Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Mister First [Update]

Unlike yesterday with NWBZPWNER Jarod, I don’t think we can get Andrew House (left) and Mic-Droppin’ Jack Tretton (right) to judge this week’s contest. Maybe Joey Chiu, the first guy to buy a PlayStation 4 at the launch event on Thursday, can get in touch with us. [Update: He just did!] Luke lifted this still…

One million PlayStation 4s were sold to customers in the first 24 hours the console was available, Sony said in a news release this morning. The PS4’s Nov. 15 launch was in the U.S. and Canada only. Sony has said it expects to sell 3 million by year’s end. The PS4 launches in Europe and…

Sunday Comics: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published Nov. 11. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published Nov. 13. Read more of Penny Arcade Brawl In The…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Make ‘Shop, Not Warcraft: The Winners

As mentioned an hour ago, this week’s ‘Shop Contest is being judged by none other than the subject himself: Jarod, who cosplayed South Park’s “NWBZPWNER” at Blizzcon a week ago. He has a critique for five of you, but gives his overall No. 1 to adrianssons! Remarks of the Judge: 1st Place: adrianssons “This man…

Happy Birthday, Shigeru Miyamoto. The creator of Mario, Zelda, Pikmin and many more games we love turned 61 today.

The PlayStation 4 Makes Skylanders: Swap Force Look So Much Better

In August I got an early chance to play the latest installment of Skylanders on a PlayStation 4. I thought it was just the prettiest thing ever. After reviewing the game on the PS3, I thought I might have just been seeing things. Nope. So much better. The difference, which might not show up quite…

For Sale: A Rare Pac-Man Bootleg from Arcade Gaming’s Golden Age

This Craigslist advertisement for a Pac-Man arcade cabinet tells a sweet and sentimental story about its life with its owner, and its role as a favored sleeping perch for his cat. But it may overlook its real value to collectors: It’s a rare, illegal clone of the game, known as “Hangly-Man.” The seller, a “Pac-Man…

Reach Through the TV with MIT’s Amazing Kinect-Controlled Project

This is called a Dynamic Shape Display. MIT built it, and it uses a Kinect sensor. In one of its applications, instead of a user in real life manipulating something on a TV, it puts the user on a TV, manipulating something in real life. See for yourself. inFORM, the name of the display, has…

One California City is the Scene of the First Two PS4 Robberies

The PlayStation 4 officially launched at midnight Thursday, U.S. Eastern time. Three hours later, it was officially robbed for the first time. Ladies and gentlemen, it is the dawn of a new era in console crime! Not only that, happy PS4 customers were robbed on launch night twice in the same city: Bakersfield, Calif. the…

How Long Can a PS4 Last in a Microwave Before Bursting Into Flames?

Here we go again. Kenny Irwin is a self-styled “professional microwaver,” who has melted down, let’s see, a Nintendo 2DS, a Wii U, a 3DS, and an Xbox 360. Think he’ll take on the PlayStation 4? Of course he will. For art! He’s very careful to say this is a “non working” PlayStation 4 but…

When do we call the current console generation the last generation, and the next generation the current generation? Day one of the first console? Once all consoles have launched? After all games of their launch window? A year? Let’s talk this over.

This Week in the Business: Wii Aren’t the 99 Percent

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … STAT | 1%—Amount of more than 5,000 gamers surveyed by Intergi Entertainment planning to buy a Wii U soon; this compares to 58% who said they were planning to get a PS4, and 39% who are planning on an Xbox One QUOTE |…

Look, Trion Worlds Is Doing The Whole Voxel Thing Now

Pixels were great, but they were so two dimensional. Polygons were really cool, but now that developers have to license them directly from the gaming website (they do not), everybody’s moving to voxels. Even Rift and Defiance developer Trion Worlds is doing it, with free-to-play online adventure RPG Trove While the rest of Trion was…

Killer Mobile Games Don’t Need No Shiny New Console

Who needs to spend several hundred dollars on a console when we’ve already spent several hundred on the latest tablet or smark phone, right? Hey, at least the games are cheap, and this week sees the release of some damn fine games. Better than the PS4 launch lineup? I’ll leave that up to you folks…

Antonio Banderas Hijacks The PS4 Launch With Glorious GIFs

The hype train pulled into the station one more time last night during Spike TV’s PS4 coverage. And, of course, during these exciting days of next-gen console launches the members of the online forum NeoGAF joined in by posting GIFs. Antonio Banderas GIFs, to be precise. Why exactly him? He had nothing to do with…

DC Universe Online Isn’t Like Other PS4 Launch Titles

DC Universe Online is not a PlayStation 4 original. It’s not a recently-released big budget third-party title. It’s not an indie darling. It’s a nearly three-year-old, free-to-play, massively multiplayer online role-playing game — a different sort launch title, with a different set of issues. First off, let me say how excited I am to finally…