Both 
Microsoft and Sony took some heat when they announced that neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 would be backwards compatible. Sony had a solution in its pocket, though, with its upcoming game streaming service,PlayStation Now. Microsoft was left a bit flat-footed.
But now, the company says it’s thinking about rolling out an emulator for Xbox One to let people play Xbox 360 games.
It’s 
not uncommon for kids to break things. It is, however, pretty special when what they break is the security of a hi-tech video game console.
Kristoffer Von Hassel from San Diego’s Ocean Beach neighborhood is the wunderkind who discovered a security loophole on the Xbox One.
You’ve 
scrimped and saved, skipping lunches and selling old games on eBay, and now, finally, you’ve got the $400 or $500 you need for a next-generation console.
But despite what the price tag might say, that’s not quite enough. In fact, it’s not even close.
Microsoft 
may not want to lower the price of the Xbox One just yet, but that’s not stopping some of the world’s biggest retailers from doing it anyway.
Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon have all cut the cost of the Xbox One Titanfall bundle from $500 to $450, putting the system within reach of Sony’s $400 PlayStation 4.
Middleware, 
post-mortems on game design, and discussions on ways to improve monetization in free-to-play titles generally aren’t the sorts of things that rev up players. And, on paper, the annual Game Developer’s Conference might seem a little too ‘inside baseball’ for the average person.
But in the detail-obsessed gaming world, GDC is one of the highlights of the year. It lacks the pomp and circumstance of E3 — as well as the big game announcements, generally — but it’s one of the best ways to get a sense of where gaming is going.
Everyone’s 
a critic. And when the subject is next generation consoles, they’re especially ferocious.
Sometimes that’s legitimate. Sometimes, it’s user error. (And sometimes, it’s an odd mix of both.) Fixya has dug through over 40,000 complaints to determine the most common problems with each of the new machines on the market.
Roughly 
three months after the Xbox One hit stores, its price was cut.
On February 24, Microsoft lowered the retail price of its next generation console in the UK from £429.99 to £399.99, the equivalent of a $50 price cut in the U.S. At the same time, the company unveiled an upcoming Titanfall bundle in both regions, which includes a copy of the system’s most anticipated game at no additional charge.
The bundling of such a big game raised some eyebrows, but the UK cut really set gaming forums ablaze. Was Microsoft acknowledging weakness in Xbox One sales? Was it “pulling a Nintendo” to remain competitive? Was the company throwing in the towel?
Not at all, but it’s clear the company — and its flagship console — have their work cut out for them.
Microsoft 
may have led the charge in gesture and voice recognition in the home with Kinect, but the competition is coming fast.
And given the growth in this market—user interface is expected to top $25 billion by 2016, according to Visiongain—there’s no shortage of interest in what the company may announce at its Microsoft Build event in April, where the company is expected to focus in part on Kinect 2.0 for Windows.
Microsoft 
and game video network Machinima are defending a recently discovered advertising arrangement between the companies, but experts say they could be facing extended trouble down the road.
Word of the partnership came out earlier this week via Ars Technica. According to leaked documents, well-known Machinima YouTube video creators were paid a bonus by Microsoft for highlighting the Xbox One in their video content. However, the terms of the agreement stipulated that Youtubers not disclose they were being paid to promote the console. In other words, they were getting paid to pimp the system but were told not to tell anybody — nor say anything untoward about the Xbox One.
The 
Xbox One might have won December, but the PS4 is winning the war.
According to brick and mortar retail tracker The NPD Group, both of Microsoft’s consoles outperformed Sony’s in the final month of 2013 in the U.S. Microsoft sold 908,000 Xbox Ones and 643,000 Xbox 360s in December, surpassing the totals for both the PS4 and PS3, though Sony did not provide specific numbers.
Chris Morris: Journalist 