Xbox Living

The three new DLC map packs for Halo 4 have received dates according to the German Xbox Live dashboard. All three will be out by April 1, 2013.

• Crimson Map Pack: December 10, 2012
• Majestic Map Pack: February 25, 2013
• Castle Map Pack: April 1, 2013

The first pack, Crimson, will include three new maps for Halo 4: Wreckage, Harvest and Shatter.

The next, Majestic, will offer Landfall, Monolith and Skyline.

The third pack, Castle, will send players into combat on Daybreak, Outcast and Perdition.

343 Industries says the maps will feature a wide range of claustrophobic and open-space arenas for lots of combat variety. Halo 4 was released on November 6.

Unlike its predecessor, Final Fantasy XIII-2 will fit onto one disc on the Xbox 360 console, Square Enix has revealed.

Final Fantasy XIII had three discs to hold all of the content in that game. Other high-profile games, such as Mass Effect 2 and L.A. Noire, have recently shipped with multiple discs.

This doesn’t mean a shorter game, or less content, however. Instead, the game simply uses less pre-rendered video scenes that are stored on the disc. Instead, action cutscenes will be rendered on-the-fly by the Xbox 360 console. Square Enix promises about 40 hours of gameplay in Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is due out on December 15 in Japan, but worldwide markets will be waiting until 2012 to try out the sequel. North America will get the game on January 31, 2012, while Europe gets it on February 3.

Good news if you’re a bit too lazy to get up and swap discs once every ten hours or so.

We’ve got a new look at the upcoming Battlefield 3! This trailer shows off some campaign gameplay (Operation Guillotine) on the Xbox 360. Check it out:

Battlefield 3 is due out October 25, 2011 in North America, on October 27 in Australia and October 28 in Europe.

Microsoft has announced during its pre-E3 conference this morning that it is working on the next installment of the Halo franchise. Halo 4 will be out for the holiday season… 2012.

Halo 4 will once again star Master Chief, the protagonist from the original Halo games. This new game will also mark the beginning of a new Halo trilogy, according to Microsoft.

In the meantime, Microsoft announced a remake of the original Halo for this year.

Microsoft has unveiled a host of new services that will be coming to their Xbox 360 platform over the next year.

Among the services is Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Bing on the Xbox 360 will allow searching with voice commands using the Kinect.

YouTube service has also been announced for the console. Further, ESPN and UFC on demand videos will become available to Xbox 360 owners.

In addition to the Internet video, the Xbox 360 will include the capability to be used for live TV service with cable providers. No information on which providers will be supported has been provided so far.

These new features are announced to be coming within the next year, though specific dates have not been provided.

At a pre-E3 press conference today, Microsoft announced that a remake of the first Halo game for the Xbox 360.

The remake, called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, will make use of the graphics engine seen in Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, updating the game for high-definition, current-gen graphics.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will be out on November 15, 2011. The new game should keep Halo fans busy until Halo 4 comes out a year later, during the holiday 2012 season.