Phil Spencer on new hardware, price drops, mid-gen refreshes -- and why the company won't ditch Series S.

Last week, Worms developer and indie game publisher Team17 brought the ire of the internet upon itself as bosses attempted to launch a range of collectible Worms NFTs. But while the reveal, swift condemnation and embarrassing backtrack have all now passed, employees at the developer's main Wakefield and Nottingham sites remain stunned.

It was never meant to take as long as it did. As far as the "GoldenEye" team were concerned, "Perfect Dark" should have come out a year or two after their seminal console first-person shooter, a quick-fire follow-up to one of the greatest games ever made.

According to the people who lived through it.

The mid-nineties was an era when PC gaming began in earnest, kick-started by the mighty "Doom's" release in 1993. First-person shooters burgeoned as a result, and their combination with the real-time strategy genre conspired to make the humble home personal computer a powerful commercial gaming platform. And when it came to RTSs, the one name on most people's lips was "Command & Conquer."

Hi, I'm Wesley, and I was addicted to World of Warcraft. I'm not talking about a, 'I played this game a lot because it's fun' kind of thing. I'm talking about a good old-fashioned, almost ruined my life kind of thing. Hold onto your legendary hats, things are about to get serious.

"We had Communism and we had 'Cyberpunk.'" Mike Pondsmith would hear those words 25 years after he'd joked about how few people would play a Polish translation of his American paper role-playing game "Cyberpunk" in a country behind the Iron Curtain.

Steam has begun warning users not to use a high-profile Counter-Strike: GO gambling website after its ownership turned out to be two YouTube stars - who were also using YouTube to promote the site. Trevor "TmarTn" Martin and Tom "Syndicate" Cassell are listed in newly-uncovered business records as the president and vice-president, respectively, of online gambling site CS:GO Lotto.

Microsoft's E3 media briefing was strong, I thought, although its impact was dulled by a pretty spectacular set of leaks that not only revealed the existenc…

Only a few years ago, retro gaming was the very definition of a niche, clustered around web forums, fanzines and with the venerable Retro Gamer magazine as its only notable mainstream outlet. Then, around 2012, something changed. This was the year the ZX Spectrum celebrated its 30th anniversary.

This week, feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian cancelled a university speaking engagement after threats that it would be met with a shooting spree. The news seems like a stark and spectacularly grim escalation of the mounting harassment of female game developers and commentators on the games industry.

Starving, mountains, zombies: his incredible story.