UPDATE: It's been confirmed - Microsoft has dropped its controversial used games and always online policies for Xbox One. You can read the full changes at Xbox Wire: http://news.xbox.com/2013/05/qa

The quick version: lending, trading, buying and reselling games works as it does on Xbox 360 and you only need to connect online once when setting up the console.

In what could be a dramatic reversal of its controversial Xbox One policies, reports have emerged (via WhatHifi and Giant Bomb) that Microsoft will drop the used games restrictions and always online requirements for Xbox One.

According to both reports, the console only has to connect online when being set-up for the first time and game discs will work on Xbox One as they do on Xbox 360, with no restrictions for used games.

WhatHifi says the move will be announced later today, with game developers being informed.

We're highly sceptical about these reports (remember there was no announcement or hint leading up to the reveal of the policies to begin with). But given the heat Microsoft has faced over the policies - and with US chat show host Jimmy Fallon incorrectly saying that PS4 is the only console that plays used games - Microsoft clearly has to do something, as Xbox One's disastrous PR campaign continues to spiral out of control.

Is Microsoft really prepared to do such a quick u-turn on Xbox One? We'll see if WhatHifi's report is accurate and if Microsoft announce the move tonight.

Guerilla Cambridge has 'not compromised on anything' says Tom Jones, art director on the title.

"There’s always pressure when you do a Killzone game because the standard is so high," explained Jones.

"I think we were keen to not live up to the expectations, in a way. I think there’s an expectation because it’s a handheld game it would be a port or a poor man’s version. We wanted to make sure it was a proper game. We’ve not compromised on anything. We’ve applied the same methodology and same commitment and work levels as we would if it was being developed for PS3 or PS4."

We briefly played Killzone Mercenary at E3 and it's a strong showing for the Vita - visually it's the best looking game since Uncharted and the credits system where you're awarded bonuses for how you kill enemies lends an engaging score attack slant to the FPS.

With Resistance and Call Of Duty offering poor competition in comparison, we're confident Killzone Mercenary will be the best FPS on Sony's handheld - it's just how it stacks up against the other titles on Vita that remains to be seen.

Denis Dyack, former president of Silicon Knights and current Chief Creative Officer of Precursor Games, says he has "never been happier as a developer" as he is right now.

We caught up with Dyack during E3 to chat about Precursor's Shadow of the Eternals project and when asked about the games industry today, Dyack told us he's never been happier as a games developer.

"I think because of how the industry’s changed, in many ways, with a lot of the changes that have happened have forced groups like us to look to other means but at the same time, there have been massive epiphanies on how great this really is," said Dyack.

"This is a true statement – I, personally, have never been happier as a developer as I am right now working with a very small group of people and working with the community.

"Shawn and Paul are running the company and I get to be completely creative. That’s awesome. I’ve been at large developers who have huge contracts but nothing is as good as this is.

"I don’t know if they could have happened if the industry had kept going the way it was. I used to talk about building large companies and having thousands of people at them. That’s, clearly now, not a good way of doing things. We’ll let the triple-A groups go in that direction but we’re exploring things now that we never could have explored before and it’s really, really great."

We'll have the full interview and report on Shadow of the Eternals early next week on NowGamer.

Hotline Miami 2 has been announced.

Following on from the original, it will have new weapons, new characters you to to play as ("each with their own motivations and methods of execution") and a new soundtrack. The visual style of the original has been kept intact.

It will probably be bastard hard and we'll probably have people in the office laugh at us when they watch us try and play through it. Again.

Anyway, you've had enough words, now look at the trailer:

Not every character who has appeared in previous Smash Bros titles will be appearing in Super Smash Bros - because there isn't enough time to recreate them all.

Designer Masahiro Sakurai explained the reason when NowGamer asked if all the previous characters will return.

"I can answer that: no. We don’t have the time to fully recreate every single character who’s been in Smash Bros at this point," Sakurai explained.

"Adding new characters is not a simple addition – it’s really multiplication. The amount of work, adding a character is multiplied and becomes bigger and bigger as you go. We can’t because of the amount of work it takes. However, I do believe I understand that each character has its own set of fans out there who really like that character.

"So we’re not going to cut characters out of the way, we’re going to put in as many characters as we can, we really want to do that, because it's good for the fans and good for all of us. But in the event that we do have to cut some characters, I’d like to apologise in advance to those fans."

Given there's over 600 Pokemon, it isn't feasible to include everyone single one in Super Smash Bros, for obvious reasons.

So how are Pokemon selected for inclusion in the series?

"Well first of all, we talk with the Pokemon company," explained designer Masahiro Sakurai when we put the question to him. "What’s the hot Pokemon? What Pokemon are in the movies right now? And really do a lot of research on that front.

"For example, X and Y are coming out – of course, we haven’t done any market research because they’re not out yet, but we look at the animated series or movies and anything like that and again, find out which ones are going to be central to any of conversations in Pokemon going forward.

"But it’s not just that – going back to just what we talked about, what’s unique about them? Where do they fit in with the rest of everything else? What do they have? It’s a combination of those things."

Suda51, director of the upcoming Killer Is Dead, believes it is just a matter of time until

Suda was responding to our question on what he thought of Microsoft's plans of Xbox One for Japan and, specifically, how he felt about Microsoft not announcing Xbox One would launch in that territory.

"I honestly don’t know what Microsoft’s plans or vision for Xbox One in Japan is going to be," he explained. "We really haven’t received immense support for Xbox One in Japan as of yet, so I don’t know what their plans are. Whatever everyone else knows right now is what we know.

"That being said, Windows and a lot other Microsoft products have a track record of being successful in Japan, so I think it’s matter of time or some kind of hook that will let the Xbox explode or shine in Japan. But what or when that is, is still kind of up in the air."

Microsoft has struggled to make a success of Xbox in Japan. Despite promising moves with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey at the start of Xbox 360's life, Microsoft's consoles have yet to have had much impact in Japan. We're doubtful that Xbox One will reverse that trend but what do you reckon?

Xbox One's reputation has taken another blow, as angry spammers have attacked the official Xbox Facebook page.

All recent posts on the Facebook page have ASCII middle fingers spammed in the comments section in response, the most visible target being the cover photo which tells users to reserve the 'Day One Edition' of the console.

We're not sure why moderators have stepped in yet and zapped the comments. Perhaps Microsoft is wary of censorship accusations that almost always follow a rigurous bout of moderation but that seems like the lesser of two evils right now.

By way of contrast, the official PlayStation Facebook page isn't suffering from the same problem.

Killzone: Shadow Fall only became the centrepiece of Sony's PS4 reveal after Sony saw it in action, according to Guerilla Games' Eric Boltjes.

The lead designer at Guerilla Games revealed the info when we asked if there was much pressure knowing Shadow Fall was going to be the climax of the PS4 reveal.

"It actually was the other way round," Boltjes replied. "We started working on the PS4 title and it became that good that they wanted to make it the centrepiece, which is very flattering. But once we knew that, it brought a lot of pressure. We really needed to shine. It’s great though. We get a lot of support from Sony and a lot of patience and a lot of backing.

"For example, the controller, we were actually involving in developing the controller as well. We gave tips like hey, can you make the triggers bigger and stuff like that. So they give us a lot of love and we give them a lot of love. I mean, they’re our boss but, you know [laughs]"

We'll have full impressions on Killzone: Shadow Fall later this week.

Turn 10 Studios had input with the design of Xbox One, studio manager Alan Hartman tells NowGamer.

"Here’s a little secret for you: we were working on this title before we shipped Forza 4," explained Hartman. "Chris Tector, who is our chief architect, he has been working with the [Xbox One] hardware team for the last four years. He was involved with the early chip discussions and there’s actually chips on the motherboard that are there because of Chris Tector’s involvement.

"Before we had shipped Forza 4 we had the game architected by Chris. Literally the month before our game released to the public, our dev team was already off building the foundations of Forza 5. It’s a whole new engine, from the ground up, re-architected for the Xbox One and I mean truly re-architected."

Read the full interview to learn more about how Forza 5 'will end AI'.

So tell us about Forza 5.

Here’s a little secret for you: we were working on this title before we shipped Forza 4. Chris Tector, who is our chief architect, he has been working with the [Xbox One] hardware team for the last four years. He was involved with the early chip discussions and there’s actually chips on the motherboard that are there because of Chris Tector’s involvement. Before we had shipped Forza 4 we had the game architected by Chris. Literally the month before our game released to the public, our dev team was already off building the foundations of Forza 5. It’s a whole new engine, from the ground up, re-architected for the Xbox One and I mean truly re-architected.

The reason why we can go for 1080p/60, is the reason why we’ve got the graphical fidelity. We went big on materials in this. I don’t know if you’ve heard about our material system, but even the way we build up paint now, we don’t just do a paint colour, we build the paint up on the car like you do in real life. We do a base coat, we do a metallic coat, and each of those interacting with the light differently. And then we do the clear coat on top of it and each of those is interacting with the light, and that’s how you get the depth and richness of the car. But if we just did that, we would have ended up with cars that almost seem too perfect.

In Forza 4, we had cars that looked really good in auto-vista. So shiny and so perfect, but we had to get the touch of the human hand in there. Going in and getting the scratches on the rotors, getting the score of the paint you get when you wax your car, getting the orange peel from the effect of the spray drops hitting the paint. And then we went into our environment, which was the same rendering system, the same lighting system for our cars…

The image-based lighting from Forza 4?

No, no, this is new. This is the material system we’ve brought to the Xbox One, where no material has a colour or texture, it has properties and interactions with light. We can literally go in and go ‘This surface is concrete, no, we’re going to make it asphalt, no, we’re going to make it gun metal’, and it just works in the environment. We don’t have to go in and tweak the lighting and the shading like we have in the past; everything works with light the way it’s supposed to.

That’s really key, because with the power of Xbox One we don’t want to go off and have to deal with eight times the complexity of an air environment. We had to invest in the technology to be able to build smarter. It goes all the way back to how we used laser-scanning, which doesn’t just give us surfaces, it gives us colour and texture as well. We can bring it back as reference for the artists and quickly bring it up to that quality we’re going for.

The level of detail really adds to that feeling of car ownership. The more real things seem, the more you feel like it’s yours.

One of the things we wanted to address the most was people saying the world could feel lifeless and sterile, it was too clean, too perfect. We want to really bring the world to life through the roar of the crowds, pit crews moving around, balloons and helicopters and birds and confetti. Doing that, you achieve a level of detail that’s rich, and not perfect, but something that feels real.

Do these small details have any bearing on how the car physically handles?

Yeah, actually, if you get out into that loose rubber, it’ll affect the feel of it. It’s another texture.

And are you treating the car interiors with as much love as the exteriors?

In Forza 4, we had auto-vista on 24 cars. We’re bringing that level of love – that you can climb around the car, open it up – to every car. Hundreds of cars. It was key for us to make sure that Forza 5 was an epic game. It couldn’t be a mini-Forza, a hey-we’re-kinda-shipping Forza. If we were going for launch, we thought, we have to go all in. We have to do a full Forza that we can call Forza 5. Big tracks, real world tracks, which meant hundreds of cars, diversity of cars. It meant going off and adding open wheel cars to the game, to make it be Forza-worthy.

Did you storyboard the tracks this time around, the way you did in Forza 4?

We did, though we put a slightly different tack on it this time around. We actually sent a team out to the Alps and they captured tens of thousands of photos and videos and measurements. From that, we created a fictionalised universe, as you know, the fictional track, the back history, everything. We wanted to go out and say ‘What is the track we really want to pour ourselves into? What is the thing that will really show off what Xbox One is about?’ We had a lot of areas we considered, but we wanted density and light, so that started pointing us more towards the city. And then we thought ‘What will show that high frequency detail? What will show something that’s not too clean and pristine?’

So we went more and more old world, and as we did the research, we started to fall in love with Prague. All the bridges and the rivers. If you go to Prague, you won’t find that race track in Prague; we did the same thing we did with the Alps. We thought ‘We need to make an interesting and challenging track’, so we took what we knew and decided to create a ribbon running through Prague that will show off the castles, give elevation gain… so we built that fantasy track in Prague, then wrapped the reality of Prague around it.

What kind of thing is being added for the Forza community this time round, considering that people won’t only need to buy a new game to play it, but a new console as well?

We took that very seriously, and this links back to what I was saying about an epic Forza for the launch. Because we knew we couldn’t do a small game and say go and spend hundreds of dollars to go and play this small game. We wanted to give them plenty of reasons to get excited for this console.

And that’s part of being first-party, is saying ‘What are the platforms we really want to get behind?’ So cloud was something we started thinking about early on and thinking about what we wanted to do with that power. Some things were easy. Something that the community will love is dedicated servers, you always want to play on dedicated servers. That allows us to have massive multiplayer games of a high quality nature. But that was kind of easy, right, so what else could we do? That’s where Drivatar really started, the thing we’ve been working on. When we came to the next gen we asked what we could do with this sort of power. It was the idea of stripping it down to the base technology; what do we really want to do with it?

We put it up there as what we can really do for our community, and so the idea is that you’ll never race alone. We don’t build AI any more, we just build a system that captures players and delivers them back to you. So it really is, when we say the end of AI, it is the end of AI. We won’t make AI any more; we’re just going to unleash the players on each other, in a sense. And of course we’ll allow you to say ‘Hey, do I want to really challenge myself? Do I want to hold back? Who do I want to race with?’ And every time you’re racing, you’re training your AI. Every time you connect, that AI is getting uploaded and recording down your friends and the rest of the universe out there to play against. It’s an ever-evolving game. The game will honestly be a lot different three to six months after launch compared to what it will be at launch, because that AI community, that Drivatar community, will be fleshed out.

The third DLC pack for Black Ops 2 will be called 'Vengeance', if a leaked image is to be believed.

The image suggests the map pack will contain multiplayer maps Detour, Uplink, Cove and Rush. it will also have new zombie map Buried and zombie weapon Ray Gun Mark II.

The image appeared on Reddit shortly after game design director David Vonderhaar tweeted an image of 'studio B', which appears to show the DLC trailer being put together.

The problem with Dead Rising 3 is it has to contend with the two (three if we’re counting Off The Record) games that came before it.

Dead Rising and its sequel were funny games. Zombies were usually found in survival horror games up until that point but the Dead Rising series as the perfect platform for Capcom humour as much as anything else – the Wile E. Coyote weaponry, the gory cartoon-esque deaths, the ridiculous bosses, the coffee creamers and so on. It was a series in which you could create an electrical Blanka mask of death and stick it on a nearby zombie, watching it stumble around and electrocute fellow undead with lightning zaps.

That could well be the biggest stumbling block for Dead Rising 3, which has ditched that humour in favour of a more mature outlook, its world now punctuated with slabs of grey rather than the bright neon lights of Fortune City.

Dead Rising 3 - On Its Own Merits

Taken on its own merits, Dead Rising 3 looks impressive. It’ll flex its next-gen muscles in terms of volume more than it will with Fancy New Graphics. As Capcom Vancouver ran us through what new protagonist Nick Ramos can do, we noticed that there’s a ridiculous amount of zombies shuffling about onscreen, even down to vague outlines of the outdead scraping around in the distance.

You can see as far as the horizon allows you to. You can travel there, too – Capcom Vancouver was keen to stress that you can travel anywhere you want without having to suffer through loading times.

Dead Rising 3 looks like it will mostly take place outdoors as Capcom Vancouver wants to make the most out of the opportunity to have a ‘go anywhere, go anything’ mantra at the core of its design. There are subtle changes to the design to reflect the lack of loading times.

One easy example: if you wanted to get to the rooftops of Dead Rising 2’s Fortune City casinos, you had to climb a ladder and sit through a loading time, because the rooftops would load in as a separate area. Because that’s no longer the case in Dead Rising 3, you can clamber onto the rooftops across car wreckages or nearby structures, making the level design feel far more organic and natural.

It’s also opened up the chance for more vehicle play. You can drive around Dead Rising 3’s city and motorways although zombies can clamber onboard, which we’re told will affect the weight and handling of a vehicle. Zombies can reach through can grab at Ramos, which triggers a QTE to escape their clutches. QTE is a game mechanic with negative connotations in gaming but its inclusion in this instance makes sense.

The move outdoors is a positive, confident step forward. There are still indoors areas to explore and visit – the one seen in the Microsoft conference demonstration had an eerie survival horror feel while we saw a few more in a behind-closed-doors presentation that had Ramos scrabbling around for shotguns, assault rifles and new outfits – but these indoor areas now seem to be home to poking around finding blueprints and books and completing certain objectives, rather than a place where you’ll spend the majority of your time in the game.

Speaking of blueprints and books, everything else here besides the shift to outdoors is a tweak on the Dead Rising formula. Blueprints show you new weapons you can unlock by duct-taping two items together but you can now do this on the fly, rather than having to seek out a workbench to create new tools of destruction. Books continue to serve as perks, much as they did in previous games. You can also level up, increasing your stats and unlocking new moves.

There are special flavours of zombies too. One of the zombie types we saw were firemen, which had head protection thanks to the helmets they wear and also fireaxes as weapons, making them more of a threat than the regular undead.

The one objective we saw was almost reminiscent of previous games in the series. As Ramos was poking around trying to find items to create new weapons with, fireworks were seen in the distance. A voice on the walkie-talkie informed us that this was someone who needed saving and off we go to save them. The survivor is trapped on-top of a carousel with zombies nearby. Clearing out the zombies completes the objective, as the survivor scampers away to safety.

Dead Rising 3 - Dude, Where's My Humour?

So far, so usual. But there’s one important component that’s missing – humour.

That lightness of touch found in previous series outings is missing from Dead Rising 3. It makes nods to the trademark humour – satirical billboards sit proudly on-top of buildings infested with the undead and you can still complete the entire game in a dress – but they now sit awkwardly in a series that has lost its colour and ditched its bright personality for grittiness and air-strikes. Nick Ramos already wears the look of a protagonist doomed to be dwarfed by the charisma of original hero Frank West.

There are still questions on the actual mechanics of Dead Rising 3. There was no indication on whether time management will play a part in Dead Rising 3 and while safe houses are present, it doesn’t seem like you have to escort survivors there. The one objective we saw had the survivor take off on his own accord once the objective is complete.

The frame-rate is also a big concern. It’s understandable that next-gen code presented this will have a variety of technical hitches and problems but nothing else we saw E3 had the same frame-rate problems Dead Rising 3 did. Dying Light, the closest comparison at the E3 in terms of on-screen activity, didn’t choke on its sheer number of zombies like Dead Rising 3 did.

While a sluggish frame-rate may be a case of optimisaing the code, Capcom Vancouver doesn’t have the same option for a quick fix when it comes to the humour and the tone of Dead Rising 3.

It'll be hard for Dead Rising 3 to move beyond the shadow cast by the gargantuan charisma and personality of previous games in the series and much of its success will come down to whether Nick Ramos can achieve that or not.

Dead Rising 3 is looking like a good game and a solid exclusive for Xbox One might whether series fans will be able to recalibrate their expectations for the shift in tone remains to be seen.

Yusuf Mehdi, the director of Xbox One, has claimed "in the long run, our console wins".

The quote came in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, which obviously suffers somewhat thanks to being run through Google translate but here's the exchange:

Question. During E3 has given PlayStation 4 as a winner, especially for its price, 100 euros cheaper. What do you think?

Answer. Which at E3 is not won or lost, but it will only play. We unveiled 20 titles for Xbox One, of which 17 are exclusive to this console. I do not think Sony can say the same. What I hear is that output, we are better positioned, with a complete value proposition. With the installed Skype voice service and Kinect motion sensor included. No use to me win a show, because the test will be the consumer. In the long run our console wins.

While that can be questioned thanks to Google Translate garbling some of the words, there's no questioning the final statement "A largo plazo nuestra consola será la ganadora." We can speak some Spanish (NowGamer is multi-lingual! Just about) and that means "in the long term, our console will be the winner."

Whatever the exact wording is, the meaning is clear - Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi is confident that Xbox One will eventually emerge triumphant, despite Sony's emphatic headstart following E3.

Keiji Inafune, creator of Mega Man, says he still has people asking him to make another game in the series.

Talking to us about Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, a title Inafune is producer of, we asked if there's still room for the smaller arcade-orientated titles amongst the Call Of Dutys and BioShock Infinites of this gen.

"We know that Call Of Duty is major and BioShock Infinite is huge but there are still a lot of fans that have something for retro games and other games from the past," answered Inafune.

"Every generation has its own games and trends. So people who know games and know its history as well, I still get people coming up saying “Mega Man, Mega Man, make another Mega Man, I want another Mega Man”, you know?

"So it seems there are still people who are looking for something else. There’s still an audience for games like this, an older style of arcade game where it’s mindless fun cutting up a bunch of enemies. Maybe it’s not the biggest genre right now but there are still people who enjoy that. For us, we want to make something that’s different, something that will stand out in that aspect. We’re not following trends, so maybe that gives us a chance to stand out. "

We'll have the full interview and full impressions on the bloody Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z this week.

One of the surprise announcements in Xbox One's E3 conference was Sunset Overdrive - an exclusive title from Insomniac Games, a studio that made its name through series exclusive to PlayStation like Spyro The Dragon, Ratchet & Clank and Resistance.

What gives?

Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, has spoken about why Sunset Drive is an Xbox One exclusive through the studio's official website: the reason is 'the abilities and philosophies driving the development of Xbox One' made 'Sunset Overdrive a perfect fit.'

"It may surprise some of our longtime fans that we have partnered with Microsoft Studios to develop Sunset Overdrive exclusively for Xbox One," explained Price.

"When we first began discussing this idea with Microsoft, we were initially hesitant to shift back into an exclusive arrangement. But as the Microsoft team began introducing us to the abilities and philosophies driving the development of Xbox One, we knew that Sunset Overdrive was a perfect fit.

"The Xbox One and Xbox Live will support our ambitions to create an ongoing two-way dialogue with our community. It will also allow us to have quicker production cycles, enabling timely content updates for new weapons, characters, storylines and even pop culture-relevant content like memes based on social commentary."

However, Price also notes that this doesn't mean Insomniac Games has turned its back on Sony.

"While we are excited about partnering with Microsoft on Sunset Overdrive, that doesn’t mean we can’t or wouldn’t make games with our longtime friends at Sony. That’s the magic of being an independent developer."

Insomniac Games is fresh from its first ever multiformat release, Fuse (check out our Fuse review if you haven't already done so), which stiffed in the charts.

Sony's conference might have won the praise and plaudits at E3 but Microsoft's Major Nelson says they're "not going to change anything" in response to that.

He was asked if Microsoft was going to change anything in a Reddit Games interview and Major Nelson was quick to put the emphasis onto the games Xbox One had in his answer.

"I don't really think... we're not going to change anything," said Major Nelson. "We're very happy with what we've done with Xbox One. Did you see the games on stage. Did you see the exclusives? I mean, we're really, really proud of the system and the games that are coming out.When you look at games like TitanFall, did you see TitanFall? Okay, enough said. Conversation over.

"We're really happy with what we've shown onstage and with what we've shown in the booths. It's safe to say we're confident with where we're going and we're confident that gamers are going to love our vision of the future and what we're going to offer for gaming."

Bungie president Harold Ryan says the 'graphics are different, platform to platform' for Destiny.

What isn't clear is whether this means between the PS4 and Xbox One (as is asked in the question Ryan's responding to) or between the next-gen and current gen versions.

Responding to our question on what kind of special features we can expect for PS4 and Xbox One for Destiny, Ryan replies: "We’re not committing right now to any specific platform features. The great thing for us with timing is that we were making a new engine, and then two new consoles were coming out, which led us to invest more into making the new engine for it.

"There are a whole bunch of great opportunities for us to go after, like full player experiences, etc. We’re investigating all of those and building the core experience of Destiny, which will be similar across all the platforms. The graphics are different, obviously, platform to platform, but in a connected world, the game of Destiny is going to be awesome on all of them."

In regards to the presentation, it must be really hard trying to translate something so big into such a small space of time so that people actually get it. Do you think that the world has understood just how massive it is?

I don’t think so. There’s a lot to the game. Even with what we showed in the demo, we got to the end and we had seven people all playing in the same encounter. You’ve got player investment in there, you’ve got public matchmaking in there, co-operative gameplay events. What kind of story were those guys going on, what activities were they choosing as a team? That’s just one narrow slice of the experience.

We showed a couple of the more combatant races in the montage at the end, and you can fight the race of The Fallen, the main enemy. To really get it, you need to play it. So lots of people have been ‘Okay, we’ll play!’ and we’ve had to say ‘Well, we’re still pre-alpha code.’ We did get seven players to work with the dedicated server onstage, which was unnerving. But there’s a lot to Destiny, I think it’s going to take a while for people to really understand the full scope of it.

Do you think it’s going to be difficult for people who have played more console games to get used to this kind of MMO PC game style?

We’re definitely very sensitive to the average, let’s call them, Halo player, COD player, even players of Oblivion and games like that. We know they’re not very patient and they want an action game, and the first thing Destiny is is an action game. And so everything on top of it is a rich and deep plus, but if you want a great action game experience, you can pick up Destiny and play through a great action game. You’re going to be presented with so many opportunities to progress your character, to care about how you look and how you customise yourself, and who you play with and how you play with them, but ultimately it’s a game we’re very focused on designing for people who just love to play the current generation of online shooters.

It can be hard for players of MMOs to feel that they’re having a real impact in the world, with respawning bosses, etc. How have you gone about tackling this problem?

There will be a huge set of discussions to have about the activities you can engage in in Destiny. The designers have the ability to make something an activity that you play through, and they control the frequency that you can play through it, whether you play through it once or multiple times, and they control whether you play it with two or three friends or whether you play it in a public space, where you might encounter it every time you land on Venus as you go through. And so the type of challenge, the reward that comes from accomplishing that challenge, is something that is designed for the player as we go through it. We won’t present you with a situation where you slay the Devil Walker Lord and are glad he’s gone, and then he happens to just be back the next day. If we set you that kind of activity, you’ll actually accomplish it and then move on beyond that task.

How have you gone about being able to bring in other players from different levels to you as you play?

One of the reasons we showed the public event at the E3 demo is that you can see that there are a couple of low-level players, some teen-level players, a couple of twenty-level players, all sharing the same space, the same event. While there are activities where in order for it to be competitive you’re going to have similar power levels for the group, there are also a ton of activities that have been designed for people to just be able jump in and play, no matter what their level is. One of the things you didn’t get a lot of in the demo is that you get loot appropriate for your character and for your level as well, so everyone who engages in that event is going to get compelling rewards for completing them.

Is this shared-world shooter experience something you think will be similar to an MMO, in the sense that people will be able to play it for years?

We absolutely plan for Destiny to be a world that grows over time, that is a place you build your character in it, you meet friends in it, and it will continue to live and grow. Hopefully people will like it enough that we get the opportunity to help it keep growing over time.

What kind of special features can we expect for PS4/Xbox One?

We’re not committing right now to any specific platform features. The great thing for us with timing is that we were making a new engine, and then two new consoles were coming out, which led us to invest more into making the new engine for it. There are a whole bunch of great opportunities for us to go after, like full player experiences, etc. We’re investigating all of those and building the core experience of Destiny, which will be similar across all the platforms. The graphics are different, obviously, platform to platform, but in a connected world, the game of Destiny is going to be awesome on all of them.

What do you think of all the fuss being made online about the issues surrounding DRM?

Whether they DRM or not doesn't actually matter for us because we're taking a leap and saying in order to provide the experience we believe in you'll have to be a connected gamer. What the platform providers do with it at that point is up to them. It won't affect us.

What kinds of advances have you been able to make with Destiny after deciding to release it on next-gen platforms as well as current-gen ones?

It was about increasing the scope of technology, because all of a sudden it made more sense to put more into some fundamental things that would allow us to expand the amount of interactivity that the player has with the game. For the artists on the team being able to build and paint to the scale the next-gen consoles can display, they’re loving it. It turned out really well on the demo, I think, what has been nice and solid from a competitive point of view.

What are your feelings on 343’s Halo 4?

I think they did a good job with Halo 4. There’s nothing harder in the world than building a game, I think. It’s interactive and it’s about making something fun, and you can’t measure fun until you play it. When you try to hit eight or ten million people, it’s tough. I think they did a great job pulling together what they did. I played through all of Halo 4 in the first week it came out. I think it was a good game.

With a new IP, the world is your oyster. You’ve got no restrictions, right?

The opportunity that Destiny has presented us, we’ve been able to double down with the next generation of consoles coming out. We can really step back again, like we did with Halo 1, and say ‘What do we want? What’s the next game we want to play? How do we want to play it, how do we want to share it?’ You know, we worked a lot on socialising, with Halo 2 going on Xbox Live and launching BungieNet, and getting back to groups. There’s a lot to carry as you’re going from one game to the next. What futures do you keep, which ones do you add to? What do you change? In this case, we got to step back and look at the base line and build from the ground up the games we really want to play.

The Bungie community seems to be a really happy bunch. It’s quite rare to see.

We’ve been fortunate enough to be able to focus on interacting with our fans, and to have them interact back with us and be happy. We’ve been really fortunate to be a Bungie game developer over the years.

Creating a new science fiction universe is a massively intricate thing. How are you guys layering up the history of this universe?

When we started working on the Destiny universe, the first thing we did was to write a fictional background. You start off as you are now, a Guardian of The Tower, defending the wall that surrounds the last bastion of humanity, and the enemies are growing in strength. You start there and you start talking about how you ended up with that one last city, and what happened with peace. We spent years on it, with about eight or nine writers on the team, the editor for sci-fi from Tor is now our managing editor inside the studio, and Joe Staten who has been writing fiction for Bungie for fifteen years has been lead writer on it, and so we have a great team of guys that have just been writing and outlining and tweaking and tuning. We married the concept of the story and the fiction to visual concepts, and that's how we ended up with things looking the way they do. They’re breathtaking. Sometimes I take them home and hang them on my wall. We have them all over the studio, people have our art up as their desktop.

It’s about finding that creative line and then we flash it out there, reams and reams of fiction for Destiny that back all aspects of it. The fun piece is when we plan the next story to tell and we go ‘Okay, so here we are, what’s the most exciting thing to pick?’ We pick the images we want, the activities we want, and then we think what stories relate to those and then pull it together.

That sounds like so much fun. I used to be a bit of a Warcraft dabbler, lost a thousand hours of my life.

(Laughs) I stopped at level 60 with my Dark Elf warrior.

How have you tried to create a realistic world, one that people will miss when they leave and want to come back to?

That was one of the core principles for Destiny, we wanted to create a place, a world that they would want to belong to. That it would be a hopeful place, a beautiful place, but full of intrigue and mystery. That’s where we went. We went deep into fantasy and sci-fi, and pulled the two together. And I think the team we’ve assembled to pull it off from a visual point of view really nailed it.

The Last Of Us is officially the biggest IP launch since L.A. Noire, as it hit the top spot in the UK all-formats chart.

Naughty Dog's adventure is the third-fastest selling game this year behind BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider, and is Sony's first all-formats number one since the release of Uncharted: Golden Abyss for PS Vita. Check out our The Last Of Us review to see what we thought of the game.

It's good news for Nintendo this week too, as Animal Crossing: New Leaf took second spot in the charts and is officially the biggest non-Mario 3DS launch to date. We've also got an Animal Crossing: New Leaf review to read, if you want to know more about the 3DS title.

Grid 2 falls to third, after enjoying the spoils of the top spot in the UK charts last week.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer has clarified the 'sharing 10 games with family' idea on Xbox One via PA Report.

Microsoft has already announced the 'family sharing' feature of Xbox One that allows you to share your games with up to 10 members of that group, but it wasn't clear if they had to be in your family or not - and if they were, how would Microsoft check?

This gave rise to lots of talk about Kinect checking who you'd be sharing your games with and so forth but Spencer has clarified the policy.

“It’s not ten different people all playing the game concurrently, but when you think about a real usage scenario, and we thought about it around a family, and I know certain people will create a family group of people that aren’t all part of the same family, and I do think that’s an advantage, and people will use that," Spencer explained.

"I saw it on NeoGAF instantly, the Xbox Family creation threads, where people said 'Hey be a part of my family.' No birth certificates will need to be sent in! I do think that’s an advantage of the ecosystem that we have.”

The internet has done a better job of explaining this feature than Microsoft has thus far, and what's more, this seems to be the best aspect of Xbox One - particularly in light of all the negativity surrounding the console to date.

Why isn't Microsoft making a bigger deal out of this feature?