Microsoft Game Studios

Last week, XBLAFans ran down the 25 best XBLA games to be released on the Xbox 360. This week, some of the games that didn’t make the cut get …
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Xbox One’s cloud is one of the next generation system’s most-touted features and more details on how developers will utilize the cloud to improve their game titles are constantly …
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For fighting fans not content with the fidelity of the Xbox One controllers, despite the improvements to the d-pad, Mad Catz has developed a Killer Instinct-themed Tournament Edition 2 …
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Sadira is the first completely new character revealed for the 2013 reimagining of the classic, Killer Instinct. The name Sadira is Persian in origin and means lotus tree, which is …
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In an interview with Polygon, Yukio Futatsugi, the game director for the upcoming Xbox One exclusive Crimson Dragon, detailed a dragon rental feature. Yukio explained that players can register …
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A tweet from Phil Spencer, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, has revealed that Microsoft has a number of cloud-focused video game projects incubating for the Xbox One. …
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Grounding’s Yukio Futatsugi has revealed that it was Microsoft’s decision to move Crimson Dragon from Xbox 360 to Xbox One. Futatsugi told Eurogamer at the Tokyo Game Show that …
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Charlie Murder was developed by Ska Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released August 14, 2013 for 800 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Charlie murders. Charlie — in concert with the other members of the band of his namesake — brutally, bloodily murders undead and demonic foes by the score. Oh, he also skateboards, puts on concerts, drops acid, flies on a broomstick and does a whole bunch of other crazy crap. Mostly, though, Charlie murders. He makes a point of stomping on downed adversaries’ defenseless faces, sending their eyeballs and somehow-still-intact brains flying out of the noggins that contained them only a second earlier. He shoots, he slashes, he bludgeons, he punches — he murders. Such wanton destruction might prompt another round of those discussions as to whether or not those damn video games the kids play really have gotten too violent, whether or not they really are rotting gamers’ brains (at least they have the good courtesy to leave them in their respective noggins). It might do that, but it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t do that because the death and dismemberment is all so outrageous, so ridiculous, so…hilarious, that no one should take any of it seriously.

Absurdity is never in short supply in Charlie Murder. The two-person team of James Silva and Michelle Juett-Silva have distributed it with liberally enough here that Charlie Murder crashes right through genre convention, and, for the most part, keeps on rockin’. Silva once commented to XBLAFans that he had no need for a design document. It wasn’t entirely clear at the time how serious he was about that statement, but it’s obvious now that there was at least some truth to his words. It’s impossible to believe that anyone at Microsoft told the Silvas what they could and could not do when designing their game. In fact, it’s hard to believe that they themselves were even capable of as much. Yes, the tried-and-true brawler staples are all here, but so are myriad off-the-wall ideas that somehow come together in a way that (usually) works. Charlie Murder isn’t the first brawler to load up on crazy — but it is one of the best.

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Microsoft’s Kinect based shooter Crimson Dragon is now set to feature asynchronous multiplayer gameplay. Polygon made the discovery during a hands-on demo, when it was revealed that gamers can …
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You’re angry, and I can understand that. You didn’t much care for Microsoft’s announcement last month that its next-generation console, the Xbox One, will feature oppressive DRM measures. The once-every-24-hours online check-in when playing on your own console and the once-an-hour check-in when playing on someone else’s is only slightly less draconian than what the public was fearing would be announced. On top of that, publishers will also have the option to limit gamers’ ability to buy, sell and trade used games.

The anger is based on the gaming public’s deduction that Microsoft’s goal is to minimize the used game market on the Xbox One. And while it does not appear poised to put forth any mandates to make that happen, it will be giving publishers, itself included, a host of new tools that will make it possible to achieve that goal. It would seem, then, that the public is right to be angry. It’s right to remain angry, too.

On Monday of last week I took my seat at University of Southern California’s Galen Center and watched as Microsoft talked about precisely what it said it would at E3: the games. That’s great, because the games are ultimately — or should be, at least — the main reason anyone decides to invest in a new gaming platform. It’s also bad, though, because it meant the platform holder did nothing to assuage gamer fears of an ironfisted Microsoft crippling the used game market.

That evening, rival Sony held its own press conference in which Sony Computer Entertainment America President and CEO Jack Tretton all but sat Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business President Don Mattrick over a dunk tank and handed the audience softballs. Forget about bad. Things were now looking terrible for Microsoft.

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