"We are adding the ability to make weapon adjustments outside of the standard title update process".
Halo 4's next title update will introduce a new backend feature whereby 343 can tweak and tune weapons without releasing a full update. As with Modern Warfare 3, this will allow the developer to adjust the gun balancing continuously, reacting to problems almost as quickly as they arise.
Celebrated developer in teasing background image shocker.
In what I can only assume is an attempt to make your, my and everybody we know's heads explode with frustration, DICE has launched a Battlefield 4 teaser site where you wipe away mist to reveal a background image of some tanks - only the image keeps misting up again, forever denying us closure. Argh.
Log's exploring Columbia - give him directions.
The next big game on our review chopping block is 2K Games and Bioshock Infinite, a whimsical, often brutal fantasy set on a floating, war-torn city in 1912. Bioshock Infinite! Where barbershop quartets croon their way through highly anachronistic pop melodies. Where half-mechanical men clobber fire-spewing anarchists. Where space-time itself is punctured by glimmering distortions, distortions that can be manipulated by leading lady Elizabeth to port over materials from alternate realities.
Outland, Mad Riders, Beyond Good and Evil and Rayman 3 HD also chopped.
It's a regular massacre. To the left, the bleeding remnants of various Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Revelations DLC packs. To the right, a pile of butchered Xbox Live Arcade hits. Ubisoft has taken an axe to a significant proportion of its Xbox Live Marketplace content, hacking various innocent, trusting price tags into neat, gruesome halves.
"At this time there are no plans for single player DLC.".
You can't make a sequel to your Tomb Raider prequel, Crystal Dynamics. That's just... wrong, like Marty McFly sleeping with his own mother. Alas, this unnatural prospect is a very probable one, according to global brand director Karl Stewart.
Blu-ray support, new controller, hard drive as standard?.
If this is a hoax, it's one of the most elaborate hoaxes we've ever come across. Rumour mill regular VGleaks has posted what it claims are documents for the next gen Xbox development kit. They don't say much that the site hasn't already given away or that hasn't been rumoured by other sources, but they offer a reasonably complete picture of the Durango's capabilities from a consumer's point of view. Pending official confirmation, obviously.
Changelog to arrive "in the next few days".
There is light at the end of the tunnel, my deep-delving and high-building brethren. Minecraft Xbox 360 update 9 is almost out of bug fixing, and 4J Studios says we can expect full details in the next few days. A trailer for the pack has already been created, and is due this week.
Witness inevitable Locust victory in our livestream.
Gears of War: Judgment is out this week. It's rather good. To celebrate this fact - and the fact that Microsoft generously provided the review copies early - we're going to try livestreaming the OXM team playing it, via the magic of YouTube.
Two for the price of one news post.
Time waits for no man, life is fleeting and I simply don't have the energy to write two separate news articles about two separate topics this afternoon, hence the below exciting all-in one write-up. Tomb Raider! Gears of War: Judgment! Which do you love more? Let them fight for our affection, readers, like dogs for table scraps.
Connor's crazy sidestory continues.
Good grief, my comicbook Injun spider-senses are tingling! It can only be the launch of another weird and wonderful Assassin's Creed 3 DLC pack. Today's instalment is titled The Betrayal, and continues the Tyranny of King Washington sidestory inaugurated by The Infamy. The file is 1.21 GB in size, costs 800 MP and can be downloaded here.
Competition taken offline following "technical difficulties".
If you're thinking of entering yesterday's Xbox Live Entertainment Awards, you might want to hold off for the moment. If you've already entered, you might want to change any and all of your passwords.
Dontnod: 'If you think like that, there's no way the medium's going to mature'".
Words can't describe how depressed I was when Epic's Chris Perna told me that a female Gears of War lead would be "tough to justify", given the nature of the game's market. Seems people who buy action videogames are all terrified baby-men who can't process the concept of an alternate in-game gender. Who knew? I imagine Remember Me creative director Jean-Max Morris was similarly narked to discover that nobody would publish his (quietly promising) game, on the strength of preconceptions about the audience.
John Riccitiello stepping down on 30th March, share price rises 2.6 per cent.
EA's chief executive officer John Riccitiello has announced that he will resign his position on 30th March following the company's failure to meet internal financial targets. Former CEO Larry Probst will serve as executive chairman while EA's board searches for a replacement, with EA Sports boss and former Microsoft exec Peter Moore tipped to swing the ballot.
"You have to have a fresh and innovative design.".
My god, the news. WHERE IS THE NEWS? Save for this morning's Gears of War: Judgment review, Xbox-flavoured happenings are decidedly thin on the ground right now. Why, I almost found myself writing a news piece about the Walking Dead: Survival Instinct - a game we've yet to receive review code for, which goes on sale tomorrow, and is thus, in all probability, rubbish.
Tanks, guns and terrible puns confirmed.
It begins. Well, it'll begin very shortly. DICE has released a video teasing a Battlefield 4 announcement on 27th March, aka next Wednesday. View the thrilling footage here, then take yourself off to a corner and wonder aloud about the game's contents and theme.
Reboot's decidedly wacky origins explored.
We already knew that this year's Tomb Raider reboot wasn't always a "gritty", down-to-earth survival story. We knew that Crystal discarded a number of ideas during development - most notably a young female companion for Lara, possibly modelled on the likes of Yorda from ICO and Trip from Enslaved.
But sci-fantasy "gave us this freedom".
Bungie's always-online next gen shooter Destiny has been bubbling away in pre-production for yonks, with ideas beginning to circulate well before the studio split from Microsoft - there are references to the new shooter's background fiction in Halo 3: ODST, released way back in 2009. The choice of a science fiction setting seems an obvious one, given the studio's pedigree, but according to writer and design director Joseph Staten, it took Bungie years to nail down.
Assassin's Creed and GTA publishers are "in a really dangerous position".
Former Battlefield franchise executive producer Ben Cousins has tossed in his two-pence (translation for American readers: "ten cents") on whether traditional games publishing can survive the switch to a market dominated by digital distribution. EA's not doing too badly, apparently, but Grand Theft Auto publisher Take Two and Ubisoft need to straighten themselves out.
Competition runs from 18th to 26th March.
Morning all. Sick of Monday already? Because I've got just the thing for those start-of-week blues. That's right - prizes. Microsoft has announced the Xbox Entertainment Awards, a competition to determine the very best games, films, TV shows and tunes on Xbox Live Marketplace. Participate in the proceedings, and you could walk away with a swanky limited edition Xbox 360, or even tickets to gamescom 2013 in Cologne, Germany.
Carnage reigns supreme in the first proper footage.
Saints Row 4 will release on 20th August 2013, Volition and Deep Silver have announced. The first in-game footage of the "climactic" (as in, final?) Saints Row is below. Hold onto your hats...