Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross, Leicestershire. Rare's games span the platform, first-person shooter, action-adventure, fighting, and racing genres. Its most popular games include the Battletoads, Donkey Kong, and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).
Xbox Game Studios is an American video game publisher based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, spun out from an internal Games Group, for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows. It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, other desktop operating systems, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, and web-based portals.
Microsoft XNA is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.
Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) is a video game digital distribution service available through the Xbox Games Store, Microsoft's digital sales platform for the Xbox 360. It focused on smaller downloadable games from both major publishers and independent game developers. Titles ranged from classic console and arcade video games, to new games designed from the ground up for the service. Games available through the XBLA service ranged from $5–20 in price, and as of October 2016, there have been 719 Xbox Live Arcade titles released for the Xbox 360. Prior to the Xbox 360, "Xbox Live Arcade" was the name for an online distribution network on the original Xbox, which was replaced by the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Xbox Games Store is a digital distribution platform currently used by Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console and formerly by the Xbox One. The service allows users to download or purchase video games, add-ons for existing games, game demos along with other miscellaneous content such as gamer pictures and Dashboard themes.
Games for Windows – Live or GFWL was an online gaming service used by Games for Windows–branded PC titles that enables Windows PCs to connect to Microsoft's Live service. Users, each with a unique Gamertag, are able to play online, keep track of their friends' status, send and receive messages, gain and keep track of Achievements and associated Gamerscore, voice chat across platforms, and more. Some games allow for cross-platform play, such as Shadowrun, putting Windows players against Xbox 360 players.
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information announced later that month at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
'Splosion Man is a 2.5D action platform video game developed by Twisted Pixel Games for the Xbox 360, available through the Xbox Live Arcade digital download service. It was released on July 22, 2009, as part of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade. Players control 'Splosion Man, an escaped science experiment with the ability to explode himself repeatedly, as he works his way through obstacles and traps trying to exit the fictional laboratory known as Big Science.
Twisted Pixel Games, LLC is an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. Originally a contractor, Twisted Pixel releases games based on its own intellectual properties such as The Maw and 'Splosion Man. The company uses its own proprietary engine, known as Beard, to power its games. On October 12, 2011, it was announced that Twisted Pixel had become part of Microsoft Studios. However, Twisted Pixel separated from Microsoft, and became an independent company again on September 30, 2015. In November 2021, the company became a subsidiary of Oculus Studios.
Yo-Ho Kablammo is a pirate themed arena shooter for Xbox Live Arcade, developed by Canalside Studios, the game was released on the Xbox 360 on September 2, 2009. Yo-Ho Kablammo's sequel, Yo-ho-ho Kaboom, was never released.
CarneyVale: Showtime is a vertical platformer developed by Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was initially released on Xbox Live Indie Games on Xbox 360. Players play as Slinky, "a circus acrobat trying to rise up the ranks by performing acrobatic tricks and death-defying stunts through increasingly complex arenas".
Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a discontinued integrated development environment (IDE) for building video games on the Microsoft XNA platform. Such video games can run on Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone and the Zune. XNA Game Studio is targeted at hobbyists and experienced programmers, and is primarily used to develop 2D and 3D video games for various Microsoft platforms. XNA games can be published for the Xbox 360 using an XNA Creator's Club membership, that has a yearly fee.
Luma Arcade was a video game developer with origins in South Africa. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, with development offices in Johannesburg and a satellite office in Portland.
Dust: An Elysian Tail is an action role-playing video game developed by American independent designer Dean Dodrill, published by Microsoft Studios. It was released for Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade in August 2012, and subsequently for Microsoft Windows in May 2013, for Linux and OS X in December 2013, and for PlayStation 4 in October 2014. A version for the Nintendo Switch was announced at E3 2018 and was released in September 2018.
The Pinball Arcade is a pinball video game developed by FarSight Studios. The game is a simulated collection of 100 real pinball tables licensed by Gottlieb, Alvin G. and Company, and Stern Pinball, a company which also owns the rights of machines from Data East and Sega Pinball. Williams and Bally games are no longer available since June 30, 2018, as FarSight had lost the license to WMS properties, which has since passed to Zen Studios.
Black Forest Games GmbH is a German video game developer based in Offenburg. The company was founded in July 2012 by a team of 40 staff members, including chief executive officer Andreas Speer, previously employed by Spellbound Entertainment, which filed for insolvency earlier that year. As of August 2017, it is a subsidiary of THQ Nordic. As of June 2019, the company employs 66 people.
Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox network and Xbox Game Pass. The brand is produced by Microsoft Gaming, a division of Microsoft.
Xona Games is an independent Canadian video game developer founded in 2008 and headquartered in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Dream Build Play is an annual $75,000 Microsoft video game contest used to promote Microsoft XNA Game Studio and eventually Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It was announced in 2006, started in 2007, and ran until 2012. In 2008 and 2009 it spanned over 100 countries and in 2010 it spanned 110 countries. It was restarted in 2017 as the Dream.Build.Play 2017 Challenge. Notable winners include Dust: An Elysian Tail and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
In the video game industry, a console war describes the competition between two or more video game console manufacturers in trying to achieve better consumer sales through more advanced console technology, an improved selection of video games, and general marketing around their consoles. While console manufacturers are generally always trying to out-perform other manufacturers in sales, these console wars engage in more direct tactics to compare their offerings directly against their competitors or to disparage the competition in contrast to their own, and thus the marketing efforts have tended to escalate in back-and-forth pushes.
