According to the Xbox Support website, Xbox Live core services are limited on Xbox One and Xbox on Windows 10. Specifically, users are having trouble signing in to Xbox Live and accessing previously purchased content. Some users are experiencing difficulties signing in on the official mobile app as well.
Microsoft says “Our engineers and developers are actively continuing to work to resolve the issue causing some members to have problems signing in to Xbox Live. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.”
It’s been something of a rough week for Xbox Live, which has encountered issues on multiple occasions (including one particularly severe incident). That’s again the case today for Xbox One and PC owners, as sign-in issues have emerged on Friday that Microsoft says it’s working to resolve.
While sign-in problems sound somewhat innocuous, that can mean you’re unable to get online to play games like Fortnite or to even access certain content. In a tweet, Microsoft’s support account stated, “If you’re running into errors attempting to sign in or access previously purchased content, our teams are aware and working to identify the cause. We’ll update here when we have more to provide.”
The Xbox Live status page doesn’t offer much more information, except to confirm that both Xbox One and Xbox services on Windows 10 in the “core services” category are impacted. Besides the sign-in problems, you might also have trouble creating or managing an account right now.
There’s no word on exactly when the problems will be resolved; as always, it could be a very short wait or a matter of hours. Some small consolation is that these problems don’t appear as serious as those earlier in the week, which caused some users to receive a black screen when powering the system on. This rendered it completely unusable, though some reports suggested that disconnecting the system from the internet would allow offline functionality to resume.
We’ll report back with any further details as Microsoft shares them.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s first DLC character, Piranha Plant, arrived this week alongside the big 2.0.0 update. Nintendo offered the new fighter for free to players who purchased and registered their games on My Nintendo by January 31, but if you missed your opportunity to get it, you now have the option to buy it.
Piranha Plant is now available to purchase in the Switch Eshop. Unlike the other planned DLC characters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Piranha Plant isn’t included in the game’s Fighters Pass, so you only have the option to pick it up individually. If you do want to add it to your roster, it costs $5–slightly cheaper than the price of other upcoming fighters, presumably because it doesn’t come with a new stage and music tracks.
Beyond Piranha Plant, Nintendo is working on five other DLC characters for Smash Bros. Ultimate. The first of these will be Joker from Persona 5. Each new fighter will come in a pack alongside a stage and multiple music tracks for $6. You’ll also be able to get all of them at a discount through the $25 Fighters Pass. Picking up the Fighters Pass will also get you a bonus Mii costume based on Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
All of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s DLC characters are slated to arrive by February 2020. Nintendo hasn’t officially revealed the identities of the remaining four fighters yet, but during the Game Awards in December, NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime teased they will all be newcomers to the series and characters “who you wouldn’t anticipate.”
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launched for Nintendo Switch on December 7 and has set new sales records for the series. Not only was it Amazon’s best-selling video game of 2018 (and the US’s fifth best-selling game) despite launching near the end of the year, it has already sold 12 million copies around the world, making it Nintendo’s third best-selling Switch game to date.
Microsoft’s latest Games with Gold offerings are now available, giving you a host of freebies for your Gold subscription. This month’s inclusions offer a few retro throwbacks along with some action games from older generations. As always, some of the games are available throughout the entire month while others will rotate in and out midway, so check the schedule to make sure you don’t miss out on any.
The Xbox One games include Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, an 8-bit style game modeled loosely after Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse. It’s a prequel, both spiritually and plot-wise, to the upcoming Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and we found it rather good. It will be available throughout the entire month. Super Bomberman R also joins the rotation on February 16 through mid-March. It’s an update of the classic Bomberman franchise, best used as a madcap party game so you can curse your friends for bombing you.
On Xbox 360, you get Assassin’s Creed Rogue, a game that came out alongside the widely derided Assassin’s Creed Unity. It was an interesting game in its own right, though, and explored more of the Templars’ perspective. It’s only available through February 15, after which it will be replaced by the original Xbox game Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.
As always, the Xbox and Xbox 360 games offered through Games with Gold are playable on Xbox One through backwards compatibility. You can still grab one of last month’s games for a while longer as well: WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship for Xbox One is available until February 15.
Check out the full line-up and schedule below.
February 2019 Games With Gold
Xbox One
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Feb. 1-28)
Super Bomberman R (Feb. 16-Mar. 15)
WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship (Jan. 16-Feb. 15)
After cooking for half a decade, Crackdown 3 is almost here. Trailers have shown that it will more closely resemble the first game than its divisive sequel, and the prevailing opinion seems to be that that’s a good thing on face value. Commercials play up the comic-book cop connection with help from Terry Crews’ over-the-top personality, which effortlessly conveys the explosive attitude fans are apparently asking for. Now that I’ve played Crackdown 3 for a few hours it’s easy to identify similarities to the 2007 original, but rather than the campaign stealing the show, it’s the competitive multiplayer component that will be my reason for paying attention to Crackdown 3 at launch.
When Microsoft hosted the demo at a recent event, the plan was to get a taste of multiplayer before stepping into the campaign. At the heart of competitive Crackdown is the cloud, or more specifically, Microsoft’s Azure server infrastructure. With the power of roughly a dozen standard Xbox One systems dedicated in the cloud to each multiplayer match, large, highly vertical environments are yours to destroy. Every structure can be punctured or completely leveled into rubble. It’s an impressive calamity to witness, but it’s how the new rules of engagement influence your approach to combat and perception of distance and obstacles that really counts, and that only works because every player is experiencing the same physics simulations in real time.
Click To Unmute
Crackdown 3 Wrecking Zone Multiplayer Gameplay Trailer
Anthem Open Demo Has “Significant Improvements” – GS News Update
Anthem Open Beta Demo PC Gameplay Live
Fortnite Location Guide: Sundial, Metal Dog Head, Oversized Coffee
Fortnite Season 7 – Week 9 Secret Battle Star Location Guide
Fortnite – Pop 10 Golden Balloons Location Guide
Metro Exodus – Uncovered Gameplay Trailer
IGN, GameSpot, Jeuxvideo and Mein-MMO Come Together To Create The Ultimate 4 Player Co-op Team In Anthem
The Worst Of Dirty Arty – Season 1 Highlights
Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw – Official First Trailer
Resident Evil’s Complicated Ties To Dead Space
Crackdown 3’s Multiplayer Soars Above Its Single-Player
Ben Affleck Cryptically Confirms That He Won’t Star In The Batman – GameSpot Universe News Update
Share
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Everyone has the use of a generous lock-on ability that remains in effect even after an enemy leaves your line of sight, allowing you to strategize how you might use your destructive abilities to capitalize on your informed advantage. To balance the engagement, a visible blue tether connects target and shooter during lock on, turning red once the attacker opens fire. When you detect that you’re in someone’s sights, your reaction is either to mad dash for a boost pad or to explode through buildings to carve out a path to safety. But don’t forget: With a predator tracking your every move, you might be better off facing them head on instead. Doing so leads to frantic bouts of blowing up buildings to disrupt movement or clear away a protective barrier so you can strike with lesser weapons while your heavy guns cool down.
Incorporating my destructive capabilities wasn’t natural at first, but once the practice became habitual after a few matches it was like a lightbulb went off in my head: Destruction is at the heart of everything in multiplayer, and seeing how it elevates the core Crackdown experience made me realize how the cloud is capable of more than simply streaming games as we know them today.
No matter how fast, nor hard-hitting the action got in our matches, there was never a sign of the Azure servers buckling under pressure. Controls were responsive and there was nary a hiccup in frame rate or resolution to note. A real-world test this was not–we were in a Microsoft-controlled environment after all–but it was a promising sign of what’s possible under ideal conditions. The only evidence that I was playing a game running in the cloud was the impressive destructibility on display, the likes of which I’ve never before seen in a multiplayer setting.
Despite only having access to a single map and match type, the 90-minute multiplayer session flew by. We were then given the keys to the campaign and, at Microsoft’s suggestion, started off with a save file a few hours into the adventure. This was when my second revelation hit: Old Crackdown isn’t as fun as I remember it, especially when compared to the exciting multiplayer component. I have seen only a sliver of the campaign, but what I saw was tepid and outdated. The world is rendered with some modern flourishes like bloom lighting and seemingly infinite draw distances, but it generally sticks very close to the original game’s visuals. It’s a stylistic choice for sure, though it’s hard to say that it’s an inspiring one.
The same goes for the reality of playing as a budding supercop: The powers you remember from the past, or those you can experience in multiplayer, will only be yours if you once again go through the process of searching a wide and tall city for orbs to build up experience/skill meters. Coupled with a generic objective system in the open world, which itself also feels like something pulled from 2007’s open-world playbook, my time with the campaign was more underwhelming than I could have expected. To be fair, that gameplay formula is part and parcel of the Crackdown experience, the game a lot of us championed as the model Microsoft should follow for a sequel. In my case at least, it’s clear I didn’t realize what I was asking for.
One of my favorite questions to ask game developers is whether they, as creators, know better than fans what’s best for their games. The most common answer I get is that they know best because the audience asks for everything without understanding the constraints of development. Crackdown 3 creative director Joseph Staten didn’t hesitate to give fans the nod, because a launched game “becomes whatever people make of it.” Considering the two halves of Crackdown 3, I then asked him whether his role as a creator is to innovate in tech or creative game design. “Microsoft is a big technology company,” he replied, acknowledging the reality of his particular position. “Games are entertainment, but Microsoft has this capability that other companies don’t.”
In those two answers Staten pretty much summarized my understanding of Crackdown 3. Fans asked for something, and by all evidence, Microsoft is aiming to give them what they want: the experience of reliving the original Crackdown with a fresh coat of paint. It will be interesting to see how others revel or revile when confronted with the seemingly matter-of-fact approach to the campaign. I expect impassioned positions on both sides. Multiplayer, though, will be the real test of whether Crackdown 3 is a success, purely for how it validates Microsoft’s almost-unique position in the industry.
Click To Unmute
Crackdown 3 Terry Crews Gameplay Trailer | Xbox E3 2018
Anthem Open Demo Has “Significant Improvements” – GS News Update
Anthem Open Beta Demo PC Gameplay Live
Fortnite Location Guide: Sundial, Metal Dog Head, Oversized Coffee
Fortnite Season 7 – Week 9 Secret Battle Star Location Guide
Fortnite – Pop 10 Golden Balloons Location Guide
Metro Exodus – Uncovered Gameplay Trailer
IGN, GameSpot, Jeuxvideo and Mein-MMO Come Together To Create The Ultimate 4 Player Co-op Team In Anthem
The Worst Of Dirty Arty – Season 1 Highlights
Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw – Official First Trailer
Resident Evil’s Complicated Ties To Dead Space
Crackdown 3’s Multiplayer Soars Above Its Single-Player
Ben Affleck Cryptically Confirms That He Won’t Star In The Batman – GameSpot Universe News Update
Share
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Whispers about the future of cloud gaming are heard with ever-increasing frequency. As big companies rear up to deliver what they hope is the next evolution in gaming tech, now is the time to look out for the fruits of years spent experimenting behind closed doors. Perhaps smartly, Microsoft hasn’t made much of ado about Crackdown 3’s cloud-based multiplayer mode. It’s almost tough to understand why that is once you get a taste of it in action, because it’s so immediately awesome. Perhaps the reason is that Microsoft has been listening. Maybe it’s heard the outcries of skepticism of the cloud, and our collective adoration of the old ways. So they give us what we ask for, but like a Trojan horse, Crackdown 3’s attractive exterior belies an unexpected surprise. Only in this instance, that surprise is one worth welcoming with open arms.
The biggest test for Crackdown 3’s cloud-based gameplay will be how it all holds up under pressure. In the recent case of Anthem‘s demo weekend, we saw how one of the biggest game publishers, if not the biggest, can still struggle with the crippling network demands that come with an influx of new players. Microsoft’s challenge is even harder, given that players are not just connecting to servers, but also relying on their computational power to drive the gameplay. Staten told me that the Azure service is robust enough to support every Xbox One sold to date playing Crackdown 3 online at the same time. It’s impossible to test that lofty promise, but if true, that means everyone with a good-enough internet connection should get the same experience I had under Microsoft’s supervision just the other day. And if that happens, Microsoft will find itself in the enviable position of having proved that the cloud isn’t just a buzz word or a fad, but that it’s a worthwhile opportunity for the future of gaming.
The first trailer for Hobbs and Shaw is here. The movie is the first spin-off from the blockbuster Fast & Furious series and stars Dwayne Johnson as Agent Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham as mercenary-for-hire Owen Shaw.
The trailer delivers a ton of action–it’s three minutes long, so be warned if you don’t want to know much about the movie going in. It sets up the bad guy played by Idris Elba, a villain called Brixton who has been given some kind of genetic upgrade. Hobbs and Shaw aren’t exactly friends, but they are brought together to stop him, and the rest of trailer delivers a non-stop barrage of stunts, fights, and over-the-top action, plus a lot of self-aware one-liners. Check it out above.
Hobbs & Shaw is directed by Deadpool 2’s David Leitch, and also stars Vanessa Kirby (Mission Impossible: Fallout), Eiza González (Baby Driver), and Eddie Marsan (Deadpool 2). It releases on August 2, 2019.
In related news, it was confirmed this week that production on Fast & Furious 9 starts this month. The next movie in the main series is set for release in 2020 and stars Vin Deisel once more, but won’t feature Johnson or Statham.
