Microsoft

There Are Two Versions of Halo 4 on iTunes. You Don’t Want Either of Them.

Loaded with official artwork from the Xbox 360 hit and padded with dozens of glowing reviews, the two Halo 4 games that made it through Apple’s strict app approval process this week are, quite obviously, not what they claim to be. Spotted by a reader of AppAdvice, Toan Tran’s Halo 4 and Dung Bui’s Halo…

Halo 4 Problem Banned “Less Than 200” Players, Microsoft Says

When users began pouring into Halo’s official online forums complaining that a new map pack had been inadvertently banning them from matchmaking multiplayer, it seemed to be a widespread problem. Well, according to Microsoft, it was about as widespread as those people who had gone to post on the forum. A statement provided to Kotaku…

Halo 4 Players Are Getting (Sort of) Banned For Downloading a Halo 4 Map Pack

The farce surrounding the release of Halo 4’s Crimson Map Pack has got a whole lot more farcical, with some users complaining that those who downloaded and began playing the pack for free—like Microsoft told them to—are being banned from certain portions of the game. The game’s official forums are full of people saying that,…

There’s a Zelda Game On The Windows 8 Store! (Don’t Buy It)

For a store that’s meant to be all about control, it sure didn’t take long for someone to sneak a fairly blatant clone onto Microsoft’s Windows 8 Marketplace. Spotted by NeoGAF user PsychoRaven, the game pictured above is still there at time of posting. Perhaps out of bravery, or at least stupidity, the “creator”, Joeri…

Windows 8’s Store Now Supports Adult Video Games

When the platform first launched, Windows 8 inexplicably shut out games rated PEGI 18, meaning that, if/when the day came that developers began releasing games with Windows 8 features, Europeans wouldn’t be able to get them from Microsoft’s store. It was a stupid oversight, especially since other markets like the US had no such issue,…

The Smartest and Dumbest Things Microsoft Did in 2012

As the year winds to a close, it’s becoming possible to get some perspective on just what happened in gaming this year. If promises were kept, expectations met, games loved, or trends followed. What exactly were the major companies up to in 2012? One company managed to stay busy while avoiding perhaps the one thing…

Men Massaging Each Other With Video Game Controllers

The DualShock. When you look at the original PlayStation controller, you probably see an iconic game controller. These guys see something they can press into each other’s backs. Mitsuhiro Saitou, a writer from Japanese site Daily Portal, became a pro masseur. With his newfound knowledge of pressure points, he decided to see if the original…

The Xbox 360 Won’t Be Banned By a Silly Court Case

While it seemed unlikely, there was always the chance, however remote, that a battle of patents between Microsoft and Motorola could have seen the Xbox 360 taken off store shelves. A US judge, however, has ruled that this won’t be happening. The two companies have been fighting for years, with Motorola saying the Xbox 360…

Remember that Microsoft Killer Instinct trademark? Seems it’s been knocked down by a TV show with the same name.

Another Report Says The Next Xbox Is Launching in November 2013

According to business news site Bloomberg, Microsoft’s next Xbox console will be released in time for the 2013 holiday season. That’s “according to people familiar with the company’s plans.” Those same “people” (so, not machines!) say it’ll be out in time for Thanksgiving sales. They also say Microsoft is still debating internally whether to use…

Microsoft Sold 750,000 Xbox 360s Last Week

Turns out people like video games, and buying video games, and buying machines to play video games on. Microsoft sold a whopping 750,000 Xbox 360s in the United States between Sunday, November 18 and Friday, November 23 (Black Friday), according to spokesman Major Nelson. Not too shabby! For comparison, Nintendo sold 400,000 Wii U consoles…

Halo 4 Was Shaped, At Least In Part, By One Of The World’s Great Concept Artists

You’re in for a treat today. Today, we’re looking at a collection of Halo 4 art by Nicolas “Sparth” Bouvier, aka one of the most talented concept artists in the world, regardless of the industry. Sparth’s ability to convey not just the look of a sci-fi setting but its mood is legendary, so it was…

Here’s Microsoft’s Black Friday sales list for Xbox Live. Yes, Games on Demand games are still too damn expensive.

Holiday Gift Guide: What Do You Buy The Xbox Gamer?

We’ve shared some PC gift suggestions—from keyboards to games—and gifts that will cost you under $25. But today we want to suggest games and accessories to match an Xbox 360. Our editors are chiming in below, but feel free to post suggestions. Pretty controllers are totally acceptable! And hey, don’t knock the battery charging station.…

Microsoft’s New Xbox Game Charges By The Hour

Microsoft very quietly announced a new Xbox Live Arcade game today called Karaoke. On the surface, it sounds rather harmless; partnering with The Karaoke Channel, it lets users stream around 8000 songs from a central library, and you can use SmartGlass to queue up tracks and save a favourites list. The weirdness comes in when…

Microsoft’s Smartglass is Great (And I Don’t Even Use it For Games)

When Microsoft first announced its Smartglass technology at E3, I figured it would end up like the console’s video marketplace, or Facebook application. A neat idea for the guys in marketing, but wholly uninteresting for the average user. A few weeks in and I’m glad I’ve been proven wrong. I’ve got the app installed on…

More Than a Million People Beat Halo 4‘s Campaign in the First Five Days of Its Release

In the first five days since Halo 4‘s release on Nov. 6, 1,116,882 people completed the game’s campaign, or roughly one out of every four persons who played campaign at some point in that span. Some 4.5 billion kills were recorded by all these players, roughly two-thirds of the projected population of Earth. About 13.5…

Sony and Microsoft Could Have Killed the Wii Long Before It Would Save Nintendo

The midnight launch of the Wii U is a perfect time to reflect on the craze, six years ago, surrounding its predecessor, and the industry-transforming success of the Wii. And there really is no finer story you could read about that than what Rob Crossley has written for CVG. Microsoft and Sony both had their…

These Xbox 360 Black Friday Deals Include A Fancy White Console, an Exclusive Skylanders Figure and More

Sony isn’t the only hardware manufacturer trying to pry open your turkey-addled wallet next week. Microsoft will be partnering up with various retail outlets to offer their game console bundles with hot new games in a variety of configurations. The news comes from Xbox exec Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb: Walmart will offer an exclusive special…

Relive The Horrors of the Original Xbox Live Dashboard

Microsoft’s Larry Hryb has been digging through the archives in honour of Xbox Live’s 10th birthday, and has come up with a few dusty old relics. Above and below, you’ll find images of what the first, original Xbox Live dashboard used to look like. And you thought the current dash is bad. While it sort…