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Latest Andru Edwards Videos
The People Making Xbox Games Reportedly Hate Game Pass
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Microsoft, Video Games,
Xbox Game Pass has always had one obvious pitch: pay a monthly fee, and a giant library of games, including brand-new ones on day one, is just there. For players, that is close to a miracle. For the people who actually make those games, it may be closer to a slow-motion disaster.
According to a new report, that tension is not a rumor floating around the internet anymore. It is coming from inside the house. Xbox studio leadership reportedly detests Game Pass, and the reason is deceptively simple: they think it is teaching an entire generation of players that a $70 game should feel free.
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Alienware’s $800 AW3426DW Is a Gorgeous Ultrawide With One Big Catch
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Displays, Product Reviews, Video Games,
You know the moment when a game finally fills your whole field of view, the world stretching out past the edges of where a normal screen would stop, and you catch yourself just sitting there grinning? That is the feeling the Alienware AW3426DW is built to sell. At $800 for a 34-inch curved QD-OLED, it is Alienware's attempt to make that feeling affordable, and when everything lines up, it absolutely delivers.
The catch is that everything does not always line up. This is a stunning panel wrapped around a very specific idea of how you should be using it, and the moment you step outside that idea, the shine comes off fast. It is one of the best-looking monitors you can put on a desk for the money. It is also one that will happily leave a third of itself black if your game does not play along.
Click to continue reading Alienware’s $800 AW3426DW Is a Gorgeous Ultrawide With One Big Catch
Bethesda Just Dropped Big News on Fallout, Elder Scrolls 6, and Starfield All at Once
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Microsoft, Video Games,
For years, getting Bethesda to say anything concrete about its games has felt like pulling teeth. Today the studio opened up all at once, with a sprawling note about the future of Fallout, Starfield, and The Elder Scrolls, and there is genuinely a lot in here worth caring about.
Start with the headline that will get Fallout fans out of their chairs: Obsidian, the studio behind the beloved Fallout: New Vegas, is officially returning to the series with its own spin-off game!
That isn't the only Fallout news, either. Bethesda confirmed Fallout 5 is now in pre-production, and that full remakes of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are on the way, though nobody is putting dates on any of it yet.
Asha Sharma’s XBOX Reset is Devastating (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games, Videos,
Eight days. That's how long it took Xbox to go from holding what I thought was its best showcase in a decade to shutting down a studio it had just used to headline it. Microsoft announced a brand new Hellblade on that stage, and barely a week later Ninja Theory, the team behind Senua, was told it's over. You don't do that unless something in the foundation is cracking.
Here's the number behind the chaos: Microsoft has poured more than $20 billion into Xbox over the last five years, and annual revenue still dropped by nearly half a billion dollars. Satya Nadella said the quiet part out loud when he described the operation as "subsidizing entertainment." He also pointed out that there's more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft. Sit with that: creators earn more from Xbox games than Xbox does. That's a structural problem, not a rough quarter.
Click to continue reading Asha Sharma’s XBOX Reset is Devastating (Video)
Asha Sharma Just Hit Reset on Xbox (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games, Videos,
Microsoft spent $69 billion buying Activision Blizzard, but Xbox still found itself in one of the strangest positions in gaming. Hardware revenue was falling, the brand identity was getting blurrier, and longtime fans were starting to wonder whether Microsoft even wanted to be in the console business anymore.
Click to continue reading Asha Sharma Just Hit Reset on Xbox (Video)
Universal Sued Nintendo Over Donkey Kong. And It Backfired. (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Video Games, Videos,
Picture the year 1983. You walk into a video arcade during its absolute golden era, the air thick with cheap pizza and ozone, that wild geometric carpet under your feet, the whole room a chaotic symphony of beeps and bloops. Arcades were printing money. But behind all that noise, a genuinely bizarre legal brawl was brewing, and it pitted a Hollywood titan, Universal Studios, against an underdog Japanese company that got its start back in 1889 making playing cards.
That company was Nintendo, the game was Donkey Kong, and Universal was convinced Nintendo's smash hit infringed on its trademark for King Kong. It's a David-versus-Goliath story played out in federal court, and it did not end the way Universal expected.
Click to continue reading Universal Sued Nintendo Over Donkey Kong. And It Backfired. (Video)
The ROG Xbox Ally: A Portable Xbox Dream, with a Windows Reality Check
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Portable Audio / Video, Video Games, Videos,
You know that feeling when you pick up a device and it just makes sense? Like someone finally listened to what you actually wanted. That is exactly what happens when you get your hands on the ROG Xbox Ally. Microsoft and Asus have finally answered a question we have been asking for years: what would a portable Xbox actually look like?
But this is not just another company trying to build an all-in-one handheld. This is a massive ecosystem play to let you take your Xbox library absolutely anywhere.
You can pick up the ROG Xbox Ally now!
Click to continue reading The ROG Xbox Ally: A Portable Xbox Dream, with a Windows Reality Check
Why 86 Million People Abandoned Nintendo
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Video Games, Videos,
It’s easy to look at the Wii U’s sales numbers - a 13.5 million unit whimpering follow-up to the Wii’s 100 million unit roar - and assume the console itself was the problem.
But it wasn’t.
The hardware was weird, sure, and that chunky GamePad looked a bit like a Fisher-Price toy, but the real issue was that Nintendo forgot how to talk to human beings. Between the disastrous name that sounded like an accessory and an E3 reveal that hid the actual console, Nintendo spent years trying to sell a solution to a problem nobody knew they had. It was a classic case of brilliant engineering colliding with catastrophic messaging, creating a device that even the most die-hard fans struggled to explain to their friends.
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I Played Halo: Campaign Evolved at Halo World Championship: Halo Studios is Trying to Solve a 25-year-old Problem
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games,
The room already had that Halo World Championship energy. Loud, slightly chaotic, half sports arena and half family reunion. People were still talking about clutches and brackets, still wearing team jerseys like they were uniforms, and then the whole weekend abruptly pivoted into something else. A nostalgia bomb with a release window.
Halo Studios walked out and said the quiet part out loud: they’re remaking Halo: Combat Evolved. Not a texture pass. Not “Anniversary, but shinier.” A ground-up campaign remake built in Unreal Engine 5, coming in 2026, and yes, it’s headed to PlayStation 5 along with Xbox Series X|S and PC.
And then they did the smart thing. They didn’t just announce it. They showed it.
The first long look was The Silent Cartographer, the mission every Halo fan can replay in their head like muscle memory. There’s a reason they picked it. It’s beach landing and wide-open chaos and that specific Halo magic where it’s always your choice whether to be careful or stupid.
Then I got in line and played it.
Halo World Championship 2025 Was a Farewell Tour and a Pitch for What’s Next
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games,
There are a lot of esports weekends where the biggest story is the trophy. Someone plays out of their mind, the bracket goes sideways, the crowd loses its voice, and you get a clean headline at the end: Team X wins. Roll credits.
Halo World Championship 2025, held October 24–26 in Seattle, did not do clean headlines. It did endings and beginnings at the same time. It crowned Shopify Rebellion as the final Halo Infinite world champions after a 4–1 Grand Finals win over OpTic Gaming. It put up strong viewership and attendance that made the whole thing feel bigger than a niche scene. It raised real money for charity. It gave the Halo faithful a reason to argue online for weeks. And then it quietly made the most important point of the whole weekend: Halo is trying to turn the page.
If you only watched the matches, the weekend felt like a victory lap for a team that looked built for it.