Playing indie games day in and day out has recently called my long-standing relationship with AAA gaming into question. Though we first met at the tender age of 3, since then, it’s inspired all of my worst personality traits and burned a number of bridges that would be really convenient to have intact right now. I had to forcefully unlearn a lot of the things it taught me over months and years of re-education and avoiding the medium altogether, and the negative influence of gaming on the socially stunted can still be seen both in myself and others who were like me. That’s why I’m breaking it off with AAA. It’s been a long road with a lot of ups and downs, but as they say, your shit is on the curb. Get the fuck out of my apartment.

I was never very popular in high school. Instead, I was well known without being well liked, which is a very important differential that I feel is lost on those who favor ugly fedoras and playing Used to Know when they crysterbate. Envious of endless incestual girlfriend-swapping between peer groups I could spot from the Magic: The Gathering table, I eventually regressed into a smelly goblin that spent half his time rearing lambs for the FFA and the other half sneaking Arc the Lad after his nine-o’-clock bedtime (upgraded to ten when I turned 17, which was a big fucking deal).

They’re brothers? I never would have known that immediately!

This combination of misanthropic reclusivity and vague animal smells bestowed me the appearance of a swamp hermit, which, as it turns out, is up there with non-messianic cult leader and that guy who power washes poo off the street in terms of general attractiveness. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I was a dead ringer for two concurrent international celebrities, a fact I would have been much better prepared for if I wasn’t so busy projecting my romantic impotence onto anything with a vagina. Still, I grew up and burned through a string of girlfriends, as is demanded of all men by the High Order of Things Men Are Expected to Do, making sure to brand every ex a psychopath in order to wash my hands of being a shitty boyfriend. It would take me a few more years to completely drop the misogynist douchebag thing, but that’s a different story.

“AAA gaming doesn’t just want your personal and financial worth. It demands it in order to keep feeding you new experiences, because this is an art form where being shitty at level 3 will bar you from the rest of a game unless you practice your mushroom bounce for nine weeks…”

The one thing that did sort of replace my need for human companionship was gaming. It is a medium designed around massaging the male ego, probably because most of the people who worked in and partook of its development over the last forty years (barring Brenda Romero, who is fantastic) were a combination of guys like me and the slicksters who massaged the industry into certain portions of the general public, most of whom were also like me (white, male, draws a lot of dragons).

Me as a dragon.

Having that sort of hypermasculine reinforcement was useful at a time when I could still count the amount of sex I’d had on my fingers, and doubled as a really inventive way to avoid having any more (remember, at that age, perceived sexual activity is heavily tied to your worth as a man) while simultaneously failing to grow as a person. Thus I spent many years shunning human interaction as much as possible, content with slaying a truly staggering number of bipedal wolf monsters and being wowed by Final Fantasy 8’s cutting-edge graphics.

So lifelike.

Sexist Homophobe

By the time I snapped out of my opiated gamer haze, I was significantly older and (debatably) significantly wiser, or at least wise enough to realize that for the better part of two decades, I had been the Noah Calhoun of playing video games. Every girl I had ever loved was a woman on the side by contrast (three of my exes just fist-pumped the air), and the frightening understanding that I had sacrificed a huge portion of my life to staring at screens at once became readily and horrifically apparent, especially since, by romantic standards, AAA games and the industry that creates them had inflated some of my worst personality flaws to monstrous sizes.

“The problem with being around hobbies that subconsciously hammer sexism into most of their products is that those standards start to impress themselves onto the hobbyists.”

For one thing, AAA requires a huge investment of time and money that goes well beyond the onus of a normal relationship. Every hour of in-game progress is time spent away from physical human beings, every dollar siphoned from hypothetical real world activities that might involve hypothetical other people. AAA gaming doesn’t just want your personal and financial worth. It demands it in order to keep feeding you new experiences, because this is an art form where being shitty at level 3 will bar you from the rest of a game unless you practice your mushroom bounce for nine weeks, just long enough for the sequel to the game you’re been trying to finish releasing at $60 MSRP. And unlike any other teachable skill, being good at video games is really only applicable to playing other games, despite what “science” says about “hand-eye coordination.”

The end result of allocating all that energy is that I began to prioritize gaming over all of my other relationships and obligations. Not that my home life was particularly stellar (I once walked in on an aunt taking bets for when I would kill myself), but I did have a small circle of friends who I repeatedly avoided in exchange for more time behind the console. Gaming was controllable. It was unabashedly positive, and it consistently told me the stories of male loners who, against great odds, would save the world and get the girl. I saw no reason to even attempt another hobby or make any new friends, my game collection ballooning into hundreds of different titles as my net worth remained a constant of zero. I was addicted to acquiring and beating games, and I instantly hated anything that would keep me from it. Console gaming hooked me on cartridge-era heroine.

Real heroine might have been better.

Second, AAA is a sexist homophobe with a number of ridiculous misconceptions regarding non-whites. Blindly committing your life to it would be like coming home for Thanksgiving with a foul-mouthed, upper-middle class grandmother as your date, happily slurping down bacon gravy while she tells your horrified family that the latest architectural development from South America is building huts from leaves instead of shit. Gaming as whole has a serious problem with people who aren’t gangly white dudes, and it probably has something to do with being invented in the 40’s by a guy best known for indirectly blowing up a quarter of a million Japanese people. Near everyone who got in on the ground floor was a gangly white dude. Their successors were mostly gangly white dudes, and the gangly white dudes who run things now are generally gangly white dudes, their most common thread a marketing bible only relevant to first wave Madison Avenue advertisers and Duke University lacrosse players.

The problem with being around hobbies that subconsciously hammer sexism into most of their products is that those standards start to impress themselves onto the hobbyists. Maybe not completely, and maybe not at first, but looking at the comments of anything I’ve ever written outside of Indie Statik is a depressing reminder that the most vocal aspect of the gaming community is a terrifying army of misogyny jingoists. Even more depressing was that I used to be like them, biased to mentally shuffle women into certain roles because every game that I played established them as such. Women as two-dimensional love interests. Woman as property that needs to be protected. Woman introduced solely as an extension of the protagonist.

“It took a long, long time to scuttle most of the my gamer-infused personality defects, and despite that, some still pop up from time to time in charmingly inconvenient ways.”

Without the proper context to understand tropes in interactive storytelling, those same tropes oozed into my brain and established a lopsided understanding of gender roles that heavily favored spiky anime hair. Worse still, because I used gaming as such a heavy crutch for my social life, I felt the need to voraciously defend those tropes as often as possible, resisting any change to the status quo with the frothing of a rabid hyena. These were my games, and deserved the defense of something befitting my ownership. I was feeling emotions. I was the hero, and just like the games I so worshipped, my opinion mattered the most. It made perfect sense at the time.

Shitty Friends

When our teeth and ambitions are bared,

Finally, AAA has shitty friends. They hate creativity and love strongarming you into paying for their things. Their parent companies constantly lie to your face and not-so-secretly disdain you, anyone with an innovative streak is quickly ostracized (then mass-copied) and promising IPs are quietly watered down until they’re just as bald and angry as everyone else. They also all encourage a kind of cultish brand loyalty not seen since Heaven’s Gate, prodding you to defend their products as though an inanimate disc will somehow spring to life and give you a hug. The veil of “this company cares about me” is a joke to working professionals who know better, but when you throw in a huge swath of young gamers still looking to define a singular identity, that push can all too easily turn Jared Power Gamer into Jared Douchebag Flametroll. Now multiply that by hundreds of thousands of times, and you might begin to understand some of the freakshow-level animosity coming out of these fanbases.

It took a long, long time to scuttle most of the my gamer-infused personality defects, and despite that, some still pop up from time to time in charmingly inconvenient ways. Still, my long romance with AAA titles and developers is dying. We can’t even look at each other eat cereal anymore without curbing the urge to throw a punch, and the lackluster, consumer-unfriendly reveal of the Xbone is only mirrored by the eventual heat death of the WiiU and unwarranted self-congratulation at Sony’s perpetual “we haven’t done anything yet and we’re winning” party. I can already tell that E3 is going to be a FEMA-level clusterfuck of multi-million-dollar booths and shoe-in-mouth CEOs, as it has every year since the LA Convention Center was moved over an ancient Indian burial ground, but either way, I’m starting to get plain ol’ burned the fuck out of corporate gaming and the effect it has on young people. The real, emotional ones, not the imaginary murder urges pushed by cable news.

Taken from the ‘I’m making this up out of my ass’ institute

Yes, a number of these problems still exist in indie. Gaming as a whole, as with any hobby, has the potential to damage people in vulnerable emotional positions, altering their consciousness in much the same way a drug would in exchange for things like brand loyalty and a fleeting feeling of inclusiveness in the community. I feel like despite this, the indie scene is less prone to that kind of effect, but I suppose time will tell as it continues to rise to prominence.

Of course, that might just be the addiction talking.

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Two months of solid work by various audio and visual artists as good as wasted. And all it took was a takedown notice from an involved party that suddenly reared their head long after the contracts had been signed with the entity that claimed ownership of the original music. Copyright law protects creative and innovative products, but those involved with the Retro Game Music Bundle can’t help but feel a little sore due to the convoluted systems surrounding copyright that meant some of their hard work could not be shared, or at least not with any money being made from it, and each one of the artists deserves to be paid something for their efforts.

A week after launching the Retro Game Music Bundle on May 23rd, the copyright dispute that emerged forced the Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem II, Major Stryker, Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure and the NUKEM 3D: Remixes albums to be pulled down.

“Nobody really ‘won’ in this situation,” Josh Whelchel, one of the organizers of the bundle and revered composer, tells me.

Every single one of the releases were created by an enthusiastic team, and they even went so far as to issue fresh recordings using an authentic Sound Blaster 16 with DOS installed. Proper retro. Likewise, the many albums were given new artwork and were spruced up for a fine presentation on the main page. Perhaps the most special part of the effort, according to Josh, was the Duke Nukem 3D soundtrack that Hyperduck Soundworks threw together and mastered. Then you had the remix album featuring Duke Nukem 3D arrangements by the likes of virt, Disasterpeace and many other celebrated musicians.

“Of course, we did all this with full rights and permission and a signed contract from the entity that claimed ownership,” Josh says. “We received a takedown notice from another involved party who claimed that they owned the music. Obviously, this resulted in the takedown of so much great content.”

All of this music and artwork was made publicly available for just a week. It came as a surprise and with a huge dollop of disappointment for everyone involved. Clichéd as it is to say, the creators and contributors of the bundle are down, but they are certainly not out. Currently, conversations and investigations are being performed so as to get all of the content originally released back online.

Copyright Sores

Given the situation, Josh and the rest of the team at Game Music Bundle feel that it’s time for “increased transparency regarding copyright.” I’m then passed on to Jesse, the apparent “copyright expert,” who goes into further details as to the problems the Retro Game Music Bundle encountered, and what is shared is information relevant to everyone involved in artistic creation, games and music or otherwise.

Jesse immediately targets the problem with copyright by pointing fingers at “accessibility.” This means that anyone who wishes to seek permission to use someone else’s work in whatever fashion they please has to jump through a lot of hoops, many of which are hidden out of sight. Being as the focus here is obtaining permissions for music, Jesse informs us that there are two copyrights that have to be dealt with – the sound recording itself, as well as the underlying musical composition. This is where the fractions start to come into play.

Two different entities could hold each of these copyrights, and that could further be split between many more parties and individuals, each of which has to be hunted down in order to gain the full permissions. “We’ve seen a real-life case where a particular composition is owned by over 20 different publishers, one of whom has 0.01% ownership,” Jesse tells me.

The process of hunting down all of these copyright owners, specifically of the composition (we’re not even touching on the recording itself here), actually begins on Wikipedia as the vital starting point is finding out who wrote the song and not who performed it. “Shockingly, Britney Spears usually doesn’t write her own music.”

“From there, we can do research at ASCAP or BMI (or SESAC), though in many cases, BMI will tell us there are’non-BMI writers,’ and ASCAP will tell us there are ‘non-ASCAP writers,’ but we can’t simply assume that those writers belong to the opposite society because many writers are independent and belong to neither. Additionally, ASCAP and BMI don’t store percentages of ownership.”

It’s proper detective work, and a lot of it, most of which shouldn’t have to be a necessary process. Not now, not ever. The problem is that copyright is distributed between far too many people and the records of who gets what and how much percentage just aren’t apparent enough. Sometimes, it can just get outright ridiculous, as Jesse says that there have been times after going through a music publisher that they have 99.9% of a composition licensed, and then they have to track down a minor publisher, which is literally “some dude in a house.”

The only resolve for this arduous process is the database of registered copyrights that the US Government operates. However, according to Jesse this is incomplete and difficult to search. This is the result of there being no requirements for a person to register their copyrights with the government, and therefore being made part of this system; so a copyright can exist without it being government registered. In many cases, Jesse says that copyright law directs those looking for permissions to contact copyright holders via registered mail, which ends up being a good metaphor for how the whole process is broken:

“When sending a registered letter, a little slip of paper must be filled out, usually by hand, in pen. The letter-sender brings this slip with their envelope to the postal desk, at which point the postal employee runs it through an old label printer, stamps the slip, stamps the letter a few times, and then affixes a separate label to the letter.

“The employee then carefully peels off a separate sticker containing a row of numbers, pulls out an old-looking book from under their desk, finds a page that isn’t absolutely covered with little sticker-rows of numbers, sticks your number row in the book and stamps it for good measure, if necessary.

“Seriously. Try it sometime. It’s the most archaic process in the world.”

I’m sure we’d all rather not. Point taken? The hope is that by voicing these concerns and difficulties with copyright law and obtaining the necessary permissions, a healthier and more positive copyright ecosystem can emerge. This would mean that situations such as the one that arose with the Retro Game Music Bundle would be avoided. Jesse, and the rest of the team, fully believe these issues crop up because “no one knows how to look up their own or anyone else’s ownership in various facets of a work.” It means that people are quick to rush to conclusion and show outrage when they needn’t.

What’s needed, according to Jesse, and I have to agree, is a “smart, easy-to-use database where artists (and other users) could both request and grant permission for a variety of uses.” The fact that we’re still having to stamp papers and swap stickers when computers can organize and store this information better, as well as perform the necessary procedures far more efficiently, is ridiculous. If this kind of updated system was in place that actually made full use of the internet so that those trying to secure these permissions could do so efficiently and in full, then what happened to the Retro Game Music Bundle just after it launched wouldn’t have. It could have been discussed and resolved beforehand.

As it is, despite the best efforts of those behind the Retro Game Music Bundle to get all the necessary signatures, a bunch of other parties have fallen from the woodwork and issued the takedown notice. It’s no one’s fault, really, and everyone’s reacting as they have the right to. But an updated system would have prevented such a situation, and it’s in everyone’s interests, particularly creative types who want to earn money from their work, to engage in the need for a change here.

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Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has high hopes for Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V, as the exec boasted (and Eurogamer reported) that he expects the open-world crime-sim to sell 18 million copies during its first year on the market.

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Just in case you needed more of a reason to look down upon Valve’s Greenlight system, which was set-up primarily for indies who want to get their games on Steam, it’s come to light that Paranautical Activity has been rejected from Steam because Valve don’t want to spread the message that indies can bypass the community voting system of Greenlight by getting a publisher.

Yes, it’s apparently as ridiculous as it sounds.

Writing on their blog, Code Avarice say that they had been contacted by Adultswim Games, who wanted to work with them and get their game on to Steam without having to go through Greenlight. At this point in time, Paranautical Activity had already been submitted to Greenlight, and in light of this new arrangement, Code Avarice neglected it, as you would.

Yesterday, a representative from Adultswim Games had a meeting with Valve to arrange getting Paranautical Activity onto the Steam Store. They had already performed similar deals for Super House of Dead Ninjas and Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe, both of which are now on Steam, but were never submitted to Greenlight at any point. However, things didn’t go so smoothly as Valve told the Adultswim Games representative that they “don’t want to send the message that indies can seek out publishers to bypass Steam Greenlight.”

So make sure to go upvote Paranautical Activity on Greenlight as that’s the only way it will get on to Steam now. Of course, if this were a AAA game, then it wouldn’t need to go through Greenlight in the first place, and the fact that a trusted publisher wanted to bring it to Steam wouldn’t have been an issue at all. I’m pretty irked by this whole situation. What do they want indies to do exactly? Beg and roll over? Valve’s reasoning in this case is pretty ridiculous, and the fact that they’re worried about indies suddenly rushing out to get publishers so they can get on to Steam is silly. Fine, they rejected Paranautical Activity, and that’s a shame, but the daft reasoning here is what’s really getting my back up.

Code Avarice recently spoke to YouTube user green9090 to provide more detailed information on the subject, as you can hear by watching the video below.

Whereas Valve pushed back in that particular direction, they announced last night in a private forum for developers on Steam Greenlight that the Steamworks SDK is now available to any developer who wishes to make use of it. Below is the announcement made privately the forums, which Valve say will become public knowledge later on, but we’ll let you in on the secret right now.

“As of today, the Steamworks SDK and accompanying documentation is now available to any developer via the Steamworks Developer Site at https://partner.steamgames.com (you’ll need to log in and agree to the SDK access agreement).

We see this as a small, but important step as we work toward providing more broad access to the Steamworks set of features and Steam distribution platform. With this access, developers should be able to evaluate potential integration with the various features and APIs in Steamworks, compile the code and perform limited testing of the functionality with the included sample application.

Developers wishing to integrate the Steamworks SDK with their own games or applications still need to first be Greenlit and provided with an appID.

Once you’ve accepted the SDK Agreement, you’ll also be granted access to the Steamworks Development group (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks), where you can post questions in the relevant discussion boards or see other frequently asked questions.

We’re announcing to this group first, but will eventually make this public knowledge. Please let us know if you have any trouble accessing the SDK or documentation.”

With one hand they give, while the other takes away.

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“Retreeeeeeat!” yell various Microsoft higher-ups after the PR fallout from their Xbox One reveal last week. You may have heard how Microsoft have been getting a lot of abuse hurled at them from just about everyone for the direction they’re going with their next generation console, which is practically the opposite to the open arms towards indies (and players) that the Wii U, PS4 and OUYA have been imbued with.

It seems that Microsoft wanted to try to hold the barrage back a little bit, and they’ve sought to do this by talking to various journalists and stating a few things that may show signs of their not being so closed off to the non-corporate sides of game making and distributing. Or it might just be that Microsoft’s internal organization is appalling and the message that was spread during their Xbox One reveal wasn’t the one that they had intended.

But let’s not forget that whatever they say, the dashboard could still be an issue and indies will still have to find a publisher if they want their games on Xbox One.

So first up in our retreat from Microsoft (or desperate reiteration) comes from Don Mattrick, the supposed “head of interactive entertainment,” who spoke to Kotaku to reveal that the Xbox One will have an “independent creator program.” What does that mean? He says that Microsoft will be sponsoring it, giving people tools, and suggests that we’ll hear more details at E3 in June. You’ll be hearing that a lot.

Waiting until E3 has become Microsoft’s best tactic, because it suggests that the rush to throw hate-bombs at their policies and interests is all premature and, arguably, immature. But here’s the thing, Microsoft: if you’re announcing a console, you might want to show your full range of plans, if only just a little, rather than focusing on your corporate ties. If you had just said something about this indie creator’s program, then people would have held off on that front a little. As to the used games issues and the rest of the criticism levelled at the console and the things your representatives have said about it (saying the console is parallel to top-end PCs, pleeeease), that’s quicksand you’ve stepped into right there.

Last thing from Mattrick speaking to Kotaku is the following quotation:

“Indie creators exist right inside our ecosystem. Probably the best example of a huge success is Minecraft. The work that Notch did [was] pretty amazing in the PC space. We’re going to support those guys.”

Oh, I’m sure you are after Minecraft sold six million copies on XBLA. And because of the money it generated and the existing fanbase and interest it had, Microsoft granted the game leeway through its policies so that it could be fitted with regular updates, which is wise, of course, but that only goes to further showcase Microsoft’s priority in games that make a ton of money: only if a game is selling like hotcakes will they go out of their way for an indie developer.

Don’t get me wrong; they’re right to prioritize the games that make money, but when you have their console competitors deliberately seeking out interesting and unique games that are more than likely unheard of, and ensuring it’s as easy for them to get onto their digital stores, Microsoft are only reiterating that their interest in indie games is mainly within those that can make the millions, which is like, what, a handful at best?

On that note, let’s move on to another shred of information, this time regarding Microsoft’s apparent interest in indie games not being limited to how much money they can make. This will be interesting.

This time it’s Press Play’s co-founder, Mikkel Thorsted, head of a studio that has been acquired by Microsoft, talking to OXM about how Microsoft are apparently looking for “weird stuff.” Ha, this will be a good ‘un; you can tell, can’t you? Let’s just go straight into a quotation from Mikkel:

“”Microsoft was after people who could do unique content and make weird games, but it also needed a team that wasn’t huge, that hadn’t made breakout hits,” he said. “Because they would be [expensive]! It was looking for a team with the potential to make weird stuff. We were one of the very few. A perfect match.”

Mikkel then expands upon what an indie game developer being acquired by Microsoft meant. He says that Microsoft have a “micro-studio approach,” and that means they want the studio and the people within it to work exactly as they were before. However, they now have a Microsoft representative strut in on occasion to check that they’ve thought about what they’re making and what decisions they side with. For Press Play, he says, it meant that they could enjoy doing what they have been doing for the past seven years, and do so without the stress of financial woes and other economic issues.

That doesn’t sound all that bad, actually. But I’m still giggling with the idea of Microsoft looking for “weird” games. I think I may have a different perception of what weird is than they do. I’m a terrible person.

Small and weird?

Just to prove how terrible I really am, let’s have a laugh-a-long with Microsoft Studios’ corporate vice president, Phil Spencer, who spoke to Polygon to reveal how much he “loves” indies. I see you clawing away at the rubble, Phil, but it’s going to take a while to rebuild that house you knocked down.

“”I love indie games. Personally, that’s where I’m playing a lot of games. I love the diversity of characters, stories and play styles. We want to make the television screen a home for more content, diversity of business model, size of content. Look at 360 and our history investing in games like Braid, Limbo, Castle Crashers and Trials. I think the team has done a nice job of identifying small indie developers and bringing those games [to Xbox].”

Right, here’s where he decides to appeal to our memories of great indie games that Microsoft brought to the masses through Xbox Live Arcade several years ago. These were actually good times, and they stayed for a while too, with plenty of other indie games, like Super Meat Boy, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Fez and Dust: An Elysian Tail also coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Good stuff. But the policies surrounding them, like charging outlandish fees for having Microsoft’s internal testers look at a game for a patch, really seem backwards nowadays. And all of these games needed to find a publisher or have the publishing duties be handled by Microsoft themselves. This is still going to be the case with the Xbox One, so we’ll continue to see only a few indie games being released on the console, I expect.

That’s if indie developers still want to release their games on Microsoft’s console, of course. They should if they’re interested in making the money that potentially lies within, but the problem is that Microsoft have built up a player base that isn’t quite as interested in indie games as other consoles, and it’s going to be a much more laborious effort to get the game onto the stores too.

The only thing we can do now is wait until E3 to see if Microsoft are able to turn their public image around at all, or at least pander to indies a little more with this program they’re introducing. Only then can we really decide what the Xbox One will mean for indies, and this will probably be Microsoft’s last chance to turn things around.

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Over the last year or so, many outlets uncovered information believed to be about the console. Some of that information came from leaked internal memos, some from sources familiar with Microsoft's plans and still others from those who said they had development kits for the Xbox One, which was referred to internally by the codename Durango.

Now that the next-gen console has been revealed, let's look back and see what rumors were right, wrong and what nobody knew about at all.

The name

Would it be the Xbox 720, building on the convention established with the 360? How about Xbox Infinite or Infinity, based at least in part on Microsoft's acquisition of the Xbox8.com domain?

Microsoft laid the rumors to rest. The next Xbox is called Xbox...

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If you can't get online, or don't want to, the Xbox One becomes useless.

Microsoft is making a bet that its next console can survive, perhaps even thrive, off of the purchases of those typically plugged-in early adopters and that internet proliferation, which currently hasn't spread to about a quarter of the developed world, will steadily encompass all of those who might have an interest in gaming.

It's not a bad bet, but it does send a bad message to those unwilling or unable to get online: Tough luck.

Unveiled last week during a day-long event on Microsoft's campus, the Xbox One seems to be a lot of things: A device where you can watch movies or live TV, listen to music, browse the internet, video chat with your friends, play games....

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A slide on the Xbox 360 touting the Xbox One's multitasking and app pinning features seems to indicate that Words with Friends, Zynga's popular tile-based word game, is headed to the next-gen console.

Navigating to the Xbox One tile that appears on the Xbox 360 home screen launches an app filled with information about Microsoft's upcoming console. Selecting the "What it does" tab loads a handful of slides highlighting features like Skype, TV viewing and multitasking. The "Multitasking is a Snap" slide (pictured above and below) shows a series of apps pinned in the console's user interface, including Words with Friends.

Zynga's game has yet to be announced for the Xbox One. During the presentation in which Microsoft revealed the...

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