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Microsoft Studios, the digital publishing arm of the Washington-based mother ship, recently cleared some time on their Twitch channel to host the folks from Signal Studios and their upcoming free-to-play RPG, Ascend: Hand of Kul. For over an hour, Ascend‘s developers fielded general questions about the game, the ongoing closed beta and an eventual release.

While an exact date hasn’t been locked down, Lead Designer Ian Scott commented on the ballpark release window. “We don’t know specifically but I would guess over the course of the next couple of months,” Scott said. “More and more people will have access [to the beta] and then the game’s going to kind of gradually launch into open release.”

“We’re going through the process of doing another update which will open up more stuff to get to the end of the game,” explained President of Signal Studios, D.R. Albright III. “When we do that, which should hopefully be within a few weeks, we’re going to release the rest of the beta codes. Then we’re going to update again [based on] that information, and that’s when it’s going to go live.”

The Ascend beta has been running strong since the beginning of the month, welcoming players who originally signed up to get a taste of what’s to come. While we can’t get into specifics about the beta content, it’s a small sample of the early game and from what we’ve played, you should be excited to get your hands on it. But it’s not all fun and games.

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Publisher NinjaBee games released a bundle of games that won’t sting your wallet. 1600 Microsoft points will get you a bundle of games released by the Utah-based indie studio on …
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Telltale games revealed that Clementine will return in the second season of The Walking Dead. A panel at Comic-Con this year gave the first details confirming that Clementine will …
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Spartacus Legends was developed by Kung Fu Factory and published by Ubisoft. It was released June 26, 2013 for free.

Despite being made as a tie-in to a television series on Starz, Spartacus Legends is a free-to-play fighting game that doesn’t require any previous knowledge of the show. The game puts you in the role of battle-hardened slaves rising up the ranks to become legendary gladiators. Buckets upon buckets of blood will be shed as you fight your way through Roman arenas. There was a lot of potential here for this to be a fun, mature fighting game. In the end, the game’s bright ideas were murdered by a slew of technical problems.

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Through a post on the Undead Labs’ official forum, the developer has revealed the details of State of Decay‘s upcoming Title Update 3. Undead Labs’ founder, Jeff Strain, provided …
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Yesterday, in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine, Lionhead Studios’ Creative Director, Gary Carr, spoke of Microsoft’s commitment to courting indie developers on the Xbox One. He describes Microsoft as “very passionate” about building strong relationships with Indies, noting that the gaming business’ future is in jeopardy without independent developers.

Gary adds that while the big players like Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon “kind of hold it all together,” independent development is a major force behind innovation, and both big and small players alike can co-exist. Carr’s comments regarding an upcoming presentation from Phil Harrison could be interpreted as a hint that Microsoft may be re-evaluating its approach to publishing on Xbox One.

In a separate interview, Phil Spencer also discussed some of the challenges faced by both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One with regards to game publishing. The ease of development and publishing for the Xbox 360 has been both a blessing and a curse for the console. There have been some immensely high-profile, high-quality releases from a number of independent developers, but much of the Indie marketplace has also transformed into a dumping ground for woefully mediocre titles and clones of clones of clones.

At this point, so far into the console’s lifecycle, it can be difficult to reliably identify Indie games worth playing, and this has led to a significant shift in Microsoft’s publishing strategy for the Xbox One. Thankfully, Phil Spencer is aware of the parallels to Apple’s heavily-curated, closed ecosystem, and addresses them to an extent.

However, the goals are still potentially antithetical to each other; in order to attract good developers who create great content, a market cannot or should not heavily restrict access to its publishing tools. Conversely, a completely open market, where everyone can publish nearly anything, can also lead to a weakened content ecosystem, suffering from the same quality bloat seen in the Xbox 360’s Indie marketplace.

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Another day, another bundle of Xbox Live Arcade games designed to fill out your digital library for one low cost. This time around Microsoft’s packaged five action titles for …
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Standing in front of a PC demo station at E3, City Interactive Creative Director Steve Skelton describes Alien Rage to XBLAFans as a shooter that takes “the modern sensibilities of shooters — you know, control setup, mechanics, and applying the old-school fun and games, run and gun, frenetic action to it.” Unfortunately for fans of that style game, that pairing has considerably slowed down the raw speed of Unreal Tournament and Quake III (the “old-school” games mentioned by the developers as inspiration) to create space for those modern sensibilities.

Alien Rage takes place on a space station in which something has gone horribly wrong – the premise is not unlike that of the first episode of the classic Doom. There are no hellspawn here, however. The playable level pitted us against aliens that might remind older players of the first Predator film, complete with invisibility on a select few of them (these cause distortion to the surrounding air and environment, a particularly nice effect).

Since so much of City Interactive’s efforts were spent attempting to channel the magic that makes Unreal Tournament such a fondly remembered classic, it’s worth exploring some of those elements more specifically. Part of what made the late-90s/early-2000s generation of PC shooters what they were was that there were no limitations on the number of weapons a player could carry, which allowed players to be extremely creative in finding solutions to problems. Taking out an enemy around a corner in Unreal Tournament could be accomplished by setting a series of traps down with the bio-rifle, by bouncing a grenade off of the far wall or by detonating a shock rifle combo that would reach around the corner with its massive explosion.

Alien Rage limits the number of available guns to two, following the conventions of more modern shooters such as the Halo series. This means that while the player may have up to two or three different strategies for any given encounter, the full range of options will never be simultaneously available.

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In a post on Undead Labs’ official site, Geoffrey discusses new details about how State of Decay‘s Sandbox Mode may operate. He describes the team’s core, guiding philosophy in crafting …
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Capcom took a brief moment today during San Diego Comic Con to blow a few minds and announce a new Strider game headed to current and next-gen consoles early next year.

The techno ninja who first made his debut more than twenty years ago is getting a 2.5D graphical overhaul, some slick new toys and a seamlessly connected environment through which he’ll hack, slash, flip and generally just go about being a ninja. The revival has a distinct Shadow Complex vibe, and is being helmed by none other than Double Helix Games, the studio currently developing the long-awaited Killer Instinct remake.

Though information released indicates the title will be developed for all the usual suspects, including Xbox One and Xbox 360, there’s no official word yet as to whether or not Strider will hoist the orange banner of Arcade as previously rumored. Considering the release window falls well into the next generation of hardware, it could be that Xbox Live Arcade will have already been phased out, as we learned earlier this year.

In any case, look for Strider to bring a little more ninja to your X-marked console of choice. You can check out the official announcement trailer after the jump, and if you’re still hungry for more, kick back and take in seven minutes of gameplay footage immediately following.

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