Halo Studios Suffers Job Losses Shortly After Campaign Evolved Launch

Update: Xbox source says they're not "layoffs", but "external contractor shifts".It's been just nine days since the release of Halo: Campaign Evolved (a remake we loved enough to slap a 10/10 on it) and now a few employees at Halo Studios have indicated they've left the company.The revamped campaign appears to be off to a good start, at least on Xbox, with around 900k sales across console and PC. However, despite that early success, several Halo Studios employees have taken to LinkedIn recently to share that they are no longer employed by the developer.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/ha...ved-launch

Here's What The Ghost Recon Wildlands Upgrade Looks Like On Xbox Series X|S

How the new Xbox versions stack up.A newly-upgraded version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands officially arrived on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S yesterday, and therefore we've got some footage to bring your way of both versions following the major update.Various YouTube channels have been showing off this footage, but the easiest comparison is via the ever-reliable Fuzion Xbox Testing, which has separate videos for both the Series X and Series S gameplay.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/he...-series-xs

Halo 1 Co-Creator Reveals His Verdict On The Campaign Evolved Remake

"Been slowly playing through Campaign Evolved on Heroic".Everyone's been sharing their thoughts on Halo: Campaign Evolved over the past couple of weeks since it first arrived with the Premium Edition, but what does the Halo 1 co-creator, Marcus Lehto, think of the game so far?Lehto played a massive role in bringing Halo to life back at the turn of the millennium, working in major roles on Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo: Reach before departing Bungie in 2011. In regards to Campaign Evolved, he's got mostly great things to say about it, highlighting that he really loves the upgrades and is having a lot of fun.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/ha...ved-remake

Take-Two CEO Hails 'Astonishing' GTA 6 Pre-Orders, Explains Lack Of Disc Version

He suggests discs don't make sense for certain releases.We've very much on the path towards GTA 6's release now - Take-Two has reconfirmed today as part of their earnings release that it's still scheduled for November 19th, while also hyping up the "Extended Look" on Netflix in late August.It's yet to have been revealed what kind of sales we're looking at for pre-orders alone, but Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has described them as "unprecedented", "astonishing" and "exceptional".Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/ta...sc-version

A Year Later, Grounded 2 Is Preparing For A Major Week Across Multiple Platforms

What do you think of the Xbox first-party title?It's been a while since we last talked about Grounded 2 here at Pure Xbox, but the Xbox first-party title has been progressing nicely ever since its initial release back in late July of 2025, and now it's preparing for a major week ahead.August 11th marks the "Into The Abyss" update for the game, which focuses on one of the largest areas of Brookhollow Park in the form of the pond, which now allows for deep underwater exploration. We recently had a chance to view some behind-closed-doors footage of Into The Abyss, and it certainly looks a great addition to the game.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/a-...-platforms

Gears Of War: E-Day Players Share Their Initial Thoughts On The Multiplayer Beta

Now live in early access.Last night marked the arrival of the Gears of War: E-Day Beta in early access for pre-order customers and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate / PC Game Pass members, so we've started to see a bunch of impressions over the past few hours.We were very intrigued to see how people would react to this one when we went hands-on a few weeks ago, as although we had some great things to say about it, we also had a few concerns as well:Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/ge...layer-beta

Evercade Partners With Xbox For Two Major Game Collections & DOOM Nexus Handheld

A retrotastic collaboration.We've spoken before about how much we love Evercade here at Pure Xbox, and they've clearly been working very closely with Microsoft and Team Xbox in recent months to launch a series of Xbox-owned titles on their platform.The latest two have just been properly unveiled after teases earlier in the year, and they're the DOOM Collection and the Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie Collection, both of which are launching on October 30th for £24.99 / $29.99.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/ev...s-handheld

Surprise! Quake Adds Free New Episode With 600G Xbox Achievements

To celebrate its 30th anniversary.QuakeCon has officially kicked off today in Texas, so we assumed we'd get at least one surprise reveal at some point over the next few days, and one has already arrived in the form of a brand-new episode for Quake!The episode is known as "Dawn of the Machine", and it features "19 all-new maps across a cohesive campaign" along with a new soundtrack and Deathmatch map. Here's how MachineGames describes it:Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/su...hievements

Evercade Partners With Xbox For Two Major Game Collections & DOOM Nexus Handheld

A retrotastic collaboration.We've spoken before about how much we love Evercade here at Pure Xbox, and they've clearly been working very closely with Microsoft and Team Xbox in recent months to launch a series of Xbox-owned titles on their platform.The latest two have just been properly unveiled after teases earlier in the year, and they're the DOOM Collection and the Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie Collection, both of which are launching on October 30th for £24.99 / $29.99.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/ev...s-handheld

Free Play Days: Try These Xbox Games For Free (August 6-9)

Your latest set of FPD freebies for the weekend.Is it Thursday already?! That means it's time for a new batch of Xbox Free Play Days titles, and this week's selection is a particularly good one, featuring NBA 2K26 and a couple of Ghost Recon games amongst other things.The highlight here for some people will be Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, which has literally just received a free upgrade for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S this afternoon.Read the full article on purexbox.com


https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/08/fr...august-6-9