Program will be "an ongoing benefit for Xbox Live Gold members on Xbox 360".
Good news, penny pinchers! Microsoft has announced that it will continue to give out two free Xbox 360 games to Xbox Gold subscribers each month after the end of the year, following an "overwhelming response" from community members.
Details of GTA 5's next title update and timing to follow.
Wondering when you'll get your hands on GTA Online's $500,000 Stimulus package? You're not alone. Rockstar "hopes" to release the first instalment of $250,000 before the end of this week, after GTA 5's next update appears on Xbox Live, and says it'll set an exact release time shortly. Only one weekday to go, chaps. Cutting it pretty fine, there.
Plus: your homegrown Argonian can be as fat as you please.
The next generation is finally upon us, ladies and gentlemen, and so far, it appears to be furry, bulbous and scantily clad. Bethesda has released a new video about character customisation in The Elder Scrolls Online. At times, it leaves very little to the imagination.
"This is something for the entire industry to be excited about".
The Independent Developers at Xbox program, born of Microsoft's aims to enable indie self-publishing on the Xbox One platform, will open the doors to thousands of young indie upstarts, giving them a "full pool of resources" and potentially change the landscape of gaming for the better. So says one of the brains behind it, anyway.
"It's kind of a weird, ironic thing to say," muses Mark Rubin.
Every year, Activision releases another Call of Duty game, and every year, comments threads and forums overflow with contempt for that game, and every year, that game somehow manages to sell tens of millions of copies regardless. How to explain this phenomenon? Infinity Ward's executive producer Mark Rubin suspects it has something to do with the huge proportion of consumers for whom Call of Duty simply is gaming, the one and only title they feel obliged to play.
"Congratulations to the team at Rockstar for their success," says UK boss.
Riley is coming for you, Trevor - he's got your scent. And as for you, Michael, you should keep an eye out for scary men with painted faces and over-designed rifles, hiding behind your shower curtain. Infinity Ward might be fairly laidback about GTA 5's Call of Duty parody, but publisher Activision has urgent designs on Rockstar's sales record.
"But absolutely it's the right decision if there's something glitchy.".
We don't normally report on analyst commentary round these parts, but I thought the below was interesting: IDC's videogame research manager Lewis Ward has suggested to the BBC that the delayed release of much-hyped open worlder Watch Dogs will take a bite out of next generation console sales.
Empty servers, new control schemes and alas, no more super-powered elevators.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, and no beta survives contact with a bunch of adrenaline-crazed FPS fans. During your tour of the Battlefield 4 beta's Shanghai map, you may have noticed a few technical hiccups. DICE has now released a list of the bugs it's aware of, and the fixes it has implemented. Here are those that apply to the Xbox 360 version.
Strapped for cash? Get yourself an Albany Cavalcade.
Are you still having trouble turning a buck in GTA 5 multiplayer, despite our list of GTA Online's best-paying missions and tips on how to become a Los Santos millionaire? The below list of car prices could be worth a perusal, then. In the event that all your BAWSAQ investments go down the drain, selling stolen vehicles at mod shops is an easy way to make quick cash.
"There are so many things that can go wrong, and you can never know until you've launched.".
How are you getting on with GTA Online? Burned through any especially well-paid missions lately? Made a million or two? Or are you still surfing around in a sea of technical difficulties? If that's the case, Battlefield 4's executive producer Patrick Bach would like you to consider the following before unleashing your wrath at Rockstar Support.
Don't expose to the naked eye.
"Polishing". It's a dangerously ambiguous catch-all term for that point in game development when most of the actual content has been created, and all that's left to do is quash bugs and fiddle with the balancing (I say "all that's left to do" like any of this is easy - it isn't). In Forza 5's case, "polishing" is more appropriate than usual. With every week that passes Turn 10 reveals another set of offensively high-end cars, and those cars are getting shinier and shinier.
Snap the app to your screen, watch during gameplay.
There it is again - a faint rumbling on the wind, a sense of mounting pressure, of new beginnings. Microsoft has wheeled out another exclusive Xbox One launch feature - a swanky app from Youtube user-generated video portal Machinima. You can see it in action below, along with new footage of Dead Rising 3.
But there'll be more experiences coming to single player, developer permitting.
The perks of Microsoft's Xbox Live Compute service will mainly apply to multiplayer gaming at Xbox One's launch, the manufacturer has revealed, with benefits for single player to follow.
"You should compare it to other games on the same platform," not different versions.
DICE aims to make Battlefield 4 look as handsome as possible on every platform available - and is accordingly braced for criticism, as fans pick up on the inevitable discrepancies between different versions of the game. Speaking to OXM at the British Academy Of Film & Television Arts centre in London yesterday, the franchise's executive producer Patrick Bach predicted that some players would "nag" the developer over the details, but insisted that DICE would never compromise for the sake of graphical parity.
Eight-episode Every Street United will take place around the globe, has interactive elements.
Microsoft's second original TV series for Xbox Live is apparently Every Street United, a reality show with interactive elements that will scour the globe for great undiscovered football players, culminating with an episode shot at the 2014 World Cup.
The man with the skull-faced balaclava is back.
Did you pre-order Call of Duty: Ghosts from Gamestop? Lucky you - besides the Freefall map (which takes place in a dynamically disintegrating skyscraper) and a weekend of double XP, you'll get "exclusive" access to a multiplayer character skin based on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Simon "Ghost" Riley.
Ship Happens.
A new video over on Xbox Wire has gone to considerable lengths to explains the benefits of some of the Xbox One's features, and how those features help to future-proof the console. It also gives us a sneaky look at the Xbox One's super smooth user interface in action.
Microsoft rebrands the Xbox One cloud as Xbox Live Compute.
Hooray for unambiguously good news about the Xbox One! Microsoft has rebranded the console's cloud server program as Xbox Live Compute, and says that all developers for the console will, as rumoured, have access to free "computing power" and dedicated servers for multiplayer.
Any guesses as to what the next free titles might be?.
As we reported last month, Halo 3 is October's second free download for Games with Gold, following on from Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes HD. Xbox Live gold members can download it right now from the Xbox Live Marketplace, after which time the game is yours to keep forever.
One less boy racer to keep you up at night.
Watch Dogs isn't the only high profile Ubisoft project that's in difficulties. As reported by Kotaku, Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections' The Crew has also been delayed till the publisher's next fiscal year - sometime between 1st April 2014 and 31st March 2015.
