Master Chief is being "mercilessly hunted", it seems.
Well, no wonder Master Chief looks a little raggedy, a little - shall we say - down at heel in the trailer for Halo Xbox One: he's struggling to survive in the face of a galaxy-wide holocaust. When you can stomp Prometheans 24-7 without falling behind the cutting edge of fashion, you'll be in a position to judge, eh? Plot details for the game appear to have surfaced over at the Microsoft Store. The page has now been pulled, but the generally trustworthy All Games Beta has preserved a snapshot for posterity.
Get to know Franklin, Michael and Trevor just a little bit better.
I'll admit it folks, there have been few things capable of distracting me from my weekly dose of new Breaking Bad recently, but I think I can consider myself safely hyped for the impending GTApocalypse thanks to the newest trailer that's just surfaced online.
"We're looking at early next year for potentially good timing for us.".
The first batch of Watch Dogs DLC may hit Xbox 360 and Xbox One sometime in early 2014, Ubisoft's Dominic Guay has told OXM, and will possibly involve different playable characters and "kinds of gameplay".
Say hello to Closing Time, which "showcases the rendering strength" of the game engine.
All too often, guns in games are the equivalent of fast food, tossed aside the second you empty the clip. Bungie wants to change that with Destiny, offering up unique, uniquely named firearms that are basically adverts for the history and capabilities of the players carrying them.
"The fact that Microsoft changed its Xbox One online policy within a week - is that a bad thing?".
Microsoft's dramatic curtailing of such policies as Xbox One's online DRM and always-on Kinect have provoked a certain amount of scorn from some quarters, it's fair to say. Others, however, see these "One80s" as evidence that the manufacturer genuinely cares about the core games enthusiasts it's often accused of abandoning. Among the latter is Lionhead's creative director Gary Carr, who spoke at length to OXM on the subject in an interview you'll find in issue 103.
But has "stayed away from it for now" based on player feedback.
Battlefield 4 is shaping up to be this winter's strongest shooter, despite a slight want of new ideas beneath that thick, crunchy layer of next generation pyrotechnics. Could developer DICE have done more with Xbox One's more esoteric capabilities, such as that much-trumpeted "magical" cloud support? I asked creative director Lars Gustavsson for his thoughts.
In other news, GTA 5's soundtrack includes 240 songs and 15 radio stations.
Ahead of Grand Theft Auto V's fast approaching release in September, Rockstar have expanded The Crews feature in its Social Club to include a new hierarchy structure, which will allow crew leaders to assign ranks and impose responsibilities to their minions.
Microsoft opts for QWERTY layout, praise the gods.
The growth of Kinect on Xbox 360 (around 20 million sales to date, remember) has mysteriously coincided with a dialling down of the effectiveness of certain versions of the console's virtual keyboard - now an unsightly strip across the top of the nav.
EA Sports chap promises big boosts to resolution and crowds, too.
BioWare's using the power of Xbox One and PS4 to render up extraordinarily lifelike blind burrowing creatures. EA Sports, meanwhile, is using that power to make players run into each other more believably. Speaking to Eurogamer, FIFA 14 lead producer David Rutter has discussed some of the benefits purchasers of the next generation version can expect over their lowly Xbox 360 or PS3-preferring compatriots.
Still no release date details, alas.
4J Studios has dribbled out a dash of detail on Minecraft Xbox 360's forthcoming custom texture packs, formally known as Mash-Up Packs. Besides a new interface and a set of textures you can apply to an existing world, the Packs will ship with a ready-made Themed World to illustrate the possibilities. Oh, and there will be appropriate music, too. All sounds great to us.
New Dragon Age: Keep app allows players to shape world ahead of release.
BioWare has announced Dragon Age Keep, a web application that - wait, come back! It's not just the usual browser-based marketing gimmick. Keep allows you to preconfigure the world of Dragon Age: Inquisition to reflect the choices you made in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2, in lieu of a more traditional save transfer option which is, I assume, impossible for technical reasons.
Free-to-play shooter coming early 2014.
Crytek's free-to-play FPS Warface is coming to Xbox 360 and... nope, just Xbox 360, actually. It's out in early 2014, for Xbox Live Gold subscribers only. Where's the Xbox One version, Crytek? And why does this game look so much like Battlefield 3?
Release date and contents announced.
If you've yet to pick up Borderlands 2, undoubtedly Gearbox Software's finest hour, you might want to circle 11th October in your diary - that's the UK release date of the Game of the Year edition, which bundles up all post-release add-on content alongside the main game.
"I have nothing but positive things to say about those guys," says Nathan Vella.
Capybara's co-founder and president Nathan Vella is all kinds of chuffed about the indie's relationship with Microsoft. Working with the manufacturer to publish Below on Xbox One and Super Time Force for Xbox 360 has been a "very positive" experience, Vella told me shortly before the announcement of Microsoft's ID@Xbox program at Gamescom last week.
But family sharing, "always-in-the-cloud" and digital loaning might require it, says product director.
Microsoft's retirement of Xbox One's online DRM in June was enthusiastically received by many, but a proportion of fans continue to mourn the glittering/hypothetical digital future thus cruelly/hypothetically nipped in the bud. There was even a petition, calling for the revival of such schemes as remote digital games library sharing.
Offline and pay-upfront is "something many of our players want", agrees Moore.
"We don't ship a game at EA that is offline," the company's chief operating officer Peter Moore told Engadget at Gamescom last week, cue a predictable wave of shock and recrimination. Fear not, everybody - Moore's had a change of heart, or rather, feels his comments were "misinterpreted".
Killer Instinct, Kinect Sports Rivals, Ryse, Forza 5 and more all playable at PAX.
Microsoft's Major Nelson was in full-on Enigma Mode last night, hinting at a number of exciting revelations at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington, which kicks off on Friday 30th August.
But how does this work under the new real-money Xbox Live?.
Microsoft appears to have Stepped It Up on the GTA 5 front, offering those who pre-order the game from the US Microsoft Store 1600 MP at no additional charge. But how does this work, exactly, now that Microsoft Points are dead as the Dodo, and Xbox Live transactions are carried out in real moolah?
8th November might not be the big day, according to second source.
Xbox One's coming out on 8th November in the US, according to a report yesterday from Kotaku. "Oh no it isn't!" claims a second report published today, also from Kotaku. This is beginning to look like a tennis match, chaps - why not lock your sources in the cellar with a single broken pool cue and strict instructions to settle the matter like gentlemen? There can be only One, etc.
Get Bully: Scholarship Edition for three quid.
Microsoft finally called time on the long-lived Xbox Live Marketplace Points system earlier today, ushering in real-money transactions across the entire service. As if to celebrate, Rockstar's just let slip an almighty batch of Games on Demand and DLC reductions. New to GTA's sister franchises? Fancy warming up before GTA 5 makes landfall next month? Here you go, then.
