Author: Sam Machkovech

A leaked promotional image for the Xbox One S confirms news that Ars had gathered ahead of this year's E3 conference. (credit: Microsoft)

Rumors and insider tips have pointed to an Xbox One "slim" model being revealed at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the news was so good, someone at Microsoft couldn't wait to spill the beans.

Images found by multiple NeoGAF forum members confirm the news of the new "Xbox One S"—and the ability for gamers to pre-order it soon enough. Multiple Xbox sources had recently confirmed to Ars that some sort of "slim" system would be announced at this year's E3 and that a major part of its bulk reduction (which has been measured by Microsoft as "40 percent") will come from the removal of its AC adapter's  "power brick," which will make this the first Xbox-branded console to nix that bulky portion.

The leaked announcement image also confirms news that the Xbox One S will support 4K output, though Microsoft sources have informed Ars that 4K support will mostly manifest in the system's menus and in any streaming app that announces support for 4K output in the future—meaning, this will not include the kind of hardware upgrades needed to automatically boost current software to 4K resolution. The announcement image also trumpets support for high dynamic range (HDR) imagery, a vertical stand, and a "streamlined" controller, though we have yet to learn what exactly will be streamlined or changed in that controller.

The hammer comes down—at the workplace. (credit: Riot Games)

League of Legends creators Riot Games have never shied away from the fact that some of its players really, really suck. The company's "tribunal" answer to toxic behavior has paid big dividends in the past few years, but it hasn't zeroed out all rude players—which means Riot still had some recent data handy to connect the dots for an intriguing, workplace-related corollary.

The leading question: Does bad in-game behavior carry over to the workplace? Riot was in a position to know, since its staffers are also avid LoL players—and have apparently signed over permissions for their bosses to track their gameplay.

With help from Google's re:Work staff analytics team, Riot picked through the last 12 months of each staffer's LoL gameplay records and chat logs. The analysts found that in the case of fired employees, 25 percent of them exhibited significantly toxic in-game behavior. This wasn't a surface-level search for vulgar and hateful keywords but rather a deeper, context-specific analysis; according to re:Work, the worst behaviors included "passive aggression (snarky comments) and the use of authoritative language, sometimes using their authority as a Riot employee to intimidate or threaten others."

This teaser for the new Destiny expansion was taken down from the game's British site shortly after it was posted on Wednesday. (credit: Bungie)

Bungie fans knew that more news about the shooting game series Destiny was incoming this week, and a major nugget of that news landed a day earlier than expected—there may be an official plan to bid the last generation of gaming consoles farewell.

A Wednesday update to the game's British website loosed the name of the next Destiny expansion—Rise of Iron—along with its September 20 launch date. Clicking the promotional box for that news, which has a picture of an armor-clad hero wielding a flaming hammer (because, you know, video games) loads an outdated trailer for 2015's Taken King expansion, which leads us to believe that this information was accidentally posted ahead of a planned Thursday reveal via the game's official Twitch channel. In fact, as this article was going to press, the image was removed. A saved screenshot is posted above.

In addition, the promotional text box says the expansion will launch "for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One," which could mean one of two things: that the last generation of Destiny is officially over or that its release schedule has been deprioritized to get current-gen console owners their updates first. Last-gen Destiny players are still getting updates to the game at the same speed as current-gen players, but Bungie hasn't been shy about recommending that players make the next-gen jump at some point. In particular, last year's expansion forced such large memory requirements for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (whose most popular SKUs don't have giant hard drives) that Bungie made it a point to tell players how to transfer their progress and stats to new systems.

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—At a recent press event, Square Enix reps tried to set the tone for the future of the stealthy Deus Ex games with a flashy, live-action video. The next game’s story was foreshadowed in a film called “The Mechanical Apartheid,” anchored by the story of a husband and wife divided by a very Deus Ex kind of conflict: a forced quarantine for any “Augs” who have received cybernetic enhancements. Robotic wife and "natural" husband forcibly separated? Nooo!

But that polished, dramatic video didn’t leave the most lasting impression. Instead, that honor went to a giant table graphic with icons representing all of the games and “fiction” entries we can expect in the future. The stories will be spearheaded by this August’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but Square Enix also teased two attached projects launching this year and two more “AAA games” in a future timeline, currently blurred out.

Square Enix wasn’t ready to reveal its years-down-the-line hand, but ahead of E3, the company did produce quite the three-of-a-kind: the new, big-ticket game; an arcade-styled stealth shooter; and the first official Deus Ex games for touchscreen devices. Best of all, the entire trio is set to launch by the end of this summer.

Playtonic Games

Yooka's the lizard; Laylee's the bat.

7 more images in gallery

In May of 2015, a gaggle of ex-developers from the game studio Rare made the crowd-funding rounds with dreams of resurrecting the 3D-platformer genre—and the results have finally begun to bear fruit. Yooka-Laylee, the debut project from Playtonic Games, looks like a blatant love letter to N64 classic Banjo-Kazooie. This week the game has finally been received a proper video reveal almost exactly a year after the dev team concluded its $3.2 million campaign.

The trailer, seen below, was apparently saved to help fans swallow the hard pill of a game delay. Yooka-Laylee has been pushed back from its original October 2016 promise to "Q1 2017." New publisher Team 17 (of Worms fame) will handle the game's Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, and Steam releases next year.

From the look of things, Playtonic seems dead-set on making a third Banjo-Kazooie (Banjo Three-ie?) in everything but name and main characters. Lizard and bat combine to double-jump, float, roll, and transform into other temporary creatures while traversing what appear to be some large, incredibly colorful worlds. Floating blocks, magically appearing platforms, and races (including a roll through a tunnel and a Donkey Kong Country-esque mine cart ride) fill out the brief preview footage found in an official trailer and a Eurogamer eyes-on preview.

Reddit user locknlawl reported plenty of Vive systems for sale at a Micro Center in Fairfax, VA. (credit: Reddit)

Update, 6/7, 12:45pm EDT: Following this weekend's surprise surge of Vive VR kits at Micro Center stores, HTC announced an official stabilization of the $800 system's supply on Tuesday. Now, VR hopefuls in 24 countries can expect orders directly from HTC to ship within "2-3 business days."

HTC took the opportunity to confirm that in-store Vive demos will land in 100 retail stores by the end of June, spread between Microsoft Stores, GameStop shops, and Micro Center locations.

Original report: With pre-order woes and supply limits lifting, the opportunities to walk into a store and buy a high-end virtual reality system are on the rise. Oculus has announced some specific in-store demos and purchase opportunities, while its main rival, the HTC Vive, has had fewer hype-building announcements.

Heels on male Sims? Short hair and suits on females? Maxis says you can finally go to fashion town on your virtual denizens. (credit: Maxis)

The Sims game series has typically offered a ridiculous number of options for how their virtual denizens live, work, play, and love—and it has never shied away from political blowback in the "love" category. The only major exception at this point has been a delineation between the series' three types of Sims—men, women, and children—in terms of 3D character rendering.

That changed on Thursday with an official unlocking of The Sims 4's customization options to all grown-up Sims. Voices, walking styles, clothing, accessories, and physiques can now be applied to men and women however users see fit.

"The Sims is made by a diverse team for a diverse audience, and it's really important to us that players are able to be creative and express themselves through our games," Maxis said in its announcement post. The company also made a statement to the Associated Press that was mindful of popular, real-life fashion choices: "Female Sims can [now] wear sharp men's suits like Ellen [DeGeneres], and male Sims can wear heels like Prince."

Sam Machkovech tests VR sniping game The Nest; video edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

The HTC Vive's "room-scale," out-of-the-chair approach to virtual reality has unlocked some very interesting gun-gaming ideas, and, as a result, most of its current shooters encourage a lot of movement. As such, launch highlights Hover Junkers and Space Pirate Trainer offer significant gameplay benefits for anyone who can duck, dodge, and hop around their play space while faking like a laser cowboy.

Some VR gamers may prefer an experience that splits the difference: a shooting game that employs motion-tracked controllers but doesn't require serious physical effort. Those players will finally get their wish with the impending launch of this month's The Nest, whose early access beta version stakes its entire claim on a single weapon: the sniper rifle.

(credit: Scott Beale)

It's easy to joke about the average shelf life of a major social media platform, especially one that hinges its reputation on young users. After all, this era has seen its share of MySpaces and Friendsters. In both cases, platform downfalls came after a change in the popularity guard, and new numbers unearthed on Thursday may point to another virtual torch-passing—this time between Twitter and Snapchat.

Citing "people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg reported that the Snapchat smartphone messaging service officially surpassed 150 million daily active users. That figure soundly beats Bloomberg's estimate of Twitter's 136 million daily users (derived from the service's publicly announced 310 monthly active users and Twitter's announced estimates of how many of those use the service on a daily basis).

In recent years, Snapchat's basic functionality—of auto-deleting messages and posts while connecting friends to photo and video feeds—has expanded. The service now boasts hugely popular auto-filter functions, which attach silly face-matched images to users' faces and eyes in much better fashion than what the Nintendo DSi introduced in its simple camera app back in 2009. These days even many professional publishing houses connect to the service to post frequent phone-video updates (if you're asking: ars_technica).

Watch out! Once you drink Amazon Prime's kool-aid, you may find yourself renewing the service... forever. (Or, at least, for a third year.) (credit: Rachel Murray / Getty Images)

Amazon isn't likely to release granular data about its Prime subscribers anytime soon, which means a privately run survey has a little more weight than we might otherwise give it—especially with a conclusion as resounding as the one drawn by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners on Tuesday. The firm's latest report estimated an Amazon Prime retention rate that may only be rivaled by alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs: 96 percent.

That's how many Prime members elect to renew the service after two full years of use, according to CIRP's estimate (which it surveys of 2,108 users. CIRP's numbers also found that 91 percent of one-year subscribers elect to renew for a second Prime year, while 73 percent of the service's free-trial users decide to pay for Prime.

The survey tracked renewal rates in all three of those cases, dating back as far as the second fiscal quarter of 2014, and it found that 30-day trial upgraders slowed down from June of 2014 until September of last year—which CIRP's study authors attributed to the March 2014 bump in Prime fees from $79 to $99. The rates slowly climbed from that point on, and they've had an upward trend in the other categories, as well—one-year renewals are up from 81 percent in early 2014, and two-year renewals have climbed from 81 percent that year, as well.