"I'm going to take responsibility for those decisions, good ones and bad ones.".
Speaking during the latest IGN Podcast Unlocked, Microsoft's Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has reflected at length on the Xbox One's early months and, in particular, its specifications and entertainment features.
Locke and load.
In anticipation of the upcoming Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5: Guardians landing on your Xbox One next year, Microsoft has released a full, proper, teasing trailer of the upcoming live-action Halo: Nightfall.
Have you horde the news?.
Respawn's shooter keeps on evolving - soon you'll take the fight from player-versus-player to players-versus-AI. In Titanfall's brand new game mode, Frontier Defense, you and (up to) three teammates will fight waves of Titans, Grunts and Spectres, including a few new variations on familiar units, while defending what Respawn calls "a vital objective".
Defend the Earth against neon wildlife.
In what I hope is the first in a series of sudden giveaways, Microsoft has released a free "fast-paced, space-themed, RTS and top-down shooter combo", Voice Commander, on Xbox One. Thanks to Eurogamer for noticing.
Proposed misstatements about the game's quality are "inactionable", rules judge.
Fancy a bit of light legal reading to help your lunch and/or breakfast go down? A US federal judge has just dismissed a proposed lawsuit about "materially false and misleading statements" allegedly issued by EA with regard to the launch-day quality of Battlefield 4.
EA Access members get it earlier, though.
The only thing better than basketball is free basketball, and the only thing better than free basketball is basketball from the 23rd century, featuring players with telescopic prosthetic arms, and a ball that's actually the head of that android guy from Aliens.
Find, join and play matches without switching out to your desktop.
If you've always been tempted by eSports tourneys, but are well aware that you lack the dexterity and basic ruthlessness to participate, you should fear and dread the coming of Xbox One's Electronic Sports League app. According to the blurb, eSports on consoles "has never been easier", which is basically another way of saying that public humiliation has never been easier. Download at your peril, then.
How a rectangle became a game about clowns and explosions.
Some people look at featureless red blocks and see only featureless red blocks. This appears to have been true of Other Ocean, developers of ID@Xbox title #IDARB, which is why they asked Twitter at large to help flesh out the concept.
Will allow downloaders to fight owners of the paid-for edition.
A little nugget of Japanese intel, before you head off for the day. You probably have videogames to play, I expect. Videogames like Tecmo's long-in-the-tooth fighting game Dead or Alive 5, a free version of which will apparently release on Xbox One, according to an issue of Famitsu translated by Gematsu and passed on by Videogamer.
Creative director Alex Hutchinson thinks video sharing is the way forward.
The writing is on the wall for the corridor FPS, Far Cry 4's creative director Alex Hutchinson has told OXM, as video sharing services make the element of repetition harder and harder to ignore.
Corporate Lockdown is the first of five packs, out 28th October.
As if 30 hours of xenomorph avoidance wasn't harrowing enough, Sega and Creative Assembly have announced the first of five add-on packs for Alien: Isolation, Corporate Lockdown. It adds three maps to the game's Survivor Mode, played from the perspective of Seegson executive Ransome, who is on the way to the good ship Torrens with decoded Nostromo data.
Racers and Dragon Balls collide in the latest Deals of the Week.
I find it helpful to visualise Xbox Marketplace deals as a cinematic setpiece. The latest Xbox 360-based reductions, for example, would consist of a small herd of Dragon Ball characters, screeching defiantly from the midst of a confused, honking whirlpool of high-end motors.
Also, Insomniac shares a few thoughts on 1080p.
Xbox One exlcusive Sunset Overdrive, you might recall, has a mission-based co-op mode for up to eight players - it culminates with nocturnal survival escapades, in which players arrange traps to intercept waves of increasingly tough munsters. Sounds fun, but wouldn't full-blown free-roam co-op support be preferable, Insomniac? Well, it could still happen.
"What kind of leader will you be, Agent Locke?".
Halo: Nightfall probably isn't the part of the Master Chief Collection package you're most eager to lay violent hands on, but you know what? Perhaps it should be. Presided over by executive producer Ridley Scott and directed by Sergio "Battlestar Galactica" Mimica-Gezzan, it's an introduction to the plot of both the Collection and Halo 5 - the former serves, cunningly, as pre-op preparation for the latter.
Watch a video of it all here.
Having only just got shot of October's Xbox One update, Microsoft has announced details of plans for November. Slow down, Phil! I'm still getting to grips with that new Friends section.
What you'll get for #163;23.99.
Ubisoft has announced several big wodges of DLC for Far Cry 4, that non-linear shooty-bang game with the magic tigers and elephants.
"I advise you not to use the phrase 'Sunset Overhype' because that's just lazy writing!".
Look, Insomniac - I realise that working on those dreary, straight-laced Resistance games for years may have left you feeling somewhat stifled, but will you please leave the fourth wall alone? I'm not sure there's much of a wall left, frankly, given how often you've kicked through it over the past 12 months.
Co-founder Alexandre Parizeau promoted to oversee "unannounced projects".
Jade Raymond - the Montreal, Quebec-born Sony and EA veteran who helped introduce Assassin's Creed to the world - has announced that she will stand down as managing director of Ubisoft Toronto, the present home of Splinter Cell.
But defends it as a more "practical" approach than shipping on multiple discs.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection's 20GB day-one update might be annoying, but it's the most "practical" way to ensure that buyers get their money's worth, 343 co-founder Frank O'Connor has argued in a series of NeoGAF posts.
Korean ratings board outs plans for generation jump.
With Playdead's Inside on its way to Xbox One next year, what better way to celebrate a game about the unknowable misery of childhood fear (probably) than playing the developer's last game about the self-same subject? This seems to be someone's thinking, given an Xbox One version of Limbo's been listed on the Korean ratings board's website.
