Microsoft

I’ve Had To Kick My Modern Habits To Stop Dying In Halo: Reach Multiplayer

A little figure wearing red space pads flickers onto my screen from behind a pillar and I immediately pull the left trigger on my Xbox One controller to zoom down my rifle’s sights. Except this is Halo: Reach, and there are none. My blue space dude lobs a grenade instead. The red man disappears again.…

Sources: Microsoft Is Still Planning A Cheaper, Disc-Less Next-Gen Xbox

In June, Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, a new iteration of the Xbox that the company said would “set a new bar for console power, speed and performance.” What Microsoft didn’t say is that it is also working on a lower-cost, disc-less version of Scarlett, code-named Lockhart, according to four people briefed on the company’s plans.…

Halo: Reach Launches On PC, Becomes Third Most Played Game On Steam

The remaster of Halo: Reach came out on PC today, marking the series’ return to the platform after 12 long years, and Steam users have given it a Spartan’s welcome, with over 100,000 people playing at the same time making it one of the top five games on Valve’s storefront The game’s only been out…

The State Of Xbox One In 2019

Nearing the end of its life, the Xbox One feels less like a box for spinning video game discs and more like a platform for selling digital subscriptions. The pitch of a mostly-digital future that blew up in Microsoft’s face the year the Xbox One launched is now mostly here in 2019 and it’s not…

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Thanksgiving Commercial Spoils The Damn Ending

Imagine: you’re sitting with your family on Thanksgiving Day, watching football or the parade or a Hallmark movie marathon, when suddenly you see a commercial for the new Star Wars game. “Cool,” you might think, for roughly twenty seconds, until it spoils the ending and one of the game’s coolest surprises That’s what it was…

A Day Of Trying To Stream Xbox One Games While On The Go

When Microsoft’s video game streaming service, Project xCloud, began its beta last month, there were only four games available to test. Now there are over 50. I spent a day taking the service on the road with me to see how it’s working. Currently, the service streams games from Microsoft’s servers to a smartphone or…

Everything Announced For Xbox One And PC At X019

New game announcements from Obsidian, Rare, and Dontnod highlighted Microsoft’s Inside Xbox presentation at X019, the company’s annual fan festival taking place in London this weekend. It also showed several updates and new trailers for previously announced games, as well as new content coming to Project xCloud and Xbox Game Pass—including 10 Final Fantasy games.…

A Ton Of Final Fantasy Games Are Coming To Xbox Game Pass

Final Fantasy VII through XV (excluding the two MMOs) will get added to Game Pass in the coming months, Microsoft announced today during the latest episode of Inside Xbox at this year’s XO19 fan event in London. That chunk of the series includes 10 games, many of which, like Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XII:…

Obsidian’s Next Game Is A Survival Adventure Where You’re The Size Of An Ant [Update]

Today, as part of Microsoft’s XO19 conference in London, Outer Worlds developer Obsidian announced its first project under the Xbox Game Studios umbrella: a survival adventure game called Grounded Grounded, which is releasing in early access on Xbox One and PC in spring 2020 (digitally and as part of Xbox Game Pass), is an up-to-four-player…

Age Of Empires II‘s Remaster Kicks Ass

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is a lot. It adds new campaigns, civilizations, revamped enemy AI, and 4K graphics, in case you’ve been waiting to see a flood of medieval warriors clash incomprehensibly with one another in crisp detail. Remastered and slightly reworked, one of the defining real-time strategy games of the turn of…

Microsoft Rolls Out Customizable Text Filters For Xbox Messages

Rolling out starting today to Insider preview members and coming soon to Xbox One owners everywhere, Microsoft’s new Xbox text filters give users the ability to tailor the level of offensive content they’re exposed to through private messages and, eventually, in profiles, clubs, and their activity feed. Don’t worry, “none” is an option. Detailed in…

Everything Announced During Today’s Inside Xbox

Following Sony’s “State of Play” livestream earlier today, Microsoft jumped in with an Inside Xbox presentation featuring new content and services coming to its platform. More games are coming to Xbox Game Pass. On Xbox One, Jump Force, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and Lego Worlds are being added. On PC, Cities: Skylines, Saints Row…

Video Game Companies Vow Action On Climate Change, But Critics Say They Need To Do More

Within a couple generations, after climate change has more visibly ravaged the Earth, the easiest way for humanity to interact with lush forests and icy glaciers might be video games. It’s a bleak, maybe science-fiction potential future, but not an improbable one; according to some analyses, we have just 12 years to suppress catastrophic climate…

Smash Bros. Creator Just Made “Xbox” Trend On Twitter In Japan

During a special Nintendo Direct for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Masahiro Sakurai introduced the Banjo-Kazooie DLC. Not only does he want you to get that, but he would also like you to play the original game on Xbox. The original Banjo-Kazooie games were released on Nintendo hardware, but as Sakurai explained, Microsoft now owns the…

Little Kid’s Hand-Written Xbox Fan Mail From 2002 Is Very Wholesome

Seamus Blackley, one of the key people involved in the creation of the original Xbox console, was going through some old stuff the other day when he came across an adorable piece of fan mail written 17 years ago by little Mitchell Riley. Realizing he’d never replied, Blackley decided to track him down and make…

Everything Microsoft Showed On Today’s Inside Xbox

Microsoft showed off Gears of War 5‘s horde mode, NBA 2k20‘s career mode, and the new games coming to Game Pass during its latest episode of Inside Xbox The episode spanned over an hour and a half, and while it was mostly full of new trailers for games we already knew about, there were a…

Long-Promised Minecraft Graphical Overhaul Is Canceled

Today, Mojang announced that it has ceased development on Minecraft’s Super Duper Graphics Pack, citing technical difficulties. It’s been just over two years since the feature was announced on stage at E3 2017, “Some of you might remember us announcing the Super Duper Graphics Pack during E3 2017,” the studio announced on its website today.…

Kinect may be dead as a video gaming peripheral, but its technological uses live on. The latest example is in Sydney, where it’s being used to help control the speed and frequency of train boardings

Two Years Later, Minecraft Still Doesn’t Have Its Xbox One X Graphics Enhancements

The Super Duper Graphics Pack for Minecraft was announced at E3 2017. Just over two years later, it’s still never been released, and there has been little news about the update’s progress. Back in 2017, the team sounded optimistic. “Today we’re revealing a new look for Minecraft that we’re super duper excited for you to…

I Wish Nintendo And Sony Made Elite Controllers

Out of every single video game purchase I’ve ever made in my life, across games, consoles and accessories, I don’t think I’ve made a more sensible purchase than Microsoft’s Xbox Elite controller. First released in 2015, it was—and remains, even with a successor on the way!—expensive as hell. As Phil Spencer said at the time,…