The Late-Summer Xbox Game Pass Lineup Is Stacked

​​Xbox Game Pass’ initial August additions were somewhat of a letdown, thanks to a lineup anchored by Hades (amazing) but not much else. For the back half of the month, Microsoft seems to have turned up the heat…with a cloud version of Need for Speed Heat. (I’m so sorry. I can’t help myself.) Anyway, here’s everything coming to Xbox Game Pass in the next few weeks.

August 17

Humankind (PC)

Need for Speed Heat (Cloud, via EA Play)

Star Wars Battlefront II (Cloud, via EA Play)

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Cloud, via EA Play)

August 19

Recompile (Cloud, Console, PC)

Train Sim World 2 (Cloud, Console, PC)

Twelve Minutes (Cloud, Console, PC)

August 25

Psychonauts 2 (Cloud, Console, PC)

August 26

Myst (Cloud, Console, PC)

Of course, whenever games come to Xbox Game Pass, games also leave Xbox Game Pass. The following titles will leave the library on August 31:

Blair Witch (Cloud, Console, PC)

Double Kick Heroes (Cloud, Console, PC)

NBA 2K21 (Cloud, Console)

Stranger Things 3: The Game (Cloud, Console, PC)

In short, the late-August lineup is absolutely stacked. Humankind sounds like a rock-solid 4X game, if you’re into those. The reimagined version of Myst, one of the most quintessential puzzlers of all time, was previously announced for PC, but is apparently coming to Xbox via Game Pass. Train World Sim 2 is about trains. What more do you need?

And then there’s Twelve Minutes, a narrative-driven time loop game with some serious Hollywood talent: Daisy Ridley, James McAvoy, and Willem Defoe. Kotaku tends not to preview games more than once as, more often than not, doing so just feeds into the hype machine. But Twelve Minutes is the rare game we’ve dedicated two previews to—one in 2015 and one four years later in 2019. It’s been in the works for a bit and has looked intriguing the whole time. I’m excited to finally check it out.