Deep Silver has today announced that 4A Games will be supporting Metro: Last Light with a series of original single player downloadable content packs throughout the summer.

The ‘Faction Pack’ (set for release in June) and the ‘Chronicles Pack’ will include new, original single player gameplay that expands on the Metro: Last Light universe and story. The ‘Tower Pack’ will present a unique solo challenge to Metro veterans whilst meanwhile, the ‘Developer Pack’ will give creative players some interesting tools with which to explore the world of Metro…

“Artyom’s story may have been concluded in Metro: Last Light, but there are other characters with stories to tell, some familiar locations that fans of the Metro series wanted to revisit, and some new challenges that 4A wanted to explore,” said Andrew Prokhorov, Creative Director at 4A Games. “Since completing the game we have been working on these new stories and hope to release them throughout the summer.”

The Metro: Last Light Season pass is available to download now from Xbox Live for 1200 MSP now.

Metro: Last Light is available now and was rated 9/10 in our recent review.

A raw and gritty, futuristic squad-based third-person shooter built with Unreal Engine 3, Scourge: Outbreak pits the veteran mercenaries of Echo Squad, against their sworn enemies, the Nogari Corporation, in a desperate mission to rescue a double agent hidden behind enemy lines and to recover a mysterious meteorite fragment from Nogari’s possession. Convinced that Nogari’s ‘Ambrosia Fuel Technology’ is connected with deadly plagues that threaten to ravage the world, this may be Echo Squad’s last and only shot at bringing the Nogari threat to its knees once and for all.

Scourge: Outbreak marks the Xbox LIVE debut of a massively overhauled and vastly improved version of The Scourge Project: Episodes 1 & 2, originally released for PC in April 2010. With a host of new features and enhancements based on community feedback, including new and re-vamped gameplay, a stronger and more prominent story narrative, smarter AI, more gratifying gunplay, powerful new XP Perks, a much more detailed and vibrant world, and a long list of other exciting changes, the differences between TSP and Scourge: Outbreak are phenomenal! 

Scourge: Outbreak looks better, plays better, and is far more fun than The Scourge Project ever was. It’s a game that our small, humble team is immensely proud of, and we think that once players get into the game, they are really going to enjoy all of the newly-added content and features we’ve added.

said Ake Mora Temnerud, Studio Director of Tragnarion Studios.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfrJ4wvRQRE

Scourge: Outbreak Key Features:

• Up to 4-Player Co-op Campaign with 6+ hours of gameplay
• 4 Playable Characters, each with different weapon handling stats and a distinct combination of Special Abilities
• Unique character-specific flashbacks that reveal critical past events, and shed a new light on the game’s story
• XP system to track your experience and unlock powerful gameplay rewards in Campaign AND Multiplayer
• Squad AI for groups with less than 4 Players
• Quick-Order-System (QOS) for rapid deployment of squad-members
• 9 Weapons, plus multiple variants of each to suit your style of play
• Up to 8 Players in Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture-The-Flag multiplayer Versus modes in 5 action-packed maps!
• Leaderboards for competing with friends and other Players around the world!
• Challenging Achievements to unlock

Scourge: Outbreak will be available on Xbox LIVE July 3, 2013  for 800 Microsoft Points. 

With the removal of Xbox LIVE Gold Family Subscription packages, this did bring about rumours and suggestions that maybe the next Xbox console will have something up its sleeve to replace this. Polygon has reported on some Xbox LIVE Subscription facts, that YES – the Xbox One console can have multiple users on the one Xbox account whilst not needing an additional subscription per console either.

“If you have an Xbox Gold membership today for 360 and you buy an Xbox One, your membership applies to both systems,” Microsoft’s Phil Harrison told Polygon. “You don’t have to get another subscription.”

Multiple members of a household will be able to share a single account, Harrison said, explaining, “Anybody who has usage privilege on that machine can use it.”

Multiple users on the One Xbox Live subscription will be able to access their own Friends list and personalisations too. Great news for the families who share an Xbox!

Thanks Polygon

Call of Duty: Ghosts was the final reveal at todays Xbox One console unveiling, and although the next-gen visuals for this game doesn’t look all that different to be honest (just better lighting environments and character models) – it still looks set to be one of the greatest Call of Duty campaigns since the original Modern Warfare.

Call of Duty: Ghosts takes the critically-acclaimed franchise into the next generation. New world. New story. New, next-gen engine.

Available November 5th 2013.

With the newly announced Xbox One console from Microsoft today, post-reveal questions have included if it does block used games as per all the recent rumours and if it does require an always online internet connection. Clearing up the latter, Microsoft has confirmed that whilst the new console does require an internet connection it doesn’t have to be ‘always online’.

That being said #XboxOne will be best when connected to the cloud, but does not always need to be online.

— Xbox One (@TheXboxOne) May 21, 2013

Now, the important one since we all know how we love to trade-in our old games, shit games, or just fancy something not quite full priced games – it has been confirmed that the Xbox One console will not block used games, but you will need to deactivate your content license. So, in short if you install a game to your HDD and activate the license then all the accounts on your Xbox One console can play that game. If you sell your game, it will also need to be sold online. Microsoft hasn’t officially announced the trading details required to action it, but it will render your license useless and allow the new owner to play the game instead of you. There has been no talk of this being a chargeable service, but a license transfer can take place in the cloud over Xbox LIVE to the new owner. It is good to learn that used games are not dead afterall, Xbox Wire has stated “We are designing Xbox One to enable customers to trade in and resell games. We’ll have more details to share later.”

No wonder EA decided to scrap their online passes, they’d be useless on Xbox One with the way license transfers are in place!

Thanks: Kotaku

Microsoft has compiled a fact sheet detailing all the important information you need to know if you didn’t watch the XBOX ONE announcement Live Stream earlier today.

THE INTRODUCTION

Xbox One is the all-in-one games and entertainment system for the living room of the 21st century. Xbox One puts you at the center of all your entertainment, giving you instant access to TV, games, music, movies, sports and Skype, all in one place, without switching TV inputs or waiting for slow updates or lengthy downloads. Xbox One will launch in markets around the world later this year. Features include the following:

Live TV – Navigate and watch live TV through Xbox One. All your entertainment is now available in one place and is easily accessible on one system. Always know when your friends are online and ready to play your favorite game, even when you’re watching TV. Gone are the days of switching inputs.

Snap – Use Snap to do two things at once. Talk to friends on Skype, and watch the big game together. Follow what people are saying about your favorite show by surfing the Web. Listen to the music of your choice while playing the latest blockbuster game. Jump back and forth instantly between experiences without a loss in performance.

Skype – Display full HD, 1080p Skype video calls specially designed for Xbox One and, for the first time ever, have group Skype calls on your TV.2 Split the TV screen to join a multiplayer battle while hosting a Skype video chat with friends and family.

Home – Wake up your Xbox instantly with the words “Xbox, on,” and you’re welcomed to a personalized Home screen with your favorite games, apps and content. Pin movies, music and more for instant access to the things you love the most, right where you want them.

OneGuide – Find TV and entertainment quickly with voice searches for names, networks or times, presented in an easy-to-use and tailored program guide. See what’s on your favorite channels and the content that’s available in your entertainment apps, and quickly find the latest action movie or when the big game starts.

Trending – Still can’t decide what to watch? See the entertainment that’s popular within the Xbox community or with your friends. Trending is a great way to stay on top of what’s hot in TV, games and entertainment and to stay connected with friends in new and social ways.

THE HARDWARE

Xbox One was designed from the ground up to be the centerpiece of every living room with modern hardware, and it features the all-new Kinect, the new Xbox One Wireless Controller, a 500GB hard drive, an eight-core, x86 processor, wireless networking connectivity, HDMI, three super-speed USB 3.0 ports, and a high-speed Blu-ray disc player. Features include the following:

Xbox One console – Designed with the 21st century living room in mind, the Xbox One console features a premium design with a gloss black finish, horizontal orientation and a slot-loading Blu-ray disc player.

Updated wireless controller – Enhanced with more than 40 technical and design innovations, the new impulse triggers offer precise haptic fingertip feedback and a newly engineered D-pad delivers greater responsiveness and control. An infrared LED on the front of the controller allows Kinect to automatically recognize you, making it easier to pick up and play.

Redesigned Kinect – It includes a 1080p, HD camera that captures video at 30 frames per second. All- new, active-infrared capabilities increase precision, allowing it to work in nearly any lighting condition and expanding field of view to accommodate a greater variety of room sizes. Microsoft proprietary Time-of-Flight technology measures the time it takes individual photons to rebound off you to create unprecedented accuracy and precision. The new noise-isolating multimicrophone array filters ambient sounds to recognize natural speaking voices even in crowded rooms.

GAMING ON XBOX ONE

Gaming on Xbox One immerses you in bigger, more cinematic worlds that look and feel more lifelike, featuring more believable characters and richer stories. Game worlds come alive through the unlimited processing power of Xbox One and the cloud. Features include the following:

Smart Match – Estimates wait times for multiplayer gaming and lets you enjoy other Xbox One activities including live TV, Skype or sports experiences while waiting for a new game to begin. On Xbox One, your Xbox Live reputation fundamentally matters and helps you find the best match based on skill, game style and language for a deeper online multiplayer gaming challenge.

Expanded achievements – Allows for new achievements powered by the cloud and offers more ways to earn, more frequent updates and the ability to share wins with friends. An expanded achievements system captures videos of gameplay and continues to grow achievements over time, and Gamerscores carry over from Xbox 360.

Living Games – Leverages the power of the cloud so games can evolve and learn from actual players, letting you play against your friends’ shadow. Dynamic, living worlds evolve and improve the more you play, and games stay in sync with what’s happening today — real-world events can be instantly added to games, and the latest stats can be automatically added to sports titles.

Game DVR – Captures and saves in-game highlights and epic moments to the cloud. Use editing and sharing tools to post game footage to your Xbox Live profile and social networks.

XBOX LIVE – THE NEW GENERATION

The new generation of Xbox Live is completely redesigned to harness virtually unlimited power to connect, save and store personalized profiles, games and entertainment so they can be accessed anytime and on any Xbox One console. Connecting to Xbox Live makes accessing content effortless by installing games in segments so that playback starts quickly and updates happen in the background. Features include the following:

Xbox SmartGlass – Turn smartphones or tablets into second screens that intelligently interact with Xbox One and serve extended experiences for games, TV shows, movies, music, sports and apps. Navigate with touchscreens, pause or rewind a movie, or swipe, pinch and tap to surf the Web on the TV using more devices than ever before.

Multiplayer gaming – Enjoy a smart, quick and intuitive gaming experience in which multiplayer gaming has been enhanced to support playing with friends with no waiting in lobbies, and matchmaking features such as Smart Match and reputation let you architect your personal, favorite matches.

Apps – Discover and download a variety of Xbox One apps using simple voice searches. Pin favorites to the dashboard and jump in and out of apps instantly, or Snap them side by side to do two things at once.
Web for the TV. Explore the Web with Internet Explorer for Xbox One. Use Kinect and voice commands to browse your favorite sites with ease. Use Xbox SmartGlass to control your experiences with a swipe of your finger and send websites from tablets and smartphones to the biggest screen in the house.

Sports – Watch live games, highlights and replays in HD and with simple voice commands. Xbox One provides game-changing features with a personalized channel guide and the ability to dig deep on schedules, rosters and stats when making fantasy sports picks.

Xbox Live Gold – Existing Xbox Live Gold Membership for Xbox 360 will seamlessly carry over to Xbox One, becoming more valuable than ever.

Electronic Arts took to the stage today at #XboxReveal to announce that it has developed EA SPORTS™ IGNITE, a new game engine that will power EA sports games on Xbox One.  Fuelled by Ignite, games will be alive with players who think, move, and behave like real athletes and dynamic living worlds, transforming the way people play and experience games on next gen consoles.  Created with the Ignite engine, Madden NFL 25, FIFA 14, NBA LIVE 14, and  EA SPORTS™ UFC, will each launch within the next 12 months.

Below is the full official Press Release. You can watch more by heading to your Xbox36o Dashboard and watching the full #XboxReveal video including footage from all the named titles above. Enjoy.

***** Press Release *****

EA SPORTS IGNITE blends new technology with the best rendering, run-time physics, animation, intelligence, locomotion, and online systems from across EA into one powerful, new engine. Athletes will possess human-like intelligence for advanced decision-making, players will have the agility required to change speeds and directions with true athletic motion, and living worlds will make the game experience as rich and dynamic as real-world stadiums and arenas. A video showcasing how EA SPORTS games will look and play on Xbox One can be viewed here.

Through years of investment and innovation, we have built technology across EA SPORTS to create a game engine that will deliver stunning accuracy, realism and experiences that we previously could only dream about.With EA SPORTS IGNITE and the power of next generation consoles, our games will come alive—with more authenticity, more emotion, more connectivity, and more fun.

said Andrew Wilson, Executive Vice President and Head of EA SPORTS.

Athletes in EA SPORTS next gen games will be able to make intelligent decisions with human-like reaction times. EA SPORTS IGNITE computes four times more calculations per second than previous consoles, unlocking nearly infinite potential for how players think, and enabling them to make more difficult decisions faster. Players are alive with contextual awareness and instincts—thinking, anticipating, and reacting—just like real athletes, and players are conscious of their environment. In FIFA 14, for example, a player’s sense of urgency increases as the match draws on and a goal is needed, rushing to take a free kick, corner, or goal-kick if time is running down.

EA SPORTS IGNITE will deliver the dynamic movements and biomechanics of the world’s best athletes. With 10 times more animation depth and detail than previous consoles, and thousands of new sport-specific animations to drive new locomotion systems, players now plant, pivot and cut, quickly change speeds, and shift momentum with the agility and explosiveness of superstar athletes.

EA SPORTS games for the next generation will have stunning accuracy and visuals. By creating living worlds, the in-game environment is now as dynamic as real-world stadiums and arenas that change throughout a match.  For the first time ever, 3D crowds and dynamic sidelines will impact the experience, and rich sports atmospheres will change organically based on the progress of a match.  Player actions will change depending on the situation, and crowds will have an expectation of how a game is likely to play out, and react accordingly.

Have you all calmed down? Caught your breath? Worked out how many organs you’ll need to sell to then afford the new Xbox One? The answer to all 3 questions from me is yes. But whoa… what a day so far, right? Well let’s now talk about CryENGINE 3.

Videogame developer and publisher Crytek GmbH have spoken out and welcomed the unveiling of Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, reiterating that their CryENGINE 3 technology is equipped to start creating software for the system now. Take a read of the press release below and try not to keep screeching like a girl… I am failing at that.

Crytek recently became an officially licensed provider of middleware and tools for Xbox One, and will support the platform as well as equipping CryENGINE 3 licensees with the advanced toolset required to achieve their own games for the system.

“We offered assurances over two years ago that CryENGINE 3 was ready for the next generation of consoles, and time has revealed that promise to be true,” said Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development at Crytek. “As developers begin to create new games for Xbox One, our technology and unparalleled support will ensure CryENGINE 3 users remain at the forefront of the industry now and well into the future.”

Crytek’s CryENGINE 3 is used by licensees around the world to create blockbuster hits and popular online games, and is the first all-in-one development solution that provides multi-award winning graphics, and all necessary game systems and tools, out of the box.

At precisely 6pm BST Time (UK) the pre-warm up intro music dropped and the stage opened. The dramatic tones of drums, and god-knows-whatever-else a bit rock and pop had been playing about 15 minutes prior. The new Xbox console from Microsoft is now officially announced. Today we welcome the birth of a new generation with the XBOX ONE

Twitter was awash with reactions every waking second – What if they show no games, what if no console is shown, what if this, that and the other – showing how the bad PS4 reveal had an effect on Xbox fans in the build up todays reveal. The moment the console was on stage, my mouth had dropped, this sexy beast was going to be mine this year. The new generation XBOX ONE is all modern, metro and sexy, with a specifications list to match.

Some quotes during the event is that Team Xbox is on a new mission to design and build an all in one system that will light up a new generation of games and entertainment to put YOU at the centre of it. The all in one entertainment system is the one system for a new generation …

Games, Movies, Skype and Interactive TV all comes together.

XBOX ONE

Some of the new experiences with the all new XBOX ONE and new Kinect are:

• Controls all your devices with voice commands.
• Remembers what you was last doing and playing.
• New Metro Theme and Trendy area.
• New Social features.
• No need to change input to watch tv.
• Faster voice command reactions.
• Xbox Movies and Music still present.
• Skype – Skype now has multiple video group chat only on Xbox One
• Skype with Kinect control.
• Interactive TV with Xbox One Guide.

The next generation Kinect sensor is crisp at 1080p with wider view, Kinect can now understand the slightest rotation of a wrist or shoulder. It can read your heart beat, but even the new Xbox controller has been updated too for the hands-on approach to gaming. Integrated battery compartment, dynamic input buttons, better D-pad, a whole better playing experience for next-gen assisted by the all improved Kinect Sensor.

The new Xbox LIVE is more powerful and will use more than 300,000 servers for XBOX ONE compared to just 15,000 for Xbox 360. This will enable greater cloud based experiences, saves, movies, anytime anywhere. Intelligent TV and a multiplayer gaming DVR functionality is included to save your gaming moments and bragging rights. Achievements will tell your personal story of how you play, and a new future matchmaking feature to find better matchmaking tailored to you. Bigger matches with more players, better living and persistent worlds will now be a possibility with the breakthrough of XBOX ONE!

The new generation XBOX ONE is here… available this fall.

Look out for further updates really soon.

Global music subscription service Deezer has today announced another landmark partnership to give music lovers throughout Europe unlimited access to their favourite tunes – instantly from their Xbox games console.

On top of giving you access to over 20 million of the hottest tracks and thousands of themed radio stations, the new Deezer app is Kinect enabled so that you can take a break from dancing your socks off to navigate the specially designed screens using your whole body. What’s more, each console can connect to up to three Deezer accounts simultaneously, giving you even more opportunity to share and discover music with friends. Once you have decided who the Halo champion is, you can do battle for the title of King of the Deezer Playlist.

The Deezer app is available for download now, and to access all the great features all you need to do is subscribe to Deezer Premium+ on Xbox live.