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November’s Xbox One update is opening up new options to show off who you are online and change the look of your console interface. There’s also some new ways to watch content through the OneGuide. Here is the rundown:

You can now suit up your profile with your Location and Bio like on the Xbox 360, but you also have a “Showcase” that rolls clips from Game DVR or your notable Achievements as soon as someone looks at your profile. This can be customized with whatever content you want. Speaking of Game DVR, you can finally share your clips to Twitter straight from your console. Nice!

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This year, masters of storytelling Telltale Games released two critically acclaimed episodic series on XBLA, and soon they’ll be telling those tales on Xbox One. Both The Walking Dead Season 2 and The Wolf Among Us will be getting next-gen retail releases this fall. Each game will be the complete experience, so you can play the story from beginning to end without all that pesky waiting between episodes. If disks aren’t your thing, both seasons will also be available to download.

For those of you wanting to continue Clementine’s story in the zombie apocalypse, The Walking Dead Season 2 will get its retail release on October 21. If you’re not caught up on the series, the first season is already available for Xbox One. If noir crime stories and magical creatures are up your alley, The Wolf Among Us will arrive a little later November 4. You can check out the dark and moody trailers for both games after the jump.

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Xbox 360 puzzle-platformer Limbo could be headed to the Xbox One, a Korean Ratings Board listing suggests.

Microsoft Korea submitted “Limbo Xbox One” to the board for classification …
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The Behemoth has been careful to only reveal information about its next game at a slow trickle. The developer elected not to show or tell the press or public …
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Microsoft’s October update for the Xbox One is now available for download. This update focused on optimizing the system for those who bought the Kinect-free version, but it comes with plenty of other fixes and functions.

Snapping apps is a lot easier now. Just double-tap the Xbox button and a small menu pops up. You can pick an app to snap, change focus between the game and the snapped app, or unsnap it. You can also “press X to record that.” To take advantage of the easier snapping, Friends and Messages are snap-able (snappable?) so you don’t have to leave your game while assembling your party.

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This week’s schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, October 14th @ 8:00 pm (CST) – Recurring Tuesday Stream with Marshall. This week: Minecraft: Xbox One edition – Join me again!

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It may sound like a joke, but it’s super cereal: a pack of South Park-themed tables will be coming to Pinball FX2 very soon. South Park Pinball captures the essence of the construction paper cartoon in two new tables centered around our favorite foul-mouthed fourth graders. South Park: Super Sweet Pinball recreates the insanity of the small Colorado town with Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. This table features many fan-favorite faces and some memorable moments from the show. Butters’ Very Own Pinball Game is all about the boy who could laugh at a storm cloud recreating his best moments, including saving Imaginationland and his exploits as Professor Chaos.

South Park: Super Sweet Pinball is coming to Xbox 360 on October 15 and Xbox One on October 16. The pack will cost $4.99 on either platform. If you want to see both new tables in action, just check out the trailer after the jump, m’kay?

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This story contains some spoilers for the end of the fourth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones as well as for parts of the book A Dance with Dragons.

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The Boston Festival of Indie Games held its second convention on Saturday, September 13 after a successful Kickstarter. The convention features up-and-coming indie developers making games for consoles, PCs, mobile devices, virtual reality and tabletop. XBLA Fans had the opportunity to attend and see what goodies might be in store for Xbox in the near future. These are the games that we got to see in that short day.

Keep in mind, while most of these are in the works to come to Xbox platforms, not all of them are confirmed Xbox releases yet.

High Strangeness

This paranormal adventure game from Crystal Labs swaps between game console generations. By pushing the right trigger, you swap between eight bits and 16 bits with authentic graphics and mechanics from that generational “dimension.”  For example, in the SNES-stye 16-bit dimension, you can move diagonally and use more combat moves, whereas the eight-bit dimension leaves you with a simple jab attack and only four directions to move in. While the world stays the same, you will have to occasionally swap to defeat certain enemies trapped in a particular dimension. However, most of the game can be completed in both bit variations, so you can enjoy the game in whichever generation feels more comfortable.

Retro fans will notice the resemblance to classics like The Legend of Zelda once they experience some of High Strangeness‘ puzzles and combat. You will need to throw switches, move blocks, catch patterns and uncover secrets to get through it. During the demo, I experienced that classic moment during which a friend figured out the puzzle over my shoulder and walked me through it. That’s what lead developer Ben Shostak was going for. “A lot of retro-like games out there are using a lot of the style and references, but we’re using the actual design and gameplay,” he explained.

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There isn’t much love in the developer world for the ID@Xbox parity clause, which requires independent game developers to release their games on Xbox One at the same time as on other platforms. Some developers have lodged public complaints about it, and rival Sony has lambasted it.

It’s not that Xbox head Phil Spencer hasn’t heard these complaints, it’s that he believes that despite these objections and ridicule, the parity clause takes care of his most important audience: Xbox One owners.

“The thing I worry about is — because I look at all the people who buy an Xbox, and they invest their time and their money in Xbox One, and, as millions of people obviously own Xbox Ones, I want them to feel like they’re first-class, because they are,” Spencer said on The Inner Circle podcast. “When a third-party game comes out, it comes out on all platforms at the same time, and when indie games come out, I want them to come out and I want Xbox to feel like it’s a first-class citizen when an indie game launches.

“So, for me, the parity thing is, if you own an Xbox One, I want to work for you to make sure that when great content launches, if it’s coming to Xbox and another platform, that you kind of get it at the same time everybody else does.”

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