Xbox

Remember, The PS4 And Next Xbox Have More To Offer Than Just Prettier Graphics

It’s such a crude yardstick, yet it’s the one most people use when trying to gauge the leap between console generations. Graphics. How a game looks. It’s great for sizzle reels and screenshot comparisons, but at the end of the day, it’s not where the real leaps in video games are made. Those are made…

Cops Say Dad, Visiting Badly Burned Son, Stole Three Game Consoles From a Hospital

A five-year-old boy playing with a cigarette lighter set his shirt on fire and went to the hospital with serious burns on Wednesday. Cops allege that his father went to the hospital’s family waiting room, and consoled himself with a Wii, PlayStation and Xbox raided from a supply cabinet. Pittsburgh police say that Jim Skursky…

Xbox spokesman Major Nelson weighs in on the PS4 conference. Shots fired!

Late-Night Gamer, 6, Saves Family From Attic Fire

Let’s hear it for letting your six-year-old stay up late to play video games. That’s what Taylor Hendrix, of Brownsville, Tenn., was doing when he noticed smoke and flames from the attic “coming down the chimbley.” Taylor sounded the alarm, getting his grandparents and four other children out of the home before it was completely…

See the Star Wars Lightsaber-Fighting Game That Never Made It

It never went anywhere, and maybe that’s a good thing, but this is a demonstration Studio Gigante put together for a Star Wars fighting game on the original Xbox. Josh Tsui, currently of Robomodo, co-founded the studio and for some reason tweeted out this video on Valentine’s Day It’s somewhat better than the trainwreck that…

I Helped Create The Xbox, But Now It’s Painful To Watch

I was a founder of the original Xbox project at Microsoft and gave it its name. Almost 14 years after the painful, pointless, and idiotic internal cage-match to get it started and funded, the hard selling of a compelling and lucrative living-room product to Bill (and then Steve as he began to take over), a…

What People Used To Say About The First Xbox

We don’t know every last thing about the new Xbox. Some leaked details, for the most part, sprinkled with a liberal helping of rumors. While we wait for new bits and pieces to be revealed, why not reminisce a bit? Let’s have a look at how the very first Xbox, turning 12 years old this…

Report: The Next Xbox Will Require An Internet Connection, Block Used Games

A new Edge report suggests that Microsoft’s next Xbox gaming console, code-named Durango, will require an Internet connection to use. It also won’t be able to play used games, Edge says. We have not been able to confirm the veracity of this new report, which claims that Durango discs will ship with one-time-use activation codes…

Get Ready For Some Serious Halo Parkour

Watching this video by ReiKo, you have to wonder if the people who made Halo 4 intended for players to be able to pull off some of the insane trick-jumps that they do. The spacing is just right, the trajectories lead perfectly from point to point… maybe they planned it this way? Hard to say.…

Call of Duty isn’t a big deal in the world of e-sports. Microsoft, Activision and $1 million are hoping to change that

Everyone’s Going to Play as the Bad Guys in Aliens: Colonial Marines Multiplayer, Aren’t They?

Ok, yes: the Marines in Gearbox’s officially sanctioned Aliens shooter have some cool guns. But, honestly, if you’re going to pick up this game, do you really want to play as another sci-fi soldier? No, you’re not. You’re going to want to impale humans on your deadly tail, slash them to bits and spit acid…

Assassin’s Creed III’s Evil George Washington DLC Comes Out on Feb. 19

Priced at $10 for the first episode, the long-teased “Tyranny of George Washington” DLC comes to Assassin’s Creed III next month. The alternate reality add-on comes out a day after the U.S.’ President’s Day holiday and shows a Ratonhnhaké:ton who never joined the Assassin’s Order. Titled “The Infamy,” the first episode will be followed by…

And The Xbox Game With The Most Users In 2012 Was… Call of Duty (Of Course)

Call of Duty earned both the first and second spot of Major Nelson’s annual Xbox rankings, which is a pretty impressive (if totally unsurprising) achievement for Activision’s popular military shooter franchise. Halo 4 took third place on the list, which measures the top 20 games based on the number of unique users that connected to…

Prince Harry “Thrashed” Fellow Troops at FIFA While in Afghanistan

Prince Harry isn’t first in line for the U.K. throne. But he could be one of royalty’s biggest gamers. In an interview from The Daily Mail (via MCV), Prince Harry talked about his experience serving in Afghanistan. He also discussed his preference for gaming, playing sports, or flying helicopters. “You can ask the guys: I…

Nerd Artist Gives The Xbox A Long-Overdue Makeover

Artist Cory Schmitz has, just for fun, taken the idea of redesigning the Xbox “brand” and run with it. I like where he’s ended up. Maintaining the green and prominent “X”, just about everything else we associate with the platform’s marketing is gone, replaced with something far cleaner and more distinct. Just, literally, an X…

The Xbox Team Just Hired A Very Classy Designer

Andrew Kim turned a lot of heads last year with a bold redesign of Microsoft’s corporate branding, a vision and set of logos far braver (and classier) than what Microsoft eventually came up with for products like Windows 8 and Surface. It was all unofficial “fan” work, of course, but things just got a little…

Report: Microsoft Replacing Xbox Chat With Skype For Next Console

According to “A person familiar with the matter”, website CVG is reporting that, as part of Microsoft’s continuing efforts to consolidate Skype (which it now owns) as the standard communications platform for the company’s products, it’ll “become the default chat service on the next generation Xbox console”. What would this mean, exactly? Who knows, the…

Free Downloads For Those Bitten By Buggy Walking Dead Game

Telltale’s The Walking Dead game may have won its share of year-end awards and accolades, but it’s not without some problems. Notably, the game can be quite buggy, particularly the disc-based, retail Xbox 360 version. The game’s designer Telltale is now running an amends program for anyone struck by “hitching” in the game, which is…

Xbox Support Staff Say They Were Fired After Posting About Their Jobs On Kotaku

If you do customer support for Microsoft, don’t post about it on this website. You’ll probably lose your job. Over the past week, I’ve been in touch with two former Xbox support staff. Both people, who asked that we not use their names, say they were fired for writing comments about their jobs on Kotaku.…

This Dude’s Penis Is Stuck In His Xbox And Other Amazing Xbox Support Trolls

Last week I wrote about a silly Twitter exchange between Xbox support and a prankster that pretended to have an issue with an Xbox when in fact he had a PS2. Someone suggested that I look at Xbox support’s favstar, which is a service that tracks a Twitter user’s ‘favorites’ with that account. Turns out,…