E3 2014: Every Video Game Release Date Announcement

Here's a full list of every release date announced so far at this year's E3 for Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and 3DS.

GameSpot -

E3 is a popular place to announce new games, but it's perhaps an even more popular venue for announcing release dates. And in that regard this year's show has not disappointed so far--whether it's the beta for Destiny or PlayStation Now, The Last of Us Remastered, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, or any number of other games, there's a good chance that, if it's a game coming out this year, we now know its release date.

What follows below is a complete look at the release dates (and frustratingly vague release windows) announced at E3 so far. We'll be updating this list throughout the week, so even if you don't see what you're looking for, check back and you may just find what you're looking for.

Click here for release dates for PlayStation 4, XBOX One, Wii U,  PlayStation 3, XBOX 360,  3DS and PC.

E3 2013: all the latest news from this year's hottest gaming show

 

Techradar - Check back here as the week progresses for news on the Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo and much more, plus hands on reviews with the consoles and peripherals you need to know about.

We're pretty jazzed...you?

Here's all the latest from the conference:

 

EA wheels out 11 next-gen titles

Waiting anxiously for news on Star Wars: Battlefront and Mirror's Edge 2? EA heard your calls and talked up both titles, along with nine others, during its pre-E3 press conference.

All the games are destined for the PS4 and Xbox One, and while we won't see either console for awhile, EA generated some buzz by enlisting some celebs to talk up the titles. It was interesting, to say the least.

• Read about the EA games coming to the Xbox One and PS4

 

The Xbox One is $499, £429 and coming this November

We saw game after game at the Microsoft E3 press conference, but at the end, it made good with the numbers. It seems that the Xbox One will be arriving just in time for the holidays.

It's not surprising that Microsoft's new console should arrive in time to be tucked under Christmas. It could be quite a retail battle if the PS4 arrives in the same month. Sony had previously announced a "holiday 2013" release date.    More

Also see Microsoft at E3 2013

The Xbox One will unite your living room

PCWorld - Following months of fevered rumor and speculation, Microsoft finally took the veil off the Xbox One, a console that furthers Redmond's efforts to take over your entire living room experience. The new system will come packaged with an updated version of the Kinect sensor and will be available “later this year." No price was announced.

The presenters on stage at Tuesday’s launch event consistently branded the new console as technology that will unify the living room and bring all of your entertainment—games, music, and movies—into one location. And with a bevy of impressive new functionality, it appears that the One might just be able to assume that role of one central device.

Microsoft is well aware that the television resides at the center of your entertainment universe. And the Xbox One wants to be the gatekeeper for those experiences. All of them.

Xbox owns your TV

Voice commands will be a big part of interacting with the One. While we can assume you'll still be able to navigate via your controller or Smart Glass app, Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s senior vice president of interactive entertainment, demonstrated how to navigate the One using voice commands and gesture control with the updated Kinect sensor.

Xbox One

Users can instantly activate the One by uttering “Xbox On.” The Xbox will be able to differentiate the user’s voice and automatically remember where that particular user last left off in the dashboard.

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New Xbox more than a game console for Microsoft

SAN FRANCISCO/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is set to make a splash this week with the eagerly awaited unveiling of its new Xbox game console, eight years after the last version, as it seeks a larger share of the $65 billion a year global computer gaming industry.

But the small device faces some big competition from the PlayStation 4 by Sony Corp and the Wii U by Nintendo Co Ltd in a shifting market.

Gamers are gravitating to online play - suggesting the hey-day of console games are over - while Microsoft wants its sleek new toy to finally cross the bridge to the mainstream and become the family's entertainment center.

"Core gamers are very hungry for a new machine but the difference between 2005 and now is that the stakes are so much higher," said Ryan McCaffrey, executive editor at entertainment website IGN.com, harking back to Microsoft's last Xbox release. "The entire Xbox experiment from Microsoft was for it to be the center piece of your living room."

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How the next Xbox can win the cable TV war

If the next Xbox is a home-TV-integrated beast, HDMI-in may not be pretty...but it's probably the best short-term way to get to the future.

CNET - The battle for the future of television is just beginning, but it looks to be a long one. One of the key players is Microsoft, which has spent the past several years morphing its Xbox 360 from a straight-up gaming console into one of the best video-streaming boxes you can buy.

Of course, the current Xbox 360 is getting long in the tooth, and the next-generation model is expected to be announced soon, and to be available as early as the end of 2013. And TV services look to be just as central to the core of that device as gaming.

Last week, The Verge reported that Microsoft plans to enable live TV access on the upcoming console:

The functionality will work by taking a cable box signal and passing it through to the Xbox via HDMI, allowing Microsoft's console to overlay a UI [user interface] and features on top of an existing TV channel or set-top box.

That story would seem to confirm earlier rumors that the next Xbox would have support for live TV input, among other upgraded entertainment options, including Blu-ray.

So, the "Xbox 720" is taking a page from Google TV. But is that wise? Gigaom's Janko Roettgers asks, "Really, Microsoft? Your vision for the future of TV is...an HDMI cable?" He makes some solid points, ending his argument with "HDMI pass-through is the ultimate admission of defeat."

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Microsoft starts E3 countdown, stirring rumors of next Xbox

PCWorld - Without saying much of anything, Microsoft has hinted that its next Xbox will break cover at the E3 trade show in June.


Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, Microsoft’s director of programming for Xbox Live, has posted a countdown timer to E3 on his blog. Nothing accompanies the post except the headline (“Countdown to E3 2013”), a link to the official E3 Website, and the words “And it’s on…”

E3 is scheduled for June 11-13 in Los Angeles, though Microsoft usually holds a press conference the day before the show floor opens.

In fairness, Hryb could be counting down to anything—yet another version of Halo, perhaps, or the rumored “Xbox Surface” tablet. Or maybe he just woke up on this morning and realized he was really excited for a trade show that’s six months away.

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IGN - Best of 2012

                         




 Selecting IGN's Best of 2012 nominees and awards represents the culmination of a year's worth of observation, discussion and debate, along with countless hours spent in front of games, movies, comic books, and television shows. With a year marked by giant blockbuster highlights like Marvel's The Avengers, Halo 4, Breaking Bad, and the Mac Book Pro with Retina, to smaller but still fantastic high points like Journey, Dredd 3D, Community, and the new Saga comic series, 2012 represents some truly memorable entertainment.

Help us celebrate IGN's nominees and tune in on Dec. 19 to see the category and genre winners announced. And on December 21, check back to find out the overall winners, including IGN's 2012 Game of the Year. In the meantime, pick your own winners and vote now in IGN's People's Choice Awards.

Game of the Year Nominees

IGN's official nominees for 2012 Game of the Year are...

• Mass Effect 3
• Guild Wars 2
• The Unfinished Swan
• Borderlands 2
• Hotline Miami
• FTL
• Halo 4
• The Walking Dead: The Game
• Journey
• Dishonored

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Xbox: The new face of 'entertainment' at Microsoft, beyond just video games

Engadget - The most striking takeaway from a recent meeting I had with Xbox Music GM Jerry Johnson wasn't the Spotify-like service he was in New York City to show off, but rather what he said about a much larger internal change at Microsoft. Having been relegated to the world of video games for the past decade, Microsoft is opening up its Xbox branding to a larger world of media. "'Xbox' is actually going from thinking about gaming in a device to being the entertainment face for all of Microsoft," Johnson said -- a major change from the Xbox name's place as a stand-in for "the Halo and Gears of War box," trotted out once or twice annually by lower level execs from the Washington-based software giant. "That's what the company -- all the way up to Steve Ballmer -- have gotten behind. That's why you're gonna see movies on Windows 8 slates, you're gonna see music, and it's gonna be branded as 'Xbox.'," he explained. This naming convention carries to Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 RT as well -- all post-Windows 7 Microsoft devices (and Xbox 360) will refer to music and video libraries as "Xbox Music" and "Xbox Video," respectively.

But to many, that shift could be confusing. Isn't "Xbox" that thing in the living room? When "Xbox Music" shows up on Windows 8 devices later this month, will your average user understand that, no, they don't have to own an Xbox to listen to the music therein? Johnson's not worried about that potential reality. "The brand has continued to evolve," he argued. "I don't think it's left anything behind, I think it's broadened the number of people who engage in these type of experiences. And Microsoft as a company I think recognizes that, and it's more about Xbox meaning 'entertainment.'"

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Microsoft to pair DVR with next Xbox?

The next iteration of Microsoft’s Xbox may be a real game-changer for consumers’ living rooms.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the software giant a patent on December 27 for an “integrated gaming and media experience,” in which content could be recorded on a gaming console.

Here’s the essence of patent No. 8,083,593 according to the USPTO abstract:

A digital video recorder (DVR) application running alongside a television client component allows users to record media content on the gaming console. The DVR application also integrates itself with the console menu. Once integrated, users can record media content while playing games. Alternatively, users can record content when the gaming console is turned off.

The recorded content can include television programming, gaming experience (whether local or online), music, DVDs, and so on. When in the recording state, users can also switch between various other media modes, whether gaming, television, and so on.      More

Microsoft Preps Xbox Live Users for New Social, Video Features

PCMag.Com - Microsoft is adding some new social and streaming video features to Xbox.com and the software giant is bracing Xbox Live users for what looks to be a fairly significant navigation revamp which includes the elimination of “My Xbox.”

“In the coming days, the familiar ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com is going away,” Microsoft’s Denny Atkin told Xbox Live members in an official Xbox.com blog post this week. “Fear not: It’s being replaced with a significant update that will make it even easier to see what your friends are doing on Xbox Live.”

Replacing My Xbox will be a new section called “Social,” which adds access to Microsoft’s new Beacons feature, a tool that lets users tag games they want to play with other Xbox 360 gamers as well as serving as social networking platform for friends on Xbox Live.

Beacons is part of Microsoft’s next big Xbox 360 dashboard update. Other new stuff coming down the pike includes access to the Zune video catalog, which will allow Xbox Live users to use their browser to buy movies and television shows.          More

Xbox to deliver cable TV

CNET - The new-look Xbox Live dashboard featuring Comcast programming. (Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft’s long-rumored plans to bring cable television content to its Xbox video game console will become reality over the holidays.

The software giant announced this morning that nearly 40 television content providers–including Comcast, Verizon, and HBO in the United States–will roll out programming over Xbox Live. The company also has deals lined up with providers in the U.K., Spain, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and Italy.

“Today’s announcement is a major step toward realizing our vision to bring you all the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, made easy,” Don Mattrick, president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, said in a statement.

Microsoft first discussed the possibility of bringing cable programming to the Xbox at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in June. At the time, the company said it was working on deals to allow customers to use the console to watch movies and television shows, in addition to playing games.

That’s always been the promise of Xbox, since Microsoft first moved into the video game console business a decade ago. Gaming was always at the heart of the console. But the company’s vision for the Xbox was to be a strategic beachhead for its software in the living room. With video programming available through the Xbox, Microsoft gives customers one more reason for turning on the Xbox for all of their living room entertainment, not just gaming.

The new programming announced today won’t be free. Customers need also to be subscribers to HBO, for example, to be able to view its HBO GO programming.               More