Developer Toylogic has some good news for people who want to play its free-to-play faction-based RPG game Happy Wars but don't want to pay Microsoft a monthly fee: they can now play the game without having to be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber.

In the latest edition of Bonus Round, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says that Sony and Microsoft will likely slash the price of their last generation consoles in February. Pachter went on to claim that publishers have threatened to stop supporting the last generation consoles if platform holders didn't start cutting the price of their systems.

If you are an Xbox Live Gold subscriber, today is the day that you can download Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light for free as part of Microsoft's ongoing Games with Gold promotion.

Released in August 2010, the downloadable title would normally cost you $14.99, but you can score it for free of charge beginning now and until the end of the month.

Earlier in the month Microsoft handed out Sleeping Dogs for free.

Look for Microsoft to announce new games available in February for free as part of the program.

Pizza Hut says that it added $1 million in sales in the four months after launching a Kinect-enabled app on Xbox 360 that allowed gamers to order Pizza for delivery. The company said that the app was so successful that it has begun talking to other companies about the possibility of deploying similar apps on additional platforms - though it didn't drop any specific names.

Microsoft's Games With Gold program is offering two games in the month of January, The first two free games for Xbox Live Gold subscribers in 2014 will be the action game Sleeping Dogs and Lara Croft's 2010 adventure, Lara Croft: Guardian of Light.

Sleeping Dogs will be the first game made available on January 1, followed by Lara Croft on January 16. As always, you have until January 15 to grab that copy of Sleeping Dogs, and after January 16 you have until the end of the month to grab Lara Croft.

MMO company Perfect World Entertainment is making a major push into the free-to-play market on video game consoles. The company announced that it has completed a company expansion by creating a console division targeting current and next-gen consoles. Planned console products expected include current and future games from Perfect World Entertainment’s suite of developers, the company said.

The second free offering from Microsoft's "Games With Gold" for the month of Dec., Shoot Many Robots, is available now on Xbox Live for Xbox 360. In the first half of the month Microsoft offered Gears of War for free as part of the program. Shoot Many Robots is usually priced at $4.99 on the Xbox Games Store. Shoot Many Robots is a four-player action platformer developed by Demiurge Studios and published by Ubisoft for Xbox Live Arcade.

As the supposed console war kicks off, it looks like Sony has a slight edge over Microsoft. According to data released by retail research firm NPD Group, the PS4 edged out the Xbox One in sales, but Microsoft says it won a battle on a different front during the launch window for the next-gen consoles. More PS4 software was sold as well during the period, but more sales of PS4 consoles and software makes sense given that the system went on sale a week before the Xbox One did in North America.

Microsoft fared considerably better than Sony on Black Friday, according to data analysts InfoScout. The firm claims that Xbox One was the highest selling console during the period, comprising 31 percent of total hardware sales. The Xbox 360 also fared pretty well, grabbing a 30 percent share resulting in a joint Microsoft lead of 60 percent. Joint sales of the PS3 and PS4 amounted to 30 percent share in sales total, while sales of the Wii U and Wii combined was 7 percent.

The new two titles to be free to Xbox Live Gold members as part of Microsoft's Games With Gold program will be Epic Games' popular shooter Gears of War and multiplayer scrolling action game Shoot Many Robots. Gears Of War will be available as a free download starting December 1 and will be available as a free download to Gold subscribers until December 15. Shoot Many Robots will be free starting December 16 all the way until December 31.

According to two separate reports, Apple is in discussions with the makers of the Kinect motion sensing technology to buy the company out. According to reports on AllThingsD and Calcalist, Apple is in serious talks to buy out Israel-based PrimeSense for $345 million.

A new report from Bloomberg reveals that one of the candidates to replace former CEO Steve Ballmer wouldn't think twice about making major changes to the company if necessary - including shutting down major divisions to refocus the company like Bing and Xbox.

Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund says that Microsoft's losses on its Xbox business total $2 billion per year, but are masked or hidden by substantial cash generated from royalties on patents from Android-based devices.

While Red Bull is the number one brand on YouTube (mostly because it sponsors so many interesting sporting and gaming events worldwide), "PlayStation" is also pretty popular, according to data collected by Statista and Mashable.

Microsoft's free game offerings to Xbox Live Gold subscribers as part of its Games With Gold promotion are A World Of Keflings and Iron Brigade. A World Of Keflings will be available beginning Nov. 1 up until Nov. 15. Iron Brigade will be available for free Nov. 16 until the end of the month. In case you are not familiar with the game, is a real-time strategy kingdom management game that lets your Avatar be the star.

Microsoft posted its first quarter financial results for its current fiscal year, revealing that it raked in $18.5 billion in revenue for the three-month period ending on September 30th. The numbers represent a 16 percent increase in revenue compared to the same period a year ago. Microsoft also reported overall net income of $5.24 billion, a year-over-year increase of 17 percent.

It looks like Microsoft has decided that its free giveaway program for Xbox Live Gold subscribers is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Microsoft announced via its official Xbox blog that the Games with Gold program will continue on as a permanent fixture.

"Today, as part of the 'Week of Xbox Live,' we're excited to announce that we are making Games with Gold an ongoing benefit for Xbox Live Gold members on Xbox 360," the team wrote in a blog post.

That machine that you put your pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters into to get more manageable currency from will soon spit out Xbox Live Gold memberships or cash you can use on Microsoft's online gaming platform. Rixty is partnering with Microsoft to bring Xbox Live codes wholesale to a number of other currency platforms, including Coinstar and Great Lakes Scrip Center's gift card retailer, the companies announced today.

Almost 50 percent more online console gamers prefer using the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live than playing online using the PS3 and PlayStation Network, according to new data released by retail research firm NPD Group. The data comes from NPD Group's 2013 Online Gaming report, which was highlighted by Microsoft today for obvious reasons. Of course it should be taken into account that the NPD report only tracked online game players in North America and not in other regions like South America, Asia, and Europe.

If you don't already own a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 and don't mind buying a refurbished used console, then a sale announced by retailer GameStop might be of interest to you. GameStop is cutting the price of its refurbished PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles from October 11 - 24. No doubt it wants to unload some of its older inventory to make room for the next-generation Xbox One and PS4 launching in late November.

A U.S. District Court jury in Seattle has awarded Microsoft $15 million in damages related to its long-running patent infringement lawsuit with Motorola. This signals the end of litigation (save the appeals process) in the long-running legal dispute over claims by Motorola that the Xbox 360 infringed on several of its patents related to video decoding and wi-fi technology.

Jinni has inked a multi-year agreement with Microsoft to enhance entertainment discovery on Xbox video game and entertainment systems including the Xbox 360 and the upcoming Xbox One releasing in late November. Jinni is described by its creators as a "taste-and-mood based engine" that enables entertainment discovery using "content genetics" and an understanding of user preference analytics.

Microsoft has revealed the two free games Xbox Live Gold subscribers will get in September as part of the Games With Gold program. The Games With Gold Program hands out two free games each month - one in the first half of the month, and a second in the latter half of the month. The games are only available within those time frames, so if you don't get them when they are available then you miss out.

Frontier Developments is fascinated with how Microsoft is changing the Achievements system for Xbox One games to be more dynamic and allow for new ways of rewarding players for completing milestones in games.

Microsoft has renamed the "Xbox Live Marketplace" on Xbox.com to the "Xbox Games Store," putting the name in line with other marketplaces the company runs - like "Windows Phone Store." The Xbox Games Store is still located at marketplace.xbox.com (at least for now), and now groups titles by platform, with sections for Xbox One, Xbox 360, Mobile and Web games.

If you own an Xbox 360, have an Xbox Live Gold account, and happen to be a Time Warner Cable subscriber, then you'll be happy to hear that the official application for Microsoft's console is now available for download. The app allows Time Warner Cable subscribers to access live television programming via their Xbox 360. The app was announced in June by both companies.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will retire within the next year, the company announced today. A special committee and Ballmer will help hand pick a successor. The committee is headed up by lead independent director John Thompson and includes chairman of the Board Bill Gates, chairman of the Audit Committee Chuck Noski and chairman of the Compensation Committee Steve Luczo.

Beginning today and continuing until August 31, Xbox Live Gold subscribers may download Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising: Case Zero for free. The new free game downloads are part of Microsoft's Games with Gold program, which gives away two free games a month.

On this week's show we talk about the continued neglect of the Wii U by third-party developers, the right and wrong way to put together a crowd-funding campaign for a game, the latest news on the Xbox One, and the results of last week's poll on GamePolitics. Download Episode 64 now: SuperPAC Episode 64 (1 hour, 20 minutes) 74.3 MB.

A federal judge in Seattle has swept through a list of experts that both Microsoft and Motorola want to testify in the continuation of their contentious court battle over a technology licensing dispute related to wireless technology used in the Xbox 360. The back and forth between Microsoft and Google subsidiary Motorola is about how much Microsoft should pay for essential technology on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) basis.