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After choosing Satya Nadella to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO, Microsoft has elected to appoint Stephen Elop as head of its Devices and Studios division. The news comes from an internal memo posted over on TechCrunch. Microsoft's Devices and Studios wing oversees Xbox, Surface, entertainment and games.

Elop was the former CEO of Nokia, which Microsoft announced it intended to purchase last year. Elop will replace Julie Larson-Green, who will shift roles from hardware over to Microsoft's My Life and Work team, a subdivision of the Applications and Services Group. Prior to her appointment as head of Xbox last year, Larson-Green was in charge of all Windows products.

At one point, Elop was in the running to replace Ballmer at Microsoft, at which point insiders claim he was considering selling off the Xbox division. Elop served as CEO of Nokia for three years. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]

Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare has arrived on the Xbox One and Xbox 360, with gameplay unlike anything the series has ever seen. It's so wildly different, I thought you folks could use a few tips. Read more...

In a press release, Konami announced today that the price of the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes has been lowered from $40 to $30 for both retail and digital copies of the game.

Fresh Party and Friends features are coming in the March update for Xbox One.

You can see the Xbox One's new dashboard update in action in this video released by Microsoft's Major Nelson today.Read more...

"Kept you waiting, huh?" whispered Konami, before dropping a collection of news bombs this morning. For starters, the company announced a price cut to the physical PS4 and Xbox One versions of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. Rather than costing $40, the two consoles' retail versions are now priced at $30. The company says it wants to "provide as many people as possible an opportunity" to play the game - awwwwwwww.

Other versions of Ground Zeroes remain at the same price; you can check out the game's still highly-convoluted pricing structure here. Incidentally, the price cut is matched in the UK, where PS4 and Xbox One retail versions will set Brits back £30.

In addition, Konami confirmed the previously speculated inclusion of Phantom Pain DLC with early purchases of Ground Zeroes. The codes, which include additional staff to utilize in Big Boss' Mother Base headquarters, which apparently plays a "central role" in The Phantom Pain, are available in the first batch of retail copies and for an undisclosed "limited" amount of time with download versions. In case you've been living under a rock or with bandages wrapped around your ears, MGS5: Ground Zeroes is being billed as the prologue chapter to MGS5: The Phantom Pain.

If you'd rather wait before you Snake, the good news is all copies of Ground Zeroes have some integration with the Mother Base in The Phantom Pain. The POWs and VIPs you rescue in the prologue will carry over to the follow-up, as will character skins you unlock.

Finally, it wouldn't be Metal Gear without some peripheral capers, and if you so choose you can download a free second-screen "iDroid" app on iOS and Android to use with the game. The app, which is integrated into SmartGlass for Xbox, lets you view maps, play cassettes you discover, and summon air support in the game ... Oh, the game! Yes, the small matter of Ground Zeroes itself arrives on March 18 for PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PS3. [Image: Konami]

Next month, an update will bring the popular Twitch video game broadcasting service to the Xbox One in a way that home consoles have never seen before. It will launch just in time for Titanfall. Read more...

EA Tiburon kicked off a design contest late last week for the next game in the Madden NFL series. The developer is challenging fans with creating new logos and uniforms for the game, and is accepting submissions now through March 7.

EA's last release in the series, Madden 25, brought back the ability to relocate NFL teams in the game to 17 different cities. While the contest announcement stresses that EA prefers user-created logo and uniform designs based on those 17 cities and the dozens of team names that were created for Madden 25, it will accept submissions that involve other team names and locations. Those looking to enter their designs for, say, a Milwaukee-based football franchise can download EA's uniform and logo design packet (in .zip file form) to get started. [Image: EA Sports]

EA COO Peter Moore is betting on a dominating role for digital revenue in video games. Speaking at the Digital Entertainment World conference, Moore said (via GI.biz) he expects digital sales to fully eclipse retail numbers in two years.

He likened the rising prominence of downloads as a type of "creative destruction," in which an industry is unable to regulate the evolving purchasing habits of its consumers. Moore compared the scenario to the music industry, which he says is still recovering from its shift away from relying primarily on physical disc sales for revenue to a more download-centric model.

Moore relates that EA's "customers" used to be retailers but, in the global always-online environment of the modern era, those "customers" are now the players. This has caused EA to triple its customer service operations over the last five years and even affected the company's marketing efforts - TV advertising spend is down and online and social advertising is up. Social media is more important than ever to EA.

EA just reported third-quarter earnings for its fiscal 2014. While the massive games publisher suffered an overall net loss of $308 million during the period, digital sales accounted for over half of all earnings. EA attributed this big upswing to a 60 percent increase in transactions in EA's lineup of collectible card-based simulations, FIFA Ultimate Team, Madden NFL Ultimate Team and NHL Ultimate Team. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]

Hide your valuables, Thief is on the loose this week ...

Choose your platform to jump to a specific release list: [Image: Square Enix]

Has Greg finally surpassed Alfredo as the dominate FPS player?

Say "hello" to Thief, the first game of the year with review scores across the board. Ours trended toward the higher side calling it a game where the "balance isn't entirely successful."

• Game Informer (80/100): "Locked behind this old-school game design is a gem that stealth fans should eye up for their collection."
• Edge (70/100): "Fans who take the time to customise their settings ahead of their first playthrough will find a rewarding world here to pick clean. Nevertheless, it's still difficult to shake the feeling that, for all his dexterity, Garrett has stumbled in his attempt to gain access to a new generation.
• IGN (68/100): "Between the hit-or-miss missions is an extremely annoying city hub map and a weak story full of bland characters, and Garrett himself isn't as sure-footed as a master thief ought to be. Ignoring the story and cherrypicking the best side missions is the best way to approach it."
• Gamespot (60/100): "Each time I thought I might fall in love, the game doused my passions with a new annoyance. There was the bug that had me swimming in place on top of some boards I'd leapt to. (Thank goodness for reloadable checkpoints!)"
• Telegraph (40/100): "I had more fun making my way up to bed in the dark after playing Thief than I did at any point during its benighted trudge across The City."

[Image: SquareEnix]

Will the split between 360, Xbox One, and PC mean fewer people buy Microsoft's new console? We discuss.

The Titanfall beta on Xbox One and PC last week attracted 2 million unique players, Respawn Community Manager Abbie Heppe told Polygon.

Engineer Jon Shiring said in the same interview that Titanfall is completely reliant on the new Xbox Live Compute platform, Microsoft's cloud and scalability service: "If it's down, nobody can play." Titanfall did go dark for seven hours during the beta, as the team attempted to scale up the game for more players. Shiring called that one "human error."

"People need to understand that when you write a whole bunch of new code, there's bugs in it," he said. "We have to find those bugs. That was the goal of the beta. We know it's not going to work right. We don't want to find out on launch day. Let's find out now. We found probably 10 real things that we worked on and fixed. That's 10 things we don't have to find on launch day. We still might find some new things on launch day, but at least those ones are not there anymore."

We tried our best to master mech mechanics in the Titanfall beta last week, live and on-air, and our most memorable moments are saved for all eternity in this Joystiq Tiny Stream.

MachineGames talks about Wolfenstein: The New Order being a story-driven, single-player adventure, and it's true there's some finesse and direction to the cutscenes, a suggestion of secondary characters with personality and backstory. Much the same can be said of Die Hard, though, and it's no War and Peace. That's not to dismiss the storytelling in The New Order, but based on what I see in its first two hours, it mostly sticks to the action movie spirit of tearing up Nazis, saving the day, getting the girl, and blowing shit up.

The return of William "BJ" Blazkowicz provides a gruff-voiced American hero with McClane-like hardened features and self-whispered one-liners, while Gruber is all but resurrected in the campy glares and maniacal laughs of the game's arch-villains. More important than that, I've got waves and waves of "Nazi scum" to kill, to use the blunt words of Blazkowicz, and machine guns in each hand. A story-driven romp The New Order may be, but a romp is still a romp. That said, the game shows a hand for ripping up preconceptions.

Microsoft confirmed this morning that a Titanfall/Xbox One bundle will be offered. It arrives the day the game launches for that console and PC. It's $499 and will include a digital copy of the game and one month of Xbox Live Gold.Read more...

Thief certainly lives up to its name, having borrowed and filed it down from 1998's eye-opening classic, Thief: The Dark Project. Eidos Montreal's take strays from pure stealth in its contemporary design, but earns success from one crucial perspective: that of a man who sees glittering objects everywhere.

Though it's too dark to classify as comedy, Thief made me laugh at myself as I inhabited the role of Garrett, master thief and perpetual pincher of private items. Between the closeness of the game's first-person perspective and the oppressive gloom cast by its cobbled, medieval architecture, Thief effectively imparts the ideal mindset to match Garrett's quiet and crouched movements. That mindset, I learned while running from guards and stupidly stopping to unscrew a shiny plaque on the city's wall, is tinged with insanity and distraction. I just couldn't help myself.

The Lego Movie Videogame achieves something of a rarity in the UK charts this week - not just keeping FIFA 14 off the top, that is. It's one of few games to achieve more sales in its second week than in its first, albeit only 7 percent more, but it's still something to build on.

A price reduction helps FIFA 14 back into second, while lower down the charts Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze debuts in ninth. The Wii U game is just ahead of Rayman Legends, which sees a 300 percent rise in weekly sales on the back of PS4 and Xbox One ports. All those games beat Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 to the top ten, as the last chapter in the FF13 saga sinks from a debut third spot to 11th.

"I've been a ghost all my life," Thief protagonist Bruce Willis Garrett says in this trailer for his soon-to-be-released game, in which he may or may not literally be a ghost. Where's Haley Joel Osment when you need him? Check out our video preview for more ghost-thief action. [Image: Square-Enix]

Pretty much every contemporary gaming machine - be it a tablet, smartphone, console, handheld or PC - has the ability to connect to the internet for streaming media content. If you're using such a device to watch Netflix on a Comcast network, your speed and stability should see a bump in the near future.

Netflix and Comcast have announced a new joint partnership in which Netflix will pay the internet and cable service provider for direct access to its broadband systems. Netflix previously worked with a middleman company called Cogent through which they bought their bandwidth, but now that company has been cut out of future proceedings.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal was originally struck in January, but it wasn't until today that the companies released a joint statement confirming the new relationship. January was also when a Washington, DC appeals court voided the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules that the FCC used to enforce net neutrality, which you can read more about thanks to our friends at Engadget.

It's unclear for now what the Comcast/Netflix deal will mean for net neutrality - the press release states that Netflix will not be given preferential treatment - but if nothing else, it could mean a great deal to a Netflix subscriber's wallet. If Netflix is paying Comcast more than they were paying Cogent, there's a financial cost that needs to be accounted for. [Image: Netflix]

Thief arrives on the PC and both PlayStations and Xboxes this week, along with Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare on Xbox 360 and Xbox One and the latest Castlevania for PC and the previous-gen consoles. Call of Duty fans on PC and the PlayStations get the Onslaught DLC this week, too.Read more...

Titanfall from Respawn Entertainment is kind of a big deal. But in case you haven't made up your mind about the game - or watched us fail miserably at the beta - here's a trailer showing you what a bunch of people are saying about it to help you decide your feelings. Yay peer pressure! [Image: EA]

Unlike the free-to-play, mobile lawn defense simulator, Plants vs. Zombies 2, microtransactions aren't planned for the launch of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare.

In an interview with GameSpot, PopCap producer Brian Lindley stated that Garden Warfare won't have microtransactions "at launch," but noted that PopCap will watch in-game metrics and fan reaction to determine where to take the game next.

We can only guess as to what those plans may be, but hopefully they aren't comparable to the temporary "test" of charging to spawn new lawnmowers in PvZ2, as reported by GameSpot. [Image: EA]

That's Phil Spencer, one of Microsoft's top gaming executives. Sakaguchi, of course, is Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy, now at Mistwalker, where he has released a few Xbox-exclusive JRPGs like Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon. Hope Phil isn't just messing with us, because the Xbox One sure could use some JRPGs. (I've reached out to Microsoft to see if this is for real.)Read more...

Telltale Games will share its first Tales from the Borderlands details at an upcoming SXSW 2014 panel, the studio announced this week.

Attending Telltale Games representatives include president Kevin Bruner and designer Harrison Pink. Gearbox president Randy Pitchford, Borderlands series director Matthew Armstrong, and Borderlands 2 writer Anthony Burch will also attend, presenting new insight into the game's creation and fielding audience queries in a Q&A session afterward.

The panel runs from 5:30 through 6:15 p.m. on Saturday, March 8, at the Palmer Events Center in Austin, Texas.

[Image: Telltale Games]

EA has unveiled two new car packs representing Jaguar and Ferrari for its hit arcade racer Need for Speed: Rivals, though arguably more intriguing is what the publisher isn't telling us.

The Ferrari pack (highlighted in the trailer above) features the 1987 edition of the Ferrari F40 alongside 1995's F50. The Jaguar pack also includes two cars, the Jaguar XJ220 supercar and the C-X75 prototype, a hybrid-electric coupe that Jaguar describes as "the ultimate expression of the brand's design and engineering innovation." Both of these car packs feature a $6 price tag.

Immediately following the above reveal, EA dropped a not so subtle hint that these may not be the only new cars joining the racing game this month. "[T]hese aren't the only new cars that will be hitting the streets of Redview County in the coming weeks," the publisher's announcement states, before urging players to keep an eye on the official Need for Speed: Rivals Facebook account. [Image: EA]

The above trailer highlights the numerous new customization options found in Call of Duty: Ghosts, though if you're any sort of legitimate hard-nosed, elite, military killing machine, you'll obviously want to equip yourself in head to toe images of chubby orange cats floating in space. [Image: Activision]

Prepare to laugh, cry, and be amazed in this week's Top 5 Titanfall Kills of the Week.

Six Joystiq troopers went into the Titanfall PC beta on Tuesday, none came out. While these intrepid staffers did their very best to prevail, it was all for nought. Across all multiplayer modes offered in the early test version of Respawn Entertainment's upcoming shooter, Joystiq got thoroughly smoked.

On the bright side, it was marvelously entertaining to watch them get positively obliterated by the competition. As captured in this Joystiq Tiny Streams edit of their adventures, the moment things truly got ugly was when all six got trapped in an alley during the popular Last Titan Standing mode. It's like the opening of Gangs of New York but, you know, with giant robots.

If you enjoyed watching the Joystiq crew get taken to school, take note: Joystiq Tiny Streams appear every Monday and Friday at 4PM EST on Joystiq.com. Want to get in on the live action? Joystiq Streams broadcasts at 4PM EST every Tuesday and Thursday on the Joystiq Twitch channel. Our streams are chock full of developer commentary and schadenfreude. [Image: Respawn Entertainment]

Greg continues his training to become a better Titanfall player by learning Alfredo's loadout.