Xbox

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…

Borderlands 3: The Kotaku Review

Take a bag of potato chips—any brand, anywhere—and you more or less know what you’re going to get. Crispy, greasy salt and oil delivered via thin layers of starch, they make a mess of crumbs and grease, and they’re terribly delicious, extremely difficult to stop eating once you’ve caved into the first, and likely to…

After several delays, the Japanese-made Xbox One exclusive shoot-’em-up Natsuki Chronicles is slated for a late 2019 release. The game was first scheduled for and 2015 release but has been delayed four times. In a blog post, the studio’s president apologized for the repeated delays. 

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…

Here’s September 2019’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

Hitman’s first season led February’s PlayStation Plus games, but if you’re an Xbox fan, now you can get it too with September’s Games with Gold. Which you should, because it rules. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Gold subscription. September’s Games with Gold are: Xbox One Hitman:…

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…

Report: Contractors Have Listened To Inadvertently Recorded Audio From Xbox Owners’ Homes

Microsoft contractors working on Xbox have gained access to audio recordings of Xbox owners’ home life, a Vice Motherboard report revealed today. According to the report, accidentally triggered Xbox voice commands would result in audio recordings stored by Microsoft, which contractors could hear. The report, titled “Microsoft Contractors Listened to Xbox Owners in Their Homes,”…

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…

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

ESA Says Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo Will Start Disclosing Loot Box Odds

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has announced that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony will be required to implement new policies requiring the disclosure of all loot box odds for games on their platforms. “I’m pleased to announce this morning that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have indicated to ESA a commitment to new platform policies with respect…

15 Years Later, I Was Finally Brave Enough To Finish Doom 3

After the recent surprise release of Doom 3 on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch I felt I needed to finally accomplish something I had been putting off for too long. It was time to load up Doom 3, start a new game and finish this thing. I tried before when I was much younger and…

Wolfenstein: Youngblood: The Kotaku Review

I am generally suspicious of games that people say are “better with friends,” simply because most things are. Manual labor, paying taxes, repeatedly hitting your thumb with a hammer—these are all things that are “better with friends.” Humans are social creatures, and company can make both miserable and pleasant things a whole lot better. “Better…

Gears Of War 4 Headlines August’s Xbox Live Games With Gold

August’s Xbox Live Games with Gold are a nice mix of action and racing. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Gold subscription. August’s Games With Gold are: Xbox One Gears of War 4 (August 1-31) Forza Motorsport 6 (August 16-September 15) Xbox 360 (compatible with Xbox One)…

Gears Of War 5 Is Going To “Avoid Highlighting Or Glorifying Smoking”

In 2019, because we’ve already seen a shift away from it in a lot of movies and TV shows, it’s not the biggest deal if a major video game decides to not show any of its characters smoking. It is interesting, though, if the game is making a point of it. The Coalition, developers of…

July’s Game Pass games have been announced with Shadow of Mordor: Shadow of War arriving on July 4 alongside My Time at Portia and Undertale, while Blazing Chrome will be a release day addition on July 11. Unfortunately, Warhammer Vermintide 2 and some other big games are also leaving this month.

In its latest ID@Xbox showcase Microsoft announced a bunch of indie games that will soon be coming to Game Pass including Bad North, Gonner, The Banner Saga 3, and Yoku’s Island Express It also announced that others, like Undertale, Timespinner, and For the King, are headed to Game Pass on PC. 

Xbox Boss On Microsoft’s Struggles With Game Quality And Efforts To Improve It

Whatever the strengths of the Xbox platform, it’s long lagged behind Nintendo and Sony in terms of homegrown, exclusive video games. There have been highlights in its history and even some stellar games of late, such as last year’s Forza Horizon 4, but the Xbox One era has been rough. There have been prominent cancellations,…

‘Xbox Live Is Not A Free Speech Platform’: Xbox Boss Promises New Features To Make Online Gaming Less Hostile

You can learn a lot about a person by the values they express, and possibly something about an entire gaming platform by the blog posts the person running it writes. That’s why I was so eager at E3 last week to ask the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, why he recently wrote a 1200-word essay…

Phil Spencer On Xbox’s Unusual Strategy, Working With Sony, And More

Xbox chief Phil Spencer has heard from the skeptics. They think that what he’s doing with Xbox means that Microsoft is giving up on consoles, or even going third party. That’s all wrong, he told me during an extensive interview in Los Angeles last week, where we discussed his vision for Xbox, the recently announced…

Xbox Players Can Now Have The Same Gamertag, If They Don’t Mind Numbers At The End

Frustrated that someone else got the Xbox Gamertag you wanted before you did? Thanks to changes implemented by Microsoft this week, players can now choose a Gamertag that’s already in use, as long as they don’t mind having a hashtag and random numbers next to their display name. There can be only one MasterChief, MajorNelson…