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Tag: video games

  • A Major ‘Stardew Valley’ Update Is Coming in March

    A Major ‘Stardew Valley’ Update Is Coming in March

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    I’m insanely excited about the tweet Barone made in December revealing one of the new items: bigger storage chests! (If you know, you know, and if you don’t know, you will soon after you start playing and need to store everything.)

    How Should You Prepare for the Update?

    First and foremost: Buy the game if you don’t own it already. The game’s power requirements are low compared to other popular games, so it should be easy to play on just about any existing PC.

    For existing users, if you use mods, you’ll need to prepare for the likelihood of updating all of your mods after the update goes live. There’s no way to know when mod makers will have time (or if they will at all) to update a mod you like, so you’ll have to keep an eye on that yourself. SMAPI and Content Patcher are minimum requirements for many mods, so start with updating those.

    If you have an existing file you want to hit perfection on or the completion-related Steam goals, like crafting any item, you might want to complete the existing goals before any new additions arrive. Crafting and cooking recipes are sometimes tricky to unlock or find since they often depend on other achievements in the game, and there’s no telling where the new recipes will be.

    What Do You Need to Play Stardew Valley?

    To play the new update on March 19, all you really need is a working PC. But for the best experience while you play, here’s what we recommend having available.

    A Game Controller

    You can play Stardew with just a keyboard, but a game controller is much more intuitive and comfortable to use. I find I often use both, since the keyboard is where I activate my mod shortcuts, but a great gaming controller is preferable by a long shot whenever I’m doing any normal tasks around the farm, heading to the mines, and especially when I’m fishing. I refuse to fish via keyboard.

    A Steam Deck

    If you’re bummed about needing to wait to play on your Nintendo Switch, you could get a similar experience with the help of a Steam Deck. Our favorite at WIRED for PC gaming is the Valve Steam Deck, and you can even upgrade to the OLED Valve. Extra bonus with the Steam Deck is that your mods can work on it, too. Here’s how to do it.

    A Great Headset for Co-Op

    Did you see that mention of eight-player co-op? Because I sure did. While eight voices trying to manage the same farm sounds a little crazy, I have loved playing Stardew Valley in co-op mode. I once played one file for over a year with a friend to hit the in-game perfection levels together. (Hot tip: don’t miss the recipes on the TV!) Having a good gaming headset makes everything easier on co-op, since it eliminates echoes and crappy audio.



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  • ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ Is Coming in 2025. Will a New Nintendo Switch Join It?

    ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ Is Coming in 2025. Will a New Nintendo Switch Join It?

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    A new Pokémon Legends game is coming to the “Nintendo Switch family of systems” in 2025. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, announced Tuesday with a brief teaser trailer, is an “ambitious new entry” into the series that will launch simultaneously worldwide. It’s also fuel for the fire that a new Nintendo Switch console is coming next year.

    The first Pokémon Legends game, Arceus, launched in 2022. Arceus was new ground for the franchise: the first open-world game in the series, something for which fans had long clamored. The Pokémon Company offered little in the way of details on Z-A, which will take place in Lumiose City of the Kalos region, the France-inspired setting introduced in Pokémon X and Y. In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, “an urban redevelopment plan is underway to shape the city into a place that belongs to both people and Pokémon.”

    Wording around the game’s launch, specifically that it will come to Nintendo “systems,” has already caught the eye of some fans. While that could refer to variations on the Switch—the Switch Lite, the OLED model—reports earlier this month suggest that the Switch successor is expected in 2025. VGC reports that the delay could be a push to give Nintendo time to line up “stronger first-party software.”

    Anticipation for a new Nintendo console couldn’t be higher. It’s been nearly seven years since the company introduced the Switch and more than two since the OLED version dropped. All the more reason for fans to speculate about when the next system might come. Following Tuesday’s Z-A announcement, “Switch 2”—the name commonly given to the (presumably) forthcoming console—began trending on X with fans posting “I can care about Pokémon again” and “The Switch 2 has to be next year because I just know they don’t want us playing the new Pokémon game in 30 [frames per second].”

    The new Switch’s existence is hardly a secret these days; during GDC’s 2024 state of the industry survey, 8 percent of polled developers said they were working on games for its successor. It’s not a question of if the Switch 2 exists; it’s when Nintendo will finally announce it.



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  • It’s Apparently Easy to Crack the Apple Vision Pro’s Front Screen

    It’s Apparently Easy to Crack the Apple Vision Pro’s Front Screen

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    Apple’s mixed-reality headset is selling well, but it’s embroiled in a new mystery that’s proving tough to crack.

    As first reported by MacRumors, some customers have discovered a mysterious crack appearing vertically down the center of the front-facing screen on their Vision Pro headsets. The reports have come from only a small number of users, most of them talking about it on Reddit, which can be an unreliable source. That said, Engadget reports that the same crack has occurred on its review unit. The folks affected say they haven’t mishandled the devices—there’s been no dropping or smashing that could create the crack in the laminated glass screen. So it’s not yet clear what exactly is causing the problem, or whether it actually affects the performance of the Vision Pro.

    WIRED reached out to Apple to ask about the cracks on the Apple Vision Pro’s front screen and what could be causing them, but the company hasn’t responded.

    Apple has chosen to make its first headset out of premium materials like aluminum and glass that have resulted in the device being both heavy and less durable. For an example of how it stands up to stress, take this video of YouTuber JerryRigsEverthing absolutely demolishing an Apple Vision Pro headset. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t do well if you set it on fire.)

    Here’s some other consumer tech news.

    Apple Sports a New App

    This week, Apple announced a dedicated app for sports lovers. It’s called—wait for it—Apple Sports. The app is free on iOS, and it gives iPhone users access to real-time sports scores. It can be used to track scores and stats from some professional and college leagues, like Major League Soccer, NBA and NCAA basketball, Premier League soccer, and NHL hockey. Notably missing are other sports giants like the MLB, NFL, NCAAF, NWSL, and WNBA, though Apple says those leagues are coming to the app soon for their upcoming seasons.

    The app lets users filter and customize the scoreboards to show their favorite teams. It’s also meant to push users toward watching games on Apple TV, with the inclusion of a “Watch on Apple TV” button in the app. While the iPhone app is free, streaming the games usually requires a subscription.

    Apply PC Games Directly to the Forehead

    In other VR news, Sony says it is testing out making its newest VR headset compatible with PC games. Sony’s PS VR2 came out a year ago, and while it’s a fun, powerful device, it received some criticism for requiring a tethered connection to a PS5 console. Now, Sony is exploring the idea of letting players utilize the headset for gameplay on PCs as well.

    The announcement was buried a few paragraphs into an update about new games coming to Sony’s console platform. The company didn’t share any details about which PC games it is testing on PS VR2, or when such a feature might become available.

    Still, it’s a welcome cross-platform move that may bring Sony a step closer to ending the console wars. That’s probably not the company’s immediate goal here, but it is not the first move by a gaming company on the interoperability front. Last week, the Xbox team announced that several of its previously exclusive console games will soon be made available on other platforms like PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch.

    What Are You Dune 2 Night?

    Swiss luxury watchmaker Hamilton has unveiled two new timepieces inspired by director Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune sequel. As you might expect, they look like something that’s arrived straight from Arakkis. (That’s the Dune planet.) The exterior is a rugged matte black, with bright blue numbers and watch hands meant to evoke the color of the eyes of the Fremens. (They’re the Dune people.) The triangular shape of the case is an evolution of Hamilton’s Ventura model, which was first introduced in the 1950s.

    The Ventura XXL Bright costs $1,810 and is limited to 3,000 total units. The Ventura Edge Dune watch is $2,553 and is limited to 2,000 total pieces. Dune: Part Two opens next Friday, March 1.

    Tech Trouble

    It’s a rough time to be in the tech industry for a lot of workers, especially those who have been swept up in the great wave of layoffs that have happened so far this year. In a matter of weeks, tens of thousands of tech workers lost their jobs. Companies of all sizes have made cuts recently, including Google, Amazon, Discord, and Instacart. It’s a stark shift for an industry that grew by enticing employees with extravagant campuses and benevolent benefits. Now, faced with a glut of job seekers, companies have gotten very particular about who they hire. It’s harder than ever to land a tech job, and both sides of the interview table are getting creative about how they approach the other. (Yeah, they’re probably all using AI.)

    This latest episode of WIRED’s Gadget Lab podcast dives into the plight of tech workers, and how getting a job and keeping one have become much more precarious.

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  • The 14 Games We’re Still Most Looking Forward to In 2024

    The 14 Games We’re Still Most Looking Forward to In 2024

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    In 2023, it felt like the new hit games were just never going to stop coming. In a way, they didn’t. We’re firmly in 2024 and we’re still excited for new titles. From new games like Hades II, to actuallygood remakes like Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, here are the games we’re most excited about this year.

    Since game release dates change so often, and there are so many new games announced regularly, we’ll be updating this piece throughout the year as new games come out and we get more solid info about release dates for others. Don’t see anything you like? Don’t forget to check out our guides to the Best Games on PlayStation Plus, The Best Switch Accessories, and Best Online Co-op Games.

    Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

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  • Review: ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Sets a New High for the Series

    Review: ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Sets a New High for the Series

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    The reboot cycle that began with 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake was a creative risk. It transformed a single PlayStation game into a trilogy meant to retell one of the most celebrated RPGs of all time. Remake was a slower, more elaborate vision of Square Enix’s beloved 1997 hit; it took the first few hours of the original and turned them into a stand-alone game. And, it worked. Remake was a thrilling, easy-to-love game where iconic characters like Cloud Strife and Aerith Gainsborough felt like fully realized versions of their previous polygonal counterparts.

    With Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the stakes are higher. Rather than being contained in the city of Midgar, its backdrop is the entire world of Gaia and the impacts Shinra’s political and planetary machinations have had there. Square Enix has already pulled off the impossible: Remake took a story fans knew by heart and flipped those expectations on their head with a few major plot deviations and the promise of an “unknown journey” when credits rolled. With Rebirth, the company delivers on that promise—and in the process has set a new standard for all of its Final Fantasy games to come.

    Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which drops next week, picks up immediately after Remake’s end. Cloud and the gang have escaped Midgar as fugitives and are now on the hunt for Sephiroth. Their task will lead them on a similar path as the original—parades in Junon, the Vegas-like Gold Saucer, a spiritual quest in Cosmo Canyon—but Rebirth plays with its freedom by expanding the game’s lore and adding new storylines.

    It’s a more robust telling in every way. The world is split into different regions, huge open-world maps with towers to climb, scouting, side quests, chocobo catching, fiend fighting, a new card game, and many more experiences. Rebirth is as big as players want it to be; if you’re more interested in shotgunning through the main story, there’s no penalty for skipping side stories that will grant you extra time with your party. Rebirth could have just refined graphics and gameplay and called it a day; instead, it opens up a world that feels alive.

    Rebirth plays much the same as Remake—the battle style, skill sets, and enemies will feel familiar—but iterates on those systems. Skill trees add a level of customization to character moves, and Rebirth’s expanded party means more fighting styles and combinations to test out. Teamwork is the underlying structure of the game. In battle, characters can team up to deliver specialized moves. Outside of it, Square Enix has added a new relationship system that helps determine story outcomes, like which date you’ll take at the Gold Saucer.

    While in theory this isn’t a new idea—the original game also had a hidden system to determine how much you preferred characters like Tifa or Aeris—Rebirth’s emphasis on it adds a nice touch. You can deepen your relationships between Cloud and his companions by taking the time to talk with them individually. These moments are small but heartening. Cloud and his party actually do seem to like and care about one another rather than acting as a group of strangers thrown together by fate.

    The cast has real charisma together, and Rebirth shines when it gives them the room to interact. While the original game was largely from Cloud’s perspective, players get control over duos like Barret and Red XIII, or Aerith and Tifa, on their own, and the game is better for it. New, fleshed-out character backstories give the game more depth than its source material. Barret and Red XIII, in particular, are given more room to shine, whether it’s small moments like Barret putting on a pair of sunglasses to hide tears or Red proudly telling you about his sense of smell every chance he gets (often by implying that Cloud smells horrible).

    Square Enix’s reimagining of Final Fantasy VII also takes care to explain more of the game’s world and the forces within it. Black Materia, arguably the MacGuffin of the original game (why would a world-ending orb exist if not to give heroes a reason to fight, I guess), actually makes sense this time around. The same goes for concepts like the Lifestream, which Rebirth offers in far greater detail.

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  • Give Us an Xbox Handheld Already

    Give Us an Xbox Handheld Already

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    Microsoft is gearing up for a big holiday season at the end of this year. During yesterday’s much-hyped Official Xbox Podcast, Xbox president Sarah Bond teased news regarding the company’s hardware, as well as its plans for its next-gen gaming devices. “What we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation,” she said.

    The biggest question about Microsoft’s next bet, then, isn’t whether or not it will continue to make traditional consoles that plug into your television. It’s if Microsoft will follow in the footsteps of companies like Nintendo and Valve to make a console you can carry around. Gaming has long advanced past the point of handhelds only providing a separate, smaller experience; you can play everything from battle royal megahits like Fortnite to expansive, open worlds like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without a full TV setup.

    Other Microsoft competitors like Sony have already dipped into handhelds. In addition to the company’s efforts like the PlayStation Vita, which it stopped producing in 2019, it released PlayStation Portal—which allows you to stream games from your PS5—last year.

    Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has expressed admiration for his competitors’ strategies. During a recent interview with The Verge, he says Microsoft has been “kind of learning from what Nintendo has done over the years with Switch … when I look at Steam Deck and the ROG [handheld] and my [Lenovo handheld] Legion Go, I’m a big fan of that space.” What keeps players from gaming more, he says, is more than just sleep or the regular obligations of life. “Some of it is just access,” he told The Verge. “Do I have access to the games that I want to play right now?”

    Even when asked directly about whether Microsoft would be making a handheld, Spencer refuted the idea. “I’m a big fan, but nothing to announce.”

    Doubling down on traditional consoles this holiday season isn’t unexpected. In September, Microsoft accidentally leaked information about its release plans, including a look at its mid-gen console refresh and a new controller, through unredacted documents. If still accurate, the documents also included information on its next-gen Xbox console, pegged to 2028, as a “hybrid game platform” that would use the cloud.

    Although cloud gaming offers an attractive solution for some players looking to avoid the hassle of a console on the shelf of their home entertainment center, Xbox execs have always been firm that traditional consoles are important to the business. “When we look at our hardware … it’s where you get the most flagship, seminal experience of Xbox,” Bond said during the podcast. “And it also represents a developer target. Our developers can build the specs of our hardware, and we invest to make sure when they do that the games are going to run great on our hardware, but they’re also going to be able to be accessed across any screen because of all the other investments we make.”

    As Microsoft opens up its games to more platforms, it needs to make its signature hardware more appealing beyond a community loyal to the brand itself. Spencer himself may agree; eagle-eyed fans have noticed him liking tweets calling a handheld “inevitable.” Microsoft doesn’t have to make a technological leap to make great games accessible; just one that lets you go outside once in a while.



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  • ‘Diablo IV’ Heads to Game Pass as Microsoft Eyes 4 Games to Expand Beyond Xbox

    ‘Diablo IV’ Heads to Game Pass as Microsoft Eyes 4 Games to Expand Beyond Xbox

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    Microsoft is bringing its first Activision Blizzard title to Game Pass, following its successful multibillion-dollar acquisition of the company: The 2023 hit Diablo IV will be available on the subscription service starting March 28.

    Microsoft announced the news today during an episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, which also served as an attempt to clear up recent rumors that the company had plans to take Xbox-exclusive games to other platforms. Fans weren’t too keen on the idea, posting messages on social media likening the move to a betrayal, saying it would “devalue” the brand and make owning the console pointless.

    Spencer tackled those rumors head-on, saying that only four games would be losing their exclusive status. Despite speculation that the games going to other consoles might include Starfield or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Xbox is not considering either title, he said.

    Spencer declined to name the four games, but said that two are “community-driven” titles the company wants to expand. The other two, he says, “were never really meant to be built as platform exclusives.” Spencer said the teams behind the games had plans to make announcements soon. According to Game File reporter Stephen Totilo, those four titles are Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Grounded.

    Xbox’s move to bring these titles elsewhere does not mean a “fundamental change in how we see exclusivity,” Spencer noted. He described Xbox as a platform for gamemakers who want to reach the most players. “It’s not about one device,” he said. “It’s not about games in service of a device, but rather the devices people want to play on should be in service of making the games as big and popular as they possibly could be.” The company’s hardware is still a “critical component” in the company’s strategy, but they believe they’ll have players across many platforms.

    “I do have a fundamental belief that over the next five or 10 years, exclusive games, games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware, are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry,” Spencer said. The industry, he noted, has been trending this way for nearly a decade, and having titles that are also available on consoles like the PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch will help Microsoft reach more players.

    Xbox’s hardware remains a “critical component” of Microsoft’s goal to keep its business healthy, Spencer said, but the team knows players span many communities and platforms: “We fully accepted that we’re going to have Xbox players across all kinds of devices.”



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  • ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ Disappeared. It Won’t Be the Last Beloved Game to Vanish

    ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ Disappeared. It Won’t Be the Last Beloved Game to Vanish

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    On January 30, X gaming account Wario64 spotted something strange: Yager’s seminal cult classic Spec Ops: The Line had been unceremoniously removed from online storefronts without warning. Developers who made the game were just as baffled as fans. “Makes no sense,” tweeted the game’s director, Cory Davis. “Especially because the themes portrayed in Spec Ops: The Line are more relevant now than ever.”

    In 2012, Spec Ops was not at the forefront of the military shooter genre, where franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield were pumping out titles yearly. It had been a decade since the last Spec Ops game, and The Line was meant to reboot the series. Set in Dubai, it follows Captain Martin Walker and his squad through the decimated city; as its story ramps up, players are faced with increasingly horrific scenarios, like deploying white phosphorus, as Walker’s grasp on reality begins to deteriorate.

    Its selling point, as argued by its creators, was that the game was doing something different than its peers—tackling a story that was more Heart of Darkness than military propaganda. The game’s launch was not a commercial success, but a critical one. “It was culturally significant, tectonic in terms of how we think about creativity and critical conversations about war games,” says Mitch Dyer, a former video game critic who reviewed The Line in 2012.

    “For it to just disappear overnight—it’s a little bit traumatizing for people who it meant something to or had interesting things to say about it, because now it’s inaccessible,” says Dyer. Not that it’s impossible to play—those who purchased physical copies can still experience it—but future generations won’t be able to discover it anew. Looking back at the game now, 12 years later, Dyer describes its achievements as “kind of quaint” in hindsight. “It wasn’t just the story itself. It wasn’t just the script or the words, which were all fantastic. It was the execution and presentation,” he says. “It starts asking questions that you kind of become too numb to [or] bother to think about.”

    Dyer, now a games writer himself, and some of the developers who made the game believe its fingerprints still exist in the industry today. It stayed in the cultural conversation for more than a decade. Now, it’s gone. The reason for its disappearance? A licensing issue. Publisher 2K confirmed that several of those partnerships, likely ones related to music in the game, have expired. The Line isn’t coming back—and there are worries its cultural impact may disappear too.

    Preservation is the issue old games face today as the industry grapples with the dilemma of waning technology and a deepening backlog. Video games disappear for a variety of reasons: shuttered online services, old tech, new console generations, damaged physical media, storefront removals, and yes, expired licensing deals. Last year, the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network released a staggering study which found that 87 percent of classic games have been lost over the years.



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  • Minecraft could be the key to creating adaptable AI

    Minecraft could be the key to creating adaptable AI

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    Minecraft is a game for humans, but it could help AI too

    Minecraft

    Minecraft is not only the best-selling video game in history, it could also be key to creating adaptable artificial intelligence models that can pick up a variety of tasks the way humans do.

    Steven James at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and his colleagues developed a benchmark test within Minecraft to measure the general intelligence of AI models. MinePlanner assesses an AI’s ability to ignore unimportant details while solving a complex problem with multiple steps.

    Lots of AI training “cheats” by giving a model all the data it needs to learn how to do a job and nothing extraneous, says James. That is a fruitful approach if you want create software to accomplish a specific task – such as predicting the weather or folding proteins – but not if you are attempting to create artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

    James says that future AI models will need to tackle messy problems, and he hopes that MinePlanner will guide that research. AI working to solve a problem in the game will see the landscape, extraneous objects and other detail that isn’t necessarily needed to solve a problem and must be ignored. It will have to survey its surroundings and work out by itself what is and is not needed.

    MinePlanner consists of 15 construction problems, each with an easy, medium and hard setting, for a total of 45 tasks. To complete each task, the AI may need to take intermediate steps – building a set of stairs in order to place blocks at a certain height, for instance. That demands that the AI can zoom out of the problem and plan ahead in order to achieve a goal.

    In experiments with state-of-the-art planning AI models ENHSP and Fast Downward, open-source programs designed to handle sequential operations in pursuit of an overall goal, neither model was able to complete any of the hard problems. Fast Downward was only able to solve one of the medium problems, and five of the easy problems, while ENHSP performed slightly better by completing all but one of the easy problems and all but two of the medium problems.

    “We can’t require a human designer to come in and tell the AI exactly what it should and shouldn’t care about for each and every task it might have to solve,” says James. “That’s the problem we’re trying to address.”

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  • The Console Wars Are Over. Some Influencers Won’t Let Them Go

    The Console Wars Are Over. Some Influencers Won’t Let Them Go

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    A handful of Xbox titles may soon lose their exclusivity status and move to platforms like PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Good news for players who own those platforms. Not so for everyone. Rather than rejoice that more people may be able to enjoy their beloved games, parts of the Xbox community are furious about what they consider a betrayal.

    Over the last month, the gaming world has been awash in speculation that titles like Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, and now Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will no longer be available only on Xbox. “A new multiplatform approach for certain Xbox games is emerging inside Microsoft,” The Verge wrote over the weekend, ”with the company weighing up which titles will remain exclusive and [which] will appear on Switch or PS5 in the future.”

    For the time being, these rumors are just that. That hasn’t stopped some members of the Xbox fan community, including influencers, from withdrawing their support or outright declaring the platform dead. As spotted by VGC, several notable fan accounts are already protesting with videos and posts on X. In one video, creator Riskit4theBiskit proclaims he will “need to process this” and says he’s getting off X for the day. “If this is true, I think it’s a massive misstep,” he adds. “I think as a fan and a supporter of the brand for 20 years, I’ve put hundreds of thousands of dollars into this brand over time. It does feel like a bit of a betrayal.” Others are posting receipts from trading in their Xbox consoles.

    The fan reaction has been so extreme that late Monday Xbox head Phil Spencer addressed the community directly. “We’re listening and we hear you,” Spencer tweeted. “We’ve been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox.”

    Spencer’s statement didn’t quell much. Shortly after it was posted, Xbox-focused account Klobrille, which has more than 158,000 followers on X, posted that listening “will not be enough,” and that Microsoft needed to follow through on “previously made statements.”

    Further replies to Spencer’s tweet continue the chorus of dissatisfaction: “Bringing Xbox to multiplatform will devalue the platform, please don’t,” wrote one user. Another wrote that the move away from exclusives would let “the whole gaming world down.” More succinctly, another: “F Xbox.”

    Spencer has been clear for years that he’s hardly interested in interconsole conflict. “We’re in the entertainment business. The biggest competitor we have is apathy over the products and services, games that we build,” he said during a 2020 interview. Furthermore, Spencer described such “tribalism” distastefully. “There is a core that just really hates the other consumer product. Man, that’s just so off-putting to me … To me, it’s one of the worst things about our industry.”

    Exclusivity hasn’t helped Microsoft beat its competition, either. Last year, during its court battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft said in a court filing that Xbox had “lost the console wars” and “has consistently ranked third (of three) behind PlayStation and Nintendo in sales.”

    During a hearing on the matter, when asked directly if Xbox had lost said wars, Spencer referred to them as “a social construct within the community.”

    Next week, Spencer will presumably announce something sure to excite or enrage hardcore Xbox fans. Regardless of which way it goes, the recent dustup has demonstrated that brand loyalty and console allegiance, taken to the extreme, have birthed a toxic culture in gaming. There is no superiority to be won over owning a PlayStation or an Xbox; it is a personal preference best made when considering what specs, price, or other amenities work best for the individual. Brands, like companies, like jobs, will never love you back. Microsoft’s play is to win eyeballs and make money—and by diversifying its options, it certainly will.



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