Microsoft

Sorry, Russia! Xbox One Will Launch In Only 13 Countries This Year

At E3, Microsoft said they’d launch the Xbox One in 21 countries this November. Today, they’ve altered that forecast a little bit, slashing it down to 13. Here’s Microsoft’s official Xbox blog with the news: At E3, we announced that Xbox One would be available in 21 markets around the world at launch. This was…

What It’s Like to Have an Xbox One At Home Now (If You Work For Xbox)

If you’re a powerful person at Microsoft, you may already have an Xbox One in your home. Such are the perks. What’s that like? Two of them talk about it. Of course they’re only saying nice things, but this is the best we have for now… These new (first?) impressions of home Xbox One ownership…

In case you missed the livestream demonstration of Microsoft’s game-making toolkit Project Spark last week, you can watch a video of the whole thing right here.

Kinect No Longer Mandatory For Xbox One (But Will Still Come With It) [UPDATE]

Another backflip? Back in May, Microsoft said that you’ll need have the motion-sensing Kinect plugged in at all times in order for your Xbox One to function, but now they’re reversing course once again. We already knew that you could turn off the Kinect, but now Microsoft says it doesn’t have to be plugged in…

Xbox Live Family Subscriptions Convert to Individual Accounts Aug. 27

In preparation for how Xbox Live will function once Xbox One gets here, Microsoft will convert Gold family subscriptions to individual accounts beginning on Aug. 27. Since everyone in the house will now have to pay for a subscription, Microsoft is adding another three months of Gold to anyone affected. It’s all in a notice…

Xbox One Ditches One Of Xbox Live’s More Annoying Limitations

Good news: Microsoft’s Xbox Live online service is going to undergo some noteworthy changes for the Xbox One, and will do away with at least one of the current system’s more annoying limitations. If you’ve ever tried to play a “Games for Windows Live” PC game while your roommate watches Netflix on your Xbox 360,…

Find Out All About Microsoft’s Project Spark Game-Maker Right Here

I’ve been intrigued by Project Spark, a build-your-own-game app for Microsoft platforms (Windows 8, Xbox 360 and Xbox One), since Jason first told me about it. Today, we’ll learn a bit more. Down below starting at 7:30PM Eastern, the game’s developers are doing a live hands-on demo of the game in action:

Below, the lovely indie game announced for Xbox One at Microsoft’s E3 press conference this year, is actually just a timed exclusive—it’ll hit other platforms eventually.

First, there wasn’t going to be a headset included with the Xbox One. But now, Microsoft says that feedback from gamers is the reason that every one of their next-gen consoles will include the communications peripheral

Sharing And Streaming Will Be Free On PS4 (But Not Xbox One)

You’ll need to pay for premium membership to play (non-free-to-play) games online with a PS4, but not to share them: Sony prez Shuhei Yoshida clarified on Twitter today that you can stream and record PS4 gameplay footage without paying any PlayStation Plus fees. In contrast, yesterday Microsoft clarified that you’ll need an Xbox Live Gold…

Here’s Everything That Comes With The $500 ‘Day One’ Xbox One

Some of you already have pre-orders in for the Xbox One and it’s simply a matter of waiting until you can find out when it’s actually going to be in stores. You might think you already know enough about Microsoft’s next-gen console but, this morning, the folks in Redmond are showing off what comes with…

Taiwan Animators Come Up With Better Gamertags Than Xbox Live Trolls

Next Media Animation has made a good living offering allegorical reenactments of controversies—many of them in video gaming—and setting them to the sonorous tones of a Mandarin voice-over. I wasn’t expecting them to do something on Xbox Live’s new Enforcement United Project so soon, however. Well, hey, it’s Monday in Taiwan, too, I suppose. In…

Does Your Gamertag Have Herpes? Beware Xbox Live Enforcement United

I do not envy Xbox Live’s enforcement moderators. They have an endless and thankless task policing the service’s notoriously juvenile user base. And mind-numbing, too, if a the experience offered by “Enforcement United”—Xbox Live’s new crowdsourced tattling system—is any indication. Announced last week, Enforcement United is going to be part of a self-policing strategy designed…

The Xbox One’s Insides Have Changed A Little Bit Since E3

The Xbox One we saw at E3 isn’t quite the Xbox One the team at Microsoft has in their hands right now. They’ve been making a few tweaks to the system, Xbox exec Marc Whitten shared on Major Nelson’s podcast today Whitten covered a few other updates on the internal status of the Xbox One.…

The Xbox One Is Apparently Designed To Stay On For TEN YEARS

People used to laugh when Sony said the PS3 was going to be around for a decade (even though it was a totally fair thing to say!), so I can only imagine those same folks’ reaction to word that the next Xbox isn’t just designed to be around for a decade, but stay powered on…

John Carmack Talks Xbox One Backlash And Kinect Privacy Concerns

Super-whiz programmer John Carmack thinks some of the “witch hunt” against the Xbox One was unjustified, but he didn’t love all of the Microsoft’s original policies, either. In this clip from his marathon Quakecon keynote, Carmack forecasts the inevitably of cameras like Kinect and seems less excitable than most about machines that are constantly checking…

John Carmack on PS4 vs. Xbox One Specs: They’re ‘Very Close’

At the start of his QuakeCon keynote, legendary tech-whiz John Carmack offered some observations about the biggest two contenders in the coming console wars. You can watch the clip from Carmack’s keynote above. While he says he hasn’t done enough benchmarking to be able to do a straight-up comparison between the PS4 and Xbox One,…

You Can Use Video Capture Devices On Xbox One. But What About PS4?

Xbox One users will be able to use third-party capture cards and devices to record gameplay video just as they did on the Xbox 360, Microsoft has told us. This is in addition to the built-in capture feature the company has announced for their next-gen console. But what about the PS4? While the PS4 has…

Xbox One Offers A Possibly-Better Way To Wait For Multiplayer Matches

The Xbox One will come with a matchmaking system called Smart Match, and in a new blog post today on Xbox Wire, Microsoft shares some details about the new Xbox Live feature. It’s a revolutionary way to sit around and wait for multiplayer games to start. Well, maybe not. But in a list of the…

The Xbox One Controller Costs $60; the Headset is $25.

Microsoft finally got down to officially telling everyone the official price of an extra Xbox One controller, and it’s $59.99. The Xbox One’s headset—which isn’t included in the box—is $24.99. This is important because existing Xbox 360 controllers and compatible headsets won’t work with the Xbox One (Microsoft reasons that Kinect, included with every Xbox…