Xbox One DVR plans cancelled

By Imad Khan Updated February 28, 2019

If you were hoping that your Xbox One would become the ultimate TV box, prepare to be disappointed. Microsoft has revealed that it is suspending its plans to turn its Xbox One into a DVR.

At last year’s Gamescom in Cologne, Germany Microsoft announced that DVR functionality would be coming in 2016. It turns out that announcement was a bit premature. “After careful consideration, we’ve decided to put development of DVR for Over-the-Air TV on hold to focus our attention on launching new, higher fan-requested gaming experiences across Xbox One and Windows 10,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge. The company added “We’re always listening to fan feedback and we look forward to bringing more requested experiences on Xbox One, Windows 10 and Xbox Live this year.”

Ever since current CEO Satya Nadella took the Microsoft helm over from Steve Ballmer back in 2014, it seems that he’s been steering the ship towards a universal Windows 10 platform. This is in contrast to pre-Nadella Microsoft, which had each one of the company’s arms in a different pot. And in keeping with the new philosophy, with each subsequent update, the Xbox One has been starting to look more and more like a PC. Not only that, games that were once exclusive to Microsoft’s home console, like Gears of War and Forza, are now debuting on the Windows 10 store.

Doubling down on games seems to be the better move, as Microsoft caught the ire of gaming audiences back in 2013 by positioning the Xbox One as an entertainment-heavy Kinect-focused device. Once Phil Spencer took over as the Head of Xbox, he quickly changed Microsoft’s messaging towards gamers, and has since seen much praise from the community.

With E3 starting next week, we’re fairly confident Microsoft will continue on its universal Windows adoption.

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Imad has been a gamer all his life. He started blogging about games in college and quickly started moving up to various…

Gaming

Xbox has new Ninja Turtles controllers … and they smell like pizza

Players use Ninja Turtles themed Xbox controllers.

Microsoft and Paramount Pictures are giving away Xbox controllers based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which they are proudly proclaiming are "the world's first pizza-scented Xbox controllers."
This is not the first time Microsoft and Paramount created weird Xbox controllers to give away in a sweepstakes. Its fuzzy Sonic and Knuckles controllers released around Sonic the Hedgehog 2 also gained a lot of attention in February 2022. Still, there's never been an Xbox controller quite like this. Four controllers exist, which are an oozy green, have art of one of the turtles on it, and have the top of a pizza sticking out of the back. According to Microsoft, that is what is actually pizza-scented.

"Satisfy your hunger for kicking butt with the world’s first ever pizza-scented controller," Microsoft says in an Xbox Wire post about the controller. "Designed to deliver the smell of the Turtles’ beloved meal to your game time, these exclusive Xbox Wireless Controllers come with a built-in scent diffuser shaped like a slice of delicious New York ‘za." That's a pretty fancy way to say you've made a controller that smells weird and will continue to smell even weirder as time goes on. They don't even specify what kind of pizza it smells like!
To have a chance to nab one of these controllers, people need to follow Xbox Game Pass on Twitter (or X, as it's being rebranded to) and retweet (re-X?) a tweet (an X, I hate this) that the account will eventually post before August 13. What you do after you get one of these is on you.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem hits theaters on August 2.

Gaming

The best traits to level first in Remnant 2

Three characters shoot at a boss in Remnant 2.

Much of Remnant 2's leveling process is based around increasing the ranks of traits that you'll discover throughout your journe. This will give you plenty of opportunities to build a character that best matches your playstyle. In the game's opening hours, however, each character will begin with just a few traits that can be leveled, and your equally limited trait points can make deciding which of those you want to invest in somewhat of a challenge. In this guide, we'll give you our opinion on which of these are best to focus on for optimizing the early part of your adventure. Here are the best traits to level first in Remnant 2
Best traits to level first in Remnant 2
When beginning the game with a new character, you'll have only five traits – one archetype trait exclusive to the archetype you've chosen and four core traits that every character begins with. Your archetype trait will level automatically as you play with that archetype, so you don't need to do anything with that trait. Instead, let's take a look at the four other core traits and discuss which ones are best to invest in.
Vigor
Vigor improves your overall health, which means you can take more damage before dying. This is likely the most important trait to pump points into, especially when first setting out into the dangerous world of Remnant 2. Enemies hit hard (especially bosses) and you have limited healing options during these opening hours, so you'll need every bit of extra health you can get. It wouldn't hurt to prioritize this trait until you get it to level 10, actually, as you'll be able to get plenty more points as the game progresses, and being able to take a few more hits against the game's first few bosses is immensely helpful. This is even more true for Challengers in team compositions where they'll be tanking and spending a lot of time in melee range.
Endurance
Endurance improves your overall stamina, which will allow you to run and roll more during combat. This is a great option to level up if you're playing a character that is focused on melee, as it will allow you to run more when you get surrounded or roll out of the way of enemy attacks without worrying as much about your stamina meter. For primarily ranged players, though, it's a bit less useful, so you're probably better putting those points elsewhere early on. As with Vigor, though, Challengers will likely benefit most from the trait due to their tendency to be a group's close-quarters combat specialist.
Spirit
Spirit improves your weapon mod power generation. This helps you to earn the ability to use your weapon mods more often in combat, meaning that its usefulness is entirely dependent on how useful your weapon mods are to your build. At the beginning of the game, your weapon mods will be most helpful during boss battles, and you're likely to end them before generating a second use of your mod anyways. Because of this, Spirit is likely better saved for leveling later on so that you can focus on survivability first. Gunslingers, however, are likely to see this as a good option in group settings because they're designed to be a DPS powerhouse.
Expertise
Expertise improves the cooldown speed of your archetype skills. This will aid you in using these skills more frequently, which can be a help against bosses and packs of deadly foes. However, like with Spirit, the usefulness of this trait in the initial few hours of the game is limited due to the already long cooldowns and the speed at which many bosses are likely to fall anyways. While Vigor should still be a priority for most classes, Expertise can be a particularly worthwhile trait for Medics who are playing with a group, as it's vital to keep their healing capabilities available as much as possible.

Gaming

Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition is going to take even longer

inarius diablo 4

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have agreed to extend the deadline for its impending merger. The companies now have until October 18 to close the deal, extending their original deadline by months.

The original cutoff for Microsoft's Activision Blizzard buyout was July 18, however, that finish line wasn't an easy one to cross. Just before that date, Microsoft had to face off against the FTC in a court case to decide the deal's fate. A San Francisco judge ruled in Microsoft's favor with only days to go before the July date. With a few other loose ends to tie up, Microsoft now has until mid-October to get it done.