Owing to Microsoft’s renewed focus on backward and forward compatibility, the Xbox Series X and Series S have a lot in common with the Xbox One as far as the interface and the OS are concerned- but at the same time, the new Xbox consoles also have impressive backward compatibility features that are capable of enhancing older games in pretty significant ways.

Recently, Xbox’s director of program management Jason Ronald said that Microsoft would be releasing more backward compatibility enhancements for the Xbox Series X/S this year, and it seems those are going to be coming soon. In the latest episode of the Xbox podcast, Xbox’s Larry Hryb (a.k.a. Major Nelson) said that though he can’t say much about it right now, “there will be some enhancement news coming soon.”

Jason Ronald also chimed in, suggesting that Microsoft has a lot of “exciting” things in the works that are going to be rolled out over the coming months. He said: “We’ve got a lot of really exciting things that are coming down the pipeline over the coming months and over the coming years.”

Backward compatibility enhancements seem like a given at this point, but hopefully, Microsoft will be adding further system updates to the Xbox Series X/S as well. Not that long ago, for instance, Ronald said that a number of improvements to the consoles’ capturing and sharing features were being worked on. You can read more on that through here.

Xbox “Duke”

For the record: original Xbox controllers were not Frisbees. After all, throwing a Frisbee at someone wouldn’t knock them out cold like “The Duke”, such was the weight and thickness that the OG Xbox controller possessed. If nothing else, it was solid and suited incredibly large hands. And really, there was nothing else. At least Microsoft redesigned the controller to be smaller and more comfortable down the line.

Before they became The Coalition, and the custodians of Microsoft’s Gears of War franchise, they were known as Black Tusk Studios. Back during E3 2013, they debuted what seemed to be a brand new IP, an exciting new concept that got many intrigued. That IP was later obviously scrapped in favor of new Gears of War projects (and official statements would go on to variously say that it never existed, and was just a concept pitch), but in an interview with Polygon, The Coalition finally came clean, discussing the original concept.

“Microsoft was in discussions with Epic. We were hugely invested in what we were working on. You don’t spend a year and a half working on a game without getting attached to it. There was a lot of discussion,” said studio manager Mike Crump, adding that the decision wasn’t easy.

“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some people on the team who were disappointed when they found out the thing they’d been working on for so long was going to be shelved.

“If you’ve been in the game industry long enough, you’re going to go through project cancellations. People go through this period of mourning a bit. You have to give them that space and time to go through that, the sense of loss that people have around something they’re invested in.”

The final decision was a “no-brainer,” according to Crump. “We went around the table and everybody was in favor of going for Gears of War,” he added.

I can imagine it being creatively stifling and disappointing, but on the whole, it seems that the new studio has settled into its role quite nicely.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition launches next month on Xbox One, with a PC release to follow; Gears of War 4 will launch exclusively on Xbox One some time next year.

This year, the highly respected and extremely popular physics engine  brought to you by Havok, turns 15 years old. Havok appears in many different games stretching across not only multiple generations of hardware, but it also spans a wide variety of genres,

Havok has been put to use in some of the most respected video games of all time, Half Life 2’s Gravity Gun, and even the heart wrenching survival story, The Last of Us.

The Havok team started out in my homeland of Ireland, in a place known as the Trinity College which is situated in Dublin. Having walked past it many times, it’s interesting to me, on a persoanl level, to think of how something that would influence the gaming industry so much was created just down the street from me.

If you’ve been playing Sunset Overdrive, Destiny, Dragon Age Inquisition, then you already owe thanks to Havok.

To help demonstrate their dedication to bringing the games we all love to life in their own way, they have released a rather beautiful, historical timeline of their work. Check it out by clicking on the image!

And it looks awesome!

The long rumored game was finally revealed at Microsoft’s E3 presser earlier today, and seriously, it looks like a return to form for the beleaguered series.

The game is set in the Iran/Iraq border, and it features a much more agile and nimble looking Sam, who seems to be have inherited the complete moveset from Ezio and Altair from Ubisoft’s own Assassin Creed series, and an emphasis on platforming that, again, looks like Assassin’s Creed.

Moreover, the game has you as the head of Echelon 4, so you can order missile strikes as well. In addition, the graphics look kind of tailor made for 3D, so that might be an incoming announcement as well. The combat looked amazing, and the “Killing in Motion” feature deserves a special mention. It looked slick and extremely stylish.

The stealth also looks pretty good.

An inordinate amount of time was spent on the game’s Kinect functionality, which seems to be all about voice commands and voice integration.

Check out the first gameplay demo below: