QUOTE | “We don’t want to dig too big a hole.” – Oculus VP of product Nate Mitchell, explaining why the company isn’t selling the Rift hardware below cost, at least for now. Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… STAT | 38% – GameStop’s year-over-year increase in holiday software sales for Xbox One…
Amir Hekmati, the former U.S. Marine and one-time game developer, has been freed from an Iranian prison after more than four years in captivity, according to an Iranian news report. The Iranian-American was serving a 10-year prison term, reduced from a death sentence, related to charges of espionage against Iran. His family and the U.S.…
This weekend’s UFC fight has been four years in the making. Dominick Cruz pioneered a nigh-untouchable Matrix-like fighting style and dominated a whole division with it. Then he got injured. For years. While he was away, TJ Dillashaw claimed his belt with remarkably similar moves. Now, they’re finally gonna fight. I’ve written about TJ Dillashaw…
The absurdly popular Xbox One early access game ARK Survival Evolved is supposed to be getting more than a hundred extra servers, according to a press release today. They’re not live yet, as the game’s several hundred servers remain stuffed. The promise of added support should give people a slightly better chance to get into…
Slime Rancher is a popular new Steam game where you adventure around, vacuum up smiley little slime creatures, plop them in a cage, and harvest their, um, poop. All the while, you try to stop them from growing miserable. It kills me to see them frown. A well-crafted start screen, I think, can provide a…
I didn’t do a “what are you playing?” post for January, so instead I’m going to do one for this coming weekend. Weekends are people, too! So: What are you playing these days? I’ll go first: If you’ve been listening to our Kotaku Splitscreen podcast, you already know that I’ve been playing a lot of…
A few days ago a bunch of members of the gaming press went and played Ubisoft’s upcoming tactical shooter/RPG Tom Clancy’s The Division. Let’s see what they thought of it. We didn’t attend the preview event (obviously) but the embargo lifted this morning and there are enough substantive hands-on demo videos out there that I…
Fallout 4 was not always the game that we actually got to play. Like most games, it changed and morphed during development—and it’s fun to look back on what could have been. In this video, I show a few things that never made it into the post-apocalyptic trash collecting game, from quests to alternate character…
When Mario Maker launched, Nintendo warned players it could remove stages from the game for a variety of reasons, including ones that were merely unpopular. Nintendo has made good on that threat, but folks in the Mario Maker community are upset because it’s not really clear what “unpopular” means. Here’s what Nintendo originally outlined: Notice…
The independently developed Half-Life 2 expansion Prospekt is now Valve-approved. It’ll be available on Steam in February. Created by lone indie dev Richard Seabrook, Prospekt continues the story of Half-Life: Opposing Force and threads its way through the narrative of Half-Life 2
One of the creators of DOOM is back with something special. Romero released “Tech Gone Bad” out of the blue this morning, which he described as a “warm-up.” A warm-up to what, though? Hmm. Here’s how Romero describes the setup for this stage: After exiting the Computer Station you knew the worst was up ahead.…
This afternoon, U.S. president Barack Obama took interviews with a few YouTube celebrities, and hey wait a minute are those Amiibo? Does Obama collect Amiibo? Which do you think is his favorite? Does he really have TWO Luigis? UPDATE (4:37pm): Wait a minute. As our commenters have pointed out, these aren’t in fact Amiibo but…
Fallout 4’s latest update is en route, promising to bring a few changes and fix a bunch of bugs, several of which are related to dismemberment. Gotta get that dismemberment working right! The 1.3 update is currently in beta on Steam but doubtless will be coming to all platforms in the not-too-distant future. On PC,…
OK Katana Zero, you have my attention. The game is being billed as a “a fast paced neo-noir action platformer,” and it looks equal parts slick and brutal. Among other things, the game will let you slow down time and interrupt characters during conversations. It’ll be out sometime this year. Watch the full trailer below.
Fox announced today that they plan to launch a reboot of 24 without Jack Bauer, which is sort of like Konami making Metal Gear Solid without Hideo Kojima. It’s just not going to work. The new series is called 24: Legacy, asEW reports. It’ll star someone named “Eric Carter”—lmao—and they’re looking for a totally new…
As the new year rolls on, so does Worth Reading, our weekly collection of the best games writing around the web. Here’s what I’ve found. Hey, You Should Read These “The afterimage of Final Fantasy VII” by Christian Nutt A remake of Final Fantasy VII, despite Square Enix’s public reservations about the project over the…
In honor of David Bowie’s passing, Square Enix is giving away Steam keys for Omikron: The Nomad Soul, which he starred in and wrote music for. The offer is “while supplies last” and runs through January 22. US players should use this link, European players should use this link. Both require the code “omikron.” Contact…
It is time once again for Destiny Trends, presented by well-known Destiny fan-site Kotaku dot com. Out: Strategizing with your teammates to carefully pick apart your opponents one by one as you try to win each hard-fought, grueling match of Trials of Osiris. In: Putting your controller down. (via r/destinythegame) You can reach the author…
Subnautica, the underwater survival game in Early Access, has a new H2.0 update—and it looks pretty damn good!
Pokkén Tournament, the Pokémon fighting game, hits the Wii U on March 18, Nintendo announced. Richard has played the game’s Japanese arcade version, so you can read about his experience here to find out whether you should be looking forward to this one.
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