Microsoft

Microsoft will have 14 games from its internal studios to show at this year’s E3. That’s according to a new tweet by the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer. Microsoft has been busy acquiring a bunch of new game studios recently. It sounds like we’ll finally get to hear what they’re working on.

Microsoft has hinted at this for a while, but now it’s official: Xbox Game Pass is coming to PC. No word on timing or any other details just yet; Xbox boss Phil Spencer says they’ll elaborate more at E3.

Microsoft has announced the next batch of games to get added to Game Pass starting with Metal Gear Survive on May 23. The first game in The Banner Saga series will get added that day as well, with indie shooter Void Bastards coming day and date on May 29.

The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, says the platform is committed to fighting the “growing toxic stew of hate speech, bigotry and misogyny” people experience in their digital lives in a blog post today. It goes on to lay out the principles and actions Xbox will pursue to be inclusive environment.

Microsoft Announces Minecraft Earth, A Minecraft Version Of Pokémon Go

In a move that’s equal parts surprising, inevitable, and brilliant, Microsoft today announced Minecraft Earth, an augmented reality game that will let people build all sorts of blocky creations as they’re walking down streets and trying not to get hit by cars. It’ll be out later this year for phones, with a beta hitting this…

Microsoft And Sony Announce Vague Cloud Gaming Partnership

Microsoft said today that it will partner with Sony, its chief rival in the gaming console space, on “new cloud-based solutions for gaming experiences.” It’s unclear what exactly the new collaboration will ultimately lead to, but the move is still a surprising one given that the companies’ Xbox and PlayStation console lines are market competitors.…

Minecraft’s New 10th-Anniversary Map Is Awesome And Hides A Few Secrets

Minecraft is celebrating its 10th anniversary since it was first released, back in 2009. To pay tribute to this milestone, Mojang teamed up with Blockworks to create a massive map covering the entire history of the popular game. And for those who dig deep, you might find a few secrets and Easter Eggs. When I…

Sea of Thieves New Arena Mode Is All The Good (And Bad) Of Sea of Thieves

There are two halves to Sea of Thieves’ anniversary update. The first is a collection of story missions that offer some much-needed structure. The second is the Arena, a player versus player combat mode where crews compete to gather chests and sink each others’ ships. It’s a blast of high sea action, but maybe not…

Sea Of Thieves’ New Story Quests Are Just What The Game Needed

Sea of Thieves’ Anniversary Update is live. The pirate game’s ambitious expansion brings activities from competitive player-vs.-player battles to fishing and cooking. Largest of all are the “Tall Tales,” a lengthy chain of cutscene and exploration driven story missions that are designed to be completed in a group or by your lonesome. The first—hunting down…

Microsoft’s Official Examples Of “Acceptable Trash Talk” Are A Joy

Microsoft updated the company’s “Community Standards for Xbox” earlier this week, and while this is normally not news, the content is so damn wholesome that it’s worth a closer look. You can read the whole thing here, and I genuinely recommend you do: the company has gone way beyond simply listing rules you should follow,…

Cuphead: The Kotaku Review

Cuphead turns players into perfectionists. The long-awaited hand-drawn action game is full of cartoony boss battles that demand enough precision and focus that even a single hit of damage feels unacceptable. Playing Cuphead is like a stage performance; every mistake is embarrassing, but the curtain call of each defeated boss is like nothing else. This…

New Disc-Less Xbox One Coming In May, Will Cost $250

Microsoft officially announced a new, all-digital version of the Xbox One S during the latest episode of Inside Xbox today, confirming previous rumors. It will have a 1 TB hard drive and be priced at $250, with Microsoft saying it will receive price drops as necessary that will make it always cheaper than the standard…

Man Pleads Guilty To Hacking Both Microsoft And Nintendo

A 24 year-old man from England has pleaded guilty to charges of hacking into both Microsoft and Nintendo’s servers, causing an estimated $3-4 million damages. As The Verge report, Zammis Clark—a former security researcher at Malwarebytes—went before a court in London this week accused of accessing servers at both companies, stealing user information, accessing files…

Minecraft Update Removes Mentions Of Notch, The Game’s Creator

The latest Minecraft update makes a few changes to the decade-old phenomenon, none more notable than the fact the game’s splash screens have removed all mention of Minecraft’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson. Previously, the game’s splash screens—the yellow text you see when Minecraft boots up—would display random messages, and some of them referenced Persson with…

New Microsoft App Lets You Play PC Games On Xbox, Sometimes

After years of testing via the Xbox Insider program, Microsoft has finally officially released its free Wireless Display app, enabling PC streaming to Xbox One, complete with controller support. It’s neat when it works. In my experience thus far, it doesn’t work often. Harnessingindustry standard Miracast technology, the Wireless Display app from Microsoft is designed…

Halo: The Master Chief Collection Is Coming To PC, Adds Halo: Reach

Halo: The Master Chief Collection will soon include Halo: Reach and be available on the Windows store and Steam, Microsoft announced today during its Inside Xbox livestream. Rather than make every game in the collection available all at once on PC, Microsoft said the collection will roll out one game at a time, starting with…

Just Cause 4 Hits Xbox Game Pass Only Three Months After Release

Despite all of the explosions in Avalanche Studios’ open-world chaos simulator, Just Cause 4 did not set the world on fire when it launched last year on December 4. Now, less than 100 days later, it’s free for Game Pass subscribers to download and play on Xbox One. Microsoft announced the game would be the…

Microsoft’s Inside Xbox Show Isn’t Working

Yesterday afternoon, Microsoft aired its latest episode of Inside Xbox, a monthly livestream in which the company updates players on new stuff in the world of Xbox. Like most episodes of Inside Xbox, it was long, precisely staged, and light on interesting news. If new Nintendo Directs have become exciting, mini-E3 press conferences, new episodes…

500+ Games Are Backward Compatible On Xbox One And More Interesting Stats

ResetEra user MauroNL spent some time putting together a comprehensive list of stats and dataabout the Xbox One backwards compatibility program. Using Wikipedia, Xbox.com and other tools, MauroNL figured out how many games are backwards compatible on Xbox One and how many have yet to receive support. MauroNL also put together some interesting stats about…

Sea Of Thieves Has Unexpectedly Become One Of Twitch’s Biggest Games

After an intriguing but worryingly barebones launch in March 2018, Rare’s ambitious pirate opus Sea of Thieves found itself lost at sea. There just wasn’t enough for players to do, causing many to fear that the game would never live up to its potential. Late last year, that began to change. Now, Sea of Thieves…