Thurrott Daily: December 21

8 years ago today we were buried under this.

Some more tidbits from around the web.

12/21/2015 3:28:07 PM

Microsoft provides a peek at some of your Xbox Live stats from 2015

An interesting new Your 2015: Year in Review page shows you some of your more interesting Xbox Live stats from the past year. Long story short: I spend a lot of timing gaming, apparently. Among my stats:

You’ve been with Xbox since 2005. (Not true. In fact, this Xbox account dates back to the launch of Xbox Live, so probably 2002-ish.)

You spent 1845 hours gaming on Xbox Live in 2015. On average, your friends spent 1242 hours, and the community spent 368 hours. Your gaming hours place you in the top 5 percent worldwide.

Your most played game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Your most played Games with Gold title: The Walking Dead: Season One.

You spent 20 hours on Halo 5: Guardians. (19 hours for your friends, 10 hours for the community.)

You spent 30 hours on Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. (21 hours for the community.)

So aside from the weird mistakes here—Xbox Live clearly can’t differentiate between “game sitting there waiting” and “me actually playing a game”—I’m surprised there’s no mention of Black Ops III in there. Since I clearly have played this game more than both Halo 5 and Gears of War: UE combined. Still, interesting.

Official Call of Duty®: Black Ops III – Awakening DLC Pack Preview Trailer

And speaking of Xbox, Treyarch has launched its preview trailer for the first Call of Duty: Black Ops III map pack DLC (downloadable content), called Awakening. Looks like four great new multiplayer maps (including a remake of “Hijack” from BO2) coming in early February.

The bad news? PlayStation gets it first. So we won’t see it on Xbox until early March if I understand the schedule.

“Will Apple Inc.’s iPad Air 3 Catalyze an Upgrade Cycle in 2016?”

Already moving on from the iPad Pro, eh?

Sponsored: Get Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter for $400 off

Another ping for the server admins out there: NewEgg is currently offering up to a $400 discount on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter (2 processors) OEM version. That’s a pretty serious discount for the most capable Windows Server version in the market today.

Apple Music rumored to get Hi-Res Audio in 2016

While the reviews of Apple Music are decidedly negative, there’s no doubting the impact of Apple just bundling something on its phones:The service has quickly attracted a lot of paying customers, and the app is somehow among the top 10 most used mobile apps of 2015. The thing is, I actually like Apple Music, and while the UI is a bit rough, and buggy, the thing that puts it over the top is its wonderful curated playlists. (Spotify allegedly does a great job with this too, but I really do prefer what I see in Apple Music.)

Anyway… according to a report by Macotakara (in Japanese), Apple is bringing higher-quality music to the service in 2016.

Apple seems to have developed Hi-Res Audio streaming of up to 96kHz/24-bit.

Many high-end audio manufacturers plan to add the Lightning corresponding audio cable in 2016, toward the Hi-Res Audio compatible Apple Music.

OK, the auto-translate stuff on Google is a bit harsh, but you get the idea: the audio will be of higher quality than can be delivered through standard headphone jacks. I bet this is related to rumors about Apple dropping the headphone jack on future iPhones.

Man sues Bethesda over his ‘Fallout 4’ addiction

When you consider that Fallout 4 isn’t nearly as popular as Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Activision owes me a lot of money.