Brian Crecente

Electronic Arts Thinks I’m a Cannibal

Here’s one piece of swag I won’t be donating to a charity. Electronic Arts sent me a freezer box this morning packed with Skate 2 assets and two frozen steaks. I’m pretty sure I won’t be storing that in my closet until November. But what’s this about the two 6 ounce steaks being “prepared fresh…

You Got Your Baroque in My Battlefield

Danny Elfman, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble. They’re just a few of the classically trained musicians jumping on the video game bandwagon lately to make absurd amounts of cash. Just how absurd? Game composer and Game Audio Network Guild founder Tommy Tallarico tell the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the typical fee for a…

Xbox 360 Dominates 2008 Game Rentals

Seven of the top ten most rented titles in 2008 were Xbox 360 games, the remaining three were Wii titles, according to a survey by Rentrak and Home Video Essentials. Rentrak used Home Video Essentials, which measures consumer rental activity and grosses on more than 65,000 film and video game properties, looking at retail, online…

Stylish Robber Shoots Man for Wii

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies are looking for a man in Air Jordans who broke into a home in West Palm Beach Tuesday night and shot a man before stealing his Wii. Air Jordans? Really? The fancy footwearer and a pal broke into the home about 7:30 p.m., demanded money and jewelry from the person…

EA Responds to Pandemic Rumor

In the face of rumors that Pandemic’s Brisbane, Australia studio has been let go, Electronic Arts said today that their upcoming cuts will affect studios, but declined to be more specific. “In December, EA announced a cost reduction initiative that will impact facilities and headcount,” said Mariam Sughayer, Electronic Arts spokeswoman. “We do not expect…

A Guide to Proper Commenting

Let’s start with what is the heart of Kotaku’s commenting principals: Commenting is a privilege not a right. Whether today is your first day reading the site or you’ve been reading it since the day I stepped foot in Kotaku tower, you don’t have the right to troll, to name call, to get off topic…

Welcome To the Family: A Letter From Xbox 360’s John Schappert

Welcome to the Family is a series of three letters that will run this week from the heads of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. We asked each of the companies to write up a welcome letter to new owners of their consoles. They did the rest. We are running them in the order they were received.…

TV

To: Ash From: Crecente Re: So I Hear This Season’s 24 Is Good… So Far I don’t really watch that much television. Between running Kotaku, spending time with Trish and playing with Tristan, I’m pretty whipped by the end of the day. When I do watch TV it’s often old movies on AMC or the…

Breaking News: Nintendo Games Not A Substitute for Reading a Book

A Carlsbad mother is fighting mad. Turns out that video games make her 5-year-old have panic attacks and, get this, they’re not a good replacement for reading books or playing outside. The Isabelle Clingerman tells the local news there that while her 9-year-old, who owns more than 40 Nintendo games, can play the games to…

Suicide Girls Rock Band Their Pants Off

If they’re going to tackle Halo 3 in the buff and Grand Theft Auto IV lollipop-fetishism, you know that the avant-garde nudies over Suicide Girls is all over Rock Band. And I do mean all over. In this latest pictorial, photographer tmronin took 1,800 shots over two separate shoots in Chicago to create this 72-photo…

Playstation 2 Hits 50 Million in North America

The Playstation 2, born in 2000, continues to churn out impressive sales despite being a generation behind the current slate of gaming. Earlier today Sony announced that the PS2 just hit 50 million. And that’s in North America alone, the Associated Press reports. John Koller, director of hardware marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment of America,…

Ubisoft Announces Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is coming to the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 this year, Ubisoft announced today. The game will be a prequel to the wild west shooter that was met with mediocre reviews in 2007. Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood transports players from a ravaged Civil War-era Georgia to…

U.S. Army Buys Drunk Driving Game

The U.S. Army is funding improvements to a drunk driving game developed at the University of Calgary, in hopes of reducing what they say is a growing drunk driving problem among soldiers returning from war zones. Booze Cruise allows users to enter their weight and a number of drinks, then attempt to drive home using…

Fallout 3 Bug Fix Update Hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 Today

A patch to fix quite a number of bugs in Fallout 3 hits all versions of the role-playing game today, Bethesda says. The update is available for the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish versions. The patch will also be required to play the downloadable content, Operation: Anchorage, coming to the Xbox 360 and Games…

Wii Music Coming to Classrooms

Nintendo is teaming with The National Association for Music Education to get the Wii and Wii Music into schools, the two announced today. The collaboration will have music teachers in 51 cities using Wii Music to help children with rhythm, temp and song structure. “The goal of Wii Music is to inspire people of all…

Indiana Jones Canned [Update]

The last time we heard about the Indiana Jones game was back in March when Vanity Fair mentioned it would use the same engine as The Force Unleashed. There’s probably a good reason for that. IGN is reporting that multiple sources both inside and out of LucasArts have told them that the game has been…

All A Twitter

To: Bash From: Crecente Re: And So, The Twittering Begins I didn’t last very long on Twitter. I stopped using it right after Facebook came out with robust support for the iPhone, giving it up to update my Facebook status instead. But now that all of these people have added my Twitter I sort of…

Here is Your X-Men Origins Wolverine in 3D

Who needs screen shots when you have 3D SCREENSHOTS! X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is apparently so cool it can’t fit into just two Ds, so Activision dropped this interactive screenshot on us. Super-cool 3D effect aside, this really doesn’t give me much to see in the way of the game.

Golden Tee Joins the Navy, Ships Out on Supercarrier

Arcade and bar golfing sensation Golden Tee recently made it’s way to aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis, thanks to the company behind the game. Incredible Technologies sent a brand new machine to the aircraft carrier after Lt. Mike Hall wrote a letter to them about his love of the game and his longing to…

Nifty Ottoman Hides Your Rock Band Instruments

Much to the delight of my wife, a good third of our game closet is filled with Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments. Which means this sexy storage device is a must have. The AK Rock Box Gaming and Storage Ottoman with Drum Lift may sound a bit pricey at first, ringing in at $185,…