Xbox Game Pass adds Mass Effect, Outer Wilds in January

Xbox announced today the first batch of games it will add to Game Pass in 2022. The new games include the recently released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and the critically acclaimed Outer Wilds. Three of the games are available today, with coming in the next two weeks.

The three games that debuted on Game Pass today are Olija, a 2D adventure game; Gorogoa, a hand-drawn puzzle game; and The Pedestrian, a side-scrolling puzzle platformer. All three games are available on console, PC, and cloud platforms.

More games are coming to Game Pass starting on January 6, including Mass Effect: Legendary Edition for console and PC. The same day, Outer Wilds and Embr will also join Game Pass, both for cloud, console, and PC. Spelunky 2 and Anacrusis will join the service on January 13.

As always with Game Pass titles, we lose some games in order to get others. The games leaving the service by January 15 are Desperados III, Ghost of a Tale, Kingdom Hearts III, Mount & Blade: Warblade, Pandemic, and Yiik: A Postmodern RPG. PUBG: Battlegrounds is also going off Game Pass on January 10 and will become free-to-play on January 12.

The company usually adds a second batch of games to Xbox Game Pass later in the month, so we’ll be waiting to see what those will be.

Rachel Kaser

Rachel Kaser is a gaming and technology writer for from Dallas, Texas. She's been in the games industry since 2013, writing for various publications, and currently covers news for GamesBeat. Her favorite game is Bayonetta.