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It's great to see new games joining the Xbox Game Pass Essential tier — Microsoft's cheapest version of the service as things stand — but for whatever reason, they don't seem to be getting proper announcements anymore.
We've seen this happen a few times in recent months, and it's happened again over the past few days with two games suddenly joining Xbox Game Pass Essential in the form of No Man's Sky and theHunter: Call of the Wild.
This was discovered by the folks at True Achievements, and the Xbox Store pages highlight the evidence:
Both of these games are now playable across console and PC with your Xbox Game Pass Essential description, and it's perfect timing for No Man's Sky in particular following its massive new "COSMOS" update the other day.
As for the other Game Pass tiers — Premium, Ultimate and PC — we're expecting Microsoft to announce more titles for September on Tuesday, so stay tuned to Pure Xbox for more details ASAP.
But yeah, this is weird... why is Microsoft releasing titles onto Xbox Game Pass Essential without revealing them ahead of time? Maybe there's a hidden reason behind it? In any case, we're certainly grateful for the two new additions!