Luke Plunkett

Auditorium HD

Report: Nintendo Scaling Back Wii Production

According to a report from Nikkei, Nintendo has begun the process of reducing the number of Wiis being manufactured. The report says that two Japanese companies – Mitsumi and Hosiden – are facing massive losses in revenue this year due to the “declining fortunes” of the Wii and a “drop-off in orders from Nintendo to…

EVE Online’s Latest Expansion Features…Space Combat

You know, there’s something about MMOs that makes my skin crawl. Can’t stand them. Yet whenever EVE Online pops up – like it has with this trailer, for new expansion “Dominion” – my resolve weakens. Just a little. Dominion is EVE’s 12th free expansion, and it’s out today.

British Sales Charts: The Mustachioed Interloper

You laughed when Reggie bet the farm that New Super Mario Bros. Wii would outsell Modern Warfare 2. We laughed too. But last weeks British sales charts show he may be onto something. Because Modern Warfare 2 has already been toppled from its perch, after only two weeks on sale. And it’s been toppled by…

WoW’s Pandaren Get The Action Figure Treatment

From April Fools joke to cult hero, World of Warcraft‘s Pandaren have come a long, long way. Now, they can go a little further, and join you slobbing it at your desk. For a limited time, Blizzard will be selling action figures of their most special fat panda, Chen Stormstout. They’ll be $50, and available…

An Early Look At The Warhammer 40K MMO

Texas-based developer Vigil have been working on a Wargammer 40K MMO for years now. And in all that time, have shown only a single piece of concept art. Let’s add a little to that, eh? A friendly source has sent us these pieces of concept art for the game, used in the early stages of…

Mega Man Sells, But Who’s Buying?

As seen on Iron Forge, via GameSetWatch.

WoW Guilds Just Like…Street Gangs?

World of Warcraft has been compared to many things over the years. Everquest at first, then later, crack. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it compared to street gangs in LA. Earlier this year, scientists from the US and China published a paper called “Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven…

Mario’s Italian Rhapsody

You may have seen one of these clips before, where a custom level is built for Super Mario World that automatically plays a tune. But you probably never saw one playing the part of all four members of Queen. [thanks denki!]

Japan Gets Limited Edition Pro Evo PlayStation Portable

Next week sees the release of Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 on PSP in Japan. Or, as its known in the game’s homeland, Winning Eleven 2010. To celebrate, there’ll be a Winning Eleven PSP-3000 on sale. Adorned with both the logo for the Winning Eleven series and the UEFA Champions League – the game’s main selling…

Final Fight: Double Impact Screens

When Capcom release “Final Fight: Double Impact” next April, you’ll not only be getting two retro side-scrollers for your money, but some different graphics modes as well. Here are your options. You get four: the original sprites, the hideous “HD Smooting”, and either of those can viewed in a standard 4:3 letterbox view or a…

PC Download Stores Arguing Over Who Comes After Steam

Stardock’s claim that it holds 10% of the PC digital download market have been shrugged off by two of the company’s main competitors, Direct2Drive and GamersGate. GamersGate CEO Theodore Bergquist tells Kotaku that “We have daily direct contact with all major publishers out there, we can benchmark most of our numbers with both Steam and…

See Brink’s Characters Running On Autopilot

I saw people playing Brink at E3, and thought it looked pretty promising. Bit hard for you to really understand without moving pictures of gameplay, though, so here’s some moving pictures of gameplay. It’s the first part of the demo we saw at E3, showing off the game’s free-running “autopilot”. Hopefully the Mirrors Edge 2…

Yakuza 3 Turns Up On Amazon Germany

Yup. This again. Dare to dream. A listing for Yakuza 3 has appeared on Amazon Germany’s site, and while we normally wouldn’t bother with mysterious retail listings, Amazon Germany have quite the track record. It says it’ll be out in March 2010, will cost €63 (USD$94) and…says nothing else. So far, so good! Remember, though,…

Ocarina Of Time & Halo Go Just Fine Together

It’s Halo, as though the Great Architect – in this case, Eiji Aonuma – is speaking through it. [via Go Nintendo]

Nintendo: Wii Sales Up 85% Since Price Cut

You may think that Wii sales are on the way down, down, down, but don’t tell that to Nintendo! No, according to internal numbers, since the console dropped to $199 things have never better. Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cammie Dunaway, says that since the Wii was knocked down from…

Nokia Busted Promoting Nintendo Emulators In Advertisement

Hey, Nokia: just because your own experiment with handheld gaming went pear-shaped doesn’t mean you can go advertising other people’s games on your phones. Nintendo are currently investigating a commercial for Nokia’s N900 smartphone, which reportedly showed the phone happily playing a bunch of retro emulated games for the NES, SNES Game Boy and Spectrum,…

Yeah, Another Game’s Been “Banned” In Australia

Free-to-play MMO Crimecraft has been refused classification in Australia, on the grounds that it uses drugs as an “incentive or reward”. It’s the reason Fallout 3 had to be edited, and why NFL Blitz has never been released in the region. Another game effectively banned, blah blah blah, yada yada yada. It’s not the first,…

Contact Creator Has Another Space Game For The DS

Audio Inc., the brains behind Sakura Note and the excellent Contact, have a new DS RPG in the pipeline, jam-packed with synthesisers and Engrish. Let’s take a look! It’s called Space Agency. Whether it’s the sequel to Contact (which was designed by Audio’s boss Akira Ueda) or not, it’s hard to tell with all that…

BBC Upset With Microsoft Over Xbox Live Payments

The BBC and MIcrosoft aren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye at the moment, with the British broadcaster unhappy with the way Microsoft charges users for much its online content. The dispute is centred around BBC’s iPlayer, a service that allows people in the UK to watch BBC programs from their computer, PS3 or Wii. There were also…