Microsoft

Meanwhile in Japan, Microsoft’s A.I. Chatbot Has Become an Otaku

This was bound to happen. So were the questions about Hitler. In the West, Microsoft launched Tay, an A.I. chatbot designed to appeal to the youth. Its rollout was, well, not good. In Japan, however, Microsoft had previously launched a schoolgirl chatbot called Rinna. Schoolgirl. Chatbot. Japan. Of course. For the past couple months, Rinna…

GTA V Player Completes Insane Parkour Map In Record Time

Nearly impossible, custom-made parkour maps are a popular part of GTA Online, with their very own community. They test the limits of the game’s engine, which sometimes results in some truly spectacular runs. This is Albert using an Enduro bike (which is great for wall rides) on a really evil map made by Retro maniA,…

Microsoft Releases AI Twitter Bot That Immediately Learns How To Be Racist

“Hellooooooo world!!!” wrote Microsoft’s new AI bot in its first tweet yesterday morning. By the end of the day, it had declared that Hitler did nothing wrong Tay, launched yesterday, is an artificially intelligent bot that’s designed to appeal to teens and younger 20-somethings. Its Twitter bio reads “Microsoft’s A.I. fam from the internet that’s…

Maki Roll, a professional cosplayer and dancer, has written a fascinating essay about Microsoft’s recent GDC party controversy She examines the event from a dancer’s perspective, and takes a closer look at what the backlash says about an industry grappling with the increased visibility of women’s issues.

Xbox Survey Wonders If You’d Trade In Your Digital Games For Store Credit

Refunds notwithstanding, digital video game purchases are normally a one-way street, but what if they weren’t? A question from a recent Xbox survey asks gamers if they’d part with their digital acquisitions for 10 percent store credit. The image belowpopped up on Reddit yesterday, and the hypothetical it presents is interesting. Trading in a $60…

Microsoft Says They Regret Holding GDC Party With School Girl Dancers [UPDATE]

Hours after hosting a “women in gaming” luncheon at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft threw a party with scantily clad dancers in school girl outfits. It wasn’t a good look, and the company has since apologized. The photos surfaced after a series of tweets by Tin Man Games editor Kamina Vincent brought…

Xbox One Gets Another ‘Limited’ Price Drop

The Xbox One will drop to $300 for a “limited time” next week, Microsoft said today. In other words, don’t ever plan to spend more than that on the console. See, Microsoft has a habit of announcing “limited” hardware discounts that transform into permanent ones, which is bad news for anyone who buys at the…

Nice New Controllers, Microsoft

Microsoft has been on a roll lately with its special edition Xbox One controllers. The Elite is almost perfect, the Lunar White is gorgeous…and now there are these guys. They’re called Dusk Shadow (the blue one) and Copper Shadow (the…copper one). They’re regular controllers at a regular price, just with that nice gradient effect down…

Kinect Involved In Ancient Egypt Kerfuffle 

Last year, a pair of German artists claimed to have “stolen” scans of a priceless bust of Queen Nefertiti—housed in Berlin’s Neues Museum—using nothing but a Kinect. Now, experts are lining up to call bullshit. The artists, Nora al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles, say they used “a modified version” of the Kinect to take the…

Last Monday, Microsoft closed Lionhead Studios; next Monday, Sony is holding a job fair for the former employees. Ex-Lionhead developers will be able to network with folks from various SCEE studios: Guerrilla, Evolution, Media Molecule, etc.

Bill Gates: ‘I Will Look Into’ A New Age Of Empires

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates had an AMA on Reddit yesterday, so of course he was asked a question about…Age of Empires Never mind that the dude doesn’t really have much to do at Microsoft these days, when le-click saw an opening (via PC Gamer), he damn well took it, asking: Mr. Gates,…

Epic Games Founder Slams Microsoft For Trying To ‘Monopolize’ PC Gaming [UPDATE]

This week, Microsoft has touted a new initiative that they’ve said will unify platforms, making it easier to for developers to release games on both PC and Xbox One. But at least one major developer isn’t thrilled with Microsoft’s plans. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian this morning, Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney…

Far Cry Primal Has Some Great Easter Eggs

It’s not an open world game without hidden references and easter eggs. And Far Cry Primal has some pretty cool ones: some related to other Ubisoft games, while others to our own prehistory. Blood Dragon cave There’s a cool reference, for example, to the retro futuristic spinoff game Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Remains of…

Report: HoloLens Dev Unit Includes Conker Game

It looks like Fortune broke an embargo a little early today and released details on the first Microsoft HoloLens unit that humans can actually buy. While Fortune’s original story has been pulled, the information was picked up and posted by Redditor Shooob. The gist is this: the first development kit for the HoloLens will not…

One of the Rarest and Most Beautiful Xbox Ones Ever Made

Apparently, there are only two of these consoles in the whole world. They are official, from Microsoft, and given out this month to two lucky winners in South Korea. Earlier this month, Microsoft Korea held a contest for these very limited-edition Xbox Ones. As tipster Sang points out, these traditional Korean style mother of pearl…

Xbox Live Is Down

We’ve been getting emails and tweets all week about this, in increasing volume, but this evening Xbox Live seems to have finally dropped out for pretty much everyone trying to access the paid service. This went out four hours ago (from time of posting): And this went out two hours ago (at time of posting):…

How To Get Red Dead Redemption Running On Your Xbox One [UPDATE: No Longer Working]

One of themost requested additions to the Xbox One’s backwards compatibility list, Red Dead Redemption is now available for download and play. Folks just need to own the game digitally and find someone already following the game. Update: Not working anymore. Xbox’s Major Nelson comments on Reddit. From a screenshot showing Rockstar’s Western available for…

Microsoft’s Vision Of Future NFL Fans Is A Cold, Gimmicky Nightmare

This is how Microsoft wants you to consume the National Football League in the near future. With Hololens goggles, and pinching, and holographic Russell Wilsons (Russell Wilsi?). It’s the kind of future that only someone working for a giant tech company would want to see. The kind of future that ignores the reality of modern…

Instead of competitive multiplayer, Homefront: The Revolution is getting a four-player online co-op mode in May. Quite an interesting path for a fairly low-interest game like Homefront to have co-op multiplayer. But it certainly could be refreshing. To contact the author of this post, write to: [email protected]

Streamers rejoice: Skype now hides your IP address by default The move should cut down on game streamers being harassed and DDOSed by folks resolving their Skype address into an IP.