Xbox LIVE active users have jumped past 60 million thanks to strong holiday sales, subscriptions, and engagement strategies, Microsoft confirms in its latest Q2'19 earnings report. Xbox LIVE adoption has been relatively flat throughout the last few quarters, but subscribers and active users have spiked thanks to a successful holiday season. Microsoft saw 64 million monthly active users on Xbox LIVE in the three-month FYQ3'19 quarter, up about 8.5% year-over-year and nearly 13% quarter-over-quarter. It's worth noting that Xbox LIVE bridges multiple devices and these numbers reflect platforms like Xbox consoles, Windows 10 PCs, and mobiles. This is all according to plan as Xbox LIVE now serves as the connective tissue between various hardware platforms. (Continued below) Xbox Game Pass is a big driver of Xbox LIVE engagement and overall gaming revenue, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms in the quarterly earnings call. “Xbox Live monthly active users reached a record 64 million, with the highest number of mobile and PC users to-date. Xbox Game Pass subscribers and Mixer engagement also hit new all-time highs. And Minecraft, which continues to be one of the most popular and durable gaming franchises in the industry, delivered record revenue as we expanded into new platforms, geographies and segments like Education,” Nadella said in the FYQ3'19 call. Microsoft is poised to pull in more Xbox LIVE users and active paying subscribers. The company has ambitious new service plans including its Project xCloud, which streams games to mobiles, PCs, and consoles, as well as new initiatives like engagement-driven Xbox Rewards. Mixer continues to do exceptionally well and gleans revenues from advertisements and monetization, and Microsoft will expand Xbox Game Pass' lineup with new titles over time. There's even rumblings Game Pass could launch on PC sometime soon. I'd personally like more visibility into these numbers. It'd be neat to see how much Microsoft is earning from Xbox LIVE active subscribers as well as more info on how it organically folds into other services like Mixer and Game Pass. I'd also like to know how many Xbox LIVE subscribers Microsoft is able to keep versus those they lose as subscriptions lapse. Microsoft is typically coy when it comes to exact figures (it stopped reporting Xbox One console sales ages ago) and it's honestly a shame. The company is doing interesting things and these figures could give us more insight on its complex, multi-faceted ecosystem strategy.
Microsoft has a new free games event going on this weekend, and Xbox Live Gold subscribers have a great choice of titles.
Right now, Xbox One gamers can download and play three games, all offering different styles of gameplay.
This includes The Sims 4, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Fishing Sim World.
It's quite a strange mix to be sure but something worth checking out if you’re a free games fans.
But here’s where the warning comes in as time is running out to take advantage of them all.
Microsoft has confirmed that these titles will be reverting back to their normal price wall status very soon.
“Express your creativity with your Sims, battle it out in the epic Halo saga, and immerse yourself in an authentic fishing simulator without the sea sickness,” a message from Microsoft explains.
“The event begins on Thursday, February 7 at 12:01 a.m. PT and runs through to Sunday, February 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Start by finding and installing the games here.
“To download on console, click on the Gold member area on the home dashboard.”
The good news is that fans in the UK should technically have until Monday morning, around 8am on February 11, to play it all.
The games will also be available at a discount so fans can continue playing while keeping their Gamerscore and achievements earned in-game.
Xbox: February's ‘Games with Gold’ lineup released
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Notice of all the different choices can be found for each of the three games, below:
The Sims 4 ($39.99 SRP): up until 2/11, The Sims’ anniversary sale is on! Get up to 80% off The Sims 4 base game and 50% off select expansion packs.
North America base game discount – 80% off: $8.00
ROW base game discount – 60% off: $16.00
Halo: The Master Chief Collection ($29.99 SRP) at 25% off: $22.49
Note: only Halo: The Master Chief Collection Digital Bundle is on sale and for purchase.
Fishing Sim World ($19.99 SRP) at 25% off: $14.99
Other Xbox Live free games worth checking out is Apex Legends, recently released by Respawn Entertainment.
While it can technically be downloaded by anyone on Xbox One and Xbox One X, an Xbox Live Gold subscription is required to play online.
And without that, you can’t do much on Apex Legends.
Apex Legends: THRILLING trailer for new game release
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Apex Legends is a new Battle Royale experience set in the world of Titanfall that currently has a lot of people playing it.
Respawn CEO Vince Zampella revealed the scope of the initial success of their latest venture, telling fans:
“In 72 hours, over 10 million players have jumped into Apex Legends, and we’ve breached 1 million concurrent players!
“This has been a truly incredible journey. We tested and tweaked. We argued and agreed. We got to a point where we felt some magic.
“We knew it would be risky to take the franchise in this direction, to go free to play, and do a surprise launch. But we fell in love with Apex Legends and wanted, needed, other people to play it too.
“We hoped you’d love it as much as us, but never in our wildest dreams could we have expected the outpouring of support and positivity we’ve seen.
“From all of us at Respawn, thank you for giving us and Apex Legends a chance. Thank you for joining us on this journey. This is just the beginning! We have so much more in store for you this year.”
More Xbox Live free games will be announced by Microsoft in the coming weeks.
After years of development and multiple delays, Microsoft's next big exclusive, Crackdown 3, launches this week–and you can play it for only $1 if you meet a few requirements.
As a first-party game, Crackdown 3 is free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. And right now, Microsoft is offering a one-month Xbox Game Pass trial for only $1. The catch is that you need to be a new subscriber to enjoy the savings.
Xbox Game Pass already has “millions” of subscribers, but if you're not among them, right now seems to be a good time to jump in. You can sign up for Xbox Game Pass on the Xbox website or through your console.
Crackdown 3 is coming to Xbox One and PC, but Xbox Game Pass is only on Xbox One right now. It could come to PC and other platforms down the road, but no announcements have been made as of it. Crackdown 3 launches on February 15.
Crackdown 3 is not the only game coming to Xbox Game Pass in February; you can see a full rundown of February's additions below.
For $10/month, Xbox Game Pass subscribers get access to a growing library of free games to download and play for as long as their membership stays active. There are more than 100 Xbox One and backwards-compatible Xbox 360 titles in the catalog, including Halo 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Sea of Thieves, PUBG, Mortal Kombat X, and many more.
February Game Pass Games
Shadow of the Tomb Raider – February 7
The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season – February 7
Microsoft has revealed a brand-new Xbox One controller that will have lovers of the color red in heaven.
This week Xbox's official Twitter page unveiled a brand-new Xbox One controller, dubbed “Sport Red,” that will be releasing soon. More specifically, the special red-everything controller will release on March 5.
Microsoft provides the following product description for the controller:
“Equip yourself with the Xbox Wireless Controller – Sport Red Special Edition, featuring a vibrant red design with metallic accents and rubberized diamond grip for enhanced comfort. Enjoy custom button mapping and plug in any compatible headset with the 3.5mm stereo headset jack. And with Bluetooth technology, play your favorite games on Windows 10 PCs and tablets.”
Like all Xbox One controllers, all three current Xbox console platforms will be supported as well as PCs.
The controller is currently available to pre-order via the Microsoft store. It will cost you $69.99USD, and comes with free shipping.
Personally, I think the PS4 currently has a monopoly on the best controller color designs, though this one is sure right up there with some of the best PS4 controllers. I don't even like the color red that much, which is how I know the designers over at Xbox really nailed this one.
And it seems the general consensus agrees with me:
That said, $70 is a bit pricey for a controller, even a cool one like this. Controllers never go on sale with deep discounts, but they do go on sale, typically around Black Friday and Christmas. In other words, it may be best to hold off on pulling the trigger on this for now. After all, $70 buys you a brand-new AAA game and a $10 indie.
Anyway, as always, feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you think. Hot or not?
No matter how heartbreaking the win over Thanos will be in Avengers: Endgame, one thing is certain: Doctor Strange is the architect of this win. I’m not just talking about the events in Infinity War that needed to happen in a certain way in order for the Avengers to actually beat the Titan in the next movie, but of other events from all the other Marvel movies, which may have been set up in a certain way by Strange. In a somewhat apologetic tone, Strange told Iron Man at the end of Infinity War that this was the only way to beat Thanos. Strange has seen so many different outcomes that he knew the only way to win would require some sacrifice. But beating Thanos is possible.
We’ve often talked about the importance of time travel for Endgame, and about Doctor Strange’s master plan, as several fan theories tried to guess how the Avengers would win. But we now have an incredibly interesting theory that doesn’t look at what Strange did while peering through time. Instead, it gives us an approximation of the time he actually spent looking at all those potential futures.
Reddit user CleverD3vil estimated that Strange needed more than 5,000 years to look at what’s required to win. That seems like a huge amount of time, but let’s not forget that Strange looked at 14,000,605 alternate futures.
On Titan Strange sits down and actually looks at 14,000,605 alternate futures, and that looks like he just spent only a minute or two doing it, now we don’t know much about Time Stone and how it works but we know that he would have to look through time as if he is watching a movie or he couldn’t have actually experienced it with loops and stuff to save him… either way he would have spent a lot of time.
14,000,605 x 3 hours (He would definitely spend more per timeline… maybe months in some.. but like in the movie lets take the 3 hours) = 42,001,815 hours which is 4,795 years round off to 5,000 years
The theory says that Doctor Strange could have further honed his skills while analyzing events from various periods — I also think he went back in time not just forward, to ensure this timeline progresses in a certain way. A few days ago, I argued that it’s wrong to think Star-Lord is guilty of letting Thanos prevail on Titan, and that’s because it all happened under Strange’s watchful eye. Strange allowed Star-Lord to interfere with the plan because he knew that giving Thanos the Infinity Stones, and making him think he would win was the only way to beat him.
When you think about it, this is nothing new for Doctor Strange, as he did the same thing while fighting Dormammu. He created a time loop that must have ran millions of times until the Dormammu realized he couldn’t win. The Doctor Strange battle in the movie only featured some of the loops, but the director of the movie did say that Strange spent plenty of time stuck in that time loop. Meanwhile, the full theory about Strange’s role in defeating Thanos follows below:
Samuel L. Jackson is no Tom Holland or Mark Ruffalo when it comes to Avengers leaks, but he certainly seems ready to spoil some details about the upcoming movies. Exactly a month ago, the actor who will reprise his Nick Fury role in at least two Marvel movies this year (Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home) casually dropped a huge detail about Captain Marvel. He confirmed that she can travel through time, which has tremendous significance for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fast forward to February, and Jackson is back with a revealing spoiler about the upcoming movies, and it’s one that can explain Captain Marvel’s arrival in Endgame.
“[The Avengers are] up against some really, really tough odds right now, we saw throughout Infinity War,” Jackson said back in January, during an interview. “So now we know we need something that’s as powerful as Thanos, and at some point, we’ll find out how powerful she is and all the things that she’s capable of. She’s one of the few people in the Marvel universe that can time travel.”
Talking to Total Film Magazine (via ComicBookMovie), Jackson implied that Captain Marvel might travel from the ‘90s directly to the Endgame future following Fury’s page.
I guess we might figure out that she can do things that nobody else can do. She can time travel, so maybe she can get ahead or behind or whatever, and figure out what all that is. The fact I have the pager 20 years later – it gets addressed in an interesting sort of way.
Jackson didn’t say that Carol Danvers will just jump through time and make herself available in the 21st century, but that seems to be the implication. A previous TV spot for Captain Marvel partly addressed the pager. That video was shown in international markets, revealing a discussion between Fury and Danvers about the pager. That pager, meanwhile, looks exactly like the one Fury has — well, Fury’s pager is upgraded to work in the future. The question is now, in light what Jackson just said, does that pager communicate through time? How would that even be possible?
If Captain Marvel does jump from the ’90s to 2019, then it would certainly explain where she was all these years.
What is worth paying attention to is that Captain Marvel can move through time as she pleases without a Time Stone. She might not be able to watch time unfold as Doctor Strange did, but that’s a power that will obviously come in handy.
Jackson didn’t tell us exactly what’s going to happen though, à la Holland or Ruffalo, so he’s probably allowed to drop these particular teasers. What’s interesting is a fan theory said a few days ago that the snap in Infinity War might have pushed Carol back to the ‘90s. She then had to leave the planet, the theory said, so that she wouldn’t interfere with young Carol who’s still a kid on Earth during the ’90s. She gave Fury the pager in the process, with clear instructions for him to call her only if and when the snap occurs. That’s just a theory, however.View image on Twitter
Captain Marvel launches on March 8th, with Endgame set to premiere on April 26th. While you wait, you might want to check out the new Total Film Magazine for more Marvel content.
