Stephen Totilo

Xbox 360 Update Hands-on: Last.FM In Action

The final part of our Xbox 360 November dashboard update saves the best for last, without intending the pun. Here’s Last.FM in action on my 360, injecting a bit of Zelda and MF Doom into my system. I downloaded a preview version of next month’s Xbox 360 update this morning and quickly found that Last.FM…

Xbox 360 Update Hands-On: The Stuff That Didn’t Work, For Me [UPDATE]

Instant streaming in 1080p? Microsoft did warn that its new Zune video marketplace might not allow for streaming for people with slower (slow-ish?) connections. This is my low-point in my three-part preview of the 360’s new November dashboard. The video marketplace on the Xbox 360 has been re-branded with the Microsoft Zune brand. I checked…

Xbox 360 Update Hands-On: Facebook And Twitter

Microsoft provided Kotaku with an early version of the November Xbox 360 dashboard update. I just tested Twitter and Facebook on my 360. Watch. Both Xbox versions of the social-networking services are available only to paying Xbox Live Gold users. Apologies for the low volume. Turn it up before you start watching/listening. The Facebook video…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

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Notebook Dump: Missing High School

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? Oh, man. So late today for a Friday appointment that this post will barely even contain full sentences. Busy week. Exciting new tech on the site. Our first fashion review.…

The Saboteur Impressions: It’s Not Just Black And White

The build I played of The Saboteur this week was a month old, so if I had fun and was impressed, what does that mean? I’d only previously seen the game played by a developer and that was in mid-Summer. Back then I wrote a positive preview based on the number of interesting ideas the…

Solution To Ubisoft Mystery Less Thrilling Than Surmised

Remember this mystery mailing I reported receiving yesterday? Your theories as to its true nature were, sadly, off the mark. Some readers thought the package, which came with the three pictured games and no explanatory note, was an elaborate tease of a new Prince of Persia game. Some suggested that these three games were bound…

Castlevania’s Igarashi Involved In WiiWare Rebirth, Secret Stuff

In the summer we reported that longtime Castlevania developer Koji Igarashi, absent during the franchise’s appearance during E3, was still at Konami, involved in a project that would emerge at Tokyo Game Show. That didn’t come to pass. I checked in with Konami, wondering if the recently-announced 2D downloadable Wii game Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth…

No-Fail DJ Hero Is Easier And Harder Than Expected

Failure is not possible in Activision’s turntable riff on Guitar Hero, but I saw last night how tough — and strategic — playing the game can be. DJ Hero was available to play in a SoHo Manhattan gallery as part of an Activision and Microsoft-backed evening event for this multi-platform game. After I arrived, I…

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Our TAY trio is ready for the new Kotaku, but they better heed some warnings. The horse will be able to add images to #cheats, but not yet (A known issue… bear with us). The troll needs to be patient waiting for his page to appear (Starred commenters can start a page about anything, but…

Old News ’96: Nintendo Also Increasing Storage Capacity, Hopefully, Maybe

The PlayStation 3 may be expanding to 250 Gigabytes in the United States next month, but a mere 13 years ago Nintendo was working on its own storage expansion. A whole 64MB more storage capacity was coming. With Zelda. You are reading Kotaku’s once-weekly journey back to yesteryear. This week I am comparing Sony’s newest…

EA More Nice Than Naughty, In Terms Of Floorspace At Least

Quick observation that might counter the impression people inside and outside of the gaming sector have of the big companies in the business: EA’s games are Nicer than they are Naughty. By a factor of two, in fact. I’m kicking myself today for not having visual proof for you. But I can make a sketch…

Only PC Dragon Age Has Baldur’s Gate Camera

Dragon Age: Origins controls well on a PlayStation 3, BioWare proved to Kotaku yesterday — mouse and keyboard not required. But if you want the overhead view seen in this game’s spiritual predecessor, a mouse (and computer) is a must. I got a chance to try a PlayStation 3 build of Dragon Age yesterday at…

Half-Minute Hero Review: A Good Risk

Have you ever had your intelligence insulted or your time wasted by a Japanese role-playing game? This one won’t do either. Half-Minute Hero, XSeed and Marvelous Entertainment’s unusual, experimental role-playing game is smart, sharp, surprisingly long — given its title — and sloppy in a way that somehow doesn’t break the game but instead makes…

No NPDSs Today

The monthly surge of industry excitement about industry sales figures has been postponed until Monday, the NPD group announced today. The sales-tracking firm was scheduled to release today its listings of U.S. video game hardware and software sales for September. The report would have provided a glimpse of how the likes of Halo 3: ODST…

Not Exactly Three Of A Kind

Mailing from Ubisoft today. You figure it out, because we can’t.

Who You Can Kill, Who You Can’t [UPDATE]

While I was playing an early PlayStation 3 version of EA’s December World War II game, The Saboteur, yesterday, I was told not to worry about running over certain characters. The game’s developers, see, had to decide whose death matters. Cory Lewis, a producer at Pandemic Studios, which is making the game, was directing me…

People sure do love their zombie games. It’s the new WWII!

Talk Amongst Yourselves

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The Xbox Massage-Makers: Money, Sex Toys & Indie Backlash

College senior Justin Le Clair may be the most commercially successful Xbox 360 developer of 2009. For four hours of work he’s pocketed $60,000 and counting. His creation? An Xbox massage program, the first in a controversial trend. “I threw it together in class,” Le Clair told Kotaku during a phone interview this week. His…