Halo 
may not have made it to the big screen, but it’s getting its own TV show.
And one helluva producer.
As part of the Xbox One reveal Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled plans for Halo: The Television Series, which will air exclusively on Xbox Live. To assuage any fan fears about the show’s quality, the Redmond-based company has partnered with legendary movie-maker Steven Spielberg to create it.
Microsoft’s 
next-generation Xbox will dominate headlines tomorrow, but Sony couldn’t resist stealing one more news cycle for the PlayStation 4 today.
The company has released a teaser video showing off its upcoming console, which was conspicuously absent at Sony’s own event in February.
Console 
manufacturers have been quick to point out the advantages of playing video games on a big screen, but Microsoft has loftier ambitions.
The company unveiled their ‘IllumiRoom’ technology in January at CES, but we’re now getting a more complete picture of what it can do. And it’s pretty cool stuff.
On 
Wednesday, Microsoft confirmed the worst-kept secret in the video game world: It plans to unveil its next generation console on May 21.
Like Sony’s PlayStation 4, the new console is expected to hit stores this holiday season and many analysts and investors are hanging their hopes on the new machines to kickstart the video game industry back into growth mode.
With 
the successor to the Xbox 360 likely to hit stores before the end of the year, you’d think people might hold off on things like an Xbox Live subscription at this point in the console cycle. But apparently the online service is more popular than ever.
Microsoft reports Xbox Live subscriptions hit 46 million worldwide in the most recent fiscal quarter. That’s up 18 percent from a year ago.
Unemployment. 
Microsoft Studios’ creative director Adam Orth is going to have to learn to deal with it for a little while.
Orth, whose controversial Twitter comments about always-on connectivity last week stirred up gamers and forced a public apology from the Redmond-based company, is no longer employed at Microsoft.
Chris 
Morris explains that having a big company like Microsoft step up could make always-online more palatable for next-gen
Will the next Xbox continue the reign of success Microsoft has seen this generation or will it stumble Sony-style, losing momentum at a critical junction for console systems? The answer could lie in a single feature.
Kotaku recently reignited the rumor about the next Xbox requiring a constant connection to the Internet – and Microsoft Studios’ creative director did nothing to put out that growing brushfire with his Twitter fiasco last week.
Will the next generation Xbox require an ‘always-on’ connection? There’s nothing to base that on right now except for rumors and the echo chamber of the Internet. But, for the sake of argument alone, let’s say that is an upcoming feature. Is it as bad as it seems?
The 
wait to learn what Microsoft has in store for the next generation now has a countdown.
The Verge reports that the company will hold an event on May 21 to reveal the new console, with a more complete look to follow a few weeks later at E3 2013.
Was 
it a hint at one of the new Xbox’s features? Was it a friendly argument that spun out of control? Either way, a tweet from a Microsoft bigwig has turned into a public relations debacle.
Microsoft Studios’ creative director Adam Orth took to Twitter Thursday to comment on the growing gamer disgust with “always on” DRM, essentially technology that requires a game or device to be connected to the internet to work properly. That tech made the launches of high-profile PC games Diablo III and SimCity disastrous, and rumors are swirling that it will be included in the next Xbox system as a means to thwart used game sales.
It 
hasn’t been a smooth ride for Nintendo’s Wii U. It’s premature to call the system a flop, but it’s undoubtedly been a disappointment thus far.
Nintendo’s new console system had a decent start, selling 463,000 systems in December of last year, but that paled compared to the 890,000 Wiis that were sold during that console’s debut. Worse yet, the Wii U sales drop since then has been dizzying. In January and February combined, only 112,000 Wii Us were sold, according to The NPD Group. To put that in perspective, the Wii sold 683,000 in that time frame. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 have thoroughly outsold the Wii U in 2013.
Chris Morris: Journalist 