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Musical group Linkin Park is now one step closer to the world of video games thanks to Project Spark developer Team Dakota. The developer created a "remixable" music video for Linkin Park's "Guilty All The Same" in Project Spark, which includes an audio remix station so players can build anything they want in the level. Project Spark is a robust game creation tool currently in beta for PC and Xbox One.

The "Guilty All The Same" level isn't the first time an interactive game experience was built around an existing piece of music. Just last month, Radiohead launched an experimental iOS and Android app called PolyFauna for imagery and sounds from its song, "Bloom."

Microsoft opened Project Spark's beta version to all Xbox One owners this month and also removed the game's Spark Time microtransactions. [Image: Linkin Park]

Last week's debut of the Garden Variety DLC for PopCap's Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare brought mixed reactions. Players appreciated that the addition is available free of charge, but they were less than pleased with the bugs that have been causing the third-person shooter to crash on consoles.

Since initial bug reports began streaming in, PopCap's tech staff has been working to alleviate the problems. Last Friday, the developer released a patch that should have cleared up any issues with the Xbox One version of the DLC, though the Xbox 360 game remains partially hobbled.

PopCap creative director Justin Wiebe has been fielding reports on Twitter. Though Wiebe has yet to offer a specific timeline for when the Xbox 360 bugs will be squashed, his most recent tweet on the topic offers players hope. "We have a potential fix submitted for testing," Wiebe wrote. "If the tests go well X360 should be back to norm soon. Fingers crossed!"

We've contacted PopCap and publisher EA for further information on the status of the DLC. We'll report back as soon as we hear anything. [Image: EA]

Microsoft has rolled out a slate of new entertainment apps on Xbox Live, giving Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners access to a broader variety of sports, competitive gaming, and film offerings.

Starting this week, Xbox Live Gold members can keep up with live-broadcast tournaments and other competitive gaming events via the Xbox 360's Major League Gaming app. Major League Gaming launched its own dedicated e-sports network last year, serving up competitive gaming streams at up to 1080p resolution.

Xbox 360 owners can access new film catalogs via the Encore Play and Movieplex Play apps starting this week, while MLB.TV Premium will deliver live games and league archives to subscribers on the Xbox One. Microsoft notes that its Encore Play, Movieplex Play, and EPIX apps are also scheduled to hit the Xbox One in the coming months.

[Image: Microsoft / MLG]

Today, Bobbya helps out opposing Pilots with their chronic neck problems. "Got it!"

Starting this Friday, McDonald's will bundle exclusive Skylanders Swap Force figurines with Happy Meal purchases, in the restaurant's latest ploy to keep kids occupied while they stuff their faces with Chicken McNuggets.

Featured characters include Chompy, Eruptor, Free Ranger, Freeze Blade, Magna Charge, Prism Break, Rattle Shake and Wash Buckler. Eligible purchases also include coupons giving $10 off of the multiplatform Skylanders Swap Force Starter Pack and $1 off individual character figures. The week-long promotion extends through April 4.

Bear in mind, however, that Happy Meals-bundled characters are just toys, and won't summon in-game Skylanders like retail figures will. Still, if you've ever wanted a Chompy figure to display alongside your Skylanders collection, you'll want to hop in your car on Friday and order up some Happy Meals. Hint: tell the drive-thru guy that you have eight kids waiting at home for their dinner if you're trying to order a full set. He might not believe you, but he probably won't feel like you're worth an argument.

[Image: Activision/McDonald's]

This is State of Service, an ongoing review of the online service of a recently launched game. See our scored review of Titanfall here. Tuesday, March 25 | T-minus 16 days until final verdict
Current State of Service: Good
Summary: PC version experiencing limited issues. Balance patch deployed. Xbox 360 version delayed.

After two weeks on PC and Xbox One, Titanall's service performance remains mostly solid. The PC version is still experiencing isolated issues, notably infinite loading screens when trying to connect to a game. It seems most players on both versions, however, have had a smooth experience. For its part, the Joystiq staff has encountered no significant issues on Xbox One or PC (though matchmaking still has a confusing habit of pairing low-level players with high-level players). Servers briefly went offline around 10pm Eastern on Thursday, March 20, and began to come back online within an hour.

Titanfall has also received its first balance-tweaking and bug-squishing patch, and you can find the patch notes right here. Finally, neither Joystiq or players at large will be able to test the service of the Xbox 360 version this week, as it was delayed to April 8 in North America and Aprill 11 in Europe.

If you encounter any problems with Titanfall, let us know in the comments or on Joystiq's Twitter or Facebook accounts (use the hashtag #sos and don't forget to specify your platform!).

Microsoft has issued an Xbox Live service alert detailing an outage that currently prevents some users from purchasing digital content and accessing certain in-game features on the Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Microsoft notes that content access is currently "limited" on both platforms, leaving some users unable to buy new content or re-download previously purchased items. The Xbox One's "Social and Gaming" sector has also taken a hit, temporarily revoking user access to features like video recording, cloud storage data transfers, and multiplayer matchmaking. Xbox One owners experienced a similar service outage affecting online multiplayer gameplay earlier this month.

Forza Motorsport 5 players will also encounter a game-specific outage today due to scheduled maintenance. Microsoft is "getting closer to a fix" for reported issues, and will issue progress reports until service is restored.

[Image: Microsoft]

The Xbox One Titanfall bundle is now $450 on Microsoft's store—joining retailers like Walmart and Target in offering a $50 discount on the newest Xbox—but don't call it a price cut. Microsoft says the deal isn't permanent. Read more...

Xbox Live serves up a series of steep discounts this week on retail-released Xbox One games, bringing price drops for the digital versions of Thief, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and other featured titles.

Starting March 28 and extending through March 30, the Xbox One versions of Thief and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition will be priced at $29.99 each. Call of Duty: Ghosts will be available for 33 percent off of its regular retail price ($39.99), while Ghosts' DLC-bundled Digital Hardened Edition is up for grabs at 20 percent off.

Xbox Live Gold members can also pick up the Xbox 360 Games on Demand versions of all three games at a discount through March 31. Other sale-priced Xbox 360 games featured in this week's lineup include NBA 2K14, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, and 2K's BioShock series.

[Image: Square Enix]

Battlefield 4 Premium members on consoles can grab the game's third expansion, Naval Strike, today. The PC version has been delayed because developer DICE has "detected an issue and it needs to be solved." The PC version won't receive a release date until the company feels it meets "the highest quality level possible." That's certainly a new approach.

The Battlelog companion app has also received an update. It includes several solid fixes to the game's overall experience, including the long overdue ability to open Battlepacks and view already accessed content. At this rate, Battlefield 4 should have its development pipeline all cleaned up just in time for the next installment's launch.
[Image: EA]

Fuel Industries' planned excavation and documentation of a New Mexico landfill which would, in theory, unearth a burial of E.T. cartridges for the Atari 2600, is currently in negotiations for a dig permit. The Alamogordo Daily News reports that the New Mexico Environment Department has rejected Fuel Industries' waste excavation proposal, saying that it was too "generic" as well as lacking in site-specific details.

Those details aren't just bureaucratic red tape, either. According to the Daily News, the NMED called for further testing of the Alamogordo landfill in 2004, when studies showed increased chemical levels at the site. Twenty-two "compounds of concern" were noted at the time. Imagine cracking open the soil of a landfill to hunt down a video game graveyard only to have noxious fumes and chemicals poison you, like you'd opened up a pharoah's tomb and suffered the mummy's curse.

It's unclear how the delay will impact the development of Fuel Industries' documentary, which was planned to air on Xbox this year. The NMED stated that their findings were sent to Fuel Industries on February 27, but as of March 17, they had not seen a revised proposal. [Image: Atari]

The Xbox One wasn't supposed to need a remote control. That was the whole point, right? With its high-tech Kinect camera, we could just talk to it and tell it what to do. Remote controls were a thing of the past, a finally bygone relic of the 20th century! Except, well, not really.Read more...

Microsoft is set to reveal one or more Japanese Xbox One exclusives, made by a renowned Japanese studio.

The track list for Harmonix's Fantasia: Music Evolved has expanded again, this time leaning a bit more heavily on modern music. New songs that will be featured in Kinect rhythm game include David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust," Nicky Minaj's "Superbass," The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" and Lorde's ubiquitous "Royals." Classical music fans will also be happy to know that Anotonin Dvorak's "Symphony No. 9 from the New World" has also made the cut (now you can associate it with something other than Asura's Wrath).

We got to spend some time with Fantasia at GDC, and we enjoyed every minute of it.

We haven't been shy about praising Harmonix's Fantasia: Music Evolved thus far. Based on our experience with it at GDC 2014 last week, that's not likely to change anytime soon. We tried the latest version of Fantasia, running on Xbox One, and the Kinect-powered experience was delightful from top to bottom.

Whether you're intuitively creating your own synthesizer solo in "Ziggy Stardust" or ringing bells hanging from the horns of a giant stag - no, really - the level of creativity and craftsmanship on display is always apparent. You can witness the magical madness yourself in our video preview.

Fantasia: Music Evolved, is slated to arrive this year on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Though jumping in that titan would probably be a bad idea, one of the employees of an EB Games store in Melbourne, Australia came up with the best way to use up empty Xbox One and 360 boxes: he built an almost life-sized titan from Titanfall to guard the store.Read more...

Infamous: Second Son racked up the second-best first week for a PS4 game in the UK, only placing behind launch title Killzone Shadow Fall. Those sales were enough to ensure the system exclusive took the UK No. 1 ahead of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes this week, with last week's leader Titanfall titanfalling to third. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster was the other big new release of the week and the re-polished PS3 and Vita game took fourth.

February and March's swathe of big-name games has finally given the UK charts a more current feel: Eight of this week's top ten were released in 2014, and most of those only in the last few weeks. The two lingerers from last year? Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition and, no surprises, FIFA 14. [Image: Sony Computer Entertainment]

It's almost time for the massive invasion of Tamriel by the combined forces of PC and Mac massively multiplayer online role-playing gamers. Zenimax has revealed the dates and times servers are opening up for the early access and official launch of The Elder Scrolls Online. Read more...

While Titanfall's online service has been pretty stable - barring some launch day hiccups - that doesn't mean that Respawn is done with tweaking the game experience. A server update has been applied to the game that fixes a handful of issues, as well as re-balances some of the gameplay.

For example, Cluster Missiles now do less damage against Evac Dropships, which is good news for anyone who loses more than a handful of games (see: us once, and us again) and needs to hitch a ride out of the game's hectic warzones. You can check out the full list of fixes and tweaks after the break. [Image: EA]

Fuel Industries' planned excavation and documentation of a New Mexico landfill which would, in theory, unearth a burial of E.T. cartridges for the Atari 2600, has been put on hold. The Almagordo Daily News reports that the New Mexico Environment Department has rejected Fuel Industries' waste excavation proposal, saying that it was too "generic" as well as lacking in site-specific details.

Those details aren't just bureaucratic red tape, either. According to the Daily News, the NMED called for further testing of the Almagordo landfill in 2004, when studies showed increased chemical levels at the site. Twenty-two "compounds of concern" were noted at the time. Imagine cracking open the soil of a landfill to hunt down a video game graveyard only to have noxious fumes and chemicals poison you, like you'd opened up a pharoah's tomb and suffered the mummy's curse.

It's unclear how the delay will impact the development of Fuel Industries' documentary, which was planned to air on Xbox this year. The NMED stated that their findings were sent to Fuel Industries on February 27, but as of March 17, they had not seen a revised proposal. [Image: Atari]

AlfredoIGN finally suffers a crushing loss after winning 181 straight games. Catch up on the press conference to find out why.

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

Alfredo shows you 13 quick tips to become a more skillful Pilot in Titanfall.

Alfredo and Greg enter the most intense match of Titanfall they have ever played.

The next entry in Ubisoft's expansive, open-world Far Cry franchise will arrive in the first half of next year, according to a Eurogamer report.

Citing unnamed "people familiar with the project," Eurogamer claims that the game will forgo another romp through the jungles in favor of a visit to the Himalaya mountain range. Gameplay details are scant, but Eurogamer believes that the new setting will offer players wholly novel activities such as riding on elephants, while the fan-favorite hunting sections will make a return with local fauna as prey. Far Cry 4 is reportedly heading to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC and we can expect to hear more details on the game at E3 2014 in June.

When reached for comment, Ubisoft was unwilling to discuss Far Cry 4, though representatives say they'll have more information for us if and when such a title enters development. [Image: Ubisoft]

Here we go. Two days after we showed you the next Assassin's Creed , Ubisoft's confirming it. Video footage above.Read more...

It's just another day in the Animus, as Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed: Unity today. The game is slated to arrive on PS4, Xbox One and PC this coming holiday season. Ubisoft offered a brief glimpse at the game in its early, alpha state in the trailer seen above.

Although Assassin's Creed 3 was widely criticized for being an unpolished American frontier work simulator, last year's Assaassin's Creed 4: Black Flag reestablished the franchise's sea legs with sure footed piracy. [Image: Ubisoft]

Ubisoft is currently promoting the visual and practical strengths of its "Snowdrop" engine, an always-on real-time development toolset built for Tom Clancy's The Division. Given the primary audience attending the Game Developers Conference, Ubisoft is focusing more on the engine than the post-apocalyptic nitty gritty of the game itself, which is being made for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

With The Division's progress and 2014 release being questioned in recent rumors, though, I asked Ubi-owned developer Massive Entertainment for some clarity on how it's being built. According to Rodrigo Cortes, Massive's Brand Art Director, "game and technology is the same," and it "never goes offline."

From Snake to The End, the creator of Metal Gear Solid chooses his favourite characters from the series.

Microsoft has discussed the ongoing sales battle between PS4 and Xbox One, saying this console cycle is "a marathon, not a sprint".