Electronic Arts today announced a new title in its Plants vs. Zombies franchise to be released on the Xbox One. Revealed during the publisher’s E3 media briefing, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will also see an Xbox 360 release at some point following the Xbox One version’s release. A press release issued by EA following the publisher’s media briefing confirmed a spring 2014 release date for Garden Warfare. The game is being developed by PopCap Games using the Frostbite 3 engine.
EA played the game live during the media briefing, showcasing plants fighting off hordes of zombies in a multiplayer setting. The gameplay was more akin to Gears of Wars’ horde mode than to traditional tower-defense Plants vs. Zombies gameplay. Units shown included a cactus sniper and a flying onion that appeared to be the PopCap’s plant take on a military drone.
According to the press release, Garden Warfare will feature 4-player co-op as well as 24-player competitive multiplayer.
Minecraft will make the jump to the next generation as an Xbox One release, Microsoft announced today at its E3 media briefing. Microsoft Studios Corporate Vice President Phil Spencer made the announcement, promising that Minecraft: Xbox One Edition will have bigger worlds and multiplayer” than does its Xbox 360 predecessor.
That predecessor, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, is the most successful game to ever release on Microsoft’s XBLA platform. It has sold in excess of six million copies and been played for over one billion hours since its release in May of 2012.
The Xbox One will release this November. No specific date for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition‘s arrival on the system has been announced.
Microsoft will release its next-generation game console, the Xbox One, this November for $500 in North America, the console holder announced today during its E3 media briefing in Los Angeles. The console will also launch in the UK and the remainder of Europe during November, where it will be priced at £430 and €500, respectively. All told, Xbox One will release simultaneously in 21 different markets.
A Day One Edition of the console is currently available for preorder at retailers such as Amazon. A limited edition controller, code to unlock a Day One achievement, premium packaging and a decal are included in the Day One Edition.
Last week it was revealed that Twisted Pixel’s LocoCycle will be an Xbox One launch title.
Capy Games, the studio behind XBLA’s in-development Super Time Force, is developing a new game called Below for the Xbox One, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer announced today at Microsoft’s E3 press conference. Spencer described the game as a roguelike full of secrets.
Jim Gunthrie was revealed to be Below‘s composer. Gunthrie also handled composition duties on Capy Games’ Superbrothers: Swords and Sorcery.
Microsoft will announce the game lineup for this year’s Summer of Arcade promotion, Phil Spencer has confirmed via Twitter. “SoA announce is a highlight for me at E3,” the Microsoft Studios corporate vice president tweeted. “We’ll do it again this year. I’ll see if I can sneak into the announce again.”
Summer of Arcade is Microsoft’s biggest Xbox Live Arcade promotion. Five Microsoft Studios-published Arcade games release one a week for a five-week period that usually spans through late July and August. Last year’s Summer of Arcade releases were Deadlight, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Hybrid, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD and Wreckateer.
Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference, when the console holder is most likely to announce the Summer of Arcade lineup, will take place on Monday, June 10 at 9:30 am PDT.
Source: @XboxP3 via @lifelower
Xbox Live Arcade is a dead platform downloading. Microsoft’s designated home for small and inexpensive downloadable video games will not make the jump to the next generation. When the Xbox One releases later this year, all of its video games will live in the same space. The nearly nine-years-old Xbox Live Arcade might continue to exist on the Xbox 360 and slowly fade away during the transitional year(s), or Microsoft might quickly yank it like a Band-Aid through a dashboard update. In either case, XBLA has been read its last rights.
One day soon, gamers everywhere will turn on their Xboxes and find all available games under an aptly named Games section of the dashboard. It’s tempting to read this move as another case of Microsoft pushing independent developers farther away from the green glow of the Xbox spotlight. It’s tempting to assume that the new dashboard will shine that light even brighter on big-budget game releases and multimedia options, and that may well end up being the case. However, some indies, believe it or not, actually enjoy working with Microsoft. Additionally, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer told Eurogamer that he feels the new layout, which includes a recommendation system, will “solve fantastically some of the challenges that independent developers face, particularly around discovery and connecting their game to an audience, by some of the platform features we have in the machine itself.”
We’ll have to check back in a few years into the Xbox One’s life to verify whether or not Spencer spoke truly — but no one wants to wait that long. So here and now, what does the elimination of Xbox Live Arcade mean? Will it continue the Flight of the Indies? Or will it better a system that obviously has more than a few kinks and bring back the downtrodden and departed?
CastleStorm was developed by Zen Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released May 29, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.
In CastleStorm you’ll sometimes shoot sheep. Out of a ballista. Into a castle. It’s made possible by a unique propulsion technique: rainbow excrement. Zen Studios’ CastleStorm is obviously not a game that takes itself seriously. It has a story, but it’s intentionally dumb. There are blue guys. There are red guys. The red guys steal a shiny object of immense power from the blue guys, and the blue guys, somewhat reluctantly, go to war in an attempt to retrieve it. Cutscenes filled with overtly cheesy and occasionally humorous jokes frequently interrupt the tower-defense-meets-Angry-Birds gameplay, but the joy of launching projectiles, which are only occasionally weaponized beasts, out of your ballista and towards enemy castles and opposing forces marching on your own castle will keep you coming back for more.
Here’s what we liked:
Plenty of options – At first, CastleStorm will seem simple to a fault. You have a castle. The enemy has a castle. You have a ballista. The enemy has a ballista. You have soldiers. The enemy has soldiers. It’s a feeling that quickly evaporates as you progress through the campaign and unlock an impressive variety of unit types, ballista projectiles, magic spells, castles — including those you build yourself — and upgrades. Though you will encounter the occasional mission objective that changes things up a bit, most levels involve you defending your castle and flag while electing to either capture the enemy’s flag or tear their castle down to its foundation. Thanks to the numerous tools of destruction at your disposal and those employed by the enemy, this formula never gets old. It’s challenging and satisfying to implant arrows in troops’ heads, crash down gates with flying quadrupeds and blow castle rooms to smithereens with bombs. Good thing, too, because success in later levels is achieved only by nimbly managing your war assets. Fail to do so, and you’ll be overwhelmed as the no man’s land between the safety of the opposing castle gates quickly becomes the enemy’s land.
Yesterday, Microsoft pulled back the curtain on its next-generation home game console. Dubbed “Xbox One,” the machine will hit retail shelves at an unannounced date later this year. With E3 right around the corner, Microsoft held back much of its next-generation software, among other things. Still, much was shown and discussed during the console holder’s presentation, and XBLAFans has more than a few feelings towards it all. Read on to find out how we’re feeling about the Xbox One’s look, TV and Kinect focus, lack of game announcements and more.
Nick Santangelo: Let’s start with the obvious. Microsoft came right out and showed the new controller, Kinect sensor and console. Sony of course showed its PlayStation 4 controller back in February but not the console, so that was a pretty big departure. Were you guys happy to see what the box actually looks like? Does that matter to you? Did you like the hardware design?
Ryan Thompson: I thought the design was excellent. I especially enjoyed the textured analog sticks on the controller, which are taking a beat from the MLG Pro Controller, it seems.
Shawn Saris: It was nice to see. It looks like what I had expected. They kept it pretty straightforward, although it does seem a little bland, more like a cable box and not a console full of power.
Shawn Ryan: It’s a bit boxy, but I personally love how it looks. I don’t mind the size either. The controller looks like a great evolution of the 360 design, and to me it just looks “next-gen.”
Ryan Thompson: “Like a cable box” is an excellent observation. (Editor’s note: Perhaps “like an alarm clock” is a more apt comparison.)
After years of waiting and speculating on the part of gamers and the press, Microsoft President of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick today unveiled the company’s next-generation console, the Xbox One, at an event broadcast live from Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus. The new console, which will launch worldwide later this year, is the successor to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, which launched in November of 2005. The Xbox One is Microsoft’s third home video game console, with the original Xbox having been launched in November 2001.
In a stark contrast from competitor Sony’s PlayStation 4 unveiling, Microsoft showed the world what the Xbox One console (pictured above), controller and Kinect sensor looked like almost immediately at the start of the event. All three piees of hardware are primarily black, with the Xbox One and Kinect sensor having hard rectangular shapes. The new controller appears similar in shape to the old one, but has an improved d-pad, triggers and more. Microsoft promised that there are 40 design innovations in the new controller.
Though much of the show failed to focus on actual games, Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios, revealed that Microsoft is working on more than a dozen Xbox One games. “We have more titles in development now than in any other time in Xbox history,” said Spencer. “I’m proud to announce that Microsoft Studios plans to release 15 new games in the first year of Xbox One.” Spencer stated that eight of those titles are brand new franchises.
Tomorrow at 10 am PDT, Microsoft will likely tell us all some things we already know. The Xbox creator will also tell us plenty that we don’t already know. Some rumors will probably be proven true, others false. New games and features will be discussed and, in some cases, shown. Ultimately, the curtain is going to fall on Microsoft’s event before the public hears everything it wants to hear. Microsoft is only going to tease us, with a more complete showing of all its console plans for the years ahead not coming until the console holder’s traditional pre-E3 media briefing on June 10.
But tomorrow we will know something we don’t know today. We’ll know something about what direction Microsoft plans to steer the Xbox brand in over the course of the next generation. Sitting here right now, I can honestly say that I know nothing more than any other gamer who’s followed the supposed leaks over the past few years knows about what we’re going to see tomorrow. Rather than make educated guesses about what might be shown tomorrow and at E3, XBLAFans is following up last week’s look at how developers feel about XBLA as it currently stands by having them speak about where they want to see it go in the next generation.
During PAX East this past March, we cornered six game developers and asked them one question: If you could change any one thing or add any one feature to the next-generation version of Xbox Live Arcade, what would it be?
