Update: Xbox Live (and Xbox.com) appear to be mostly back online. The service status page does note, however, that certain apps are currently experiencing issues, including YouTube and Netflix.
Original Story: Xbox Live is currently experiencing problems that Microsoft says it’s in the process of resolving.
The current Xbox Live Status page
On the first day of a free online multiplayer weekend for Xbox 360 owners, the service is offline, though it’s currently unclear why. On top of that, it’s impossible to check its status–the usual webpage tracking any issues lists all services as “unavailable.” The entirety of Xbox.com has also been rendered inaccessible for periods of time.
According to multiple tweets from the Xbox Support Twitter account, Microsoft is aware of the problems and is attempting to fix them. “Our teams are currently working to resolve a few Xbox Live issues,” the account said in one tweet.
We’ll have more details as they are made available.
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Microsoft is planning a phased rollout for its upcoming operating system, Windows 10. The new OS will debut first on PC this summer, following by versions for phones, Xbox One, HoloLens, and other devices later in the year. That’s according to a new report from noted Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott, who attended a special event at Microsoft’s Build conference in San Francisco today where the details were divulged.
Citing a conversation with Windows executive Joe Belfiore, Thurrott that Windows 10 will arrive for those non-PC platforms “according to their own schedules later in 2015.”
Microsoft announced back in January that Windows 10 would be integrated into Xbox One by way of a future update. Xbox boss Phil Spencer assured fans at the time that when the Windows 10 Xbox One update arrives, it won’t morph the games console into an enterprise-centric device.
How it will operate is unclear, and whether it will come with a dashboard rearrangement is not known.
“We won’t see people using Excel on the Xbox, but Microsoft is making it easier to port experiences from PC over to Xbox where they make sense,” Spencer said at the time.
Xbox One Preview Program members will get to try the new Windows 10 integration first. Spencer said on Twitter earlier this week that Preview Program members will be able to test it out “at least” a month before general availability. Access to the Xbox One Preview Program is available by invitation only.
Last night, Steam’s Community Market was simultaneously filled with outrageously priced items and absolute bargains due to a currency error that Valve continues to work toward resolving.
At some point in the overnight hours, Steam’s currency exchange rate was thrown off for anyone using Indonesia’s currency, the Indonesian rupiah. According to PC Gamer, the system treated the rupiah’s value as being identical to that of the US Dollar, which in fact is worth almost exactly 13,000 rupiahs.
The effect of this was twofold. Those using rupiahs were able to buy items on the market–where players can buy and sell various things, including in-game items from Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2, among other games–at incredibly low prices. Conversely, those using USD found prices on some items to be a tad higher than usual, like a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive weapon whose starting price was $3,549,383.07 (via Reddit).
In order to deal with this, Valve took Steam trading and the Community Market offline for a period, during which time it “reverted as many of these purchases as possible,” according to a message posted on Steam. “A relatively small set of users have one or more transactions where the item was restored back to the seller, but the wallet funds have not yet been returned to the buyer. We are still working to resolve this issue and appreciate your patience while we sort everything out. “
Likewise, Valve hasn’t yet fixed an issue where rupiah users who used codes to add money to their Steam wallet received the wrong amount. However, Valve says that situation “will be fixed later today.”
Sony’s Japanese PlayStation website has launched a new section devoted to the PS4 version of upcoming RPG Persona 5, and along with it, we’ve got a batch of new high-resolution screenshots to fawn over.
Many of the screenshots look to be taken directly from scenes shown off in the game’s debut trailer, while others were previously available only in small images on the official Japanese website. There’s a mixture of images from combat, social areas, and dungeons, as well as one of the game’s ridiculously stylish menu system.
At the time, Persona 5 director Katsura Hashino offered some new information about the game, explaining, “For this game, we’re going with a challenge that fuses together a juvenile school setting that is as large as life, together with a picaresque romance. In the previous game, we wrote a story that involved having a justice group chase down a bad guy that could easily be feared by just about anyone.
“This time, it’s about a group of high school students that are being ‘chased’ by unexpected occurrences due to the justice they believe in. We’re writing [the story] to convey a thrilling everyday life in the shoes of these characters, that are as large as life, in this juvenile school setting.”
Warren Spector, the veteran games developer who helped create the seminal Deus Ex original, has praised the series’ 2010 reboot Human Revolution, but hopes the next game offers more than what was shown in the recent reveal trailer.
Writing to fans on Reddit, Spector explained he was a fan of Human Revolution, stating: “I don’t finish a lot of games and I finished DX:HR. That’ll tell you something. When I did finish it, I kinda sat back and thought, ‘Wow, I just had a Deus Ex experience.’ It sounded like DX and felt like DX. It was pretty cool.”
However, for now, he is not quite as positive about the next project. He said: “I thought the Mankind Divided trailer was pretty violence-o-rific, which bugged me a little. I mean, Deus Ex was never about killing stuff. It was about picking your own play style, which might involve killing stuff.”
Nevertheless, Spector appeared confident that the Mankind Divided video might not be representative of the final game.
“In trailers, you just have to give people the most action-packed stuff you can, I assume,” he said.
“Given how well Human Revolution did at the whole choice and consequence idea I’m hoping–and have confidence–the actual game will be a little more in the ‘Play-style Matters’ mold.”
“Play-style Matters” is a phrase coined by Spector to generally describe freedom in a game to make your own choices and, as a consequence, how its characters and world responds to those decisions.
Sega and Creative Assembly have announced that they have now released official mod tools for strategy game Total War: Attila. The “Assembly Kit,” as Sega is calling it, is available to owners of the game through the Tools menu in your Steam Library.
The Assembly Kit is being billed as the “most extensive” mod tools package Sega has ever released, outdoing similar packages for Shogun and Rome II.
Courtesy of Sega, the Total War: Attila Assembly Kit includes the following:
DaVE: enables editing of the game’s database entries.
BOB: enables processing of raw data such as textures, models and animations.
TeD: enables the creation of individual battlefields for land, sea and sieges.
Terry: enables the editing of campaign map aesthetics such as the height-map, lighting and props. Unlike previous Assembly Kits, Terry now grants access to Terrain Raw Data, which means modders can determine which battle maps load in for specific campaign map locations.
Sega also pointed out that fans who want to “get the most” out of the Assembly Kit should download the Terrain Raw Data resource pack. This comes with a whopping 60 GB of assets for creators to work with. Check out the video above to see some of this in action.
Interested modders can also visit the Total War Wiki here for a more in-depth rundown of scripting methods and how to best leverage the new mod tools.
Set in an overgrown wilderness populated by the Avvar hunter people, the $15 content will see players exploring an “ancient Tevinter fortress that hides a dangerous secret.”
Gamers can also expect to face off against new enemies, and amass new legendary armor and weapons. Jaws of Hakkon concludes with a battle against an “ancient god of war bent on destroying the world.”
In GameSpot’s 7/10 Jaws of Hakkon review, critic Austin Walker praised its new perspective on the Dragon Age lore and its gorgeous and varied environments. But Walker also wrote that Jaws of Hakkon lacks the cinematic storytelling of the base game, and notes that a few missions can be boring.
Jaws of Hakkon was released first on Xbox One as part of an exclusivity arrangement between BioWare studio owner Electronic Arts and Microsoft. As part of this agreement, BioWare was forbidden from even talking about when the content would be released on other platforms.
Direct X 12, the next graphics API for Windows devices, has been demonstrated rendering real-time graphics with “six to twelve” times more polygons than its predecessor.
Speaking at the Build 2015 conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Microsoft technical fellow John Shewchuk talked through a strikingly detailed Final Fantasy PC demo that was running from a quad-SLI Digital Storm rig.
The video demonstration, which graphics card giant Nvidia says “points a way through the uncanny valley”, can be found below:
“The thing that’s really incredible about what you’re seeing is just the density of data that’s involved in this,” Shewchuk said.
In a bid to show that the demo was not pre-rendered CG, Shewchuk opened the free camera to look around the scene in real-time, as well as make various changes to the lighting.
Shewchuk claimed that each scene renders about 63 million polygons. “That’s about six to 12 times more than we could do with DX11,” he said.
He went on to claim that the textures were 8K by 8K, and that “every piece of hair is being rendered as a polygon – this isn’t surface map stuff. I think it’s an incredible example of just how far people are pushing big data.”
Nvidia said the demo was “running on four of our flagship GeForce Titan X GPUs,” and described it as a “stunning example” of what can be done with Microsoft’s next graphics API.
Direct X 12 is due to arrive with Windows 10, which is rumoured will release in July, though no official date has been set.
“Microsoft has said Windows 10 will launch this summer. We have nothing additional to share,” a Microsoft spokesperson told GameSpot in response to the release date rumour.
Call of Duty publisher Activision has teased a possible upcoming entry to the series for Nintendo’s Wii U. The official Activision Support Twitter account hinted at a release while replying to a fan’s question about why Nintendo ID’s can be connected to the Call of Duty website.
@GoodGamer14 Hey there. Stay tuned for more Wii U releases. ^DL
The tweet may be referring to the publisher’s recently announced Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which is slated for release on November 6 this year. The game is currently confirmed for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It wouldn’t be the first game in the series to be released for the Wii U, as 2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II was launched for the console in 2012.
![[Update] Xbox Live, Xbox Website Currently Down](https://playerschoicegames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2858481-status.jpg)
