Android Gaming Headlines and Updates: PUBG Mobile, Among Us, Xbox Beta, and More

This week has seen some odd goings on in the world of mobile games. For one thing, the planned Among Us sequel has been cancelled not because nobody likes the first one but because everybody does.

Meanwhile the highly anticipated Forager has gone missing a day before it was due to hit the Google Play Store, and nobody knows why. Big Brother: The Game has a release date, but nobody knows how it’s going to work.

In other news, it looks like PUBG Mobile might just have a path back to the Google Play Store in India, and NieR Reincarnation has been confirmed for a western launch.

For the latest new Android games and sales, check out the Saturday companion to this article. 

Announced almost a year ago at G-Star 2019, Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds is a slick-looking anime-inspired multiplayer RPG with cel-shaded graphics and a fairly nifty story. You play as somebody playing a game. The game the person you’re playing as is playing is called Ni no Kuni. Far out, man. It’ll be here later this year, but in the meantime there’s a teaser trailer to enjoy. 

This story is becoming increasingly tedious, but we started following it so we’ll continue. After dropping Tencent as its publishing partner owing to border tensions between India and China, PUBG Corporation is reportedly in talks with Reliance Jio – a huge deal in India – to take over, meaning there may be light at the end of the tunnel for Indian PUBG Mobile fans in withdrawal. 

It’s not often that the success of a game is the reason for the cancellation of its sequel, but that’s what’s happened with Among Us, a fun, casual asymmetric multiplayer game that’s recently skyrocketed in popularity thanks to its appeal to Twitch users. All of the features that were destined for the sequel will now appear in the original. 

This is an odd one. Forager, the open world crafting game that started life as a game jam entry before finding favor with Humble Games, has suddenly been slapped with a delay just 24 hours before it was due to go live on mobile. We don’t know why, but we’re fairly certain that Forager will be worth the wait. 

A joint project between Endemol and 9th Impact, Big Brother: The Game is a very intriguing prospect. Players will get to choose between being contestants or spectators, with an apparently life-changing prize available to the person who manages to complete all the challenges and survive all the evictions. 

NieR Reincarnation has been approaching with the elusive air of a coy spy. We’ve had a couple of fairly uninformative trailers, but no confirmed release date, nor any confirmation that the game will even be published in the west. Until now. Along with a new, infuriatingly vague, trippy trailer Square Enix has assured us that NieR Reincarnation will eventually wash up on western shores. 

Updates

Developers like to celebrate when their games pass important milestones, and this week sees Square Enix celebrating the six month anniversary of War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius – which still has a way to go before it has as many months under its belt as words in its name – is holding a host of giveaways.

Following last week’s launch of the Xbox Game Pass Beta app, which allows Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to stream Xbox games on their smartphones, Microsoft has updated the Xbox Beta app to allow players to stream games from their own consoles. Other new features include the ability to capture and share in-game footage.