Microsoft Game Studios Archive

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Xbox One releasing this November for $499

By
Nick Santangelo
– Posted on June 10, 2013Posted in: News

Xbox One $499

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.

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3

BattleBlock Theater review (XBLA)

By
Nathan Bowring
– Posted on April 11, 2013Posted in: Featured Reviews, Reviews, XBLA Reviews

BattleBlock Theater was developed by The Behemoth and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released April 3, 2013 for 1200 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

bbt

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost five years since the release of Castle Crashers, the side-scrolling brawler brainchild of The Behemoth that grew up to be an XBLA darling that still sits atop sales charts today. Needless to say, the next game made by The Behemoth would have big shoes to fill. Instead of playing it safe, The Behemoth dared to be unique with BattleBlock Theater. Not only did they dare to take on a whole new side-scrolling genre, they also dared to create one of the craziest premise in the history of gaming.

BattleBlock Theater puts you in the shoes of one of the hundreds of prisoners who, after a terrible boat crash, washed up on a mysterious island and were taken captive by giant cats. These cats love their theater, so they force their prisoners into deadly plays. The story mode revolves around platforming and puzzle solving, navigating death traps and fighting crazy animals. When you’re tired of exploring the theater, you can dive into a host of multiplayer modes. BattleBlock Theater is a wonderful platformer not meant to be taken seriously, and made even better when you play with friends.

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1

Motocross Madness kickstarts onto XBLA April 10

By
Christine Mitchell
– Posted on April 5, 2013Posted in: News

motocross-madness

Motocross Madness finally got a release date. The game was officially announced by Microsoft for XBLA back in June 2012 and while it now seems to have dropped the “Avatar” prefix, will still allow players to take their Xbox Avatars free-riding across massive environments, from the deserts of Egypt to the snows of Iceland this April 10. Players will be able to drift, trick and turbo boost their way across 9 expansive off-road tracks in single player events, ghost challenges and 8-player online multiplayer races as well as 2-player offline competitive and co-operative modes. The game is also thought to utilize the Avatar Famestar program but no pricing details have been revealed as yet.

Source: PlayXBLA

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3

Doritos Crash Course 2 coming soon to XBLA

By
Jared Miller
– Posted on April 2, 2013Posted in: News, Screenshots

crash_course_2_game_boxart

After quietly appearing in February on a Xbox Marketplace listing, Microsoft has officially announced Doritos Crash Course 2 from Behaviour Interactive, the follow up to 2010′s popular advergame by the same name. In the sequel,  “run, jump, slide and wall jump your Avatar through four new worlds of irreverent obstacles, traps and pitfalls.” As players make their way through the course, they will compete for the best completion times and collect stars to unlock further progress. While no online multiplayer is mentioned, a player can “compare your best time against up to three asynchronous games clips of your friends.”

Like the first game, Crash Course 2 will be free to play, but this time around gamers will have the option to buy coins, giving them the ability to “unlock new courses, power-ups and vanity items.” While no exact release date has been announced, the game will hit virtual shelves this year. In the mean time, hit the jump to make your way through this obstacle course of screenshots.

Source: PlayXBLA

 

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1

Motorcross Madness combines open world exploration with closed course racing

By
Steve Melton
– Posted on February 20, 2013Posted in: News
Avatar Motocross Madness

Avatar games are a thing now. No longer are they confined to the corners of the XBLIG channel, nor limited to awards given out to players. Microsoft has fully embraced our cuddly little self-representations, and now not only are they featured in Xbox LIVE Arcade games, but players can now also earn rewards for them via the Avatar Famestar program. Motocross Madness is one of the titles utilizing the program, and as such players can unlock rewards in the game or use rewards from other games in it.

Motocross Madness is the third game in the Motocross Madness series, which hasn’t seen an installment since May 2000. It also features a large open world players can explore when not racing for the first place trophy. It can be explored alone or with friends — locally via two player splitscreen and online with up to eight players. PlayXBLA’s XBLA Alex and XBLA Vulcan showcased the game via a livestream on Twitch.TV. The game is in development at Bongfish, the studio responsible for XBLA games Harm’s Way and Red Bull Crashed Ice Kinect, both of which are solid games. It currently has no virtual street date, but PlayXBLA are scheduled to run a second preview today on their Twitch.TV channel.

Update #1: As our ever-vigilant tipper @lifelower points out it looks like Microsoft has dropped Avatar from the game’s title, naming it simply Motocross Madness. Seems this idea of renaming sequels as though their predecessors never existed (looking at you, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted) is becoming a trend.

Update #2: We’ve received word from the developer that Motorcross Madness will indeed be able to play 2-player splitscreen and Xbox LIVE simultaneously. That means you and a guest can take on the world.

Source: PlayXBLA, @lifelower

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4

Humble Hearts: Dust: An Elysian Tail sequel is a ‘very strong’ possibility

By
Nick Santangelo
– Posted on February 17, 2013Posted in: News

Dust Could Get a Sequel

Yesterday XBLAFans reported that developer Humble Hearts has some “exciting news” related to its debut effort, Dust: An Elysian Tail, in the pipeline. Humble Hearts hasn’t announced what exactly that news will be, leaving us to initially speculate that the announcement could end up being DLC, a sequel or a port(s).

Speaking last night with XBLAFans via email, Humble Hearts mastermind Dean Dodrill ruled out DLC. He also informed us that he is not ready to announce a sequel to Dust: An Elysian Tail at this time — but he’d like to make one.

Dodrill has told us that there is a “very strong chance” Humble Hearts will develop a sequel to its Summer of Arcade 2012 title at some future point. So while anxious Dust fans can officially stop hoping for a sequel announcement in the coming weeks, they can remain positive about the chances of Dust 2 eventually being unveiled.

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Dust: An Elysian Tail getting DLC?

By
Nick Santangelo
– Posted on February 16, 2013Posted in: News

Dust XBLA

One-man development studio Humble Hearts will soon be announcing some news about last August’s Summer of Arcade title, Dust: An Elysian Tail. A Humble Hearts Facebook post states that studio head Dean Dodrill has “some exciting news to share over the coming month. The dust hasn’t settled yet!”

Dodrill has made no mention on Facebook, Twitter or the game’s official website as to what the news will be, leaving gamers and XBLAFans alike to speculate as to what it could be. Our best guess is that Dust is going to be getting some downloadable content, but a sequel or a PSN and/or Steam port are also possibilities at this time, as is just about anything else anyone can imagine.

A port seems unlikely given that Dodrill took the opportunity to also mention that yesterday marked the 6-month anniversary of his game’s release on XBLA and that he wanted “to thank everyone who has followed me and helped make the game a great success.” Certainly those statements don’t entirely rule out a port, but the XBLA callout would seem to imply that the news is XBLA-related.

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“No plans just yet” for future Trials Evolution DLC, no cross-platform play

By
Steve Melton
– Posted on February 14, 2013Posted in: News, Trials Tuesday

trials origin of pain bmx supercross

During GameSpot’s recent playthrough of a pre-release build of Trials Evolution: Gold Edition RedLynx level designer Lee Rowland revealed that the company has “no plans just yet” for future downloadable content for the Xbox 360. Rowland stated that the team’s focus is on getting the Windows-based Gold Edition ready for release on March 22. Unfortunately, Track Central tracks will not be cross-compatible between the 360 and PC versions of the game, mostly due to different protocols between the PC and 360 versions. This also means no cross-platform gameplay.

Ubisoft Shanghai assisted with the conversion of Trials HD levels, which are now integrated into Trials Evolution: Gold Edition. This leads to the obvious inquiry as to whether we’ll ever see Gold Edition content ported to the Xbox 360 build of Evo. The tracks themselves are now (essentially) ready for the Xbox 360 build, but let’s remember there’s still a bit of a mountain to climb before we see the possibility of HD in Evo 360 realized. Both games were published by Microsoft Game Studios on the 360, but shortly before Evo was released Ubisoft acquired RedLynx, meaning that now there’s a new party to consider in the process. HD was also the 10th best-selling game of 2012, and it doesn’t make good business sense to stifle sales of one of the top XBLA games.

But before everyone gets their torches and pitchforks let’s remember two things: 1) video games are a business. As much as we’d like them to cater to what we want they still have money to be made, deadlines, budgets and contracts to adhere to just like any other for-profit product. 2) RedLynx is nothing if not loyal to its fans. If they are ever able release this or any other content while remembering point #1, they will. Also be consoled in the fact that aside from the HD tracks there are no exclusive tracks shipping with the Gold Edition of the game, nor does it (currently) include the Origin of Pain or Riders of Doom DLC packs; though it’s unknown at this time whether the editor objects from those packs will be included.

For those who really need their Trials HD fix in Evolution, remember that many fan remakes can be found on Track Central. We’ll also be releasing special episodes of Trials Tuesday in March that will showcase these remakes and celebrate the release of Gold Edition on the PC.

Source: GameSpot

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5

Minecraft’s ‘The End’ delayed out of Title Update 8

By
Nick Santangelo
– Posted on January 8, 2013Posted in: News

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

It would seem that falsely predicting the arrival of The End is something reserved not strictly for ancient Mayan civilizations, but also for modern video game developers. Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition developer 4J Studios responded to fan questions on Twitter yesterday about the impending arrival of the floating island known as “The End” is actually not impending at all: the island will not be patched into the XBLA version of the game along with Title Update 8 (TU8), as the developer said it would back in December.

The reason for the delay is that the studio has been forced to dedicate time to creating fixes for bugs that popped up in Title Update 7 (TU7), which released on December 19. 4J tweeted that its assertion that The End would come to XBLA as part of the next title update was made “before we knew we were releasing a bug fix update for TU7. The bug fix update will be TU8, so The End will be later.”

Some of the bugs that will be addressed include one the “Kick Player” bug that freezes the player’s Xbox when the host tries to kick him or her and one that mistakenly prompts players that they cannot sleep in beds when monsters are around.

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2

Crimson Dragon demo, DLC packs ‘mistakenly released’ on XBL in Japan

By
Nick Santangelo
– Posted on January 2, 2013Posted in: News, Videos

A demo for the Grounding Inc. and LAND HO! co-developed on-rails shooter Crimson Dragon suddenly appeared on the Japanese Xbox Live Marketplace over the weekend sans a formal announcement of its existence. Japanese XBLA players interested in test-flying a dragon were required to have at least a Silver Xbox Live account and be willing to part with a wallet-obliterating 4,294,967,295 MSP. The demo release, along with its ludicrous listing price, was a mistake, but it is said to be in a playable state.

Ground Inc.’s Yukio Futatsugi (director, Panzer Dragoon Saga) responded to questions about the nature of the demo over Twitter by saying that it was “mistakenly” (Google Translate) released, but that it was “actually playable.” XBLA Fans’ unofficial man in Japan, @lifelower, reports that the demo initially appeared to be a limited version of the full Crimson Dragon game, but Futatsugi shot that notion down, explaining that the download was a dedicated demo. The game designer also mentioned that he has been in contact with Microsoft over the accidental release.

Microsoft pulled the demo down on New Year’s Eve, but lifelower was able to grab footage of the English version of the game and toss it up on YouTube. The video, posted above, shows off the game’s menus and one of the six playable dragons soaring through the skies and mixing it up with airborne baddies in jungle and arctic levels.

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