Pre-ordered the blue controller. That is a 90s aesthetic that needs to fully come back and never leave.

I wanted to, but I couldn't find any information on the rubberized grips on the back to see if they contained actual rubber.

Probably the same as the 20th Anniversary controller I have. They feel pretty rubbery and nice.

I would love it, but I developed a latex allergy 3-4 years ago.  Too many years in the rubber industry and now I have to wear special clothing just to continue to make hydraulic hoses.  I'm almost retired though, had a few setbacks, but shouldn't be long now. Skin contact makes me break out in rash and blisters (hives). 

Ah yeah, my mom had that. She worked for Aladdin Plastics for a while and she became allergic to certain plastics.

Xbox always delays stuff for other companies it tends to be to make the game better, polished or refined but with xbox it always feel they don't know what they are doing and keep delaying it... The xbox app store would also release in July and where is it? The only thing that is not delayed is a price hike for gamepass...

Oh well atleast some of the sales are good this week:

- Afterimage
- Aero Acro bat (surprise release for me)
- Carmageddon Max Damage
- Neighbours back from Hell
- Smoke and Sacrifice
- Sword & Fairy inn 2 (not sure what to think of it but it checks some boxes that I enjoy)

Microsoft and Activision Have Formed a New Team Within Blizzard to Work on Smaller 'AA' Games Based on Existing IP

Our sources indicate that Microsoft and Activision have approved the creation of a new team within its Blizzard subsidiary, comprised mostly with employees from King. Blizzard is known for beloved franchises like Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, and Microsoft is keen to curate and serve these franchises more prolifically than Activision itself did previously. Military sci-fi strategy series StarCraft for example has essentially been on mothballs since StarCraft Remastered in 2017, and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer himself has name checked StarCraft during interviews about the acquisition in recent years. Still, you need teams to work on these classic franchises, and that's exactly what Microsoft is gearing up to do.

To that end, we're told Microsoft and Activision's new team within Blizzard is tasked to work on "AA" smaller games based on existing franchises within the Blizzard universes. Given King's mobile expertise, it's possible that these will be mobile games aimed to support Xbox's planned mobile gaming store for iOS and Android — although we're not entirely sure that they'll be restricted specifically to mobile. Given Microsoft's platform agnostic strategy across mobile, PC, and console, it's entirely possible that any fresh projects could run across platforms. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently described how it wants Xbox to focus on a three-pronged gaming approach across those endpoints, with Xbox console at its core.

Sources tell me that Microsoft is keen to explore and experiment finding success out of smaller teams, given the monstrously ballooning costs facing AAA game development. A lot of the biggest success stories in the industry in recent times have been unique ideas from smaller teams. Think of games like Balatro, Palworld, Vampire Survivors, Among Us, and even some of Microsoft's internal games like Sea of Thieves and Grounded. Many of these titles were built by comparatively small teams, and in some cases solo developers. Yet, many of these titles became wildly popular based on their innovative gameplay alone and in some cases, their agility to pivot to new trends. As player habits have evolved in recent years, the industry is undergoing something of a painful transition. 

WindowsCentral

This new King studio is specifically geared up for agility, eschewing some of the bureaucratic bloat that can occur in bigger teams. Microsoft has also repositioned some of its existing studios around this thought process, with Halo developer 343i also taking on a more streamlined single-team organizational style, ditching its siloed multi-team format of yesteryear which was often cited to me as having communication issues. The Verge also noted recently that Xbox has now moved into one departmental building at Redmond HQ, specifically to improve communication and collaboration.

Could you both be knee jerking here.  Are you complaining that Bungie is layoff just like about every tech company today or is this about something else.  Its evident to me that maintaining a huge team is cost a lot but service games in general just isn't getting the same returns since the main resource that is drying up is gamers time.  To many service games and not enough gamers to waste all their time playing your grindy game paying incremental amounts of cash to keep afloat.  I actually believe a lot of service games will be scaling back on staff because it cost to much.

Need to port Warcraft and Starcraft with new UI exclusively to Xbox Consoles and sell some hardware.