One of Xbox Live’s creators has left Microsoft

The man who helped transform Xbox Live from a network of desktop PCs running under its developers’ desks to a service connecting some 39 million game-playing folk has left Microsoft. Eric Neustadter has worked at the company for 18-and-a-half years, 14-and-a-half of those dedicated to Xbox where he’s most recently served as the platform’s director of architecture. He recently returned from a sabbatical, and the co-host of the Major Nelson podcast hasn’t yet made any indication of what’s he’s going to do next. If you’d like some more info on who the man who holds the first-created gamertag (“e”) is, you should definitely read this two-part history on building Xbox Live which chronicles the birth of the service and its relaunch with the Xbox 360’s 2005 release. They’re worth your time — I promise.

[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Source: Eric Neustadter (Twitter)

Xbox Live gets 28 percent more monthly active users in the first quarter

It was a pretty good first quarter for Microsoft on the gaming front. The company revealed today that monthly active Xbox Live users increased by 28 percent over the last three months, a huge jump that now puts the active user base at 39 million. To be clear: These aren’t the total amount of people on Xbox Live (which sits around 49 million), just those who are playing at least once a month. The summer break probably accounted for much of that growth, together with high-profile releases like Metal Gear Solid V and Destiny: The Taken King. Still, the gaming success wasn’t enough to help Microsoft’s More Personal Computing group — which includes all of its devices — still saw revenue fall 17 percent in Q1, mostly due to the 54 percent revenue drop in phones. And that figure isn’t too surprising: Microsoft didn’t really have many fresh phone offerings over the summer.

Source: Microsoft

Playdate: Giving away the farm with ‘Halo 5: Guardians’

Halo 5: Guardians launches next week on Xbox One and we’re celebrating the only way we know how on Playdate — by giving stuff away and playing video games on Twitch. What’s the giveaway? A special Xbox One console packing 1TB of storage, Halo 5 stylings and the game itself. And for runners up, a pair of Astro A40 headphones decked out in the sci-fi shooter’s livery. Oh, right, we’re playing a game too. You can probably guess by now what that’ll be, but if not it’s Halo 5. Join Sean Buckley, myself and our special guest Richard Lawler as we form a Blue Team of our own and fight through Covenant and Prometheans for two hours starting at 4 PM Eastern / 1PM Pacific. You’ll be able to find us in the usual places, too: Here on this post, the Engadget Gaming homepage and Twitch.tv/joystiq if you’d like to join us in chat.

Watch how Neon Indian used Kinect for its latest concert

The combination of the electronic band Neon Indian and Microsoft’s Kinect makes so much sense it seems practically inevitable. During Neon Indian’s performance at the CMJ Music Marathon in NYC this month, it used five Kinect sensors to capture the movement of band members, the results of which were projected in a trippy light performance behind them. You can see the Xbox One Kinect sensors set up throughout the stage for its performance of “The Glitzy Hive” from its latest album, VEGA INTL. Night School, in the video below. We’ve seen plenty of other intriguing uses of Kinect for music performances — even the Seattle Symphony has experimented with it — but it’s still interesting to see how different artists approach Microsoft’s motion-sensing camera. Neon Indian will be using the Kinect setup in select locations throughout its upcoming tour, and you can get a better sense of how it works after the break.

Via: Wired