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kotakuroboto
Our Missing Video Game Robot Hero
Osamu Tezuka's beloved boy robot, Astro Boy, defined an art form, inspired a nation, and is a cultural icon worthy of the Robot Hall of Fame. So why doesn't he get more video games?
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gdc09
High or Low? Fantasy in Dragon Age
Dragon Age: Origins Lead Writer David Gaider and BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have different ideas about what high and low fantasy is; which may foretell a genre crisis for the game.
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editorial
How Seriously Should We Take Game Addiction?
A Chinese gamer swallows razor blades in a suicide attempt, Daniel Petric shoots his mom and Brandon Crisp runs away from home – anyone see a pattern here? More » -
apple
Would You Buy An Apple Gaming Console?
The prospect of another company jumping into the console market is laughable to most people, and for good reasons. It isn't a market you can just leap right into. You need connections, capital, and consumers hungry for any product you put on the market. Over at Cnet's The Digital Home, Don Reisinger suggests that only one such company exists - Apple. More » -
best of
Best of Categories, Which Ones Should We Keep, Lose?
Every year I vote on a number of different game of the year, best of E3, best of whatever awards and every year I run into the same problem: The categories never really work for me. Often it ends up feeling like you're trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole and hope for the best.
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Wavin' Goodbye
Turner's GameTap Shutters Editorial, Boots Staff
GameTap, the on-demand game portal owned by Turner Broadcasting, is closing the books on its editorial division to focus solely on games, according to a community post by content vice president Ricardo Sanchez. More » -
editorial
Wii Fit: Innovation in Gaming or Marketing?
I'm on the road again today with my wife, son and two dogs. Trish is driving us back from El Paso, Texas to Denver. I spent a longish weekend visiting my mom and step-dad and since I'm going to be reviewing Wii Fit soon for Kotaku, I decided to bring along my Wii and a copy of the game.
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is the game industry mature?
Going Off the Deep End: Has Gaming Grown Up?
We talk about innovation in a number of ways in the game industry, some of which are very far off in the grand scheme of things: erudite discussions of game play, biomechanics, tailoring an experience to each individual. We have the less esoteric, more realistic discussions of what can be done with games now, and that sort of 'innovation,' I think, is really more a discussion of games 'growing up' and heading into more mature territory. Perhaps some of these debates are being cast in the wrong terms, or at least, there are multiple avenues of discussion to be explored. More » -
opinion
What King of Fighters XII Taught Me About Diablo 3
I've long been mulling over exactly how a theoretical Diablo III should look...for years now. You see, Diablo is a 2D franchise entering a 3D world. And its graphical style, as trivial and superficial as the topic may seem, will affect the way the game feels to play (which many have probably noticed in 3D Diablo clones like Dungeon Runners that feel distinctly less satisfying). More » -
editorial
How Long Until DLC Adopts The Rental System?
With larger hard drives and faster bandwidth, a future in which players are downloading a majority of new releases isn't all that unimaginable since eliminating a retail middle man could make the prospect very enticing for publishers and developers. But what about the sexier aspects to this digital model? With such a digital infrastucture, these oft-prophecized downloadable purchases only scratch the surface. More » -
editorial
Why Isn't CES Filling E3's Gaping, Festering Hole?
I'm by no means an E3 or CES (Consumer Electronics Show) veteran, having attended both shows only twice (and the "classic" E3 only once). But compared to foreign events like Leipzig's Games Convention, Berlin's IFA (tech show that rivals CES) or Tokyo's TGS, the two American shows had/have a distinct identity from their overseas counterparts. Maybe it's the attendance of people with similar values to my own (aka sucking both gasoline and fast food with no abandon), but this similarity, however trivial it may be, has made me wonder why CES isn't filling in the gaps of E3. While I'd never expect developers to attend in mass (and frankly, there isn't room), why don't Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo use the CES stage as a launching ground for their next year of products? More » -
editorial
Open World vs. Real World, And My Feelings on the Burnout Paradise Demo
I am a lazy bastard. And maybe it's for this reason, among a slew of others I'm sure, that I enjoy playing games so much. Run around and play football? Too sweaty, I'll load Madden. Steal cars and beat up prostitutes? Too much work scrubbing the blood stains, just give me GTA. More » -
editorial
Why Doesn't Xbox LIVE Have Age Matching?
Last night I signed on LIVE for a little Team Fortress 2 fun. You see, after Mass Effect dropped, I blacked out for a few weeks. When I woke, aside from realizing that a monkey had written my posts for some time (the experiment was a success, btw), that Orange Box was sorely in need of some attention. So I played some TF2. And then I remembered, again, what I despise most about Xbox LIVE. More » -
impressions
Super Mario Galaxy Japanese Retail Copy
Before popping in Super Mario Galaxy this afternoon, I had to dust my Nintendo Wii. Besides the occasional Wii Sports game, the machine hasn't gotten much use. It's kinda just sat there in the living room, waiting for games — not mini-games, but games. After an unnecessarily long drought, the games are finally starting to hit. Third party-wise Zack & Wiki, which is fantastic, dropped, and today sees the release of Super Mario Galaxy in Japan. More »
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tristan
Wired on Gaming Parents
Wired's Clive Thompson called me up a few weeks back to talk to me about how I deal with Tristan playing video games. My 5-year-old son, for those of you who don't know, has written game reviews, play tested hardware and jammed with me on Guitar Hero. More » -
rocky mountain news
Rocky: Ban Video Game Ads
What I don't get, besides the fact no one on the editorial board came over to talk to me about this when they were writing this and I was still working there, is why the Rocky Mountain News editorial is so deliberately missing the point of this story. More » -
kotakufixu
KotakuFixu: Sony and Nintendo's Future Bloggers
OK, Sony and Nintendo won't do it, so we're going to do it for them. More » -
game boy
AP Stylebook Gets Game (Boy)
The new AP Stylebooks are here. The new AP Stylebooks are here. More » -
editorial
Are Games Getting Easier?
Twitch Guru's Mark Raby has an interesting article up about have become easier over the years. He points to arcade games like Pac-Man, which had a seemingly infinite number of levels and were hard to master and compares them to today's games with their endless saves and scalable difficulty settings. More » -
microsoft
Another Msoft Blogger is Born
Microsoft seems to be the only of the big three that seem to get the power of blogs, even the ones written by company employees. Major Nelson's site is a tremendous success and Gamerscoreblog is becoming a must read. The latest addition to Microsoft's blogging stables is David Weller, the community manager at Msoft's Game Technology Group. LetsKillDave promises to dish the Msoft approved dirt on game development tech by developers for developers. More » -
instructions
Do We Need Instructions?
When was the last time you read a game manual? More » -
politics
Buckle Your Seatbelts, We're In for a Bumpy Ride
It looks like we're in for a busy summer afterall. Last July, we were the first to speak to the Federal Trade Commission about their decision to launch an investigation into Take-Two and allegations that the company used deceptive marketing practices in selling Hot Coffee-enabled Grand Theft Auto. More » -
feature
Columbine Survivor Talks About Columbine RPG
By: Brian Crecente More » -
katamari
Games First To Keita Takahashi: "Whatever, hippy."
Games First's Aaron Stanton spin kicks Katamari creator Keita Takahashi right in the side of his stupid hippy head. Why? Over the absurdity of the creator of one of the games with the worst control schemes in recent memory giving the Big N shit for emphasizing the importance of how gamers interact with games. More » -
feature
E3's Biggest Winners and Losers
By: Brian Crecente More » -
official xbox magazine
A 10 on the 360
According to Official Xbox Magazine, the best game you can get for the Xbox 360 is...Fight Night Round 3. They gave the EA boxing game a perfect 10 out of 10, which resulted in their readers getting their collective boxers in a knot. Gamer boxers are well-documented as being among the most easily knotted in existence, but nonetheless the editor-in-chief has written an editorial defending the score and musing somewhat wanderingly about the significance of review scores in the modern console scene. More » -
editorial
And Spore Shall Lead Them
Electronic Arts is stumbling, according to Business Week, and the thing that can save them is a wee bit of innovation, a very wee bit. More » -
tom chick
Tom Chick Rebuts Kotaku's Own
Tom Chick — known as a gaming journalist, blog hater and the guy who kissed Nick Nolte's girlfriend on a season two episode of Newsradio — has written a response to our recent editorial by Wagner James Au, Blogging Down The House... More » -
ps3
Bandai Boss Says Spring PS3 'Impossible'
It's like a wildfire of boring information. Games Industry reported that Bandai president Takeo Takasu described Sony's plans for the PS3's spring launch as "impossible." While no publishers prior to Takasu have said something so damning about the PS3 launch any frenzy this story is generating is just pent up angst. More » -
world of warcraft
What World of Warcraft Teaches
Clickable Culture directs readers to a Gamasutra piece written by David Sirlin that is highly critical of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Sirlin's own Web site talks a lot about "playing to win" and "skill" - he applies some of this to his harsh (but thoughtful) critique of World of Warcraft. More » -
world of warcraft
WoW Guild Admits 'Terrorism' Was a Hoax
Just a few hours after we reported on one guild's apparent vicegrip over a server, the thread has been deleted and the guild, Imperial Order, revealed that it was all just a big joke. More »


















