NEWS: Saturday Update

Good afternoon everyone! This week saw the announcement of the Xbox One, which love it or hate it, is going to be a major contender in the upcoming console war. My opinion is that its just the logical evolution of the 360, a device that can "do it all," and it actually looks pretty good. I probably won't buy one as it seems pretty much exactly like a media center PC/SteamBox (which I have already...), but if I had a choose a console for the next gen, it would probably be the Xbox One.

As for Japan, this week has saw the arrival of the Austrian exchange kids. My school district does an exchange with a school in Austria once a year, so earlier in the week myself and some other teachers went out drinking/karaokeing with the Austrian teacher, and the other night we had a farewell party for everyone involved in the exchange. The biggest surprise was just how incredibly well the students spoke English. I'm lucky if my kids can throw together two sentences without constantly pausing, yet these kids were pretty much at native level.

How can the B.O.E see these kids, with their fantastic English ability, arrive every year, and still refuse to change their backwards-ass foreign language education? The results of a proper English curriculum are literally right in front of you. Oh well, looks like its back to another week of "repeat after me" and studying grammar.

Here are this week's news stories:

• Terraria Updates Coming to Console Versions
• Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition Komes To PC In July
• Next-Gen Kinect is Coming to Windows PCs
• You Can Experience Battlefield 4's Gritty Realism On October 29th
• SimCity Patch 4.0 Adds "Launch Park" For Early Adopters
• Diablo III Infographic Shows 2.1 Million Players Still Log On Daily
• "Smart Match" Smartly Matches You Against Other Xbox One Gamers
• Mark Rein: Intel Held Back Innovation On the PC
• Hollywood Tries to Censor Movie About Hollywood Censors
• Ghost of a Tale Reaches Its Funding Goal
• It Looks Like Kevin Conroy Will Be Batman After All
• Massive Moon Meteor Explosion Was Visible to Naked Eye
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengence To Seek Revenge On PC

Story of the week:

• 8-Core CPU Heads Xbox One's Hardware Specs

Bonus Content:

This week saw the release of the first episode of the much talked about, but never actually attempted Happy Steve, Angry Steve Podcast. This was basically just done as a proof-of-concept type thing, to prove that we could actually do it and just get it out there, so I'm afraid it is very rough around the edges. Any criticism you can give us is very much appreciated.

Okay guys, that's it from me for this week! Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, my youtube channel for gaming videos, and check back here every Saturday for a roundup of my Escapist news pieces!