Xbox Game Pass: Outer Wilds Among Nine Games Leaving Service on New Year's Day

Outer Wilds, the acclaimed time loop adventure from Mobius Digital, is among nine titles leaving Xbox Game Pass at the turn of the new year. Microsoft's subscription service, which is known to shuffle its library of games every month, did not mention these titles' removal in its latest Xbox blog. Scrolling down to the ‘Leaving Soon' section on the Xbox app, however, reveals that there are nine games on track to leave the service on January 1, 2023. Given it's in the Xbox app, this is basically official.

As one of the best titles to be leaving Game Pass, Outer Wilds features a bizarre premise where you play an unnamed space explorer stuck in a time loop. Every 22 minutes, the solar system's star goes supernova, thereby resetting the planets and particles back to their original state. Not to be confused with the space-set RPG The Outer Worlds — also available on Game Pass — here you're tasked with exploring the secrets of an extinct race and solving the overarching mystery.

Outer Wilds was given a Xbox Series S/X upgrade in July via Game Pass — enabling 60fps — and will soon be leaving the platform.

Other major titles leaving the service include Square Enix's Scarlet Nexus, where you master psychokinetic powers to battle in expert hack-and-slack segments to unlock the mysteries of a Brain Punk future. The Pedestrian, which recently dropped on PlayStation, as part of the PS Plus Extra and Deluxe catalogue, will be departing on January 1 as well.

Earlier this month, Xbox brought Hello Neighbor 2 onto its subscription service — a day-one launch — taking you back to Raven Brooks as an investigative journalist to spy on your creepy neighbour. And while that's limited to a single-player experience, its multiplayer spin-off title, Secret Neighbor, will disappear off Game Pass on New Year's Day.

Xbox Game Pass will bid goodbye to the following nine games, starting January 1, 2023.

• Iron Harvest
• Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars
• Tropico 6
• Scarlet Nexus
• Secret Neighbor
• Outer Wilds
• Gorogoa
• The Pedestrian
• Embr

You can choose to purchase all these games at a 20 percent discount before they leave Game Pass for good. Microsoft also has its annual Xbox Countdown Sale running until January 2, 2023, offering heavy discounts across several titles. Games like Elden Ring, Gotham Knights: Deluxe Edition, and Need for Speed Unbound saw their first discounts since launch.

Earlier in December, Xbox Game Pass introduced 11 exciting additions on Game Pass, which included three day-one launches: Hello Neighbor 2, Justin Roiland's High on Life, and a retro-styled RPG Chained Echoes. The catalogue also included the much-revered Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, where you relive comedic interpretations of all nine episodes in the epic titular film series. Metal: Helsinger, a rhythm-based, demon-slaying experience, also finally made it to Xbox One.