Microsoft

The free Xbox Live Games with Gold lineup for July has been revealed and players can get their hands on some of the July games right now. Some of the games will be made available half way through the month.

Excitingly, Xbox has announced a new change to the Xbox Live Games with Gold promotion and this comes as part of a celebration for the two year anniversary of the promotion, which began in July, 2013. Starting this month, there will now be two free Xbox One games available each month for all Gold members.

Starting at the beginning of the month, players will be able to pick up Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the Xbox One - AC:IV will remain available for the entirety of July. On July 16th, So Many Me, an arcade style game will also be made available on the Xbox One.

The Xbox 360 will also be getting one full game and one arcade game this month. To start it off, Plants vs. Zombies has become available for free on the Xbox 360 and it will remain free till July 15th.

The new free games lineup for the Xbox Games with Gold June promotion has now been revealed by Microsoft and there are a number of free games Xbox Gold members will be able to pick up throughout the month.

Like previous months, players will be able to get one Xbox 360 during the first half of the month and another Xbox 360 game during the second half of the month. This month there will be two three Xbox One games, both of which can be downloaded throughout the entirety of June.

First up for the Xbox 360 lineup is Just Cause 2. Considering hype for Just Cause 3 has been blowing up recently, it seems like perfect timing to have a free access pass to Just Cause 2. Whilst the game may now be several years old, there's still dozens of hours worth of fun to be had in this game. You can download Just Cause 2 for free right now, although it will be swapped out with another game on June 15.

Starting June 16, Thief will be put up for free for Xbox 360 Gold members. Thief is much

We all know a new Gears of War game is coming, there's no doubt about it. It's one of the few franchises that really helped to serve the Xbox 360 a great deal of popularity, and many fans are ready to see a new Gears game.

Whilst we haven't really had any full official details about Gears of War 4, we'll occasionally hear bits of information from developers working on the game, and that is exactly what happened this week.

Whilst the Gears of War Marcus Fenix collection was unfortunately confirmed as a false rumor by Black Tusk's producer Rod Fergusson, he did mention that they may have something special to show us at E3 later this year.

To follow on with that, Jack Felling a developer at Black Tusk Studios, shared an image on Twitter that had the caption "Last day of the shoot... One of the actors in a mocap suit! #MotionCapture #Props #MarkerBalls @GearsofWar"

It's clear that Black Tusk have been working on a new Gears of War game, and the latest news suggesting

Recently, Microsoft pushed out an Xbox One port of Killer Instinct 1 as part of the new season for the latest Killer Instinct game on the console, and now they are putting a little bit of love into it to pay homage to all those that played the original Killer Instinct on the Super Nintendo.

In a new patch, that has recently gone live, Killer Instinct 1 now has online multiplayer capabilities, and players can jump in game to play against other players from across the world. As well as the new online features, Microsoft added a few new changes to Killer Instinct 1, all of which can be read in the patch notes below.

- We updated the front page of Ultra-combo.com. If you scroll down to the Season 1 Changelist, you can now see an image of the Story Mode Mural!
- Riptor's correct Ultra Music is not playing because of a bug. We're trying to fix that via patch before the next Content Update.
- When you unlock a Story Mode XP bonus, that XP is Player XP only (not Character

It's always exciting to hear what Microsoft's best development studio, Rare is up to these days. They have made classics like Banjo Kazooie and Viva Pinata, and have also thrown out dozens of other playful games suitable for the whole family.

Rare's most recent attempts have been within the world of Kinect, and they have released a various of sports and other active games compatible with the Kinect for the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, most gamers weren't really interested in Rare when all of their effort went into these kind of games, but in a new light, Microsoft has realized that Rare deserves to be doing something a bit more exciting with their time.

Que dozens of rumors now spreading the internet because of a small job listing Rare has posted on their website following the development shift for the studio. On the job listing, it states that Rare are looking for an animator that has "high quality animation skills that include movement in bipedal animation, quadruped and facial

So far, Microsoft have managed to keep things about Halo 5 Guardians pretty quiet, and the only content about the game that we have learned about in the past has come straight from Xbox themselves. However, over the weekend, a massive leak showing video footage of Halo 5 hit the internet, and it stirred a frenzy.

Whilst the leak has pretty much been wiped from the web as of writing, the internet never forgets, and we can all still recall what the video displayed. The gameplay showed a few seconds of combat, focusing on a player using a Battle Rifle.

What was clear right away was the changes that had seemed to be made to the ADS in Halo. Ever since Combat Evolved, ADS has been limited to scoped weapons like sniper rifles and battle rifles, and the strange new battle rifle ADS in Halo 5 Guardians confused many players into thinking that ADS would be the norm in the upcoming Halo game.

However, a 343i official responded to the leak on Twitter and stated that ADS will not

It obviously makes sense for any person in Phil Spencer's position to do all they can to promote the greatness of the Xbox One, but it's not all words - apparently we will be seeing a 'crazy' lineup next year for Microsoft's newest console.

Phil Spencer said in a recent podcast that, "Looking at production schedules and how things are lining up, next fall is just crazy,"

"This fall from a first party/third party standpoint is great. Next fall, honestly it's not hype at all, I honestly don't know that we can actually ship all the stuff that thinks it's trying to ship next fall. It just might be too crowded and we might purposely try to move some things out to spread it."

We already know all about how busy Fall can be for the gaming industry, but it sounds as if Phil Spencer and the Xbox crew have so many games lined up for this time next year that they'll find it hard to fit them all in.

Honestly, this is just the news we want to hear about, and it will be even

In a recent interview, Phil Spencer revealed some information about Microsoft's plans to bring back two old franchises from the older generation Xbox consoles.

In the interview, the following games were mentioned to Phil Spencer : Alan Wake, Banjo Kazooie, Blinx the Time Sweeper, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Fusion Frenzy, Halo Wars, High Heat Baseball, Kameo, Knights of The Old Republic, MechAssault, Otogi and Shenmue.

Phil Spencer was then asked if any of the prior mentioned games were ever going to receive new installations for the Xbox One, and Phil responded with a very exciting answer -

"There are a couple games on that list that we're doing some work on. I'll just say that. People should know that we listen to feedback, we have ideas, and there are franchises in the past we think would be great to come again."

In my opinion this is great news - the Xbox has had many great exclusive titles over the last decade, and many of them have been left behind for newer

It seems that nobody can escape acquisition these days - if you're a successful business, and you manage to get the spotlight on you, chances are somebody like Google, Microsoft or Amazon will swoop down and offer a pricey deal to purchase your entire business.

Recently, Twitch was acquired by Amazon for $970 million, and now there are rumors circulating that Microsoft is looking to acquire Mojang, the creators of the ever-popular Minecraft.

Whilst nothing is definitely confirmed at this point, it is looking likely that Microsoft are looking into paying whatever they can to get hold of Minecraft, including a cash payment upwards of $2.5 billion.

The deciding factor will come down to whether the current Minecraft owners will be willing to give up their rights to the game for a huge cash sum. Markus "Notch" Persson, the original creator of Minecraft has already stated in the past that he has made enough money from Minecraft, but due to changes in Mojang, it may not be

Microsoft has just announced a brand new controller for the Xbox 360, despite a lot of their effort now focusing on their latest console, the Xbox One. The new Xbox 360 controller follows the same design as previous controllers for the console, although it has been printed with a brand new skin.

This skin has been named the Arctic Camouflage skin, and can be seen in the picture above. This skin is another attempt by Microsoft to offer players customization when it comes to buying accessories for their console, and is certainly not the first official skinned controller.

This particular Xbox 360 pad will set you back $54.99, and will be available in North America next month.

If you want more customization options for Xbox 360 controllers or controllers for other consoles you may want to check out our custom controller creator - on here you'll be able to find a huge range of great controller skins, as well as other mod options and customization features.

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