Xbox Game Pass Wave 2 Lands Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy Day One, but Check the Exit List

The second August wave of Game Pass is out, and this time the headline writes itself. Microsoft confirmed on Xbox Wire that Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, the new game from Plague Tale studio Asobo, arrives day one on August 27 for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, playable on console, PC, cloud and handheld. After a first wave built on breadth, this is the marquee bombshell that wave 1 was missing.

Resonance is set fifteen years before A Plague Tale: Requiem and follows Sophia, the fierce plunderer players first met there, on a journey to the Minotaur's Island, where she faces deadly trials and puzzles while staying a step ahead of the army chasing her. Getting a full-priced Focus Entertainment release on launch day is exactly the kind of month-maker the service leans on, and if you were on the fence about the game, the subscription just made that decision easy.

Video: Focus Entertainment on YouTube

The rest of the wave, day by day

Egging On, the fragile-egg platformer that closed wave 1, is available today and now reaches the cheaper Premium tier too. August 19 is the busy day: the dark souls-like platformer Vapor World: Over the Mind lands day one in Game Preview for Ultimate and PC members, joined by the BlazBlue roguelite BlazBlue Entropy Effect X and the Africanfuturist heist game Relooted, both on Premium as well. The cozy life sim Starsand Island follows on August 20. August 25 brings the stylized FPS racer Aerial_Knight's DropShot plus Blood Dungeon, a day one survival platformer from the creators of Nidhogg. Young Suns launches its 1.0 on August 31, the turtle-fishing incremental Shelldiver closes things on September 1, and Wolfenstein 3D quietly became playable on Series X|S and cloud on August 12. On the perks side, Once Human players on every tier get a console avatar, a monthly Meta Pass and XP boosts from August 25, a nice bonus on top of the active Once Human codes worth redeeming this month.

The exit list stings more than usual

The catch is what leaves on August 31: Another Crab's Treasure, I Am Your Beast, Neon Abyss, One Lonely Outpost and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Remastered Edition all walk, with NBA 2K26 following on September 6. Another Crab's Treasure and I Am Your Beast are two of the best short games on the service, so if either has been sitting in your backlog, this is the two-week warning. Our honest read: wave 2 is thinner than wave 1 on volume, but one day one Plague Tale outweighs a dozen filler drops, and August ends up one of the stronger Game Pass months of the year.