Latest Andru Edwards Videos
The Budget Xbox Series S Now Costs 499 Euros, and That’s the Good News
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games,
The Xbox Series S was supposed to be the console you bought without thinking about it. Cheap, small, good enough, the thing you got your kid or picked up as a second machine for the bedroom. In Europe it now costs €499.99. That's a 43 percent increase on a console that launched as the budget option, and it's the smallest number in this story.
Microsoft told everyone back in June that Xbox prices were going up on August 1st, but it only shared US figures at the time. The European and UK numbers landed when the increase actually took effect, and they're considerably worse than the American ones.
Click to continue reading The Budget Xbox Series S Now Costs 499 Euros, and That’s the Good News
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How Xbox Destroyed Game Pass - The Best Deal in Gaming (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games, Videos,
Microsoft spent more than $80 billion buying video game studios, and the Xbox division now runs at roughly a 3% profit margin. Park that money in a high yield savings account and you would have done better. That is the punchline everybody reaches for, and the conclusion they draw from it is that Game Pass was the mistake. I think they have it backwards.
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The Original Xbox Comes to PC, and It’s Really About the Next Console
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games,
The lineup is a proper nostalgia flight: Fuzion Frenzy, BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Conker: Live and Reloaded. These are not lazy ports. Microsoft has bolted on custom graphics settings, better anti-aliasing, and upscaling that pushes the original 480p all the way to 4x sharper, so games built for a CRT in the corner of your living room can actually look at home on a modern monitor.
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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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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.
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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.
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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
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.