players are granted with valuable intel to hunt down new enemy leaders who have appeared all over Manhattan. Hijack Extractions: Players now have the ability to interrupt an extraction by cutting the rope and attempt to acquire the fallen loot bags. This is not without risk, however, as this action will instantly mark them as Rogue.
• Sealed Caches: Sealed Caches can now be dropped by named enemies in the Dark Zone. The content of these caches remains mysterious until they are extracted and can include gear, Division Tech, and Dark Zone funds.
• Player Stashes: Player stashes are now available in every Dark Zone checkpoint.
• ISAC Assignments: These weekly assignments are now included in the map overview. Also with this update, weekly exclusive rewards will be introduced as well as free vanity items.

In addition, there are a number of new Gear Sets for the game in the update, along with a long list of gameplay changes, loot balancing and bug fixes.

Ubisoft has release the first details of the next free update to hit Tom Clancy's The Division. The Conflict update, which will land on May 24 for Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4, will bring plenty to be excited about, including the new Clear Sky Incursion, new gear sets, weapons and loot.

Here's how Ubisoft describes the new Incursion:

The update also includes the addition of high-value targets, which present a challenge as you'll have a limited amount of time to take them out. Additionally, players will now be able to hijack your loot in The Dark Zone, making things even more intense.

For more, be sure to check out the trailer above. And let us know in the comments what you're most looking forward to when the update drops on May 24!

In the post-Destiny world of the MMO-lite, Tom Clancy's The Division represents a massive ambition to combine a modern third-person tactical shooter with RPG mechanics in a huge and connected world. Ubisoft's industry leading open-world design takes center stage, painstakingly reconstructing New York City wrapped in a near-apocalyptic vision of social breakdown.

I've spent almost 100 hours stalking The Division's alleyways, abandoned buildings, and contaminated sewers. It'd be a lie to say that Ubisoft Massive's connected shooter isn't a huge achievement.

Millions of players have fully engaged. They've spent days grinding out gear, trying to perfect character builds and taking on the game's most daunting challenges. At this point, I've seen everything The Division has to offer. I want to answer the question 'is it all worth it?' This is the full experience of The Division.

Virulent Vistas

Story, Setting and Design

The Division is based on a real-world simulation that shows how rapidly society would break down in the event of a biblical-scale viral outbreak. Taking place in a meticulously detailed reconstruction of New York City, a secret U.S. military organization known as the Strategic Homeland Division, or simply 'The Division,' is activated to respond to the catastrophe, which has brought the United States to its knees and chaos to the streets.

You play as a voiceless Division agent, whom you can customize visually to a limited degree. Your agent is deployed to investigate the cause of the outbreak, help the terrified survivors, and combat the city's opportunistic criminal elements.

MMO-lites and their derivatives aren't particularly renowned for their stories, and The Division doesn't go to great lengths to buck this trend. While the premise is exciting, the story's delivery could've been a little more ambitious. There are very few cut-scenes, and they typically take place in the safety of your home base during debriefing conversations. There are no cinematic set-pieces, no major plot twists, and in typical Ubisoft-style, the opportunity to develop the game's limited array of villains is sorely missed.

Taking on a real-world setting for this type of game has clearly been a challenge. There are no zombies, fantasy creatures or aliens to give the world flavor, so to under-develop the narrative surrounding the game's enemy factions comes across as unusually stark. Why did hundreds of city sanitation workers become insane, murderous pyromaniacs? How was one person able to rally scores of prison inmates into an organized militia? There are answers to some of these questions, but Ubisoft makes you dig for them. Much of the game's narrative and character development is hidden away in collectable CCTV footage, mobile phone recordings or 'Echo' events, which show you scenes from a prior event in augmented reality.

The vast amount of narrative items does help to give the game's world some believability. There's an immersive Watch Dogs-like voyeurism about going through a discarded cell phone or abandoned CCTV clip, seeing glimpses of The Division's virtual inhabitant's lives. There are hundreds of them too, giving completionists a lot to think about.

I can appreciate that Ubisoft probably felt that going heavy on the cinematics and narrative in a primarily multiplayer game could've been wasteful, but its weak presence dampens the roleplaying investment you might typically look for in an RPG, and reminisces of similar failings found in their other AAA franchises. At the very least, it not only makes any attempt at playing The Division solo a pretty soulless affair, it feels like a missed opportunity to elevate expectations of what a massively multiplayer game can and should achieve on the narrative front.

Where immersion through story might be lacking, the same cannot be said for The Division's graphics. The visuals are one instance where Ubisoft shrugged off the typical MMO design conventions of reduced graphical quality to favor sheer volume – The Division is one of the most beautiful titles available on the Xbox One today. From its dynamic weather systems, densely detailed locations, and lavish special effects, The Division is the triumphant culmination of Ubisoft's industry-leading open world design.

The Division grasps at the periphery of an engaging story with its optional narrative footage, but it's a far cry from the lore-stuffed cinematic missions that feature in other open world RPGs. The result paints The Division as a visually exciting, but ultimately static diorama.

Ubisoft Massive's take on the RPG shooter genre more than makes up for its brief story treatment with some incredible core gameplay, the foundation of which could prove to be a winning formula that ensures The Division's survival for years to come – but it isn't without problems.

Loot Fever

Gameplay

As noted, The Division is a connected RPG cover shooter, set in the third person. The game has heavy co-operative elements, and purports to encourage class-based, strategic co-operative play – a prospect that should prove particularly rewarding in some of the game's harder activities.

The Division draws parallels with the likes of Diablo III and Destiny, undergoing a gameplay shift between the levelling experience and its post-story endgame content. The initial Level 1-to-30 experience is one of discovery, skill unlocks and plot progression while Level 30+ becomes a loot hunt, providing increasingly difficult challenges for increasingly powerful items.

Level 1 to 30

As I begun playing The Division for the first time, I felt a twinge of excitement I hadn't felt since the early days of World of Warcraft. Exploring the game's abandoned buildings, quarantined labyrinths and haunting makeshift mortuaries proved a sobering experience, given the fact it's set in near-modern times, and based on events that could theoretically occur.

While the locations are varied, detailed and gorgeous, the mission objectives you're required to undertake while levelling are woefully unambitious. Accompanied by very sparse context, they almost always amount to the following. "Go to this waypoint, stand here, kill a bunch of gun-toting dudes, get experience points, move on to the next."

Despite the game's incredible atmosphere and brilliantly executed enemy A.I., the copy-and-pasted mission objectives make for a crushingly simplistic solo experience. Perhaps that's fair enough, though; The Division isn't designed to be played alone.

Similarly to Diablo 3 and Borderlands, squads of up to four players can jump into each other's game world, complete missions, explore and obtain loot together. Enemies scale dynamically to account for the additional damage your squad will be dealing – and this is where The Division is the most enjoyable.

The core objectives outlined above are far more engaging when tackled in a squad. In the earlier stages of The Division, the game feels well tuned to reward players who want to commit their skills to a healer role, a damage role or a defensive tanking role in equal measure. At this point, it's nowhere near as restrictive as a typical MMO, where you simply can't progress in a mission without a particular skill utility or class function.

Beyond strategic play, The Division rewards players with piles of color-coded loot items. As I was levelling up, every boss kill and every hidden cache scattered throughout the game's winding and vertical open world provided heaps of gratifying upgrades.

The Division's varied weapon types also feel great to use, particularly when combined with the diverse modding and gear talent system which adds layers and layers of customization and ways to progress your character.

As I was levelling, The Division felt as though it had nailed all the magical elements of a strategic shooter RPG, with meaningful upgrades, class skills, and intelligent enemy CPU behaviour. Indeed, as a shared experience, The Division very effectively provides dozens of hours of co-operative RPG shooter fun for groups of friends – making it a worthy proposition in its right.

However, if you want to dive deep into The Division's endgame, a lot of the systems that appear robust at face value begin to unravel.

Level 30 Endgame

After slugging through The Division's open world levelling content, you'll start peeling away at layers of increasingly loose design decisions that hinder the Level 30 endgame. Only four of the game's dungeon-like missions are available to be set as a Level 30 challenge mode, edging the post-story gear grind into repetitive territory. While The Division's much-touted Dark Zone area provides a wealth of variety as a result of player-driven emergent PvP play, even these areas of the game are marred by flaws in some of the game's underlying systems.

The vast majority of The Division's abilities simply aren't valuable enough in the highest Level 30 PvE or PvP content. While it felt as though The Division had playstyle diversity levelling up, it's simply not an option to play as an aggro-stealing tank or a pure DPS role in The Division's endgame – despite having gear stats that hint at the contrary. The most optimal builds in both PvE and PvP are defensive healer hybrids to ensure personal survival, minimizing the need for co-operative and strategic play, and maximising the need to coordinate the spam of the game's most powerful defensive abilities on cooldown while ignoring the game's robust cover system, strafing and dodge rolling instead. Other playstyles struggle to make the grade.

On the PvP side of things, if you don't want to suffer endlessly repeating the game's four challenge mode missions, as mentioned, you can step into the Dark Zone – which features NPC bosses, hidden caches of wildly powerful gear and other players. And yes, they can kill you. In fact, they often will. Until you've successfully extracted gear obtained in the Dark Zone, you will drop items you're carrying when killed. Extractions can only be triggered in certain areas, they alert nearby players to your presence, and take over a minute to complete – making for harrowingly tense situations. My first forays into the Dark Zone were exhilarating, even when you disregard the sluggish server infrastructure.

Gear has a far more pronounced effect in the Dark Zone than it does in comparable shooters. A player who has maxed out all the endgame content on offer can very easily destroy a player who is stepping into the highest Dark Zone level bracket for the first time, making PvP encounters pretty meaningless on a competitive basis. It contributes to the exciting sense of danger and vulnerability you'll feel in the Dark Zone, as most of the time you'll be unable to determine how powerful a potential enemy player is just by staring at them.

Will they kill me? Do they simply want to utilize the loot extraction chopper as well? Will they attack as soon as my back is turned? Those paranoid questions make for exciting experiences, as squads of players will often meet in Mexican standoffs, testing each other's nerves – and of course, successfully extracting the awesome loot you've obtained in the Dark Zone always feels so good.

As noted, far too many of the game's skills and talents are weak in player vs. player combat. Encounters devolve into opposing squads chain-spamming the game's most powerful abilities, ignoring the advertised cover system to strafe and roll while hip firing sub-machine guns. Despite the sadistic gratification of insta-killing under-geared players, the Dark Zone's chaotic implementation results in limited satisfaction for anyone looking for serious player vs. player action. It wouldn't be a major problem if The Division featured truly balanced PvP gameplay modes or a robust PvE progression path without the Dark Zone, but the lack of Level 30 activities makes participation unavoidable.

The imbalanced ability tuning extends into The Division's highest-level PvE endgame content too — the incursion 'Falcon Lost' – which is a brief, wave-based boss fight taking place in a single arena.

It's laudable that Ubisoft is providing endgame players new challenges in free updates, but Falcon Lost exemplifies some of the game's most deep-seated issues. The sheer amount of area of effect attacks, combined with swarming drones that fly above cover, and The Division's weak crowd control abilities once again render various skills, class roles, and even the cover system suboptimal.

The most popular strategy for overcoming 'Falcon Lost' involves hiding in a coverless trench to negate the stationary boss, with all four squad members chaining the overpowered Survivor Link ability and area of effect healing skills to mitigate incoming damage. Of course, it's the player's choice to commit to this sort of cheesy strategy, but when it's the easiest path to victory it just feels inefficient not to utilize it. Being forced to play this way feels unsatisfying, and makes me wonder whether future Incursions will be similarly short-lived.

Perhaps a greater diversity of playstyles would emerge if the loot system wasn't so unbearably random. Each piece of endgame loot features the usual stats that improve damage, survivability, tech skills and so on, but they also feature a vast array of nuanced sub-stats that strengthen specific abilities, such as improved turret health, damage resistance against elite enemies, and much, much more. Obtaining those stat boosts is based on pure randomness, and while you can spend credits (a LOT of credits) to re-roll them, far too often you won't actually get the stats you're gunning for.

For all the dissatisfaction, The Division is still more than enjoyable to jump on with friends to complete the daily challenge mode missions, suffer together in the anarchy of the Dark Zone, and grabbing powerful loot always feels great. The way the studio has designed play for Level 30+ reveals flaws in the game's design that may even call for an overhaul of some of its systems. Ubisoft says its listening to feedback, but whether or not players will receive the updates they need is, of course, uncertain.

Post-Apocalypse

Conclusion

Tom Clancy's The Division has been a frustrating game to review – not because it's a bad game, far, far from it – but because it comes so close to being something truly amazing.

While the elements of something incredible are certainly present, from the industry-leading world design, sobering atmospherics, detailed environments, creative skills, and the conceptually exciting Dark Zone – the implementation has been far from ideal, even when you disregard annoyances like disappearing daily missions and insufferable Dark Zone lag.

Pros:

• Industry leading visual design
• Polished combat mechanics
• Unlimited potential

Cons:

• Story delivery is weak
• PvE content is thin
• RPG skills and systems need attention

If you haven't jumped into The Division yet, it's a fantastic title for groups of friends seeking a straight-forward, Diablo-like experience wrapped in a robust and polished RPG cover shooter. If you're looking for endgame content that's a little more MMO-like with its depth and diversity, I'd recommend waiting to find out how the free upcoming Patch 1.2 alters the state of play. Ubisoft has hinted that it plans to improve weaker skills and develop the game's PvE offering, but whether or not they deliver remains to be seen.

Ubisoft hasn't built a title like this before, and the inexperience clearly shows – The Division seems to be a victim of its ambitions. The good news is that now, games can be updated, and the flaws in the system aren't so thick that they're beyond repair. With proper attention, Ubisoft could easily pivot the game towards the vision it represents. We can only hope that The Division's long-term story is just beginning.

• See on Amazon
• See on the Microsoft Store
• See on the Xbox Store

This review was conducted on Xbox One using a copy purchased by the writer.

Incursions, or Patch 1.1, will arrive after April 12th's three-hour maintenance. Ubisoft is planning to add several large content patches in the coming months. Following Incursions, The Division will pick up another free update titled 'Conflict', beyond that, major content additions will come in the form of large paid expansions, either separately or as part of the game's season pass.

Incursions are Ubisoft's take on MMO-like end-game raids. The first Incursion, Falcon Lost, occurs in an underground water treatment facility, where the game's rogue private military company Last Man Battalion are making their final stand. Falcon Lost will challenge squads of four players with all-new enemy types, and demand the highest levels of co-ordination and skill. Players who find victory in Falcon Lost will be rewarded with some of the game's most powerful loot, including brand new gear sets.

The full patch notes are as follows.

NEW FEATURES

Falcon Lost

• Falcon Lost is a new incursion available in the Stuyvesant area
• You must be level 30 and have completed the mission "General Assembly" to access this mission
• The encounter is balanced for 4 players with high level gear

Gear Sets

• Gear set equipment can be found by completing the most challenging activities in Manhattan
• Collecting and wearing gear sets grant powerful stat bonuses and talents
• Gear sets of varying gear scores can be found for many playstyles. Find the set that best suits yours •"Tactician's Authority" – enhances electronics and support capabilities
• "Striker's Battlegear" – provide bonuses for assault capabilities
• "Sentry's Call" – enhances marksman capabilities
• "Path of the Nomad" – provides bonuses for lone wanderers

Trading

• Items dropped by enemies can be shared with other players
• Trade items by dropping them as loot from your inventory, so players in your group can pick them up
• You can only share items for during the first 2 hours after you have acquired them
• Items can only be shared with players who are currently in your group and who were also in your group when the item was originally dropped

Assignments

• Assignments are automatically obtained when you log in and can be tracked from the map via the menu called "Mission Overview"
• Assignments are available for a limited time (24h for Daily Assignments and 7 days for Weekly Assignments), after which, they will be replaced by different assignments
• Assignments come in different categories: Dark Zone, Combat, Crafting.
• Most assignments can be completed while playing alone but some will require enlisting other agent's assistance to complete

Dark Zone Supply Drops

• Dark Zone Supply Drops are a global event where the Strategic Homeland Defense agency airdrops multiple supply caches to assist Division agents
• Supply drops will occur multiple times over the course the day
• The supply drops will contain non-contaminated gear of all types that will be ready to use without the need for extraction
• These supply drops will be heavily sought after by other agents and enemy factions that roam the Dark Zone, so be ready for resistance

Gear Score

• Every non-vanity gear piece that can be found when your agent is level 30 has a Gear Score value. The higher an item's Gear Score, the stronger the item
• The overall Gear Score of your agent can be seen in your main menu next to your player level. Gear Score indicates the advancement of an agent
• Other agents' Gear Scores are displayed next to their health bars
• Improving your gear and increasing your overall Gear Score will grant your agent access to the most dangerous high-end challenges

Group Spectator Camera

• The Group Spectator Cam lets players spectate members of their group while waiting to be revived or the entire group to be down
• Players can use RB/LB, R1/L1 or Q/E keys to switch between group members

New High-End Named Weapons

• Added new High-End named weapons:
• Warlord: Assault Rifle
• Valkyria: Submachine gun
• (Historian: Marksman Rifle) Please note that while the Historian will be implemented in the game with this update, it will not be acquirable in-game until update 1.2

GAME CHANGES

Gameplay

• Turret skill can no longer suppress enemy NPCs, as this allowed named NPCs to be defeated too easily
• Recalibrating High-End items will now cost normal Credits instead of Phoenix Credits
• Phoenix Credits drop have been increased on lvl 31 and 32 named enemies: Level 30: 1-3 Phoenix Credits
• Level 31: 2-4 Phoenix Credits
• Level 32: 3-5 Phoenix Credits
• Named enemies of level 30 and more will now always drop one High-End item when killed

Dark Zone

• The vendor in the Church Safe House will now sell items in Dark Zone Funds instead of Phoenix Credits
• Ranks requirements for Superior and High-End quality items at the Dark Zone Vendors have been adjusted: Superior (Purple) items: Rank 15 instead of 30
• High-End (Gold) level 30 (Gear Score 163): Rank 25 instead of 50
• High-End (Gold) level 31 (Gear Score 182): Rank 40 instead of 50
• Added a new Dark Zone bracket for characters with Gear Score 160+

Crafting

• Increased costs for converting crafting materials and crafting High-End items: 10 Standard (Green) materials instead of 5 to craft 1 Specialized (Blue) material
• 15 Specialized (Blue) materials instead of 5 to craft 1 High-End (Gold) material
• 10 High-End (Gold) materials instead of 8 to craft 1 lvl 31 High-End (Gold) item
• Changed deconstruction yield of Standard (Green) and High-End (Gold) items: Deconstructing a Standard (Green) item yields 1 Standard material instead of 2
• Deconstructing a High-End (Gold) item yields 1 High-End material instead of 2
• Added new level 31 and 32 High-End items Blueprints to Vendors
• Removed Division Tech requirements from some level 31 High-End Blueprints
• Level 32 named enemies will have 40% chance to drop Division Tech materials

User Interface

• Added gamepad deadzone calibration in settings menu (all platforms)

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug that could prevent characters from accessing the game if they had too many items in their inventory
• Rehabilitated Talent will no longer remain active when the character is not under a Status Effect
• Fixed a bug where Daily Hard and Challenging missions would no longer reset every day
• Fixed a bug where sometimes the weapon talents would not activate if the player has the exact stat requirements
• Fixed a bug where players could exit the Dark Zone on East 43rd street
• Reloading stripper clips is now correctly interrupted by firing the weapon (marksman rifles and shotguns)
• Fixed an issue where buying a weapon with a pre-attached scope using the buy and equip feature sometimes caused the scope to un-equip
• Fixed an exploit where players could shoot through corners of covers
• Fixed a number of locations where NPCs could shoot through walls
• Fixed an exploit where players could ignore the fire rate of certain weapons
• Fixed some locations where players would get stuck in Queen Tunnel Camp mission
• Fixed various prop collisions so that players no longer become stuck
• Fixed a bug where the final cut scenes would unlock before the final missions were completed
• Fixed a bug where the Water Supply side mission would not activate
• Fixed an issue where the Morphine Supply side mission sometimes would not complete
• Players no longer receive too much XP for completing the Morphine Supply side mission
• The buff from Smart Cover no longer stacks if multiple teammates are using it on the same piece of cover
• Fixed some bugs where deployable skills would not activate under certain circumstances
• Fixed a bug where voice chat volume indicators would overlap in the group UI frame
• Fixed a bug where receiving a group invite via Matchmaking would sometimes not show up on the screen
• Fixed a bug where the dead teammate icon would turn into a blue dot instead of a red cross if the players were too far away from each other
• Fixed an issue where a player would be unable to inspect the appearance of his/her character while changing outfits
• Fixed some UI elements for mission overview frame and adjusted some of the misaligned icons
• Corrected the colors for the appearance items in the Mission rewards list
• NPC's will no longer ignore the player while they are attempting to interact with props (arming/disarming bombs)
• Fixed a bug where a NPC would sometimes not leave its spawn area during the Morphine Supply side mission
• Fixed a bug where NPC's would sometimes not respawn at one of the landmarks in the Dark Zone
• Several clipping issues have been fixed with various appearance items
• Some tooltips have been updated with more clear information
• And many more

PC specific

• Added new resolution scaling and lighting options
• Added support for reporting players on PC. Players can now type in chat /report
• Improvements to resolution detection and switching between display modes
• Fixed some issues with camera movement while using Tobii Eye Tracker
• Fixed screen look for minimap when using Tobii Eye Tracker
• Fixed several issues with Logitech peripherals
• Fixed several graphic issues due to dual monitor display
• Fixed an issue where players could move UI elements out of the visible screen area

As a connected online RPG shooter, Ubisoft faces a battle to keep players engaged as they gorge on the game's post-story content. Ensuring the end-game remains engaging and rewarding is one of the most challenging design aspects of MMOs and games with MMO-like qualities, such as The Division and similar RPG shooter Destiny. Will Ubisoft Massive be able to keep up? Time will tell.

• See The Division on Amazon
• Five things we love about The Division

We're also giving away a digital Xbox One copy of Tom Clancy's The Division to one lucky commenter! Simply leave a reply and join the discussion for a chance to win.

Every week, I give my take on some of the biggest Xbox news, rumors and talking points in one handy post every weekend. You can also rely on this weekly column to catch up with all the latest game releases.

Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Xbox One News.

Rumor: Grand Theft Auto 6 in production, Tokyo location shelved

File this under 'R' for Rumormill, but a source speaking to TechRadar revealed interesting details about the series' previous and future plans. Chiefly, that Rockstar is indeed working on Grand Theft Auto 6, and that the studio gave serious consideration to moving the franchise to Tokyo, Japan. According to TechRadar's source, the studio went as far as sending research teams to survey Tokyo, but eventually shelved the project for various reasons ranging from the automobile infrastructure to the game's USA-based identity.

The report also states that the groundwork for Grand Theft Auto 6 has begun, but the location has yet to be decided.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is inevitable, but we're almost certain to hear about a sequel to the Western-themed Red Dead Redemption before the next instalment of GTA. Where would you set GTA 6? Let us know in the comments!

See Grand Theft Auto V on Amazon

Killer Instinct trailer teases vampiric fighter, rankings to be reset

Killer Instinct's Season 3 is almost upon us, and the roster is shaping up nicely! We already know Tusk, Kim Wu, Halo's Arbiter and a fully-featured Rash will appear in the initial line-up, and now we know that the previously leaked Mira will join the roster too. Mira is expected to be the deceased twin sister of Maya, resurrected as a vampire. Mira leaked in an early build of Season 3, along with Gears of War's General RAAM, which is all sorts of awesome.

In addition to the new balance tweaks and features, Killer Instinct Season 3 will reset all online rankings down to Qualifier. It will give PC newcomers the chance to catch up, and give veterans the chance to slaughter newbies like myself as they ascend back up to the top. Additionally, ranked matches at Gold or above will be best two out of three, giving you a chance to recover from a mishap. Players who remain inactive at the highest Killer rank will be knocked down to Gold as well. Rest assured, though, your stats won't reset as a result of the new season.

Killer Instinct Season 3 will launch on March 29th, for Xbox One and Windows 10, will full cross-purchasing and cross-play.

Team Xbox tease E3 announcements

We're officially on the road to E3, and senior figures at Xbox HQ have begun teasing their plans. This year's E3 Expo will take place on June 14th, and Microsoft will be there in force to announce the latest and greatest games and features for our favorite console.

The Xbox team have begun reviewing their plans for E3, as noted by the following tweet from Xbox head Phil Spencer:

An hour before that, Xbox platform head Mike Ybarra tweeted similarly, excited for the future:

In my opinion, Microsoft utterly stole the show last year with the announcement of Xbox 360 to Xbox One backwards compatibility. Mike Ybarra teased to me last year that the studio was working on "two or three" features on the same game-changing level as backwards compatibility, so, I think it's safe to set our hype levels into overdrive.

On March 30th, we also have Microsoft's annual developer conference Build to look forward to, which is already teasing new features for Xbox One.

Tom Clancy's The Division promises new end-game activities soon

Tom Clancy's The Division has earned Ubisoft over $300 million dollars so far, but the studio is far from finished with their connected shooter. In this week's "State of the Game" report, Ubisoft Massive praised the game's latest patch, which brought sweeping improvements to the PvP Dark Zones, loot, and other features (head over here for the full patch notes). Regardless, hardcore Agents are already exhausting the piles of content on offer, and are looking towards the future.

The Division will pick up two free updates in the near future, one of which will add Ubisoft's take on the typical MMO "raid" formula, called Incursions. MMO raids are typically longer, more challenging boss-filled dungeons that require groups of coordinated and strategic players, and it'll be interesting to see how Ubisoft puts their spin on this PvE staple.

In the blog post, Ubisoft tease a big upcoming update that'll add new end-game activities. Whether these are the promised Incursions remains to be seen, but the studio will be revealing the details in full this Tuesday on their live stream.

See The Division on Amazon

Square Enix estimates 50 hour length for Final Fantasy XV, cactuars confirmed

In a NicoNico stream (via Silliconera), Final Fantasy XV producers discussed various topics, including the game's length, visuals, and most importantly, cactuars.

When it comes to Final Fantasy XV's length, the studio estimates that the JRPG will run at around 50 hours for the main quest alone. If Final Fantasy XV follows its predecessors, it'll likely be crammed with side activities and hidden bosses as well, pushing the final play time much higher for completionists.

When it comes to frame rate and resolution, they expect it to clock in at 30 frames per second, but acknowledged that it occasionally dips below 30. This would still be an improvement on the game's Episode Duscae demo, which suffered from significant pre-optimization frame rate issues on Xbox One.

Finally, the franchise's iconic cactus creatures, the Cactuars, will be making an appearance. The Cactuars have taken various forms in Final Fantasy games, but in XV, they'll be potent enemies capable of avoiding even powerful Shift Break attacks.

The game's final resolution will be revealed on March 31st, along with a brand new trailer. Most of the topics discussed were in reference to the game's PS4 version, given the Xbox One's tiny footprint in Japan, but hopefully we'll hear Square Enix's plans for the Xbox One version as well next week.

See Final Fantasy XV on Amazon

OneCast Ep.11 - Quantum Break extravaganza!

This week I was lucky enough to get early access to Remedy Entertainment's time-abusing shooter Quantum Break ahead of its April 4th launch. In our latest podcast, I give some of my early impressions on the game's first act and first TV episode, in an addition to a random discussion about Dell's XPS 15 9550 laptop that I recently picked up (and subsequently returned...)

Check out the podcast for details on our Ask #OneCast game giveaways, which will happen weekly for our listeners henceforth!

Giveaway – Tom Clancy's The Division for Xbox One (Digital)!

Speaking of giveaways, this week, you can win another copy of Tom Clancy's The Division digitally for Xbox One! Ubisoft's apocalyptic connected shooter has already become the fastest selling new IP in history, and is slated to get tons of updates and new content moving forward — both free and part of the game's season pass.

If you'd like the chance to jump in and get gear grinding with the rest of New York City, then simply join the discussion in the comments section below!

The winner was peachy001! Come back next week for another giveaway!

ICYMI - Some of Windows Central's biggest Xbox articles of the week

• Microsoft lets you link your Xbox contacts to the Windows 10 'Redstone' People app
• Friday Fun: Ten awesome Xbox One video game Easter Eggs
• Quantum Break's episode pack is a massive 75GB download
• Microsoft is 'not actively planning' a way to trade in digital Xbox One games
• Sunset Overdrive and Dead Space are among April's free Xbox Games With Gold
• Killer Instinct Season 3 bundles revealed for Xbox One and Windows 10
• Five indie games coming to Xbox and Windows 10 that we're really looking forward to
• Dark Souls, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 join Xbox One backwards compatibility list
• Xbox One system update rolling out, along with Xbox Windows 10 app update
• Controller Chaos turned my Twin Peaks Xbox controller concept into something awesome

New Xbox One game releases for the week ending March 27th, 2016

Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO - Racing - Milestone S.r.l.

"Play SLR EVO and experience real rally! More than 186 miles of faithfully-reproduced track and 58 cars which have made rally history! From legends of the past, such as the Stratos and Celica, to jewels of the modern era, like the Citroën DS3 and C4."

Stranger of Sword City - Role Playing - Experience Inc.

"STRANGER OF SWORD CITY is the next step in the evolution of the traditional dungeon RPG genre, which will be released on the Xbox One. This title contains the three core elements of attraction for dungeon RPGs: character creation, conquering various dungeons, and dungeon crawling gameplay."

Trackmania® Turbo - Racing & Flying - Ubisoft

"Available for the first time on Xbox One, Trackmania offers you the ultimate arcade racing universe. Test your skills in outlandish tracks and challenge your friends at home (offline splitscreen) or online."

101 Ways To Die - Platformer, Puzzle & Trivia - Vision Games Publishing Limited

"In this puzzle-platformer you'll play assistant to mad scientist Professor Splattunfuder - a scientist, inventor and weapons manufacturer of questionable sanity. ."

And that's a wrap!

This week I've been playing Quantum Break to prepare for our review, which will go out ahead of the game's launch on April 1st. For some early impressions on the game, head over to here.

Beyond Quantum Break, I've also been mulling over the idea of diving into the murky world of Dark Souls, given its availability on Xbox One backwards compatibility. I'm a tad afraid that the punishing combat will make me smash up my controller in a newb-induced rage, but we'll see.

The week ahead is going to be a big one for Microsoft, and potentially Xbox, as the annual Build conference gets underway on March 30th. So keep your eyes on Windows Central where we'll have all the latest and greatest news and events emerging from Microsoft's big event.

What games have you been playing this week? How do you feel about this week's Xbox happenings? Let us know below!

The Division is now the fastest-selling game in Ubisoft's history, and recently toppled Activision powerhouse Call of Duty as the most played game on Xbox Live. Ubisoft has ambitious plans to keep The Division's end game content fresh, and much of today's 1.0.2 patch seems geared towards improving what is already quite an awesome experience.

Some of the update highlights include better loot drops for Challenge Mode missions, a collection of bug and exploit fixes, and improvements to PVP gameplay in the Dark Zone. The full patch notes are as follows.

Gameplay

• Named enemies. will now drop better loot in Challenge mode than in Hard mode.
• Added a cooldown period for the Static Turret stun attack in order to avoid a stunlock in PvP and PvE game modes.
• Named NPCs will no longer respawn after being killed in the Open World. This will prevent situations where players were able to kill a same named NPC over and over again.
• Modifications to the weapon talent: Trained. It can now only be rolled on Shotgun, Marksman rifles and Pistols
• Its bonus has been reduced from 1%-5% to a constant 0.1%
• For the Midas SMGs, Trained Talent has been replaced with Responsive Talent which increases damage when getting closer to the target. This applies to existing weapons as well as newly acquired ones
• For all SMGs, LMGs, and Assault Rifles, it will be replaced with another randomly picked weapon talent. This applies to existing weapons as well as newly acquired ones
• Fixed a speed run exploit for the Rooftop Comm Relay mission
• Fixed an issue where weapons dealt no damage if the reload animation was interrupted by an agent's skill
• Fixed an issue where players became stuck in an emote animation if activated via chat while auto running
• Fixed a bug where skill power would be increased permanently while using the Death by Proxy talent
• Fixed a bug where experience was not being awarded for completing all side-missions in the Midtown East safe house
• Fixed instances where the Seeker Mine with Airburst / Multi-mine mod would detonate too soon, miss targets or cause no damage
• Fixed a bug where grenades would sometimes not display the blast radius warning before detonating
• Fixed an issue where some NPCs in low cover would not react to being shot by the player
• Fixed issues where emotes would cause the player model to behave oddly (missing guns, player stuck in emote animation, etc)
• Fixed a bug where weapon mods and weapon skins would not show up on other players in the game world
• Fixed an issue where DPS would not be calculated properly when purchasing a new weapon mod

Dark Zone

• Players can now heal other neutral players in the Dark zone, by using First Aid and Support Station skills
• Players are now able to fast travel to Dark Zone checkpoints, but only when coming from outside the Dark Zone
• The Dark Zone disconnect timer has been increased to 30 seconds, meaning players will remain in the game world longer when logging out while in the Dark Zone (this applies while not in combat)
• Items extracted from the Dark Zone are now properly marked as "new" items when moved to the players inventory
• Players killed in the Dark Zone now drop ammo, medkits and grenades. This loot is generated and not taken from the dying players' inventory
• Players killed in the Dark Zone will lose less Dark Zone Funds and Experience (Rogue and non-Rogue)
• Dark Zone Funds and Experience rewards for surviving Rogue status have been improved
• Dark Zone Funds and Experience rewards for killing Rogue agents have been improved
• Phoenix Credits drop have been increased on lvl 31 and 32 enemies in the Dark Zone:Please note that due to this fix causing client stability issues, we have to remove it from this update until it can be addressed in a next one
• Lvl 30: 1-3 Phoenix Credits
• Lvl 31: 2-4 Phoenix Credits
• Lvl 32: 3-5 Phoenix Credits
• Increased drop rate of High-End items from lvl 31 and 32 named NPCs in the Dark Zone.
• Increased drop rate of High-End Division Tech Material from lvl 32 named NPCs in the Dark Zone.
• Improved Dark Zone Chests items quality: Rank 30 chests will now drop Superior (Purple) items instead of Specialized (Blue)
• Keys chests now have a chance to drop High-End (Gold) items
• Dark Zone Funds drop rates and quantity on NPCs has been reduced.
• Fixed a bug where the Wildfire and Fear Tactics talents were affecting neutral players in the Dark Zone.
• Fixed instances where players would receive a DELTA error message when entering the Dark Zone
• Fixed a bug where sometimes players could not loot anything after returning to the game following a network disconnection
• Fixed Stage 1 Rogue timers not displaying correctly when Rogue players receive damage from another player

Graphics

• Fixed a few lights that did not cast global illumination

UI

• Added more information for Daily missions on the Map
• Tutorials have received some UI polish
• The Matchmaking menu now displays the mission difficulty rating more prominently
• The mini-map mission tracker has been optimized to be less confusing to players
• Fixed a bug where some of the attributes for high-end equipment were cut-off in the recalibration menu
• Fixed a bug where the Matchmaking menu for a mission would not display correctly or kept disappearing
• Fixed missing item icons in the Reward Claim Vendor's inventory
• Fixed incorrect side-missions being displayed in the Map legend

Audio

• Fixed a bug where the helicopter crash SFX would be missing from the Brooklyn end cinematic
• Fixed a bug where the Zapper Turret mod had no sound
• Fixed a bug where the audio for entering a contaminated area would be cut-off
• Fixed a bug where audio would not play when scrolling through vanity items

Localization

• Fixed Ubisoft CLUB reward descriptions in Korean and Traditional Chinese
• In-game localization bug fixes

PC

• Tobii Eye Tracking bug fixes and improvements
• On launch, the PC client now monitors PC graphic settings and applies the best settings for the user's configuration. This is unless the user has custom settings.
• Fixed an issue where the Map was sometimes difficult to navigate with a mouse
• Fixed issues with Hungarian, Korean, and Russian localizations
• Fixed an issue that prevented matchmaking while on the Map
• Removed the Store button from the Character Selection screen on PC versions of the game. Players can find the store page in the Ubisoft CLUB app directly
• Fixed increment number on Day 1 Patch Notes (was 1.1, now correctly states 1.01)

Xbox One

• Fixed a bug where players could not reconnect to the servers after suspending the game on Xbox One
• Fixed a bug on Xbox One where unblocking a player would not be reflected in-game until title reboot

PlayStation 4

• Added an option to disable the PlayStation 4 controller speaker
• Improved textures and models streaming speed
• Fixed an issue where ISAC volume could get too loud when playing with headsets

The Division is slated to receive two free content patches shortly, the first of which will add Ubisoft's take on end-game MMO-like raids. We have it on good authority that Ubisoft plans to support The Division long into the future. In addition to free updates, The Division will receive paid expansions as part of its season pass, and all the usual bug and balance fixes.

If you're yet to jump in to Ubisoft's near-apocalyptic New York City, we listed some of the reasons we're loving The Division in the below video!

See The Division on Amazon

Source: Ubisoft

I think The Division's recent beta tests were a pretty good indicator that the game was going to be something special, and millions of gamers seemed to agree — its smashing records for Ubisoft, becoming their fastest selling title to date.

The Division is insanely ambitious, being the product of not one, but several Ubisoft studios, and looks set to topple Destiny from its connected-shooter crown.

For those who don't know, Tom Clancy's The Division is a third-person tactical shooter with heavy RPG elements, set in a post-societal New York City. A smallpox virus on steroids has wiped out much of the populace, and various crazies and criminal elements have moved in to take over the city, looting and pillaging as they go. You play as an agent from the Strategic Homeland Division, or The Division for short, tasked to be the last line of defence against the total collapse of the US.

Throughout the game, you'll undertake missions either solo or in teams of up to four to wipe out fanatical faction leaders, rescue high-profile hostages, unravel the cause of the pandemic and work to restore order to a New York gone mad — all while picking up piles and piles of tasty loot.

I'm still working on a full review for The Division, but here're some of the things I love about The Division so far.

1. The game actually works

Ubisoft has a patchy track record when it comes to big game launches. Assassin's Creed Unity is notorious for denting the series' image with its menagerie of bugs, and Rainbow Six Siege — a game that is entirely multiplayer-based — was plagued with server issues extending from the game's launch.

The Division had a few early access tests on Xbox One, showing millions of players a small portion of the game's final content. All that testing appears to have paid off because I haven't yet encountered any dropped connections, latency issues or major bugs.

The Division takes place in a vast and meticulously detailed open world, which is always-online. While your progress in the story and side missions are unique to your version of the open world, you can jump in and out of your friend's worlds to share progression at will. The game's player vs. player DarkZone persistently connects you to other players and considering The Division's tactical squad-based gameplay, minimalizing latency and connection issues is paramount.

These days it seems to be a 50/50 chance whether an online game will actually work properly on launch day, I'm overjoyed to report that everything has been rock solid so far when it comes to The Division's servers. I won't lie, though; I have encountered some strange glitches with audio, where sound files get backed up into a buffer and then start playing all at once. I have fallen through the world on one occasion and discovered areas of the game that are missing textures — but, so far, there's been nothing one could consider game breaking.

If you're having trouble connecting to other players, you might need to consider reconfiguring your Xbox's NAT settings.

2. RPG systems that matter

Since the advent of World of Warcraft, I feel like multiplayer RPGs have struggled to walk the line between class uniqueness and homogenization. If classes are too unique, it can lead to imbalance and situations where you're neutering your group unless you have an expressly required class role (such as a healer). If classes are too similar, you'll never be in a situation where your group is underpowered for not having a particular class, but then why have classes at all? Homogenization is just plain dull.

In the similar RPG shooter Destiny, the three classes you could choose from in its base game were almost entirely inconsequential. Each performed very similar abilities on very similar cooldown timers, primary differences being aesthetic in nature. Even on higher level content, Destiny rarely presented reasons to work as a team to overcome its various sci-fi bullet sponges — somewhat missing the point RPG co-operative play. The Division is different.

The Division is a little more like Diablo III in the sense that all players have access to all abilities, but can tailor their class role and playstyle at will. Enjoy the healer role? Go down the Medic talent tree, and hunt gear that increases your healing abilities. Enjoy being a damage dealer? Find a sniper rifle, take all the damage modifying perks, firepower gear and aim for the head. Want to help with crowd control and defense? Go down the security tree, and avoid equipment that reduces your threat level with the enemy.

From the game's guns, mods, stats, perks, talents and skills, The Division allows you to tailor your combat role with more depth than other recent RPG shooters I've played, even exceeding the likes of Mass Effect — which is not only bold but just plain awesome. Ubisoft appears to have thoroughly nailed what an RPG shooter should be.

3. Loot addict's paradise

So far, The Division's open world feels like the culmination of everything the publisher has learned about world design over the last decade, cramming it to the brim with worthwhile activities and reasons to explore. For the most part, The Division ditches those notorious Assassin's Creed-style flag collect-a-thons.

As you wander the chaos of The Division's New York streets, frozen forever in the neon glow of an abandoned Christmas, it rains gameplay opportunities like gifts from a post-apocalyptic Santa sleigh. These can be anything from your basic go here, kill this, click on this side quests, all the way to story-driven dungeons complete with tactical boss fights.

Whether you're diving into an unexplored sewer or fighting your way through an abandoned apartment block, each area, each mission and each boss kill comes with guaranteed, sweet and succulent items that dig their little hooks into your skin and make you want more, MORE!

As mentioned, The Division's RPG mechanics allow you to tailor your playstyle in various ways, making the statistic hunt all the more satisfying. Whether you're chasing firepower, medical skill or technical prowess, The Division's spread of stats and modifiers makes loot incredibly rewarding when you know what to look for — particularly when you see the effect it can have on your damage and healing numbers.

When combined with a Diablo III-style crafting system, if you're prone to loot addiction (like me) you could be kissing goodbye to the sunlight as you game until dawn, forgoing sleep, food, and human contact. "Just five more minutes... I'll do one more quest..."

4. A world worth caring about

The Division takes place in a near-future New York City, complete with world-renowned landmarks and familiar modern day locations. Ubisoft is well known for their expertly crafted open worlds — which while detailed, can occasionally feel a little sterile. As mentioned, Ubisoft appears to have learned from criticisms about its previous games to produce something with a stronger pulse — a fact which should be at odds with its decayed setting.

The game is littered with tiny details, finer nuances and life-like NPC interactions that are a joy to discover. For example, check out the below sequence featuring a crow griefing a rat. After several hours of play, I've only seen this occur once.

Gorgeous graphics, day and night cycles and dramatic weather effects give new life to areas you may have previously traversed. The Division might not be able to call upon space-age sci-fi tropes when building its enemies and weapons, but the modern day setting twisted by a very realistic apocalypse is equal parts haunting and surprising in its own right.

Beyond missions themselves, the game provides a wealth of flavor to give context to the game's infectious world — including recovered CCTV footage, smartphone voice messages and even augmented reality reconstructions of previous events. It allows you to experience what drove the city into total anarchy, setting the stage for a cohesive narrative that Ubisoft can build on for many months (maybe years) to come. My experience with the game's main plot is limited, but all signs, so far, are quite promising.

5. The unforgiving Dark Zone

The Dark Zone is probably my favorite aspect of The Division so far. It is brutal, exciting, innovative, and captures the exhilarating essence of classic MMO open world player vs. player almost perfectly. While roaming The Division's environment, you'll only encounter other players in the game's various social hubs or those who have joined your group. Outside of the Dark Zone, the only enemies you'll meet are CPU controlled. While they do have some pretty oppressive A.I. and often deadly abilities, computer-controlled enemies are usually predictable. Human players are far less so.

The Dark Zone is a strip of New York City that cuts straight through the middle of the game's map, painted red to reflect the danger therein. When you enter this zone, players who aren't in your group can attack and kill you.

The Dark Zone is not to be confused with team deathmatch or capture the flag — it is still very much a part of the core RPG experience complete with loot and computer-controlled enemies. Ubisoft's servers will dynamically connect you with other roaming players, creating a persistent threat to your personal well-being.

There's no guarantee that you'll be attacked, and there's no guarantee that you won't be — it's that uncertainty that can make the Dark Zone a unique and paranoid place to be inside. If you're brave enough to traverse the most infected areas, the rewards will be incredible. The Dark Zone has some of the most powerful loot in the game and even has a separate levelling system and currency to encourage participation.

Players who attack their fellow agents get flagged as rogues, and can be killed for Dark Zone EXP and currency without repercussion. It might seem like a better idea to just not become a rogue, but in the Dark Zone, you can steal Dark Zone loot directly from a downed player, which can be incredibly enticing if you happen upon a player with his back turned, distracted by the extraction chopper needed to recover Dark Zone loot.

That greed can be overwhelming, and sometimes that greed can pay off big time. Other times, that greed can get you killed.

The road to review

A game like The Division is quite difficult to review, if for no reason other than its massive scope. When you disregard its story, huge play area, and combat, a major question mark hangs over its end game. I'd argue that a game that introduces behavioral incentives to remain engaged has a responsibility to keep the content fresh with regular content drops and activities that break up the potential monotony of MMO-like loot grinding.

Reaching Level 30 introduces Phoenix Credits, farmed from the high-level areas and daily quests, which can be used to purchase powerful items. Level 30 also unlocks challenge modes for the game's missions — think hard mode, but even harder. The Division also has a season pass that promises three new expansions, in addition to exclusive extra content along the way. Additionally, Ubisoft will soon patch in Incursions, which will form the basis of The Division's end game "raid" content for squad-based play. You can check out a trailer for future content for The Division right here, and the mere fact the trailer is titled "Year One" shows that the studio has extensive plans for this game.

Tom Clancy's The Division is already a massive success story, becoming Ubisoft's fastest-selling game of all time. So far, it seems that Ubisoft has side-stepped some of the mistakes made by similarly connected games and delivered something truly special in the process. Frankly, so far, this is the game that I expected Destiny to be.

Stay tuned for our full review, but I think it'll be a little more of a reflective piece. From what I've seen so far, I'm prepared to recommend The Division right now to anyone who enjoys multiplayer shooters, loot-heavy RPGs like Diablo and Borderlands, and even single player cover-based shooter campaigns like Gears of War or Mass Effect.

It has been a while since I've had this much fun in an online game, I just hope the fun lasts as I march towards the level cap.

• See The Division Xbox One Bundle on Amazon
• See The Division Xbox One Bundle on the Microsoft Store
• See The Division on Amazon
• See The Division on the Microsoft Store
• See The Division on the Xbox Store

Xbox One owners of Ubisoft's highly anticipated open world shooter Tom Clancy's The Division will gain access to the game'e first two expansion packs 30 days before they are offered to their PC and PlayStation 4 counterparts.

Ubisoft also offered a brief description of those two expansion packs;

A third paid expansion pack, called The Last Stand, will be released for all of The Divisions's platforms at the same time "next winter". In addition, players can download two free DLC packs to the game:

Tom Clancy's The Division is due for release on Tuesday, March 8.

See at Amazon

Tom Clancy's The Division is one of the biggest upcoming games of 2016, and Microsoft will help celebrate its release with a launch party at its flagship retail store in New York City starting at 9 p.m. on Monday, March 7. The game itself will be released the next day on March 8 for the Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4.

Microsoft says:

If you're interested in attending, the store is located at 677 Fifth Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Street in Manhattan.

Source: Major Nelson

We're also giving away a copy of Dying Light: The Following Enhanced Edition to one lucky commenter! Simply leave a reply and join the discussion for a chance to win.

Every week, I collect some of the biggest Xbox news, rumors and talking points into one handy post every weekend. You can also rely on this weekly column to catch up with all the latest game releases.

Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Xbox One News.

Xbox marketing head Aaron Greenberg discusses Quantum Break heading to Windows 10

This past week, Microsoft announced that Quantum Break would be heading to Windows 10, bundled free with every Xbox One pre-order. The Windows 10 version of Quantum Break will be delivered via the Windows 10 Store, and come complete with Xbox Live achievements, game clip and screenshot sharing and cloud saves — enabling you to transfer your progression from Xbox to PC and vice versa.

Quite notably, some Xbox One fans were upset about the news. Some felt that bringing the previously announced Xbox One-exclusive to PC would diminish the value of the console, and hurt its chances against the PS4. Others felt that Microsoft should've been more transparent about Quantum Break's PC version, which was previously advertised as Xbox One exclusive. Some extended their concerns into the future, envisioning a world where every Xbox One exclusive would hit PC with cross-play, worrying about the possibility of Microsoft forcing Xbox One users to go head to head against keyboard and mouse wielding PC gamers in competitive games (which, by the way, won't happen).

Xbox marketing head Aaron Greenberg discussed some of the concerns on a podcast with Major Nelson (via GameSpot), stating that the announcement's timing was due to uncertainty about when the Windows 10 version would be ready:

Aaron Greenberg also discussed some of the reasons why Quantum Break is coming to PC, noting that shipping the game to PC gives it a greater potential for success:

Even though Microsoft are taking PC gaming more seriously, Aaron Greenberg said that Xbox fans shouldn't allow the news to cause anxiety about the future of Xbox as a console:

How do you feel about Quantum Break hitting Windows 10? Let us know in the comments.

Quantum Break will arrive on Xbox One and Windows 10 on April 5th, 2016.

See Quantum Break on Amazon

Psyonix discusses Rocket League for Xbox One with Major Nelson

For those who don't know, Rocket League is a hit indie sports game popularized on Windows and PS4. The game combines competitive arcade racing with soccer, where your vehicles can be used to smash a gigantic ball into a net. Since the game's PS4 launch, Xbox One owners were wondering whether or not it would arrive on Xbox One, and late last year, Psyonix gave us the answer. Rocket League will hit Xbox One on February 17th, and Psyonix's Jeremy Dunham joined Major Nelson's podcast to discuss Rocket League for Xbox One.

Psyonix stated that the only reason Rocket League hadn't hit Xbox One sooner was a matter of dev hours, rather than exclusivity:

Rocket League for Xbox One will come with some unique car customization, including vehicles inspired by Gears of War, Halo and Sunset Overdrive. Some of those vehicles will play into the game's Xbox One achievements, which have been streamlined following feedback on the game's PS4 and PC versions:

You can pre-order Rocket League right here on the Xbox One Store, ahead of its February 17th launch.

Ubisoft expects The Division to be one of the biggest new franchise launches in history, Watch Dogs 2 confirmed

Ubisoft is projecting big sales success for The Division. In a call to investors, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot discussed their strategy for the year, the future of Assassin's Creed and some big expectations for their upcoming connected shooter-RPG, The Division.

Ubisoft also hailed Rainbow Six Siege for achieving "record engagement levels", spearheading the studio's effort to keep players hooked to Ubisoft services (and revenue streams).

Echoing the news that Assassin's Creed would ditch its efforts to be an annual series, Guillemot stated that the studio was now in a position to re-examine the franchise and give it a "new dimension". If the previous Kotaku leak pans out, Ubisoft will be taking the stealth franchise to ancient Egypt. That same leak also claimed we'd be getting Watch Dogs 2 this year, which has now been confirmed by the same investor's call report.

Ubisoft is in a good position for 2016 and beyond, even without Assassin's Creed. The Division, Far Cry Primal, on-going updates to Rainbow Six Siege, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Watch Dogs 2, Ghost Recon Wildlands and new IP like For Honor should help the studio delight investors and gamers in equal measure. Only time will tell.

Giveaway – Dying Light: The Following Enhanced Edition for Xbox One

Join the discussion in the comments for a chance to win Dying Light: The Following Enhanced Edition for Xbox One. Dying Light launched last year and became a hit for its blend of parkour, Diablo-like looting mechanics and detailed zombie-apocalyptic world. To celebrate the launch of its hefty expansion, The Following, we're giving away a digital key for the Xbox One version. The Following adds an entirely new area to the game, complete with new weapons, quests and even drivable vehicles. The Enhanced Edition also includes all of the game's previous season pass DLC content in addition to the free updates that Techland have issued over the course of the year.

The winner was kenzibit!

ICYMI - Some of Windows Central's biggest Xbox articles of the week

• Xbox One Preview Program still 'TBD' on accepting more testers
• Halo 5 will get hit with a 'Hammer Storm' with its next free content update
• ARK: Survival Evolved for Xbox One adds split-screen support with latest update
• Ubisoft sees higher revenue from Xbox One players over PlayStation 4
• Xbox is following Nintendo, not PlayStation, into the future
• You can now pre-order Rocket League for the Xbox One
• Quantum Break recommended PC requirements updated, slightly less crazy
• Xbox One owners spent over 1 billion hours gaming in January, PlayStation 4 still on top for sales
• Quantum Break will sync your progress between Xbox One and Windows 10
• Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 're-examination' means no new games in the series in 2016

New Xbox One game releases for the week ending February 14th, 2016

In Space We Brawl: Full Arsenal Edition - Shooter - Forge Reply SRL

"In Space We Brawl is a frantic couch twin-stick shooter in which you challenge friends in fast-paced space battles for up to 4 players."

D/Generation HD - Classics & Social - West Coast Software Limited

"D/Generation was an immensely popular isometric puzzle game written in 1991 by Robert Cook for PC/DOS and ported by John Jones-Steele to Windows and Amiga/CD32. D/Generation HD has been recreated from the original source code and contains all the original features and puzzles but in glorious HD graphics."

Factotum 90 - Action & Adventure, Puzzle & Trivia - TACS Games

"You're in deep space and something's collided with the ship. Main power is offline and you're trapped. It's lucky you have access to this terminal. It's a little old but with these two robots and some clever thinking you might be able to get power back online and save the day."

Unravel - Platformer - EA

"Unravel introduces Yarny, a new, lovable and endearing character made from a single thread of yarn, which slowly unravels as you move. Inspired by the unique and breath-taking environments of Northern Scandinavia, Unravel is a visually stunning, physics-based puzzle platformer."

ARSLAN: THE WARRIORS OF LEGEND - Action & Adventure - Koei Tecmo

"An exciting collaboration between The Heroic Legend of Arslan anime and the action-infused Warriors series! Experience the grand historical fantasy with ARSLAN: THE WARRIORS OF LEGEND!"

Assassin's Creed Chronicles – Trilogy - Action & Adventure - Ubisoft

"Expand your Assassin's Creed experience and discover the forgotten stories of three remarkable Assassins in brand-new settings with fresh 2.5D stealth gameplay. Play the adventures of three cult Assassins: Each chapter comes with a unique hero and a new setting all interconnected through a common plot that will only be revealed at the very end."

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 4 - Action & Adventure - BANDAI NAMCO

"The latest opus in the acclaimed STORM series is taking you on a colorful and breathtaking ride. Take advantage of the totally revamped battle system and prepare to dive into the most epic fights you've ever seen in the NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM series!"

Dying Light: The Following - Enhanced Edition - Action & Adventure - Techland

"Dying Light: The Following - Enhanced Edition takes parkour-fueled zombie survival to a whole new level. Enjoy the definitive Dying Light experience with the brand-new Legend system, improved visuals, major gameplay enhancements, and more."

And that's a wrap!

This week I've mostly been enamored with an upcoming ID@Xbox title named The Flame in the Flood, launching on February 24th, 2016 for Xbox One. The Flame in the Flood's developer, The Molasses Flood is comprised of ex-Halo and Bioshock devs, and they gave me permission to discuss some of my experiences on this week's OneCast which should go live tomorrow right over here.

What have you guys been playing this week? Join this week's Xbox news discussion for a chance to win a digital code for Dying Light: The Following Enhanced Edition for Xbox One!

As a game steeped in near-future realism, creating diverse and unique enemies probably presented an interesting design challenge for the team at Ubisoft Massive. This latest trailer gives us an idea of how The Division's enemy factions will operate, and what role they'll fill in the game's mysterious plot.

For those who don't know, The Division takes place in a near-future New York City destroyed by a man-made viral outbreak. Body bags litter the streets and buildings rest abandoned. The city is overrun with violent criminals, dangerous psychopaths and desperate survivors.

The earliest enemies you'll encounter are the Rioters, loosely organised bands of vagrants taking advantage of the social breakdown — looting and pillaging. Rioters formed some of the game's most simplistic enemies in The Division's recent beta test, but they'll rush you with baseball bats, Molotov cocktails and smoke grenades — so don't take them lightly.

Second up are the Rikers, a band of escaped convicts from Rikers Island — a real-world prison complex with an average population of 10,000 inmates. The Rikers have transformed the prison into a self-styled fortress and are expanding their territory into New York City itself. A deleted reddit post recently claimed that Rikers Island would house The Division's end-game raid content, rumored to feature teams of 8 players. For now, take that rumor with a pinch of salt!

The third faction showcased in the trailer are the Cleaners, comprised of hazmat-clad sanitation workers previously responsible for the disposal of contaminated material. The Cleaners appear to have lost their grip on reality during the collapse, turning their flame-throwers on anything, or anyone they deem to be infected.

The final group revealed are the Last Man Battalion (or LMB). The LMB are a former private military company, hired by Wall Street corporations to protect their assets, presumably to be recovered once the outbreak had ended. Sadly for them, the outbreak didn't end, and now this self-styled army has taken up a new purpose: imposing fascist rule over the surviving citizens.

These are some of the enemies standing between you — the Strategic Homeland Division — and the recovery of society. The Division answers only to the U.S. President, and its members are handpicked from all levels of the military to receive special training, intelligence, and technology. Division agents lived as regular citizens and were to be activated only as a last resort line of defence against a devastating threat. As a Division agent, it's your job to save society from itself, and bring the outbreak to an end.

The Division's beta will return on February 18th, 2016 for Xbox One owners, and will be open to everyone ahead of its final March 8th, 2016 launch on Xbox One, PC and PS4.

See The Division on Amazon

We're also giving away a digital pre-order for Tom Clancy's The Division to one lucky commenter! Simply leave a reply and join the discussion for a chance to win.

Every week, I collect some of the biggest Xbox news, rumors and talking points into one handy post every weekend. You can also rely on this weekly column to catch up with all the latest game releases.

Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Xbox One News.

Titanfall 2 will have a story-driven campaign, spin-off TV show

In an interview with Forbes, Titanfall 2's lead writer — Jesse Stern — confirmed that Respawn Entertainment is injecting a full-blown story campaign into Titanfall's sequel, repairing one of the original game's biggest criticisms.

Formerly an Xbox exclusive, Titanfall recreated the best of Call of Duty's fluid multiplayer and combined it with unique mech combat in a science fiction world. Sadly, the original didn't go to great lengths to provide story context, it seems Titanfall 2 will rectify that.

Beyond discussing Titanfall 2's campaign, Stern also remarked that the studio is exploring a spin-off TV series, but fell short of confirming that it's in active development. However, he did confirm that Titanfall 2 will feature a story-driven campaign, drawing inspiration from American colonial history:

Respawn echoed comments from EA's investor call, stating that Titanfall 2 will arrive within EA's 2017 fiscal year:

Fallout 4 patch should hit Xbox One next week

Fallout 4 recently received patch 1.3 on PC, bringing with it a payload of quest and bug fixes, as well as much needed improvements to settler management. The patch has yet to arrive on Xbox One and PS4, but the wait could soon be over according to Fallout 4's community lead:

In patch 1.3, selecting a settler will inform you what roles they're currently assigned to, without you having to have line of sight with the specific assigned object. As depicted here (via Imgur):

The full changelog can be found here, although these are the notes for the Windows PC version. Naturally, some features like new ambient occlusion settings probably won't make their way across, but the gameplay and quest fixes are a pretty safe bet.

The Division's map size compared to Fallout 4's Commonwealth, GTAV's Los Santos

Budding video game cartographer MarcoStyle has compared the map size of The Division to GTAV and Fallout 4, with some encouraging results.

According to his calculations, The Division's full map is similar in scope to Fallout 4's sizable Commonwealth. Combined with The Division's underground and interior areas, one could speculate that it'll be around as dense as Fallout 4's map as well. As I saw in the beta, many areas were either unavailable or unpopulated, so those of you who had concerns that The Division's playable space could be too limited can look to Fallout 4 to get a rough estimate of how extensive The Division's Manhattan reconstruction will be.

Those of you who have been following The Division since it's original announcement might be wondering why previously advertised areas like Brooklyn haven't made it into the full game. In a separate video, MarcoStyle retraces The Division's marketing materials which previously advertised Brooklyn as a playable area, but from the beta map, it seems as if those plans have been shelved. Still, The Division's season pass promises to add three new playable areas to the game, so there's hope some of those previously advertised Brooklyn vistas could return in a future update.

Are you happy with The Division's map size? Let us know in the comments.

Halo 5 Guardians update removes Breakout from Team Arena and more

In a detailed blog post on Halo Waypoint, 343i outlined some of the recent and upcoming updates to Halo 5 Guardians' multiplayer mode. Here are some of the key points:

• Halo 5 Guardian's networking algorithms got a tweak to improve matchmaking speeds for some of the game's more highly ranked players.

• The breakout game mode has been removed from the Team Arena playlist following player feedback.

• Several Warzone REQ cards have had their level requirements altered to reflect their potency.

• 343i use big data telemetry harvesting to determine how Red and Blue Team's colors provide an advantage in certain scenarios. As a result, Blue Team had its coloring brightened. 343i were also able to identify an area of the Eden map where Red Team had an advantage, as a red object reduced Blue Team's target acquisition on the map.

"The first thing we went about doing is combing through the vast amounts of telemetry we gather on each and every game. There were a few different key metrics that were interesting, but at the end of the day the simplest metric we landed on was looking for choke points that were biased for one team or the other."

The full blog post also details some upcoming game modes, tweaks to rankings, and more.

Giveaway – Tom Clancy's The Division (Xbox One Digital Pre-Load)

This week, we're giving away a digital code for Tom Clancy's The Division! This digital key will allow you to pre-download the game ahead of its March 8th, 2016 launch. The Division is a tactical RPG shooter, bringing together cover-shooting mechanics from games like Watch Dogs and RPG progression and loot from the likes of Borderlands. The game is set in an apocalyptic New York City, following a catastrophic viral outbreak. It's your task to discover the cause of the pandemic and survive alone in an unforgiving and anarchistic city. Check out our preview for The Division right over here.

The winner was SmoothDog! Check back next Sunday for another giveaway.

ICYMI - Some of Windows Central's biggest Xbox articles of the week

• Red Dead Redemption bringing the Wild West to Xbox One with backwards compatibility
• MMO survival-shooter H1Z1 is headed to consoles; becomes two seperate games in the process
• Gigantic ditches its closed beta NDA, will be inviting more testers soon
• Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer gets gory with the new Doom reboot
• Navigating depth, difficulty and the Dark Zone in The Division's Xbox One beta
• Mirror's Edge Catalyst gets a closed beta and new trailer
• DOOM reboot will let you battle demonic forces on PC and Xbox One on May 13
• Rainbow Six Siege's 'Operation Black Ice' free update adds a new map and more
• Cobalt is Mojang's new shooter with a focus on slo-mo combat
• Beyond Flesh and Blood brings violent mech shooting to Xbox One and PC in this latest trailer

New Xbox One game releases for the week ending February 7th, 2016

Cobalt - Platformer / Shooter - Mojang / Microsoft Studios

"Shoot, roll, punch, and jump your way to slow-motion victory in Cobalt, an action platformer from Oxeye Game Studio. Take on the role of a mysterious cyborg stranded on an even more mysterious planet in our single-player campaign, or play with friends in a wealth of coop and versus multiplayer modes."

Fortified - Action & Adventure / Shooter / Strategy & Simulation - Clapfoot Inc.

"Fortified is an explosive strategy shooter where players will defend the Earth against a menacing Martian invasion in the 1950s. Play as one-of-four pulp-inspired heroes as they fight swarms of terrifying robots with an arsenal of Cold War-era weapons and experimental technology."

Bike Mayhem 2 - Racing & Flying - Goldmark Studios

"Smash down trails, launch huge jumps, pull off insane tricks, win tons of gear, build amazing trails and challenge your friends to be the King of the Mountain! Bike Mayhem 2, the sequel to its' hugely successful predecessor that was downloaded over 7 million times!"

Dad Beat Dads - Action & Adventure / Fighting / Platformer - Stellar Jay Studios

"Dad Beat Dads is a fast-paced, local multiplayer brawler for up to 4 players. Dad Beat Dads also has the latest in Robo-Dad technology, so you can ditch your friends and play against the computer. 3 different game modes keep the gameplay fun and challenging."

Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign - Puzzle & Trivia - D3Publisher of America, Inc.

"The award winning match-3 puzzle gameplay meets Marvel's biggest Super Heroes and Super Villains in the most epic puzzle adventure. Combine your favorite characters from the Marvel Universe (including Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Venom) with deep RPG leveling, episodic events written by Marvel writers, and much more."

Krinkle Krusher - Action & Adventure / Strategy & Simulation - Ilusis Interactive Graphics

"Krinkle Krusher is an action castle defense where you cast elemental spells to defend your kingdom from twisted and hungry creatures called Krinkles. After several generations of peace, they happen to come back exactly when the Ancient Tree bears its first fruits in centuries, and of course, a cake was made from it.."

And that's a wrap!

This week I've been playing Cobalt, which is proving far more confusing than expected, and Microsoft's exclusive MOBA, Gigantic. Gigantic recently had its closed beta NDA lifted, which means I'll soon be posting a full preview here on Windows Central in the next week or so.

With games like Red Dead Redemption and Deus Ex Human Revolution hitting backward compatibility, I've started to give up hope of ever clearing my backlog. What have you guys been playing this week? Let us know in the comments for a chance to win a Tom Clancy's The Division Xbox One pre-order digital code!

I went into The Division's Xbox One closed beta with limited expectations. Memories of Watch Dog's "downgrade" and Assassin's Creed Unity's less-than-perfect launch condition are still fresh in my mind. Trusting video game marketing materials is something I've learned not to do.

Thankfully, Ubisoft opted to let some of us get our hands on The Division early, ahead of its March launch date. I was fully prepared to be disappointed, but I can say with confidence that the complete opposite occurred — Ubisoft just might have a blockbuster on their hands.

Deconstructing New York City

I've never been to New York City, but if I ever make it there, I hope it's in better condition than it is in The Division. For those that don't know, The Division takes place in a post-apocalyptic near-future, where a deadly virus has wiped out millions of people, basic infrastructure, and much of the government. As a member of the Strategic Homeland Division, (or, The Division for short), the president empowers you to uncover the true cause of the outbreak, piece back civilization and unravel the conspiracy that destroyed it — by any means necessary.

The collapse of society has utterly ravaged New York City, due to the weaponized pathogen's spread on U.S. bank notes. Ubisoft has created something truly special to visualize that premise. Ubisoft's various studios aren't strangers when it comes to lovingly-detailed open-world reconstructions of real locations. We've seen it in Assassin's Creed, we've seen it in Watch Dogs, but the areas in previous Ubisoft open-world games, while beautiful, felt little more than paintings upon which to build gameplay. The Division goes a bit further.

Seeing an iconic contemporary Western city turned on its head with such incredible levels of detail synergizes with the game's premise like no other Ubisoft title has achieved previously. The beta provided us with an area representing roughly 20% of what will be available in the full game, but there was still far more detail to examine and explore than was humanly possible in the beta's 4-day duration. Piles of body bags abandoned in makeshift quarantine centers; blood-stained apartments looted and left behind; roaming vagrants eating rats to survive. Despite how vast and surprisingly vertical the beta's play space was, I found only trace amounts of copy and paste — which bodes well for the full game.

Beyond the haunted architecture and monolithic skyscrapers, The Division boasted incredible weather effects and day and night cycles, complete with snowfall, thick fog, and enveloping darkness. The mist was particularly impressive, catching light sources to create vivid hazing — which was particularly awesome when it involved enemy gunfire and flamethrowers. And all this was running at 1080p on Xbox One; the PC version can scale all the way up to 4K.

The beta was intended to test core aspects like server stability, connectivity and the like, so it featured little in terms of story — but what was on offer felt promising. Structurally, the game tasks you to build a base in the heart of New York and to do that you'll find yourself rescuing (or recovering) various specialists scattered around the city. The only story mission available in beta involved the rescue of a doctor for your medical wing, which took place in a seamless dungeon-like area within Madison Square Garden.

After you save her, she returns to your base and gives you a lead to find another key character. Presumably, each one you recover will lead you further towards unraveling the conspiracy that ended society.

Beyond main missions and cut-scenes, the game also features audio recordings, text files and "Echoes", which add further context and, in some cases, a dose of humanity to the lifeless Manhatten streets. Your equipment can sometimes parse data from various sources like discarded phones and CCTV cameras to build a holographic reconstruction of a prior event, rendering augmented reality ghosts in a scene you're able to explore.

Hovering the cursor over different individuals reveals personal information, similar to Watch Dogs, and some of these Echoes also form parts of quests in an Arkham-style detective mode fashion. There's a ton of potential here, combining the scant story details offered in the beta was more than enough to immerse and enthrall, and left me hungry for more.

Dialing back to Madison Square Garden, building interiors seem to lend themselves well to adding variety to the game's locations — which could very easily fall into a trap of repetitiveness. Regardless of The Division's meticulous detail, I think the visual themes could get a little dull over time. It'll be interesting to see how the full game tries to inject some locational diversity. While exploring, I did dive into sewers, abandoned subways and climb apartment buildings, many of which weren't fully populated with quests and loot, but each gave a clue as to how Ubisoft could diversify exploration in the full game.

If I had to sum it up, The Division's deconstruction of New York City is a true work of art, simply breath-taking. Every aspect of it complements the harshness of its plot — and the scary truth that it could all become a reality some day. The Division is, after all, based on a real-world simulation that foretold the collapse of society, should it suffer a similar bio-terror attack.

When it comes to atmospherics and immersion, Ubisoft has truly outdone themselves with The Division, it's not often a game comes along that is such a pleasure to write about. However, like the collapse of society, it could all fall apart if The Division's gameplay isn't on point. Thankfully, it is.

Depth, Difficulty, and the Dangerous DarkZone

The Division combines elements of various genres to create something bold, unique and gratifying. Borderlands proved you could get RPG-style progression and loot into a mainstream shooter, Destiny proved it works in an entirely online scenario, but it's on The Division to show it works in a tactical, cover-based shooter. So far, it seems like they've proven it with confidence.

The Division is often described as an MMORPG, but I don't think that's accurate. Players can seamlessly appear in your world, but it's not a persistent experience like a true MMO, such as Star Wars: The Old Republic or World of Warcraft. The Division doesn't force any multiplayer aspects on you (unless you enter the DarkZone, more on that in a bit). If it's your preference, you can play the entire game solo, completely avoiding contact with other players. You'll have your own version of The Division's sizable world, similar to Diablo and Borderlands.

As described above, that vast world is atmospherically on point, but how well suited is it to gameplay? Thankfully, from what we've seen so far, it's incredibly well executed.

The Division features cover-based third-person shooting, which is very reminiscent of Watch Dogs and some of the more recent Splinter Cell games. You can target new cover using the cursor, and then sprint to new positions (making careful considerations for how safe it is to break cover). The systems, when combined with very thoughtful map design, result in a broad potential for tactical play. Enemies will also use cover, attempting to surround and flank you and your teammates, using grenades and other abilities to keep you on your toes. The enemy types weren't particularly varied in the beta, but there's every likelihood we'll see much more in the full game. Fantasy games like Diablo and sci-fi games like Destiny have a broader canvas for creating unique enemy types, at least visually.

The tendency to realism may also impact the game's loot as well. I recalled an interview on Star Wars The Old Republic, where the developers discuss how to make lightsaber upgrades feel unique in an RPG, considering they're just hilts. I think The Division could suffer from the same design problem.

Once you get a specific-type of a real-world gun, it's hard to imagine how they can make visual upgrades compelling in the future. How do you make a high-level AK-47 appear more visually prestigious than a low-level one? And so on. It'll be interesting to see how The Division — steeped in near-future realism — tackles these design challenges.

With regards to raw mechanics, The Division delivers once again — the guns feel excellent to use. Headshots deal critical damage as you'd expect, you get satisfying number pops for each. Every weapon type feels distinct and weighty, and that distinction extends to mods and play styles too. You can switch between two primary weapons and a sidearm (with infinite ammo, for desperate situations), and the game gives you plenty of room to customize your experience. Weapon mods, different types of character roles, sniping from afar or getting up close with a shotgun — The Division offers lots of ways to play strategically as a team, complementing each other's playstyles, with diverse and meaningful differences.

Speaking of team play, the beta was by no means a walk in the park. The outside world is easy enough, delivering a relatively pedestrian experience with radiant quests like "go here", "loot this", "fight these guys", and so on, but the dungeon-like story mission was a little different. For the Madison Square Garden mission, you were able to join matchmaking queues to invite up to 3 other players, as well as increase the difficulty of the scenario. More players meant harder enemies and fighting through those waves of crazed looters in a team on hard difficulty presented an exhilarating challenge. And this was only the first story mission.

Even the most sophisticated A.I. can't test a player as well as another human can, and The Division knows it. That's why they've created the Dark Zone.

The Dark Zone is a (quite literally) quarantined area of the game, seamlessly shared with other players — whether you're grouped with them or not. The Dark Zone represents the areas of New York hit hardest by the pathogen. High walls surround the Dark Zone, giving it a foreboding presence from the outside. Inside, there are no signs of life, characters don ventilation masks to traverse it, and the urban decay is turned up several notches. That decay extends to the zone's rules, or well, lack thereof.

The Dark Zone is pure anarchy, and you will be killed by other Division agents while inside this zone. While the story details are a little scant, the Dark Zones house some of the game's most powerful, tantalizing loot, and to obtain those items is an incredibly fraught affair.

When you do find an item in the Dark Zone, whether looted from an NPC or an abandoned storage crate, not only does the item appear on your character's back in a bright yellow quarantine bag, but it has to be extracted. Extractions can only happen in designated areas, and calling a loot extraction chopper alerts all nearby players to your presence. Those players may simply wish to use the helicopter as well, or, occasionally, they may want to hunt you down, shoot you in the back and steal the loot for themselves — I know this, because I was one of those players.

When you kill another agent in the Dark Zone, you're flagged as a rogue agent, complete with a bounty, and can be seen by all other players on the map. The bounty dissipates over time, but for 80 seconds or so (increasing per innocent player you kill), you're a valid and desirable target.

On the first day of beta, the Dark Zone was total chaos as players got to grips with (or blatantly ignored) the rules. On the second day, a tentative peace appeared to form, few players were willing to break the ceasefire, roaming in groups to explore what the Dark Zone had to offer. Occasionally an extraction flare would fire, and several rogue agents would pop up on the map, as greed took hold.

The Dark Zone draws on that player-driven emergent gameplay that is typically only found in MMOs or survival-based online games. Players that meet in the Dark Zone can emote and communicate in a rudimentary way, or simply let their guns do the talking. Permanently connected games like ARK: Survival Evolved and Day-Z are well known for allowing players to grief each other, but Ubisoft have very carefully segregated this type of play into its own, quite literal quarantine zone, and by the looks of things, it can be completely avoided.

Like many things in The Division's limited beta, freedom to choose played heavily in my experience. I could easily switch between a healer, damage dealer or support character; I could change my playstyle depending on what weapons I equipped and modified; I could indulge in difficult team-based missions against A.I. opponents or dive into the danger of the Dark Zone. And all this was offered in The Division's beta, in a tiny part of what will be on offer in the full game.

Building a Blockbuster

The hype for The Division is off the charts, and the beta further catalyzed expectations. However, questions remain. Just how big will the world be? How much content will be on offer? Will there be a rewarding reason to continue playing once the story is over? Will I need the season pass to keep up with the community? Should players expect regular content drops to keep the end-game fresh? Is The Division intended to end once the credits role?

When you willfully inject behavioral incentives like loot and EXP grinding to keep people addicted, I'd argue that developers have some responsibility to keep the end-game content from becoming stale. As a connected open-world shooter with MMO-like mechanics, such as aggro management, class roles, and EXP progression, it's on Ubisoft to manage expectations about what The Division truly aspires to be.

Questions aside, The Division's beta showed nothing short of incredible potential. If Ubisoft has played their cards right, The Division may not only be a blockbuster, but it could be the standard bearer for connected games for years to come. I'll see you in the Dark Zone.

See Tom Clancy's The Division on Amazon

Ubisoft launched a beta test for Tom Clancy's The Division this past week. The studio's ambitious RPG shooter has seen unprecedented demand, garnering positive assessments across major outlets and social media alike.

Only those who pre-order the game are guaranteed access at present, but Ubisoft has extended the beta test for an additional day to accommodate people who signed up to the waiting list.

Speaking on their official forum, a Ubisoft representative hailed interest in the game, explaining that invites would go out to users on the waiting list in chronological order:

I'm working on a preview of The Division based on my experiences in the beta, but I'm reasonably confident Ubisoft have a hit on their hands. The RPG systems are deep, the gameplay is polished and rewarding, and the Darkzone PVP is quite tense and unique. Whether or not the full game delivers on the hype remains to be seen, but so far, all signs are very positive.

You can sign up for the beta waiting list over here, by selecting "Join the waiting list", or by pre-ordering.

If you've experienced The Division, what are your thoughts so far? Let us know in the comments.

The Division launches on March 8th, 2016 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

See The Division on Amazon

Source: Ubisoft Forums

Ubisoft's latest open-world RPG 'Tom Clancy's The Division' is set to release in the coming months, with a beta test scheduled to kick off in little under a fortnight. As the release draws close, more details are beginning to emerge surrounding various pre-order choices.

Microsoft has announced that The Division will be receiving its own Xbox One console bundle in March that will launch simultaneously with the game. The bundle is now available for pre-order from the Microsoft Store for $399, but is expected to be obtainable from various resellers once the game hits store shelves. Alongside a 1TB Xbox One console, the bundle includes an Xbox One controller, a digital copy of The Division and an Xbox Live Gold 14-day trial.

Those in the United States who pre-order the console will be entitled to a redeemable code to access the upcoming beta test, which begins on January 28th on Xbox One. Despite this offer, the console won't ship until a later date, making the code somewhat useless without already owning an Xbox One console.

The Division releases for Xbox One on March 8th and is now available for pre-order from the Xbox Store for $59.99, or alongside an Xbox One console from the Microsoft Store.

• Pre-order The Division Xbox One Bundle
• Pre-order The Division on Xbox One

Those wondering whether Tom Clancy's The Division will be a shallow loot-fest should check out this new trailer.

Ubisoft Massive's MMO-shooter hybrid is targeting a spring launch, and the studio have begun revealing a little more about how the game will play as you stalk the abandoned New York City streets.

In The Division, you play as a special forces agent sent deep into an abandoned New York City following a biological disaster. Your task is to seek out the source of the contagion, spread on bank notes, which has crippled the US government and all basic services. The trailer offers us a glimpse at its gritty story treatment, which appears to firmly earn its 18+ age rating.

The trailer also reveals a little more about how you'll build up a base of operations, level up, obtain loot and perform typical MMO-like class roles like tank, support, damage and healer.

Players will be able to team up at safe houses, scattered throughout the game's sizable world. You'll be able to take the fight to the game's various A.I. criminal factions, who are entrenched and taking advantage of the near-apocalypse.

The Division isn't all about fighting computer-controlled combatants, though. The trailer also offers a glimpse at the Dark Zone, designated areas where players will be able to find even more powerful items. However, the items can found in the Dark Zone are contaminated, and can only be used if successfully extracted from the area. While in this zone, you can also attack and be attacked by players who might want to steal your items for themselves. If you can stomach it, you can even betray your own teammates to keep all the loot for yourself.

The Division launches on March 3rd for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Pre-order customers get guaranteed access to the beta test, set to begin soon.

• Pre-order The Division for Xbox One on Amazon US ($59.96)
• Pre-order The Division for Windows on Amazon US ($59.96)

Welcome to our weekly ICYMI for Xbox news!

We're also giving away a copy of Star Wars: Battlefront for Xbox One to one lucky commenter! Simply leave a reply and join the discussion for a chance to win.

We'll still be posting major Xbox announcements in the main feed. However, I'll be collecting some of the more nuanced news, rumors and talking points into one handy post every weekend. You can also rely on this weekly column to keep up to date with all the latest game releases too.

So without further ado, here's the latest edition of This Week in Xbox One News.

Missed The Division's Alpha? Check out these leaked gameplay videos

Tom Clancy's The Division makes up part of Ubisoft's 2016 onslaught, and if the queues I saw at Gamescom and EGX were any indication, interest in this game is on the high end (to say the least).

In The Division, you play as a member of an eponymous organisation tasked to uncover the causes behind a massive pandemic. The disease spread on bank notes, causing society to collapse in less than a week. The Division agents are supposed to be self-sufficient soldiers, capable of completing missions independent of command. The game has heavily connected multiplayer elements, such as asynchronous PVP, but it can also be enjoyed entirely solo without teaming up, or fighting against other players.

Be sure to check out the videos as soon as possible, as Ubisoft will likely issue takedown notices soon.

The Division launches on March 8th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Phil Spencer discusses cloud compute for third party games, backwards compatibility and more

Xbox head Phil Spencer frequently engages fans on Twitter, and he's had quite a bit to say in the past week.

Regarding Titanfall 2, a fan asked whether the game would lose access to Microsoft Azure as a result of it going multiplatform. Of course, the first Titanfall became a poster-child for Azure, appearing in commercials to tout the way Microsoft's server infrastructure helped power the game's A.I., analytics and more. Phil Spencer replied that Azure is available to any game, even PS4 exclusives - after all, Microsoft Azure is a large business in its own right.

It might work out cheaper for EA to use its internal server infrastructure to power Titanfall 2. Whether or not it can keep up with Microsoft Azure in terms of quality and features is another matter entirely, though. Considering Respawn Entertainment own the Titanfall IP, and studio head Vince Zampella stated that he partnered with Xbox specifically for Azure, there's every chance we could see Titanfall 2 remain in the Microsoft cloud.

Phil Spencer also fielded a few questions about backwards compatibility. Regarding previously announced backwards compatible titles such as Halo Wars and Call of Duty: Black Ops 1, Phil said that the dates for those titles haven't yet been announced, but the team were actively working to get them ready for Xbox One.

Phil also replied to an inquiry about backwards compatibility for the original Xbox, stating that an achievements system would need to be figured out beforehand. As noted by justinmorgan57, backwards compatibility for the original Xbox is potentially easier to accomplish than the Xbox 360, as it shares an x86 hardware architecture with the Xbox One.

Motiga updates fans on the status of its upcoming Xbox One and Windows 10 universal game, Gigantic

Gigantic is an upcoming shooter/MOBA hybrid for Xbox One and Windows 10. Gigantic is special, not only for its great gameplay but because it'll be among the first games released as a Universal Windows App across Xbox One and the Windows 10 Store.

Sadly, the game's independent developer, Motiga, recently suffered layoffs - but the remaining staff are soldiering on, and recently provided fans with an update on Gigantic's progress.

Motiga noted that switching Gigantic from two separate clients to a single, Universal Windows App has been a difficult challenge, but the developer strongly believes in Microsoft's vision for the Universal Windows Platform, as noted below.

Early next year Motiga will ship a new build to its closed beta testers on Xbox One and Windows 10. This new version will be a Universal Windows App, possibly the first available on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. Some of the benefits include improved matchmaking, changes to the core gameplay mechanics and tons of additional content. Read the full list of improvements over on the Gigantic blog here.

I've played the game at Gamescom, and, despite not being a fan of MOBA-type games, Gigantic helps gamers accustomed to all sorts of genres find enjoyment in its third-person, team-based gameplay. If you haven't checked out Gigantic before, you can do so over on GoGigantic.com, and if you believe in Microsoft's universal app vision, keep a firm eye on Gigantic.

Konami is hiring for a new Metal Gear following an exodus of Metal Gear developers

If there was an annual award for this year's most reviled publisher, I'm pretty sure Konami would top 2015's proceedings. The drama between Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima and IP owner Konami has dominated video game news over the past year. Hideo Kojima and Konami recently unceremoniously parted ways, but that hasn't stopped Konami's plans for one of gaming's most beloved franchises.

Kojima's contract forbids him from discussing his time at Konami (and apparently, from attending award ceremonies), but the reports haven't been pretty. Beyond removing Hideo Kojima's name from Metal Gear Solid marketing and box art, Konami is reported to have made life very difficult for the staff working under Kojima.

The supposed 'power struggle' between Hideo Kojima and Konami resulted in the abrupt cancellation of a wildly anticipated Silent Hill sequel, a Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that was quite obviously rushed to completion. Reportedly, Konami also began treating uninvolved Kojima Productions staff very poorly, resigning video game developers to menial jobs, installing CCTV cameras in offices and hiring supervisors to monitor breaks.

Konami strangely denied reports that Kojima was leaving the company following MGSV's completion. Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be a fabrication, as Kojima recently re-opened Kojima Productions as an independent studio, signing a deal with Sony to build a PS4 and PC game with a small team comprised of former Metal Gear developers.

If you're a game developer looking for work, and Konami's reported behaviour doesn't bother you, you might be interested to know that the studio has begun hiring "highly skilled" developers to build the next Metal Gear. It doesn't sound like a smartphone game, at least.

Regardless of whether or not the reports about Konami's strange behaviour are true, it's quite obvious that the studio has a long journey ahead of it to regain consumer trust. Metal Gear is, at least for now, synonymous with Hideo Kojima.

EA and Visceral are hiring for a Star Wars action adventure game

In a piece of job listing news that fills me with far more optimism than a Kojima-less Metal Gear, former Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond and Legacy of Kain writer Amy Hennig could be working with Visceral Games to develop the Star Wars action adventure game that we so very desperately deserve.

Visceral (Dead Space, Battlefield Hardline) are known to have been working on a Star Wars game for some time, but this new job listing offers tantalising hints about the game's nature.

Given Jade Raymond's experience with open-world action adventure games like Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs, EA could be onto a serious winner here. As someone still basking in the glow of The Force Awakens, I surely hope we'll get a glimpse at next year's E3.

Giveaway - Star Wars Battlefront for Xbox One

This week we're giving away an Xbox One copy of Star Wars: Battlefront! Simply join the discussion below to enter.

The winner was Lazy666Beard! Congrats! To everyone else, check back next week for another giveaway!

ICYMI - Some of Windows Central's biggest Xbox articles of the week

• Check out how much time your Xbox One controller spent in your hand during 2015
• Hacker group claims it brought down Xbox Live this week, pledges to do it again
• Minecraft for Xbox gets huge free update with new blocks, mobs and more
• Gigantic to get fresh beta build with new characters and more in early 2016
• Super Party Sports Football review: Soccer meets physics puzzles on Xbox One
• Halo: Reach, Fable III, and 14 other Xbox 360 games gain Xbox One compatibility
• Forge map editor is part of the newest free update for Halo 5: Guardians
• Acclaimed RPG The Banner Saga will fight its way to the Xbox One on Jan. 12
• Plex on Xbox One is now free to use
• Review: Fallout 4, post-hype post-apocalypse

New Xbox One game releases for the week ending December 20th, 2015

ARK: Survival Evolved (Game Preview) - Action & Adventure, Survival - Studio Wildcard

"Stranded on the shores of a mysterious island, you must learn to survive. Use your cunning to kill or tame the primeval creatures roaming the land, and encounter other players to survive, dominate... and escape!"

And that's a wrap!

This week I've been struggling through ARK: Survival Evolved in between sessions of Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: The Old Republic - it's almost as if a recent movie had some influence on me.

It's encouraging to see the backwards compatibility list grow this week, even if it was just over a dozen titles. Hopefully, Microsoft will increase the visibility of backwards compatible titles on the Xbox Store, and release sales figures to entice some of the other heavy hitters on the UserVoice request page. Mass Effect 2 and 3, Red Dead Redemption and Elder Scrolls V would've been a pretty swell Christmas present.

Will you be stepping away from gaming for the holidays? Or is the vacation from work simply an excuse to play even more? Join the discussion for a chance to win Star Wars Battlefront for Xbox One!

Welcome to our weekly ICYMI for Xbox news!

We'll still be posting major Xbox announcements in the main feed. However, I'll be collecting some of the more nuanced news, rumors and talking points into one handy post every weekend. You can also rely on this weekly column to keep up to date with all the latest game releases too.

So without further ado, here's the latest edition of This Week in Xbox One News.

Next big Xbox One update will be in February

Last week, Microsoft delivered the New Xbox One Experience dashboard update to the general public. The update contained a more intuitive design, a fresh guide menu, improved load times and Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. Mike Ybarra and the Xbox platform team aren't satisfied, though, as they're already making plans for future updates.

Speaking to Major Nelson on his official podcast, Mike stated that the engineering team have already begun discussing how the next Xbox feature update will look. He explained that the next Xbox updates will arrive in February 2016 to ensure the console's OS remains stable over the holiday period.

During the podcast, Mike Ybarra also discussed Xbox One's backwards compatibility. Phil Spencer tasked a team to work on a solution for the feature, given its popularity on the Xbox One's UserVoice page. After a six-month investigation, Microsoft's engineers began to uncover a way to emulate the Xbox 360 hardware within the Xbox One, despite the physical differences.

If you haven't read it already, Mike Ybarra offered some hints as to what future Xbox One updates may contain in our recent interview. Don't forget to check out Major Nelson's podcast over here.

Xbox take a jab at Sony over backwards compatibility, Phil Spencer touts "deep" selection of games incoming

Speaking of backwards compatibility, Xbox UK appear to have taken a jab at Sony in a video showcasing backwards compatibility. A couple of years ago, Sony infamously trolled Microsoft for its now removed disc restrictions with a sarcastic instructional video. Xbox UK produced a similar video, during which they ask, "why pay for games you already own?", likely referencing Sony's questionably priced Playstation Now streaming service. I see what you did there, Xbox UK.

Additionally, Phil Spencer recently took to Twitter to reiterate that Microsoft has a large list of upcoming backwards compatible - beyond the 104 currently available.

A quick perusal of the UserVoice page reveals Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption and various Call of Duty games to be among the most requested titles. We know that Bethesda is on board with Fallout 3, 2K Games are bringing Bioshock - whose parent company also owns Rockstar Games, the powerhouse behind Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. Despite speculation to the contrary, Activision has also pledged their support with Call of Duty: Black Ops, indicating that other titles in their back catalog might arrive as well.

What games would you like to see the most? I'm all about Mass Effect. Speaking of which...

EA might be bringing its Xbox 360 library to Xbox One via EA Access

Microsoft headlined Xbox One backwards compatibility with the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect, a game in one of EA's most prominent franchises. The first game, however, was published by Microsoft Studios, prior to EA's purchase of its developer - Bioware. I'm speculating, but it seems that Mass Effect 1's X360 publishing rights made it easier for Microsoft to include the game in the first wave of backwards compatible titles. However, many fans were disappointed by the absence of the EA-published Mass Effects, 2 and 3.

Part of the issue with Mass Effect 2 and 3 is the multiple-disc format the games come in, but that shouldn't affect digital versions. EA are on board with the program, though, having bought Mirror's Edge to the platform already. Rather than throwing their entire back catalog at Microsoft, EA might be taking a more considered approach for its wider portfolio. In a Twitter exchange (via ICXM), EA said it was considering bringing its Xbox 360 titles to the Xbox One via EA Access:

EA Access is already a highly regarded for its value, delivering exclusive early access demos, tons of free games and other discounts. Were it to add its Xbox 360 back catalog as well, I suspect subscription numbers will only increase further.

Star Wars: Battlefront balance tweaks outlined

Speaking of EA, Star Wars: Battlefront is nearly here! Battlefront's developer, DICE, recently took to its official blog to detail some of the balance tweaks made to the game since its open beta a few weeks ago:

I'm happy to see tweaks to the spawning system, which led to battles devolving into spawn-camping shooting galleries. The addition of bullet drop to certain weapons and weak points on Imperial walkers should add a layer of complexity I felt the game was sorely lacking. What do you think of the changes?

Star Wars Battlefront launches on PS4, Xbox One and PC on November 17th, 2015.

Tom Clancy's: The Division picks up new details thanks to new Q&A session

Ubisoft recently hosted a new Q&A session for their upcoming multiplayer RPG-shooter hybrid, The Division. The Division pits players in an abandoned New York City following a global pandemic that threatened to wipe out civilization. The game features quasi-MMO elements such as asynchronous multiplayer, players can either work together or compete for survival, and even betray each other to further their own goals.

Ubisoft answered a raft of fan questions in the video (often via Surface), which I'll summarise here:

• Player skills, such as healing abilities or offensive abilities are assigned to the right and left bumpers. You can only have two active skills at a time, but you can swap out any that you've unlocked at whim via the game's menu. Doing so in combat isn't "recommended", but seems possible.
• Weapons can be customised with scopes, muzzles, new magazines and other attachments, but also have a cosmetic slot for changing the paint job or pattern.
• You can access four independent character slots.
• You can customize your appearance, including hats.

The Division has suffered multiple delays, but it looks both ambitious and promising in equal measure. I saw the game running live on a Xbox One at 2014's Gamescom convention, and even in that early build I was intensely impressed (particularly by the sadly cancelled companion app). Are you interested in The Division? Let us know below.

The Division launches on March 8th, 2016, for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Fallout fun - check out this NPC battle featuring 1000 Deathclaws

Fallout 4 has already cleaned up shop, shipping 12 million copies worth a whopping $750 million dollars. As expected, Fallout 4 videos are hitting YouTube thick and fast. Gameplay, game guides, those familiar (but hilarious) glitches, but there's also some awesome NPC battles. The best I've seen so far comes from Cosmic Contrarian, linked above, whose beastly PC pitched 100 Brotherhood of Steel knights against 1000 Deathclaws.

I'd really like to see what 100 knights vs. 10000 ghouls would look like, but I'm not sure what kind of crazy setup you'd need to accommodate such a blood bath!

ICYMI - Some of Windows Central's biggest Xbox articles of the week

• Review: New Xbox One Experience - change for the better?
• How to access Xbox 360 titles on the New Xbox One Experience with backwards compatibility
• The original Xbox and Halo: Combat Evolved celebrate their 14th birthday today
• Buy an Xbox One hardware bundle and get an additional free game until Nov. 21
• Xbox One NXOE update now rolling out worldwide
• Fallout 4 ships 12 million copies to retailers, game 'generating record sales'
• NXOE: How to access and manage your pins
• U.S. Xbox One sales outpace PS4 in October
• Official Xbox One Chatpad now on sale at Microsoft Store for $35
• Xbox One backwards compatibility feature update begins rolling out

New Xbox One game releases for the week ending November 15th, 2015

Gems of War - Puzzle - 505 Games

"From the creators of Puzzle Quest, play the new Puzzle/RPG/Strategy mash-up, GEMS OF WAR! Battle against epic bosses or other players. In Gems of War, you battle your foes not just with swords and sorcery, but with a puzzle board!"

Fallout 4 - RPG / Shooter- Bethesda Studios

"Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, welcome you to the world of Fallout 4 - their most ambitious game ever, and the next generation of open-world gaming."

Rise of the Tomb Raider - Action & Adventure- Crystal Dynamics

"Featuring epic, high-octane action moments set in the most beautifully hostile environments on Earth, Rise of the Tomb Raider delivers a cinematic survival action adventure where you will join Lara Croft on her first tomb raiding expedition."

And that's a wrap!

This week, like millions of others, I've been fully immersed in the ruined world of Fallout 4. Hopelessly addicted, scavenging building supplies, creating forts everywhere, sneaking through skeletal buildings, stomping feral ghouls, wielding a pistol in one hand and a Pip-Boy 3000 in the other - I can't get enough.

I think it's a bit of a shame that Rise of the Tomb Raider had to share a launch window with Fallout 4 this week. Rise is a tremendous game, but I think it's fair to speculate that it'll be overshadowed by the radioactive might of Fallout 4 for quite some time.

What games have you guys been playing this week?

Ubisoft has once again delayed the release of its highly anticipated open world RPG shooter Tom Clancy's The Division. The game will now be coming out in the first quarter of 2016, rather than sometime in 2015, for the Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4 platforms.

Ubisoft revealed the delay via a statement posted on the game's official website. It didn't go into details about why the launch date was changed, saying only that Ubisoft and its development teams "want to ensure the game not only meets our high expectations but also those of our fans and players alike." The Division was first announced at E3 in June 2013 for a planned release in 2014. Ubisoft later decided to push the release date into 2015 before today's announcement.

Ubisoft also mentioned the new release date for The Division in its quarterly financial statements today, adding that the first quarter of 2016 will also see the launch of a currently unnamed "new triple-A title."

Source: Tom Clancy's The Division, Ubisoft