Category: Xbox News

Talk to any kid in the early ’90s and the ’90s absolutely sucked! There was a hole in the ozone layer, war was popping up all over the globe, they had lost the voice of our generation in Kurt Cobain, and parents were just the worst. 

But talk to those ’90s kids now and the decade rocked! Blossom, Pogs, Ren & Stimpy – it’s never been bettered before or after. A lot of the bad stuff filters away and all of the boring in-between times have vanished from memories. Nostalgia, that painful longing for the past, was once treated as an illness but now we wear it as a badge of honor, triggered by a song or a film or a toy.

With our latest game, Cardpocalypse, it wasn’t enough to only poke at people’s nostalgia, we wanted to grab it by the Hypercolor t-shirt and, like Kris Kross before us, make it jump, jump. We wanted to remind the players about what it was like being a kid in the 90’s, more than any Buzzfeed listicle could. Remember the time your favorite game got banned in school, or when that one kid called the teacher Mom? Back when you couldn’t look up cheats and tips online, but had to wait for the latest games magazine to come out (or sneak a costly phone call to the hint-line). 

We’ve filled the game with all the vibes that made being a ten-year-old so fun, those years before teen cynicism creeps in and clothes become blacker. Our theme song draws from afternoon cartoons like TMNT and Pokémon, and every champion has their time in the spotlight with super fun character intro music – some of the tunes absolutely wail. We’ve packed the artwork of the game with as many easter-eggs as possible which should provide eagle-eyed players with an abundance of warm “oh my god, remember that” moments. The game-within-a-game, Mega Mutant Power Pets, is our tribute to the trading card games that we grew up with, many of which and inspired us to start making games in the first place. And the stories and quests are like a time capsule of our collective memories at school all told through Jess’s first week at Dudsdale Elementary. 

There’s been an over-abundance of ’80s themed retro and the timing seems right for ’90s reminiscing to have it’s day in the sun, we’re mega-thrilled to have Cardpocalypse as a part of this. It was such a fun time to relive while creating the game. Hopefully there’s plenty more to come before we start seeing the “you were a child of the ’20s if…” articles or until “OK, Millennial” starts becoming a catchphrase. One thing’s for sure though, nostalgia will never grow old.

Talk to any kid in the early ’90s and the ’90s absolutely sucked! There was a hole in the ozone layer, war was popping up all over the globe, they had lost the voice of our generation in Kurt Cobain, and parents were just the worst. 

But talk to those ’90s kids now and the decade rocked! Blossom, Pogs, Ren & Stimpy – it’s never been bettered before or after. A lot of the bad stuff filters away and all of the boring in-between times have vanished from memories. Nostalgia, that painful longing for the past, was once treated as an illness but now we wear it as a badge of honor, triggered by a song or a film or a toy.

With our latest game, Cardpocalypse, it wasn’t enough to only poke at people’s nostalgia, we wanted to grab it by the Hypercolor t-shirt and, like Kris Kross before us, make it jump, jump. We wanted to remind the players about what it was like being a kid in the 90’s, more than any Buzzfeed listicle could. Remember the time your favorite game got banned in school, or when that one kid called the teacher Mom? Back when you couldn’t look up cheats and tips online, but had to wait for the latest games magazine to come out (or sneak a costly phone call to the hint-line). 

We’ve filled the game with all the vibes that made being a ten-year-old so fun, those years before teen cynicism creeps in and clothes become blacker. Our theme song draws from afternoon cartoons like TMNT and Pokémon, and every champion has their time in the spotlight with super fun character intro music – some of the tunes absolutely wail. We’ve packed the artwork of the game with as many easter-eggs as possible which should provide eagle-eyed players with an abundance of warm “oh my god, remember that” moments. The game-within-a-game, Mega Mutant Power Pets, is our tribute to the trading card games that we grew up with, many of which and inspired us to start making games in the first place. And the stories and quests are like a time capsule of our collective memories at school all told through Jess’s first week at Dudsdale Elementary. 

There’s been an over-abundance of ’80s themed retro and the timing seems right for ’90s reminiscing to have it’s day in the sun, we’re mega-thrilled to have Cardpocalypse as a part of this. It was such a fun time to relive while creating the game. Hopefully there’s plenty more to come before we start seeing the “you were a child of the ’20s if…” articles or until “OK, Millennial” starts becoming a catchphrase. One thing’s for sure though, nostalgia will never grow old.

Something of great value to the Draconids is buried in the rocky crust of Terra, and these cold-blooded fiends will stop at nothing to get it out. An army of lizards, giant laser drills, and an extinction-level planetary threat… the odds sound about even, wouldn’t you say, Immortal? Welcome to Rock and Metal, the newest expansion to the world of Skyforge!

We’ve been building the Draconids up for a while now, from their first appearance as a fairly benign presence in the New Horizons update, to their skirmish in the Heart of the City during the recent Ignition update. Captain Garos’ intelligence shows that your scaly enemies have taken refuge in a giant, impenetrable dome in Terra’s Toxic Wasteland. This abandoned industrial site is rife with pollution and is considered inhospitable to all but the most despicable lifeforms.

Your adventure will take you into the heart of the Draconids’ operation to find out what the lizards are drilling for. You’ll have to contend with legions of Draconid warriors to infiltrate their dome and shut them down. But amidst the rocky excavation, a metal malice lies in wait…

Kerax is an unnaturally large Draconid commander encased in mechanical armor. Known by the Draconid legions as the Assault Cyborg, his cybernetic suit greatly enhances his combat abilities, so bringing down your reptilian rival won’t be an easy task. Be sure to buddy up with other Immortals if you want to stand a chance against this monstrous threat and get out of the mission alive!

If you’re in need of some extra firepower, the new expansion heralds the thunderous arrival of the Black Metal collection, a set of weapons designed for the Firestarter, Soundweaver, and Grovewalker classes. Inspired by the fashion and iconography of metal culture and bands like Rammstein, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC, these weapons really pack a rock ‘n’ rollin’ punch!

The Firestarter, the newest class in the Skyforge universe, gets a set of demonic-looking torches to switch up the heat in battle. Pentagrams and pyrotechnics are common fare in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, so we channeled their fiery flair when designing the Firestarter’s new weapons, and the attack bonuses and effects granted while wielding them.

The Grovewalker wields a heavy metal thyrsus, an ancient weapon originally made from fennel, and a symbol of the Greek god Dionysus. This particular design incorporates an imposing metal skull that’s sure to make enemies quake before the Grovewalker’s earthly powers! Its new attack effect sees large glowing spikes protruding from its back, a look inspired by punk rock culture (sadly, they don’t make cool leather jackets in the Grovewalker’s size).

As Aelion’s resident guitar hero, the Soundweaver was already heavily immersed in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, so we had to turn the swagger up to 11. The Soundweaver wields a new demonic-looking guitar swelling with fire and a furious, otherworldly energy. In designing the look of the Soundweaver’s new toy plus its attack effects, we took influence from the magnificent flamethrower guitar guy shredding away during a high-speed chase in “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Meanwhile, the exploding amps might remind you of a young time traveler amping up in Back to the Future!

Skyforge players who have ascended to their Elder God form can also unlock the powers of the Aspect of Vengeance. This new form is primarily available for the Archer, Outlaw, and Gunner classes (but you can switch to it even with your non-ranged classes), and it’s primed to enhance and amplify your ranged combat abilities. Fire arrows or a gun (depending on the Aspect’s current stance, which can be switched), summon lightning, order a volley of arrows, or unleash hell with the Aspect’s ultimate form!

If you haven’t yet unlocked your Elder God form, there’s still time! Defeat Tol Monter, the Avatar of the Oceanid Invasion, to access the Aspect of Vengeance and a host of other Elder forms. Tol Monter is a powerful ocean dweller and a monstrous challenge to even Aelion’s greatest defenders, so get your best team together if you want to take it down! If you don’t claim victory before the current Invasion cycle ends, you can also wait for the next one and challenge the Avatar of that Invasion instead.

Ready to rock? Skyforge and the Rock and Metal expansion are now available to download for free from the Microsoft Store! The Black Metal Collection weapons can also be purchased in the Flower of Evil, Rhapsody of Pain, and Playing with Fire bundles.

What an eventful year 2019 has been! We’ve had black holes, a royal baby, recording-breaking superhero movies, and even more politics than we thought we could handle. At Snap Finger Click, we’re excited to celebrate the end of the decade with a brand new update to It’s Quiz Time. And the best news of all? It’s completely free to anyone who owns the game!

Two years ago, together with our publisher Vision Games, we released It’s Quiz Time, a trivia game you can play with your smartphone hosted by Salli the supercomputer. As a team of former Buzz! developers, we were looking to make an awesome new quiz game that brings people together. It’s Quiz Time includes 11 different rounds, five game modes, integrated streaming features, and a sassy AI host that can say any name and read out any question.

With 25,000 questions included in the game, we’re confident It’s Quiz Time is the biggest trivia game ever released on console. But we didn’t stop there. Shortly after its initial release, we made a special end of the year quiz with questions all about events of the previous 12 months. Since then, we’ve been bombarded with requests to do another end of the year quiz. We know the festive period is the perfect time to gather your friends and family to play games, so we couldn’t think of a better time to release this new update.

From today, you can play the Best of 2019 quiz in It’s Quiz Time featuring questions about some of the most memorable events of the year:

• In the 2019 video game My Friend Pedro, what type of fruit is Pedro?
• What was named Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2019?
• The remix of “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus spent how many weeks at the top of the US singles chart?

With 800 questions covering a range of topics such as current affairs,
weird and wonderful news items, music, movies, video games, TV, and sports, we
know there’ll be something for everyone to keep you entertained throughout the
winter.

There’s a lot more to It’s Quiz Time than just simple multiple choice. In the Connections round, you can choose all the connecting answers from a big grid. In Matchmaker, you need to pair up the matching elements. When you play Guesstimation, you need to drag along the graph line to find the right number that answers the question. For the Showdown round, you team up together to take down the leader. And every game ends with The Big Finish, a quickfire finale where huge points can be won and lost. Each round is designed to make the most of your smartphone, dragging, swiping and tapping the right answers.

You can play It’s Quiz Time with up to eight players or you can play alone against the AI. As well as playing together in the living room, you can broadcast your game on streaming platforms like Mixer so that your friends can join in remotely.

It’s Quiz Time is available on Xbox One for $19.99 on the Microsoft Store and the Best of 2019 update is available from today and free to download for anyone who owns the game.

We hope you have a great holiday season playing It’s Quiz Time at your Christmas and New Year’s parties. Be sure to let us know what you think of the new update on Twitter at @snapfingerclick or Discord at discord.gg/snapfingerclick. Merry quizmas!

88 years after Robert E. Howard introduced Conan the Barbarian to the world, the ferocious hero is due to take on his most remarkable challenge yet. We are proud to announce February 25, 2020 as the release date of 1-4 player action adventure game Conan Chop Chop.

Conan Chop Chop is set in a world where heroes,
villains, magic and legends are plentiful. In this blog post, I would like to
give you a glimpse into how we’ve gone about converting this extraordinary world
into a game.

Building a Fun Combat
System

Hitting
stuff is fun! At its core, that’s what Conan
Chop Chop is all about. When we’re playing a game that is all about hitting stuff, we want the
second to second combat to feel snappy, responsive, and satisfying. We know you
do too, so this was our goal. We want players to feel challenged,
excited, frustrated (at times), and rewarded.

We want you to step in for the first time and “get it,” but
we want you to master the weapons, the enemies, the bosses and the world’s
secrets over time. Kind of like the famous Othello slogan “A minute to learn… a
lifetime to master.”

Building a Revisitable
World

Simple, fun, and rewarding combat is what we are looking to
bring to players, but the game goes deeper than that. Every playthrough is
different, with unique combinations of weapons, armor and charms (think
powerups) that will help you slash your way through the procedurally generated
world. The first time you find the giant Bastard Sword, or the first time you
equip the Flaming Weapon charm, we want those moments to mean something.

Bring Some Friends!

There is nothing quite like sitting down on the couch with
friends, four controllers at the ready, and having a new world ready to explore
together. We want laughing, we want screaming, we want teamwork, we want
betrayal (just a tiny bit…). Conan Chop
Chop is at its best when shared with others, which is why we’ve been
working hard to bring online multiplayer support to go along with local co-op
for launch.

We Can’t Wait!

As Conan Chop Chop
closes in on its release date, the team is working hard on balancing, polishing
combat and finalizing our rogue-lite game progression. We love this game, and we can’t wait to get the
final product into your hands!

Xbox Support is about you! That’s why we appreciate all the help you’ve done in making the newest version of our support website a reality.

Xbox gives you a place to play and connect with your friends and family, and we know it’s no fun when you’re interrupted. That’s where Xbox Support steps in – whether via the Xbox Assist app on Xbox One, our online help at support.xbox.com, our support forums or our customer support advocates, we’re always working to get you back to gaming as fast as possible.

Xbox Support’s New Site: Smarter, Faster and All About You

Your Feedback Improved Support Worldwide

The new website offers a sleeker support experience. It integrates articles, documents, forum results, and upfront snips of solutions with each search. And it’s optimized for mobile devices! This faster and smarter website is built for gamers who need help quickly—whether you’re in the middle of a game or setting up a device for the first time.

We asked Xbox Insiders to help us try out the new support website, and your detailed and passionate feedback told us exactly what the community needed to make support accessible and flexible.

Team Xbox thanks you very much for helping us launch worldwide!

Check out this post about the changes to the website here. There’s still more to be done. Use the big, green “Give Feedback” button at the bottom of the website’s homepage if you’d like to provide feedback:

We plan to keep making improvements so the support you need is always at your fingertips. Stop by the new website, get help, and let us know what you think!

Follow us on Twitter at @XboxInsider and this blog for release notes, announcements and more. And feel free to interact with the community on the Xbox Insider SubReddit.

These are exciting times here at Dice! We’ve just released our reimagining of one of the most (oh, all right, the most) classic map in Battlefield history: Wake Island. Battlefield veterans will remember this Pacific battleground from Battlefield 1942 and it’s seen a few incarnations in other titles, too.

The design of this horseshoe-shaped classic has treated us to many frantic multiplayer matches throughout the years. Now, with the help of modern tech, we’ve been able to design Wake Island as we’ve always imagined it. Wake Island 2019 is larger, built for better pacing, and supports new Battlefield V features like Fortifications.

Wake Island features
fights across land, air, and sea, but we thought we’d look closer at infantry
combat specifically in this post. Here are a few pointers from our Level
Designer Shashank Uchil on how to best play the four classes – Assault,
Support, Medic, and Recon – when attacking or defending as the U.S. or Japan in
this lush but hostile environment. 

Playing Assault on Wake Island

If left unchecked, enemy vehicles could
quickly turn the tide of the battle of Wake Island. You don’t want that to
happen! If you’re playing as Assault, prioritize taking out the numerous tanks
and planes. Use gadgets like the Panzerfaust, AT Mines, and Sticky Dynamite to
bring down tanks and stationary weapons like the AA Guns to rid the skies of
aircraft.

Playing Support on Wake Island

Supports should prioritize building
Fortifications to keep the enemy side’s tanks and transport vehicles in check.
This is also a great class for holding the opposing team back using the
trenches found across the map. Lay down suppressive fire with the mighty
machine guns and you will be a great asset to your squad and team.

Playing Medic on Wake Island

Naturally, keeping teammates alive and well is
key to playing Medic, especially on such an intense map as this. Keep laying
down medpacks and look for (safe) revive opportunities. Furthermore, Medics
would be advised to switch between long-range and short-range weapons based on
where they are. When moving between flags, it’s wise to swap to a long-range
weapon, but while close to a control point and the close-quarter combat ranges
found by it, choose a high rate-of-fire weapon.

Playing Recon on Wake Island

Recons have one true love: the high ground!
Playing as this class, you will find some form of tower near every flag on Wake
Island. You can also climb the hotel, hangar, air tower, and fuel tanks to get
a great view of the map. Be careful though – these locations are a primary
target for other players, too.

There you have it! Whatever class you choose,
we hope you have fun on Wake Island and that you (re)discover the frantic
sandbox gameplay this timeless design caters to.

Snow has come to the
New Frontier, and it has brought some fearsome enemies with it…

You grab your gear and hop in your Duni Shetarru AWD for a normal day of hunting Arkfalls for some new tech to sell. As you drive along, you start to notice a new terraforming anomaly – it’s snowing! Suddenly, an ark from the ark belt overhead comes crashing down and lands among the wintery landscape, and there isn’t much time to get there before any nature of baddies show up to claim its rewards. Lock and load Arkhunter, because this winter is no wonderland, and the Volge are out in full force to take down anyone in their path.

For four weeks, the Solstice Strike event will be active in Defiance 2050 bringing freezing snowy landscapes, and murderous Volge. Do you have what it takes to eliminate these enemies and grab your gear before more show up? And what is wrong with the Warmaster? He seems especially…..frosty.

What could possibly be worth going up against the Volge you ask? This event will bring with it new rewards, contracts, pursuits, prototypes and more!

Warm up your weapon with the new
Frigid Impact Mod Fusion to shield against the cold wind. This new fusion type
will leverage the power of your shield to deal massive damage to enemies. Once
your shield is broken, you will deal damage to all enemies around you!

If groundbreaking tech is your thing,
also stock up on the Aegis synergy. These synergy crystals will enhance your
shield to never before seen capabilities. Increase your regen rate, while also
providing significant stopping power proportionate to how much shield you
currently have!

The holiday spirit has hit Paradise in the form of the Cheer Cannon prototype. Stop the Volge grinch with this brand new rocket launcher that fires holiday cheer in the form of festive trees. These trees will pierce through all enemies, and explode on impact with another surface. Get this prototype from the Paradise vendor during the event and let your holiday trees fly!

Want to enjoy the festive atmosphere with other Arkhunters? Then join us to sit together by the fire and enjoy the holiday mood and defeat all the grumpy Grinches and to grab some fantastic Christmas gifts!

Happy Holidays!!!