Major Nelson
Major Nelson, real name Larry Hryb, is Microsoft’s Director of Programming for the Xbox network. Some argue he’s just a corporate shill and always has to toe the company line, but his blog is a great source of official information about all things Xbox. He posts about weekly sales of Xbox games, when games go up for pre-order/pre-download, and when games go live for download on launch day. He also posts a lot of other Xbox-related news, as well. Sure, it is from a company pitchman, but it’s official information straight from Microsoft, which beats getting info passed through a filter of cynicism and negativity.
GameClips.io (Xbox Clips)
If you don’t want to buy dedicated equipment to make your own gaming videos, a great feature on Xbox One is the ability to easily record clips of your gameplay by just saying “Xbox, record that,” but what do you do with those clips after they’re recorded? You can watch them on your Xbox One and share them with friends that way, or watch them on Xbox.com, but there is another, better way. GameClips.io, formerly Xbox Clips is a website that features all of the clips everyone has recorded and lets you easily search for specific Gamertags of your friends or check out the most popular clips of any and every game. Even better, you can easily download the clips to your computer to edit and use later (though you really should ask permission from the Gamertag you’re downloading clips from before you use them). You can also easily share clips on social media with just a click, which, along with being able to download the files, makes GameClips.io our go-to site for Xbox One gameplay clips.
Xbox Status Page
The Xbox network is sturdy, but occasionally it goes down. Sometimes this is due to an extremely high volume of traffic, or a bunch of script kiddies launching DDoS attacks, or other unforeseen issues. Whatever the reason, you don’t need to go to your favorite forum or social media and ask, “Is Xbox down for anyone else?” because Microsoft has an Xbox Status page that will tell you exactly what is going on. Just check the Xbox Status page, and you’ll see exactly what services are affected on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The Xbox network is usually pretty stable, but for those times when there’s a problem, it’s nice to have an official source of info.
Xbox Achievements
There are lots of achievement websites out there, but the best one of the bunch is Xbox Achievements. They don’t just re-post the same list that everyone else posts and call it a day, either. They have full achievement guides, game reviews that talk specifically about the quality of the achievements, and a great forum for each and every game where community members can discuss achievements as well as help each other “boost” for tricky multiplayer cheevos. Not everyone cares about gamerscore and achievements, and that’s fine, but if you do, then XboxAchievements should be your No. 1 resource.
XBLDB (Now Defunct)
This site is no longer active, but it monitored upcoming games for Xbox 360 and Xbox One and automatically posted whenever a game dropped in price, letting users see what the weekly sales were going to be or what games were on sale during the “Ultimate Games on Demand” sales Microsoft ran a few times per year hours, and sometimes days, before other websites reported them. This was a great cost-savings site.
