Jason Schreier

Big JRPG news: Trails of Cold Steel III is coming to PS4 in North America this fall. Here’s the twist: This one is published by NIS America rather than XSEED, which published the previous two Cold Steel games. That’s a bit worrisome, given the nuanced writing in Trails games and NISA’s previous work with Ys…

EA’s Troubled Decade Of Star Wars Games

On May 6, 2013, Disney and Electronic Arts announced that the two companies had signed a ten-year deal to make Star Wars games. It was an industry-changing deal that, in retrospect, looks like a big mistake for both parties. The deal, which was largely put together by EA Labels president Frank Gibeau, came just four…

EA Cancels Open-World Star Wars Game [UPDATE]

Electronic Arts has canceled its open-world Star Wars game, according to three people familiar with goings-on at the company. The game, announced alongside the shutdown of Visceral Games back in 2017, had been in development at EA’s office in Vancouver. EA Vancouver, a large studio that mostly handles support for a variety of the publisher’s…

In November 2016, we reported that the hidden sci-fi teaser inside of Watch Dogs 2 was for an unannounced game called Pioneer that was, at the time, in trouble. Nobody at Ubisoft had acknowledged the project publicly until last night, when former director Alex Hutchinson wrote on Twitter, “RIP Pioneer” with a link to the…

We’re The Staff Of Kotaku–Ask Us Anything [UPDATE: Over]

It’s been a wild 2019 in video game news so far, and what better to greet the new year than a Kotaku staff Q&A? We’ll be in the comments answering your questions for the next couple of hours. Ask anything you’d like. UPDATE (6:32pm): Q&A’s done! We’ll be back another time.

Former Gearbox Lawyer Accuses CEO Randy Pitchford Of Taking Secret $12 Million Bonus In Lawsuit Gearbox Calls ‘Absurd’ [UPDATE]

The former general counsel of game studio Gearbox (Borderlands, Aliens: Colonial Marines) and CEO Randy Pitchford are suing one another in a messy legal battle that sees both men accused of violating their legal duties to the company. The suit against Pitchford is full of sensational allegations, including the accusation that the Gearbox CEO received…

Kingdom Hearts III‘s Epilogue Will Be Patched In After Launch

The much-anticipated Kingdom Hearts III comes out on January 29, and if you plan to play it, I sure hope you have a home internet connection. Because the epilogue will be added via patch the next day. On Twitter this morning, publisher Square Enix laid out the update schedule for Kingdom Hearts III’s launch week,…

Bungie Splits With Activision, Keeps Destiny

Developer Bungie and publisher Activision are splitting up, an industry-shaking divorce that will see the shared world shooter series Destiny enter fully into Bungie’s control. This development comes after years of tension between the two companies—tension that has existed since before the first Destiny even shipped. Bungie, the studio that created and has led development…

Our Video Game Predictions For 2019

What’s coming for video games in 2019? What sort of wild predictions do we have for the year? Today onKotaku Splitscreen, we discuss. Every January, Splitscreen makes a bet to see who can rack up the most correct guesses about what’s going to happen in the coming year. Last year, Kirk won, which is why…

Wild New Destiny 2 Puzzle Stumps Players, Leading Bungie To Reverse Course 

On Tuesday, Destiny 2 opened up Bergusia Forge, the fourth and final activity in the game’s recent Black Armory content pack. There was a catch, though. For everyone to access it, at least one player in the world would have to solve a fiendish puzzle called Niobe Labs. The puzzle turned out to be so…

Final Fantasy X/X-2 will be on Switch and Xbox April 16, Square Enix said today, while the Final Fantasy XII remaster will be out for those platforms on April 30. No word on the other old Final Fantasys that were announced for both platforms last year(FFVII and FFIX). And Final Fantasy VIII is still ignored.

Alien Isolation Sequel Announced For Phones

Alien Isolation was a big critical hit when it came out in 2014, so news of a sequel might come as welcome news to fans. Less welcome news might be the fact that said sequel is a mobile game. Today, Fox announced Alien Blackout, a survival horror game that, like Isolation, stars series protagonist Ellen…

Why I Now Have To Play All Of Bloodborne To Completion

Starting this weekend, I will be picking up the PlayStation 4 game Bloodborne and starting a new playthrough. For the next few months, I will be finishing it. I don’t really want to, but I must. For Kotaku Splitscreen It’s not that I don’t like Bloodborne. I played through the first few bosses when it…

A Bunch Of Former Top Hearthstone Designers Are Making A Marvel Game

Former Hearthstone director Ben Brode and a group of his colleagues left Blizzard last year, and although they yet haven’t announced what they’re making next, today they dropped some big news: It’s a Marvel game. Second Dinner, a new indie studio founded by Brode, former Hearthstone executive producer Hamilton Chu, and several other ex-Blizzard employees,…

Don’t Miss Out On CrossCode, An Excellent Action-RPG

What I love about CrossCode, an action-RPG that came out on Steam earlier this year, isn’t just that it’s charming as heck and feels great to play. No, what I love about CrossCode is that it’s secretly a puzzle game. Don’t miss out on this one, folks. CrossCode, which I started playing last week after…

Every Game Kotaku Splitscreen Played In 2018, Part Two

It is now time for part two ofKotaku Splitscreen’s Game of the Year discussions. Except we don’t really want to pick a Game of the Year. We want to pick every Game of the Year. This week, Kirk, Maddy, and I close out 2018 by talking about all the games we played this year from…

The good news: “Persona 5 R” is a real thing, presumably an enhanced version of the popular PS4 game (like Persona 4 Golden) The bad news: There’s no indication here that it’s coming to Switch. Yet. Developer Atlus says more news is coming in March.

PlayStation Classic Gets Huge Price Cut, Which Says A Lot

One month after the NES Classic launched, it was impossible to find. One month after the SNES Classic launched, it was the hottest console on the market. And one month after the PlayStation Classic launched, it’s been marked down from $100 to $60 at every store on the internet. This 40% price drop, which went…

If you’ve ever wanted to get your Roomba to make you a Doom map, now’s your chance. This script by programmer Rich Whitehouse appears to be invented for Kirk Hamilton

One Of The Switch’s Top Sellers Is A Bad Game That Costs $0.01 

This morning, people across the country will unwrap brand new Nintendo Switches. Maybe they’ll open up the eShop and look at the Top Sellers, where they’ll see a selection of the usual suspects: Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8, Stardew Valley. And then they’ll see Bouncy Bob Bouncy Bob is an unremarkable arcade game in which…