Owen Good

Meet the First PS4 Customer. He Has Come to Judge You.

For the second straight week, the subject of our ‘Shop Contest will judge the entries making fun of him. As a courtesy, we will now profile Joey Chiu (center)—who 10 days ago was first in line to buy the PlayStation 4 at its launch event in New York. Soon after hearing word over Twitter when…

Twitch Couple’s Strip Show Could Mean Bad News for PlayStation 4

File this one under “Why we can’t have nice things.” A week after the console’s launch, some PlayStation 4 users appear to be using Playroom, an augmented-reality game taking place in one’s living room, to broadcast ridiculous live “shows” involving nudity, firearms, and God knows what else. This is accomplished through the live-streaming of games…

Does this count as government aid? Because EVE Online has an actual ruling body that meets in Iceland IRL. The game’s publisher is asking players to donate Pilot License Extensions (PLEX) to fund relief to the Phillippines as it recovers from Typhoon Haiyan, and will match $15 to each donation, up to $75,000.

EA Sports Sued by a Desperate NCAA Over the Game it Endorsed and Made

Back in the summer, the NCAA piously announced it would no longer license video games, leaving it to members to decide whether they would continue to appear in EA Sports’ college football series. The schools’ biggest licensing agent and Electronic Arts chose to settle all claims brought by college players, leaving the NCAA as the…

Making Room for a New Xbox Brings Back Memories of the Original

For some, the arrival of the Xbox One means finding room for it in a TV cabinet or entertainment center, especially for those power-user gamers with multiple consoles spanning generations. For me, it meant putting out to pasture an original Xbox, one given to me by a very good friend. The following is an essay…

Spider-Man Foiled in Attempt to Rob Xbox One on Launch Night

Parker! Parker! Get out there and get me some pictures of that menace! He tried to steal an Xbox One! Maybe that’s news? What do I pay you people for?! OK, so, not really. It was a guy in a Spider-Man hoodie, the hood zipped into a mask around his face to keep his identity…

Borderlands 2 Serves Up a Thanksgiving-Themed Episode Next Week

As only it could do, Borderlands 2 is desecrating a sacred family tradition for millions with its next wildass set of missions, “The Horrible Hunger of the Ravenous Wattle Gobbler.” available on Tuesday for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. It sounds nuts. The pretext for all of its Thanksgiving imagery is a “hunger-themed competition,” being…

The Guy Who Got His Xbox One Early is Unbanned

Good news, says Andre Weingarten: “I’m unbanned!” Sometime in the early afternoon while the college freshman was in class, his Xbox One—the thing Target mistakenly delivered early two weeks ago—went legit. What’s the first thing he’s going to do? “Well, I’ll be streaming,” he said. You can watch here as he plays Call of Duty:…

Diablo III Expansion’s Closed Beta to Begin by Year’s End

Diablo III‘s closed beta test for the Reaper of Souls expansion will begin by the end of the year, Blizzard said today. It’s underway now for “friends and family,” of Blizzard—which includes “3,000 of our most active Diablo III players from around the world” in addition to VIPs and press. When the Closed Beta begins…

NBA Live 14: The Kotaku Review

It’s hard to remember, but NBA Live was once a challenger to the formidable NBA 2K. If you care about aggregated ratings, NBA Live 10 and NBA 2K10 finished in a dead heat. Live had stolen away one of 2K’s top designers. It was fargin’ war. Then EA Sports burned down everything. We haven’t seen…

Heist Nabs 58 Xbox Ones More Than a Week Before Launch

The PlayStation 4 had two day-one robberies in the same city, but the clear winner in next-generation crime has to be the Xbox One. Fifty-eight of the consoles were stolen—and stolen a week ago—in Memphis, Tenn., where one unlucky customer has just been arrested. WMCT-TV reports that a 31-year-old Memphis man is facing charges of…

Xbox One Has No Built-In Livestream Option At Launch, But It’s Coming

Xbox One gamers will not be able to upload video to Twitch.tv at launch, Microsoft said this morning. The lack of support leaves Xbox One users without the ability to broadcast live gameplay natively from the console. “Our goal is to deliver it during the first part of 2014,” Microsoft said in the news story.…

Three Nintendo Systems Share a Birthday Today

Though plenty of attention this week is on the PlayStation 4’s launch last Friday, and the Xbox One arriving on the next, at the midpoint—today—is a rather significant date in video gaming history: Three Nintendo systems all released in North America on Nov. 18. The Wii U, of course, is most recent, launching last year…

Man Shot Dead Over PlayStation 4 Sale

Saturday brought news of the first robbery of a PlayStation 4; today brings news of the first killing associated with one. Police in Orlando, Fla. say two men were shot, one fatally, in the aftermath of a PS4 sale gone wrong Sunday afternoon. Authorities say Emmanuel Johnson, 25, had agreed to meet an unidentified 23-year-old…

eSports Is Getting Its Own Network—MLG.tv [Corrected]

Video gaming’s not a sport? Don’t tell that to MLG.TV—an Internet-broadcast network that’ll showcase the league’s major events and, yes, broadcast a studio show with highlights and news, akin to the coverage that, yes, real sports get. MLG announced the new programming venture today in this story at TechCrunch. The broadcast will stream up 1080p…

The ESRB Provides the Latest Preview of South Park: The Stick of Truth

It should be no surprise that South Park: The Stick of Truth is chock full o’ filth-flarn-flarn-filth-flarn and hellbent for an M-for-Mature rating. It’s still fun to hear the ESRB reading the dialogue aloud from its fainting couch. The game includes several instances of mature humor and sexual material: one extended sequence depicts characters getting…

The PS4 Makes Madden, FIFA and NBA 2K Better, But Not Essential

Heading into this console transition my opinion was that, of all the genres that could possibly sell a new Xbox or PlayStation, sports would come in last. Despite the richer visuals and refined experiences I’ve seen so far, that opinion still stands. My PlayStation 4 arrived late Friday, and since then I’ve spent time with…

Uncharted Craftsman Seeks More Help in Battle Against Cancer

David Vigil, a master leathersmith, is well known for his replicas of props appearing in the Uncharted series (and other games made by Naughty Dog.) The 25-year-old craftsman is also fighting stage 2 pancreatic cancer, and trying to raise money to pay for his treatment. Vigil’s second fund raiser (he held one last year) is…

The Week in Games: One to Go

It’s the Xbox One’s turn to shine this week, arriving on Friday along with 22 games, among them exclusives like Ryse, Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3. And, in either the most unfortunately timed or ballsiest release ever, New Super Mario and Zelda titles come out the same day. Here’s the week in games. Tuesday,…

Pokémon X and Y Community Solves Shiny Hatching—and Crowdsources It

For those who can’t get their hands on the magic machine that auto-finds shiny Pokémon for you, there’s the next best thing—a crowd sourced database that will pair trainers in Pokémon X and Y to eggs guaranteed to hatch a shiny. It will depend upon the good will and cooperation of the Pokémon community, particularly…