Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, has passed away at the age 55. Nintendo confirmed his passing today in a brief statement posted on their site.

Sony Online Entertainment has been sold by its parent company Sony to a private investment group called Columbus Nova. The studio has been rebranded as Daybreak Game Company and will continue to push forth on all current and future projects. 

You may remember Trixie360, former community manager of Xbox Live, host of numerous video shows that were on the console a few years back. She interviewed former editor Jim McLaughlin for a gamer spotlight a few years back as well as helped usher in Xbox Live Co-Op Night. Since moving on from Microsoft, Christa Charter (aka Trixie360) has become a successful author writing several novels. Her series based on a character named Lexy Cooper is particularly interesting for gamers. Why? The stories are murder mysteries set in a universe respectful of gamer culture.

The Xbox One is all about taking over your living room, from your TV to your Blu-Ray player and of course video games themselves. The Kinect adds a bit to the ease of access for this, allowing you and your family to say simple voice commands for common actions like volume control, pausing movies and even switching channels on the TV.

Oh how far we've come in the seven years since this site has begun. Co-Op wasn't even considered a major feature for some, barely a bullet on the back of the box. Now? A major AAA studio is hiring a designer who's sole responsibility is to create cooperative gameplay. Naughty Dog, developers of the Uncharted series and The Last of Us have the job posting.

Last week a few days after the PlayStation 4 launched, we reported that several people were having issues with their console. This week the Xbox One launched, and like we said before, with any sort of release of this magnitude problems are almost guaranteed to pop up. We've been keeping tabs on reviews, forums, and direct feedback from our readers and it looks like there are two issues that are popping up for the Xbox One.

Sony's PlayStation 4 launched yesterday and as with any major release there are a few technical issues right out of the gate. Numerous users are reporting dead systems out of the box or after the 1.50 update; which is mandatory to access many of the console's features. Anyone who tried to play a game online during launch night also knows there were quite a few issues with PSN and for a period of time, users couldn't even sign in.

Believe it or not, there was a time when videogames didn't make you wait for the menu to load, when they didn't make you sit through four screens of publishers, engine developers, and physics technologies. There was a time when you simply inserted a quarter and pressed start and began playing. Somewhere along the way we lost that but perhaps, there's a slight chance, we'll be getting back to just playing a game.

Nintendo has a weird relationship with the internet. Sure, you can trade your adorable Pokemon monsters to anyone across the globe via the information superhighway, but playing a platformer online? Goodness no! If you're dying to play Super Mario 3d World with your friends, you need to make sure that they're comfortable sitting beside each other. The Wii U's next Mario game features four player co-op, but only of the local variety. Any ambitions to squash goombas with your online friends will have to wait.

Microsoft have announced the official release date for the Xbox One. You can grab the system in on November, 22nd 2013. The console is launching on this day (a Friday) in 13 markets: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA. The November 22nd release date is the same day the Xbox 360 launched in 2005.

Remember all the hub-bub about the Xbox One not coming with a headset? Remember how they also said it wouldn't work with current headsets? Just like Microsoft reversed its decision to support older headsets with an adapter, it appears it has reversed its decision on including a headset. Today Xbox Live's Major Nelson has unboxed the Xbox One console revealing several goodies inside, including a headset.

John Carmack is a monster name in the gaming industry. He's a pioneer, a legend. John co-founded id software and help create such games as Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, QUAKE and many others. He's been a driving force in gaming for over 25 years, specifically in the area of 3D. So perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that he's leaving id Software to help with what foks are saying is the future of 3D gaming - the Oculus Rift.