Kotaku

The Making Of Street Fighter IV: The Liveblog

Yoshinori Ono, producer of Street Fighter IV, is on stage right now at Comic-Con 08, talking about his latest creation and how it came to be. He's currently getting those new to Street Fighter IV up to speed, but hit the jump for our up to the minute liveblog coverage.

Spore E-Card Creator Goes Live, Makes You An E-Card God

Planetwide Media has launched the MashON Spore E-Card Creator, an online app that uses Spore monsters, backgrounds and props, in conjunction with the fun of word bubbles, to create custom virtual cards. With the right submarine placement, you too can create your own Spore penis monster and e-mail it to your parents.

The release notes that e-card fans can add their "customized content from the Spore Creature Creator," an option we don't have handy at Comic-Con this week. Our efforts to make snappy dick jokes with the MashON app have met with unsuccessful results. Perhaps you'll fare better.

Full release after the jump!

Is This Guitar Hero: World Tour's Setlist?

Console wars are so last season. Now we've got setlist wars for music games. When Rock Band 2's formidable list was confirmed during E3 week, we uttered a low whistle for all the catching up Guitar Hero: World Tour would have to do to to keep it a competition.

Now, via the Something Awful forums comes what purports to be a leaked list of World Tour songs by their respective sections. Now, we know now that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are somewhat different in terms of who plays them and what their motivation is, and a great Rock Band song might've made a boring Guitar Hero III song. But are all bets off now that we've got band sets for both games?

And if so, let's play pretend for a sec, and imagine that what follows after the jump is actually Guitar Hero: World Tour's list. If it is, then who do you think's winning now?

Hasbro Sues Over Scrabulous Facebook Game

Hasbro is suing the creators of the popular Scrabulous Facebook game, after a request the toy company made to the social network earlier this year to pull the game went unanswered.

In January when Hasbro first began to fuss about Scrabulous, many were perplexed — wasn't the prolific Facebook board game an homage to the original, arguably even a sort of viral marketing? But today's infringement suit announcement comes just after Electronic Arts, through its partnership with Hasbro, launched its own official Scrabble game on Facebook, a launch no doubt complicated by the existence of an unlicensed, competing game.

Hasbro says Scrabulous infringes on its intellectual property rights, and is suing creators Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, while requesting that Facebook pull the application immediately.

Full announcement follows the jump.

EA, DC Bring Mirror's Edge To Comic Books

Electronic Arts announced today it has partnered with Wildstorm, an imprint of DC Comics, to bring its Mirror's Edge intellectual property to life as an ongoing comic book series. A limited edition prequel issue will be available to Comic-Con attendees at Booth #5233. The first person adventure, currently in development at DICE, will join sister property Dead Space in the four color 2D medium later this year. The move is part of EA's IP³ initiative, a push to bring internally developed properties outside of the video game space and into areas like movies, animation and graphic novels.

EA announced yesterday that it had tapped United Talent Agency to represent the company as it moves its internally developed franchises into the realm of motion pictures and television series.

Hit the jump for the full press release on the Mirror's Edge comic book series and check back all week for further Comic-Con coverage from Kotaku.

Splinter Cell: Conviction Delayed

When Ubisoft didn't show Splinter Cell: Conviction at its last event, people worried a little about how the game might be doing. Fear not — the game's doing great. So great, they say, that Ubisoft just decided it'd be better off releasing it as part of its "2009-2010" lineup instead of in this year's fiscal fourth quarter. You know, to "bolster" next year, as the company said in its fiscal first quarter results statement.

Signs at Ubidays seemed to suggest that the game was undergoing a reworking, though Ubisoft's reps were specifically vague on details. We also heard that a "way too egotistical" Michael Ironside would no longer be returning as the voice of Sam Fisher.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot elaborated a bit during the company's call to investors:

Mutant-Riding Bandicoot To Save the World

This Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant video gives you a quick glimpse of Crash's mutant wrangling abilities and touches on the free-roaming and co-op play aspects of the game.

Epic Preps Unreal Engine 4 For "Next Console Generation"

Epic president Mike Capps guesses the next console generation will begin anywhere between 2012 and 2018 — and when it does, Unreal Engine 4 will be already waiting for it. At least, that's what Capps told an audience Microsoft's Gamefest 2008 in Seattle this week, according to a Gamasutra report.

Said Capps:

"We've got Unreal [Engine] 4 in production right now... it's going to be in the next console generation - our rough guess is 2012 [to] 2018."

Tim Sweeney also has a guess about what the platforms will be at that time, and in what order Epic will address them:

Study: MMORPG Biz Needs More Freebies

More free games will help the MMORPG market expand, found a Parks Associates study. Apparently, only "hardcore" gamers, who represent only a small portion of the audience surveyed, are willing to pay subscription fees, and so for everyone else, the study recommends offering more free titles.

Out of some 2000 online gamers surveyed, Parks said, 14 percent would be interested in playing more MMORPGs if they were free. According to Worlds in Motion, Parks Associates' Michael Cai said that the excess of 10 million players WoW's scored is a major exception that most publishers shouldn't expect to emulate using a subscription business model.

Everyone who visited Capcom's booth at E3 last week were treated to a peek at a glorious retro Mega Man t-shirt. The shirt reflects the decision Capcom made to turn Mega Man 9 into an "impossible hard" 8-bit revival of the franchise.

The marketing group decided that since the game was going to look like it came from 1987 they whole marketing campaign should too. So they called up I Am 8-bit artist Gerald de Jesus and had him whip up a truly fantastic bit of fantasy Mega Man art for the fabled shirt.

Only four of the shirts were created for Inafune and Takeshita to wear during last week's show. The good news? Capcom promises to start selling the shirts on their site soon.

EA has dropped details on this year's celebration for the release of Madden NFL 09, annoyingly titled Maddenpalooza. Mentioned during Leigh's interview with Steve Schnur earlier this month, Maddenpalooza is a music festival featuring bands from current and past Madden soundtracks that will take place at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California on August 11th. Fans can snag tickets through local radio stations or at the Rose Bowl on event day, which entitle them to a day filled with music, NFL star signings, and various other bits of marketing, all leading up to 9PM when the stadium's pop-up Wal-Mart will sell the first copies of the game.

Artists scheduled to appear include headliners Good Charlotte, Busta Rhymes, Rev Theory, Airbourne, From First to Last and Young Dre The Truth. Sounds like a worthy successor to the traditional Maddenoliday, more than enough to hold us until they add the word Madden to the front of some new festive term.

Age Of Conan Buddy Codes Are Go

Just received an email this morning from Funcom to let me know that the 7-day Age of Conan buddy codes that shipped with the collector's edition of the game are now ready to be passed out among your friends in a suitably lordly fashion. Unlike most MMORPGs, where friend codes tend to be active from launch, Funcom wanted to give players sufficient time to get acclimated to the game before flooding the servers with people that didn't care enough to buy it. It might seem to the outsider that the company was waiting until the game was in a more presentable state, but that's just crazy talk.

Funcom suggests you allow your friend to use your game DVDs, as that not only allows you to spend quality time together, but also helps them avoid the $2.99 charge they'll incur from downloading the trial client (though they do get an extra 3 days to make up for the cost).

E308 Sega Platinum Game IPs

Talking To A Tummy (It Moves!)

To: Crecente
From: Ashcraft
RE: TwoFer

Since I've gotten back, I've been talking to Mrs. Bashcraft's pregnant belly. Amazing stuff! If Micro-Bash is awake, he'll start moving like crazy when I begin blabbering on about this and that, kicking and whatnot. Tonight we talked about Buster Keaton, and he seemed to like that.

Wonder if he recognizes my voice or if it's just the mindless droning that he's responding to...

Yep, it's the droning. Still, amazing stuff, this.

What you missed last night
Here's The Documented Evidence Itagaki Submitted Against Tecmo
Jumpgate Evolution Demands Your Attention
Jim Lee Dishes On DC Universe Online
Want To See The Max Payne Movie Posters?
Kaz Hirai Isn't Sure How Long The Xbox 360 Cycle Is...
Don Mattrick Says Nintendo And Sony Have Been "On Vacation"
Sony Holding Resistance 2 Beta Keys Hostage In Next Qore Episode
No More Nintendo Surprises This Year

SoulCalibur IV is going on sale soon, and here's your first look at the underoos in the game's "Character Creation". SCIV is bringing back the "Character Creation" from SoulCalibur III, and previously, we posted how it was possible to do things like created an Afro Ninja. Really, this right here is the reason for you to buy this game. And, no! It's so not because of the trite girls in bikini fighting. (Yawn.) It's for "Nightmare" and "Lizardman". Forget Darth Vader, forget Yoda, Nightmare and Lizardman deserve to be on the box way more than those Lucas characters. Way more.

Click through the gallery to see what I'm rambling on about.

「ソウルキャリバー4」、各キャラの下着画像集(全裸もあるよ) [はちま起稿]

No no no, this isn't the animated comic. That was something else. This is the proper Dead Space cartoon, which is being released straight to DVD. It's a prequel, explaining how everything went down before you end up on the ship where everything's trying to eat you. I must say, for a one-shot, feature-length marketing stunt, it's looking pretty good!

Rumor: Wii Music Dated for Japan, Different Colored Straps In-Coming

Not confirmed, but Nintendo-centric Japanese blog Rambing Man has a street date for Wii Music: The game will apparently be released on October 16th for ¥5,800 (US$54) as part of the Touch Generation Series and will have Wi-Fi. Other details floating include a Japanese release date for Captain Rainbow (August 28th for ¥6,800 or $63) and Valkyrie Profile DS (October 2nd for ¥5040 or $47). Oh, new Wii-mote straps, too. Make that new, colored Wii-mote straps. Priced at ¥300 a piece, they'll come in white, pink, blue and green. All four will be available for ¥1,000. Those will be out this September, says Rambling Man.

Quick show of hands: Who's interested in picking up Wii Music? Who's keen for new strap colors?

Wii Music 発売日決定 [Rambling Man via Jonnyram@GAF] [Pic]

Sony Computer Entertainment honcho Kaz Hirai is confused. Just look at his Giant Kaz Face, see how tranquilly baffled it is? That's some serious confusion. When Xbox bossman Don Mattrick said Microsoft would sell more consoles than the PS3 this generation, Hirai wasn't quite sure what that meant. How long does Microsoft think the generation is? Is the Xbox 360 going to be around for ten years like Sony claims the PS3 is? Questions, questions, questions. Here's Kaz's take: