Disappointed that the Xbox One isn’t getting over-the-air DVR until 2016? Don’t fret — the nascent gaming box is getting two other big upgrades later this year. During a press conference at Gamescom in Germany, Microsoft announced that both Windows 10 and backwards compatibility would arrive on Xbox One consoles in November.
The Windows 10 bound for Xbox One isn’t quite the same operating system that hit millions of PCs early last week. Instead, it’s a firmware akin to the Xbox 360’s 2011 “metro” update — a redesigned skin with a few new bells and whistles.
At E3 in June Microsoft said the new dashboard was focused on “speed” and “performance,” and that much is evident from its stripped-down appearance. Windows 10 on Xbox One pares down the home screen tabs to Home, Community, Watch, Games, Movies & TV, Apps, and Music, and adds a new trending section alongside your activity feed that highlights popular games and events on Xbox. Friend lists, messages, and Party Chat, meanwhile, have been relegated to a slide-away pane accessible by double-tapping the Xbox button on a controller.
Media’s now easier to navigate. The Watch tab unifies content sources — Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu Plus, and live TV — to surface high-profile series. And OneGuide, Microsoft’s overlay for live television, now sports picture-in-picture support and a full screen view.
The changes aren’t strictly aesthetic. Cortana, Microsoft’s Siri-like digital assistant, is also making the jump to Xbox One. So long as you’ve got a Kinect (Cortana won’t respond to a headset), you’ll be take advantage of its robust voice recognition to chain together commands. A phrase like “Hey Cortana, start a party and invite John,” for example, will invite a friend to a newly created chat session.
Xbox One’s new backwards compatibility feature will also launch in earnest in November. It’s been available to users who opted into the Xbox One Preview Program since June, but it will roll out broadly with “over 100” Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade games over the next few weeks. Microsoft said that, going forward, all Xbox 360 Games with Gold selections will be made “with backwards compatibility in mind,” effectively doubling the free monthly offerings for Xbox One gamers.
Windows 10 update will start rolling out to Preview Program members in September, according to Head of Platform Engineering at Xbox Mike Ybarra.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.