Microsoft

Yes, Microsoft Will Still Publish PC Games

Microsoft used to publish lots of PC games. Now, though, they mostly don’t. Sure, there’s Gears of War, and a three years late port of Halo 2, but aside from that? Not much. And it doesn’t look like there’ll be much in the foreseeable future, either. The company’s internal Flight Simulator team has been canned.…

Microsoft To Reach One Million Xbox 360s Sold In Japan (Soon)

The Xbox 360 went on sale in Japan in December 2005. The console was met by a largely indifferent Japanese game buying public. But, bit-by-bit and RPG-by-RPG, the console has started doing decent enough. According to online reports, the consoles current sales total in Japan is hovering dangerously close to the one million mark. During…

We’ve Never Wanted A Dev Kit This Badly

Not only do the new Microsoft development kits contain more debugging memory, they are some of the sexiest damn Xbox 360s we’ve laid our eyes on. Perhaps it’s just the soft black backdrop behind the development kits, or the Barry White we’ve got playing in the background, but there’s just something about that matte black…

What Is Gears Of War 2: Dark Corners?

The wonderfully twisted passages of the internet have unearthed an Asian product page advertising an April release for a Gears of War 2: Dark Corners add-on. The image, posted on Joystiq, was discovered by a Gears of War forum user in a now defunct thread, fueled by former Kotaku guest editor Geoff Keighley’s Twitter entry…

Microsoft Sued Over Gay Bashing

According to a former employee of Lionhead Studios, being openly gay at a Microsoft-owned development studio can be just as bad as having an openly gay Xbox Live gamertag. Gay video game designer Jamie Durrant is suing Microsoft for £45,000 in ‘hurt feelings’ and lost pay, claiming discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. Durrant…

Microsoft Makes 360 Development Easier All Around

Microsoft makes game development easier for all levels of Xbox 360 developers, with new development kits for professionals and updated XNA Game Studio software that adds avatar and Live Party support. Both XNA community game creators and Xbox Live Arcade developers who utilize the XNA Games Studio will be able to add Xbox Live avatars…

Microsoft Pretties Up Games For Windows LIVE

Microsoft is adding several new features to their Games for Windows LIVE service in order to make it more attractive to gamers and publishers and less attractive to pirates. Microsoft first attacks PC game piracy with the introduction of zero-day piracy protection and server-side authentication, requiring that consumers verify their products before participating in online…

Castle Crashers Is The Xbox Live Game Of The Year

Microsoft has announced the winners of the 2008 Xbox Live Arcade Awards, with The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers walking away with Game of the Year. Castle Crashers actually won three categories in the Xbox Live Arcade Awards, the annual awards voted on by the players themselves. Along with Game of the Year, it was also awarded…

The Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack Happens On April 9th

Bungie teases, but Microsoft comes right out and says it. The Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack is officially coming out on Thursday, April 9th. We were pretty certain this was the case over the weekend, but you know how much we like to have solid facts to back up our solid rumors. Microsoft verified the…

Microsoft Responds To February NPD Sales, Seems Pleased

Microsoft had a good February. It was the Xbox 360 maker’s “best non-holiday month” with the exception of the release of Halo 3, not to put too fine of a point on it. That’s according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, but the rest of the best is from Microsoft PR. Yes, the company is justifiably…

Finally, Pirate Costumes Come To Xbox Avatars

For all their promise, the 360’s avatars look a little…drab. This isn’t 1998, Microsoft, nor the set of Frasier. Thankfully, Capcom are on the case, and with Crecente in mind will be releasing pirate costumes. Sure, there’s a marketing tie-in to wade through first. After all, Capcom have copies of Age of Booty to promote…

Lost & Damned “Outsells Killzone 2”, Gives Us Sales Ballpark

Sadly, because it’s a digital download, we don’t know exactly how many copies of Lost & Damned Microsoft and Rockstar managed to sell. We do know, however, it’s more than 323,000. Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg let slip the information in an interview with GameDaily – in which he calls the Grand Theft Auto IV expansion “the…

Xbox Live Issues: It’s Not Just You

Xbox Live is currently having a downtime worst case scenario. It, horrifically, is having issues related to billing, meaning Xbox Live Marketplace purchases are wonky and signing in to Live accounts is shaky. The horror… Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb has official status on the well-being of Live, writing on his blog that “Xbox LIVE members…

Halo Wars Sells A Million

Microsoft’s latest foray into the Halo universe has surpassed the million copy sold mark, making Halo Wars the best-selling console real-time strategy game of the current generation. Nearly three weeks after the game’s initial launch in Asia, Halo Wars has sold more than one million copies worldwide, which Microsoft says makes it the best-selling real-time…

Jim Cramer vs. Jon Stewart Unedited

Last Thursday, Daily Show host Jon Stewart went for the jugular of CNBC host Jim Cramer — well, went for the jugular, again. Stewart had been ragging on Crammer, who talks finance on his CNBC show Mad Money, for spewing nonsense and being totally wrong about the economic meltdown. The edited episode can be viewed…

Patent Troll Lawsuit Begins on Tuesday

Way back in 2007 an “investment firm” that so happened to hold some patents filed a suit claiming Microsoft and Nintendo infringed them. The suit wends its way to the courtroom on St. Patrick’s Day. Fenner Investments Ltd. says controllers for the Gamecube, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360 infringe the “low-voltage joystick port interface” patent…

Microsoft Settles Its $90 Million Halo Suit

Someone at sue-happy company PalTalk just got paid. Microsoft has settled with the company that filed suit against the Xbox 360 maker over patent infringement claims related to Halo multiplayer. Make it rain, PalTalk! PalTalk hit Microsoft with a suit over a pair of patents in 2006, claiming that the multiplayer tech that powered some…

Here’s Your New Gears Of War 2 Map Pack (And Experience System!)

Epic Games have announced two big changes on the way for Gears of War 2. One is a title update aimed at addressing complaints users have had about experience.The other? Four new multiplayer maps. The title update – due on March 24 – is geared at making player’s progression up the ranks more transparent. The…

Somebody Finally Made a 360 You Can Smoke Out Of

There it is. Somebody made a bong out of an Xbox 360. Not a PSP, not a DS, not a Wii, but a great, hulking 360. Let’s ignore the potential criminality of such a device and focus instead on the engineering. Something like this can’t have been easy. No, it’s taken planning, foresight, and a…

Is Xbox LIVE Is Down For You?

At approximately 9:20pm Pacific Daylight Time, folks on the Bungie.net forums began reporting that it was hard to get matches in Halo 3. Instead of finding players, it would just restart the search. Pictured is the status message everyone seemed to be getting. Whatever the problem is, it seems to have spread to LIVE (or…