Might just be for Germany, mind you.
How many seasonal Xbox One bundles are we up to now? Four? Five? And which of these shapely, game-specific darlings will you go home with this Christmas, assuming you aren't the proud owner of an Xbox One already? Careful - they look cute but they've got teeth.
"I do genuinely believe my life is in danger.".
Giant Spacekat co-founder Brianna Wu has joined the sadly lengthy list of industry figures to receive threats and harassment online - a list that now extends from major studio heads like Treyarch design director David Vonderhaar to indie game developers and journalists.
...in order to help you control stress and anxiety.
Nevermind's core gameplay loop is one of the most sinister ever to slither from the jet-black innards of an Xbox - the more obviously terrified you get, the more unsettling and hazardous the world becomes, as the game reads your responses using Kinect's much-vaunted, little-exploited biometric feedback technology.
343 aiming for "deeper palette of characters".
Speaking to OXM as part of our whopping new Halo Special, on sale now, 343's Bonnie Ross has shed a little more light on the plot of Halo 5: Guardians. Among other tantalising titbits, she revealed that a "new mysterious threat" will feature in the game - suggesting that the fourth game's Didact won't, as has been rumoured, be the primary antagonist.
No activity on your Activity feed? Help is at hand.
Good news, everyone! The generous souls at Microsoft have temporarily rid you of the need to interact with (hawk, spit) other human beings on your Xbox One or Xbox 360 dashboard. According to a new service alert, players may experience "difficulties" when using their Friends and Profile pages.
Bungie explains the advantages of fielding higher level abilities and gear.
As you may be aware, level advantages are disabled for the majority of head-to-head multiplayer in Destiny, to ensure a level playing field between newcomers and veterans. That isn't quite true of the Iron Banner events - and yet, these aren't "no-holds-barred" exercises in punishing players who rock up with lower-level guns and abilities.
Synchronise your watches - then throw them out, because they'll frighten and upset you.
Bioware's Cameron Lee wants you spend time with his game. In an interview with Polygon he revealed that while Inquisition's storyline will take the expected 20-40 hours (which is a fairly gigantic disparity, by the way), rinsing clean the world could take 200.
The Hypogeum gets a drive-by.
It's been but two days since we last had a YouTuber telling us how to find an upcoming Destiny DLC area, and now Se7ensins (via Eurogamer) has something new for us.
Arrives 24 hours ahead of alpha testing on other platforms.
Soon, my friends, you too will know what it's like to hunker beneath a stairway, hoping against hope that your fellow Hunters will respawn before a squid-faced pterodactyl puts you out of your misery. I refer, of course, to 2K and Turtle Rock's asymmetrical sci-fi shooter Evolve, which begins alpha testing on Xbox One this month.
Warlord rounds out the list of jazzed-up battle arenas.
Halo 2's Warlock - or as it's now known, Warlord - is the sixth and final Halo 2 map to be totally remastered for the game's Anniversary edition, which forms part of Xbox One's Halo: The Master Chief Collection, out on 11th November in the US and 14th November in the UK.
It's Brazil-only for the moment, sadly.
Quite why anybody would want a glossy white edition of any home appliance eludes me. I favour shades of deathly black or festering brown, which make my apartment's omnipresent layer of filth a little less obvious to the eye.
Higher frame rates can look "really weird" in some games.
Running a game at 60 frames a second isn't just a technical chore - according to Assassin's Creed: Unity developers, it can actually damage your suspension of disbelief.
"But we can't give a when yet.".
In news that will surely gladden the heart of reviewers worldwide, the Xbox One is to receive a screenshot capturing function via downloadable update. It'll also get custom dashboard themes and backgrounds. When will these features arrive? That's for Phil Spencer to know and you to wonder about.
Enterprising scamp discovers The Terminus.
You weren't meant to see The Terminus until next year - this is a little like looking at your Christmas presents, but instead of carefully removing tape, you're triple-jumping up a massive tube. The Venus-set DLC area had already been pointed to by Bungie as part of the "House of Wolves" update, but Youtuber Nowise10 has found an ingenious way of showing you even more.
Sumo Digital's port sputters out.
The Xbox 360 port of Playground's fantastic Forza Horizon 2 might do many things right - approximating a defiantly next-gen game on 8 year-old hardware is a fairly monumental achievement in my eyes - but franchise creator Turn 10 has confirmed that it falls behind its Xbox One counterpart in one key respect: DLC.
The mist of mist-understanding.
Remember Myst? It was that heralded first-person exploration puzzler everyone talked about that turned out to be terrifically underwhelming when you finally got around to giving it a try. And you remember how it had that storyline about an island and, um, some books with little TVs on them or something? Oh, and there was airship I think! But you never flew it, or really got that close to it. Probably. Well anyway, Myst and its storyline is an upcoming TV show now.
Indie programme director bigs up the little guys.
There's always been a sense that ID@Xbox is a more focused (and, crucially, more hands-off) proposition than the Xbox Live Arcade or Indie Games programmes, and that approach seems to be reaping the benefits already - at least if Chris Charla is to be believed.
Servers will go offline for "several hours".
Attention all Guardians: you'll be unable to sign in for "several hours" from 7am Pacific time or 3pm GMT today, as Bungie rolls out an update for a number of connectivity bugs. Oh yes, and they're going to nobble quick-scoping, which was apparently possible using certain weapons. Back to Call of Duty with you, perfidious sniper-streakers!
Download for nada, or buy the game with a month's Premium membership in a box.
Microsoft and Team Dakota's fairytale-flavoured game editor Project Spark is finally ready for official release - the complete version can be downloaded now on Xbox One or Windows 8 PCs, free of charge, or bought in a box with some additional content and perks.
Buy the first next gen Metal Gear for #163;12.50 or equivalent.
In this week's Xbox Live Marketplace deals, three of gaming's most celebrated shadow-stalkers do battle. Emerging from a cardboard box right by your feet is Solid Snake, the Kiefer Sutherland-voiced edition with the fetching pirate's eyepatch. Meanwhile, Batman descends from the heavens in a swirl of high tech fabric. And then there's Mortal Kombat's Scorpion. OK, so he's remarkably unsubtle for a ninja, but he's got style.
