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Activision Lays off About 30 People, Saying There Will Be Fewer Licensed Games This Year
Even the massive money-making game publisher Activision lays off people from time to time, as the company confirmed today that they’ve cut about 30 jobs from their global work force. Kotaku first heard that the cuts were affecting Treyarch, the studio behind Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but a spokesperson for Activision said that…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 19, 2013 -
Apologies If We Wasted Your Time With That Preview
A couple of writers for this site recently proposed that we stop previewing games. We could still talk to developers before games come out, they suggested. We could still visit studios early or even play games before release, but somehow, some way, we’d no longer write previews. Given that I prefer to be absolutist only…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 18, 2013 -
Totilo and Crecente (yeah, that guy!) discuss the next PlayStation on the latest episode of the Bonus Round
By Stephen Totilo Published February 18, 2013 -
Nine More Surprising Hours With Assassin’s Creed III
I admit that I’ve had my doubts about Assassin’s Creed III in the three months since I had last played it. I had my doubts that the game, buggy and rough-edged as it was, deserved the very positive review I gave it last October. I had my doubts when my colleagues Luke and Kirk, representing…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 18, 2013 -
What’s This? A Non-Nintendo Game Creator Raves About The Wii U.
I thought I was on another planet on Wednesday when I saw Alex Ward for the first time in five years. This was Criterion’s Alex Ward, the developer of a game studio that pushes gaming hardware to the brink and that hasn’t made a game for Nintendo in 10 years. He was saying nothing but…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 15, 2013 -
If You Run a Warehouse, You Don’t Need To Turn Work Into a Game. Really.
Recently, people wanted to gamify things. That’s “game-i-fy,” as in “turn stuff into games,” which more or less meant “add points to stuff we don’t like to do to make those things more fun.” One of the patron saints of this stuff was supposed to be Jesse Schell, a game designer and teacher who described…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 15, 2013 -
12 out of 15 video game creators would make a new Star Wars game, Wired discovers. (Prepare for a twist ending.)
By Stephen Totilo Published February 14, 2013 -
Looking For a Launch Game For Ouya…
“At the end of the day, Ouya is beautiful, but people don’t buy consoles,” the woman behind the Android-based home console that is coming out next month recently said to me. “They buy content.” She’s right, right? Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman said this while she and I chatted in Las Vegas last week. People get…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 14, 2013 -
For Those Unmoved by 3DS Mario Sequels, Nintendo Has New Downloadable Alternatives
Nintendo has been so busy announcing sequels to every Mario sub-franchise that you can think of—new sidescrollers, new 3D platformers, new Golf, and Mario & Luigi—that you’d think they don’t have anything else. Well, other than Zeldas. Not quite. As they’ve quietly been doing, Nintendo is continuing to create and add to new franchises through…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 14, 2013 -
New Mario Golf Coming to 3DS This Summer From Camelot [Video added]
A new Mario Golf game is coming from longtime series developer Camelot. The game, called Mario Golf World Tour will be out this summer for the 3DS. It looks true to the series, featuring a medley of Nintendo characters (Donkey Kong, Bowser, etc.) in big, Mario-themed courses.
By Stephen Totilo Published February 14, 2013 -
BioShock Infinite‘s Lead Creator on History, Video Game Violence and… What Happens to the Sewage in a Floating City?
In an office in Union Square last week, BioShock Infinite ‘s lead creator, Ken Levine, said I could ask him about anything. He was in a kind and generous mood, offering me a strawberry from a bowl of them—he at eats at least half a pound of them a day, he told me. Anything? OK……
By Stephen Totilo Published February 13, 2013 -
Gabe Newell and JJ Abrams’ Wonderful, Unprecedented Talk Has An R2D2 Easter Egg
A week after it happened, you can now watch the DICE Summit’s kick-off talk between Star Trek/Star Wars‘ JJ Abrams and Steam/Half-Life 3‘s Gabe Newell. It was a fun talk that ended with Abrams and Newell talking about making games and movies together. That’s the news you probably saw last week. But watch everything that…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 13, 2013 -
“Brutal…Brilliant”… and Coming Out Who-Knows-When
The moody, gritty PC/PS3/Xbox 360 shooter Metro: Last Light was supposed to come out in early 2013, which is probably why ads for it started showing up atop New York City taxi cabs many weeks ago. Then Metro‘s publisher, THQ fell apart. Metro will eventually be released by new publisher Deep Silver. For now, it’s…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 13, 2013 -
The Next Xbox Has Mandatory Kinect, Game-Swapping and New Controllers, According To Leaked Info
The next-generation Xbox—the one that will follow the still-popular Xbox 360—will run multiple games at once, require game installations, and will only work when a much-improved version of the popular but divisive Kinect sensor array is plugged in, according to a source who says he has access to development hardware. Those are a just a…
Stephen Totilo and Luke Plunkett Published February 11, 2013 -
Nintendo Fan Is Happy With Nintendo’s $620 Answer to His $570 Wii U Problem
On Friday, we brought you the story of Jon, a Nintendo fan who spent $400 downloading old games to his Wii, but, through a mistake of his own and due to Nintendo’s unusually strict digital-downloads policy, found himself with access to none of those games. The lesson: a Nintendo machine isn’t like an iPhone; your…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 11, 2013 -
Anti-Gun People Who Cluelessly Mocked Me Still Live in Fantasy Land, Still Don’t Know How To Apologize
The popular, left-leaning Facebook group that mistook me for a gun nut last month has pulled the image of me that they put on their site. They actually pulled it on Monday, shortly after I ran an article illustrating the hilarious cluelessness of many of the Facebook page’s users—many of whom thought I was holding…
By Stephen Totilo Published February 8, 2013
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