News::Xbox One drops to $299 in Microsoft's spring game sale

If you missed out on last fall's Xbox One sales, you're about to get a second chance. Microsoft is kicking off an Xbox Spring Sale on March 20th that will once again lop $50 off the Xbox One's price. And yes, that applies to any bundle -- the 500GB offerings start at as little as $299, and even that pricey The Division 1TB bundle will fall to a more reasonable $349. A handful of games (including Halo 5) will see a $20 price cut, too. The hardware deals will stick around "for a limited time," so you may want to act quickly if you're eager to play and don't want to wait until June to see what E3 will bring.

Source: Xbox.com, Major Nelson

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News::Ben Heck's console wars: PlayStation 1 vs. Nintendo 64

The console wars have begun! Ben compares the inner workings of the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64 by tearing them down to their chips and highlighting the electronics design considerations, in case you want to make your own portable version. Which worked better? The 32-bit based PlayStation or the 64-bit N64? Watch the episode to find out the strengths and weaknesses of each to determine if you should design for CD-ROM or cartridge. Let us know which console you prefer on the element14 Community page.

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News::GDC 2016 Revisited: Virtual reality takes a big leap

And just like that, GDC 2016 has come to a close. But, before the Engadget team says goodbye to the gaming conference, we wanted to give you a look at some of the highlights of the week. Virtual reality was definitely the hot topic of conversation, with plenty of interesting news from Sony, Oculus and other companies. We'll see how these announcements play out over the next few months. Now, who's ready for E3 in June?

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News::This is the future of video game development

The Girls Make Games initiative aims to encourage young women to dive into the rich industry of video game development, and it seems to be doing the trick. This year at the Independent Games Festival awards ceremony, nine young ladies from Girls Make Games collected the ID@Xbox Rising Star award for their work on The Hole Story. It's a top-down RPG featuring an archaeologist named Wendy who digs a portal to a fantastical dimension in her backyard. Yeah, it's pretty neat.

We caught up with the winners right after they collected their prizes and had one question for each of them: What do you want the future of video games to look like?

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News::Insomniac Games CEO on the challenges of making games for VR

As the Founder and CEO of Insomniac Games, Ted Price is responsible for esteemed console games like Ratchet and Clank, Sunset Overdrive and Fuse. Then there's Song of the Deep, a gorgeous 2D platformer that's slated to release this summer with GameStop as the publisher. But for Insomniac and other developers, virtual reality's arrival onto the scene has opened up a world of new possibilities in game-making. And Price's team is already dipping its toes in VR, with projects such as Edge of Nowhere, an insane third-person adventure designed for the Oculus Rift.

To that end, I sat down with him at GDC 2016 to talk about developing for virtual reality, the promise of PlayStation VR, Oculus, and the relationship between Insomniac and GameStop.

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