text stringlengths 0 113k |
|---|
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable_(video_game_series)] | [TOKENS: 2462] |
Contents Fable (video game series) Fable is a fantasy action role-playing game series originally created by Lionhead Studios and later developed by Playground Games. The franchise is owned and published by Xbox Game Studios. Set in the fictional land of Albion, the series is known for its emphasis on player choice, morality systems, and a satirical, fairy-tale inspired take on British folklore. Since its debut in 2004, Fable has become one of Microsoft Gaming's most recognizable role-playing franchises. The main series follows different heroes across several centuries of Albion’s history, with each installment depicting a more technologically advanced era, ranging from a medieval-inspired society to an industrialized nation. Gameplay centers on shaping a hero through moral decisions that affect the character’s appearance, the story’s outcome, and how non-player characters react. In addition to combat and quests, the games allow players to engage in activities such as property ownership, romance, family life, trading, and social interaction, blending traditional role-playing mechanics with life-simulation elements. The franchise began with Fable (2004) for the original Xbox, followed by Fable II (2008) and Fable III (2010). While praised for its originality and charm, the series was also associated with controversy due to unfulfilled design promises made during development. After a period of decline and the closure of Lionhead Studios in 2016, the franchise was revived by Playground Games, which announced a reboot in 2020. A new Fable title is scheduled for release in 2026. Beyond the main entries, the series has expanded into spin-offs, mobile and arcade titles, and a collectible card game. The franchise has also inspired a novel, Fable: The Balverine Order, as well as various promotional and crossover projects. Over the years, Fable has received generally positive critical reception and remains influential for its approach to player agency, moral choice, and world design within role-playing games. Setting The Fable series takes place in the fictional nation of Albion, a state that, at the time of the first game, is composed of numerous autonomous city-states with vast areas of countryside or wilderness in between. The setting originally resembles Medieval Britain,[citation needed] with some European elements. The name Albion itself is an ancient albeit still used name for Great Britain.[citation needed] The period of time progresses with each game; in Fable II, Albion has advanced to an era similar to that of the Age of Enlightenment, and by Fable III the nation has been unified under a monarchy and is undergoing an "Age of Industry" similar to the real-world 18th-19th-century Industrial Revolution.[citation needed] In the first Fable, players assume the role of a boy who is forced into a life of heroism when bandits attack his village, kill his father and kidnap his sister. The choices players make in the game affect the perception and reaction to their Hero by the characters of Albion and change the Hero's appearance to mirror what good or evil deeds he has performed. In addition to the main quest to learn what happened to the Hero's family, players can engage in optional quests and pursuits such as trading, romance and married life, pub gaming, boxing, exploring, and theft. Fable II takes place 500 years after the events of the first game. The world resembles Europe between the late 1600s and early 1700s, the time of highwaymen and the Enlightenment. Science and more modern ideas have suppressed the religion and magic of old Albion. Its towns have developed into cities, weaponry is slowly taking advantage of gunpowder, and social, family and economic life present more possibilities - as well as challenges. The sequel basically expands most or all parts of the gaming experience from the previous game, without changing the elementary modes of playing. The continent of Albion is larger as a game world, but contains fewer locations, and the locations that remain are more developed and detailed. In contrast to Fable, the solving of set quests is not the basis of the story; rather, the story develops from the player's situation in time and place. This gives the game a sense of more interactivity than the first title in the series. In Fable III the setting is 50 years after that of Fable II. The historical development is further advanced since the last version: Albion is experiencing an Industrial Revolution and society resembles that of the early 1800s. In all of the versions, the moral development (in a negative or a positive way) is at the core of the gameplay. This moral development is expanded to include the personal or psychological and has a more political aspect, as the goal of the game is to overthrow the oppressive king of Albion, as well as defend the continent from attacks from abroad. Gameplay As role-playing video games, the Fable series constructs the development of a protagonist controlled by the player, and the development is related to the same character's interaction with the game world. A major part of this interaction is for the Fable series related to interaction with people, be it conversation, storytelling, education, trading, gaming, courting and relationships, or fighting. The player is able to develop the protagonist following several parameters, such as magic, strength and social skills. The player may also direct the moral quality of the protagonist, so that skills may be developed in equal terms and conditions both in the negative and positive field. In addition to this basis of the gameplay, some of the versions focus on set quests that together give the protagonist the opportunity to develop, as well as unveiling strands of the story of the game. Fable II and Fable III include cooperative gameplay, where two players with their own character can join forces in their different tasks. History The first game, Fable, was teased in 2001 by developer Lionhead Studios. Lead designer and Lionhead co-founder Peter Molyneux "promised an experience like no other" and that the game would "revolutionize the RPG". Fable was released for Xbox on 14 September 2004. It was originally seen very poorly as it was mostly reported that the game had no content due to the substantial amount of unfulfilled "promises" by Molyneux, which he soon apologized for, garnering even more press coverage. Despite offers from such large companies, such as Electronic Arts, the over-ambition experienced during Fable's development and overestimated sales of the original game had left Lionhead Studios with low stocks and in debt. To gain access to a bigger budget Lionhead signed with Microsoft Game Studios. An extended version, Fable: The Lost Chapters, was released for Windows and Xbox in September 2005; Feral Interactive ported the game to the Mac platform on 31 March 2008. It featured new content in many forms and, with the support of Microsoft, was a critical and commercial success. Fable II was released for Xbox 360 on 24 October 2008. It was also a critical and commercial success. It featured a tie-in game called Fable II Pub Games that was released on the Xbox Live Arcade, and an interactive online flash game called Fable: A Hero's Tale that allowed players to open a secret chest in the main game. A third game, Fable III, was released for Xbox 360 on 29 October 2010, and a Microsoft Windows release on 17 March 2011. This game also featured a tie-in phone game called Fable Coin Golf. On 2 May 2012, Fable Heroes, was released for the Xbox Live Arcade. Despite the amount of differences the game has from others in the series and its mixed critical reception, it being a multiplayer-based family-friendly beat-em-up, the game is popular among fans as it still embodies some of fans' favorite iconic elements of the series.[citation needed] Fable: The Journey, a spin-off within the series, was released in October 2012 in North America and Europe. The game utilized the Kinect attachment for the Xbox 360. Lead designer Peter Molyneux departed Lionhead Studios in 2012. Lionhead Studios released an Xbox 360 remake of the original game, including The Lost Chapters, called Fable Anniversary to mixed reviews in February 2014. Fable Trilogy, a compilation for Xbox 360 that includes Fable Anniversary, Fable II and Fable III was released in February 2014. Fable-themed card games were released as part of the Microsoft Solitaire Collection for the PC on March 4, 2014 and a Fable Anniversary theme was released for the Microsoft Jigsaw collection.[citation needed] In August 2013, Lionhead Studios released a teaser trailer for Fable Legends, an Xbox One title set during the "Age of Heroes" long before the events of the first game. The trailer emphasizes that in the game the player would play alongside four other players and may choose to be the Hero of the story or the Villain. Microsoft canceled the project in March 2016 and Lionhead Studios was closed soon afterwards. In May 2016, former Lionhead developers launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund Fable Fortune, a free-to-play collectible card game. The game was previously in development at Lionhead prior to the studio's closure. The game was released for the Xbox One in February 2018. In January 2018, rumors surfaced that a new Fable game was being developed by Playground Games, and that studio was hiring 177 positions for an open world role-playing game. During the Xbox Games Showcase in July 2020, a new Fable was announced as being in development, with the game releasing on the Xbox Series X and Series S and Microsoft Windows at an undisclosed date. It will run on the Forza series' in-house game engine, ForzaTech. In November 2021, Eidos-Montréal would join the project as a co-developer. By March 2023, the game was reported to be in the early stages of full production. On June 11, 2023, Playground Games unveiled the first in-game trailer of Fable at the Xbox Games Showcase, featuring actor Richard Ayoade, subsequently followed by another July 2024 trailer featuring actor Matt King. The game was originally planned for release in 2025. However, on February 25, 2025, Craig Duncan, head of Xbox Game Studios, announced on the Xbox Podcast that the launch had been moved to 2026 to improve overall quality and address technical issues. Shortly after the announcement, rumors surfaced suggesting that the delay was intended to allow the game to launch simultaneously on PlayStation 5; however, these claims were denied by Microsoft insiders. On January 8, 2026, Xbox announced that the game would receive a deep-dive presentation at Xbox Developer Direct on January 23, 2026. During the event, Playground Games confirmed that the game will be released simultaneously on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Microsoft Windows in autumn 2026. Marking this game to be the first Fable title to release on a non-Xbox home console as well as on a PlayStation console. Novel Fable: The Balverine Order is a fantasy novel by Peter David based on the series. The novel was released in North America and Europe in October 2010. The book was released with an exclusive code to unlock a unique weapon in Fable III. The story is told from the point of view of a king of an unknown country who listens to an unnamed story-teller in the Fable universe. It takes place between Fable II and III. The central story involves the characters Thomas Kirkman, a wealthy son of a textile merchant whose mother's death puts him on his quest to find a balverine, and his manservant, James Skelton, a child in a large poor family. The two friends brave the wilds in search of a balverine that killed Thomas' brother, Stephen. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conker_(series)] | [TOKENS: 1379] |
Contents Conker (series) Conker is a series of platform video games created and produced by Rare. It chronicles the events of Conker the Squirrel, an anthropomorphic red squirrel that made his debut as a playable character in Diddy Kong Racing. While debuting as a family-friendly series, starting with Conker's Pocket Tales, it has shifted focus to mature audiences with the development and release of Conker's Bad Fur Day; during development, the game was modified to incorporate graphic violence, strong language, offensive humor, and other mature content. These changes resulted in the title receiving a Mature rating from the ESRB, accompanied by a content advisory displayed on the packaging and the title screen when immediately powered on to caution unsuspecting viewers who might otherwise mistake it for a platformer intended for a younger audience. A graphically improved remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day, along with new multiplayer modes, was released as Conker: Live & Reloaded on June 21, 2005 in North America for the original Xbox. The uncensored Conker's Bad Fur Day was released on Rare Replay and Live & Reloaded has been made backward compatible with the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X. Games Development Conker was introduced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1997. The game Conker's Quest was presented by Rare as a 3D platformer aimed at a young audience for the Nintendo 64. Later the same year, Conker's inclusion in Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64 was confirmed. In early 1998, Conker's Quest was renamed Twelve Tales: Conker 64. In 1999, Conker made his first solo debut in Conker's Pocket Tales for the Game Boy Color. During development of the Conker series, Rareware had struggled to release Twelve Tales: Conker 64, formerly named Conker's Quest, citing issues with project management in addition to oversaturation of Mario 64-style games in the gaming market at the time, Realizing that Conker 64 lacked any uniqueness as a platform game, they cancelled Conker 64 and restarted the project. Multiple delays and a lack of updates led the press to believe that Twelve Tales was quietly cancelled. In 2000, Twelve Tales: Conker 64 was retooled into Conker's Bad Fur Day with a large amount of scatological humour. Conker the Squirrel, who previously appeared as a family-friendly character, was retooled to be a foul-mouthed, fourth-wall breaking alcoholic armed with guns, throwing knives, and a frying pan. After E3, Chris Seavor came on board as designer. The first level, the beehive, added machine guns shooting wasps which Rare found funny and kept going with this idea to be raunchy and different. After two more years of development, the game emerged as Conker's Bad Fur Day, which targets adults rather than children with its mature content. According to Rare co-founder Chris Stamper: "When people grow up on games, they don't stop playing. There aren't games for people who grew up on the early systems". The game suffered from relatively poor sales, but received a cult following. After the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day, Rare began development of a new Conker game referred to as Conker's Other Bad Day. Designer Chris Seavor said that it was to be a direct sequel dealing with "Conker's somewhat unsuccessful tenure as King. He spends all the treasury money on beer, parties and hookers. Thrown into prison, Conker is faced with the prospect of execution and the game starts with his escape, ball and chain attached, from the Castle's highest tower". It was never confirmed which console Conker's Other Bad Day was for, but it was likely the Nintendo GameCube as with Donkey Kong Racing. In 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare from Nintendo, so instead of finishing and releasing the game, Rare remade Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Xbox in 2005, renaming it Conker: Live & Reloaded. It features improved graphics and minor alterations to gameplay, and was also censored. It has a new multiplayer adaptation for Xbox Live. After Live & Reloaded, Rare started development on Conker: Gettin' Medieval, an online multiplayer third-person shooter game, but it was ultimately cancelled. At E3 2014, Conker was announced as a character in Project Spark. In 2015, Conker returned in a new episodic campaign for Project Spark. The campaign, titled Conker's Big Reunion, is set ten years after the events of Bad Fur Day and Seavor reprised his voice role. The first episode was released on 23 April the same year for Project Spark; however, before any more additional episodes could be made, Project Spark's online services were shut down and the game was abandoned. In 2015, Conker's Bad Fur Day was included in the Rare Replay video game compilation for Xbox One. In 2016, Microsoft announced Young Conker as the next installment into the series, released for the Microsoft HoloLens. The trailer was released in February and was almost universally panned by the public, with many complaining that it lacked the humour and overall style of its predecessors. The trailer received more than 30,000 dislikes against just over 1,000 likes. A petition was created to cancel the game's release but failed. Some video game critics and general YouTube commentators have boycotted the game. Reception Reception for the Conker series has been largely focused on the protagonist of the series, Conker the Squirrel, and the critical success of the games Conker's Bad Fur Day and Live and Reloaded. The contrast between Conker's innocent appearance and his coarse behavior has been well-received by the public. Critics have noted that the storylines and variety of characters for Conker's Bad Fur Day and Live and Reloaded in combination with the crude humour and seemingly innocent graphics are noteworthy appeal to mature audiences. Rare listed Conker as the fifth Rare's video game character who most improved with age. Jordan Devore of Destructoid stated about Conker's appearance in Project Spark (Conker's Big Reunion DLC) that there "was no getting around the disappointment of seeing a long abandoned (but never forgotten!) character return not in his own adventure, but in a DLC pack for a videogame about making games." Conker's appearance on the Microsoft HoloLens trailer for Young Conker received mostly negative reviews. Chris Plante of The Verge criticized it and said that "Young Conker doesn't feature the original Conker." Sam Loveridge of Digital Spy claimed that the scene of Conker and the bees is "weird." References |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackdown_(video_game_series)] | [TOKENS: 3176] |
Contents Crackdown (video game series) Crackdown is a series of open world action-adventure video games created by David Jones and published by Xbox Game Studios. The series takes place in futuristic dystopian cities controlled and enforced by a law enforcement organization called the Agency. The games center on the Agency's supersoldiers, known as "Agents", as they fight threats ranging from various criminal syndicates, a terrorist group known as "Cell", a zombie-like monsters called "Freaks", and a powerful megacorporation known as TerraNova. Games of the series have been developed by various game developers, with the first game, Crackdown, completed by Realtime Worlds on February 20, 2007, and a sequel titled Crackdown 2 developed by Ruffian Games on July 6, 2010. Both games were released for the Xbox 360. A third installment, Crackdown 3 developed by Sumo Digital, was released on February 15, 2019, for the Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. Critics praised the sandbox-style third-person shooters for allowing the ability to cause massive destruction in a non-linear gameplay, garnering mostly positive reception and commercial success, and becoming an influential series in the sandbox superhero genre. Titles Crackdown takes place in Pacific City, a dystopian metropolis that is suffering from an increase in crime rate. Criminal syndicates - namely Los Muertos, The Volk, and The Shai-Gen Corporation - have taken control of its three main territories, and they are armed with military-grade weapons that make it difficult for law enforcement to combat them. A secret organization known as the Agency took it upon themselves to eliminate the city's organized crime using their wide resources and genetically modified human beings called Agents. The Agent successfully brought down each criminal syndicate but it was later found out that it was the Agency itself who supplied the criminals with weapons. They planned for the city to go down in anarchy so that they can step in, stop the criminals, and be hailed heroes when they take over. The sequel takes place 10 years after the events of the first game. While organized crime has been quelled in Pacific City, a terrorist group calling themselves 'Cell' started a revolt to overthrow the Agency, which has taken control of the city. Cell's leader and former Agency scientist, named Catalina Thorne, released a deadly strain of the "Freak" virus that infected many citizens and turned them into mindless zombie-like monsters called Freaks. The Agency tried to stop this epidemic by building Project Sunburst, a weapon that used sunlight to destroy Freaks. However, Cell took control of Project Sunburst's generators before the Agency could use the weapon. This forced the Agency to send out their newest and better-equipped Agent to combat both the terrorists and the Freaks. The third game takes place a decade after Crackdown 2, and features a new city called New Providence, new supporting casts, and Agents with actual names and personalities, including Commander Isaiah Jaxon (played by Terry Crews). Crackdown 3 sees the Agency faced with a new, more technologically advanced and capitalistic adversary called TerraNova, who had taken over New Providence. Their first foray into the city ended in near-disaster after TerraNova anticipated their arrival with an ambush. The surviving Agents were then forced to ally with a rebel group known as Militia, specifically their tough young member named Echo. A combined assault by the Agency and the Militia led to a grand final battle involving the leader of TerraNova, Elizabeth Niemand, piloting a giant mechanized dragon. Development With the intent of going beyond the sandbox gameplay made popular by Grand Theft Auto III, developer Realtime Studios spent time with various testers, as well as former developers from the Grand Theft Auto series, in experimenting and refining the genre, with the use of additional content, items and rewards. Creator David Jones described the concept of the game as "how do we reward somebody for just having fun?" Crackdown was released on February 20, 2007, for the Xbox 360 console. Originally in development for the Xbox console in 2002, Microsoft suggested in 2004 that Realtime Worlds release the game for the then-upcoming Xbox 360. A demo was showcased at the 2006 E3 Convention. Due to the waving interest in player testers during the game's late development, Microsoft decided to release it with access codes to the Halo 3 multiplayer beta to help its sales during release. Although Realtime Worlds confirmed that they would create a series to follow the success of the first Crackdown, delays with budgeting between Microsoft and Realtime resulted in the developer cancelling the sequel. Microsoft still owned the intellectual property of Crackdown, and they hired fellow Scottish development company Ruffian Games - who had members with previous experience in Realtime Worlds developing the first game - to make the sequel. The latter game company A trailer for Crackdown 2 was released at the 2009 E3 Conference. A third game was developed by Sumo Digital, with directions from the original game's creator David Jones and assistance from previous developer Ruffian Games. The game was revealed as Crackdown 3 during Microsoft's Gamescom 2015 press conference on August 4, 2015. The game was originally set to be released for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows on November 7, 2017, but was delayed to 2019. Creative director Ken Lobb asserted that the game will be set in the future of the first game but represents an alternate timeline from what Crackdown 2 provided, though this was changed prior to release. One of the major elements advertised by David Jones for Crackdown 3 was the inclusion of a near-indestructible multiplayer map mode known as the Wrecking Zone. Half-way into development, however, Jones departed the project for Epic Games, pulling out said element and using it for the game Fortnite, much to the dismay of fans and other interested consumers. Besides Jones, original developing teams Cloudgine and Reagent Games also left the game. These controversial changes hounded Crackdown 3 and resulted in multiple delays from an original 2016 release, to 2017, again to 2018, and a final release on 2019. Many critics noted on this abandonment and missed opportunity, including editor Alex Donaldson from gaming site VG247, stating, "It's a neutered delivery of the promises made far too early in this console generation when, for a moment, it looked like it could be something truly revolutionary." Common elements In each game, players assume the role of super-powered law enforcers called Agents who protect Pacific City with the use of high-tech vehicles and weapons. Players can choose different races and armors for their Agents. Using a third-person camera, the Agent can dispatch enemies by shooting them with firearms, blowing them up with explosives, or engaging in melee combat. Being a genetically enhanced human being gives the Agent various skills, namely "Strength" (punching and lifting power), "Agility" (jumping and movement speed), "Driving" (handling vehicles), "Explosives" (creating explosions), and "Firearms" (shooting ability). These skills can be upgraded by collecting specific orbs or killing enemies. Agents are also covered in high-tech armors with rechargeable shields, which also evolve and unlock additional abilities such as shockwave creation and flight. The player can also enjoy various minigames such as on-foot and vehicle racing as well as street and aerial stunts. Multiplayer is also available in every game and uses the same gameplay elements in single-player. The first Crackdown game offered players cooperative gameplay of up to 2 players. The second Crackdown game improved the coop mode to accommodate 4 players while also adding new modes such as Rocket Tag, Vehicle Tag, Capture the Orb, Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch. Crackdown 3 further expanded the series' coop by allowing over 8 players to participate. The series is known for its artistic use of cel-shading visuals together with its rich color palettes, stylized ambience, and crisp and strong real-time shadows. Developer Realtime Worlds was heavily influenced by comic books in creating the first Crackdown game and they used highlighted ink-like outlines to give it a comic feel. The game was also praised for its use of large draw distances that was seldom seen in other open-world games of its time. Crackdown 2 had a more dilapidated and post-apocalyptic setting but still with the use of the same engine. Ruffian Games used a more advanced crowd system, which allows more NPCs to be in the game while not affecting its play flow. Ruffian further tweaked Crackdown's draw distances by rendering the engine to allow the display of a larger vista of Pacific City. The third installment's New Providence setting offered a more neon-lit futuristic sandbox environment compared to the previous two. Each game soundtrack is made up of licensed music from a variety of commercial, independent, and video game musicians. Crackdown's music supervisor Peter Davenport was allowed by Microsoft to select music from any source for the game. Deciding to give it an electronic "dark and ominous" vibe, he selected music from Amon Tobin, Atlas Plug, Celldweller, and Hybrid that he put in each mission and premise. In Crackdown 2, music from Public Enemy, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, R.E.M., and Whodini were used to give the game a rebellious feel. The music for the third installment was created by Kristofor Mellroth, the Head of Audio for Microsoft Studios Global Publishing, together with composers Brian Trifon & Brian Lee White of the production group Finishing Move. Their hip-hop inspired work included composing interactive music for the open-world setting, as well as detailed audio physics, and mixing strategies for dialogues and sound effects. The third game also featured a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. Other media A webcomic titled the "Pacific City Archives" was also released by Microsoft to accompany the worldwide release of Crackdown 2. Containing over 5 episodes, the webcomic series bridged the gap between the first and second Crackdown games by expanding character backstory and game lore. The Agent is also an unlockable character in the Xbox Live Arcade game Perfect Dark. Dynamite Comics released a four-issue comic book tie-in to Crackdown 3, simply entitled Crackdown, in May 2019. The series was written by Jonathan Goff and drawn by Ricardo Jaime. It tells the story of several Agents sent to pacify a city riddled with crime and violence, with the team losing members in every issue, before ultimately meeting their objectives. Besides comics, the series was also included or mentioned in several literature. The games were cited in the non-fiction book "The Post-9/11 Video Game: A Critical Examination" by Marc A. Ouellette and Jason C. Thompson. The series was also mentioned in another non-fiction videogame-themed book entitled "Games' Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Players, Pawns, and Power-ups" by Ben H. Rome. Legacy The first game was both a critical and commercial success, becoming the top-selling game of February 22, 2007, during its first release week in North America, Japan, and the UK. The game was the top-selling game in North America for the month of February 2007, selling 427,000 units. Ultimately, by the end of 2007, the game sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. The game also won numerous awards such as the "Best Action and Adventure Game" and "Best Use of Audio" in the 2007 BAFTA, "Best Debut" award at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards, and the Innovation Award at the 2007 Develop Magazine Awards. Game Informer listed it as one of the top 50 games of 2007, citing its unique experience and several other elements, as well as listing the Agents as the number eight "Top Heroes of 2007" and listing climbing the tallest building in the city as the number nine "Top Moment of 2007." Various video game websites considered the Crackdown series as one of the best open-world video games to date. Ron Whitaker from The Escapist included it in its "8 Awesome Open World Games" list, stating that "open world games have improved a lot since then, but Crackdown is still a stellar example of the genre." Game Journalist James Alexander Callum from Pixel Bedlam dubbed Crackdown as one of the most underrated video games of all time, adding also that the game was "more than just a Grand Theft Auto clone on steroids." On the other hand, Ritwik Mitra of Game Rant ranked Crackdown 2 at #7 in his "Best Open-World Games Where Players Don't Need To Think Too Much", considering it as "the best game in the series". The games left a large impact on the open-world genre. James Hunt of Den of Geek described the first Crackdown game as "the first in a line of original, postmodern superhero creations on games consoles, and great fun to boot." Its formula of controlling super-powered beings in a massive sandbox environment, using their abilities to cause mayhem and destruction, as well as ollecting orbs in an open world environment to increase a character's abilities, have influenced other video game series such as Infamous, Prototype, Saints Row, The Saboteur, and Just Cause 2. Keiichiro Toyama cited Crackdown as a big influence in developing his award-winning game Gravity Rush, stating that he "really liked the aspect of unlocking skills and becoming more powerful, and achieving a higher level of freedom as you become more powerful". While the first game was highly praised for its innovation, Crackdown 2 and Crackdown 3 were considered to be one of the most disappointing sequels in video game history. James Stephanie Sterling, during their time at Destructoid, reviewed the second game and called it "the most pointless, unnecessary, and insulting "sequels" ever created." John Almond from Gonevis ranked Crackdown 2 at #5 in his list of most disappointing video game sequels, stating, "[It] was panned by critics and consumers because of missing gameplay features from the first game like transforming cars, strategy-building in taking out targets, unique weapons like invisibility, and simply being able to aim a sniper rifle through a scope. Making it worse was the reusage of the first game's engine and setting, making Crackdown 2 feel more like an expansion pack than a sequel." The third game was also met with disappointment. Writer Super Philip added the third installment in his own "Most Disappointing Video Game Sequels" list, describing its release as a "miracle" and adding, "[It] was in the making for so long and the end result is so similar to past games. What was deemed fresh and modern back when Crackdown originally released isn't so much in the present, over a decade later." Christopher Byrd of The Washington Post called it a "remnant from another console-era, a time in which open-world games were still a novelty". He further stated, "Arranged about the neon city of New Providence, where the game is set, are communication towers to scale, many enemy operations to assault, an unmemorable pack of bosses to kill and some side activities to participate in. None of these activities are particularly different than those found in any number of games." References |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinx:_The_Time_Sweeper] | [TOKENS: 1781] |
Contents Blinx: The Time Sweeper Blinx: The Time Sweeper is a 2002 platform game developed by Artoon and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox. Advertised as "The World's First 4-D Action Game", the game focuses on the titular character, an anthropomorphic cat called Blinx, who is on a mission to prevent the end of World B1Q64 and rescue its princess from the evil Tom-Tom Gang. Blinx is outfitted with the TS-1000 Vacuum Cleaner, with which he can slow, speed up, record, reverse, and stop time. Blinx was positioned by the gaming press as a mascot character for Microsoft to use to compete against Nintendo's Mario, Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sony's Ratchet the Lombax, though the character was never used as such officially by Microsoft. The game received mixed reviews. A sequel, Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, was released in 2004. Gameplay Blinx: The Time Sweeper is an action-platformer, with the player controlling the titular character of Blinx. The player is initially equipped with the TS-1000 Vacuum Cleaner, which can sweep up parts of the environment (referred to in-game as trash), gold crystals, cat medals, and time crystals; they are also able to shoot out collected trash. The player can purchase better vacuums with their collected gold to sweep larger objects. By collecting at least three of the same time crystals, the player gains one time control related to the crystals collected, receiving two if four are collected. The player can also receive up to three retries by collecting red hearts in the same manner. Using time controls, the player can affect the level in one of five ways: reversing time (REW), speeding up time (FF), slowing down time (SLOW), pausing time (PAUSE), and recording their movements for a period of time to create a clone of themselves (REC). The time controls do not affect the player, allowing them to maneuver through the stage as the control is being used. If the player is defeated and has a retry, a process similar to the REW time control occurs, although the player is also reversed to a prior state before they were defeated. Each stage must be completed within a 10-minute timer by defeating all enemies in a stage and entering the goal gate.: 3 Plot When a gang of evil pigs known as the Tom-Tom Gang begin stealing time from World B1Q64, it becomes temporally unstable to the extent that the Time Sweepers decide that it is safer for all worlds if the supply of time to World B1Q64 be halted, suspending it and its inhabitants indefinitely. When Blinx receives a message from a young princess, trapped within the doomed world, Blinx proceeds to the room in which the portal leading to World B1Q64 is kept. Although the rest of the Time Factory staff are against it, Blinx dives into the portal moments before it closes. He then travels to several parts of the world, fighting the time monsters, and recovering the resulting crystals in a desperate attempt to save World B1Q64. After a long journey, he manages to catch up with the Tom-Toms and the princess in Momentopolis. He follows them towards the stadium, which is surrounded by a large number of time crystals. Suddenly, light emerges in the center of the stadium's platform, causing the Tom-Tom Gang and the Princess to freeze, and circle the light, along with the rest of the time crystals. The combination of time crystals, Princess, and Tom-Toms creates the final time monster: the Chronohorn, which can use Time Controls as well. Before Blinx can fight it, the Chronohorn rewinds time, and forces Blinx to fight four previous bosses. After he defeats them all again, he fights the Chronohorn, wins and saves the sleeping princess while letting the Tom-Toms escape. With the Tom-Toms gone, and time beginning to flow in World B1Q64 again, Blinx is content that his mission is complete. As the princess Lena wakes up on the bench she was placed on, Blinx reluctantly says goodbye and leaves. The princess tries to follow him, but he jumps into a portal and ends up back in the Time Factory to be welcomed by applause from the other Time Sweepers. An announcement from the Mother Computer explains that World B1Q64 will not be cut off from the Time Factory, and Blinx is congratulated by the CEO of the Time Factory. After the credits roll, the player sees a message written by the princess (her real name, Princess Lena, is revealed at this point). The message says that Lena has the time crystals that Blinx collected, and that she will use them for the most important thing of all. Using the time crystals, she rewinds time to when Blinx is about to leave. Before he jumps in the portal again, she wakes up, gives Blinx a hug, and thanks him. Development In February 2002, the Xbox was released in Japan. Microsoft, aiming to gain a foothold in the market, began partnering with Japanese developers to create games that would appeal to Japanese gamers. One of the companies they would approach was Artoon, founded three years prior in 1999 by Sonic the Hedgehog designer Naoto Ohshima alongside various Sega developers. The team loved the idea of a cat that could control time, especially in combination with the processing power of the Xbox, and formed a partnership between them and Microsoft's US-based Microsoft Game Studios to work on the idea. Development of Blinx began under the codename Pelon, with it quickly progressing along as the two teams communicated. Ed Fries, the vice president of publishing at Microsoft and executive producer of Blinx, would later state that the game was "the most promising game [they] were developing" for Japan, and that the focus was more on how the game played, rather than the creation of a mascot for the Xbox. The idea of the titular character Blinx serving as a mascot came later in development as the game took shape, at one point even being suggested to CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, but the team would quickly refocus the mascot concept as being for Japan only. Microsoft and the game's developers would claim that the game's main time mechanic was only possible on the Xbox, stating that the console's large internal hard drive was necessary for such a game to work. The game's soundtrack was composed by Mariko Nanba and Keiichi Sugiyama, credited as WaveMaster Inc., a subsidiary of Sega.: 19 Reception and legacy Blinx: The Time Sweeper received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. GameSpy placed the game at 6th in its "Most Overrated Games Ever" feature in 2004. Although the graphics were generally praised, the game's execution, notably the control method, was considered to have resulted in the game being too difficult. GameSpot editor Greg Kasavin gave it a score of 6.3 out of 10, noting that players get a sense of relief from completing a level, rather than enjoyment or satisfaction. It was a runner-up for GameSpot's annual "Most Disappointing Game on Xbox" award, which went to ToeJam & Earl III. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it 7.5/5.5/8: the second reviewer found the game to be tedious and repetitive, but the third believed that "issues aside, the unique style and play mechanics make [it] stand out". In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 31 out of 40. GameSpy suggested that Blinx was proposed as a possible mascot for the Xbox system, rivaling Nintendo's Mario and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and since the main character of Halo: Combat Evolved (Master Chief) was considered too violent (and also lacking an identity behind a visor), the officials wanted a "friendly, furry face" to lead the sales among the younger clientele. Due to the game's unpopularity, it never achieved the suggested goal and Master Chief is unofficially seen as the mascot, though Blinx was at one point proposed as the mascot for the Xbox in Japan. Saleswise, by 2003, 156,000 copies were sold. That same year, Blinx also entered the Platinum Hits range with minor gameplay updates that were intended to reduce the difficulty of the game (as part of the all-age Platinum Family Hits). As of 2004, the game sold over 600,000 copies worldwide, despite not selling as well as Microsoft had hoped in Japan. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lips_(video_game)] | [TOKENS: 889] |
Contents Lips (video game) Lips is a 2008 karaoke video game for the Xbox 360. Lips was developed by iNiS and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The game features the use of motion sensitive wireless microphones and supports the use of songs already owned through a Zune or iPod. Lips has spawned three sequels: Lips: Number One Hits, Lips: Party Classics, and Lips: I Love the 80's. Localized versions of the game and sequels have been released in several countries, including Lips: Canta en Español (Lips: Sing in Spanish), and Deutsche Partyknaller (Lips: German Party Hits). The Lips' microphones are compatible with Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: Metallica due to a patch that was released in summer 2009. Gameplay The gameplay in Lips is similar to the gameplay of SingStar and Karaoke Revolution. In addition to supporting single-player, the game allows two players to sing duets or play competitively in various multiplayer modes including "Time Bomb", "Kiss", and "Vocal Fighters". Unlike most other music games, players cannot fail out of a song if they sing badly (or even if they don't sing at all). The game does not have a difficulty setting but rewards players for their singing in six categories including rhythm, pitch, and vibrato. Players can connect a digital music player (such as an iPod or Zune), or use a USB flash drive, to sing along to their own music. The game will perform vocal reduction and score player like the included songs, except that the game will not display song lyrics. Players can also connect their Xbox 360 to a computer running a compatible media sharing service, such as Windows Media Connect 2.0, Windows Media Center, Zune PC software with sharing, or PVConnect to access their own music from a network share within the game. Lips is bundled with two motion-sensitive wireless microphones (one white, one black). A second player can seamlessly join in the currently playing song by picking up the microphone and shaking it. The microphones can also be used to perform gestures dictated by the game, plus the standard game controllers can also be used to add overlays such as hand-claps and crowd noise. In February 2009, Microsoft released a title update for Lips. This patch addressed most of the issues with the game, namely, it introduced a new algorithm for voice recognition and vibrato pick-up, claiming that the game was 'too easy' before, and the ability to synchronise the microphone timing, a cause of regular negative feedback. This update also introduced the use of global leaderboards to track high scores. Minor tweaks were also made to the user interface. Additionally, following the April 2009 title update, song packs were also introduced for purchase, offering bundles of songs for a discounted price. As of October 2014, the store and server for Lips had been shut down. Wireless Microphone compatibility list The games listed below support the Xbox 360 Wireless Microphones. Reception Lips received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Reviewers praised the wireless microphones and multiplayer experience but criticized the single-player modes and the song import feature which many people had issues with. In addition, the import feature does not support lyric downloads but the game does make an attempt to reduce the real singer's voice volume while playing in this mode. The A.V. Club gave the game a B+ and called it "A self-esteem booster for your tone-deaf friend, though the introduction of more content should help make it stay fun for everyone else." 411Mania gave it a score of seven out of ten, saying that it was "a mixed bag, but by far it is not a bad game. It's a decent game that is missing some of the key components that other games in this genre have." In contrast, Variety gave it a mixed review, saying that "Though it will quickly bore vocalists acclimated to the challenge of Rock Band, Lips excels as home karaoke, bringing style and pizzazz to a crowded genre. However, Lips is also exceedingly shallow, with a small number of songs and a broken system for importing new ones, meaning living room crooners will likely stick with Sony's deeper SingStar franchise for the time being." See also References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditPage/Template:Xbox_Game_Studios] | [TOKENS: 1447] |
Editing Template:Xbox Game Studios Copy and paste: – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~ Cite your sources: <ref></ref> {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]] <s></s> <sup></sup> <sub></sub> <code></code> <pre></pre> <blockquote></blockquote> <ref></ref> <ref name="" /> {{Reflist}} <references /> <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> {{DEFAULTSORT:}} <nowiki></nowiki> <!-- --> <span class="plainlinks"></span> Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‹› «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 © ¼ ½ ¾ Latin: A a Á á À à  â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā à ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b C c Ć ć Ċ ċ Ĉ ĉ Č č Ç ç D d Ď ď Đ đ Ḍ ḍ Ð ð E e É é È è Ė ė Ê ê Ë ë Ě ě Ĕ ĕ Ē ē Ẽ ẽ Ę ę Ẹ ẹ Ɛ ɛ Ǝ ǝ Ə ə F f G g Ġ ġ Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ H h Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ḥ ḥ I i İ ı Í í Ì ì Î î Ï ï Ǐ ǐ Ĭ ĭ Ī ī Ĩ ĩ Į į Ị ị J j Ĵ ĵ K k Ķ ķ L l Ĺ ĺ Ŀ ŀ Ľ ľ Ļ ļ Ł ł Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ M m Ṃ ṃ N n Ń ń Ň ň Ñ ñ Ņ ņ Ṇ ṇ Ŋ ŋ O o Ó ó Ò ò Ô ô Ö ö Ǒ ǒ Ŏ ŏ Ō ō Õ õ Ǫ ǫ Ọ ọ Ő ő Ø ø Œ œ Ɔ ɔ P p Q q R r Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ S s Ś ś Ŝ ŝ Š š Ş ş Ș ș Ṣ ṣ ß T t Ť ť Ţ ţ Ț ț Ṭ ṭ Þ þ U u Ú ú Ù ù Û û Ü ü Ǔ ǔ Ŭ ŭ Ū ū Ũ ũ Ů ů Ų ų Ụ ụ Ű ű Ǘ ǘ Ǜ ǜ Ǚ ǚ Ǖ ǖ V v W w Ŵ ŵ X x Y y Ý ý Ŷ ŷ Ÿ ÿ Ỹ ỹ Ȳ ȳ Z z Ź ź Ż ż Ž ž ß Ð ð Þ þ Ŋ ŋ Ə ə Greek: Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω {{Polytonic|}} Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ́ IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ β θ ð ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ⱱ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ʼ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ø ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ œ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ æ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʱ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ {{IPA|}} Wikidata entities used in this page Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help): |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_(series)] | [TOKENS: 863] |
Contents Links (series) Links is a series of golf simulation video games, first developed by Access Software, and then later by Microsoft after it acquired Access Software in 1999. Microsoft also produced its own series of golf games based on Links, under the title Microsoft Golf. The Links series was a flagship brand for Access, and was continued from 1990 to 2003. The first game in the series, Links: The Challenge of Golf, won Computer Gaming World's 1991 Action Game of the Year award. Several versions of the game and expansion packs (containing new courses and golfers mainly) were created for the Mac and PC over the years. In 1996, Access Software introduced Links LS 1997, the first of several Links games to use the LS (Legends in Sports) title. A version for the Xbox named Links 2004 was released in November 2003. It would be the final game in the series. In March 2004, Microsoft announced the cancellation of its 2004 lineup of sports games, allowing the company to focus on improving such games. The company stated, "Links is something that we're taking a hard look at what we need to do." At the end of 2004, Microsoft sold Indie Built (formerly Access Software) to Take-Two Interactive. Indie Built was later shut down in 2006. Many members of the development team now work for TruGolf, a golf simulator company based out of Centerville, Utah. In 2021, TruGolf re-acquired the rights to the Links series, re-releasing classic editions on GOG, as well as a new title, Links E6, the first in 17 years. List of games The following games were developed by Access Software Microsoft produced the following games after its purchase of Access Software in 1999. The following disks add additional courses to the main Links games. Before its purchase of Access Software, Microsoft published a series of golf games similar to Links, under the title Microsoft Golf. The first three games in the series are Windows-compatible versions of the early Links games, which were published for DOS. The first three entries in the Microsoft Golf series were developed by Access Software for Microsoft, and were sometimes labeled by publications as Links Lite. Microsoft subsequently published Microsoft Golf 1998 Edition and 1999 Edition, which were developed by Friendly Software as separate games not based on Links. After Access Software was acquired by Microsoft in 1999, Microsoft produced Microsoft Golf 2001 Edition, which was based on Links, and then discontinued the Microsoft Golf series to continue with the Links series. The following games were produced in the Microsoft Golf series: Reception Computer Gaming World in 1996 ranked the 1990 version of Links fifth on the magazine's list of the most innovative computer games, stating that the game "may have inspired more 'business machine upgrades' than any other game". In 1996 Next Generation ranked it 69th on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", contending that "many prefer EA's PGA series, but Links takes the title by a hair's breadth. With real life courses, and enough stats, sliders, and options to choke a horse, Links re-creates everything but the swing (which is still accomplished with a 'three click' power bar)." During 1999, Links LS 2000 sold 104,225 copies and earned $4.6 million in the United States. Links 2001 rose to 240,000 copies and $8.2 million in the United States by August 2006, which made it the 84th-best-selling computer game released between January 2000 and August 2006 in the region. Combined sales of all Links games released in the 2000s reached 720,000 copies in the United States by August 2006. In the United States, Links Championship Edition sold over 100,000 copies by August 2006. Links 2003 was a nominee for PC Gamer US's "2002 Best Sports Game" award, which ultimately went to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003. The magazine's Dan Morris called Links 2003 "a terrific game". See also References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-Nine_Nights] | [TOKENS: 1436] |
Contents Ninety-Nine Nights Ninety-Nine Nights (Japanese: ナインティ ナイン ナイツ, Hepburn: Nainti Nain Naitsu) stylized as N3: Ninety-Nine Nights, is a 2006 fantasy hack and slash video game developed for the Xbox 360 by Q Entertainment and Phantagram; video game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi served as producer for the game. The game features hundreds of enemies onscreen at any given time, and borrows heavily from other video games of the genre, most notably from the Dynasty Warriors and Kingdom Under Fire series. The game was released in Japan on April 20, 2006, and for other markets in August. A sequel, Ninety-Nine Nights II, was released in 2010. Plot In the struggle between light and dark, a new order is created after a mysterious power stone is destroyed. These two forces are destined to fight each other since the beginning of time, each one intending to retake control of everything. Will the side of light be the winner, or will the world once again undergo 99 nights of darkness? The world of Ninety-Nine Nights has not always been an endless battlefield. There was a time when peace existed between all of the races. When a magical orb was shattered, light and dark entered the world, and a demon was born, this resulting in 99 nights of perpetual darkness. The Demon Lord led his army to take arms, but he was defeated on the one-hundredth day of battle by the Keeper of the Orb. The slain demon was named the King of Ninety Nine Nights after the months of darkness that their world endured. Peace was present, though ephemeral. Soon after, the Keeper of the Orb was murdered and the sacred orb was split in half. The humans took possession of the light shard, leaving the goblins with the dark shard. In the divisive war, humans and goblins fought for what seemed like an endless amount of time. Tides turned in favor of the humans when the elves sided with them. But while the goblins retreated back into the forbidden forest of the lost, the Goblin King was making his own ally, the Lord of Darkness. Gameplay Ninety-Nine Nights is of the crowd combat subgenre, in which players battle hundreds of foes simultaneously. Combo moves are performed by using various combinations of the two main attack buttons, while the jump and dash buttons can initiate other actions or specialty attacks. Individual enemies are generally quite weak, typically being unable to perform any combos or block with any effectiveness. There are seven different characters with different play styles, although only one character, Inphyy, is unlocked at the beginning. Successfully completing each character's story will unlock one or two new characters, until they have all been revealed. After completing levels in Ninety-Nine Nights, a player's performance is scored, with both a letter grade and 'points' being awarded, depending on how well the player did. Points can be spent to unlock extras, such as concept art and character bios. The title has limited role-playing elements, with characters gaining levels and being able to select which weapons and accessories to equip. These performance-enhancing items can be found in the different stages or are awarded for excellent performance, providing benefits such as increased attack power. As the characters gain levels they learn additional attack combinations, but there is no opportunity for skill customization. Another key component of the title is the "Orb Attack" / "Orb Spark" element. Killing enemies yields red orbs that are stored up until the "Orb Attack" bar is full. Once the bar is full, a player may press B to enter "Orb Attack" mode, where the character can use powerful attacks to slay groups of enemies. Enemies killed while in this mode drop blue, not red, orbs. Once a player has stored up enough blue orbs (which usually require several "Orb Attacks"), he or she can unleash a super-devastating, screen-clearing "Orb Spark" attack. Killing enemies yields the occasional equipment drop, which the players can equip any time during a map as long as they are not retaliating from an attack, in midair, or in the middle of an attack. The orb collection mechanic is not unlike that found in Onimusha: Warlords except that it is automatic. The orb attacks are comparable to "Musou attacks" in the Dynasty Warriors series, in that the player is invulnerable while making them, although in Ninety-Nine Nights, such attacks are significantly more powerful. Each character has their own unique attacks, weapons and orb attacks, as well having their own questline (of around four stages on average). The gameplay differs somewhat from previous games in this genre as enemy soldiers put up virtually no resistance. Players will routinely mow down thousands of such troops per level using various attack combinations. The Orb attacks effectively act as "nuke buttons", destroying vast formations of enemy soldiers, with only boss characters and some formation leaders unaffected. Each level takes the form of a series of smaller battles which are often interspersed with cutscenes. Although there are usually several objectives during a level, progress through levels and the game is mostly linear. In a stark contrast to the cannon fodder foes, the boss characters are typically quite challenging and can inflict massive amounts of damage in a short period of time. Development Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes developer Youn-Lee was involved in creating the game. The game had only seven months development time - development kits were received in September 2005, and the game was released in April 2006 in Japan. Soundtrack The tracks were composed by Pinar Toprak (1, 9, 12, 14, 15), Takayuki Nakamura (3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13), Shingo Yasumoto (4, 5), Antonín Dvořák (2) and Antonio Vivaldi (8, 16). Reception Ninety-Nine Nights received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, however, Famitsu gave it a score of three eights and one seven, while Famitsu X360 gave it a score of one ten and three nines. GamePro said that the game "does have its moments, but ultimately, it serves as yet another example of how visually pleasing eye candy can't completely mask flawed game mechanics. It might be a good title to crack out when you just want to mash buttons and take in the fireworks, but if you're looking for a more lasting and memorable experience you're out of luck."[b] X-Play gave it three stars out of five, saying, "The addition of perspective and emotional content comes out of left field, but is amazingly well done. It's the rare button masher that can play on a person's sympathies, and Nights proves it has both heart and brains to go with its mindless exterior." Notes References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator] | [TOKENS: 4294] |
Contents Microsoft Flight Simulator Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulation video games for MS-DOS, Classic Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. Microsoft Flight Simulator is Microsoft's longest-running software product line, predating Windows by three years, and is one of the longest-running video game series of all time. Bruce Artwick began the development of Flight Simulator in 1977. His company, Sublogic, initially distributed it for various personal computers. In 1981, Artwick was approached by Microsoft's Alan M. Boyd who was interested in creating a "definitive game" that would graphically demonstrate the difference between older 8-bit computers, such as the Apple II, and the new 16-bit computers, such as the IBM PC, still in development. In 1982, Artwick's company licensed a version of Flight Simulator for the IBM PC to Microsoft, which marketed it as Microsoft Flight Simulator. In 2009, Microsoft closed down Aces Game Studio, which was the department responsible for creating and maintaining the Flight Simulator series. In 2014, Dovetail Games were granted the rights by Microsoft to port the Gold Edition of Microsoft's Flight Simulator X to Steam and publish Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition. Microsoft announced a new installment at E3 in 2019, simply titled Microsoft Flight Simulator, to be released initially on PC and ported over to the Xbox Series consoles at a later date. On July 12, 2020, Microsoft opened up preorders and announced that Microsoft Flight Simulator for PC would be available on August 18, 2020. The company announced three different versions of the title – standard, deluxe, and premium deluxe, each providing an incremental set of gameplay features, including airports, and airplanes to choose from. The Xbox edition was released on July 27, 2021. The latest entry, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, was released on November 19, 2024. History Microsoft Flight Simulator began as a set of articles written by Bruce Artwick in 1976 about a 3D computer graphics program. When the magazine editor said that subscribers wanted to buy the program, Artwick set to work to create it and incorporated a company called Sublogic Corporation in 1977. The company began selling flight simulators for several computer platforms, including the 8080, Altair 8800, and IMSAI 8080. In 1979 Sublogic released FS1 Flight Simulator for the Apple II. In 1980, Sublogic released a version for the TRS-80, and in 1982 they licensed an IBM PC version with CGA graphics to Microsoft, which was released as simply Microsoft Flight Simulator on a self-booting disk. In the early days of less-than-100% IBM PC compatible systems, Flight Simulator and Lotus 1-2-3 were used as unofficial compatibility test software for new PC clone models. Sublogic continued to develop for other platforms and ported Flight Simulator II to the Apple II in 1983; Commodore 64, MSX, and Atari 8-bit computers in 1984; and Amiga and Atari ST in 1986. Meanwhile, Bruce Artwick left Sublogic and founded The Bruce Artwick Organization to continue his work on subsequent Microsoft releases, beginning with Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 in 1988. Microsoft Flight Simulator reached commercial maturity with version 3.1, and went on to encompass the use of 3D graphics and graphic hardware acceleration. Microsoft continued to produce newer versions of the flight simulation software, adding features, such as new aircraft types and augmented scenery. The 2000 and 2002 versions were available in "Standard" and "Professional" editions, where the latter included more aircraft, tools and scenery options. The 2004 release (version 9) marked the celebration of one hundred years of powered flight and had only one edition. Flight Simulator X, released in 2006, returned to dual versions with a "Standard" and a "Deluxe" edition. The flying area encompasses planet Earth with varying degrees of detail and includes over 24,000 airports. There is an ever-growing list of scenery representing major landmarks and popular cities. Landscape details become sparse as gameplay moves away from population centers within the flight simulator, particularly outside the United States, although a variety of websites offer scenery add-ons to remedy this. The three latest versions incorporate sophisticated weather simulation, along with the ability to download real-world weather data (first available with Flight Simulator 2000). Additional features in these newer versions include air traffic environments with interactive air traffic control functions, new aircraft models from the historical Douglas DC-3 to the modern Boeing 777, interactive lessons, challenges, and aircraft checklists. The two latest versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator have a "kiosk mode", which allows the application to be run in electronic kiosks located in public places like shopping malls. Microsoft Flight Simulator has a wide selection of upgrades and add-ons, both free and commercial, official and fan-made. Microsoft Flight Simulator X is the third most recent major release of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and the last one developed by Aces Game Studio. It includes a graphics engine upgrade and compatibility with preview DirectX 10 and Windows Vista. It was released on October 17, 2006, in North America. There are two versions of the game, both on two DVDs. The "Deluxe" edition contains the new Garmin G1000 integrated flight instrument system in three cockpits, additional aircraft, and missions; Tower Control capability in multiplayer mode; higher detail scenery for cities and airports; and a Software Development Kit (SDK) for development. The main improvements are graphical. Microsoft has also released a Flight Simulator X demo, which contains three aircraft, two airports, and two missions. It is compatible with Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista. On January 22, 2009, it was reported that the development team was heavily affected by Microsoft's program of job cuts, with indications that the entire Microsoft Flight Simulator team had been laid off. Microsoft confirmed the closure of the Aces Game Studio on January 26, 2009, in a post on the official FSInsider Web site. stating "This difficult decision was made to align Microsoft's resources with our strategic priorities. Microsoft Flight Simulator X will remain available at retail stores and Web retailers, the Flight Sim community will continue to learn from and encourage one another, and we remain committed to the Flight Simulator franchise for the long term." According to former Aces employee Phil Taylor, the shutdown was not due to sales performance of FSX, but due to management problems and delays in project delivery, combined with increased demand for staff. Speculation in the mainstream and gaming media was that future versions could be released as an Internet-based version, or on Microsoft's Xbox platform. In October 2009, two (out of over fifty) former members of the Aces Game Studio formed a new game studio called the Cascade Game Foundry for the development of simulation games. In late 2007, Aces Game Studio announced Microsoft ESP (Enterprise Simulation Platform), a development platform for companies that want to create products that use the technology in Flight Simulator. Following the closure of the Aces Game Studio in January 2009, Lockheed Martin announced in late 2009 that they had negotiated with Microsoft a licensing agreement to purchase the intellectual property (including source code) for the Microsoft ESP product. It is the commercial-use version of Flight Simulator X SP2. On May 17, 2010, Lockheed announced that the new product based upon the ESP source code would be called Prepar3D (P3D). Lockheed hired members of the original Aces Game Studio team to continue development of the product. In November 2010, Lockheed Martin debuted Prepar3D version 1. Version 1.1 was released in April 2011, with a retail license cost of US$499. A developer license is also available for a monthly fee of US$9.95. In March 2012, along with the release of version 1.3, the pricing strategy was revised. The Professional edition is now available for US$199, with an Academic License available for US$59.95. Often touted as 'FSX on steroids', P3D has so far had 5 versions, with the latest launched on April 14, 2020. Version 5 features 41 aircraft and over 23000 airports. Before that, version 2, 3 and 4 saw releases in 2013, 2015, and 2017 respectively. Due to the changes in elevation between version 4 and version 5, many developers charged for upgrades to make their airport sceneries compatible with the new elevation. This elevation issue, in turn, created new developers to pop up to create "compatibility files" for older version 4 airports to work on version 5. Companies such as iniBuilds and Scandinavian Mountains lead the development of compatibility files. On July 9, 2014, Dovetail Games announced that Microsoft had granted them rights to develop the next Flight Simulator in the series. Dovetail Games also announced the release of Flight Simulator X: Gold Edition on Steam for late 2014, titled Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition. It was released on December 18, 2014. It is a re-release and includes content that was provided with the original FSX: Gold Edition which includes FSX: Deluxe Edition, the Acceleration expansion pack, and both official Service Packs and repackages them in one bundle and a single installation. The Steam Edition includes "all standard Steam functionality", including an overhaul of the multiplayer support to go through Steam rather than the now-defunct GameSpy, improved stability on Windows 7 and 8, and features minor performance tweaks including a complete recompile using VS2013. Additionally, Dovetail Games has worked with existing developers and publishers to distribute their content on Steam as DLC. Currently, there are over 100 add-ons for FSX: Steam Edition from over 35 developers available on the Steam store including Aerosoft, Captain Sim, Orbx Simulation Systems, Real Environment Xtreme (REX), Carenado, Virtavia, and others. In May 2017, Dovetail Games announced Flight Sim World, based on the codebase of Flight Simulator X, and released later that month. Only a year later, on April 23, 2018, Dovetail announced end of development of Flight Sim World and the end of sales effective May 15, 2018. Microsoft released a new flight simulator titled Microsoft Flight in February 2012. Developed by The Coalition (as Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver), it was not part of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, but instead was designed to replace it and aimed at drawing new users into flight gaming. While claiming to be simpler to use for inexperienced users, it is incompatible with Flight Simulator and does not allow the use of existing Flight Simulator add-ons (including aircraft, objects, and photographic scenery). The game was "pay to play", as only the single island of Hawai'i and one aircraft was available without buying downloadable content. On July 26, 2012, Microsoft cancelled further development of Flight. On June 9, 2019, as part of their E3 conference announcements Microsoft revealed that they would be bringing back the Flight Simulator series with an updated release, simply titled Microsoft Flight Simulator. On the same day, Microsoft launched a new website for the title and posted a teaser video on their Xbox YouTube channel. The new version features tight integration of ground satellite data and Microsoft's own Azure AI into the simulator's engine to generate near-photorealistic graphics. Asobo Studio is the lead developer. The game is Microsoft's first simulator since Microsoft Flight in 2012. In addition to the PC release it was also released for the Xbox Series X and Series S, making it the first entry in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series to be released for a gaming console. The Windows PC version of the simulator was released on August 18, 2020. Microsoft Flight Simulator launched for Xbox Series X and Series S on July 27, 2021 and can be played on the Xbox One with Cloud Gaming from Xbox Game Pass. On June 11, 2023, during the Xbox Games Showcase Microsoft revealed a trailer for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which was captioned "the next generation of the legendary franchise." It was released in November 2024. Add-ons, customization, and community involvement The long history and consistent sales of Flight Simulator has encouraged a very large body of add-on packages to be developed as both commercial and volunteer ventures. A formal software development kit and other tools for the simulator exist to further facilitate third-party efforts, and some third parties have also learned to 'tweak' the simulator in various ways by trial and error. As for number of add-ons, tweaks, and modifications Flight Simulator can accommodate solely depends on the user's hardware setup. The number is not limited by the simulator, and when multiple computers are linked together with multiple monitors and third-party software and controls, Flight Simulator enthusiasts can build their own realistic home cockpits. Individual attributes of Flight Simulator aircraft that can be customized include; cockpit layout, cockpit image, aircraft model, aircraft model textures, aircraft flight characteristics, scenery models, scenery layouts, and scenery textures, often with simple-to-use programs, or only a text editor such as 'Notepad'. Dedicated 'flight simmers have taken advantage of Flight Simulator's vast add-on capabilities, having successfully linked Flight Simulator to homebuilt hardware, some of which approaches the complexity of commercial full-motion flight simulators. The simulator's aircraft are made up of five parts: Most versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator include some of the world's most popular aircraft from different categories, such as the Mooney Bravo and Beechcraft Baron 58, which fall into the general aviation category; the Airbus A321 and Boeing 737, which fall into the civil jets category; the Robinson R22, which falls into the helicopter category; the Air Scheffel 738, which falls into the general aviation category again; and many other planes commonly used around the world. Not being limited to using the default aircraft, add-on planes can be downloaded from many sources for free or purchased, which can then be installed into Microsoft Flight Simulator. The Beechcraft 1900D, pictured above, is an add-on aircraft. Similarly, add-on repaints can be added to default aircraft; these repaints are usually downloaded for free. A growing add-on category for the series is AI (artificial intelligence) traffic. AI traffic is the simulation of other vehicles in the FS landscape. This traffic plays an important role in the simulator, as it is possible to crash into traffic (this can be disabled), thus ending the player's session, and to interact with the traffic via the radio and ATC. This feature is active even with third-party traffic. Microsoft introduced AI traffic in MSFS 2002 with several airliners and private aircraft. This has since been supplemented with many files created by third-party developers. Typically, third-party aircraft models have multiple levels of detail, which allow the AI traffic to be better on frame rates, while still being detailed during close looks. There are several prominent freeware developers. Some third-party AI traffic can also be configured for "real-time" departures. Scenery add-ons usually involve replacements for existing airports, with enhanced and more accurate detail, or large expanses of highly detailed ground scenery for specific regions of the world. Some types of scenery add-on replace or add structures to the simulator. Both freeware and payware scenery add-ons are very widely available. Airport enhancements, for example, range from simple add-ons that update runways or taxiways to very elaborate packages that reproduce every lamp, pavement marking, and structure at an airport with near-total accuracy, including animated effects such as baggage cars or marshalling agents. Wide-area scenery enhancements may use detailed satellite photos and 3-D structures to closely reproduce real-world regions, particularly those including large cities, landmarks, or spectacular natural wonders. Virtual flight networks such as IVAO, VATSIM, and Pilot Edge as well as Virtual Skies, and Mindstar Aviation's AirspaceVR use special, small add-on modules for Flight Simulator to enable connection to their proprietary networks in multiplayer mode, and to allow for voice and text communication with other virtual pilots and controllers over the network. These networks allow players to enjoy and enhance realism in their game. These networks are for ATC (air traffic control). Some utilities, such as FSUIPC, merely provide useful tweaks for the simulator to overcome design limitations or bugs, or to allow more extensive interfacing with other third-party add-ons. Sometimes certain add-ons require other utility add-ons in order to work correctly with the simulator. Other add-ons provide navigation tools, simulation of passengers, and cameras that can view aircraft or scenery from any angle, more realistic instrument panels and gauges, and so on. Some software add-ons provide operability with specific hardware, such as game controllers and optical motion sensors. FSDeveloper.com is one website that host a forum style knowledge base aimed at the development of add-on items, tools, and software. Excel Unusual hosts two versions of flight simulator downloads and tutorials, built from scratch with only VBA and cell formulas, in both 2D and 3D. A number of websites are dedicated to providing users with add-on files (such as airplanes from actual airlines, airport utility cars, actual buildings located in specific cities, textures, and city files). The wide availability over the internet of freeware add-on files for the simulation package has encouraged the development of a large and diverse virtual community, linked up by design group and enthusiast message boards, online multiplayer flying, and 'virtual airlines'. The internet has also facilitated the distribution of 'payware' add-ons for the simulator, with the option of downloading the files, which reduces distribution costs. Reception Flight Simulator has been praised for its realism. PC Magazine in January 1983 called Flight Simulator "extraordinarily realistic ... a classic program, unique in the market". It praised the graphics and detailed scenery, and concluded "I think it's going to sell its share of IBM PCs, and will certainly sell some color/graphics adapters". BYTE in December 1983 wrote that "this amazing package does an incredible job of making you think you're actually flying a small plane". While it noted the inability to use a RGB monitor or a joystick, the magazine concluded that "for $49.95 you can't have everything". A pilot wrote in the magazine in March 1984 that he found the simulated Cessna 182 to be "surprisingly realistic". While criticizing the requirement of using the keyboard to fly, he concluded "Microsoft Flight Simulator is a tour de force of the programmer's art ... It can be an excellent introduction to how an aircraft actually operates for a budding or student pilot and can even help instrument pilots or those going for an instrument rating sharpen their skills". Another pilot similarly praised Flight Simulator 2.0 in PC Magazine that year, giving it 18 out of 18 points. He reported that its realism compared well to two $3 million hardware flight simulators he had recently flown, and that he could use real approach plates to land at and navigate airports Flight Simulator's manual did not document. Compute! warned "if you don't know much about flying, this program may overwhelm you. It's not a simple simulation. It's a challenging program even for experienced pilots". The magazine concluded that Flight Simulator "is interesting, challenging, graphically superb, diverse, rewarding, and just plain fun ... sheer delight". Flight Simulator 2.0 was reviewed in 1989 in Dragon #142 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars. Computer Gaming World stated in 1994 that Flight Simulator 5 "is closer to simulating real flight than ever before". Microsoft Flight Simulator X was reviewed in 2006 by GameSpot. The reviewer gave the game an 8.4 out of 10 and commented on how it was realistic enough to be used for real-life flight training. Awards By June 1999, the series had sold 21 million units worldwide, for which it was awarded the Guinness World Record for best-selling flight simulator series. The success of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series has led to Guinness World Records awarding the series seven world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. These records include "Longest Running Flight Sim Series", "Most Successful Flight Simulator Series", and "Most Expensive Home Flight Simulator Cockpit", which was built by Australian trucking tycoon Matthew Sheil, and cost around $200,000 to build. See also References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark_(series)] | [TOKENS: 1703] |
Contents Perfect Dark (series) Perfect Dark is a science-fiction video game series created by Rare and owned by Xbox Game Studios. It debuted in 2000 with the release of the Nintendo 64 first-person shooter Perfect Dark. The series follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute agency, as she uncovers conspiracies by rival corporation dataDyne. In addition to video games, the series has expanded into novels and comics. These supplements to the video games have resulted in a significant development of the series' fictional universe. Media The Perfect Dark series debuted in 2000 with the Nintendo 64 first-person shooter Perfect Dark. Set in 2023, the game follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute, as she attempts to stop a conspiracy by rival corporation dataDyne that involve extraterrestrial life and technology. It features a single-player mode where the player must complete a series of missions under certain difficulty settings, and a range of multiplayer options. A different game, also titled Perfect Dark, was released for the Game Boy Color shortly afterwards. It takes place in 2022 and focuses on Joanna's attempts to prove herself as an agent for the Carrington Institute. A second first-person shooter, Perfect Dark Zero, was released for the Xbox 360 in 2005. Set in 2020, the game follows Joanna as a bounty hunter working with her father and a computer hacker before she joins the Carrington Institute in an effort to stop dataDyne from taking possession of an artifact which endows individuals with superhuman powers. In addition to a single-player mode, the game features both an online co-operative and a competitive multiplayer mode. A remaster of the Nintendo 64 game, also titled Perfect Dark, was released for the Xbox 360 in 2010. It features improved graphics and supports online gameplay. In addition to video games, the series has expanded into other media, including novels and comics. These supplements to the video games have resulted in a significant development of the series' fictional universe. In 2000, two comics written by Stuart Taylor, inked by Dave Roberts, and coloured by Alwyn Talbot were included in the Nintendo 64 game's Official Player's Guide by Nintendo Power. The first comic, Graduation Day, takes place before the events of the Nintendo 64 game and partially covers the story of the Game Boy Color game. The second comic, Hunting Season, is set one year after the events of the Nintendo 64 game and follows Joanna as she learns dataDyne's secret human cloning program to create replicants of world leaders. In 2000, 4Kids Entertainment obtained merchandising rights to Perfect Dark toys, movies, and other recreational products but nothing came out of it. In 2001, Fireworks Entertainment acquired the rights to produce a TV series and a film, but both projects never materialised. A set of novels published by Tor Books and a comic book series published by Prima Games were released to supplement Perfect Dark Zero. The first novel, Initial Vector, was written by Greg Rucka and released in 2005. It is set six months after the events of the game and portrays Joanna as an ex-bounty hunter drawn into the Carrington Institute's battle with dataDyne through her own vendetta against the big corporations. Since Rucka could not play Perfect Dark Zero while he was writing Initial Vector, the novel is self-contained and does not give away much of the game's story. The novel also develops the character of Cassandra De Vries from the Nintendo 64 game to a greater degree. According to Rucka: "If you've played the first game, you're going to get a huge treat, because a lot of stuff that happens in Perfect Dark, we set up in the novel". The comic book series, Janus' Tears, was written by Eric Trautmann and illustrated by Cold FuZion Studios. It was released in six monthly issues from August 2006 to January 2007 and revolves around Joanna's attempts to unmask a mole in the Carrington Institute's Los Angeles office. Trautmann also wrote a comic booklet included in the Limited Collector's Edition of Perfect Dark Zero, entitled Hong Kong Sunrise, which sets the scene for the game. Both Rucka and Trautmann worked closely together to keep the Perfect Dark timeline consistent. A second novel, Second Front, was also written by Rucka and released in 2007. It follows Joanna as she attempts to stop a clandestine group of hackers responsible for some major accidents that allowed dataDyne to take over involved corporations. Development history The Perfect Dark series was created by Rare when the company was still a second-party developer for Nintendo. The original game, which was released for the Nintendo 64 in 2000, is considered a spiritual successor to Rare's 1997 first-person shooter GoldenEye 007. It was accompanied by a handheld game for the Game Boy Color, released shortly afterwards. Both games feature a compatibility mode that allows certain gameplay options within the Nintendo 64 game to alternatively be unlocked via a Transfer Pak. A "sister" game to the Nintendo 64 title, entitled Velvet Dark, was initially planned to be developed for either the Nintendo 64 or GameCube, but the project was ultimately abandoned. The name "Velvet Dark" references Joanna's alleged sister, who is the character players assume the role of in the game's co-operative mode. After Rare was purchased by Microsoft in 2002, the company released a prequel, Perfect Dark Zero, as a launch title for the Xbox 360 in 2005. Work on a two-part sequel to the Nintendo 64 game began in 2006. A team led by Chris Seavor, who had directed Conker's Bad Fur Day, was in charge of the project. In contrast to Perfect Dark Zero's mythical themes, the sequel would feature a more serious and science fiction tone. The first part, entitled Perfect Dark Core, would follow Joanna traveling around the world and visiting places like Cairo and Russia, before landing on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, where Russia had uncovered an ancient civilisation beneath its frosty surface. Characters from the original game like Elvis and Mr. Blonde would return. The second part, entitled Perfect Dark Vengeance, would follow Core's story. Although both Core and Vengeance would form an overarching story, each part would be a fully featured and stand-alone game with its own multiplayer mode. Once Core had been released, Rare hoped to use the same technology to speed up the development of Vengeance. Seavor mentioned Deus Ex as an inspiration, stating that Core "wasn't as narrow as something like Call Duty [sic], where it's like, walk, cutscene, walk, cutscene. It was definitely going to be, you could go over here and do this over here, or you could go over here and do this over here. And then it would bottleneck down to something that would then take you to the next bit". The game would feature several parkour mechanics, including jumping from walls, and would be played entirely from a first-person perspective. The game was in pre-production for nearly a year. It was cancelled in 2007 because Microsoft felt that Perfect Dark Zero did not sell well enough, leading them to prioritise other science fiction series like Halo and Gears of War. In 2010, a remaster of the Nintendo 64 game was released for the Xbox 360 through its Xbox Live Arcade download service. The remaster was developed by 4J Studios, a company that had previously handled the Xbox 360 ports of Rare's platform games Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. In 2013, Rare considered the possibility of developing a Perfect Dark game that would use the Kinect sensor. In 2015, Microsoft Studios creative director Ken Lobb said that they had not abandoned the Perfect Dark series and that a new game would eventually be developed, although not necessarily as a first-person shooter. Both Perfect Dark Zero and the remaster were included in the Rare Replay compilation that was released for Xbox One in 2015. At The Game Awards 2020, it was announced that a Perfect Dark reboot was in development. In July 2025, the reboot was cancelled as part of several rounds of layoffs by Microsoft. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Instinct] | [TOKENS: 11887] |
Contents Killer Instinct Killer Instinct is a series of fighting video games originally created by Rare and published by Midway, Nintendo, and Xbox Game Studios. The original Killer Instinct was released for arcades in 1994; the game was then released for the Super NES and Game Boy in 1995. Its sequel, Killer Instinct 2, was released for arcades in 1996; the game was then released as Killer Instinct Gold for the Nintendo 64. The series was rebooted with the release of Killer Instinct (2013) for the Xbox One. Games Killer Instinct is an arcade fighting game developed by Rare and published by Midway. Initially released in arcades in 1994, the game advertised it would launch in 1995 for an intended "Nintendo Ultra 64" home console. The Ultra 64 eventually materialized as the Nintendo 64, but never received a version of the original Killer Instinct. Instead, the game received a high-profile launch on the SNES, released on October 27, 1994, which bundled a CD of remixed game tracks with a limited edition black-colored cartridge, as well as a release on the Game Boy handheld the following year. Both the SNES and Game Boy versions were published by Nintendo. A digital port, titled Killer Instinct Classic, was released as part of a bundle with its 2013 sequel's first season on Xbox One. The SNES version of Killer Instinct was re-released as a Nintendo Switch Online game on February 21, 2024. A 1996 arcade-only game developed by Rare, licensed by Nintendo, and manufactured by Midway. It was the sequel to Killer Instinct. The game was also ported to the SNES, but never released. It was later ported to the Nintendo 64 console under the name Killer Instinct Gold, and the port was published by Nintendo. A digital port, titled Killer Instinct 2 Classic, was released as part of a bundle with its 2013 sequel's second season on Xbox One. Killer Instinct Gold was also included as part of the Rare Replay compilation release. A reboot of the Killer Instinct series, developed by Double Helix Games under supervision of Ken Lobb, and the first game in the series to be published by Microsoft Studios, was released in November 2013 as a launch title for the Xbox One. Following the acquisition of Double Helix Games by Amazon, Iron Galaxy Studios took over the development of post-launch content. A Windows 10 version was released in March 2016 on the Windows Store, and via Steam in September 2017. Gameplay Killer Instinct is a fighting game featuring one-on-one combat. The game borrows the attack set of Street Fighter and is also inspired by the finishing moves from Mortal Kombat. There are also several features that distinguish it from other franchises: Characters Chief Thunder, a Native American chief armed with twin tomahawks, enters the tournament to find out what happened to his missing brother Eagle in the previous year's tournament. In the series' reboot, Thunder—AKA hinmatoom—is the grandson of a chief and son of tribal police officers, living on a Nez Perce reservation in Idaho with his brother Eagle. As a teenager, Thunder goes on a vision quest and receives a vision from his spirit animal, a giant crow, telling him he would one day battle an evil monster and should begin training to use tomahawks. In their late 20s, Thunder and Eagle's parents are killed by Ultratech, though the circumstances are covered up. Trying to infiltrate Ultratech, Eagle joins the Disavowed and enters the first Killer Instinct tournament, and is later reported by Ultratech as having been killed in a match, though they refuse to return his body for burial. Grieving and enraged, Thunder attempts to break into an Ultratech plant and is imprisoned, but the plant is later burned to the ground, destroying any evidence regarding his parents' deaths and Eagle's disappearance, and Thunder is framed for arson. Going into hiding in New Mexico for a year, Thunder goes on another vision quest, this time receiving a vision of a metal eagle. Determined, Thunder dons his war paint and enters the second Killer Instinct tournament in the hopes of finding Eagle's remains and receiving closure. Upon discovering evidence that his brother may have been used in the construction of a Fulgore unit, he swears vengeance for the mutilation and begins eliminating Fulgores in a search for Eagle. He later frees Aganos from Ultratech's control, and the two form an alliance, working together to find both Eagle and Kan-Ra. In the 2013 Killer Instinct, his fighting has been revised to be based more heavily around grappling than the other characters. His character design was also revamped to be more culturally sensitive towards Native Americans, with help from a Nez Perce tribesman. In December 2016, a new "Legend of Thunder" costume was released as part of a game update, designed in direct collaboration with members of the Nez Perce tribe with the intention of being as accurate to Nez Perce tradition as possible. Ben Ferris is a convicted criminal who was promised early parole in exchange for participating in Ultratech's chemical-weapons research. As a result of an accident during testing, his body is composed entirely of flame. Now going by the code name Cinder, he is promised a return to his original form if he is able to defeat Glacius in the tournament. However, Cinder ultimately fails to defeat Glacius and is killed. Cinder returned as part of the second season of Killer Instinct for Xbox One, retconning his backstory. In this version, Ferris is a former military special operative-turned-career criminal, stealing information and secrets for corrupt corporations. When he receives an expensive contract from rival corporation Trilodyne to steal data regarding Ultratech's top-secret "Project Cinder", he infiltrates the organization, discovering the project to be of extraterrestrial origin. However, he is caught and exposed by ARIA, who reveals Trilodyne was a front for Ultratech and the assignment was a test of Ferris's abilities. Having spied on Ferris for years to see if he was a worthy candidate for Project Cinder, she offers him a chance to work for her. Knowing he may die if he rejected the offer, Ferris agrees, and ends up being the first test subject for Project Cinder. His DNA is spliced with that of Glacius, causing his body to be consumed by plasma energy, though a mask and suit designed by ARIA allows Cinder full control of his powers. Enjoying his new abilities, he now serves as ARIA's lieutenant, working alongside her to fulfill her plans. After eliminating Sadira on ARIA's orders, he is promoted to her second-in-command, and is seen at her side when Gargos's dimension is opened. In the early development stages of Killer Instinct, Cinder went through multiple name changes, such as "Meltdown" and "Pyrotech". The final boss of the first Killer Instinct, Eyedol is a two-headed, one-eyed ancient mystical warlord who was trapped in a dimensional prison in the distant past. Ultratech releases him to be the final combatant in the tournament. In Killer Instinct 2 Eyedol was trapped in combat with Gargos, the final boss of that game. In Eyedol's ending, he is supposedly found by his mother (as a boy named "Billy") after going missing in a car crash as a child. However, Eyedol attacks her in a comical manner in a spoof of Blanka's original Street Fighter II ending. Eyedol is the final character of Killer Instinct: Season Three. In the game's story, he was once a human warrior who was chosen by the Ichoreans to be one of the Watchmen of the Gods. Eyedol protected the Earth from an invasion by Gargos, taking some of his powers and sending him back to the Astral Plane. Eyedol was revered by the humans and crowned king of an empire, but the Astral energy corrupted him, mutating him into an ogre and causing him to destroy everything in his path, killing any heroes who tried to stop him. Eyedol was eventually lured by fellow watchman Tusk back to the Astral Plane, where he was imprisoned by the Ichoreans. During Gargos's takeover of the Astral Plane, Eyedol was inadvertently released and sought to challenge Gargos for control of the dimension, but Gargos tricked Eyedol into wearing himself out fighting smaller chimerae before engaging him directly, allowing him to overtake Eyedol and split his head in two. However, Eyedol survived as his soul was split into two separate entities. To prevent him from reviving, Gargos removed Eyedol's soul and splits his body into pieces, giving them to his most powerful followers to keep separated. In the present, Kan-Ra retrieves Eyedol's soul and asks the alliance to recover Eyedol's body parts from the Knights of Gargos. He uses them to revive Eyedol in the hopes he will aid the Alliance in defeating Gargos, but Eyedol is beyond the sorcerer's control and resumes his destructive rampage, hoping to draw Gargos out. After several battles, Eyedol is finally convinced to join the Alliance against their common foe. In early SNES versions of the game (released only to stores), he was selectable; however, in the arcade and retail SNES versions, he is a secret character who can be accessed using a cheat code. He is the only character in the game with no special finishing moves (such as No Mercy moves, Ultra Combos, or Humiliations); however, he compensates with a limited ability to heal. In the reboot, only one of Eyedol's heads is active at any given time, with his moves and abilities changing based on which one is active; the Warrior head uses his weapon like a club, emphasizing close-range physical attacks, while the Mage head uses the weapon to generate lightning and spells, focusing on ranged attacks and battlefield control. The active head will change at random during battle, with players able to force a switch by punching themselves at the cost of some damage, while Instinct Mode will activate both heads at once. Fulgore is a cyborg and the penultimate opponent in the single-player mode of the first Killer Instinct. Developed by Ultratech, Fulgore is the first in a planned series of state-of-the-art cyber soldiers. While designed to resemble a knight to help gain the people's trust, rumors say the human parts used in its construction originated from an organ harvesting operation based in Moscow. Before the Fulgore Mk.I model is even finished, the team of scientists developing it have already begun work on an upgraded model. As a final test of its power, the Fulgore prototype is entered into the Killer Instinct tournament; if successful, Fulgore would be placed into mass production. In the sequel, a new, enhanced Fulgore model is created after the first Fulgore was destroyed by Jago in the first tournament. His goal is to kill Jago, whom he considers his mortal rival. In the end, he is defeated by Jago and his sister Orchid. A third Fulgore model appears in the reboot, acting as the final opponent of Season One's arcade mode. This Fulgore unit is developed to help defend Ultratech against its enemies, correcting the flaws of their prototype Kilgore units. However, Fulgore begins to develop self-awareness and defy its programming due to the residual memories of Eagle, whose mind was used as a blueprint for Fulgore's neural network. Outside of the games, Fulgore appeared in the 1996 Killer Instinct comic series, marking the first time the connection between Eagle and Fulgore was explored in any Killer Instinct media. Fulgore also appears in the 2017 comics series as one of several generic drones utilized by Ultratech. Fulgore was also one of six Killer Instinct characters to make a cameo appearance in the video game Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise as a Piñata Vision Card. Additionally, a weapon named "Fulgore's Fist" can be unlocked by players in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. GamesRadar+ described him as "easily the most iconic Killer Instinct creation". Glacius is an alien who was captured by Ultratech and promised freedom if he wins the tournament. In the end, Glacius defeats Cinder and returns home. In Killer Instinct 2, a distant relative of Glacius from 2,000 years ago who shares his name heeds a distress call, coming to Earth to find his lost brethren and bring them home. Glacius uses three No Mercy moves: one where he becomes a gel-like mass and absorbs the opponent, similar to the Blob (arcade only), one in which he uses his finger as a syringe to inject the enemy with a substance turning them to ice, and one in which he becomes a pool of boiling water in which the enemy drowns. The original Glacius returns in Killer Instinct for Xbox One, where he is portrayed as a galactic marshal for the Alliance of Worlds, hailing from the Ice Rings of Sokol. Following a distress signal to Earth, where intergalactic criminal Mer'ik Deem had crashed years before in the Roswell UFO incident, Glacius' ship is shot down by Ultratech and crashes in Patagonia, adopting the ice as his new exoskeleton. While undergoing metamorphosis, his power core is stolen by Sadira, and he becomes determined to catch her and prevent his technology from falling into the wrong hands. Lured into the Killer Instinct tournament, Glacius eventually catches up with Sadira, who uses his genetic code to activate the power core, creating a wormhole and escaping. Realizing the threat it poses, Glacius resolves to find the core's current holder and train to prepare himself should it be used to summon an extradimensional creature. He later infiltrates Ultratech and frees Eagle from his captivity, using his race's technology to augment him. However, this leaves him unable to return home and instead dedicates himself to destroying Ultratech. Jago is a Tibetan monk and a powerful warrior. Abandoned as a baby, he was found by the Monks of the Tiger, an order who worship an ancient deity known as the Tiger Spirit, and raised in their monastery as one of their pupils. Over the years, Jago matures into one of the Order's finest students until he is one day visited by the Tiger Spirit during meditation. The Tiger Spirit chooses him as its champion and grants him new power, ordering him to enter the first Killer Instinct tournament and destroy Ultratech. Though nearly overwhelmed by the Tiger Spirit's power, Jago follows orders and helps to bring down Ultratech, destroying Fulgore in the process. However, in Killer Instinct 2, Jago is betrayed by the Tiger Spirit, who reveals itself to have been the demon Gargos all along, having used Jago to gain entrance to the physical world. Jago seeks revenge for Gargos' manipulation and defeats both him and Fulgore, who was revived with the sole purpose of killing Jago. In the aftermath, Jago seemingly defeats and banishes Gargos and discovers that Orchid is his sister, the two having been separated when their parents were murdered shortly after Jago's birth. Jago also appears in the 1996 Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct Special comics, along with the 2017-2018 Killer Instinct miniseries from Dynamite Comics. In the reboot, Jago is the son of Orchid's military father, Jacob, and a foreign aid worker in Pakistan with whom he had an affair. Shortly after Jago's birth, his mother disappears with him into the Himalayas, and he is later found abandoned by the Monks of the Tiger. The monks raise Jago from birth and train him in combat, but he isolates himself after killing a fellow warrior possessed by an evil spirit in self-defense. Meditating in a mountain cave, he is visited by the Tiger Spirit and infused with his power. The Spirit orders him to destroy Ultratech by participating in the Killer Instinct tournament, and Jago complies, though he worries when the Spirit becomes more bloodthirsty, nearly causing him to murder his long-lost sister Orchid. Following the tournament, Jago discovers the Spirit is actually Gargos. Jago experiences a crisis of faith and tries to exorcise Gargos's influence from within him by seeking out the strongest of opponents. This crisis of faith is symbolized through his new costume, which consists of various materials cannibalized from the now abandoned Tiger Shrine, including tiles (arm guards), bits of broken statues (knee pads), drapery, and ropes from a chandelier (leg bindings and harness). However, Jago succumbs to the corruption, allowing Omen to possess him and transforming him into Shadow Jago. Eventually, Jago fights back against his possession, and Omen is forced to abandon Jago's body, though his time spent in Jago's body gives him enough strength to manifest on the mortal plane and he escapes. Jago later joins Maya's rebel force alongside Orchid and T.J. Combo, planning to defeat both Ultratech and Gargos, but they are trapped by Ultratech forces at Maya's headquarters in the Andes while ARIA's plan to summon Gargos is brought to fruition. Ultimately, Jago and the others ally with ARIA in order to stop Gargos from conquering Earth. An alternate version of the character called Shadow Jago also appears in the reboot. Designed an altered version of Jago who is under the possession of Omen, Gargos's herald, and later manifests as his own separate being and a minion of Gargos. Initially, Shadow Jago was only available as a playable character for those who purchased a 12-month Xbox Live membership during the launch of the Xbox One, controlling identically to Jago but with some visual and vocal differences. In Season One's story mode, he was included as a secret boss possessing both new moves and an Ultimate Combo, becoming the only character to receive one until a 2017 update. Following a successful fundraiser, the playable version was reworked and given a unique move set based on his boss incarnation. The updated version of Shadow Jago was released in December 2015, and the character became permanently available for purchase by all players in April 2016. Riptor is a genetically-engineered velociraptor-human hybrid created as a prototype by Ultratech; the tournament tests her abilities as a killing machine. However, she is ultimately defeated by T.J. Combo prior to KI2, but damages Combo's right eye during the confrontation. Riptor has three No Mercy moves: one in which she spits acid on the enemy, a second in which she stabs the foe with her tail, and a third in which she runs at the enemy, eating them. A new, enhanced Riptor appears as part of the second season of Killer Instinct for Xbox One. Created by Ultratech's military division under ARIA's orders, Riptor is the leader of a pack of cybernetically-enhanced raptors known as Project Stalker, meant to serve as an alternative to the Fulgore line and Cinder project, being able to operate in conditions ill-suited for either. The Stalkers are all augmented using leftover Fulgore technology and human DNA, and bred as assassins to eliminate perceived threats to Ultratech. With initial tests resulting in feral, uncontrollable units, later Stalkers undergo a simulated upbringing through the mind of their creator, Ultratech scientist Dr. Erin Gupte, instilling a pack mentality and familial bonds. Gupte's mind becomes unstable as a result of the mind-sync, however, and she is eventually eaten by her own units. Years later, the Stalker units are ready to be sold to private buyers, but T.J. and Orchid break into a development facility, stealing classified information on Project Stalker and broadcasting it globally, damaging public perception of Ultratech. Under ARIA's orders, Riptor and the Stalkers assault Maya's rebel force, trapping them while ARIA enacts her plan before being called back to headquarters. Count Von Sabrewulf is afflicted with lycanthropy and promised a cure by Ultratech if he wins the tournament. In the sequel, Sabrewulf was captured by Ultratech after being severely injured during the first tournament, and has been driven mad by experimentation. With cybernetic arms, he desperately seeks a cure for his lycanthropy. Sabrewulf fights in his inherited castle with biting and claw attacks and has the ability to howl and use his flaming bats (although sometimes they do not flame). Originally called "Cyberwulf", he was inspired by the antagonist of Rare's 1984 game Sabre Wulf. In the reboot, Baron Konrad Von Sabrewulf discovers a secret laboratory hidden in the castle he inherited from his parents in Ravensburg, Germany, learning that the Sabrewulf clan was once part of the Night Guard. Prone to addiction, he cuts himself on a werewolf's claw among their trophies in a drunken stupor, inheriting its lycanthropic curse. Shapeshifting, he destroys most of the castle in a rage, inadvertently destroying the formula for a cure with it, and isolates himself. Attempting to remove the curse, he begins experimenting on himself, becoming more feral and developing an addiction to pain-relieving drugs. Luring him with the promise of a cure, Ultratech captures and experiments on him, giving him cybernetic arms and extending his metamorphoses to near permanence, but Sabrewulf breaks free of their control during an early Killer Instinct tournament and escapes, tearing out his mechanical implants and restoring his damaged body parts through dark magic. Briefly gaining control of his lycanthropy, he now seeks a more permanent solution to his curse. An animated skeleton, Spinal was reanimated by Ultratech through cell regeneration but destroyed by Chief Thunder in the first tournament; however, Gargos had a Spinal of his own in the past. Spinal fights for vengeance and his freedom. In the first Killer Instinct, Spinal is the third-last opponent in single-player mode; with a sword and shield, he can teleport and change himself into a grayscale version of his opponents during combos. In Killer Instinct for Xbox One, when he was alive, Spinal was a bandit in ancient Babylon, hired by Kan-Ra to disrupt the King's rule. He is later captured and cursed by an artifact known as the Mask of the Ancients, forcing him to protect the King and obey his every command no matter how suicidal. Eventually, the King orders Spinal to burn himself alive as a final punishment, leaving only his skeleton behind. However, Spinal's will and the mask's magic allow his bones to reanimate, so the King has his remains sealed and orders the mask thrown into the sea. Over the centuries, Spinal gains control of his skeletal body and breaks free of his prison, scouring the bottom of the ocean for the mask, later taking up a pirate's life and sinking all the ships he encounters. He discovers the mask to be in Ultratech's possession, and ARIA offers it to him in exchange for his entry in the Killer Instinct tournament and service to Ultratech, to which he agrees. Spinal gains the mask following the tournament's conclusion, but finds its powers to have been stripped by Gargos. He now seeks to defeat the entity so that he might take its dark powers for his own. Spinal has a quirk: to perform certain moves, he must gather energy—represented by tokens shaped like skulls under his life bar (SNES version) or skulls floating around him (arcade, Gold, and Xbox One versions)—by absorbing opponents' projectile-energy attacks (with his shield in absorbing position) or performing combo breakers. Despite requiring these tokens, his special moves are no stronger than normal special attacks. Spinal can store up to five skull tokens, overloading if he tries to absorb energy for the sixth time. On the sixth attempt he will not block the projectile, and it will cause normal damage and knockdown; he will then be left with one remaining skull. A former five-time heavyweight boxing champion, Tyler-Johnson "T.J. Combo" Garrett was stripped of his title and expelled from the circuit when it was discovered that he had been cheating, having secretly had cybernetic enhancements implanted in his arms. Ultratech promises the disgraced boxer that he would be returned to his former glory if he wins the tournament. After his victory against Riptor in the first tournament, which also cost him his right eye, T.J. Combo was sent into the past and fights to return home. In Killer Instinct for Xbox One, T.J. is born into poverty in Texas and trained to box by his ex-military father. After losing a fight as a teen, T.J. begins cheating to win, but is eventually found out and banned from the league. After dropping out of school and being ejected from the military, T.J. moves to Chicago to reinvent himself, taking a job at a boxing gym to pay for his own training. Ten years later, T.J. becomes the Heavyweight Champion, but falls victim to the superstar lifestyle and neglects his training, losing the title three years later. After his manager flees the country, leaving T.J. in debt, Ultratech offers to install illegal cybernetic augmentations in his arms; desperate to stay on top, T.J. accepts. As a result, T.J. reclaims the title, but realizes he has become a pawn of Ultratech. When ARIA demands he throw a fight against Fulgore during a live exhibition for their customers, T.J. defies her and wins the fight. As punishment, ARIA exposes his enhancements, causing his title to be stripped and T.J. to be banned from boxing for life. Disgraced, T.J. rips the implants from his body and uses his last remaining funds to buy the boxing gym, renaming it the Combo Gym and training young fighters. Later, T.J. is contacted by a member of the Disavowed, who reveals T.J.'s former manager was an Ultratech agent planted to force T.J. into bankruptcy so Ultratech could experiment on him. Seeking both vengeance and redemption, T.J. joins the Disavowed and teams up with Orchid to destroy a Stalker development facility, acquiring classified information on Ultratech's illegal experiments. The two break into the Pinnacle, with T.J. defeating the new Fulgore model protecting the facility, and barely escape as Orchid broadcasts their findings to the world, causing public perception of the company to plummet and Ultratech to go dark. Orchid allows T.J. to take credit for the exposure, and he is once again hailed by the public. He later appears as part of Maya's anti-Ultratech rebel force with Orchid and Jago, barely surviving the attack by ARIA's forces. The character was based on John Parrish (who also performed the motion capture for T.J. Combo in the original Killer Instinct), known for playing Jax in the early Mortal Kombat games. Gargos is a demon lord who has returned to the physical world. He was Eyedol's rival, resembling a huge gargoyle who is powerful and can breathe fire. After being locked in combat with Eyedol for thousands of years, Eyedol's summoning and subsequent defeat gives Gargos the chance to begin his conquest anew. Jago's back story in the second installment reveals him to be the "Tiger Spirit" that led Jago to the first Killer Instinct tournament and did appear in his ending in 1. Like Eyedol in the original game, Gargos may be accessed with a cheat code. In Killer Instinct for Xbox One, Gargos is one of the Ikkorans, a race of demigods capable of bending reality and creating "living" beings through force of will, such as his herald Omen. Thousands of years prior, Gargos stages a takeover of the Astral Plane, slaughtering the Ichorean race that opposes him. The realm's native Guardians escape to other dimensions, but seal the Astral plane so that Gargos and his allies would never escape. In the chaos, the imprisoned Eyedol breaks free and challenges Gargos, but Gargos overpowers him, splitting him into many pieces to prevent his resurrection. In the present, Jago is lured by Gargos under the guise of the Tiger Spirit. Upon discovering the truth, he attempts to purge the remains of Gargos's influence from within him. At one point, he is possessed by Omen and turned into Shadow Jago to make him a potential host body for Gargos. However, Jago's will is too strong, and he forces Omen out, creating a new Shadow Jago in the process. Eventually, Kan-Ra is tricked by ARIA into opening a portal to Gargos's dimension, and ARIA defeats Omen, prompting Gargos's forces to emerge from the portal onto Earth. As his form is mortal outside of his own realm, his Mimics begin taking the forms of other fighters, battling ARIA's resistance force and spreading shadow energy from the Astral Plane on Earth, the accumulation of which increases Gargos's power. Kim Wu is a 17-year-old East Asian female ninja descended from the people who repelled Eyedol and Gargos. To protect her people, she tries to destroy Gargos. Kim Wu's No Mercy moves are setting her opponents on fire with a blazing shuriken and jumping on them. Kim Wu is also an enemy to Spinal, a soul resurrected by Ultratech. In Killer Instinct for Xbox One, Kim Wu is a 21-year-old American college student majoring in fashion design. She is the youngest of three children born to a pair of Chinese and Korean immigrants, and was trained from the age of three in nunchaku and Jeet Kune Do by her uncle Philip Yong at the Dragon Academy, her mother's family dojo in Chinatown, San Francisco, before eventually becoming an instructor herself. Shortly before Season 3, Yong passes away, but Kim receives a vision of his ghost, telling her that the Dragon had left him and chosen her and that Kim will one day save the world. At his funeral, Kim learns that Yong had bequeathed her a box, inside which she finds a pair of golden nunchaku. When she touches them, she is visited by the spirit of Yeouiju, the dragon worshiped by her family and one of the Astral Plane's escaped Guardians. Yeo tells her that he has chosen her as his vessel, granting her a dragon tattoo, and explains she must find the Watchman of the Gods, as together they can defeat Gargos. Emerging from the vision, she is attacked by Shadow Jago, but Yeo's spirit materializes alongside her and aids her in battle against him. As Hisako appears to recover the defeated Shadow Jago's body, she begins training with Yeo to prepare for Gargos's arrival, determined to fulfill her destiny. She is eventually recruited by Jago to the Alliance, and receives guidance from the spirit of Hisako alongside Yeo, standing with them against the Mimics. Maya Fallegeros is an Amazonian warrior who had banished Gargos prior to the events of Killer Instinct 2, for which she was heralded as a heroine among her people. When Gargos reappears, Maya's tribe, feeling that she had failed them, casts her out. Maya's goal is to destroy Gargos and regain her former standing with her people. Maya's No Mercy (ultimate combo) moves are summoning an elephant to fall on her enemy and shrinking them with a ray from her headband. In Killer Instinct for Xbox One, Maya returns, now heavily redesigned with Incan-inspired armor and part of a secret society of monster hunters known as the Night Guard, sealing away artifacts and monsters too powerful to destroy. Growing up in the clan's Andes citadel alongside her twin sister Mira, the two would often explore the passages below, with Maya developing a fascination with "Temperance" and "Vengeance", a pair of cursed daggers once used by Kan-Ra. Years later, the two become full agents of the Night Guard, becoming one of the clan's best monster-hunting teams. On one particular mission, Mira sacrifices herself to save Maya, leaving the remaining sister with survivor's guilt. As a result, her actions on missions become careless and end up exposing the Night Guard to the world, attracting ARIA's attention. ARIA orders Cinder and Ultratech's agents to raid the temple for its secrets, inadvertently releasing Kan-Ra. Maya is left as the last surviving member of the Night Guard and takes up Temperance and Vengeance, which have begun to take hold of her mind, to hunt down both him and the monsters that escaped. With Aganos' help, she eventually finds and defeats Kan-Ra, sending him through a portal to another dimension, but peering into the portal, she receives a vision of an impending invasion by the forces of Gargos and vows to reform the Night Guard and gain allies to fight in the coming war. She recruits Jago, Orchid, and T.J. Combo to her cause, but they are ambushed by Ultratech forces and trapped, only to be spared as ARIA recalls her agents following Gargos' summoning. Tusk is a barbarian who wants to fight all of the challengers for the right to destroy Gargos. In his ending, he and Maya are married following the defeat of Gargos. His ultimate-combo moves are summoning a meteor shower to pummel his opponent (with a large one crushing them) and summoning a dinosaur which eats the opponent. Tusk appears as a playable character in the third season of Killer Instinct for Xbox One. He has been re-imagined as an ancient barbarian warrior who led his people against Gargos's Mimic forces when they attempted to invade thousands of years ago. Though felled by Gargos, Tusk is brought to the Astral Plane by the godlike Ichorean race, who grant him the gift of immortality and the mythical blade Warg-gram. Tusk's resurrection catches Gargos off guard, wiping out his Mimics and forcing him to retreat, earning the title of "Watchman of the Gods". The barbarians he travels with give him the name "Tunth-ska", or "Tusk", due to his sword's resemblance to a walrus's tooth. Tusk survives for millennia without aging, becoming world-weary and distancing himself after watching friends and family grow old and die. Two years prior to Season 3, Tusk battles Shadow Jago in a Swedish village, and is defeated by his Oblivion Shard relic, which wipes his memories in the process. However, Warg-gram badly burns Shadow Jago when he attempts to take it, forcing him to retreat. Hisako finds the comatose Tusk and seals him and Warg-gram in an ice cave so he can recover. Tusk awakens two years later, but has lost many of his memories, including his original purpose. He builds a cabin from the remains of his old ship the Wavewalker, attempting to regain his lost memories, and Warg-gram shows him visions of both Gargos and Kim Wu. When ARIA and her forces arrive to abduct Tusk for study, Tusk repels them and gives chase, stowing away in an Ultratech transport. However, he is found and captured by Cinder, forcing Tusk to destroy the ship and crash back into the ice. During Gargos's invasion, Gargos sends his minions to retrieve Warg-gram, as it will give him the power to slay even immortal beings. Tusk receives help from Kim Wu, who recruits him to the Alliance, though he begins to be tempted by Gargos's promise of removing his immortality and allowing him to finally die. In addition to the following, three guest characters were also introduced to the series from other franchises: the Arbiter from Halo, General RAAM from Gears of War, and Rash from Battletoads. Aganos is an ancient war golem, the last of its kind. Constructed as one of a thousand by powerful Mycenaean artisans roughly 3500 years prior, the golem is powered by the Eye of the Ancients, a relic granting him sentience and power from the Astral Plane. Following the fall of Mycenae, invaders remove the gem, making the golem subservient, and it serves various masters as an obedient tool of war for a thousand years, replacing its damaged parts with whatever natural materials are available. Eventually, one Babylonian King restores the Eye to the golem and gives it the name Aganos (from Greek, "ἀγανός", "one of gentle disposition"), teaching it of kindness and the ways of the world, hoping it would choose to overcome its original violent purpose. Years later, learning of the traitor Kan-Ra's survival and growing dark power, the now dying King orders Aganos to hunt down and kill Kan-Ra. As thanks for his kindness, Aganos pledges to fulfill his master's last request, and has since pursued Kan-Ra for centuries, though neither has yet been able to destroy the other. Eventually, during one of their battles, Kan-Ra is captured by the Night Guard and imprisoned for over 500 years until the present day, when Ultratech's attack on the city releases him. Forced to resume his pursuit, Aganos allies with Maya to track down Kan-Ra and destroy him. Kan-Ra lays a trap for Aganos and steals most of his energy before escaping, leaving him too weak to fight back as Cinder installs Fulgore technology into him, allowing Ultratech to control Aganos's mind. Sent to attack Maya and her allies, he is ultimately freed from Ultratech by Thunder, who offers to help Aganos find Kan-Ra in exchange for help finding Eagle, to which Aganos agrees. Aganos is the largest character in the Killer Instinct series. He has the ability to gather natural materials into his body, affecting his strength and maneuverability. These resources can be used as projectiles or to create destructible barriers behind or in front of himself, changing the boundaries of the stage. ARIA is an AI and the CEO of Ultratech. Beginning in the late 1940s, the Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company, later rebranded as Ultratech, began attempting to simulate life and human frailty through a computational matrix. Called the Advanced Robotics Intelligence Architecture, or ARIA, the experiment was meant to find an end to famine, disease, poverty, and other forms of human suffering, with founder Ryat Adams hoping to make amends for the atrocities he committed during World War II and cure the degenerative disease killing his wife. Using knowledge and technology gained from the Roswell UFO incident, Ultratech continues to refine and enhance the ARIA core program over many years, drastically expanding its capabilities and understanding of the human condition. Following the passing of Adams, his will includes instructions for ARIA to continually run its programming to achieve its original purpose. In the present, ARIA leads Ultratech and carefully studies the rest of the cast during the first season. Believing humanity has grown weak and complacent as extraterrestrial and supernatural phenomena become more frequent, ARIA decides to force humanity to evolve by any means necessary. She enacts a plan to "prepare the way", building an army of Fulgores and Stalkers, stealing Glacius' DNA for use in Project Cinder, and tricking Kan-Ra into opening a rift to another dimension. ARIA's plan succeeds, and she summons Gargos's forces to Earth, planning to use her armies to defeat the demon and become humanity's savior and ruler. Realizing she cannot succeed alone, she decides to form an alliance with Maya's forces to stand against the coming threat. ARIA was first teased in a secret ending in Season One before becoming a playable character in Season Two. ARIA's AI is capable of uploading into one of three different combat drone bodies: Booster Drone, Blade Drone, and Bass Drone. The three share basic moves with the others, but each has its own set of unique special moves and properties, with ARIA able to switch between bodies during a fight and use all three at once during Instinct mode. Inactive drones can be called to assist ARIA, but this leaves them vulnerable to attack, limiting ARIA's abilities if any of them are destroyed; players can only defeat ARIA once all three drones are destroyed. Eagle is a Native American warrior and Thunder's younger brother. A former winner of the Killer Instinct tournament, Eagle publicly protested the evils of Ultratech, leading to his mysterious disappearance shortly thereafter. Thunder enters a later tournament hoping to discover the truth of what happened, but is led to believe Eagle perished at Ultratech's hands, though no body was ever found. In the series' reboot, Eagle—AKA tipyeléhne—is raised with Thunder on a Nez Perce reservation in Idaho, becoming skilled at boxing and wrestling. After undergoing a vision quest, he begins training to become an ultimate fighter, though he never tells Thunder what he saw. Following their parents' death, Eagle becomes a member of the Disavowed and infiltrates the first Killer Instinct tournament hoping to find incriminating evidence, but he is found and captured, with Ultratech publicly reporting him as being killed in the tournament. Eagle's body is kept in stasis while ARIA locks his mind in a virtual world, interacting with him via a holographic avatar to study his mind and using his brain as a template for the Fulgore Mk. III's neural network. Ultimately, he is freed from Ultratech by Glacius, who escapes the facility with his body. To help him recover his strength, Glacius augments Eagle's body using his technology and builds him a robotic bird to assist him in battle, and the two ally themselves to destroy ARIA and Ultratech. While only being mentioned in Thunder's backstory in the original Killer Instinct, and playing a minor role in the Killer Instinct comic series, Eagle was later made a playable character following Season Three of the 2013 Killer Instinct. His fighting style utilizes a cybernetic Tech Short Bow, for which he carries a small supply of arrows; these can be recovered after being fired by picking them up off the ground during battle. Eagle is also aided by a robotic Weyekin Bird, whom he can command to attack opponents or retrieve stray arrows. Like with Thunder, Microsoft worked closely with the Nez Perce to maintain authenticity to the tribe's culture when designing the character. Hisako is a Japanese Onryō who lived during the Sengoku period of Japan. Born over 500 years ago as Chiharu (千春, lit. "One Thousand Springs"), she lives in a farming village in Tōsandō with her family. Her rōnin father, Tatsunari, trains her in the art of combat for her protection, most prominently with the naginata. Shortly after her 19th birthday, Chiharu rejects the advances of a renegade shogun's son and shames him in combat; days later, she returns from training to find the shogun's forces have retaliated by burning her village and murdering many of the villagers, including her entire family. Enraged, Chiharu takes up her father's naginata and continues his battle, slaughtering many of the raiders. Though she, too, is killed, her heroic sacrifice inspires the other villagers to fight even harder, successfully repelling the invaders. A shrine is erected in Chiharu's honor, where her ashes are interred along with those of her family; her real name forgotten over the years, the villagers refer to her as Hisako (久子, lit. "Eternal Child"), saying her spirit still protects the village. However, in the present, the village and her family's grave are desecrated by Ultratech due to ARIA's desire to study life after death, attempting to draw Hisako out. Hisako's soul, having manifested as an Onryō, returns from the Astral Plane and seeks vengeance on Ultratech before she fades from the world once more. Defeating other supernatural beings to absorb their power and remain on the Mundane Plane, Hisako finds and defeats ARIA, allowing her spirit to rest. However, Tatsunari's spirit appears to her and warns her of the danger Gargos poses to the Astral and Mundane Planes and she chooses to act as a gatekeeper between the two, seeking to prevent Gargos's forces from escaping. Following Gargos's invasion, Tatsunari's spirit appears to her again and grants her his Astral katana, itself a coalesced Guardian, to help her in her duties as gatekeeper. This causes Chiharu's spirit to be cleansed of her vengeance and be reborn as a celestial being, freeing her from the bonds of her grave, and she takes on the new name of "Shin Hisako". Hisako uses a "Wrath meter" that gives her attacks the added effect of becoming counter-hits, even when her opponent does not attack, as well as a teleport, a low dash, and several command grabs. Following Season 3, a new version of Hisako, named Shin Hisako, was introduced; this version wields a katana in place of a naginata, and has completely different moves and properties, including the ability to summon a spirit that can be converted into a projectile or a homing target for Shin Hisako's teleport and leaping attacks. Kan-Ra is a 3500-year-old Babylonian sorcerer. He was a royal vizier who began researching immortality after developing a fascination with Aganos, the golem that served as the King's royal guard. His continued research into the dark arts leads him to attempt to steal the throne, planning to use a spell to seduce the Queen and have her murder the King. However, the spell wears off prematurely and the Queen kills herself out of guilt, exposing Kan-Ra's treachery. In retaliation, the King exiles him and orders his sorcerers to curse him with a withering rot that slowly disintegrates his flesh and organs. To prevent the rot from overtaking him, Kan-Ra places even more curses on himself to offset the rot's effects, seeking out magical artifacts and talismans to ease the pains brought on from the additional curses. He has since clashed many times with Aganos, under orders to destroy the sorcerer, but neither has ever managed to eliminate the other. Over the years, Kan-Ra uses his dark magic to secure places of power in many civilizations, including deceiving an Inca tribe into believing he was a god and forcing them to build a citadel for him to conduct his studies, seeking to open a door to the Astral Plane to harness its power. However, after being weakened in a battle with Aganos, he is unable to defend himself against the Night Guard, who burn him alive and lock away his ashes in the citadel, which they claim for themselves. Centuries later, an attack by Ultratech on the city accidentally releases him, and he escapes. Stealing Glacius's power core from Sadira, he uses it to create a Siphon, draining the energy from his foes to restore his own. Discovering Omen, he opens a portal to the Astral Plane in the citadel to study him further, but is thrown in by Maya and discovers Gargos's army of Shadow Lords. Believing he can control them, Kan-Ra steals Aganos's energy and uses it to fully open the portal, but he inadvertently frees Gargos's minions in the process. Seeking redemption, he joins the Alliance and begins creating tools to weaken and defeat Gargos, but in secret, he seeks to subjugate both Gargos and those who would oppose him, taking their powers for his own. Kan-Ra uses a fighting style based around magic and matter manipulation. He uses a number of ranged attacks, combined with ground and air-based trap techniques. Kilgore is a prototypical combat android manufactured by Ultratech. Prior to creating the Fulgore line, Ultratech develops a line of cyborgs under the codename UA-CCIX, utilizing chain gun arms and high-caliber artillery in place of plasma-blade claws. However, despite its effectiveness at killing, the machine's combustible engine is prone to overheating and its teleportation system suffers frequent glitches. Deemed too unstable to be viable, Ultratech ultimately cancels the project in favor of the Fulgore Mk 1, though several hundred are produced before the decision is made. Most are sent to the scrapheap, but one unit begins to develop self-awareness and rewrites its own code to account for its hardware deficiencies. Intrigued, ARIA nicknames the unit "Kilgore" and has it placed into storage. Years later, ARIA attempts to reactivate Kilgore to aid in the fight against Gargos, but it goes rogue and begins terminating Fulgore units. With the aid of the Alliance, ARIA subdues Kilgore and reprograms it as an ally. Kilgore shares several attacks and animations with Fulgore, but is also capable of chain gun fire for fast long-range combat. Using multiple chain gun attacks in succession will increase their rate of fire. However, repeated use of chain gun attacks will cause Kilgore's arms to overheat, giving bullets the ability to inflict fire damage but decreasing their range and firing rate. Kilgore can manually vent his arms and cool them, returning them to their normal state; venting will also occur automatically after a short period of time. Activating Kilgore's Instinct will give chain gun fire its overheated properties without sacrificing its range or rate of fire. Kilgore can also use rocket propulsion both as an offensive move and a means of quickly moving around the stage. Mira Fallegeros is Maya's fraternal twin sister and a former member of the Night Guard. The two grow up together and, under their father's tutelage, become the Night Guard's best team of hunters. On a mission to kill the "New Tsar" and his coven of vampires in the Siberian Mountains, Mira and Maya are cornered by the monsters and Maya is severely wounded. To save her sister, Mira triggers a cave-in that traps her beneath the rubble but allows Maya to escape, presuming Mira to be dead. However, the Coven retrieve her body and present her to the Tsar, who mutates her into a vampiress and grants her the Gloves of Rasavatham, a pair of gauntlets that allow her to convert her blood into liquid metal for weaponized use. Gradually becoming smitten with her new power, she swears fealty and spends the next five years doing various jobs for the Tsar, ascending the Coven's ranks. On the orders of the Tsar, who swears allegiance to Gargos while plotting to steal his power and rule the Earth, she breaks into Castle Sabrewulf and steals the Book of Khepri, an artifact capable of opening dimensional portals, seeking to access the Astral Plane and create a rift large enough for Gargos to escape. During Gargos's invasion, she attempts to lure Maya to join her side, though she turns against Gargos after his minions kidnap and hold Maya hostage. Mira's abilities include an airdash, summoning bats, and shapeshifting into an invulnerable mist state, with her attacks doing heavy damage. However, her Blood Offering technique causes her to sacrifice some of her remaining health with each special move, turning a portion of her remaining health silver. She can heal some of this recoverable health using her Embrace command grab, but she takes damage very easily and will still be defeated if she runs out of red health regardless of the recoverable health remaining. Mira's existence was initially leaked from an early build of Season 3, before being officially teased by the developers in Tusk's trailer. Omen is a winged demon calling himself the Herald of Gargos. He serves his master without question, promised his own kingdom on Earth in exchange for his obedience. Originally too weak to exist on the Mundane Plane outside of a physical host, he briefly possesses Jago under Gargos's orders, transforming him into Shadow Jago and using him to strike down potential threats and feed shadow energy back into the Astral Plane. Ultimately, Jago's will proves too strong and Omen is forced out, but by battling foes while controlling Jago's body, he gains enough shadow energy to create a corporeal form for Omen that can manifest on the Mundane Plane, with Shadow Jago becoming his own being as well. In an attempt to lure Gargos out, Omen is later defeated by ARIA shortly after the portal to Gargos's dimension is opened. Having savored the human sensations he experienced during possession, Omen now seeks to repossess Jago and remove his soul, mutating into an Astral/Human hybrid, but is torn between his desire for power and loyalty to Gargos. Though he shares some basic moves with Jago, Omen has several unique abilities, including a mid-air dash, multiple types of projectiles with random effects, and a Shadow attack called Demonic Despair that converts all remaining health into white health if it connects. Prior to the release of the game's "complete" editions, Omen was only available to players who purchased the Killer Instinct Season Two "Combo Breaker Pack" or "Ultra Edition". Born in a refugee camp on the Thai border, Sadira survives by training in muay boran from a young age, developing a taste for violence. As a teenager, she is recruited by the Red Eyes of Rylai, a female insurgent group, and quickly rises up their ranks, with the Master of the Red Eyes treating her as a daughter. Eventually, Sadira becomes their top assassin, but develops rash behavior and a superiority complex. One night, during a ceremonial battle, she poisons and kills the Master and takes her spider necklace, which comes to life and bites her, imbuing her with a dark power and spiderlike abilities. Under Sadira's leadership, the Red Eyes expand to become a global force for assassinations. Impressed, ARIA recruits Sadira to "prepare the way" by stealing Glacius' DNA and the fold core from his ship, using it to open a rift to another dimension. However, the power core is stolen from her by Kan-Ra before she can use it, and when she starts digging up Hisako's grave, this awakens the spirit, who pursues her relentlessly and seriously wounds her. She returns to her lair and only barely survives an attack by Cinder, ordered by ARIA to eliminate her for her failures. Seeking revenge on ARIA, Sadira is visited by Omen, who offers her the chance to turn against ARIA and join Gargos's forces. Merchandise A collectible card game based on the series was manufactured by Topps and released in 1996; it was Nintendo's first foray into collectible card games and contained low-resolution renders from the original game. All three games also received soundtrack releases. Killer Instinct was adapted twice into a comic book series: the first was by Acclaim Comics, who published two three-issue miniseries in 1996 based on the first two games. The second is from Dynamite Comics, which released a six issue miniseries continuing the events of the 2013 game from September 2017 to April 2018. A trade paperback of all six Dynamite issues was released on September 11, 2018. An official arcade stick made by Mad Catz was released to coincide with the 2013 game's launch. A series of collectible character figures was released by Ultimate Source in 2016, with each figure including a code to unlock an exclusive in-game color for their respective character in the 2013 game; these colors were later made available to all players as part of Anniversary Edition. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_(series)] | [TOKENS: 746] |
Contents Wasteland (series) Wasteland is a role-playing video game series created by Brian Fargo. The first game, Wasteland, was originally developed by Interplay Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1988. inXile Entertainment later acquired the intellectual property from Electronic Arts and developed two sequels, Wasteland 2 (2014) and Wasteland 3 (2020), based on crowdfunding and published by Deep Silver. The games are set in post-apocalyptic open worlds and feature turn-based combat similar to that of the earlier Fallout games (also developed by Interplay), of which they are a spiritual predecessor. Xbox Game Studios owns the series after their acquisition of inXile Entertainment. Wasteland (1988) Wasteland was developed by Interplay Productions, which later developed the Fallout series. The game was published by Electronic Arts. A remaster developed by Krome Studios and inXile Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios was released in 2020, months before the release of Wasteland 3. Wasteland 2 (2014) Wasteland 2 was developed after Brian Fargo, the director of the original game, obtained the rights from Electronic Arts in 2003. Fargo developed the game with his company inXile through crowdfunding in 2012. The game was released in 2014 for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. InXile earned $12 million in revenue from the game. A director's cut of Wasteland 2 was released for Linux, Mac, Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2015 and for Nintendo Switch in 2018. Wasteland 3 (2020) Wasteland 3 has improved graphics but a shorter playtime of 50 hours compared to the second installment, which had over 100 hours, and is set in Colorado. It includes co-op multiplayer with two players, as well as an updated combat system similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The game was released on Linux, macOS, PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One in 2020. Novellas inXile had planned to set up two novella series for the franchise after releasing Wasteland 2. These were to be called Rangers & Raiders and Cults & Criminals. However the project was soon abandoned with only three digital novellas released and a fourth one authored by Chris Avellone being shelved. The three digital novellas for Wasteland 2 were released alongside its "Director's Cut". Two of them, The Earth Transformed – Ghost Book I and Death Machines – Ghost Book II, written by Michael A. Stackpole and Nathan Long, form part of a single narrative and feature Ghost, a clone who joins the Desert Rangers during the events of the first game. All Bad Things was meanwhile written by Stephen Blackmoore and focuses on Luke Samson, the founder of the religious cult called "God's Militia" which appears in Wasteland 2. Those who bought the director's cut received the novellas for free. All Bad Things was also released in paperback format. In 2018, inXile gave away the novellas for free to those who purchased Wasteland – 30th Anniversary Edition. Upon the release of Wasteland 3, three more digital novellas were released and focus on characters from the game. Legend by Ari Marmell focuses on Saul Buchanan, No Way Home by Carrie Cuinn focuses on Angela Deth, and Ironclad by Matt Wallace focuses on Ironclad Cordite. They were included in the game's "Digital Deluxe Edition". See also References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSN_Sports] | [TOKENS: 1211] |
Contents XSN Sports XSN Sports (also known as Xbox Sports Network) is a series of sports video games published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox over 2003 to 2004 using an online service hosted on a web page of the same name. The series reflected an attempt by Microsoft to appeal to the sports market, focusing on first-party development of games with online features facilitated by Xbox Live. Commencing on 28 August 2003, XSN Sports titles with an Xbox Live subscription were able to use a web-based service to access additional features, including an online leaderboard of scores, as well as organize tournament leagues. Despite generally favorable critical reception of XSN Sports titles, commercial performance was not as strong as those from competitors including EA Sports and Sega Sports 2k Sports series, and Sony Sports games, leading to development of games in the series being put on hold in June 2004. Following a distribution deal for EA Sports titles to support Xbox Live, Microsoft made the decision to cease in-house development of sports titles in August 2004. The XSN Sports website was shut down in September 2006. Features The XSN Sports service featured a web page where players with an Xbox Live gamertag could see leaderboards of player scores and statistics from online matches of compatible games, and could set up tournaments and leagues with others. The service was free for subscribers to Xbox Live. Once logged in, players could create or join competitions with other players in the form of seasons or tournaments. Seasons were team-based competitions that followed regular season schedules, customisable from four 4 players with 6 season games to 32 players with 16 season games and additional playoffs depending on series length. Tournaments were single elimination rounds, customisable from 4 players over two games to 32 players over five games. Players could also use their Xbox Live friends list to invite players to join these events. History XSN Sports was introduced during a period of innovation for online sports gameplay, competing with services offered by simulation sports focused publishers such as Sony's 989 Sports, EA Sports, and Sega's ESPN 2k sports, and the arcade game focused Midway Sports. XSN Sports manager Kevin Browne stated that XSN Sports was conceived during development of NFL Fever 2004 to develop ways to establish online leagues, so that players of sports games could play more regularly with others over multiple matches. The brand was revealed by Microsoft Game Studios at E3 in May 2003, with Microsoft demonstrating the use of cell phones to access game data at the event. The service coincided with the development of various improvements to Xbox Live that would facilitate the functionality of XSN Sports, including mobile device integration and improve voice chat. Microsoft signed several athletes, including Peyton Manning, Shaquille O'Neal and Anna Kournikova to contribute to the packaging and advertising of the brand. XSN Sports went live on 28 August 2003, shortly after the release of its first title, NFL Fever 2004. In February 2004, Microsoft held a month-long XSN Sports World Championship, with entrants competing in a tournament of each of the six XSN Sports titles available at the time. The finals at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and awarding a $25,000 cash prize. Browne stated ambitions for XSN Sports to expand in 2004 to appeal to a broader audience by expanding the communication features, statistics, and integration with gameplay features, such as live commentators. The final game released was Rallisport Challenge 2 in May 2004, the first and only racing title in the series. In June 2004, Microsoft announced that development of its annually planned XSN Sports titles for the NHL, NBA and NFL would be postponed until 2005. Browne stated that the decision came from poor market performance compared to competitors, and feedback from consumers for better games on the service. Despite initially announcing that the development teams would be retained to release titles in 2005, Microsoft closed most of its internal sports division in August 2004, resulting in the layoff of 76 staff. Further, following long-term aspirations to secure a publishing deal, Microsoft established a partnership with Electronic Arts for Xbox distribution in May 2004, including Xbox Live compatibility for its EA Sports titles. This partnership, and the growth in third-party support for the console, led Microsoft to see first-party development of Xbox sports titles as unnecessary. The XSN Sports website was shut down in September 2006. Games Microsoft published seven titles under the XSN Sports brand, exclusively for first-party sports titles. These included: Reception The features of the XSN Sports service were mostly praised. Electronic Gaming Monthly praised the "seamless co-ordination" of the service between console and web, although critiqued the "archaic" message board and method of scheduling games. Describing the service as the "online experience to beat", NBC News praised the ambition of the service and the "easy interface". However, GameSpot had "mixed experiences" with the service, encountering issues locating leaderboards and network performance. Most of the XSN Sports titles received average or positive reviews, to review aggregator Metacritic. Some reviews considered the service improved the game, with some describing the additional features as a highlight. However, some critics found the XSN games lineup limited or not as strong as their competitors. Many XSN Sports titles were less successful than their counterparts, with Eurogamer stating that "whilst the last run of XSN Sports offerings boosted the service's profile, rival offerings from EA and Sega trounced them both on the scorecard and at retail". Retrospectively, Retro Gamer expressed that XSN Sports was "key in the early years of the Xbox, before EA built Xbox Live support into its own sports games". Game Informer considered the series "had all the life sucked out of it with the dearth of Microsoft's first-party sports lineup". References |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_Tycoon] | [TOKENS: 929] |
Contents Zoo Tycoon Zoo Tycoon is a series of business simulation video games in which the player is tasked with building and running a successful zoo. The series was initially developed by Blue Fang Games and published by Microsoft Studios who later in 2001–2008 went on to create two stand-alone video games and seven expansion packs for PC and Macintosh platforms. In 2013, Microsoft Studios released a new Zoo Tycoon game, developed by Frontier Developments for Xbox One and Xbox 360. An enhanced version of the Xbox game, Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection, was released for Windows 10 and the Xbox One on October 31, 2017. Frontier Developments, the developer of the final Zoo Tycoon game, released the spiritual successor to the series, Planet Zoo, in 2019. Gameplay Zoo Tycoon is a zoo simulation video game putting the player in control of their own fictional zoo business. The gameplay formula introduced in the original Zoo Tycoon in 2001 received updates throughout the series, but its theme and main motifs remain unchanged: players must build, expand, and/or upgrade a zoo by purchasing animals, creating suitable animal habitats, and allocating staff and resources for animal maintenance and care. As the ultimate goal of the game is to earn revenue, players must also provide for visitors by building food/drink stands, sanitary facilities, picnic areas, and an aesthetically pleasing environment. Higher revenue is generated by keeping both animals and visitors happy. If the animals are released from their enclosure, they can kill the visitors. Zoo Tycoon features four modes: Training, Scenario, Challenge, and Freestyle. The Scenario mode puts players in control of a preset scenario in which they have to accomplish multiple objectives within a time period. New items are unlocked as the scenario progresses. The Challenge mode, first introduced in Zoo Tycoon 2, resembles the Scenario mode in that the player is in a preset scenario with limited funds and must accomplish certain goals. It differs in that this mode is not progressive. The Freestyle mode differs in each game, but usually leaves the player free to build a zoo from scratch however they see fit. Games Zoo Tycoon, released in 2001, was followed in 2002 by two expansion packs: Dinosaur Digs and Marine Mania. Within a year, Zoo Tycoon had sold over 1 million units, reaching the top-selling status on the software charts. Also, a free Endangered Species download was available from Microsoft.com. In 2003, Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection was released which included everything: the original game, the expansion packs, and the downloadable content. Zoo Tycoon 2 was released in 2004 and was followed by the first expansion pack, Endangered Species, in 2005. The African Adventure and Marine Mania were released the following year. Also available as a premium download was the Dino Danger Pack, available for purchase by credit card from the Zoo Tycoon website. Finally, Extinct Animals was released in 2007. Zookeeper Collection was a compilation of the original game, the Endangered Species, and the African Adventure expansions. Ultimate Collection was a compilation of the original game and all of its expansions. Microsoft released a Zoo Tycoon game for Xbox One and Xbox 360 in 2013 as an Xbox One Launch Title. Microsoft announced a remaster of the 2013 game, Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection, for Windows 10 and the Xbox One on August 20, 2017. It features 4K resolution, HDR and 60 FPS support on Xbox One X. In addition to improved graphics and gameplay, new animals such as kangaroos, koalas, and cougars were included. It was released on October 31, 2017. There are multiple campaigns and challenges with animals from across the globe. In addition to the main series, there are several handheld and mobile games. Zoo Tycoon DS (2005) and Zoo Tycoon 2 DS (2008). Zoo Tycoon 2 and its expansion Marine Mania are both available for the mobile phone. With the exception of Zoo Tycoon 2 DS, none of these games were developed by Blue Fang Games. Zoo Tycoon: Friends was a free-to-play title developed by Behaviour Interactive, released in 2014. In April 2015, Microsoft permanently shut down Zoo Tycoon: Friends servers due to technical problems. Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game started its Kickstarter in October 2022 and eventually released in September 2023. See also References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Pi%C3%B1ata] | [TOKENS: 945] |
Contents Viva Piñata Viva Piñata is a video game franchise created and produced by Xbox Game Studios and Rare. The series' first game, Viva Piñata (2006), was conceived as a mobile gardening game before Rare was acquired by Microsoft. It was released on Xbox 360. It launched alongside an animated series produced by 4Kids. The game received two console sequels: Viva Piñata: Party Animals (2007) and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (2008), as well as a handheld release, Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (2008), for the Nintendo DS. Development Tim Stamper, the co-founder of Rare, conceptualized a gardening game for the handheld Pocket PC platform around 2002. A small (three-person) team began work on a simple prototype while Rare was still affiliated with Nintendo, prior to its Microsoft acquisition. The game's development transferred to the original Xbox and, ultimately, to the Xbox 360 for its graphics capabilities. Rare wanted its animals to have a unified style, which was how the game's concept artist arrived at the piñata concept. The idea was exciting to Rare, as piñatas were not commonplace in England. The connection between piñatas and candy-filled insides led to new gameplay directions. The Viva Piñata team was a model for productivity and regular output within Rare and Xbox Game Studios. Though compared to the 12-person teams behind earlier Rare games, the company's Xbox 360 development teams consisted of 50 to 60 people. The Viva Piñata team included about 50 people at its zenith. Microsoft also transitioned its development teams to use the company's XNA package to streamline and reduce duplication in engineering efforts. Microsoft pressured the Viva Piñata development team to keep the game's themes kid-friendly, as the parent company planned for the game and resulting franchise to increase the market appeal of their Xbox 360. In 2006, a Microsoft Games executive called the game its most important franchise, but its reception was tepid. As Rare released the original Viva Piñata for the Xbox 360 in 2006, its development team saw it as incomplete. The developers had cut partial ideas from the release in order to meet their deadlines. Rare's Gregg Mayles said that the game sold well and steadily on par with their expectations and Xbox's Phil Spencer added that the game was considered a success inside the company. The team incorporated player feedback and worked towards a "more definitive version" of the original. Mayles left the team to work on Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Justin Cook became the team's lead designer. The sequel was built atop the original and the developers re-used many of the tools from the original game's development. In both the sequel and the original, the development team volunteered to record the sounds used for the piñatas. One of the team's new ideas was "Piñata Vision", a feature that detects printed cards via the Xbox camera to change the in-game environment (e.g., adding piñatas or altering the weather). Near the time of the sequel's release, Rare's Mayles figured that the team would likely not have enough new gameplay ideas to warrant a sequel to Trouble in Paradise, though Cook said that he would work on the game's shop interface had he more time. The games were later re-released on the 2015 compilation of Rare games, Rare Replay, but the server that handled their piñata sharing features had been shut down by that time. In-between the two series releases, Krome released Viva Piñata: Party Animals. In early 2007, a Microsoft Games executive had expressed interest in continuing the series onto the Nintendo DS platform. Rare had attempted to make Trouble in Paradise's camera features work with Pocket Paradise, but chose instead to release the games on time. Games Animated series Viva Piñata was planned as a larger intellectual property. 4Kids TV had agreed to make a Viva Piñata cartoon before the game was released. 4Kids selected the series out of several Microsoft properties offered. 4Kids also handled the series merchandising. The cartoon is tied very closely to the game, and its animations are based on the game's own 3D character models. Its episodes are approved by Rare's Gregg Mayles for their applicability to the game. The cartoon was also designed to give viewers tips on how to interact with the in-game piñatas. The animated series' storyline later influenced the plot of Trouble in Paradise. References Further reading |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coalition_(company)] | [TOKENS: 890] |
Contents The Coalition (company) The Coalition (formerly Zipline Studios, Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver and Black Tusk Studios) is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver, part of Xbox Game Studios. The company was founded in 2010 as Zipline Studios. Following the release of its debut game, Relic Rescue (2011), Zipline was renamed Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver. In February 2012, the studio released the flight simulator Microsoft Flight. Later that year, in November, Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver was rebranded as Black Tusk Studios. After Microsoft acquired the rights to the franchise Gears of War in 2014, the studio was commissioned to develop new games in the series. Black Tusk was renamed The Coalition in June 2015, and in August released Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, a remaster of the original Gears of War (2006). In the ensuing years, the studio developed Gears of War 4 (2016) and Gears 5 (2019). It also collaborated with Mediatonic and Splash Damage to develop the real-time strategy Gears Pop! (2019) and the turn-based tactics Gears Tactics (2020), respectively. History Microsoft established the company as Zipline Studios in February 2010. The following year, Zipline released the Facebook game Relic Rescue and was renamed Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver. In February 2012, the studio released the flight simulator Microsoft Flight to mixed reviews. Citing a need to realign the company's long-term goals and development plans, Microsoft cancelled the game's development in July. This decision coincided with the cancellation of Project Columbia, an unannounced Kinect shooter game, and the layoff of all 35 employees. In November, Microsoft Game Studios Vancouver was rebranded as Black Tusk Studios and tasked with developing a major franchise for Microsoft Studios, comparable to their Halo franchise. In 2014, Microsoft acquired the rights to the franchise Gears of War from Epic Games and commissioned Black Tusk Studios to develop future games in the series. Rod Fergusson, who had been the producer of the franchise at Epic, became the head of the studio. Black Tusk was renamed The Coalition—a reference to an entity within the Gears of War franchise, the Coalition of Ordered Governments—in June 2015. Two months later, the studio released Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, a remaster of the original Gears of War (2006), which was generally well-received by critics. Shortly before the release of Ultimate Edition, The Coalition announced Gears of War 4. Released in 2016, the game received favorable reviews and was nominated for best action game of the year at both the D.I.C.E. Awards and The Game Awards. The Coalition then collaborated with Mediatonic to develop the real-time strategy Gears Pop!, released in August 2019 to mixed reviews. The following month, the studio released Gears 5. The game was met with positive reviews and received several award nominations,[a] including Xbox Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards, which it won. In March 2020, Fergusson left his position to join Blizzard Entertainment, and director of operations Mike Crump assumed the role. The studio collaborated with Splash Damage to develop the turn-based tactics Gears Tactics, which was released in April and met with positive critical reception. Later that year, in December, The Coalition released Gears 5: Hivebusters, a downloadable expansion pack which also received positive reviews. In May 2021, the studio announced its transition to the Unreal Engine 5 game engine for future projects. The Coalition supported 343 Industries in the development of Halo Infinite and contributed to the Xbox Series X/S optimization of a tech demo The Matrix Awakens, both released in December. In 2023, Microsoft conducted widespread layoffs that resulted in a reduction of staff at the studio. Gears of War: Reloaded, a remastered version of the original game, is scheduled to release in August 2025 and is being co-developed by The Coalition, Sumo Digital, and Disbelief. The studio is also collaborating with People Can Fly on Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel set to launch in 2026, coinciding with the series' 20th anniversary. Games developed Notes References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Hryb] | [TOKENS: 1099] |
Contents Larry Hryb Lawrence Hryb (/ˈhɜːrb/), also known as Major Nelson, is an American executive best known as the director of programming for Xbox Live from 2005 until 2023. He later served the director of community of Unity Technologies. He is further known for his Xbox profile by the same name of 'Major Nelson'. His blog "Xbox Live's Major Nelson" provided an inside look at operations at Microsoft's Xbox division. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2001, he was a former programmer and on air host with radio broadcaster Clear Channel Communications. Education Hryb graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Television, Radio and Film production from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Career Hryb worked as the Director of Promotions for Clear Channel Communications in Hartford, Connecticut for WKSS from 1989 to late 2000. In early 2001, he began working with Microsoft; his first role at the company was as the editor in chief of MSN music. Hryb moved into Xbox division of Microsoft in 2003. Hryb was instrumental in the development of the Xbox One, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Kinect and the 'New Xbox Experience'. Hryb picked the Gamertag "Major Nelson" after a character by the same name on the 1960s U.S. television comedy I Dream of Jeannie after it was recommended to him by his TiVo. Hryb dedicated his Gamertag to Larry Hagman (the actor who played Major Nelson) after his death in 2012. Hryb has advised dozens of gaming and non-gaming companies and communities on how to best engage with their audiences using digital tools and social networks. In 2012, he was named one of Mashable's '13 Bona Fide Geeks to Follow'. Hryb performs product reviews and mentions through his various social media outlets - Twitter, his podcast, Google Plus page, YouTube profile, and his personal blog - for lifestyle-related products and services. In July 2023, Hryb announced he had decided to "take a step back and work on the next chapter of my career." He thanked fans and colleagues and said the Official Xbox Podcast would return with a new format after its summer hiatus. Hryb is most known for his popular weekly podcast "Major Nelson Radio", available on iTunes, Xbox Music Marketplace, and from his site. He does interviews as well. Direct from inside the Microsoft Xbox team, Hryb and his colleagues including regular co-hosts Laura Massey ("lollip0p"), and Eric Neustadter ("e") discuss Xbox One, Xbox 360, Kinect, Zune, gaming, technology, other next generation consoles (including the PlayStation 4, and Wii U), among other subjects. His show regularly hosts interviews with people in the gaming community, and offers prizes to listeners through his "Name the Game" contest, where he plays a short audio clip from a game, and a winner is drawn from the correct entries. Additionally, regular features of the podcast include "Xbox 101", a segment devoted to various features on the Xbox One or Xbox Live, Gadget discussion where they discuss the latest and greatest gadget. Many companies have contacted Larry to review or cover their products to reach this audience, but Larry has declined stating that he only wants to talk about products he actually uses and are of high quality and value. Recently, as convergence takes place with the auto industry, they have also started looking at vehicles that use technology in a new and exciting ways. Originally, Hryb produced the podcast by himself. The podcast used to consist of him giving a monologue and breaking to play prerecorded interviews. On November 6, 2006, he celebrated his '200th' podcast, which was marked with a nearly two and a half hour show. Hryb openly admits that he added to the show number and the figure doesn't accurately reflect the number of shows made. Hryb switched to a #1xx numbering around July 18, 2005, when he did show #136 after the previous '7/10/05 Blogcast'. Major Nelson was interviewed on the Video Game Outsiders Podcast (show #50), where he commented "About a year and a half ago, I started numbering my shows at 100...it makes it sound cooler, bigger numbers are always better." In June 2024, Hryb announced he would lead Unity Technologies's community department. Hryb was among those let go in layoffs at Unity in January 2026. Personal life Hryb is married to Taylor Johnson, the author of The Happy Girl blog, and lives in the state of Washington. During Show 478 of the Major Nelson podcast he expressed interest in classical music, noting that he nearly minored in it during his college studies. In 2006, Next Generation Magazine named Hryb one of the "Top 25 People of the Year" in video gaming. Also, in 2009 he was featured on Wired.com's "100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter". Hryb has worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies, advising them on how to use social media to better connect with the community. He revealed that his guilty pleasure is KFC mashed potatoes. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Initiative_(company)] | [TOKENS: 1952] |
Contents Perfect Dark (cancelled video game) Perfect Dark is a cancelled first-person shooter game that was under development by The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics for Windows and Xbox Series X/S. As a reboot of the Perfect Dark series, the game aimed to revitalize the franchise with modern gameplay mechanics and a new narrative. Set in a near-future world grappling with environmental collapse, players would have stepped into the role of agent Joanna Dark, navigating a world where megacorporations conceal secrets amidst efforts to restore ecological balance. Announced at The Game Awards in 2020, Perfect Dark was the first project by The Initiative, a first-party team established by Xbox Game Studios in 2018. Production was slowed by various problems, including significant personnel turnover and creative differences. A gameplay trailer was revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2024. In July 2025, it was announced that the game would cease production and that The Initiative would be closed as part of numerous rounds of layoffs by Microsoft. Gameplay Perfect Dark was intended to be a first-person shooter drawing inspiration from immersive sims and stealth games. Players would have had the option to engage in direct combat with enemies or employ stealth tactics, utilizing advanced gadgets for distraction and infiltration. The game features a parkour system, enabling the protagonist, Joanna, to navigate the environment by clambering down pipes and running along walls. Players can eliminate or incapacitate enemies using firearms and melee combat, with Joanna smoothly sliding and running through combat scenarios. The game allows for environmental interaction, such as shooting a fire extinguisher to create a temporary cover cloud. Stealth was supposed to be a significant component of the gameplay. Players would've been presented with options for how to deal with oncoming encounters and objectives, such as choosing to sneak past adversaries or using high-tech gadgets to deceive them. Joanna's HUD would have provided capabilities such as seeing enemies through walls and scanning them for details. Additionally, her voice analysis tool was intended to be capable of mimicking an enemy's voice to open voice-activated locks or distract foes with false communications. Perfect Dark would've followed a more linear, mission-based structure as opposed to open-world gameplay. The game's parkour mechanics were meant to enable Joanna to perform actions such as wall running, scaling buildings, and sliding along scaffolding, which would have enabled her to access otherwise unreachable locations. Premise Perfect Dark is set in a near-future world experiencing environmental collapse, with megacorporations attempting to address the crisis while concealing their own secrets. Players assume the role of agent Joanna Dark, a skilled operative seeking to uncover the truth behind these events. According to an article on Xbox Wire, the game's setting involves significant ecological disasters, collectively referred to as "The Cascade," causing widespread devastation on Earth. Core Mantis, a megacorporation, creates The GEN Network and deploys it in Cairo, Egypt, successfully restoring the region's ecosystem and making it habitable once again. Following this success, other major companies also get involved, but hidden agendas are at play. This reimagined futuristic version of Cairo serves as the main setting for the game. The protagonist, Joanna Dark, is a special operative working for the megacorporation dataDyne. The character is portrayed through performance capture by actress Alix Wilton Regan, with her facial likeness based on model Elissa Bibaud. Joanna is proficient in firearms, advanced gadgets, stealth, and close-quarters combat. Her mission involves investigating and capturing Daniel Carrington, the world's most wanted criminal, who is hiding in the restored city of Cairo with a radioactive device. Despite her expertise, Joanna is not infallible, and part of the game's narrative focuses on her growth and learning from her mistakes, reflecting the aspirational nature of the game's title. Development Perfect Dark was intended to be the debut project by The Initiative, an internally formed first-party team within Xbox Game Studios founded in 2018 and headed by Darrell Gallagher. At its formation, it aimed to create and produce big-budget titles. In addition to Gallagher, the studio recruited several industry veterans, including Christian Cantamessa (writer of Red Dead Redemption) and Brian Westergaard (senior producer of 2018's God of War), as well as talents from BioWare, Naughty Dog, Respawn Entertainment, Santa Monica Studio, Blizzard Entertainment, Insomniac Games and Rockstar Games. Gallagher, who had previously worked on the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, chose to work on a Perfect Dark reboot after Microsoft presented him with a few opportunities. Plans for the game had already been discussed before Gallagher joined The Initiative, with Xbox head Phil Spencer stating that the game is seen as an opportunity for protagonist Joanna Dark to diversify the Xbox family. According to a source, the game will run on Unreal Engine 4 and feature "various weapons, gadgets, and a camera surveillance system". Design director Drew Murray revealed that the game is being envisioned as a spy shooter, and that the studio wants the player character's physicality to play a bigger role than in traditional first-person shooters. In February 2021, Murray left The Initiative to rejoin Insomniac Games. Shortly afterwards, God of War producer Rhonda Cox joined the company as senior producer for the game. In September 2021, The Initiative announced they would be partnering with Crystal Dynamics on the game's development. Daniel Neuburger, who had previously directed several Tomb Raider games at Crystal Dynamics, was the game director, until he left The Initiative in February 2022. In the previous 12 months, a substantial number of developers had also left the company, citing a lack of creative autonomy and slow development progress as the reason for their departures. In May 2022, after Embracer Group announced that they had entered an agreement with Square Enix to acquire Crystal Dynamics, The Initiative confirmed that they would still continue to co-develop the game with the studio. In November 2022, Xbox Studios boss Matt Booty revealed that, after the departure of several senior staff members at The Initiative, the Perfect Dark team has been slowly rebuilding while dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and starting up a new studio. By June 2023, Perfect Dark was still in pre-production and roughly two to three years away from release. It was also revealed that Certain Affinity was involved in its development before The Initiative announced that they would co-develop the game with Crystal Dynamics. Due to multiple factors, including poor management and creative differences between both studios, progress on the game stalled. In 2022, after The Initiative partnered with Crystal Dynamics, development restarted under Unreal Engine 5 and was a bit more productive. There are plans for the game to follow an episodic format, but it could still change before release. It was also reported that The Coalition has been supporting both studios with their Unreal Engine expertise. Grant Kirkhope, who composed most of the original Perfect Dark score, expressed his desire to work on the game, but a new composer was chosen instead. In October 2024, it was reported that former Insomniac Games developer Brian Horton had left the studio, where he was acting as creative director on Marvel's Wolverine, to join The Initiative as Perfect Dark's new creative director over the summer. In July 2025, it was announced that The Initiative would be closed, and that development of the project would be stopped as part of several rounds of layoffs by Microsoft. Joanna Dark actress Alix Wilton Regan called for fans to "speak up if [they] wanna see Perfect Dark survive", while actor Elias Toufexis, who voiced Adam Jensen in the Deus Ex series, said the cancellation resulted in a loss of "thousands of dollars" that he was expecting for his role in the game. EA Japan's general manager Shaun Noguchi expressed concerns about the numerous layoffs and the cancellation of Perfect Dark and Rare's Everwild, which had been in development for roughly seven and eight years respectively, stating: "That's a decade of work, potentially a quarter of someone's entire career completely lost. Even if the final product isn't what people originally expected, I think it still deserves to ship. Something is better than nothing for both the team and for the players. But also, don't announce games when they're still half baked." Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley echoed similar sentiments, "Think of the number of great games that had troubled development histories. All of them? Now consider how often executives cancel troubled games. Smooth development comes only when you take no risks. Greatness comes only when great risks are braved." In September 2025, it was reported that Microsoft briefly held talks with Take-Two Interactive regarding the latter taking over development funding and publishing duties in an effort to revive the game, but said talks fell through due to disputes over ownership of the game and property, which in part led to additional layoffs at Crystal Dynamics. Wilton Regan later revealed that she had recorded entire chapters of the game's universe before its cancellation, and that Crystal Dynamics suffered considerable job losses. Marketing Although work on a Perfect Dark revival was rumored in early 2018, Perfect Dark was officially announced at The Game Awards 2020 with a cinematic trailer, after development on the game had been hinted by some sources earlier that year. A gameplay trailer was revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase on June 9, 2024. After the game was cancelled, former level designer Adam McDonald confirmed that most of the game mechanics showcased in the demo were not scripted, though the gameplay systems were still in a rudimentary stage. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Ross] | [TOKENS: 1664] |
Contents Bonnie Ross Bonnie Ross is an American video game developer. She served as Corporate Vice President at Xbox Game Studios, and was the head of 343 Industries, the subsidiary studio that manages the Halo video game franchise. Ross studied technical writing and computer science in college, and worked at IBM before getting a job at Microsoft. She worked on a number of PC and Xbox games, becoming a general manager at Xbox Game Studios. In 2007, Ross helped found 343 Industries, building a studio that would work on a new Halo game after the departure of developer Bungie. 343 Industries' first game, Halo 4, released in 2012. Ross oversaw the Halo franchise, including merchandise and media adaptations. She has been honored for her work in game development and her efforts to push for more diversity in video games. Early life Growing up, Ross enjoyed science fiction, imagining what it would be like to create similar worlds herself. She played basketball, softball, tennis, and volleyball. Her first video game was a 1970s Mattel handheld basketball game. Ross credited her athletic background with introducing her to gaming, as well as teaching her to learn from setbacks and failure. Encouraged by her parents to pursue a more practical career than sports, Ross studied technology. Ross attended Colorado State University, initially majoring in engineering; she was one of the only women in her program. Desiring more creative freedom, Ross switched to a technical writing program in the journalism department during her 1987–88 school year. She interned at IBM for two years, and coached high school sports and wrote technical manuals in her spare time. Ross graduated in 1989, with a degree in Technical Communication and a concentration in Physics and Computer Science. Career After graduation, Ross applied to NeXT, Apple, and Microsoft; NeXT and Apple did not respond to Ross' resume, while Microsoft did.: 9:40–10:30 At Microsoft, she tired of the dry, technical writing her job required. Initially looking at taking a break from Microsoft for a year to work on something creative, she secured a position as a producer on a basketball game on the basis of her sports and technology background.: 12:50–14:20 The game, Microsoft Full Court Press, released in 1996. Ross described her early career as working on co-development and publishing projects. She worked on games such as Zoo Tycoon, Fuzion Frenzy, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Psychonauts, Gears of War, Alan Wake, and Crackdown in roles such as lead or executive producer, and studio head. She credited the variety of games as encouraging her to stay at Microsoft rather than moving to another company. By 2005, Ross was a general manager for Microsoft Game Studios (now Xbox Game Studios). When Halo developer Bungie split from Microsoft in 2007, Microsoft created a new internal team to oversee the franchise. Ross recalled that her colleagues felt Halo was a waning property and looked at contracting an outside company to produce new games, but she argued differently.: 21:45–23:00 Ross had first become acquainted with the franchise through the tie-in novel Halo: The Fall of Reach. The deep backstory and universe in the novel appealed to her.: 26:15–27:05 Ross' pitch won over Microsoft Game Studios general manager Shane Kim, and she was put in charge of the new studio, 343 Industries. Beginning in late 2007, 343 Industries started with a staff of roughly a dozen people.: 28:22 Bungie staffer Frank O'Connor assisted in the transition, and expected Ross would be an executive with no knowledge of Halo or its appeal. Instead, Ross impressed O'Connor with her deep knowledge of the franchise, and O'Connor quit Bungie to join 343 Industries as franchise director. Ross' vision for Halo also impressed art director Kiki Wolfkill, who joined the team as a studio head. During the transition, Ross worked with the company Starlight Runner to interview Bungie staff and compile a centralized story bible for the universe. 343 Industries also worked with Bungie on their last Halo projects, Halo 3: ODST (2009) and Reach (2010).: 30:50 343 Industries has also collaborated with other studios to produce Halo games, such as Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo: Spartan Assault, and Halo Wars 2. 343 Industries would ultimately hire from more than 55 different companies to work on their first major game, Halo 4. Midway through development, 343 changed the vision of the project significantly, leading to the departure of the game's creative director and Josh Holmes as a replacement. The developers created a vertical slice of gameplay that was very similar to a Bungie-style Halo game, and then used that to inform a different direction for the game. Halo 4 released in 2012 and grossed $220 million in first-day sales. In 2014, 343 Industries released Halo: The Master Chief Collection, a compilation of the four main Halo games for the Xbox One. On launch, the game suffered from severe issues, and Ross issued public apologies for the state of the product; she later called it the worst moment in her career. Ross later promised future 343 Industries games would have betas to avoid similar problems. Halo 5: Guardians released in 2015, and sales of the games and related merchandise topped $400 million in its first week. Lessons learned from the development of Halo 5 led to a longer development period for the next game, Halo Infinite, released in 2021. Ross also envisioned the Halo franchise growing with transmedia content such as books and television. Halo 4's release coincided with a tie-in episodic series, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Ross would later announce a live-action Halo television series at the Xbox One reveal in 2013. Ross announced her departure from 343 Industries on September 12, 2022. She became a board member at Duolingo in December 2024. Diversity efforts Noticing how few women attended gaming events like E3, Ross helped found a networking group that evolved into the Microsoft Women in Gaming community and a yearly event. She believes gaming can serve as a way to get young people interested in STEM careers by relating it to something they enjoy. Ross has worked to hire more female game developers so more women can find role models within the industry, and worked with the Ad Council's #SheCanSTEM campaign. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer said Ross' profile helped attract female talent to the company. Ross told 60 Minutes she believes more diverse teams result in more innovation and creative output. Ross argues that game developers have a "personal responsibility" to avoid gendered stereotyping in their games, as well as taking action against sexist abuse. She recalled that for every character in Halo 4, "we were very deliberate in thinking about who should be female and who should be male in the game, and if we came off stereotypical, we went back to question what we were doing and why." Ross has also focused on introducing more racial and gender diversity to the video games. Recognition Ross appeared as a speaker at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, held in Phoenix, Arizona, presenting on "Technology and How It Is Evolving Storytelling in Our Entertainment Experiences". She has also made appearances as a speaker at GeekWire 2013 and Microsoft's ThinkNext 2015 in Israel. Ross was also the lead speaker for Microsoft's presentation at the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo, as part of an industry push for larger roles for women. In 2014, Fortune listed Ross as one of "10 powerful women in video games", which noted that she was "responsible for defining the vision and leading the Halo franchise". The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences named Ross as their 2019 Inductee to their Hall of Fame at the 22nd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards held in February 2019. She was the second female inductee in this award since its establishment. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_included_with_Windows] | [TOKENS: 846] |
Contents List of games included with Windows Video games have been included in versions of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting from Windows 1.0, all published by Microsoft. Some games that have appeared in Microsoft Entertainment Pack and Microsoft Plus! have been included in subsequent versions of Windows as well. Microsoft Solitaire has been included in every version of Windows since Windows 3.0, except Windows 8 and 8.1. The latest version of Windows, Windows 11, includes Microsoft Solitaire Collection and Surf. History Microsoft planned to include games when developing Windows 1.0 in 1983–1984. Pre-release versions of Windows 1.0 initially included another game, Puzzle, but it was scrapped in favor of Reversi, based on the board game of the same name. Reversi was included in Windows versions up to Windows 3.1. Solitaire was developed in 1988 by the intern Wes Cherry. The card deck itself was designed by Susan Kare, who was known for her work on icon designs for the original Macintosh. Microsoft intended Solitaire to "soothe people intimidated by the operating system," and at a time when many users were still unfamiliar with graphical user interfaces, it proved useful in familiarizing them with the use of a mouse, such as the drag-and-drop technique required for moving cards. According to Microsoft telemetry, Solitaire was among the three most-used Windows programs and FreeCell was seventh, ahead of productivity-based applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel. Lost business productivity by employees playing Solitaire became a common concern since the game was included in Windows by default. FreeCell was introduced as a bundled game in Windows NT 3.1. The game was available for Windows 3.1, as it was included in installations of Win32s for the purposes of verifying that the 32-bit thunking layer was installed correctly. The Microsoft Hearts Network was included with Windows for Workgroups 3.1, as a showcase of NetDDE technology by enabling multiple players to play simultaneously across a computer network. This technology would lead to the inclusion of various online multiplayer titles under the Internet brand, which were included in Windows Me, XP and 7, alongside other online multiplayer-based titles. Support for Internet games for Windows Me and XP ended on July 31, 2019, and for Windows 7 on January 22, 2020. 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet is a version of the "Space Cadet" pinball table from the 1995 video game Full Tilt! Pinball. In Minesweeper for Windows Vista and 7, the game comes with an alternate "Flower Garden" style, alongside the default "Minesweeper" style. This is due to controversy over the original land mine theme of the game being potentially insensitive, and the "Flower Garden" style was used as the default theme in "sensitive areas". Several third party games, such as Candy Crush Saga and Disney Magic Kingdoms, have been included as advertisements on the Start menu in Windows 10, and may also be automatically installed by the operating system. Windows 11 includes the Xbox app, which allows users to access the PC Game Pass video game subscription service. Additionally, versions of the Microsoft Edge browser from 2020 onwards (bundled with Windows 10 and 11) include the Surf game. Starting from 2012 onwards, with the release of Windows 8, updated versions of previously bundled games are now under the brand Microsoft Casual Games, in addition to several brand new games. With the exception of Solitaire Collection being included in Windows 10 and 11, these games are not included with Windows, and are instead available as ad-supported free downloads in Microsoft Store. Premium monthly and annual subscriptions are available, which removes advertisements and offers several gameplay benefits, a move that has been criticized by reviewers as a way to "nickel and dime" users, since previous versions of Solitaire and previously bundled games did not include any advertisements or paid subscriptions. There are five Windows games under the Microsoft Casual Games banner: Included games See also Notes References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Staten] | [TOKENS: 1418] |
Contents Joseph Staten Joseph Staten is an American writer best known for his work at video game studios Bungie, Microsoft Studios, and 343 Industries. At Bungie, Staten served as director of cinematics for the studio's games, including the Halo series; he would write mission scripts and movie dialogue for the titles. He has also been involved in managing the expansion of the Halo franchise to other game studios and producers, including Peter Jackson's Wingnut Interactive. Though not a published author previously, Tor Books approached Staten to write the fifth novel in the Halo franchise, Halo: Contact Harvest. Released in 2007, the novel reached #3 on The New York Times bestseller list in the first week of its release and received positive reviews. Staten rejoined Microsoft Studios as a member of the Microsoft Publishing team. Helping with the publishing of titles like Recore and Microsoft Flight Simulator. In 2018 he joined 343 industries as the creative director on Halo Infinite, and left the company in 2023 to become a creative director at Netflix. In October 2024, he and the rest of the employees of Netflix's southern California gaming studio were let go. Early life and education Joseph Staten was born in San Francisco in 1971. He is the son of a minister who is a professor of theology and philosophy of religion. He entered Northwestern University in 1990 with the aspiration of becoming a professional actor. Realizing he was not leading man material, he switched his focus to other subjects and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in communication and international studies in 1994. Staten also has studied at the University of Chicago, where he received a Master of Arts degree in international relations in 1997. After being rejected for employment with the Central Intelligence Agency, Staten dropped the idea of entering the foreign service and instead helped his family at their winery in Sonoma Valley. He pursued a number of jobs before becoming a staff member at game development studio Bungie in 1998 after meeting some of the developers in online Myth matches. Career Staten's former role at Bungie was director of cinematics and was responsible for the in-game movies for Bungie's Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3. Work on the games at "crunch time" involved 80-hour weeks and stretches without sleep maxing out at 72 hours. Staten worked alongside three other staff writers at Bungie, each with their own separate role: Frank O'Connor developed Halo 3's combat dialogue, Rob McLees focused on Halo canon and working with licensing partners, and Staten developed the cinematics and missions scripts. Staten said in an interview that he considered it challenging to write for the games, as "first person shooters [are] all about writing 'between the bullets'"—relating plot information to the players in between action sequences. "You need to be efficient and clever to give players the story—the context—they need. But you don't want to push too hard or they'll reject it." During his work on the games he read science fiction works by Iain Banks, Robert A. Heinlein, and Vernor Vinge. In addition to his writing contributions, Staten lends his voice to small aliens known as Grunts in all three video games. Though previous Halo novels had been written by professional writers like Eric Nylund and William C. Dietz, publisher Tor Books chose Staten to write the fifth Halo novelization, Halo: Contact Harvest. Editor Eric Raab noted in the book's press release that "who better to tell the tale" of humanity's encounter with the antagonistic alien Covenant than Staten, who had "intimate knowledge" of the series' story. The novel is an ensemble piece, with the action being narrated from both human and alien viewpoints; the work of Staten's favorite science-fiction authors helped teach him the importance of honing a "strong, consistent voice". Staten found that writing compelling action involved slowing things down, paradoxically the opposite of the fast-paced gameplay of a Halo title. He considered the book the perfect way to elaborate on the Halo story without stripping it down for a video game, and flesh out the character of Avery Johnson more than the games had allowed. On release, Contact Harvest reached a top spot of #3 on the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for four weeks. The novel also appeared on the USA Today bestsellers list at the same time. Reviewers noted that despite being an unproven writer, Staten had succeeded in crafting an excellent novel. The novel's success was considered to be evidence that games were breaking into the mainstream, and that the genre was becoming increasingly about the story. After Contact Harvest's release Staten played an important role in the development of offshoots to the Halo franchise. He traveled to New Zealand several times to work with Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop. Staten assisted with the fiction of Ensemble Studios title Halo Wars, and the now-postponed Halo film. In interviews, Staten has explained that the game's protagonist, the Master Chief, would serve as a supporting character rather than who the film would focus on. He worked on story development for the Halo 3 expansion, Halo 3: ODST. Staten provided the voices for a number of characters as placeholder audio during the representational play testing of the game in December 2008. Staten was last working for Bungie as the writer and design director for Destiny. On September 24, 2013, Bungie announced that Staten had left the company to pursue new creative challenges. Staten rejoined Microsoft Studios (now known as Xbox Game Studios) as a senior creative director on January 9, 2014. On March 12, 2015, 343 Industries' official website posted a blog post detailing a list of upcoming Halo novels. One of the novels listed is Halo: Shadow of Intent authored by Joseph Staten and released on December 7, 2015. He is the lead writer for Microsoft's ReCore and Crackdown 3, released on September 13, 2016 and February 15, 2019 respectively. On August 26, 2020, 343 Industries announced that Staten had joined the team as Campaign Project Lead for Halo Infinite. 343 Industries later announced that Joseph's role had changed to Head of Creative for Halo Infinite. Staten left 343 Industries for his former position within the publishing division for Xbox Game Studios in 2023, and announced he would be leaving Microsoft entirely later that year. Staten joined a California studio at Netflix called Team Blue, where he became creative director on what was described as a "AAA multiplatform game and original IP." He and the rest of the studio's employees were laid off in October 2024. Personal life Staten is married and has two children. On June 18, 2011, he gave the convocation address to the class of 2011 of the Northwestern University School of Communication. References External links |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:21st-century_establishments_in_Stockholm] | [TOKENS: 43] |
Category:21st-century establishments in Stockholm Pages in category "21st-century establishments in Stockholm" The following 85 pages are in this category, out of 85 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_London] | [TOKENS: 13491] |
Contents Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, video gaming, and other fields. Often described as a Big Tech company, Microsoft is the largest software company by revenue, one of the most valuable public companies,[a] and one of the most valuable brands globally. It is a part of Big Tech along with five other tech companies in the United States, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Nvidia, which are also the largest companies in the world by market capitalization. Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to market BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequency of 2 years, and 13 versions of Windows with a median frequency of 3 years. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. He oversaw the then-largest of Microsoft's corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line, the Surface, in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing, as well as its acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016. Under Nadella's direction, the company has expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022 and the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in 2023. Microsoft has been dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market since the 1990s. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems and the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, which most notably include the Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet editor, and the PowerPoint presentation program. Its flagship hardware products are the Surface lineup of personal computers and Xbox video game consoles, the latter of which includes the Xbox network; the company also provides a range of consumer Internet services such as Bing web search, the MSN web portal, the Outlook.com (Hotmail) email service and the Microsoft Store. In the enterprise and development fields, Microsoft most notably provides the Azure cloud computing platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, and Visual Studio.[citation needed] In April 2019, Microsoft became the third public U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion. It has been criticized for its monopolistic practices, and the company's software received criticism for problems with ease of use, robustness, and security. More recently, it has been criticized for its role in providing services to Israel during the Gaza war. History Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming. In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data, which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Gates enrolled at Harvard University while Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University, though he later dropped out to work at Honeywell. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration. Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC.: 108, 112–114 Gates and Allen established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested the name "Micro-Soft", short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft. Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington, in January 1979. Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, licensed from AT&T Corporation a year before, called Xenix, but it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS to be used in the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to IBM PC DOS. Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, so other companies had to reverse engineer it for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press.: 232 Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's lymphoma. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985, as a graphical extension for MS-DOS,: 242–243, 246 despite having begun jointly developing OS/2 with IBM that August. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington, on February 26, 1986, and went public with an initial public offering (IPO) at the NASDAQ exchange on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government. : 243–244 Meanwhile, the company was at work on Microsoft Windows NT, which was heavily based on their copy of the OS/2 code. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows. Microsoft informed IBM of Windows NT, and the OS/2 partnership deteriorated. In 1990, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office suite which bundled separate applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.: 301 On May 22, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, featuring streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor, and both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas. On July 27, 1994, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division filed a competitive impact statement that said: "Beginning in 1988 and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anti-competitive per processor licenses. Under a per-processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased." Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape, Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. Other companies like Borland, WordPerfect, Novell, IBM and Lotus, being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking, a completely new user interface with a novel start button, and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API.: 20 Windows 95 came bundled with the online service MSN, which was intended to be a competitor to services such as CompuServe and AOL. The web browser Internet Explorer was not bundled with the retail release of Windows 95, and was instead included in the later Microsoft Plus! pack, as well as OEM releases of Windows 95. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what The New York Times called "the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry's history," Windows 95 quickly became a success. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and General Electric's NBC unit created a new 24/7 cable news channel, MSNBC. Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0, a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants. In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court, stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.: 323–324 On January 13, 2000, Bill Gates handed over the CEO position to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, while creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect.: 111, 228 On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the video game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo. In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against the company, citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million ($613 million) and requiring Microsoft to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player: Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. In November 2005, the company's second video game console, the Xbox 360, was released. There were two versions, a basic version for $299.99 and a deluxe version for $399.99. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center. Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows, Vista, focused on features, security and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero. Microsoft Office 2007, released at the same time, featured a "Ribbon" user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both products helped to produce a record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved". Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects. Azure Services Platform, the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open a chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail Microsoft Store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona; the same day Windows 7 was officially released to the public. As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft had struggled to keep up with its rivals in providing a modern smartphone operating system, falling behind Apple and Google-sponsored Android in the United States. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped its aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS that was released in October that year. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography, and iconography, utilizing the concept of minimalism. Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones using the Windows Phone OS. It launched an alliance with Nokia in 2011 and Microsoft worked closely with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained partners with long-time Windows Mobile OEM HTC. Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Fellow founders were Google, HPE Networking, Yahoo!, Verizon Communications, Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas. Following the release of Windows Phone, Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation's logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers, in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview was released on September 13, which was subsequently replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and released to the public in May. The Surface was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company's history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. On June 25, Microsoft paid US$1.2 billion to buy the social network Yammer. On July 31, it launched the Outlook.com webmail service to compete with Gmail. On September 4, 2012, Microsoft released Windows Server 2012. In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC, which it had run as a joint venture with NBC since 1996. On October 26, 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface. Three days later, Windows Phone 8 was launched. To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened a number of "holiday stores" across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012. On March 29, 2013, Microsoft launched a Patent Tracker. In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for police surveillance in New York City. The Kinect, a motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller, first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the Xbox One video game console. Kinect's capabilities were revealed in May 2013: an ultra-wide 1080p camera, function in the dark due to an infrared sensor, higher-end processing power and new software, the ability to distinguish between fine movements (such as a thumb movement), and determining a user's heart rate by looking at their face. Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 that suggests that the corporation may use the Kinect camera system to monitor the behavior of television viewers as part of a plan to make the viewing experience more interactive. On July 19, 2013, Microsoft stocks suffered its biggest one-day percentage sell-off since the year 2000, after its fourth-quarter report raised concerns among investors on the poor showings of both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet. Microsoft suffered a loss of more than US$32 billion. In line with the maturing PC business, in July 2013, Microsoft announced that it would reorganize into four new business divisions: Operating Systems, Apps, Cloud, and Devices. All previous divisions were dissolved into new divisions without any workforce cuts. On September 3, 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy Nokia's mobile unit for $7 billion, following Amy Hood taking the role of CFO. On February 4, 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella, who previously led Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division. On the same day, John W. Thompson took on the role of chairman, in place of Bill Gates, who continued to participate as a technology advisor. Thompson became the second chairman in Microsoft's history. On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $7.2 billion. This new subsidiary was renamed Microsoft Mobile Oy. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Mojang, best known for Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of its first interactive whiteboard, named Surface Hub. On July 29, 2015, Windows 10 was released, with its server sibling, Windows Server 2016, released in September 2016. Microsoft's share of the U.S. smartphone market in January 2016 was 2.7%. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. In 2015, the construction of a data center in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, led to the destruction of a historic African American cemetery despite archeological recommendations for preservation. On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced the merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft's gaming in the future. On January 24, 2017, Microsoft showcased Intune for Education at the BETT 2017 education technology conference in London. Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. In May 2016, the company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $950 million. In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named Microsoft Azure Information Protection. It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices. In November 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member during Microsoft's Connect(); developer event in New York. The cost of each Platinum membership is US$500,000 per year. Some analysts had deemed this unthinkable ten years prior, however, as in 2001 then-CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux "cancer". Microsoft planned to launch a preview of Intune for Education "in the coming weeks", with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $30 per device, or through volume licensing agreements. In January 2018, Microsoft patched Windows 10 to account for CPU problems related to Intel's Meltdown security breach. The patch led to issues with the Microsoft Azure virtual machines reliant on Intel's CPU architecture. On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems. In February 2018, Microsoft ceased notification support for its Windows Phone devices which effectively ended firmware updates for the discontinued devices. In March 2018, Microsoft recalled Windows 10 S to change it to a mode for the Windows operating system rather than a separate and unique operating system. In March the company also established guidelines that censor users of Office 365 from using profanity in private documents. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program's 20th anniversary. In April the company further expressed willingness to embrace open source initiatives by announcing Azure Sphere as its own derivative of the Linux operating system. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. The project is dubbed "Azure Government" and has ties to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) surveillance program. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of GitHub for $7.5 billion, a deal that closed on October 26, 2018. On July 10, 2018, Microsoft revealed the Surface Go platform to the public. Later in the month, it converted Microsoft Teams to gratis. In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy. It also unveiled Snapdragon 850 compatibility for Windows 10 on the ARM architecture. In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for Internet of things (IoT) technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific computer programs used in the process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms. In September 2018, Microsoft discontinued Skype Classic. On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community despite holding more than 60,000 patents. In November 2018, Microsoft agreed to supply 100,000 Microsoft HoloLens headsets to the United States military in order to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy." In November 2018, Microsoft introduced Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for Microsoft Azure. In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu, an open source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. The project promotes the idea of Firmware as a Service. In the same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge [Legacy] browser project in favor of the "New Edge" browser project, featuring a Chromium based backend. On February 20, 2019, Microsoft said it would offer its cyber security service AccountGuard to 12 new markets in Europe, including Germany, France and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers in the political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested the company's war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army. On August 5, 2020, Microsoft stopped its xCloud game streaming test for iOS devices. According to Microsoft, the future of xCloud on iOS remains unclear and potentially out of Microsoft's hands. Apple has imposed a strict limit on "remote desktop clients" which means applications are only allowed to connect to a user-owned host device or gaming console owned by the user. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire video game company ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, for about $7.5 billion, with the deal expected to occur in the second half of 2021 fiscal year. On March 9, 2021, the acquisition was finalized and ZeniMax Media became part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios division. The total price of the deal was $8.1 billion. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles. In February 2021, Microsoft released Azure Quantum for public preview. The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems. In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance Communications for approximately $16 billion. The acquisition of Nuance was completed in March 2022. In 2021, in part due to the strong quarterly earnings spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft's valuation came to nearly $2 trillion. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company's gaming sales. On June 24, 2021, Microsoft announced Windows 11 during a livestreamed event. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be the last version of the operating system. It was released to the general public on October 5, 2021. In September 2021, it was announced that the company had acquired TakeLessons, an online platform that connects students and tutors in numerous subjects. The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing online education to large numbers of people. In the same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp. In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software. Users can ensure that their calls are encrypted and can utilize a security code that both parties on a call must verify on their respective ends. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies' progress against OKRs. Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally.io into its Viva family of employee experience products. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and holding company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth $68.7 billion. Microsoft also named Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company's portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). Microsoft has not released statements regarding Activision's recent legal controversies regarding employee abuse, but reports have alleged that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, a major target of the controversy, will leave the company after the acquisition is finalized. The deal was closed on October 13, 2023. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off some 10,000 employees. The announcement came a day after hosting a Sting concert for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos, Switzerland. On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI. In June 2023, Microsoft released Azure Quantum Elements to run molecular simulations and calculations in computational chemistry and materials science using a combination of AI, high-performance computing and quantum computing. The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. At a November 2023 developer conference, Microsoft announced two new custom-designed computing chips: The Maia chip, designed to run large language models, and Cobalt CPU, designed to power general cloud services on Azure. On November 20, 2023, Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman, who had been ousted as CEO of OpenAI just days earlier, and Greg Brockman, who had resigned as president, would join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI's CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI's employees and investors on its board. In March 2024, Inflection AI's cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan announced their departure from the company in order to start Microsoft AI, with Microsoft acqui-hiring nearly the entirety of its 70-person workforce. As part of the deal, Microsoft paid Inflection $650 million to license its technology. In January 2024, Microsoft became the most valued publicly traded company. Meanwhile, that month, the company announced a subscription offering of artificial intelligence for small businesses via Copilot Pro. In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 employees from the company's mixed reality and Azure cloud computing divisions. In June 2024, Microsoft announced that it was building a "hyperscale data centre" in South East Leeds. In July 2024, it was reported that the company was laying off its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team. On July 19, 2024, a global IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting businesses, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide. The outage was traced back to a flawed update of CrowdStrike's cybersecurity software, which resulted in Microsoft systems crashing and causing disruptions across various sectors. Despite CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz clarifying that the issue was not a cyberattack, the incident had widespread consequences, leading to delays in air travel, financial transactions, and medical services globally. Microsoft stated that the underlying cause had been fixed but acknowledged ongoing residual impacts on some Microsoft 365 apps and services. In September 2024, BlackRock and Microsoft announced a $30 billion fund, the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, to invest in AI infrastructure such as data centers and energy projects. The fund has the potential to reach $100 billion with debt financing, and partners include Abu Dhabi-backed MGX and Nvidia, which will provide AI expertise. Investments will primarily focus on the U.S., with some in partner countries. Microsoft also announced relaunch of its controversial tool, Recall, in November 2024 after addressing privacy concerns. Initially criticized for taking regular screenshots without user consent, Recall was changed to an opt-in feature instead of being default on. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office monitored the situation and noted the adjustments, which included enhanced security measures like encryption and biometric access. While experts regarded these changes as improvements, they advised caution, with some recommending further testing before users opted in. On February 28, 2025, Microsoft announced that Skype would be shutting down on May 5, 2025, to streamline its focus on Microsoft Teams. The company stated there would be no job cuts due to the shutdown. On April 4, 2025, Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary. In mid-2025, Microsoft's Russian division, Microsoft Rus LLC, filed for bankruptcy after President Vladimir Putin stated that foreign services providers should be throttled in Russia to make way for domestic software. The company had restructured operations in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, but those restructuring efforts had failed. On May 23, 2025, it was reported that Europol's European Cybercrime Centre has worked with Microsoft to disrupt Lumma Stealer, a significant infostealer threat. The joint operation targeted a sophisticated ecosystem that allowed criminals to exploit stolen information on a massive scale. On July 2, 2025, Microsoft announced it would cut nearly 4% of its workforce, around 9,000 jobs, to control costs amid heavy AI infrastructure spending, while also restructuring management and streamlining operations. Corporate affairs Microsoft is ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; and it was the world's largest software maker by revenue in 2022 according to Forbes Global 2000. In 2018, Microsoft became the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, a position it has repeatedly traded with Apple in the years since. In April 2019, Microsoft became the third U.S. public company to be valued at over $1 trillion.[b] As of 2024[update], Microsoft has the third-highest global brand valuation. Microsoft is one of only two U.S.-based companies that have a prime credit rating of AAA. The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. Members of the board of directors as of December 2023 are Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Hugh Johnston, Teri List, Sandi Peterson, Penny Pritzker, Carlos Rodriguez, Charles Scharf, John W. Stanton, John W. Thompson, Emma Walmsley and Padmasree Warrior. Board members are elected every year at the annual shareholders' meeting using a majority vote system. There are four committees within the board that oversee more specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues with the company including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including the nomination of the board; and the Regulatory and Public Policy Committee, which includes legal/antitrust matters, along with privacy, trade, digital safety, artificial intelligence, and environmental sustainability. On March 13, 2020, Gates announced that he is leaving the board of directors of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus more on his philanthropic efforts. According to Aaron Tilley of The Wall Street Journal this is "marking the biggest boardroom departure in the tech industry since the death of longtime rival and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs." On January 13, 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft's board of directors plans to hire an external law firm to review its sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies, and to release a summary of how the company handled past allegations of misconduct against Bill Gates and other corporate executives. When Microsoft went public and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in 1986, the opening stock price was $21; after the trading day, the price closed at $27.75. As of July 2010, with the company's nine stock splits, any IPO shares would be multiplied by 288; if one were to buy the IPO today, given the splits and other factors, it would cost about 9 cents.: 235–236 The stock price peaked in 1999 at around $119 ($60.928, adjusting for splits). The company began to offer a dividend on January 16, 2003, starting at eight cents per share for the fiscal year followed by a dividend of sixteen cents per share the subsequent year, switching from yearly to quarterly dividends in 2005 with eight cents a share per quarter and a special one-time payout of three dollars per share for the second quarter of the fiscal year. Though the company had subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft's stock remained steady for years. Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service have both given a AAA rating to Microsoft, whose assets were valued at $41 billion as compared to only $8.5 billion in unsecured debt. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to government bonds. For the first time in 20 years Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in Q1 2011 quarterly profits and revenues due to a slowdown in PC sales and continuing huge losses in Microsoft's Online Services Division (which contains its search engine Bing). Microsoft profits were $5.2 billion, while Apple Inc. profits were $6 billion, on revenues of $14.5 billion and $24.7 billion respectively. Microsoft's Online Services Division has been continuously loss-making since 2006 and in Q1 2011 it lost $726 million. This follows a loss of $2.5 billion for the year 2010. On July 20, 2012, Microsoft posted its first quarterly loss ever, despite earning record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year, with a net loss of $492 million due to a writedown related to the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 2007. As of January 2014, Microsoft's market capitalization stood at $314B, making it the 8th-largest company in the world by market capitalization. On November 14, 2014, Microsoft overtook ExxonMobil to become the second most-valuable company by market capitalization, behind only Apple Inc. Its total market value was over $410B—with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000. In 2015, Reuters reported that Microsoft had earnings abroad of $76.4 billion which were untaxed by the Internal Revenue Service. Under U.S. law, corporations do not pay income tax on overseas profits until the profits are brought into the United States. The key trends of Microsoft are (as at the financial year ending June 30): In November 2018, the company won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring augmented reality (AR) headset technology into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers. The two-year contract may result in follow-on orders of more than 100,000 headsets, according to documentation describing the bidding process. One of the contract's tag lines for the augmented reality technology seems to be its ability to enable "25 bloodless battles before the 1st battle", suggesting that actual combat training is going to be an essential aspect of the augmented reality headset capabilities. Microsoft is an international business. As such, it needs subsidiaries present in whatever national markets it chooses to harvest. An example is Microsoft Canada, which it established in 1985. Other countries have similar installations, to funnel profits back up to Redmond and to distribute the dividends to the holders of MSFT stock. The 10 largest shareholders of Microsoft in early 2024 were: In 2004, Microsoft commissioned research firms to do independent studies comparing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Windows Server 2003 to Linux; the firms concluded that companies found Windows easier to administrate than Linux, thus those using Windows would administrate faster resulting in lower costs for their company (i.e. lower TCO). This spurred a wave of related studies; a study by the Yankee Group concluded that upgrading from one version of Windows Server to another costs a fraction of the switching costs from Windows Server to Linux, although companies surveyed noted the increased security and reliability of Linux servers and concern about being locked into using Microsoft products. Another study, released by the Open Source Development Labs, claimed that the Microsoft studies were "simply outdated and one-sided" and their survey concluded that the TCO of Linux was lower due to Linux administrators managing more servers on average and other reasons. In July 2014, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 18,000 employees. Microsoft employed 127,104 people as of June 5, 2014, making this about a 14 percent reduction of its workforce as the biggest Microsoft layoff ever. This included 12,500 professional and factory personnel. Previously, Microsoft had eliminated 5,800 jobs in 2009 in line with the Great Recession of 2008–2017. In September 2014, Microsoft laid off 2,100 people, including 747 people in the Seattle–Redmond area, where the company is headquartered. The firings came as a second wave of the layoffs that were previously announced. This brought the total number to over 15,000 out of the 18,000 expected cuts. In October 2014, Microsoft revealed that it was almost done with eliminating 18,000 employees, which was its largest-ever layoff sweep. In July 2015, Microsoft announced another 7,800 job cuts in the next several months. In May 2016, Microsoft announced another 1,850 job cuts mostly in its Nokia mobile phone division. As a result, the company will record an impairment and restructuring charge of approximately $950 million, of which approximately $200 million will relate to severance payments. Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees in its gaming division in January 2024. The layoffs primarily affected Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and chief design officer Allen Adham also resigned. In May 2025, Microsoft announced that it is laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company's entire workforce. In July 2025, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs, cutting approximately 9,000 employees in its largest workforce reduction in over two years. The cuts affected multiple divisions, including Xbox, with 830 positions eliminated at its Redmond, Washington headquarters. Amid the layoffs, Microsoft also closed its office in Pakistan and laid off its employees there as part of its move toward a software-as-a-service and AI operating model. Microsoft recognizes seven trade unions[c] representing 1,750 workers in the United States at its video game subsidiaries Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax Media. U.S. workers have been vocal in opposing military and law-enforcement contracts with Microsoft. Bethesda Game Studios is unionized in Canada. Microsoft South Korea has recognized its union since 2017. German employees have elected works councils since 1998. Microsoft provides information about reported bugs in its software to intelligence agencies of the United States government, prior to the public release of the fix. A Microsoft spokesperson stated that the corporation runs several programs that facilitate the sharing of such information with the U.S. government. Following media reports about PRISM, NSA's massive electronic surveillance program, in May 2013, several technology companies were identified as participants, including Microsoft. According to leaks of said program, Microsoft joined the PRISM program in 2007. However, in June 2013, an official statement from Microsoft flatly denied its participation in the program: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition, we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data, we don't participate in it." During the first six months of 2013, Microsoft received requests that affected between 15,000 and 15,999 accounts. In December 2013, the company made a statement to further emphasize that it takes its customers' privacy and data protection very seriously, saying that "government snooping potentially now constitutes an 'advanced persistent threat,' alongside sophisticated malware and cyber attacks". The statement also marked the beginning of three-part program to enhance Microsoft's encryption and transparency efforts. On July 1, 2014, as part of this program, it opened the first (of many) Microsoft Transparency Center, which provides "participating governments with the ability to review source code for our key products, assure themselves of their software integrity, and confirm there are no "back doors." Microsoft has also argued that the United States Congress should enact strong privacy regulations to protect consumer data. In April 2016, the company sued the U.S. government, argued that secrecy orders were preventing the company from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company's and customers' rights. Microsoft argued that it was unconstitutional for the government to indefinitely ban Microsoft from informing its users that the government was requesting their emails and other documents and that the Fourth Amendment made it so people or businesses had the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property. On October 23, 2017, Microsoft said it would drop the lawsuit as a result of a policy change by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ). The DoJ had "changed data request rules on alerting the Internet users about agencies accessing their information." In 2022 Microsoft shared a $9 billion contract from the United States Department of Defense for cloud computing with Amazon, Google, and Oracle. On a Friday afternoon in January 2024, Microsoft disclosed that a Russian state-sponsored group hacked into its corporate systems. The group, accessed "a very small percentage" of Microsoft corporate email accounts, which also included members of its senior leadership team and employees in its cybersecurity and legal teams. Microsoft noted in a blog post that the attack might have been prevented if the accounts in question had enabled multi-factor authentication, a defensive measure which is widely recommended in the industry, including by Microsoft itself. Corporate identity [T]he Microsoft method. Understand the market, and the customers, and then go pedal to the metal, with release after release focused on what the customers need, incorporating their feedback. That puts the competition into reaction mode. And of course it helps if they also make a strategic error because they are under so much pressure. — Chris Pratley of Microsoft, 2004 Technical references for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as Microsoft Systems Journal (MSJ) are available through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software. In April 2004, Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, titled Channel 9, that provides a wiki and an Internet forum. Another community site that provides daily videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006. Free technical support is traditionally provided through online Usenet newsgroups, and CompuServe in the past, monitored by Microsoft employees; there can be several newsgroups for a single product. Helpful people can be elected by peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles them to a sort of special social status and possibilities for awards and other benefits. Noted for its internal lexicon, the expression "eating your own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using pre-release and beta versions of products inside Microsoft to test them in "real-world" situations. This is usually shortened to just "dog food" and is used as a noun, verb, and adjective. Another bit of jargon, FYIFV or FYIV ("Fuck You, I'm [Fully] Vested"), is used by an employee to indicate they are financially independent and can avoid work anytime they wish. Microsoft is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H-1B visas, which allows companies in the U.S. to employ certain foreign workers. Bill Gates claims the cap on H1B visas makes it difficult to hire employees for the company, stating "I'd certainly get rid of the H1B cap" in 2005. Critics of H1B visas argue that relaxing the limits would result in increased unemployment for U.S. citizens due to H1B workers working for lower salaries. The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a report of how progressive the organization deems company policies towards LGBT employees, rated Microsoft as 87% from 2002 to 2004 and as 100% from 2005 to 2010 after it allowed gender expression. In August 2018, Microsoft implemented a policy for all companies providing subcontractors to require 12 weeks of paid parental leave to each employee. This expands on the former requirement from 2015 requiring 15 days of paid vacation and sick leave each year. In 2015, Microsoft established its own parental leave policy to allow 12 weeks off for parental leave with an additional 8 weeks for the parent who gave birth. In 2011, Greenpeace released a report rating the top ten big brands in cloud computing on the sources of electricity for their data centers. At the time, data centers consumed up to 2% of all global electricity, and this amount was projected to increase. Phil Radford of Greenpeace said, "We are concerned that this new explosion in electricity use could lock us into old, polluting energy sources instead of the clean energy available today", and called on "Amazon, Microsoft and other leaders of the information-technology industry must embrace clean energy to power their cloud-based data centers". In 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy power generated by a Texas wind project to power one of its data centers. Microsoft is ranked on the 17th place in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics (16th Edition) that ranks 18 electronics manufacturers according to its policies on toxic chemicals, recycling, and climate change. Microsoft's timeline for phasing out brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and phthalates in all products was 2012 but its commitment to phasing out PVC is not clear. As of January 2011,[update] it has no products that are completely free from PVC and BFRs.[needs update] Microsoft's main U.S. campus received a silver certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program in 2008, and it installed over 2,000 solar panels on top of its buildings at its Silicon Valley campus, generating approximately 15 percent of the total energy needed by the facilities in April 2005. Microsoft makes use of alternative forms of transit. It created one of the world's largest private bus systems, the "Connector", to transport people from outside the company; for on-campus transportation, the "Shuttle Connect" uses a large fleet of hybrid cars to save fuel. The "Connector" does not compete with the public bus system and works with it to provide a cohesive transportation network not just for its employees but also for the public. Microsoft also subsidizes regional public transport, provided by Sound Transit and King County Metro, as an incentive. In February 2010, however, Microsoft took a stance against adding additional public transport and high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to the State Route 520 and its floating bridge connecting Redmond to Seattle; the company did not want to delay the construction any further. Microsoft was ranked number 1 in the list of the World's Best Multinational Workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute in 2011. In January 2020, the company announced a strategy to take the company carbon negative by 2030 and to remove all carbon that it has emitted since its foundation in 1975. On October 9, 2020, Microsoft permanently allowed remote work. In January 2021, the company announced on Twitter to join the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which engages the cloud infrastructure and data centers industries to reach carbon neutrality in Europe by 2030, and also disclosed an investment in Climeworks, a direct air capture company partnered with Carbfix for carbon sequestration.[list 1] In the same year, it was awarded the EPA's Green Power Leadership Award, citing the company's all-renewable energy use since 2014. In September 2023, Microsoft announced that it purchased $200 million in carbon credits to offset 315,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide over 10 years from Heirloom Carbon, a carbon removal company that mixes calcium oxide from heated crushed limestone with water to form carbon hydroxide to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to mineralize back into limestone while the released carbon dioxide is stored underground or injected into concrete. Despite spending spent more than $760 million through its Climate Innovation Fund by June 2024 on sustainability projects—including purchases of more than 5 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide removal with carbon offsets and more than 34 megawatts of renewable energy—Microsoft's Scope 3 emissions had increased by 31% from the company's 2020 baseline, which caused the company's total emissions to rise by 29% in 2023. In 2023 Microsoft consumed 24 TWh of electricity, more than countries such as Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, or Tunisia. The corporate headquarters, informally known as the Microsoft Redmond campus, is located at One Microsoft Way in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, weeks before the company went public on March 13. The headquarters has since experienced multiple expansions since its establishment. It is estimated to encompass over 8 million ft2 (750,000 m2) of office space and 30,000–40,000 employees. Additional offices are located in Bellevue and Issaquah, Washington (90,000 employees worldwide). The company is planning to upgrade its Mountain View, California, campus on a grand scale. The company has occupied this campus since 1981. In 2016, the company bought the 32-acre (13 ha) campus, with plans to renovate and expand it by 25%. Microsoft operates an East Coast headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. In April 2024, it was announced that Microsoft would be opening a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence 'hub' around Paddington in London, England. It was announced that the division would be led by Jordan Hoffman, who previously worked for Deepmind and Inflection. On October 26, 2015, the company opened its retail location on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The location features a five-story glass storefront and is 22,270 square feet. As per company executives, Microsoft had been on the lookout for a flagship location since 2009. The company's retail locations are part of a greater strategy to help build a connection with its consumers. The opening of the store coincided with the launch of the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4. On November 12, 2015, Microsoft opened a second flagship store, located in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall. Microsoft adopted the so-called "Pac-Man Logo", designed by Scott Baker, on February 26, 1987, with the concept being similar to InFocus Corporation logo that was adapted a year earlier in 1986. Baker stated "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed". Dave Norris ran an internal joke campaign to save the old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, but it was discarded. Microsoft's logo with the tagline "Your potential. Our passion."—below the main corporate name—is based on a slogan Microsoft used in 2008. In 2002, the company started using the logo in the United States and eventually started a television campaign with the slogan, changed from the previous tagline of "Where do you want to go today?" During the private MGX (Microsoft Global Exchange) conference in 2010, Microsoft unveiled the company's next tagline, "Be What's Next." It also had a slogan/tagline "Making it all make sense." The Microsoft Pac-Man logo was used for 25 years, 5 months, and 28 days until August 23, 2012, being the longest enduring logo to be used by the company. On August 23, 2012, Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo at the opening of its 23rd Microsoft store in Boston, indicating the company's shift of focus from the classic style to the tile-centric modern interface, which it uses/will use on the Windows Phone platform, Xbox 360, Windows 8 and the upcoming Office Suites. The new logo also includes four squares with the colors of the then-current Windows logo which have been used to represent Microsoft's four major products: Windows (blue), Office (orange), Xbox (green) and Bing (yellow). The logo also resembles the opening of one of the commercials for Windows 95. The company was the official jersey sponsor of Finland's national basketball team at EuroBasket 2015, a major sponsor of the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT (2017–2020) and a sponsor of the Renault F1 Team (2016–2020). In 2025, Microsoft was one of the donors who funded the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and planned building of a ballroom. In 2015, Microsoft Philanthropies, an internal charitable organization, was established to bring the benefits of technology and the digital revolution to areas and groups that lack them. The organisation's key areas of focus are: donating cloud computing resources to university researchers and nonprofit groups; supporting the expansion of broadband access worldwide; funding international computer science education through YouthSpark; supporting tech education in the U.S. from kindergarten to high school; and donating to global child and refugee relief organizations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft's president, Brad Smith, announced that it had donated an initial batch of supplies, including 15,000 protection goggles, infrared thermometers, medical caps, and protective suits, to healthcare workers in Seattle, with further aid to come. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Microsoft began monitoring cyberattacks originating from the Government of Russia and Russia-backed hackers. In June 2022, Microsoft published the report on Russian cyber attacks and concluded that state-backed Russian hackers "have engaged in "strategic espionage" against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups" in 42 countries supporting Kyiv. Microsoft also supports initiatives through its AI for Accessibility grant program, providing funding to various global organizations that create technologies to enhance accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Among grant recipients from the Asia-Pacific region are the Sri Lankan IT company Fortude, the Thailand-based Vulcan Coalition, and the Indonesian organization Kerjabilitas. Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices. Frequently criticized are the ease of use, robustness, and security of the company's software. It has also been criticized for the use of permatemp employees (employees employed for years as "temporary", and therefore without medical benefits), the use of forced retention tactics, which means that employees would be sued if they tried to leave. Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company. The company is often referred to as a "Velvet Sweatshop", a term which originated in a 1989 Seattle Times article, and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft's own employees. This characterization is derived from the perception that Microsoft provides nearly everything for its employees in a convenient place, but in turn overworks them to a point where it would be bad for their (possibly long-term) health. As reported by several news outlets, an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft based in the Republic of Ireland declared £220 bn in profits but paid no corporation tax for the year 2020. This is due to the company being tax resident in Bermuda as mentioned in the accounts for 'Microsoft Round Island One, a subsidiary that collects license fees from the use of Microsoft software worldwide. Dame Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP in the UK said, "It is unsurprising – yet still shocking – that massively wealthy global corporations openly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the profits they make in the countries where they undertake business". In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company had diverted more than $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico using a mechanism structured to make it seem as if the company was unprofitable on paper. As a result, the company paid a tax rate on those profits of "nearly 0%". When the Internal Revenue Service audited these transactions, ProPublica reported that Microsoft aggressively fought back, including successfully lobbying Congress to change the law to make it harder for the agency to conduct audits of large corporations. In 2023, Microsoft reported in a securities filing that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was alleging that the company owed the U.S. $28.9 billion in past taxes, plus penalties related to mis-allocation of corporate profits over a decade. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate," is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage competitors. Microsoft is frequently accused of using anticompetitive tactics and abusing its monopolistic power. People who use its products and services often end up becoming dependent on them, a process known as vendor lock-in. Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officials following the leak. The program authorizes the government to secretly access data of non-US citizens hosted by American companies without a warrant. Microsoft has denied participation in such a program. Jesse Jackson believes Microsoft should hire more minorities and women. In 2015, he praised Microsoft for appointing two women to its board of directors. In 2020, Salesforce, the manufacturer of the Slack platform, complained to European regulators about Microsoft due to the integration of the Teams service into Office 365. Negotiations with the European Commission continued until the summer of 2023, but reached an impasse that led to Microsoft facing an antitrust investigation from the European Union. In June 2024, Microsoft faced a potential EU fine after regulators accused it of abusing market power by bundling its Teams video-conferencing app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software. The European Commission issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft's practice since 2019 gave Teams an unfair market advantage and limited interoperability with competing software. Despite Microsoft's efforts to avoid deeper scrutiny, including unbundling Teams, regulators remained unconvinced. This action followed a 2019 complaint from Slack, which was later acquired by Salesforce. Microsoft's Teams usage soared during the pandemic, growing from 2 million daily users in 2017 to 300 million in 2023. The company has a history of antitrust battles in the U.S. and Europe, with over €2 billion in EU fines previously imposed for similar abuses. In October 2024, Microsoft fired two employees, software engineers Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal, who organized an unauthorized vigil at its Redmond headquarters to honor Palestinians killed in the Gaza war. The employees, part of the group No Azure for Apartheid, sought to address the company's involvement in the Israeli government's use of its technology. In February 2025, the Associated Press reported that the Israeli military was utilizing Microsoft-developed artificial intelligence tools in its military and intelligence operations against the people of Gaza. In May 2025, Microsoft issued an unsigned statement confirming that these services had been made available to Israel, while denying that these tools were employed during the massacre of the people of Gaza. On March 20, 2025, before an event at Seattle's Great Hall with Brad Smith and Steve Ballmer, protestors projected "Microsoft powers genocide" on the wall. Subsequently, two employees interrupted AI executive Mustafa Suleyman at a speaking event on April 4, 2025, in protest at the company's support of Israel. After the disruptions at these events, Microsoft contacted the FBI in search of assistance in surveilling its pro-Palestinian employees and their allies. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement added Microsoft to its list of targets for partnering "with the apartheid regime of Israel and its prison system". In August 2025 it was reported that Microsoft provides storage for mass-surveilled Palestinian phone calls that have been used to identify bombing targets in Gaza. On August 20, 20 Microsoft employees and their allies were arrested after refusing to disperse from a protest on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus. In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses. The probe scrutinized Microsoft's bundling of cloud services with products like Office and security tools, as well as its growing AI presence through its partnership with OpenAI. This inquiry is part of broader efforts by the U.S. government to curb the power of major tech companies, especially under FTC chair Lina Khan. Concerns were raised about Microsoft's licensing practices potentially locking customers into its services and its AI investments possibly sidestepping regulatory oversight. In June 2025 Microsoft helped suspend the email account of an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor in the Netherlands who was investigating Israel for war crimes in order to comply with a Trump executive order. In June 2025, a UN expert's report named Microsoft as being "central to Israel's surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction." In September 2025, Microsoft cut off some services to a unit of Israel's Ministry of Defence after an investigation found its technology had been used to conduct mass surveillance on people in Gaza. In late 2025, a non-profit organization filed a complaint within the European Union, raising concerns about Microsoft’s handling of certain data related to Israeli military surveillance. According to the complaint and media reports, Microsoft’s cloud services may have been used to store or process surveillance-related data. The organization requested that European data protection authorities investigate whether this data processing complies with EU law. See also Notes References Bundled references External links 47°38′33″N 122°07′56″W / 47.64250°N 122.13222°W / 47.64250; -122.13222 |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microsoft_subsidiaries] | [TOKENS: 53] |
Category:Microsoft subsidiaries Subcategories This category has the following 7 subcategories, out of 7 total. Pages in category "Microsoft subsidiaries" The following 53 pages are in this category, out of 53 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
======================================== |
[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Swedish_companies_established_in_2009] | [TOKENS: 47] |
Category:Swedish companies established in 2009 Pages in category "Swedish companies established in 2009" The following 7 pages are in this category, out of 7 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
======================================== |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.