Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Wants Xbox to Conquer Cloud Gaming. Satya Nadella has never considered himself a “gamer,” but Civilization did manage to capture the attention of the Microsoft CEO for a stretch when he was younger.
He spent his time—unsurprisingly—empire building and strategically planning. The Rod Fergusson Interview: How Gears of War's Studio Head Earned His Reputation as the "Closer" Rod Fergusson is known as a "closer.
" We Are 343 Industries. Who saved Rare? To Infinite and beyond: Attracting new Halo fans without a new game. Phil Spencer On Xbox’s Unusual Strategy, Working With Sony, And More. Xbox chief Phil Spencer has heard from the skeptics.
They think that what he’s doing with Xbox means that Microsoft is giving up on consoles, or even going third party. That’s all wrong, he told me during an extensive interview in Los Angeles last week, where we discussed his vision for Xbox, the recently announced potential gaming deal between Sony and Microsoft, and whether he’d ever want to put Gears of War on the PlayStation 4. The biggest surprise of Microsoft Flight Simulator: it makes Bing cool. BelieveBelieve it or not, Windows isn’t Microsoft’s longest-running franchise.
Neither is Office. Breaking Through: Psychosis and the Making of Hellblade. Phil Spencer On Working With Sony And Competing With Google Stadia. How Forza overtook Need for Speed to become the world's biggest racing IP. The Complete, Untold History of Halo. The first Halo I ever finished was 2009’s real-time strategy affair Halo Wars.
That has to be something you don’t often hear. Most players’ first brush with a series as monstrous as this is undoubtedly some core Halo spectacle viewed from behind the muzzle of an assault rifle, not highlighting a convoy of units in eagle eye as a stand-in, custodial god of war. It feels like a fitting way to measure my unusual relationship with Master Chief, the UNSC, Covenant and everything else that Halo is, so we’ll go with it. Somewhat ironically, Halo began from a strategic position, rather than being mapped from the outset as a shooter. Phil Spencer interview: 'We have work to go do' on improving the Windows Store, UWP. Microsoft's E3 presentation this year was mostly dedicated to its new Xbox One X console, formerly known as Scorpio.
As usual, though, we had plenty of questions for Xbox boss Phil Spencer about Windows gaming, including the return of Age of Empires, and the future of the Windows Store and UWP, two of the more controversial elements of Windows 10. Before we dug into those issues, Spencer told us he's interested in bringing original Xbox emulation to the PC. Below we get into more about the Store, Age of Empires, and what UWP needs to do to earn wider support. What does Xbox One X mean for the way Microsoft approaches development of Windows games from here on?
Will it be easier for your internal studios to target higher-end features on Crossplay games? Interstellar Ambition: 343 Industries talks the legacy of the Halo brand (Video Games Month) – Page 46309 – Licensing.biz. Ever since its debut on the original Xbox in 2001, the Halo series has come to define the console first person shooter through its expansive world and groundbreaking combat mechanics.
Indeed, it was Halo: Combat Evolved that revolutionised the console shooter, popularising the FPS genre that had previously been largely a PC affair, to millions of new players. As the years went on, so did the Halo brand grow to encompass not only a rich legacy of core game titles but also novels, comics, animations and even a live action TV shows, all expertly produced with the marketing power of Microsoft behind them.
The Minecraft Generation. In its first year, Minecraft found popularity mostly among adult nerds.
But sometime in late 2011, according to Alex Leavitt, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California, children discovered it, and sales of the game exploded. Today it costs $27 and sells 10,000 copies a day. (It’s still popular across all age groups; according to Microsoft, the average player is between 28 and 29, and women make up nearly 40 percent of all players.) Persson frequently added new features to the game, like a “survival mode,” in which every 20 minutes evening falls and monsters attack — skeletons shooting arrows, “creepers” blowing themselves up when they get close to you — forcing players to build protective shelters. (“Creative mode” is just about making things.) Persson also made it possible for players to share their works.
Stormlands and the million-man raid: Obsidian's cancelled Xbox One exclusive. Throw your mind back to Microsoft sharing a dream of an infinitely powerful Xbox One cloud, a box under your TV able to suck an almost mystical power into your living room, transforming games as we know them.
The vision wouldn't quite materialise, but while Microsoft was hallucinating over the cauldron it was also throwing money around - throwing money at Xbox One exclusives to embody this future, and Obsidian Entertainment was spinning in its pot. "We were given a proposal, the million-man raid," Obsidian co-owner and CEO, Feargus Urquhart, tells me.
Obsidian's CEO On Microsoft's Purchase And The Outer Worlds' Future. All month long we've been rolling out exclusive features on The Outer Worlds from Obsidian Entertainment.
While we're excited about the upcoming RPG, it's worth zooming out a bit and talking about this interesting period in Obsidian's history. Back in November, Microsoft announced they were purchasing Obsidian Entertainment but that Take Two's Private Division would still be funding and publishing The Outer Worlds. While visiting the studio, we spoke with Obsidian's CEO Feargus Urquhart about why they decided to let Microsoft purchase the studio, the studio's "three-ish" current development teams, and what Microsoft means for the future of The Outer Worlds as a franchise. Watch the video above and let us know you think in the comments below.
Click on the banner below to enter our updating hub of exclusive features on The Outer Worlds. Phil Spencer talks Microsoft's new studios and its commitment to PC gaming in 2019. Microsoft is on a video game spending spree. In the past year it’s bought six studios, including Forza Horizon studio Playground Games and Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, and founded a new one. For PC gamers, the two most striking acquisitions are Obsidian and inXile. Both are synonymous with PC gaming—Obsidian’s founders are the same developers that made classic RPGs Planescape: Torment and Fallout 2, while inXile’s CEO Brian Fargo co-designed Wasteland.
The opportunity for collaboration and shared learning across our new and existing teams is potentially what’s most exciting to me. Microsoft hasn't done PC gaming well over the past decade. Meet the 19-year-old high school dropout leading Microsoft into a new era in video games. Microsoft: 'We're growing our gaming business beyond the console' Microsoft’s new gaming cloud division readies for a future beyond Xbox. Microsoft shipped its first video game in 1981, appropriately named Microsoft Adventure. Xbox chief Phil Spencer: "Microsoft needed a reboot" Xbox boss Phil Spencer has delivered an impassioned speech on the need for inclusivity within the games industry and discussed how Microsoft's gaming division has evolved over recent years. The talk - which is embedded below and well worth a watch - also offers a frank account of Spencer's first few months in his current role as Xbox chief following the troubled launch of Xbox One.
"It was obvious Microsoft needed a reboot," Spencer admitted. "Morale had hit a low, we were all massively frustrated we kept missing big trends. In some ways, it felt like real innovation was impossible. Building Bridges: How Minecraft helped a father connect with his son who has autism. A safe space Since Keith has been writing about his experiences in his features at The Guardian, he has been contacted by hundreds of game developers and parents about their own experiences. There are now multiple autism-friendly Minecraft servers such as AutCraft and SafeCraft, where people with ASD can play with each other in a safe and familiar environment without fear of being bullied, picked on or insulted. Microsoft's design rules push Windows 'beyond mere rectangles' See where Panos Panay and his team are creating Microsoft’s next hardware innovations OnMSFT.com.
If B87 means nothing to you as a Microsoft fan, perhaps what’s related to it might such as the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio. Building 87 is the vault-like complex mad design scientist Panos Panay and his team work in while creating new and transformative experiences, often having to do with how hard and function intertwine in a modern productivity environment. While many fans wait for refreshed and updated versions of the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio, the team behind the hardware has opened its doors, figuratively, with a new site that looks at the various areas of B87 that have helped produce some arguably industry guiding products. How a watch helped Emma write again. While, at least for now, the technological advancement of the watch may have slowed down, Zhang certainly hasn’t. As if creating one potentially life-changing device wasn’t enough, in episode three of The Big Life Fix she came up with an aid for people with Cystic Fibrosis (CF).
Microsoft's game chat transcribes your trash talk. Beyond the console: Xbox leaders detail Microsoft’s gaming future, led by xCloud streaming service. The days of the Xbox console as the primary focus of Microsoft’s gaming division are numbered. Rare: Doing new things is in the culture of the studio. Reports of Rare’s death appear to have been greatly exaggerated as the studio scored its first No.1 hit in 17 years. But why did so many believe they were dying in the first place? ‘Who killed Rare?’ That was the headline to a consumer article written three years ago, and it’s hard to imagine how the team at Rare felt about it – particularly when you consider they weren’t actually dead. Lionhead: The inside story. In October 2008, Microsoft released Lionhead's Fable 2 to critical and commercial acclaim. At a launch party an emotional Peter Molyneux held aloft glowing reviews and praised the exhausted team of developers who had spent the previous four years pouring everything they had into the game.
Fable 2 would go on to win a BAFTA and become the best-selling role-playing game for the Xbox 360. Playground spent 18 months developing the first 10 minutes of Forza Horizon 3.