XBox One News

Xbox One console may now be releasing to just 13 countries if current rumours are to be believed. This is almost half those originally announced.

According to GameInformer, the Xbox One will be doing another 180. Previously, games could not access digital distribution without a publisher, but now Microsoft is reversing this policy. Self-publishing will now be available to independent developers on the Xbox One. This is welcome news, as the popularity of independent games has soared in recent years. Microsoft claims the backlash from consumers and developers is what drove them to make this decision. I don’t blame them after getting called out simply…

Forza 5 will not be finished when it ships, Turn 10 has revealed. Instead, users will have to download some of the content before they're allowed to play. Users that hate big patches and launch (and nobody can really blame them) will be unhappy to learn that the developers behind the latest Forza are taking as much time as they have available to build and polish the content. While this means an inconvenience to the end user, it also means that the product isn't being limited by a "Gone Gold" date and that may give them 6-8 weeks to really push the features ...

There seems to have been a lot of confusion on this one, but Microsoft have confirmed that you will be able to play from a partial download on the Xbox One. The PS4 can do it too - it was a feature they explained quite heavily. This is a rather important feature for those that plan to buy digital (and it's one that I hope Valve are working on for Steam), so it's nice to see that everybody is on an even field.

Watch Dogs is a game that you'll want to have connected at all times, Ubisoft has revealed. Multiplayer will be so subtle that you probably won't even know you're in a multiplayer situation until the player entering your game actually chooses to attack, and there's no limit on the time they might follow you around, looking for the perfect opportunity.

There was a post made on PasteBin by an apparent Microsoft employee, a post that said that Family Sharing was just a glorified way of sharing demos. This would have not only been annoying to those who liked the sound of the feature, but it would have meant that Microsoft were flat out lying about something they were advertising. Not a mistake in an interview sort of lying, but across most of their promotional materials.

Gamestop have released a statement congratulating Microsoft for their change of heart concerning the Xbox One. It's perhaps no surprise that they're in support of the move considering their stocks dropped 5% when the Xbox One was announced.

It was a feature of the Xbox One that very few people seemed to know about, but for those that "got" it, yesterday's announcement that Microsoft were dropping more or less everything that had previously been announced was a bitter-sweet reveal. Family Sharing would have allowed you and up to ten of your friends to share a single game digitally, with you and one other person playing at exactly the same time. For those excited about the feature, this would have cut costs, opened up a whole catalogue of games they perhaps wouldn't have otherwise played and made ...

Microsoft have had a lot of frank feedback over the last few weeks, and it seems they've decided to act on it. They've announced this evening that they're ditching almost everything that was previously announced for the Xbox One, good and bad. While the 24 hour check in and trade limitations are no longer going to be a part of the system, they're also getting rid of the family sharing, digital selling and trading.

There's a lot of confusion about the Xbox One, partly because of people repeating erroneous information over and over, but mostly because Microsoft let people get that erroneous information in the first place. It's the start of a new generation, the Xbox One does things that no other console has ever done - you make sure that people understand what's going on with it from the very beginning.