Microsoft

A Catalogue Of Some Of The Rarest Consoles Ever Made

I’ve always had a weird thing for collections of video game hardware. Rare colourways, odd promotional designs, Japanese-only releases with crazy hardware features, I live for it. So I’ve just spent the last 24 hours clicking throughthis website, whose goal is to catalogue every console variant there is and ever has been, from fancy PS2s…

The Master Chief Collection Is What Happens When A Studio Doesn’t Give Up On A Game

It’s now taken as gospel that the future of a game isn’t written in stone when it first comes out. Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege rebounded from a lackluster launch, hampered in large part by its grinding, fragmented progression system, into one of the most successful shooters on PC right now. No Man’s Sky released bereft…

Sea Of Thieves Update Will Cut Down On File Size

Sea of Thieves is a constantly evolving game with an expanding roster ofmonsters to battle and islands to explore. In a blog post yesterday, Rare announced that it’s nerfing a dangerous foe: file size. Executive Producer Joe Neate announced the changes in an official blog post. Following an update on February 6, Sea of Thieves’…

Microsoft Removes Carlton, Floss Dances From Forza Horizon 4

The Carlton and Floss dance emotes are no longer available in Forza Horizon 4 following changes made to the game as part of today’s big Series 5 update. Although publisher Microsoft won’t say why it removed the emotes, both dances are the subjects of lawsuits against publisher Epic Games for using them in the mega-popular…

Xbox Game Pass Quests Give You Money For Earning Achievements

Today, Microsoft announced a new slate of quests for Game Pass games in January. Earning certain achievements in particular games available through the monthly subscription service will net you rewards points. It’s a small but interesting new development in how the company has been trying to gamify how people play games on Xbox. Announced over…

Xbox Game Pass subscribers just got a nice surprise: in addition to the already-announced games being added to the service this month like Just Cause 3 and Life is Strange, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is also going to be made available.

Forza Horizon 4‘s First Expansion Is Dull, At Least Right Now

Though I appreciate the rocky cliffs and craggy hills of Forza Horizon 4‘s new Northern Isles-inspired Fortune Island, I worry that once I finish all the expansion’s treasure hunts I’ll lose my appetite for brown emptiness. Fortune Island is Forza’s newest DLC. Located somewhere to the north of the main game’s English countryside, it’s a…

Dumb Kids Will Try Anything To Get Out Of An Xbox Live Ban

Back in the earlier days of Xbox Live, while the Xbox 360 was still in its prime, the platform’s support forums used to allow users to complain about bans they’d received, and Microsoft staff would actually reply. Even if the users were being racist little shits. It seems a universe away from how platforms are…

The State Of Xbox One In 2018

In sports they call it a rebuilding year. Xbox One has had a few of those recently, but it’s an especially appropriate description of the console’s 2018. This wasn’t a year for new hardware nor a major blockbuster exclusive game. The most exciting announcement to come out of Microsoft was the news that it is…

The most ambitious crossover event in history.

Sea Of Thieves’ Newest Update Makes The Game More Surprising And More Satisfying

When Sea of Thieves launched back in March, it felt pretty barren. The open sea in the Xbox and PC pirate game was gorgeous, but there wasn’t much to do. Since then, updates have brought new threats and areas, encouraging pirates to team up to take on sharks, survive volcanoes and explore distant islands. The…

Sunset Overdrive is headed to PC, Xbox’s Major Nelson announced on Twitter today. The news confirms previous rumors that the Xbox One exclusive would be getting ported, and adds Sunset Overdrive to the existing list of Microsoft-published Xbox One games recently added to Steam this year.

A Young Man’s Ego Doomed A Much-Hyped Jurassic Park Game

Do you remember what you were like at age 25? It was only four years ago for me, and I already think I was pretty much the worst back then. Seamus Blackley also doesn’t have a stellar opinion of the man he used to be at 25. At the time, he was executive producer on…

Microsoft’s New Studio Acquisitions Show How Much Xbox Has Changed

It came as a mild surprise when Microsoft announced Saturday that it was purchasing not just one but two mid-sized studios with a focus on role-playing games. But as strange as it seems on the surface, the deal makes perfect sense for all three parties. At the end of a relatively uneventful Xbox showcase in…

Everything Xbox Announced During XO18

This afternoon there was a special edition of the Inside Xbox show as part of X018, an event which is “a global celebration of all things Xbox,” and lots of things were announced for the Xbox universe of games. There were a lot of moving parts to the two-hour episode, so here’s a breakdown of…

Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Has Died

Paul Allen, who along with Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, has died at the age of 65 of complications associated with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Allen—who also owned the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers—first overcame Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1982, before also beating non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009 until its recurrence earlier this month. He was one of…

Sources: Microsoft Is Close To Buying Obsidian

Microsoft is finalizing a deal to acquire the independent development studio Obsidian Entertainment, according to three people briefed on the negotiations. We don’t know if ink is on paper yet, and plenty of major acquisition deals have fallen apart in the final hours, but those close to the companies believe it is all but done.…

Microsoft Announces Xbox Game Streaming Service

Today, Microsoft announced its plans to enter the world of video game streaming with Project xCloud, an ambitious service with a silly title that promises to allow the streaming of Xbox One games across computers, phones, and tablets. Microsoft says it’s currently testing out Project xCloud and plans to open up tests to the public…

Sea of Thieves‘ New Volcanic Region Is Difficult And Hilarious

Rare’s online pirate adventure game Sea of Thieves launched into some rough waters, feeling more like a beta than full game. Since then, the developers have worked to make the seas more treacherous and exciting. Last week’s Forsaken Shores content adds an entirely new region packed with dangerous volcanoes and difficult quests. It’s the perfect…

Windows Will No Longer Interrupt Your Games To Annoy You About Updates

We’ve all been there: you’re in the zone with a game—so dialed in that you can practically smell the body odor of the man you just kicked off a cliff—but then, suddenly, it’s gone. Windows has decided it’s update time, and also that you can go fuck yourself. Mercifully, that problem is now history. The…