News of Gears of War: Judgment being leaked onto the Internet has sparked Microsoft to take the initiative to reveal more information regarding the game. We’re sure hackers will soon upload portions of Gears of War: Judgment online, but you can be sure Microsoft-approved videos will be free of any spoilers so you can enjoy the game when it’s released next month.
Multiplayer is a huge part of the Gears of War experience, which is why Microsoft finally dedicated a video entirely to what we can expect from Gears of War: Judgment’s multiplayer modes. “The Guts of Gears – Multiplayer” video highlights the OverRun, Team Deathmatch, Free-For-All and Domination multiplayer modes. (more…)
Gears of War: Judgment is set to be released on March 19, but as is expected of a blockbuster AAA game, hackers have gotten their hands on the game and have leaked it onto torrent sites this week.
At this point, it’s unsure what version of the game has been made available on torrent sites, although reports are saying the version that’s available is “apparently complete.” (more…)
In an interview with CBS, Bill Gates talks to Charlie Rose about his life, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and more interestingly Microsoft. He says that the way that Microsoft went about the mobile industry didn’t allow them to get the leadership they needed. He says that they should have entered the market earlier in order to get the lead on cell phones and that “it’s clearly a mistake”.
Bill Gates says he and CEO Steve Ballmer are “2 of the most self-critical people”. He says that “There were a lot of amazing things that Steve’s leadership got done with the company in the last year. Windows 8 is a key to the future, the Surface computer, Bing – people are seeing as a better search product, Xbox“. Gates says that due to the self-critical nature of both him and Ballmer, they feel like they could better.
Bill Gates also discusses sleep and that he needs at least 7 hours of sleep, or else his “IQ begins to drop”. He wishes that he could be like other people who can thrive off only 4 hours of sleep. He is a night person and he “gets very excited about something that’s going wrong or right”. He would sometimes stay up until 2:00 A.M., which would prove to be difficult if he had an appointment early in the morning.
Alongside the talks of Microsoft, Bill Gates says that he wants to introduce a new high school course that brings together Science and History. He is also working on innovations in cheap and clean energy. While they weren’t able to get the lead on the mobile market, it seems that Microsoft is doing well in catching-up in the industry. Their Windows 8 mobile devices are starting to get traction in the industry, and hopefully with the release of Windows Blue, they’ll be seen as a major competitor.
If you’ve heard anything about the upcoming “game changer” title set to be produced by Bungie over the next 10 years in installments with Activision, you know that it certainly wouldn’t make sense for the whole series to be appearing on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In fact the first installment will be on those two consoles, but essentially everything afterward has been confirmed in legal documents to be hitting no less than the PlayStation 4, the Xbox 720, and the PC. The information that reveals said bits and pieces comes from a Call of Duty legal dispute where the contract between Activision and Bungie had to be unsealed.
The full document comes from The LA Times but the important section is right here. You’ll find “Destiny Game #2″ to be the subject of production on the PlayStation 4 and Personal Computer, while the Xbox 720, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 are being set for the Destiny Game #1 release. This means – it would seem – that the PlayStation 4 won’t be ready for action in time for the release of the first Destiny Game.
The folks at Bungie have been longtime Xbox developers having made one of the most successful gaming franchises in the history of the world with Halo, so it’s not out of the question that they’re simply going to hit the Xbox 720 first even if the PlayStation 4 will be out “in time” for one of the first Destiny installments. The fact that the first release is set for pre-order right this minute for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 has us wondering, on the other hand, how this contract figures in with the PlayStation event occurring this week – could it be that no PlayStation 4 will be shown?
Have a peek at the Destiny trailer above and see how the PC and mobile platforms – like the iPhone, in this case – will very obviously be taking part in the overall structure of Destiny and its many tendrils. This game will not be limited to one platform, nor will it be dependent on one piece of hardware for you to be able to play it. This is the next generation in gaming made real – anywhere, anytime. We wouldn’t be surprised if this game were playable on NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD before all is said and done.
The streak continues once again. Microsoft has announced that their Xbox 360 gaming console has been the highest-selling console for the 25th straight month, beating out the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii U for the month of January. The Redmond-based company sold 281,000 consoles last month, with gamers spending a combined total of $338 million on Xbox consoles, games, and accessories in January alone.
Overall, Microsoft maintains 44% of the marketshare when it comes to current-generation console sales. If you count all gaming consoles, games, and accessories, the NPD says that people spent a collective $834.7 million on all that alone during the month of January, with Call of Duty: Black Ops II being the best-selling game last month.
Rounding out the top five highest-selling games in January include Far Cry 3, Just Dance 4, NBA 2K13, and Madden NFL 13. What’s perhaps most interesting is that Far Cry 3 ranked second-highest in terms of sales, which marks the first time since January 2002 (with Final Fantasy X) that a December launch has ranked second in the following January.
As far as specific sales for the PlayStation 3 and the Wii U, Sony and Nintendo have yet to announce their sales figures. The Wii U released three months ago, and while a just-released console should technically be receiving all of the sales glory, it hasn’t beaten the Xbox 360 yet in sales. However, according to Gamasutra, Wii U sales for January are “well under” 100,000.
Nat Brown, a former Microsoft Engineer and a member of the early Xbox team, has published a personal blog post about how the past five years of Xbox were “painful” to watch, especially when it comes to the failure of turning Kinect into something bigger than what it is today. His article has a particularly harsh title: ” Stupid, Stupid xBox!!” — I recommend reading it in full, but here are a few things that I found of particular interest:
Nat Brown reminds that Xbox was supposed to be a Trojan horse to conquer the living room where Microsoft could easily beat inferior hardware such as set top boxes etc, and back then (and even now) the Xbox hardware was indeed furiously superior. Yet, Microsoft failed to take advantage of that situation, and set top boxes are doing just fine today. (more…)
The Apple TV is a fairly simple product. It’s a standard set-top box that allows you to stream content and even beam content from an iOS device to your big-screen living room television. However, the founder of the Xbox gaming console, Nat Brown, says that if Apple wanted to, they could easily destroy the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii.
In a blog post, Brown says that there are numerous problems with the Xbox platform that leaves the door wide open for Apple. Plus, Microsoft has been making it extremely difficult to develop games for the Xbox, and it doesn’t really cater to indie developers. The Apple TV, on the other hand, runs iOS, which allows for anyone to develop apps and games fairly easily, which has spawned a wealth of games for users to play.
Of course, the Apple TV isn’t catered as a gaming platform, although it’s only a matter of time before that could happen. You can actually beam iOS games to your living room TV using the set-top box, but the Apple TV itself isn’t a gaming console by any means. However, that could change with just a few more advanced features added on.
In the end, Brown notes that the past five years have been painful to watch, in regards to the Xbox, because Microsoft has essentially failed to innovate and capitalize on the potential of innovations, like the Kinect sensor. Brown also wishes that Microsoft adopted a similar model for game and app distribution that iOS and Android have been using in order to create huge and successful gaming ecosystems.
GameStop has conducted research into used game trade and has found that 60% customers are not willing to buy a console that will block used games. This comes at a time when rumors of the new Xbox not allowing used games are surfacing. Obviously, GameStop would tend to lose money if the rumors were true, so the study can’t be seen as impartial, but its conclusions are yet interesting to discuss. “Consumers want the ability to play pre-owned games, they want portability in their games; they want to play physical games,” he said. “And to not have those things would be a substantial reason for them not to purchase a new console.” chief financial officer Rob Lloyd of GamesStop said to VG247.
“It’s really only about 4% of our used game sales that are games released in the last 60 days,” he said. “Sony has said publicly that they don’t intend to block used games on its next console. Microsoft has refused to or has not commented on the rumors.” Blocking used games would significantly change the market of the new Xbox, as more people will likely shift to consoles that allow used games. As we said before, such a decision would change the future of GameStop. With its shares already falling in reaction to the possibility that it may happen. GameStop needs to find a strategy to keep shoppers coming back to their stores.
The probability of hearing news of a new Xbox this year are the highest they’ve ever been seeing how Microsoft has been teasing the countdown to its E3 press conference at the start of 2013. Until the next Xbox is revealed, we’re stuck with the Xbox 360 for a couple of months, which Microsoft took the time to highlight its overall sales.
The news comes from Microsoft’s director of programming for Xbox Live Larry Hryb who announced via Twitter the Xbox 360 has sold over 76 million units in its lifetime. The Xbox 360′s Kinect sensor also sold pretty well since its debut in 2010 as 24 million units have been sold. In addition to those sales numbers, Hryb also announced Xbox Live has 46 million paying customers, in other words, Gold Members.
At its current sales numbers, the Xbox 360 has become the fourth best-selling game console in history, behind the Nintendo Wii, Sony’s PlayStation and PlayStation 2, respectively. Considering the next Xbox has yet to be unveiled, the Xbox 360 could see some new life as an alternative to the next Xbox since it already has a large library of established titles, which will most likely receive a great discount after Microsoft’s next Xbox announcement.
At the Dive into Media conference yesterday, Microsoft went on stage and talked about one of its most successful products to date: the Xbox 360. Specifically, the company announced that they have sold over 76 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide since its launch in 2005. Plus, the console has outsold the original Xbox three times over so far.
Microsoft also announced that they have sold over 24 million Kinect sensors worldwide. Granted it hasn’t been out as long as the console itself, but for only being out on the market since 2010, 24 million is certainly a respectable number. The Xbox Live community has also increased to 46 million users, which is a 15% increase from last year.
The Xbox 360 is the best-selling console in history, and for the past 24 months, the console as been at the top of the charts for every single month throughout the past two years. On average, Xbox Live users spend 87 hours per month playing games and utilizing various entertainment apps inside the online service, and the console is moving towards more of an entertainment device than ever before. Microsoft says that 18 billion hours of entertainment were racked up in 2012 on Xbox 360 consoles.
With the plethora of content that’s available on the Xbox 360, it makes sense that more and more people are using the gaming console as primarily an entertainment device, and Microsoft knows that. So, we could see the next-generation Xbox focused more towards the entertainment crowd than what we originally thought, while still catering towards gamers, of course.
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![60% of Gamers Wont Buy A Console That Block Used Games [GameStop]](https://i0.wp.com/cdnrss.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/xbox-720-ps4-price-point-400.jpeg?resize=640%2C427 "60% of Gamers Wont Buy A Console That Block Used Games [GameStop]")
The probability of hearing news of a 
