Microsoft

The Xbox Game Pass Library Has Gotten Much Better

Rocket League and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 came to Xbox Game Pass this week. Game Pass lets you pay $10 a month for access to a library of over 100 Xbox games. As long as you keep your subscription active, you can download and play any of them. Game Pass was an interesting idea when Microsoft…

There’s a better type of HDR streaming and Microsoft plans to add support for it to Xbox One S and Xbox One X. The company announced yesterday it’s bringing Dolby Vision to the consoles which allows for better colors and higher contrasts than standard HDR. Netflix has updated its Xbox One app in kind.

Microsoft is working with Showtime on a Halo TV show set to go into production next year The project, which has been bouncing around in one form or another since 2013, is finally moving ahead with Steven Spielberg still attached along with Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt.

Nintendo And Microsoft Are Rubbing Sony’s Face In It

We’re conditioned to expect console manufacturers to be bitter rivals, constantly at each other’s throats in a battle for market supremacy. But sometimes, the enemy of an enemy can be a friend. We got a reminder during E3 that the PS4, unlike most other platforms on Earth, does not support crossplay between consoles. That means…

Proposed EU Copyright Law Could Cause Problems For Fan Content In Games

Yesterday, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs voted to approve a controversial new copyright directive that, if made into law, could change the internet as we know it. Just one of the many potential terrible results of the directive, which tasks companies to monitor user-submitted content for copyright infringement, could be a radical alteration…

Let’s Remember Some Xbox 360 Games

I think we all took the Xbox 360 for granted. Other all-time greats like the SNES and PS2 seem to be remembered more fondly than Microsoft’s console, which tends to be recalled as more of a thing that happened than a platform to be treasured. I wonder if that’s down to recency. It could have…

Sea of Thieves‘ New Event Is All About Exploration

Sea of Thieves is slowly expanding with new monsters and new events aiming to bring excitement and color to a game derided for repetitive content. A new event involving exploring and hunting down hidden thrones throughout the world shows one way the controversial pirate game could build a community. Part of the fun in Sea…

Nike Made Some Xbox Air Jordans

Just so you know they’re not playing favourites, Nike is following up its PlayStation AF1s with some Xbox-branded Air Jordan 1s. It’s not just that these are green sneakers; there’s Xbox branding on the insole and aglets: And the sole glows in the dark as well: These were worn by various Xbox reps at E3…

The Xbox One’s new avatars are almost here. An editoris rolling out to Xbox Insiders now that lets them build and tweak their avatars ahead of the actual release of the mascots, which MS says is coming “soon”. Related: if you’d like to read about the creation of Xbox avatars themselves, here’s an old feature…

How Rare Hopes To Keep Up With Demand For New Sea Of Thieves Stuff

At Microsoft’s E3 press conference on Sunday, Sea of Thieves studio Rare showed off some of the latest DLC coming to its piratey Xbox One/PC game. Later at the show, we talked with the game’s executive producer about how the studio plans to keep that pace up over the months to come. As part of…

Forza Horizon 4‘s British Setting Makes It Feel Like Racing In A Witcher Game

The Forza Horizon games are great non-racing games. You try to drive really fast along a predetermined path, but they’re not about hugging turns or calibrating tire pressure the way the main Forza Motorsport games are. Forza Horizon 4 is no different, but it’s a little more beautiful. It’s better in some ways, as all…

Podcast: We React To Xbox And EA At E3 2018

We’re two press conferences into E3 2018, and there’s already so much to talk about. Won’t you join us? On the first episode of Kotaku Splitscreen’s special E3 coverage, Jason Schreier and I talked about everything we liked (and didn’t like) about EA’s press conference yesterday and Microsoft’s conference today. Listen below, and download an…

Everything Microsoft Showed At E3 2018

Microsoft just showed off a ton of stuff at their E3 2018 Xbox press conference, including new Halo and Gears of War games, Fallout 76, The Division 2, Dying Light 2, a shiny Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, and a new samurai action game from the makers of Dark Souls. Personally speaking, I’m most excited about that last…

Microsoft Reveals Gears Of War 5 (And Two Spinoffs)

Microsoft announced Gears of War 5 at its E3 Media Briefing today with a story trailer and is slated to arrive next year on Xbox One. But that’s not all: Microsoft-owned studio The Coalition is also working on two Gears of War spin-offs, Gears Pop, a mobile game, and Gears Tactics, a strategy game for…

Microsoft just announced a new Battletoads It’ll have 2.5D graphics and couch co-op. They didn’t show or say much else. It’ll be out next year.

Dying Light 2 Announced

Parkour zombie game Dying Light is getting a sequel. We don’t know much about Dying Light 2 but based on the trailer it looks like a colorful return to another violent undead world. And you thought the sustained flood of zombie games had ebbed. Chris Avellone, one of the narrative masterminds Planescape: Torment and Star…

Devil May Cry 5 Is Coming Next Year

Capcom unveiled the new Devil May Cry during Microsoft’s E3 press conference today and it looks rad as hell, y’all. The game will be a “true” sequel to 2008’s Devil May Cry 4. A short-haired Nero returns as protagonist and seems to have lost his arm, the source of much of his power, in a previous…

Bethesda Teases Fallout 76 Yet Again

Todd Howard took the stage to give us another tease of the upcoming Fallout 76 during Microsoft’s E3 press conference today. It didn’t answer many questions, but it did look pretty. Set in the hills of West Virginia, the video shows several vault dwellers walking around the barren wasteland. The narrative seems focused on the…

Microsoft Buys Four Independent Studios

Microsoft announced it’s acquired four new game studios at its press conference today in an effort to increase the the number of exclusive first-party games it can deliver to Xbox One owners. The studios in question are Undead Labs, makers of State of Decay 2, Playground Games, who already makes Microsoft’s Forza Horizon series, Compulsion,…

Forza Horizon 4 Is Set In Britain

Today during its E3 press conference, Microsoft debuted Forza Horizon 4 The new racer in Forza’s arcadier sister series is set in Britain. It features “dynamic seasons” in a “shared open world.” Apparently this “changes everything.” Here’s a trailer: During the E3 demo, we got to see multiple seasons—summer, winter, and everything in between—each of…