Microsoft CEO Nadella sticks by Xbox, citing bigger opportunities CEO Satya Nadella plans to continue to back Xbox because of the prominence of games in today's software ecosystem, saying, "gaming is the largest digital life category in a mobile-first, cloud-first world."

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  Microsoft ships 11.7 million Xbox consoles in 2014, a modest gain Full-year results for the company overall show gains, but pre-price drop Xbox One performance doesn't move the needle for the quarter -- or much for the year.

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  EA sees profits rise on the back of strong packaged game sales The company is reporting modest growth in both revenue and profits as sales of packaged games like EA Sports UFC overtake digital for the first time in months.

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  Get a job: Petroglyph is looking to hire a Network Programmer Programmers with experience in game networking technology, take note: Grey Goo developer Petroglyph Games is hiring a network programmer to work alongside in its Las Vegas studio.

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2 Don't Miss: The beautifully intricate design of Else Heartbreak Erik Svedäng and Niklas Åkerblad talk Else Heartbreak, a story-driven game set in the fictional harbor town of Dorisburg: "a strange kind of homemade Grand Theft Auto, without any guns or cars."

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  Nvidia's new Shield tablet is hardwired to stream games to Twitch The 8-inch Android device that's being sold as a means of playing both mobile and streamed PC games in the traditional way -- in front of a live audience on Twitch.

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2 A clever method for embedding user-generated content in shared images "What if we could build our sharing system on an existing social network, like Twitter? Send vehicle designs in tweets so Twitter would provide us with a reliable hosting solution, plus built-in social sharing and virality."

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  GameSalad adds cloud features with Together Games acquisition Drag-and-drop, template-based game creation tool gets a useful upgrade thanks to the Together Platform, bringing achievements, leaderboards, chat, and multiplayer.

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2 Sacked Halo composer settles lawsuit with former employer Former Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell has accepted nearly $100,000 to settle his lawsuit against Bungie president Harold Ryan over unpaid benefits after allegedly being fired without cause.

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  Surprise -- Amazon Game Studios is making Amazon Fire phone games AGS continues to be the leading developer of Amazon platform-exclusive titles, announcing that it is partnering with two mobile studios to launch a pair of games for the Fire smartphone.

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13 Will that crowdfunded game ever actually ship? A simple set of three rules for developers and backers designed to answer the question "Will that crowdfunded game ever actually ship?" proposed by noted indie Lars Doucet.

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  Rovio and Twitch join the speaker lineup for GDC Europe 2014 European experts from Rovio and Twitch join the lineup of speakers exploring the art and business of games at GDC Europe 2014 this August in Cologne.

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2 How to become a graphics programmer in the games industry "As we were hiring a new Graphics Programmer at work I had to identify what kind of technical knowledge and skills we would expect from a potential candidate. This post might help you to identify areas to learn about."

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41 Gender wage gap: How the game industry compares to the U.S. average The gender pay gap is once again a hot topic in the world of U.S. politics, and in the world of video game development, the issue has reared its head.

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5 Grinding and the burden of optimal play "Somehow I had made a game in which you repeat the same task (solving a hacking puzzle) over and over again. How did it come to this?"

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44 Game Developer Salary Survey 2014: The results are in! Gamasutra recently polled over 4,000 game developers worldwide, asking them the question: How much money did you make?

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1 Antialiasing procedural shaders in the Unreal Engine "When using texture mapping, most modern engines will take care of antialiasing for you. Procedural shaders do not share this luxury and the creator usually has to take care of this."

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6 'What are the greatest influences on your work as a creator?' When we asked our Twitter followers what influenced them, we were hoping to hear lots of different things, and so we did.

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6 Cliff Bleszinski opens up about the future of games "Not having an agenda has been tremendously freeing, creatively as well as professionally." - Cliff Bleszinski on his "retirement," now officially ended with the announcement of BlueStreak

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  Video: No more scapegoats -- Improving the public image of games In this GDC 2013 panel, professor Ian Bogost joined Epic expat Mike Capps and the IGDA's Daniel Greenberg to argue against public misconceptions about games, and what we can do to counter them.

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  Yahoo takes a step toward mobile analytics with Flurry buy Nothing much will change, says Flurry's president and CEO, as web behemoth scoops up popular mobile analytics and advertising platform.

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20 Developer of cancelled Yogscast game reveals where the money went Winterkewl Games' lead developer Kris Vale has published a frank accounting of how the indie studio managed to spend nearly half a million dollars in Kickstarter pledges without making a game.

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13 When an artist creates games... "We keep talking about video games as art but there’s still this big gap between the video game world and the contemporary art world; we need to fill it. I want more of Pippin Barr feat. Marina Abramović."

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  Get a job: Firaxis is hiring a Senior Software Engineer The makers of Civilization: Beyond Earth are looking to hire a senior software engineer to help design and implement next-gen systems code from the studio's offices in Baltimore, Maryland.

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7 Classic Postmortem: Defense of the Ancients (a.k.a. DotA) This 2009 look-back at the popular mod (which gave rise to the now-huge MOBA genre) was written by some of its key developers and explores the origins of the phenomenon.

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