Owen Good

Well, that didn’t take long. Remember that $90,000 Kickstarter to make a Metroid fan film—one that didn’t have Nintendo’s permission? Yeah, it ended about like you’d expect. They’d gotten about $20,000, with two weeks left in the fund drive.

Here’s One Super-Realistic Feature in Madden NFL 25

Madden NFL has a “fantasy draft” option—which disperses all of the players and has every team draft a new roster before beginning your career mode. If you pick that, here’s how the game’s fake Twitter stream reacts. Good to see that ESPN’s tinhorn orchestra, Skip Bayless, stays true to character in it.

PlayStation Exec Explains Why They Keep Taking Shots at Xbox One

Andrew House, the Sony top executive who took another swipe at Microsoft and the Xbox One from the stage at Gamescom, has explained why Sony has made such arch references to the competition at its showcase events. Basically, Microsoft made them do it. “We constructed our E3 presentation because there was somehow a suspicion that…

‘Same great gameplay.’ People were pissed that FIFA 13 on the PS Vita was essentially a reconditioned FIFA Soccer, the launch title for the device. Well, there’s more where that came from for FIFA 14, reports Eurogamer

Take a Guided Tour of the Xbox One’s Controller

If you’re picking up the Xbox One when it releases (whenever that is), this is the controller you’ll be spending a lot of time with. While we’ve posted our own impressions of its design, a video and this infographic, from Microsoft, should help you understand how it differs from the 360’s. In the video, Quintin…

Watch Some Dude Pull His Hamstring for a Copy of Madden

Down in Florida this week, EA Sports challenged people to run the NFL’s all-important 40-yard dash—traveled nearly 25 years ago by one Barry Sanders of Wichita, Kansas in 4.37 seconds—and offering copies of Madden NFL 25 to 100 winners. We hope the guy at 0:16 got one as a consolation prize. Sanders, this year’s cover…

See the StarCraft II World Championships Live Here, All Weekend

The world champion of StarCraft II will be crowned this weekend at Gamescom, and action is underway right now in the tournament’s group stage decider matches. You can watch all of the action right here. The World Championship Series Season 2 group stage deciders began at 10 a.m. and will wrap up soon, in time…

Second Kickstarter for Eternal Darkness Sequel Ends Far Short of Goal

Shadow of the Eternals, the proposed spiritual successor to 2002’s Eternal Darkness, fell well short of its Kickstarter funding goal for a second time. Despite a more modest target of $750,000, the project attracted less than half that amount, or $323,950. Shadow of the Eternals was to be made by Precursor Games, a studio formed…

Top 25 Polls Determine Payments in EA Sports’ College Game

Want to know what your favorite college football team made from its appearance in EA Sports’ NCAA Football series last year? Average its Associated Press poll ranking over the past 10 seasons. If it’s 25 or higher, congratulations. They probably earned about $75,000. But a five-figure royalty check, as I speculated in my column on…

So I Went to a Fighting Game and NHL 14 Broke Out …

Let’s take a pop quiz—all gamers, not just sports fans. I’m going to show you this video on the “Enforcer Engine,” which is the remade way to fight in NHL 14. Don’t take any physical notes. Then I want you to wait 30 seconds before reading and answering the following questions. Ready? 1) How do…

Supreme Court Played Video Games Before Making Historic Decision

Though she “did seem to get it,” when lawyers for California and the games industry were arguing before the Supreme Court, we weren’t sure that Justice Elena Kagan, or justice, played any video games before their landmark Brown vs. EMA decision in 2011. Actually, they did. “It was kind of hilarious,” she told the AP.…

Going to PAX? Go Hands-On With Pokémon X and Y

PAX-goers will be the first in North America to get their hands on Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, Nintendo said today in an announcement of its activities at the expo less than 10 days away. Nintendo’s presence at PAX will include a dedicated Pokémon Gaming Lounge, located on the second floor of the Washington State…

Xbox One Kinect Can Be Used For Motion Capture In Your Living Room

Project Spark, the games-creation toolkit for Xbox One and PC, drew a lot of attention at E3 for a deep feature set. That includes all kinds of motion capture, using the Kinect 2.0 sensor. You can mo-cap in your own living room. Team Dakota, Project Spark‘s makers, told a Gamescom audience today that full-body motion…

Think Your Drive is Brutal? Check Out the Vehicles of Dead Rising 3

Capcom this morning put out a new cinematic trailer [NSFW language] for Dead Rising 3, and if you’ve gotten a good chuckle from improvised weapons like the paddlesaw, just wait the hell until you see the RollerHawg. The A-Team could only dream of being locked in a garage and coming up with something this dangerous.…

Ready at launch: Somewhat a blend of World of Tanks and the upcoming World of Warplanes, the PlayStation 4 will see the free-to-play MMO War Thunder featuring 200 models of aircraft and 100 vehicles in ground battles fought by five nations during World War II. A news release said War Thunder will be a launch…

Killzone: Shadow Fall showed off its multiplayer features in this trailer from Gamescom 2013. You can get a look at it here—well, the parts where the camera isn’t inexplicably zoomed out on the crowd, anyway.

This story begins with the end of the world: Here’s the trailer for for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, a spiritual successor to thechineseroom’s Dear Esther, shown during the PlayStation news conference today at Gamescom. The game will release on PlayStation 4, but no timeframe was given.

Music festival tycoon: Big Fest, a new game in which players become a virtual music promoter, will be coming to PlayStation Vita, Sony announced. Sony said the game’s soundtrack will feature unsigned real-life bands, giving players a chance to help a new act get discovered.

PS Vita Price Cut to $199; Memory Cards Reduced, Too [Update]

The price PlayStation Vita’s price has dropped to $199 in North America and 199EU. It takes effect immediately. Sony also is trimming the price of the Vita’s proprietary memory cards in both regions. The 32GB and 16 GB memory cards both will get $20 reductions—dropping to $79.99 for the 32GB and $39.99 for the 16GB.…

Gran Turismo 6 will launch on Dec. 6 for PlayStation 3. The game will feature concept vehicles exclusive to Gran Turismo 6 made by several automotive and non-automotive brands alike, and in some cases these concept cars will be manufactured in the real world.