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Kotick: Unemployment Likely To Affect Industry Sales
Appearing on the Fox Business network on Friday, the same day U.S. unemployment passed 10%, the head of Activision acknowledged that high jobless numbers will challenge the gaming business, but vouched for the value of playing games in tough times. After chatting about the company’s recent earnings, Fox Business guest host Charles Payne and Activision…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 10, 2009 -
Reminder: Modern Warfare 2 Kotaku Game Club Starts Tomorrow
As promised/threatened, Kotaku’s Game Club returns tomorrow. And now I can put a time on that: 2pm Kotaku Time (Mountain time), which is 1pm in Los Angeles, 4pm in New York, and 8am in Luke-land. A few reminders… -The first day of this Game Club will cover only the first three levels of the game,…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 10, 2009 -
Wary, Publishers Respond To GameStop Breaking Modern Warfare 2 Street Date
A day after the United States’ biggest games-only retailer, GameStop started selling Modern Warfare 2 early, Activision has labeled the practice disappointing. Fellow publishers Sony and Capcom also weighed in. “Activision is disappointed to learn that some retail locations have released ahead of schedule,” a company spokesperson told Kotaku in a statement before reiterating comments…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 9, 2009 -
EA: Confusion About Mature Content In Games Starts With “Over-40 Crowd”
How old do you have to be to not get that games aren’t just for kids? 40, according to EA. Though not everyone over 40 is guilty of that. Sound right? In a story about the increased acceptance of sex and sexuality in video games, the Calgary Herald got EA spokesperson Colin MacRae to draw…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 9, 2009 -
The Dangerous Video Game You Weren’t Supposed To Play
Zach Gage says his riff on Space Invaders isn’t maliciously designed software made to destroy your computer files — though it might do that. It’s a more thoughtful project than that. Lose/Lose is about values and value. It’s about what happens if a “Game Over” screen destroys your copy of the game, as happens with…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 9, 2009 -
Notebook Dump: Mass Effect 2’s New Helpers, A Failed Quest And More [UPDATE]
There comes a time in the week to reflect on what got into my reporter’s notebook but didn’t turn into Kotaku blog posts. Shall we? Dragon Age Bugs: Fahey mentioned in his review of Dragon Age: Origins that his PlayStation 3 version of the game had a bug that blocked him from completing the game.…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 6, 2009 -
Review Round-Up: Dragon Age, Drawn To Life, NBA And More
We reviewed the following games this week. None is called Demon’s Souls (Please be patient?). None of them even rhymes with Demon’s Souls. But one does star pro wrestlers… like Demon’s Souls, right? NBA Live Micro-Review: More than Pick-Up Hoops In which Owen Good objects to Marv Albert. WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 Review: A…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 6, 2009 -
Reviews
Rabbids Go Home Review: Strip-Platforming
The only game this fall that lets you shout the clothes of Santa Claus is a platformer without a jump button, a mix of Katamari Damacy and Mario, and another strong third-party original for the Wii. You are not a plumber. You are not prince. You are not even Rayman in the Rabbids Go Home,…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 6, 2009 -
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Impressions: Modern Warfare, Too
With the subtlety of a tank, EA is making it clear: Battlefield Bad Company 2 is the company’s contender to Call of Duty’s throne. A few weeks ago in New York I had the opportunity to try a map of Bad Company 2, the PC and console military first-person shooter from EA’s DICE studio. The…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 6, 2009 -
Mass Effect 2 Impressions: Looks Better, Shoots Differently, Doesn’t Overheat
Freeze-bullets. Framerates. Interactive cut-scenes. Even old friends from other Mass Effect games (yes, plural). These are some of the things, new or improved, that I recently saw in Mass Effect 2. Just three months before the January 2010 release of BioWare’s second Mass Effect, there is an intriguing bit of, well, intrigue about what’s going…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 6, 2009 -
Activision: Improvement In Consumer Experience Will Outweigh Modern Warfare 2 PC Complaints
On an earnings call today, Activision president Mike Griffith said his company is “not overly concerned” about gamer complaints regarding the lack of support for dedicated servers in the PC version of Modern Warfare 2. “We’re, of course, watching this very carefully and paying attention to it,” he said in response to a financial analyst…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 5, 2009 -
Old News ’96: BioWare Started For $100,000
Before they were a part of Electronic Arts and bringing Dragon Age: Origins to the masses, BioWare was small and scrappy. And one of their founders walked around the office barefoot. You are reading Kotaku’s once-weekly (sort of) journey back to yesteryear. We’re back in 1996 and the Calgary Herald paid a visit to the…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 5, 2009 -
Announcing The Return Of Kotaku’s Game Club, For Modern Warfare 2
Attention to those of you planning to play Modern Warfare 2. Read this first, so that you can play — and discuss — the game with the rest of Kotaku. Last year, Kotaku experimented with its own version of a Book Club and we will be bringing that back next week for Modern Warfare 2.…
By Stephen Totilo Published November 5, 2009
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