Xbox

Sea of Thieves will get a competitive mode, Arena, in early 2019, Rare announced today at XO18. Crews will compete to get the most treasure.

The original Crackdown is free on Xbox this month, Microsoft announced today at its X018 event in Mexico City.

Battlefield 1 Headlines November’s Xbox Live Games With Gold

In November’s Games with Gold, I’m personally most excited about indie racer Race the Sun, but Battlefield 1 is good too I guess. If you’re out of things to do in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you can go back to the start of the series with Assassin’s Creed As always, these games are only “free” if you have…

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.…

X018—a “global celebration of all things Xbox”—will be held in Mexico City on November 10-11. There’ll be thousands of fans in attendance, but announcements will be streamed online as well.

Xbox One Getting Mouse + Keyboard Support

FPS games (and…strategy games?) are about to get a lot more precise on the Xbox One, with the announcement today that Microsoft is “enabling mouse and keyboard support on Xbox One for select Xbox Insiders in the coming weeks.” It’s a game-by-game thing, with developers free to choose whether they implement the added compatibility or…

Here’s October 2018’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

Xbox announced October’s Games with Gold lineup during its Inside Xbox presentation this afternoon. I’m excited to see Hitman: Blood Money because it’s a chance to play some Hitman before I get to play more Hitman next month. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Gold subscription. October’s…

Microsoft’s Custom Charity Consoles Are Great

Xbox and Make-A-Wish are teaming up again for their Consoles For Kids charity drive, and the 2018 batch of custom-designed celebrity consoles are looking very pretty. How pretty you find them may depend on your feelings towards a particular celebrity, since many of them just have someone’s face plastered over the front, but there are…

Gaming peripheral maker Hyperkin is releasing another Duke replica, this time in green. The black version was surprisingly ergonomical for being a $70 nostalgia trap, but if you like a splash of color to go with your ginormous hands, the green Duke has you covered. It’s currently available at Gamestop and Amazon.

Here’s September 2018’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

My editor-in-chief cheered “LEGO Stars Wars III!” at this month’s Xbox Live Games with Gold lineup, and his excitement made me excited, so maybe this is a good month for Xbox games. You also get some classic Sega action RPGs and the grim management sim Prison Architect. As always, these games are only “free” if you have…

New Xbox All Access Program Lets You Pay Monthly For An Xbox, Game Pass, And Xbox Live

Microsoft has a new monthly financing program for the Xbox One called Xbox All Access, according to a blog post over at the Xbox website. The program allows users to commit to a two-year plan where they pay monthly for either an Xbox One S or an Xbox One X and subscriptions to both Xbox…

Three Consoles, One A/V Port

It is unholy, and yet, also strangely beautiful. Squint and you’ll see the PlayStation’s contribution, with a “Sony Computer Entertainment America” screen flashing up a few times. And the Xbox’s menu features prominently early on. Aside from that, though, this three-way struggle for AV supremacy was clearly won by the GameCube and Final Fantasy Crystal…

Monster Hunter: World: The Kotaku Review

Video games often deal in illusions, proffering the fantasy of control and power even when your meaningful influence is minimal. Monster Hunter: World, the new third-person action game from Capcom, absolutely deals in fantasy. It plucks you from reality and sets you in the domains of exotically imposing monsters that you must hunt. In this…

Sea of Thieves‘ New Update Finally Makes Things Feel Dangerous

Sea of Thieves is full of jerk playersand giant sharks, but the game has never felt all that dangerous. The latest update, Cursed Sails, mostly corrects that. The addition of terrifying skeleton threats, battles packed with cursed cannonballs, and a brand new player ship brings a welcome sense of urgency to a game that often…

For Honor Headlines August’s Xbox Live Games With Gold 

August’s Xbox Live Games with Gold is pretty good this month. It features a few games I keep meaning to check out, like For Honor and Dead Space 3. As always, these games are only “free” if you have an active Xbox Live Gold subscription. August’s Xbox Live Games With Gold are: Xbox One Forza…

Top Gaming People Say Streaming That Frees High-End Games From Requiring High-End Hardware Is The Next Big Thing

Whenever I’ve interviewed a games industry executive over the past few months, I’ve asked them what single thing will revolutionize video games in the next five years. I was expecting a range of answers: game development becoming more accessible, perhaps, or games finding bigger markets in the developing world, or a technology innovation like VR/AR…

After briefly getting the world excited over the prospect of a new hardware announcement at Gamescom next month, Microsoft has changed a line in its blog post from promising “all-new Xbox hardware and accessories” to “new Xbox One bundles and accessories.” Whoops!

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…

Here’s July’s Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup

There’s nothing too exciting in July’s Xbox Live Games With Gold. I will confess a deep fondness for Splinter Cell Conviction because when it came out in 2010 I’d never seen a game that projected the objective text into the world, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I still kinda think that.…