Jason Schreier

SNES Classic Pre-Orders Go Up In The Middle Of The Night, Sell Out Immediately

Nintendo’s new retro console, the SNES Classic, will come with a Rewind feature that allows you to go back in time when you screw up. It’s too bad you can’t use it to jump back to 4am and pre-order an SNES Classic. Last night, perhaps deciding that the NES Classic wasn’t enough of a debacle,…

Microsoft Again Stretches Definition Of ‘Exclusive’

One of the most annoying trends in video games is the word “exclusive,” which perhaps once meant “limited” or “restricted” but now, thanks to Microsoft and Sony, means absolutely nothing. Today’s big exclusive is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Which probably isn’t an exclusive. At the Xbox showcase during E3 in June, Microsoft announced that the popular battle…

Final Fantasy XV Comes To PC Next Year

Final Fantasy XV, a video game about male friendship and good hair, will come to PC in early 2018. The fifteenth mainline Final Fantasy, which came out in November 2016, was previously only available on PS4 and Xbox One. This version, which publisher Square Enix is calling Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition (lol), will be…

A New Collection Of Mega Man Games Is Out Today

A second collection of Mega Man games is out today, this time including Mega Men 7 through 10. Publisher Capcom skipped Nintendo this time around, releasing the new collection on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, much to the dismay of portable game lovers everywhere. In case you’re not familiar: Mega Man 7 and Mega Man…

Hellblade May Erase Your Save If You Die Too Many Times [UPDATE]

When you first start Hellblade, a new game from Ninja Theory (Enslaved, DmC) that’s out today on PC and PS4, you are greeted with an ominous warning: Die too much and you’ll lose your save file. As captured by critic Mark Brown, Hellblade opens with the following message: “The dark rot will grow each time…

The Nintendo World Championship is coming back this fall, Nintendo said today. Qualifying matches will take place at Best Buys across the United States, so “World Championship” might be a misnomer. To qualify, you’ll have to play… Mario Kart 7? What? More info here

Middle-earth: Shadow of War Lets You Pay Real Money For Better Gear

Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to surprise 2014 hit Shadow of Mordor, will come stuffed with loot boxes and microtransactions, not just for cosmetics but for gear that improves your main character. This news, announced over the weekend, has thrilled fans across the world. (One top Reddit post: “That’s a great way to get…

Horizon Zero Dawn’s big expansion, The Frozen Wilds, will be out on November 7, Sony said today. “Set in icy territories to the north, this new chapter of Aloy’s journey adds a new area to explore, new mysteries to uncover and new, highly lethal machines to take on.” I cannot wait.

Final Fantasy VII Retrospective: Great Because It’s Weird

Before I played Final Fantasy VII, I didn’t think it was going to be very good. I don’t remember how I was introduced to the game—maybe it was a store ad, or a magazine, or that wild 1997 TV commercial—but I do remember hating it. This is part seven of Kotaku’s Final Fantasy Retrospective, in…

Internet Sleuths Think The Last of Us Part II Is Set In Seattle

Is part of the next The Last of Us set in Seattle? Internet detectives believe so, after combing through the game’s concept art and comparing it to real-life Washington. The Last of Us: Part II won’t be out for at least another year or two, but Redditor and artist Voidsby believes they’ve already discovered one of…

Game That Entered Development In 1997 Comes Out Today

If you are wondering why Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar, a new release on Steam, looks like something from the 90s, here is your answer: It is from the 90s. After a solid 20 years in development—or roughly twice as long as Final Fantasy XV—Grimoire is out today. “After more than 20 years of…

Final Fantasy XV‘s Multiplayer Has A Ridiculously Detailed Character Creator

Final Fantasy XV’s multiplayer beta went live today, and in it, you can hack-and-slash through a few short quests. You can also spend hours creating your very own avatar, adjusting everything from facial tattoos to, uh, lower jaw width. There’s a lot of detail in this thing, to the point where you can actually choose…

The WNBA is coming to NBA Live 18, publisher EA said today. This is the WNBA’s first appearance in a basketball video game, although the NBA Live series has been shaky in recent years.

Adam Ruins Everything (Except Our Podcast)

Adam Conover, creator and star of the excellent show Adam Ruins Everything, joins us on this week’s very special episode of Kotaku Splitscreen First Kirk and I talk about Pyre, Battlegrounds, and Dream Daddy before jumping into this week’s news (29:07) on GameStop’s Thanksgiving hours, Unsung Story’s Kickstarter disaster, and a gamer cruise that lost…

The very good (if bloated) Trails of Cold Steel comes to PC today. It’s normally $40 but publisher XSEED is knocking it down to $36 for launch week. For more on the tremendous Trails series, check out our primer

A Timeline Of Unsung Story, One Of The Biggest Kickstarter Failures Ever

It was supposed to be a dream game for fans of strategy-role-playing games, but instead it became a disaster. Unsung Story, which crowdfunded over $660,000 in 2014, is one of the biggest Kickstarter failures of all time. Let’s zoom out and look at the whole debacle, shall we? Last night, the company Playdek announced that…

Three Years After Raising $660,000 On Kickstarter, Unsung Story Developer Playdek Bails

After a three-year debacle involving shady behavior, broken promises, and $660,126 that went nowhere, the game company Playdek has decided to call it quits on Unsung Story, passing the rights to a new company that will apparently develop and publish the game. In an update this afternoon, Playdek told Kickstarter backers that the game company…

You Can Pre-Order The SNES Classic This Month (For Real This Time)

After last week’s Walmart debacle, a whole lot of Nintendo fans have been asking when the hell they’ll be able to pre-order the much-anticipated SNES Classic, which launches on September 29. Today, Nintendo finally offered an answer: later this month. Here’s Nintendo: We appreciate the incredible anticipation that exists for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System:…

How Blizzard Saved Diablo III From Disaster 

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, BLOOD, SWEAT, AND PIXELS, which comes out on September 5 and tells the stories behind 10 different games including Diablo III, Uncharted 4, and Star Wars 1313. You can pre-order the book at your favorite bookstore On May 15, 2012, hundreds of thousands of people across the…

GameStop Will Be Open On Thanksgiving This Year, To Employees’ Dismay

GameStop’s stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day this year, the company told staff during a series of conference calls this morning, according to two people who were on those calls. It’s a change in policy that has upset some employees of the massive video game retail chain. The company has not yet finalized Thanksgiving…