Guild Wars 3's on the horizon—and as part of that release, developer ArenaNet got a little nostalgic in a news post last week. It shared a healthy handful of details on its incoming MMO, including an aim to fix something that shook PCG's own Lauren Morton off the second game.

It also shared an interesting tidbit about the first Guild Wars game. Namely—try as they might, ArenaNet couldn't shake off the MMO tag: "Guild Wars Reforged is, at its core, a game about a small team: a player and their assembled team of henchmen or hero NPCs or other players they want to bring along with them, overcoming challenges in a predominantly instanced game.

"Unless you invited them along, you never saw other players except in the game's social hubs. When we released the original Guild Wars, we branded the game as a CORPG (cooperative online RPG); however, the branding never stuck, and everyone informed us we'd released an MMORPG."

I suppose I'm guilty of doing the same—though it makes sense, given I'm a Final Fantasy 14 fan, and that also happens to be a set of basically single-player RPGs that just so happens to share an online world. Granted, there's plenty you can team up for, but the same goes for Guild Wars 1.

It's particularly interesting because the things that ArenaNet determined as setting it apart from other MMOs are actually more popular in modern MMOs than they've ever been. FF14 and World of Warcraft both have systems where you can fill out your party members with NPCs, and a higher emphasis on soloable content as the years have gone on.

It was a point of contention for Raph Koster (who worked on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies) when I spoke to him earlier this month for our MMO column—observing that open-world sandbox MMOs, the type Guild Wars 1 sought to set itself apart from, fell out of favour in exchange for instanced theme parks with social hubs.

In other words, when you describe a game where you rarely interact with players outside of social hubs, you can describe a ton of modern MMOs depending on how strict you're being—sure, I'll see players occasionally divebomb a mob in my periphery in WoW or join a mob of particle-effect flinging adventurers for a public event, but I'm not exactly talking to anybody.

Anyway, ArenaNet eventually leant in: "We even won multiple MMO-of-the-year awards! We gave up on the CORPG angle since it didn't stick with players, and we simply embraced what everyone told us: we'd shipped a unique kind of MMORPG."

Assassin's Creed Shadows received what is supposed to be its final update ahead of the release of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. But fans have noticed that the Black Tides update has left things open for more Yasuke and Naoe content.

Spoilers for Assassin's Creed Shadows' Black Tides update follow

Despite being promised as the "real ending" to Yasuke and Naoe's story, fans have discovered that things aren't quite as final as expected. As Assassin's Creed fan account Zephryss reports, "We might get a New Assassin's Creed Shadows DLC or even a sequel in the future."

At the end of the quest, Yasuke suggests passing the magic cube macguffin to the mortal enemies of the Templars, in order to keep it out of their hands, to which Naoe responds – spelling it out – "You think we should contact the Brotherhood of Assassins," adding, "maybe one day we'll seek them out."

So while Black Tides was supposed to be the finale for the duo, many now speculate that this won't be the case. According to Zephryss, associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois hinted during the now-archived Assassin's Creed Shadows anniversary stream that, just as Assassin's Creed Mirage received surprise DLC last year, over two years after it launched, anything is possible for the future of Shadows.

Although this may not manifest in a proper sequel for Assassin's Creed Shadows, as – aside from the Ezio trilogy – it's not exactly a series that sticks with its protagonists for more than one game.

However, the series has in the past brought back characters in future entries or DLC expansions, most notably being the return of Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Kassandra in Assassin's Creed Valhalla's DLC. So perhaps we see Naoe and Yasuke return as supporting characters in a future entry, or more DLC in a few years' time. Plus, the DLC hints at more Basim, so perhaps there's room for crossover in whatever he does next.

Ubisoft admits Assassin's Creed Shadows' story didn't land "as we hoped," so its final update is trying to fix it

Xbox is under fire yet again. It's teasing layoffs as part of a "reset", reportedly closing Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and more, and it can't present a coherent plan—all just days after unveiling upcoming games at its Xbox Games Showcase.

Rightfully, Xbox has been criticised by industry figures in response, including a former PlayStation exec. Now, Moon Studios CEO and Ori creator Thomas Mahler has taken to X (spotted by VGC), damning Xbox Game Pass.

"The Game Pass strategy could've worked if people would've shown up for it," Mahler claims, suggesting that the service's offerings (particularly new, exclusive games) weren't enough to keep people paying every month.

"You need those games your studios are producing to become smash hits, cultural events that everyone wants to play—but what was the big Xbox game in recent years that was just delightfully good? That game doesn't exist.

Almost every single first-party studio in recent years has been floundering. You'd want Bethesda to create a 'Skyrim in Space' that ought to be better than Skyrim was cause that was an old game: But we got Starfield instead…[Xbox] need to have good deals with devs so developers are actively incentivized to produce massive hits, not just slop out mediocre content like a factory."

Mahler adds that Game Pass is "a little like Communism," in that if you don't give people an incentive to pitch in and subscribe, then the whole system "comes crashing down". When Xbox raised the price of Game Pass last year, it lost "millions" of subscribers, according to Matthew Ball, games industry analyst and newly-installed Xbox chief strategy officer.

It's worth noting that while Xbox's first-party lineup has struggled arguably since the launch of the Xbox One in November 2013 (ouch), Game Pass has served up some third-party hits. In fact, three of last year's game of the year nominees—Expedition 33, Hades 2, and Hollow Knight: Silksong—were available on the service day one. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 joined a while later, too.

The issue is that these games are available elsewhere, so they're not solid incentives for players to sign up for an expensive subscription. Forza Horizon 6 is the first big exclusive game for Xbox in a long time, breaking the records set by its predecessor. But one (timed) exclusive isn't going to move the needle to the degree the company demands.