Don't worry, we're not out to start a console war in our comments: If you're in the market for a new games system, the Xbox One S, PlayStation VR, Nintendo Switch and 2DS XL all made it into our holiday gift guide, for different reasons. Once you figure out which platform is best for your intended, we have a wide assortment of games and accessories, from a 400GB microSDXC card to a custom Xbox controller to the PlayStation Gold wireless headset, among other things. Find all that and more in our gift guide at the link below. Engadget is the original home for technology news and reviews. Since our founding in 2004, we've grown from an exhaustive source for consumer tech news to a global multimedia organization covering the intersection of technology, gaming and entertainment.

Take the short view and Microsoft's annual E3 showcase was a classic power play. The company unveiled its long-anticipated Xbox One X, a kind of console supercomputer capable of rendering native 4K visuals at higher, stabler frame rates than Sony's own boutique PS4 Pro. But consider the longer view, as Xbox honcho Phil Spencer must, and what it means to play games becomes a much stranger jumble of iterative concepts, a spiraling helix of creative and commerce driven forces rapidly converging on the dissolution of the borderlands between what we define as real and imagined. TIME spoke with Spencer about the company's current and future plans, including backward compatibility (the company announced Xbox original games coming soon to all Xbox One devices), the criticality of Xbox Live (its online games service) and finally the timescale for general consumer adoption of mixed reality products. Here's what he told us.

We now know that Nintendo's next-generation game console will be the Switch, a hybrid device offering portable and home gaming in one. But there's a lot we don't know. What games will it launch with? How much it will cost? Will it play games on a TV at 1080p?