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The team at Ubisoft that created Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends is creating a sidescrolling adventure puzzle game. Valiant Hearts: The Great War tells the story of five characters and how …
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The whispers that Microsoft is interested in selling or spinning off its Xbox division have been swirling for some time. Perhaps the most concrete evidence of that move being a real possibility emerged from a February Washington Post report claiming a pair of “influential Microsoft shareholders” were putting the pressure the software giant to move on from what they believed to be a non-essential product line.

Now Bill Gates himself has weighed in on that prospect. When questioned by Fox Business Network if he would support Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella if he chose to go in that direction, Gates responded, “Absolutely.”

That does not, however, mean that the company’s founder thinks unloading the Xbox division is the right move. In fact, he noted that doing so was not an “obvious” choice and emphasized that Microsoft has future plans for Xbox and gaming at large.

“Well, we’re taking PC gaming — Windows gaming — and Xbox gaming and bringing those a lot closer together,” Gates told Fox. “The power of the PC graphics chips means you can do great games there. So I’m sure Satya and the team will look at that, and, you know, it’s up to them. But we’re going to have an overall gaming strategy, so it’s not as obvious as you might think.”

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Approximately 30 seconds after picking up a controller to try Capybara’s Below, I was ready to call it quits. Don’t get me wrong – Below was the absolute best thing I saw at PAX, and I doubt that anyone on the XBLA Fans PAX East team would disagree. But a game built on the twin foundations of exploration and discovery is a game that should be played, as Capy president and co-founder Nathan Vella eloquently put it, “on my couch at home with the lights off.”

Into the unknown

It’s not just that the deafening, stroboscopic show floor at PAX East isn’t the best venue at which to play Capy’s latest effort. Below is a journey that players should approach with as little prior knowledge as possible, and figuring out how to play is meant to be almost as much of an adventure as the game itself.

“We have no text. There are no tutorials. There are no waypoints or directors or very little UI of any type,” says Vella. “You explore the island, eventually find your way into the depths, but you’re also exploring: what are the controls? How nimble am I? Why am I so small? Why am I weak? That exploration really feeds every element of the game.”

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The latest data feed from Pandora is in, and we’re delighted to reveal that it contains a mouthwatering new trailer for Telltale Games’ eagerly anticipated, story-driven, episodic adventure game Tales from the Borderlands, not to mention the first nuggets of detail.

The data we received confirms that Tales from the Borderlands, which is due for release this summer, will be set after the events of Borderlands 2 and will feature two playable characters whose stories will unfold alternately. The first of these characters is Fiona – a quick-witted, fast-talking (but probably loveable) rogue who’s out to make the biggest score of her life. The second is Rhys, a selfish and scheming Hyperion data-miner with big ambitions. It has also been confirmed that whilst neither of these characters is actually a Vault Hunter, they will both interact with famous characters from the Borderlands series including ZerO and more. (Here’s hoping for a fairly heavyweight cameo from Tiny Tina!)

In addition to this already rather exciting selection of Tales from media, XBLA Fans can also report that Telltale Games Producer Adam Sarasohn has recently confirmed a number of interesting details about the game over at the PlayStation Blog. In addition to hinting at the various possibilities that the vast Borderlands world might hold in store for players, the key details can be found after the jump.

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Peggle 2 has bounced its way onto the Xbox 360. Originally released as a timed exclusive shortly after the launch of the Xbox One, the colorful and addictive puzzle …
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One of the biggest announcements during the Xbox One reveal was the Halo television series being developed by Xbox Studios and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin TV. It’s been almost a year since …
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NinjaBee announced today that its game Nutjitsu! has been given the go-ahead by Microsoft to release on the Xbox One this Thursday, May 8.

Nutjitsu! is a maze …
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Just in time for the NFL draft, comes the announcement that Xbox Live Gold Members will be able to use the NFL channel on Xbox One for real-time updates …
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Major Nelson just revealed that the Xbox E3 2014 media briefing will take place at 9:30 am PDT on Monday, June 9. Historically, these conferences have featured new game …
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You’ll want to steer, but you won’t be able to. Charles Cox doesn’t want you to. Endless space-based video games have taught gamers to manipulate analog sticks, a d-pad or a keyboard and mouse to steer all manner of spacecraft to precisely where they want them to go. Habitat: A Thousand Generations in Orbit doesn’t work that way. Physics have the wheel in 4gency’s strategy game, and they’ll be doing all of the steering. Cox hopes the approach will work.

He showed up at PAX East last month with a playable demo of his ID@Xbox title. Actually, it was more a proof of concept than a proper demo — 4gency put together a playable outer space sandbox and filled it with junk, lots and lots of junk. There was no objective or end point to the demo. Instead, players were free to take the orbiting hunk of junk they started with (the titular habitat), weld whatever debris they pleased onto it and propel the thing through the space. Doing so is easier said than done.

Your habitat is an unwieldy thing, as you might expect a floating mass of rock, rockets and pieces of famous landmarks to be. Movement is based on physics, so, again, there’s no steering controls for your rubble-craft. What you do have control over is the placement of rockets, the rockets you want to fire up at any given time and how much thrust you want from those rockets. A mistake at any of these three levels of propulsion oversight will lead to your habitat either careening off of other objects and being smashed to pieces or performing the spacecraft equivalent of doing donuts in a car parking lot. On top of that, players also have to manage electricity and oxygen levels, as some of one or the other is necessary for rocket power.

Taking control of a habitat, I immediately screw the entire thing up by unintentionally playing bumper cars with surrounding space debris. Crucial parts of the habitat are torn asunder and most of its inhabitants are killed. Cox restarts the demo and advises me on what to do. Even with his over-the-shoulder guidance, it’s next to impossible to not make a mistake. I continually place rockets in ill-advised locations, place one rocket where there should be a pair and apply improper amounts of thrust. There’s no shortage of space junk in the demo, and I crash into most of it during my play session.

Cox says that there’s “an art to this.” If so, Leonardo Da Vinci I am not. A successful go at things seems unfeasible, but then again, there are no conditions for success in the demo, so perhaps things will be different in the final game.

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