With backlash still highly on the loose after E3 2013, Microsoft aims to bring about some good news to gamers, starting with a $59.99 price point for all first-party games that it will be offering by the time of the Xbox One's release.

In an interview with Kotaku, a spokesperson confirmed that the new next-generation games from Microsoft will be at the same price point for Xbox 360 current games.

For the meantime, Sony is still keeping mum about the price of next-gen games. Although, going by the trend of the E3 2013, it would certainly be to the company's advantage if Sony will keep its games' price point close to its major competitor as possible, at the very least to avoid a backlash that Microsoft suffered.

Polygon's report gives a bigger sign of hope, at least a hint of it, with Jack Tretton of Sony America being quoted, "We're going to welcome free-to-play models, games from $.99 up to those $60 games."

There's bound to be a lot of revelations from now until the holidays, when more of the details are announced.

Time-bound challenges ahead

Part of Microsoft's interconnectivity seems to go beyond the integrated quality of gaming, entertainment, and more with its Xbox One, putting community as a base network for those who will be moving on with the console for the next generation.

GameSpot reports that Microsoft has announced in-game challenges that will be made available for a limited time period, and completed by a community, so that those who will participate in the challenge will be able to unlock the rewards and achievement that come with the challenge.

The challenges will also be a sort of forced community play, since those that will be posed would ideally be tasks that cannot be done by one person alone.

"Wouldn't it be amazing f the game developers noticed the community enjoying an unintended aspect of the game and creating a challenge around it, with a reward to boot?" said Cierra McDonald, Xbox Live Achievement manager, to GameSpot.

And give the cloud-based system that the new achievements will be running on, he report adds that developers can easily add the achievements and challenges immediately after the game is released.

Microsoft's main aim for these challenges is to not only allow players to enjoy a game in a different dynamic that's apart from what was intended for the game, but to also allow developers to work on these newly discovered entry points for user activity and enhanced gaming experience.

There's even talk that this feature can extend to non-gaming features, such as music and video apps for exclusive or early access to content.

Xbox One follows Steam engineering and mechanics?

A leak from Pastebin pushes the idea of how the Xbox One is trying to push the gaming industry towards the digital platform. According to VG 24/7, the post is supposedly from a Microsoft engineer who wishes to remain unnamed.

"The DRM is really, really similar to Steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family Xbox. The only [difference] is [with] Steam, you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you once per 24 hours]."

There is also a nod to how DRM used to be very difficult with Steam as it was starting out, which can mean that this may be, yet another effort for Microsoft to get back in the spotlight despite its still-standing DRM policy.

Given how pastebin post are not necessarily true-one claimed that the DRM was not yet confirmed by Microsoft at the time of the posting, hence showing that it will not have a DRM requirement-it may be hard to judge whether this particular claim has any standing in terms of Microsoft's future plans with its console.

However, it does seem to point to Microsoft's revolutionary way of dealing with new games and the digital gaming industry, though the question is whether or not the gamers will embrace the concept.

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