XBOX 360

The fairly recent loyalty program, Xbox Games with Gold, has been confirmed by Microsoft as a permanent feature that will continue on past the Xbox One's launch. Before this confirmation, it was discussed by Microsoft that the promotion would only stay till the end of the year, but it looks as if somebody has managed to convince the big M to keep us a little bit happier with our monthly Xbox Gold subscriptions.

The Xbox Games with Gold loyalty promotion offers two free games each month to everybody who has an Xbox Live Gold account. It started out with little mention from Microsoft when Fable III mysteriously appeared on the Xbox marketplace for free, but it was later revealed that the game was part of the ongoing Games with Gold loyalty service.

Since then, Xbox Live Gold members have been treated with a bunch of fairly outdated games over the last few months, including games like Halo 3, Assassins' Creed II, Dead Rising 2, Crackdown and Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes.

Despite Rockstar pleading to the public to not leak their game, even they didn't doubt that the game would probably get leaked and torrented before release. And the result of leaked copies of the game selling before the release is filled with clips and footage of the game all over the internet on websites like Youtube, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram.

Rockstar are trying their hardest to remove the footage, but because there are so many different people uploading footage, it's going to be pretty difficult.

It's become a trend to see popular games leak before their release date. For example, people were playing Halo 4 on the Xbox 360 at least a week before it actually came out. Microsoft responded to this harshly by banning any accounts that showed online play history of the game before the release date.

Rockstar doesn't have the manpower or backing by either Microsoft or Sony to do this so it's likely leaks will lead up to the game's release. The cause of this is mainly

If it matters to you, you'll be happy to hear that Microsoft has changed their Xbox Marketplace to something that sounds a little more playful. Starting from today the Xbox Marketplace will now be called the Xbox Games Store.

This follows on from a few changes that are happening to the digital Xbox Games store to make it ready for the introduction of the Xbox One. This includes a transition from Microsoft Points to real life currencies which has happened recently.

The changes won't really make much of a difference on a visual side, however Microsoft are still striding to make as many changes to the user interface on the Xbox 360 to make it feel more modernized and minimalistic with its square Windows 8 tile design.

When the Xbox One hits, the transition from the Xbox 360 will probably be very easy because the evolved design of the user interface on the Xbox 360 will end up very similar to the interface that will be found on the

The first of the previously announced trilogy of downloadable content packages for Bioshock Infinite has been released, and it will be available for both PS3 and Xbox 360 as soon as both Microsoft and Sony make it so according to Irrational Games.

The first DLC pack has been named Clash of the Clouds and is a wave based arena game that will test players skills within the various fields of the combat system used within-game.

The Clash of the Clouds DLC will also include new voxophones written by creative director Ken Levine, as well as some new Kinectoscopes and other unlockables. The DLC package currently costs $5 on Steam so similar prices will probably be released to Microsoft and Sony.

Ken Levine has also revealed that the other two downloadable content packages will form a two-part story that puts both Booker and Elizabeth as a two team detective squad that the player will be able to play as in both stories.

The first part of the DLC, named Burial at Sea

If you weren't satisfied enough with the first 8 minute game play video, Ashraf Ismail, director of the Assassins' Creed series has narrated another game play video. This 14 minute video goes into some of the game play dynamics found within the open world of Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag, and shows a little about the story of Edward Kenway, the protagonist you'll be playing as in Black Flag.

The video starts off by showing the viewer a contract mission that the player has accepted and how the player navigates the world map and in-game to find the contract victim. The video also shows the player traversing the open world a little and shows a bit more of the ship game mechanics.

We already saw the 8 minute game play video delve into the ship game play, but this 13 minute game play video helps to showcase the integration between the ship game play and the rest of the world, and I am quite impressed at just how seamless the whole situation feels.

Personally I can't wait

Despite being moved over to a new publisher, the developers of the World Rally Championship series don't expect to stop developing any time soon. In fact, Bigben, the new publisher for the series, has recently revealed that World Rally Championship 4 will be making it's way to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and PS Vita this October.

World Rally Championship will include all of the rallies included in this years FIA World Rally Championship calendar, on top of all the leading teams and drivers.

The 4^th game in the series will be improved upon in many other ways as well, including a brand new high graphical redesign with bran new real life in-game sounds for the vehicles and the environments they drive on.

World Rally Championship 4 will also include a brand new career mode that will allow the player to play as a rally driver in the 2013 championship, and according to Bigben, "Realism and immersion are two of the most important pillars of the development, with

If you're still playing through all of the extra content Gearbox has released for Borderlands 2, we're just giving you a quick nudge to let you know that you won't be close to completing it any time soon. Why? Because Gearbox has just announced another DLC content update and level cap increase.

The new update will add the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2 which will cost $5 and will allow players to level their characters to level 72. This new pack will also add a new fighting zone that will pit you off against waves of enemies you wouldn't usually see fighting alongside each other.

On top of this, a new mission will be released in time for Halloween called Headhunter Pack: T.K. Baha's Bloody Harvest. This mission will follow the story of T.K. Baha, a character first seen in Borderlands 1 and will end with a boss fight against Jacquest O' Lantern. Players will be able to unlock new customization options throughout the mission.

Gearbox has also released

As expected, Microsoft has now made Assassin's Creed 2 available to download for free for a limited period of time. This game is part of the "Games with Gold" program that is strictly for Xbox Live users with a Gold membership.

The Games with Gold program seems to be Microsoft's way of challenging PlayStation's PS Plus subscription service that has offered free games since launch. Many also believe that Microsoft are doing the Games with Gold campaign to try and claw back any customers they may have lost at their terrible pre-E3 event.

Although Assassin's Creed 2 is pretty old now, it still stands as a good, enjoyable game, and when not for free, can cost $20 to download digitally from the Xbox marketplace. However second copies from retailers such as Gamestop are probably selling the game for less than $10, and perhaps even less than $5 depending on the demand for the old game.

Players have so far managed to grab Fable III, Defense Grid: The Awakening and Assassin's Creed

As expected, Microsoft has sent out a Beta dashboard update to their Xbox 360 consoles that will change gamers experiences worldwide. The new change will remove the Microsoft Points system from the system entirely and replace it with real-money purchases.

For example, instead of having to purchase Microsoft Points for money and then spending money on games or downloadable content, players will now be able to go straight to buying the content they want with their own money.

At first, this update sounded like a nice change to the Xbox market. One reason being that Xbox 360 owners would no longer need to "overspend" to buy the content they want. For example, most DLC packages were priced at 800 Microsoft Points, but instead of being able to simply buy 800 Microsoft Points, Xbox 360 owners would have to buy the package closest to 800 Points which at the time was a 1000 point bundle.

The problem with the update though is that a lot of games seem to be even more expensive

I was pleasantly surprised as I watched the new Assassins' Creed: Black Flag gameplay video. The video features 7 minutes of gameplay footage as a narrator explains to the viewer what there is to be done in the new upcoming Assassins' Creed.

Personally I've been getting quite bored of the franchise, and when Ubisoft announced that they had plans to release a new AC game yearly, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. AC began as a series that was new and refreshing, but we saw that trying to reuse the same gameplay mechanics again and again just didn't work, even if the stories were quite compelling.

I was quite happy to see that the new Black Flag game actually looked quite good in this new gameplay video.

The gameplay shows off plenty of features involved with the high seas. We already know that the new game is pirate themed, but you may be surprised to see just how much of the game actually involves pirate shenanigans. In AC4: Black Flag, players will have their own