News
18 CommentsSonic & Knuckles, Phantasy Star 2 and more now backward compatible on Xbox One
Several Xbox 360 games have been made backward compatible on Xbox One today, according to Microsoft. The most notable of the additions are truly old-school: Phantasy Star 2 and Sonic & Knuckles, both Xbox Live Arcade games now playable on Xbox One.
Sega originally released both games on Sega Genesis; Phantasy Star 2 came stateside in 1990, while Sonic & Knuckles launched worldwide in 1994, months after Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The original Sonic & Knuckles cartridge could be directly locked onto its predecessor's to access the older game's data.
Other 360 games now playable on Xbox One include Dig Dug, Runner 2 and Samurai Shodown 2. With the exception of Runner 2, today's update is certainly a throwback: The majority of these releases are over 20 years old.
News
20 CommentsStar Wars: The Force Unleashed games are now backward compatible on Xbox
Both Star Wars: The Force Unleashed games for Xbox 360 are now backward compatible with Xbox One, according to Microsoft. Owners of The Force Unleashed and The Force Unleashed 2 can now spend their Star Wars Day replaying the action games, which bridge the gap between the first two Star Wars trilogies.
Xbox backward compatible titles have been arriving in waves since the year began. Recent notable additions to the list include Dead Space, Saints Row 4 and Left 4 Dead 2.
Cover Story
Issue
18
May 2, 2016
Their future is Epic: The evolution of a gaming giant
Find out how one of the industry’s biggest developers is changing its approach.
Read moreNews
13 CommentsEA giving away expansions for Battlefield 4 and Hardline (update)
Electronic Arts is about to announce the next Battlefield game, and the publisher is marking the occasion by offering free downloads of expansions, starting today, for Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline.
The Battlefield 4 add-on Dragon's Teeth is free for the next week, from today to May 10, on all platforms that the game is available on: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The infantry-focused expansion offers four maps set in the Asia-Pacific region, and it was originally released in July 2014. Dragon's Teeth also includes the Chain Link game mode, and gadgets such as the R.A.W.R., an unmanned ground vehicle.
Battlefield 4 developer EA DICE is also running new community missions that, if completed, unlock special rewards for players. The current one,...
Deals
10 CommentsHalo, Gears, Forza and more discounted in Microsoft Studios sale
Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners can score some downloadable games on the cheap(er) this week, thanks to the Microsoft Studios publishing sale. That means Microsoft-published games — Halo, Forza, Gears of War and more — are discounted up to 57 percent off, with the better deals available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers.
More than 50 Microsoft-published titles and downloadable add-ons are marked down during the sale, which runs until May 9. The full list, which includes Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, as well as Xbox 360 games that are backward compatible on Xbox One, is available at Xbox.com.
Here are a few highlights from the sale (with Gold-specific discounts in parentheses).
Xbox One
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die - $6.00 ($4.95)
Gears of War Ultimate Edition - $27.99 ($23.99)
Forza...
Latest Xbox 360 Forum Activity View all posts
News
26 CommentsMighty No. 9 finally launches on June 21, creator says
Mighty No. 9 has a new launch date: June 21.
The "spiritual successor" to Mega Man has "gone gold," creator Keiji Inafune said, putting Mighty No. 9 on course to launch for Mac, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on that date in North America and Asia. It will launch worldwide on those platforms on June 24. Deep Silver is publishing the game on consoles.
The versions for Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita will follow at a later date, Inafune said.
Inafune acknowledged it has been nearly three years since the project was initially and enthusiastically crowdfunded by thousands of Mega Man fans and apologized for the repeated delays to Mighty No. 9's launch.
"This is a project where everyone's passions were combined in order to create something very...
Video
22 CommentsSee gameplay from 1666: Amsterdam, by the director of the first two Assassin's Creeds
Footage of 1666: Amsterdam, which was to have been the next big console game from the creative director ofthe first two Assassin's Creeds, has surfaced from a presentation in Europe. It's a video-of-a-video, but you can watch it above.
The journalist Brandon Sheffield captured the video, which shows the game's title sequence and initial gameplay, in which the player appears to be a mysterious cloaked figure who can control animals and cause terrifying hallucinations. Sheffield said the game's premise was "be worse than the devil," which is why the player controls rats, crows, black cats and other animals linked to black magic.
1666: Amsterdam was in development at THQ Montreal when Ubisoft bought the studio and the project and fired creator Patrice Desilets. Desilets was the creative...
News
11 CommentsXbox Games With Gold for May include Peggle and lots of sequels
Xbox Live Gold members will be treated to four free games in May, and Microsoft has revealed the offerings. Two Xbox One and two Xbox 360 games will be available to download throughout May — and three of them are sequels.
Defense Grid 2 on Xbox One and Grid 2 on Xbox 360 will be up for download starting May 1. Defense Grid 2 will be offered all monthlong, while Grid 2 is only available to Gold subscribers through May 15.
Later in the month, Xbox Live Gold subscribers can grab Costume Quest 2 on Xbox One. That game, the sequel to 2010's Costume Quest, is available May 16 through June 15. Peggle for Xbox Arcade is a free download from May 16 until May 31. Both Peggle and Grid 2 are available as backward compatible titles on Xbox One.
An Xbox Live Gold subscription costs $59.99...
News
4 CommentsYou won't be able to buy The Beatles: Rock Band's DLC songs after May 5
The Beatles: Rock Band's downloadable songs will no longer be available for purchase as of May 5, developer Harmonix Music Systems announced today.
Harmonix regularly informs Rock Band players about DLC tracks that will disappear from the Rock Band Music Store because the studio's licenses to sell those songs are about to expire. This time, all of the post-release tunes from The Beatles: Rock Band are on the chopping block. Music from that game — both the on-disc tracks and DLC songs — is unique in the Rock Band catalog in that it cannot be exported for play in any other Rock Band title.
Harmonix released three full Beatles albums as The Beatles: Rock Band DLC — one each in the three months after the game debuted in September 2009 on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. Abbey Road was...
News
13 CommentsHBO Now app launches on Xbox One (update: Xbox 360, too)
Microsoft and HBO just stealth-launched an HBO Now app on Xbox One, bringing the streaming service to the console just in time for Game of Thrones' sixth season.
The 36 MB app marks the first availability of HBO Now on a gaming platform. HBO Now is one of HBO's two over-the-top streaming services, allowing customers to pay $14.99 a month for access to on-demand HBO programming without having to subscribe to a cable or satellite package. HBO Go, the network's other streaming service, must be authenticated with login information from a pay-TV provider.
HBO Now is accessible only "in the U.S. and certain U.S. territories," according to the HBO Now website.
HBO offers a one-month trial of HBO Now on its website. Interested parties who do happen to have a pay-TV subscription can watch...
News
29 CommentsMicrosoft ending Xbox 360 production
Microsoft has stopped manufacturing new Xbox 360 consoles, the company announced today.
"Xbox 360 means a lot to everyone in Microsoft," said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. "And while we've had an amazing run, the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us."
Spencer added that Microsoft "will continue to sell existing inventory of Xbox 360 consoles, with availability varying by country." The Xbox 360's current retail price is $199.99, in a bundle with a 500 GB system and a copy of Forza Horizon 2.
Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 on Nov. 22, 2005, in North America; the console turned 10 years old last November. That same month, Microsoft added Xbox 360 backward compatibility to the Xbox One, a feature the company had announced at E3 2015.
S...
Opinion
110 CommentsThe good, the bad and the pay-to-win of Destiny's spring update
Bungie released its big spring update for Destiny on April 12. With this patch, Bungie has made some welcome improvements to several of the game's most flawed mechanics, but at the same time, introduced some troubling new problems to annoy Destiny's loyal but long-suffering players.
What's good?
Well, for starters...
The new loot system
Before this update, loot drops in the hard-mode King's Fall raid could have Light levels ranging from 310 to 320, and every drop was rolled randomly. So anytime you got a particular item, you only had a 1-in-11 chance of getting a perfect 320 Light score.
That meant that players had to farm the raid for months if they ever wanted to reach the maximum Light level. I did the raid every week on three characters, starting with the first week the King's...
News
8 CommentsThe Walking Dead: Michonne's finale launches next week
"What We Deserve," the third and final episode of the miniseries The Walking Dead: Michonne, will begin rolling out April 26, developer Telltale Games announced today.
The episode will be available next week on Android, iOS, Mac, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Here's the synopsis from Telltale:
In "What We Deserve," feeling the weight of choices both recent and long ago, Michonne tries to protect an innocent family... but Norma and the vengeful Monroe crew are closing in. As reality shatters and the ghosts of the daughters she abandoned demand to be heard, your choices will determine who lives, who dies, and what redemption really means in a world gone to hell.
If you've played the second episode, "Give No Shelter," you can watch the video from...
News
9 CommentsWhich of the NBA's all-time greatest teams could beat the Golden State Warriors?
With the Golden State Warriors finishing the 2015-16 basketball season last week with the best record in NBA history at 73-9, the makers of NBA 2K16 turned their minds to a question that only a video game can answer: How would this year's Warriors squad fare against some of the best teams ever to step onto an NBA court?
Must Read
NBA 2K16 has a plan to keep Steph Curry from breaking the game — and we could all be the winner
NBA 2K16 developer Visual Concepts pitted the Warriors against three of the all-time greatest NBA teams: the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, which previously had the best regular-season record ever at 72-10; the 2000-01 Los Angeles Lakers, which hold the mark for the best playoff record in history at 15-1; and the 2005-06 Miami Heat,...
Explainer
24 CommentsLost touch with Destiny? Get caught up for today's April update
Nearly seven months have passed since the debut of Destiny 2.0 alongside Destiny: The Taken King. They arrived in mid-September and delivered a major boost to the game, but the three seasonal events that Bungie ran afterward — Festival of the Lost in late October, Sparrow Racing League in December and Crimson Days in February — failed to move the needle much, especially for people who aren't die-hard Crucible players.
Destiny isn't getting a proper sequel until sometime next year, and the next major expansion is coming this fall. But that leaves a huge gap that Bungie is filling today with the game's April update, which offers a big drop of new activities to do, gear to earn and Light to grind.
Bungie is hoping that the April update will be a good reason for lapsed Destiny players to...
Video
28 CommentsDestiny April update trailer recaps the new gear, missions and more
Destiny developer Bungie is looking to bring back lapsed players with its April update to the game, and the studio released a trailer for the patch today to show off all the new content in advance of its impending release.
In the video, which runs for four and a half minutes, members of the Bungie team discuss the April update's improvements and additions to Destiny. These items include a Light increase to 335 from 320; Challenge of the Elders, a high-level Prison of Elders activity that Bungie says will differ every week; armor and weapons that glow with a customization system known as Chroma; and a new strike called Blighted Chalice. In addition, Bungie community manager Chris "Cozmo" Shannon noted today that all vendor weapons (not armor) will be re-rolled with new perks when the...
News
12 CommentsRecreate the dumbest nickname proposal in sports history with NBA 2K16
This week, ESPN revealed the jaw-dropping story behind a sports nickname so stupid its own team cast the lone dissenting vote against its approval: The New Jersey Swamp Dragons, today known as the Brooklyn Nets, who were looking for an extreme makeover in the 1990s.
After reading through Zach Lowe's delightful oral history of this name — which could only be taken seriously in a decade of ridiculous, toyetic handles like Mighty Ducks, Raptors and Warthogs — you can preserve the memory of the most dumbassed branding proposal in professional sports, thanks to the magic of NBA 2K16.
Xbox One user "Da Infamous NY" painstakingly recreated the Swamp Dragons' proposed uniforms from the images included in ESPN's story, and has made them available here. NBA 2K16 has a uniform creation suite...
News
22 CommentsAlan Wake DLC episodes are free on Xbox
The expansion packs for Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake are now available for free on the Xbox Marketplace. Newcomers to the mystery adventure game, which recently became backward compatible with Xbox One, can pick up both "The Writer" and "The Signal" at no charge.
When "The Signal" first launched in July 2010, it was available to owners of new copies of the game for free; for everyone else, it cost $20. "The Writer," which followed that October, cost $6.99 upon first release. Both are additional episodes building upon the story of Alan Wake.
Alan Wake is available to download on Xbox Marketplace for $19.99. Recent buyers of Remedy's latest game Quantum Break, which launched on Xbox One and Windows PC this week, already have the complete Alan Wake experience. Copies of Quantum Break...
News
17 CommentsDead Space now available on EA Access
Dead Space, the 2008 survival horror shooter from Visceral Games, is now available free to EA Access subscribers in the service's vault, publisher Electronic Arts announced today.
This isn't likely to be a huge deal for EA Access subscribers — the service is exclusive to Xbox One, and Microsoft already made Dead Space free as one of April's Games With Gold. The Xbox 360 title is also playable on Xbox One via backward compatibility.
However, Dead Space is only a Games With Gold title for the first half of the month. So if EA Access subscribers forget to scoop it up from the Xbox Live Marketplace before April 16, they'll still be able to download it from The Vault. Dead Space is the 18th full game to be added to EA Access, following last week's debut of NHL 16.
News
13 CommentsSaints Row 4 now backward compatible on Xbox One
Saints Row 4 joined the roster of Xbox One backward compatible titles today, Microsoft announced. The Xbox 360 game is now playable on the company's current hardware.
This is the fifth Xbox 360 game this week to get the backward compatibility treatment. Saints Row 4 follows yesterday's addition Dead Space, which it will soon join on next month's Games With Gold lineup too. This means both of April's free 360 games for Xbox Live subscribers are now playable on Xbox One. Saints Row 4 will be offered from April 16 until the end of the month.
For more Xbox 360 games you can replay on your Xbox One, see our list below.
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