We've spent quite a bit of time demoing PlayStation VR games for our January Year of VR issue. Alongside the big pricing and timing announcement for the hardware, Sony gave us a chance to dive into some of the games launching alongside and shortly after the headset releases in October.

Unlike Rift and Vive, the PlayStation VR launch lineup is far from solidified, though Sony expects around 50 games. For many of these, the demos are still early enough that it's hard to get a complete sense of how these games will shape up. It's important to understand that developers launching with the hardware still have six months, quite a lot of time, to polish and perfect. Here are some impressions from the Game Informer staff.

BattlezoneDeveloper: Rebellion

Microsoft announced today that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Alan Wake, and Pac-Man are all now available to play as backwards compatible titles on Xbox One.

We knew Alan Wake was on the way, thanks to a promotion related to the upcoming Quantum Break, and Symphony of the Night was accidentally revealed in a leak, but Pac-Man is a surprise.

Alan Wake, Castlevania: SOTN & PAC-MAN are now available on Xbox One Backward Compatibility https://t.co/qPMRNrLoTQ pic.twitter.com/A55On4TWIY

Bryan Singer's X-Men Apocalypse opens in theaters on May 27. After you watch the trailer below, which shows off almost every major character in an action scene, I think you'll agree that May 27 can't come soon enough. It looks like Signer and company are going to be doing some crazy things with Apocalypse (played by Oscar Isaac).

The trailer clocks in at just over two minutes, and most of its footage hasn't been shown yet. Good luck wrapping your brain around this film's plot. Almost every sequence makes it look like the world is ending. Again, May 27, please get here as soon as possible.

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The season pass and first DLC content for Lego Marvel's Avengers has been revealed, and it looks like the $10 pass is going to deliver plenty of content.

The DLC kicks off with the Classic Captain Marvel Character & Level Pack and the Classic The Masters of Evil Character & Level Pack on March 29. Each goes for $2.99, as will subsequent DLC packs (detailed below. All text from Warner Bros.)

However, the season pass only costs $9.99 and apart from the packs below, also now includes access to The Avengers Explorer Character Pack (Iron Skull, Scuba Iron Man, and Space Iron Man), The Avengers Adventurer Character Pack (Hyperion, Scuba Captain America, and Space Captain America), and Thunderbolts Character Pack (Atlas, Citizen V, Jolt, Mach V, Meteorite, Songbird, and Techno).

Last week Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney wrote a scathing editorial about Micosoft's UWP initiative, calling it a thinly veiled attempt to monopolize the Windows ecosystem. Given Epic's close past with Microsoft, working on both the Gears of War series and operating as a sounding board for the development of Xbox technology, I asked him if he voiced his concerns with Microsoft before he took his gripes public.

"We've been following UWP for a long time," he says. "The idea of running apps in a more sandboxed way that makes installing new apps safer, borrowing techniques from the iOS app store and elsewhere to create a next generation safer Windows environment. I've always been concerned that it will be tied to an effort to close Windows as an open platform. With Windows 8 and the initial release of Windows 10 it was certainly a closed format.

We've pulled together everything we know about 2016's video game releases in one handy location. This rundown of gaming goodness is a living, breathing list, and should help you plan out your gaming calendar for the next few months and beyond.

We promise you won't be sorry for bookmarking this and coming back to find out when your most anticipated games are scheduled to land on your PC, console, handheld, or mobile device. If you see anything we’ve missed, please let us know in the comments. Please note that games will not get assigned to a month until they have confirmed release dates. Prior to that, they will appear in the bottom grouping (confirmed, but undated).

Former Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata died last July, though his legacy in the games industry lives on. That was demonstrated in a lovely animated tribute shown at last night's Game Developers Choice awards.

The three-minute short features references from Iwata's early days as a programmer up to the end of his prolific career. 

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A Taiwanese ratings board has a listing and box art for BioShock: The Collection on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Twitter user lifelower provided a link to the ratings board. No other details are given by the listing, such as a release date or the Collection's full contents, but it's alluring nonetheless.

Previously, lifelower spotted an Xbox One ratings listing for Rocket League that turned out to be correct.

In a formidable year with several worthy contenders. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt took home the top prize of the GDC Choicd awards. Over the course of the back-to-back award shows, Her Story creator Sam Barlow was ultimately the belle of the GDC ball, taking home five awards from the GDC Choice and IGF.

Ori and the Forest also took home multiple awards. Here is the full list of winners:

Before the Choice Awards, Capybara Games president Nathan Vella took the stage for the third year in a row to hand out the Independent Game Festival awards. Here is the complete list of winners:

When Razer announced it's ultra-light Blade Stealth laptop at CES, it did so with a companion product that would turn it into a full-fledged gaming machine. Today, Razer is opening up pre-orders for its Core standalone, plug-and-play graphics card enclosure.

The Core holds a GPU and connects to compatible laptops (the Blade Stealth and the upcoming Blade refresh) via Thunderbolt 3 connection. The device supports AMD's new XConnect technology that makes the Core truly plug-and-play, alleviating the need to reboot the laptop after connecting.

Razer's GPU enclosure supports full-size graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia at launch. Only the Thunderbolt cable is required to give compatible laptops a boost with the external graphics card, and the Core includes its own set of four USB 3 ports and ethernet connectivity.