News Analysis: Xbox One update adds old game support

The headline for this article informs the reader of how the Xbox One update adds old video game support to the new console. The visual codes in this article such as the layout and design is not exaggerated and over the top while keeping it to a professional standard as this online newspaper, BBC News, is targeted towards an audience that is generally interested in keeping up with entertainment news and stories of war and politics to human interest stories. The target audiences for this newspaper are adults, however for this specific topic; the target audience can also be aimed at younger adults, teenagers at most. Thereafter we come to recognize the values of this newspaper, we the audience recognize this due to the high quality, structure and the content that the newspaper includes. The layout and values of this article are intelligent and educated as these factors need to appeal to the target audience.

The main image of this article Is unrelated to the topic of what new features Microsoft are bringing to their home console, in fact this image of a protagonist from the newly released video game ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ is vaguely disguised as an advertisement for the game which is denoted from the image that the writer has used and the caption which states “The Xbox One update comes soon after the release of Halo 5: Guardians”. This could be so due to Microsoft being the publisher for the video game and leads to them paying BBC for their game to be featured in the article as an advert. Within the body text, the writer goes on to inform the reader of what time the update is rolling out to consoles and what Microsoft has done to improve the software. Towards the end of the article, the writer writes about its rival competitor, Sony, to provide information as to how they are going about releasing these features on their home console, the PlayStation 4. However when writing about Sony, the writer who is not named uses specific lexis to address the company such as “Sony has set its face against providing backwards compatibility on its PlayStation 4 console. “ This use of lexis makes the company seem more dominant compared to Microsoft and the writer additionally makes it seem like Sony is an individual who has something against it’s rival competitor Microsoft due to the mode of address the writer uses in the quote.

Alongside the left of the article, there is a strip of advertisements to other articles which are linked to other websites. The newspaper makes money off of this due to the reader getting bored after reading the article or mid-way through seeing something of interest and then clicking that, which is a form of 'click bait' to draw in the attention of the reader. 

The second image used is of a tattooed individual bearing the PlayStation logo holding the PlayStation 4 controller. I feel that this image is here to provoke the audience as many people coming to read this article are dedicated to the Xbox One fan base. The motive that the newspaper wants is surely to cause some controversy amongst the readers to decide which one is better, thus leading to more sales of either console. This is derived from the construction of the article which shows the way in which the audience will respond to it.  As they use an image of a dedicated PlayStation individual to represent most of the aspects of the article, to conclude this definitely would have an impact on the audience that chose to read this.