With Sony recently announcing the highly anticipated fourth generation PlayStation, and Microsoft heavily rumored to be working on its own next generation Xbox, all the talk if the town right now is very much centered on what the new game consoles will be able to offer to not just games, but also game developers.
Jonathan Blow is something of a hot property in gaming circles these days. The man behind the wildly popular and critically acclaimed Braid is also one of the more outspoken developers in the industry, and in a recent interview with gaming publication EDGE, the man that thought up one of Xbox Arcade's sleeper hits was typically frank.
Sony may have beaten Microsoft to the punch with the well-documented announcement of the PlayStation 4 earlier this week, but it would seem as though the Redmond company won't be waiting around too long before detailing its own next-gen offering. According to a report over at CVG, the Windows maker is planning a special press event to be held at some point in April - a notion backed up by several sources, who've received reliable Intel to substantiate such claims.
According to a report over at TheVerge, Microsoft may be planning to implement some kind of voice-recognition technology into its upcoming home entertainment system, dubbed unofficially the 'Xbox 720'. The current direction of the Xbox 360 implies the next-gen console will serve as more than a mere gaming portal, and with the 720 also said to be expanding on the current array of set-top box-like features, it looks as though the power of the voice will also be significantly entrenched into the next-generation offering.
Rockstar Games spent a great deal of last year plugging and promoting the release of Grand Theft Auto V, and although fans were bracing themselves for a Spring 2013 release, the publisher-developer has pushed the arrival date all the way back to September 17th. Those looking forward to a Summer immersed in the aesthetically-startling environments teased hitherto will be bitterly disappointed, and the momentum Rockstar has managed to generate may also take a severe hit.
Earlier this month, Activision announced that a 'Revolution' DLC pack would be arriving for those on Xbox 360, and, as promised, the pack is now available for 1200 Microsoft Points. Announced via the blog of Larry Hryb - better known as Microsoft's very own Major Nelson - Revolution offers four new multiplayer maps, a new weapon in the Peacekeeper hybrid SMG-Assault Rifle, and the eagerly-awaited Zombies Co-op Map - Die Rise - which puts the player in the role of Zombie rather than the traditional position as Zombie slayer.
Despite being a paid service in a sea of free alternatives, Microsoft's Xbox LIVE remains the most popular online hub of all the high-end consoles. At $60 for a year's service, it offers fairly good value for money, and for a very limited time, you can get a twelve-month subscription for just $35.
It has been several years since the Xbox 360 released in a hail of glory, and with its life cycle now coming to an end, we've to contend with an almost weekly barrage of rumors and speculation with regards to its successor. According to the latest specs leak, the next-gen Xbox will be a real powerhouse, featuring an 8-core x64 CPU running at 1.6Ghz, 8GB of DDR3, USB 3.0 - get this - a 50GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive. More (potentially outlandish) rumored specs after the jump!
Microsoft has today outlined its plans to help Windows 8 and Windows RT compete with the well established competition. That plan appears to involve leveraging the Xbox gaming platform, and who can blame them?
Call of Duty: Black Ops II may have been the biggest selling title since, well, Modern Warfare III, but Activision hasn't gotten to the top of the gaming tree by resting on its laurels. As such, the publisher will be releasing a DLC pack at the end of this month for those rocking Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and as you can probably gather, it features numerous new maps, modes and weapons in order to maintain the seemingly infallible captivation gamers have with the rampant CoD series.
