
Sony’s PlayStation 4 is already being heralded as the victor of the 8th generation console war, as news of just how poor Microsoft’s Xbox One offering is have begun to sink in, with poor specs, a pathetically weak games line-up, excessive emphasis on TV rather than games, no backwards compatibility and no support for used games all combining to offer a massive boost to Sony’s share price.
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Microsoft has finally unveiled the new Xbox, dubbed the Xbox One and due “later this year,” although with the better part of their presentation being given over to TV and EA Sports precious little of the actual game line-up was on show.
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Microsoft have announced they will be co-opting Ghost in the Shell: Arise to promote the Japanese launch of their Surface line of tablets, with plenty of product placement in the offing should anyone get the mistaken impression a futuristic cyberbrain is any replacement for a 2012 Microsoft tablet.
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The PlayStation 3 has now narrowly outsold the Xbox 360, with total global sales of 77 million to 76 million at the end of 2012, according to industry statistics.
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As if enough doubts had not already been raised in response to the profusion of moe mascots for Windows 8, now Microsoft is attending Comiket 83, begging attendees to drop by their booth with the enticing prospect of “being able to photograph a beautiful cosplayer,” along with the rather less enticing prospect of being able to paw a Windows 8 touch PC loaded with a moe theme.
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Microsoft’s efforts to hawk Windows to otaku using the power of moe look to have reached their zenith with Windows 7′s Madobe Nanami, and quite possibly their nadir with the pair of generic ‘blobs trotted out to support sales of Windows 8, apparently the most loathed Windows OS since Vista.
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A leaked document purporting to show Microsoft’s plans for the Xbox 720 has been circulating widely, with plenty of attention being attracted by its low price and even lower specs.
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Microsoft is bundling a free copy of Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN together with its ¥173,250 Claudia figure – or as Microsoft would have it, buyers of their VS2010 bundle also get a charming figure of Azure mascot Claudia Madobe.
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A survey of Japanese console ownership reveals more Japanese own Dreamcasts than they do Xbox 360s, with less than 5% of gamers reporting owning one…
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- Author: Artefact
- Categories: Games, H, News
- Date: Jan 23, 2011 14:22 JST
- Tags: Censorship, Eroge, Microsoft, Moe, Oshiri, Otaku, Pantsu, Shimapan, Xbox 360


Xbox 360 bishoujo pantsu shooter Gal Gun appears to have escaped Microsoft’s efforts to promote family-friendly violence over the evils of sex after all – the game is packed with pantsu-baring schoolgirls of all kinds, and according to demo players is actually quite fun.
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It transpires that Bioware’s hit cover-shooter Mass Effect 2, which sold millions of copies and became the recipient of innumerable perfect scores and game-of-the-year awards, sold a pathetic 8,864 copies in Japan, being outsold by such blockbusters as Arcana Heart 3.
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- Author: Artefact
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Jan 19, 2011 21:34 JST
- Tags: DS, Famitsu, Microsoft, Nintendo, PS3, PSP, Rankings, Sony, Statistics, Wii, Xbox 360

Famitsu’s ranking of Japan’s top 100 best selling games of 2010 has found its way online, and seems to reveal the Japanese gaming market has devolved into a staid mixture of endless RPG franchises and Mario games…
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