Developer wants "to keep the gameplay environment as fair as possible".
It's been almost 24 hours since GTA Online's anti-cheat maintenance period, and controversy continues to rage over Rockstar's crackdown on the hackers. The studio maintains that a fairer game is a better game, but some object that walling out exploits runs somewhat contrary to GTA's criminal ethos. Upstanding users also worry that they'll be penalised for receiving vast quantities of unsolicited "counterfeit" cash.
Battlecry Studios also advertises for work on "undisclosed AAA PC and next gen console game".
Of all the companies with skeletons in the closet, few seem more burdened with secrets right now than ZeniMax Media and its subsidiary Bethesda Softworks, publisher of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles.
Enterprising user beats Fable Anniversary to the punch.
Now, that's dedication. Project Spark beta tester and OXM Twitter follower MrXbob has been busy of late - he's managed to rebuild Oakvale, a location from the original Fable, using Team Dakota's new world creation toolset, which is slated to release on Xbox One this spring.
Skeletal swordsman to arrive in January.
What's tall, fleshless and equipped with a shield-sized version of his own face? Answer: Killer Instinct's Spinal, a savage bone warrior who will join the free-to-play game's line-up "soon".
Next generation finally begins.
It's OK, everybody - you can breathe out now. Ubisoft has announced that it will release a Tetris game on the Xbox One, thus fulfilling the unspoken dreams of literally all three people who haven't played a Tetris game before.
Expect "huge, checkpoint-free, sandbox levels".
In a rather surprising turn of events, IO Interactive has published an open letter to fans about the first Hitman game for Xbox One, PS4 and PC, which is currently untitled.
But won't penalise innocents who have received "counterfeit" GTA cash.
Like a gimlet-eyed Texan sheriff, Rockstar doesn't take kindly to out-of-towners fouling up GTA Online's economy with their dirty tricks and ruses. Those who use exploits to earn free cash may be walled off from other players, or even banned outright.
It's rolling out now - expect some multiplayer downtime.
A new Battlefield 4 Xbox 360 update is in the process of rolling out, DICE has announced. The accompanying patch notes overlap a little with those for the most recent Battlefield 4 Xbox One update - among other things, jets have been rebalanced and various animation glitches have been addressed.
Underworld, Legend and Anniversary go cheap to celebrate free Guardian of Light.
If the (,a href="http://www.oxm.co.uk/69510/free-xbox-games-with-gold-download-lara-croft-and-the-guardian-of-light-now/">currently free) Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light strikes you as too grand a departure for Tomb Raider, perhaps you'll be terested in Tomb Raider: Anniversary - an Xbox 360 upgrade for the original Tomb Raider, which is now on sale on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Co-director says he hasn't thought about it "yet".
I don't know about you, but I fully intend to be miserable for the majority of March. Dark Souls II launches on the 14th, and for plenty of players who got suckered into its predecessor, the date simply cannot come quickly enough. But we still have questions. In an interview with Edge, Dark Souls II co-director Yui Tanimura attempted to shed a little light in the dark.
Excellent spin-off now yours for the taking till 1st February.
It's a good day for top-down co-op combat and puzzling, a not so good day for poor, defenceless tombs. The thoroughly marvellous Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is now yours to download free on Xbox 360 till 1st February, as part of the on-going Games with Gold program.
Kojima gives fans a sneak peek of Smartphone Snake.
If you're a Metal Gear Solid fan and for some reason you aren't already following its creator Hideo Kojima on Twitter, you might want to rectify that. Not only is he currently busying himself by tweeting pictures of everything from Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes promotional material to in-game menus, you'll also get the odd photo of small mammal skulls, just because. That's only when he isn't taking pictures of food at odd Dutch angles, of course.
"Stand by for Titanfall", proclaims new EA page.
EA appears to have launched an alpha trial registration site for Titanfall on Xbox One, out on 11th March. If you're interested - and I'm fairly confident you are - you might want to hold fire for the moment: EA has yet to formally announce a trial program, and we're unable to confirm that certain of the sources for this information are legit.
From 2am BST on 16th January.
In but half a day, silence will fall on the baked tarmac, glittering high rises and gaudy slums of San Andreas. Rockstar is taking GTA Online out of circulation to perform maintenance for 24 hours, beginning at 2am British Standard Time tonight.
Hot stuff, coming through.
Microsoft has unveiled a custom Titanfall Xbox One controller, which is down for release alongside the game itself on 11th March. It costs $64.99, and is designed to look like "a piece of military spec hardware transported from the universe of Titanfall", according to Respawn's lead artist Joel Emslie.
UPDATE: Xbox Live service alert warns of multiplayer difficulties.
EA and DICE's struggle to quash Battlefield 4 Xbox One's various bugs continues with a new Xbox One patch, which weighs in at around 710MB, and is available to download now.
"The purists are gonna argue the toss, but I think it comes down to the games.".
See that smiling man down the page there? That's Alan Bowman, Microsoft's Australasian vice president of retail sales & marketing. He's smiling because, to paraphrase this interview from Gameplanet, he's confident that the Xbox One's exclusive games and unique features are more important than how many eSRAMs it can push per cubic gigawatt.
"Those fundamentals need to be polished to what I call a 'Remedy pedigree'", says Hakkinen.
For all Remedy's new-fangled talk of live-action elements and branching storytelling, Xbox One exclusive Quantum Break will still offer gutsy old school third-person shooter thrills, the developer has assured Edge.
"One of our goals is to bring Diablo 3 to as many players as possible," Blizzard responds.
Perhaps you played Diablo 3 on Xbox 360. And perhaps, between the umpteenth loot drop and boss battle on Nightmare mode, you started daydreaming about what the game might look like on a next gen platform. This news piece is relevant to your interests.
How many scope options does it take to make a next gen MMO-shooter?.
Here's the first question I'm going to ask Bungie, next time we pop by for an interview - how many different guns are there? Are any of them procedurally generated? How extensively can I modify them? OK, so that's more like three questions. Allow me to summarise: GUNS?!?
