The Xbox Series X has been given a slightly narrower release window today, this time honing in on November of 2020 from a previously-stated holiday 2020.
This was announced today in a post on Xbox Wire, which emphasized the console's backward compatibility for select games across four generations, as well as optimized games for the system and its Game Pass library at launch.
However, the system's key console exclusive title, Halo Infinite, has been officially delayed into 2021, leaving the Xbox Series X with no known major launch-day exclusives.
Furthermore, pricing details for Microsoft's console still have not yet been announced; nor has a rumored Xbox Series S model been confirmed by official sources, though a leaked controller earlier this week appears to verify its existence.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ch-in-november ...

• May the 4th be with you, as Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order gets some free new content to celebrate the date. Available now are a host of new additions to the game, including bugfixes, accessibility improvements, and additional game modes and challenges. New Journey+ has been added, allowing you to play the game over from the start, while carrying your cosmetic items and lightsaber colors over. Doing so also unlocks meditation training game modes, which are challenges that take place in a battle grid against bosses and enemy waves. A few gameplay mechanics have been tweaked as well, allowing players to skip button-mashing quick time events and offering text-scaling options.
  
  

https://gbatemp.net/threads/star-war...lenges.564328/ ...

• A limited-edition Xbox One X is on the way. Microsoft has announced that the Xbox One X will be getting a limited edition Cyberpunk 2077 version, along with a custom controller. It sports a gray and yellow color scheme and glow in the dark paint, while the controller is half-silver, half-black. The console itself is the 1TB variation of the Xbox One X, and will be available later this June, slightly ahead of Cyberpunk 2077's official launch on September 17th.
  
  https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-xbox...dition.562731/

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Microsoft has revealed a few new details surrounding the Xbox Series X.
In an Xbox Wire post, Xbox head Phil Spencer today said "the next console generation will be defined by more playing and less waiting," and some of the Series X features were designed with that in mind.
For example, the system will have a Quick Resume feature that lets players have multiple games in a suspended state for a near-instant return to action. Like the Xbox One X, the Series X will also support HDMI 2.1, which will let the console automatically set the connected TV or monitor to the mode with the lowest latency and synchronize refresh rates between the display and the game. Spencer also listed previously announced features like the system's SSD storage, 120 frames per second support, and optimized wireless communications with the controller as contributing to a focus on instant immersion.
Under the hood, Spencer said the Series X will have 12 teraflops of GPU performance. That's twice the Xbox One X's total and more than eight times the original Xbox One's capabilities.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ries-x-details ...

The Xbox family of consoles were the best-selling machines over Black Friday in the UK.
Microsoft's device was heavily discounted during the Black Friday sales period, with the Xbox One S All-Digital consoles cut to £110 in Tesco, with £129.99 offers at other retailers. The machine bundled in digital versions of Sea of Thieves, Minecraft and Fortnite, which is why all of those games charted so well in the software charts.
More than 100,000 Xbox One machines were sold last week, according to retailers, which is just slightly behind what the console managed during Black Friday 2018. The All-Digital version was the most successful edition of them all.
Xbox One very narrowly beat Nintendo Switch by "just a handful of consoles". Nintendo's machine also featured some big discounts during Black Friday, with the new 'Lite' version down to £179.99. Retailers also did some bundling around products such as Nintendo Labo, Mario Kart 8: Deluxe and Pokemon Sword and Shield.
The Neon Switch with the longer battery life was the biggest selling version of the machine. Nintendo sold more Switch consoles during this Black Friday than it managed over the same period in 2018.
In terms of revenue, Nintendo Switch was actually the No.1 console due to the higher price of the machine compared to Xbox One.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...r-black-friday ...

Microsoft's next-gen console plans, code-named Project Scarlett, have been the butt of speculation for several years now and still are after its official announcement at E3 2019. Now, one rumor has resurfaced: Project Scarlett may be not one console, but two.
If this song sounds familiar, it's because we've heard it before. In late 2018, reports circulated that Project Scarlett consisted of a higher-powered "Anaconda" version and a cheaper, discless "Lockhart." Though these rumors faded and other reports even indicated they were false following the official reveal of Scarlett, a new Kotaku report says Lockhart is very much alive.
According to sources speaking to Kotaku, Lockhart is still in development. For comparison, Anaconda could be seen as a successor to the Xbox One X and Lockhart as a successor to the Xbox One S in terms of performance differences, with one developer comparing Lockhart to the PS4 Pro for raw graphical power. Developers would be expected to support both consoles simultaneously for next-gen Xbox releases.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...l-in-the-works ...

There are a lot of Xbox games in the works.
Halo, Ori, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, Bleeding Edge, Battletoads, Everwild, Tell Me Why, Gears Tactics, Grounded... and there's more to be announced. Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, tells us that they'll be further reveals before Christmas and even more in early 2020.
"You will see one of the most exciting line-ups that we've had coming from Xbox Game Studios in as long as I can remember," he says confidently. "For the first time ever, we really have way more games than we know what to do with in terms of knowing when they'll be announced."
The reason behind this flurry of game activity is due to the number of new studios the company has acquired as it looks to strengthen its Game Pass subscription offering. Some of these studios are not what you'd describe as AAA developers, and in fact many of the games we listed above are smaller, more unusual offerings. Take the survival game Grounded, which is an Obsidian title but one developed by just 14 people.
Some of the titles seem quite risky, but Microsoft says that Game Pass eliminates some of that risk. There's no longer that worry whether gamers will be willing to spend $60 on a new title, and so the commercial pressures are reduced when choosing whether to commission something or not.
"Yeah. In general [that's true]," Booty tells us. "I'd just want to use a different word than commission. Our studios are very creator-led. But honestly, especially where we are right now, we have a very unique advantage that so many of our studio heads are very senior, very experienced, and very creator-led. We're really trying to stay out of the way and let them make the games that they want to make. And so it's for them to say: 'Hey, when I look at Game Pass, this is what I see'. They might see a game that can bring a bigger audience than they had before, or they see the ability to make a game that might be more built around community, because they know that the second that it goes into Game Pass they have this ready-made community of players. But that's really up for them to figure out."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...nsforming-xbox ...

The cloud partnership between Microsoft and Sony was "all driven by Sony," according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Speaking to Fortune, Nadella explained the origins of the partnership with Sony, which the two companies formed in May.
"First of all, it's all driven by Sony," he said. "They looked at who are all their partners that they can trust. In fact, it turns out, even though we've competed, we've also partnered.
"Basically and fundamentally the fact that we have a business model in the areas that they're partnering with us, where we're dependent on their success. So we will do the best job for them, whether it's in cloud or whether it's in AI or what have you, in order to make sure that Sony can succeed with their own IP creation."
The partnership will influence Sony's games business, but Nadella also highlighted silicon chips and cameras as areas that "can use more cloud computing power."
Historically, Sony and Microsoft have been rivals in the games market, but their partnership reflects a broad shift away from physical products and towards digital services.
In a recent article, Rob Fahey speculated that these changes could signal the end of direct competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo -- generally known as "the console war."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...driven-by-sony ...

Microsoft has announced there will be no more games added to the backwards compatible catalogue for Xbox One.
In a blog post listing the final titles coming to the initiative, the platform holder explained it is now "setting our sights on what's next for the future of compatibility" -- i.e. concentrating on its next-generation console, codenamed Project Scarlett.
"Four years later, compatibility remains a priority for Xbox, for our community and for developers and their games, and preserving the art form of video games is part of our DNA," the company wrote.
The post also reiterated the goal stated by Xbox boss Phil Spencer during an E3 episode of Inside Xbox last night, where he declared he wanted Project Scarlett to be able to play all four generations of Xbox games.
Since Microsoft first announced backwards compatibility for Xbox One at E3 2015, it has made over 600 original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles playable on its current console. Over half of all Xbox users have made use of this functionality.
The final wave of backwards compatible games includes the earliest Splinter Cell titles -- making the entire franchise now playable on Xbox One -- as well as Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, and Unreal Championship 2. It is also making the digital version of Xbox 360 RPG Too Human available for free.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...oject-scarlett ...