Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy spins onto Xbox Game Pass with August update

thesixthaxis.com:

Microsoft has announced a small clutch of games coming to Xbox Game Pass in the start of August, and it’s the expected Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy that is leading the way.

Crash will arrive later this week on 8th August, but is being preceded by the day one launch of Creatures of Ava, and followed next week by Mafia: Definitive Edition.

Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy is a fantastic remake of the original PlayStation platformer trilogy, starring the very radical marsupial in Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, all completely remade by Vicarious Visions. It’s the latest game from Activision Blizzard’s library of games that is being drip fed onto Game Pass since the company’s acquisition at the end of last year, following on from COD Modern Warfare 3 at the end of last month, and Diablo 4 all the way back in March.

N.Sane Trilogy is fantastic, though, and we said back with our 2017 review that “As far as remakes go, you can’t get any better than this. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is exactly how fans envisioned it – an unadulterated celebration of a PlayStation pioneer.”

Next week we then have Mafia: Definitive Edition, a similarly ground-up remake by developer Hangar 13, who lifted the original game’s narrative and action and dropped it into their modern engine for Mafia III.

Microsoft are keeping things pretty light in early August, but we can expect a bit more hustle and bustle to Game Pass announcements in the second half of the month, as they look to make a splash at Gamescom 2024.

There’s some pretty sizeable changes coming to Game Pass in the next few months, as well, with price hikes and a relaunch of the regular Xbox Game Pass service called Xbox Game Pass Standard. This will now include Xbox online multiplayer, and have the full library of back catalogue games, but will no longer have day one games. This is seemingly a calculated move just to push people to the even higher prices Game Pass Ultimate, if they