This Week in the Business: Fortune Also Favors the Cautious

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Being too ambitious, as we have seen with THQ for example, is not always a good thing.”—Koch Media co-founder Dr. Klemes Kundratitz, on rapid growth at Koch Media and its publishing arm Deep Silver QUOTE | “GameStop has at least 10…

The Best Of Kotaku, The Week Of August 12

So many reviews this week! Tons of games are out/are coming out to defeat the end of the summer in gaming style. Head on over to Kotaku Selects to read our reviews and other hand-picked articles from the week. The image above is called, “Mario Killed My Friend With My Own House.” 🙁 It’s by…

Mysterious Pokemon Image Might Be Teasing Something. But What? [UPDATE]

Today, the Pokemon Game Show in Japanrevealed a few things,like a new Pokemon anime that follows Pokemon Red and Green. You can watch the trailer for that above. And, according to Serebii, at the end of a different retrospective trailer aired during the show, the following mysterious image of a battle was showcased: Blurry, but…

It’s A Real Gun. A Real Halo-Themed Gun, That Is.

This is nothing like those branded Halo bullets we covered a while back: ucfnate‘s Halo Beretta M9A1 is custom. While I’m not into real-life guns myself, dang if this isn’t well-made.Not only are the grips UNSC, but they also glow in the dark. The grips cost 120 dollars, and they were made by DS Grips.…

Minecraft Creator’s Latest Is…A Zombie Game (And It’s Free)

Game jams are fantastic for short, focused games. Couple that with Notch’s ability to make polished gems for jams, and what you get is Shambles—an FPS zombie game developed for the 7DFPS challenge. Yeah, another zombie game. Fortunately, this one is pretty good! You can play it in your browser here, or download it here.…

Siri Isn’t Happy About Those Sexts You Send

It’s 2013. Some people send sexts; the practice is not abnormal. But if Siri could talk freely, like she does in this sketch by Slacktory, I doubt that she’d be very happy about what people send as attachments in texts, or in Snapchats. With good reason! Welp. You could always play Dungeons and Dragons with…

One of Grand Theft Auto V’s Achievements Is… Surprising

Xbox360Achievements does their thing once again, this time revealing the achievements for the next Grand Theft Auto. If you’d like to be spoiled on what these are, keep reading—otherwise, steer clear! You can read the full list of achievements here, but let’s talk about “From Beyond The Stars.” It’ll require you to collect and return…

The Nirvana of Video Games? Video games need a grunge movement, or at least that’s what Kotaku contributor and 90s aficionado Leigh Alexander argues in this excellent piece over at Gamasutra. It’s a version of a talk she recently gave at a UK games convention, and it involves Paula Abdul.

Biggest fear for Season 2 of The Legend of Korra: so much this. Probably not unreasonable either, given that in interviews, the writers highlighted Mako and Korra’s relationship as a point of tension in the upcoming season. (GIF via avataraang)

This Amazing Life-Sized Mass Effect Party Member Is Made of Paper

You might not be able to have conversations or go into combat with this papercraft version of Jack made by tankball, but you’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty freakin’ cool. I mean, geeze, look at how tall this thing is! Although it makes for a slightly creepy picture, this Jack comes apart, too. It’s for easy…

The Heisenberg Conspiracy: Wired‘s posted a whole bunch of theories about how to read Breaking Bad and predict what’ll happen at the end of the series. Some are way too out-there, but a couple are sharply observed and even a little bit mind-blowing.

Watch Blizzard’s New Collectible Card Game In Action

Hey, remember back in March when Blizzard said their new game would be coming out “IRL soon”? Well, they were telling the truth, because they just gave us a beta to show you wonderful people. Take a look at the video for a walk through the opening of the game, a look at the quests,…

The Grim Reality Of Grand Theft Auto Online

GTA Online sounds pretty freakin’ great, right? There’s so much stuff to do, and a lot of it is nonviolent…OR IS IT? That’s the question asked today by Dorkly. Their answer stands in stark contrast to Chris’ more utopian take.

Tales of Xillia The Kotaku Review

Tales of Xillia is pretty awesome. You should totally play it. That’s exactly the sort of review I would have written back in 1995 had I played the very first game in Namco’s long-running role-playing series, Tales of Phantasia, on the Super Famicom. I would have tweaked the wording slightly for each subsequent game, maybe…

Terrific Indie Game Trailer Is Your Gateway To 80 Other Trailers

Skip the first 26 seconds of this trailer for the 2103 PAX Prime Indie Mega Booth. Get right to the good stuff… a cascade of picture-in-picture links to trailers for 80 or so cool-looking indie games. Some of these games are out already. Some are forthcoming. All will be at PAX, the massive open-to-the-public gaming…

This Guy Really Wants Shrek To Be In The New Smash Bros

Oh, Miiverse. You’ve got such amusing characters making all sorts of silly posts. Take “Sakurai” here, a poster which cronicstate found, for instance. Sakurai is almost assuredly a troll, but everyone takes the bait and argues with him over the possibility of having Dreamwork’s Shrek in the new Super Smash Bros. It’s hilarious. For reference,…

Read Polygon‘s Version Of the Harassment Story Folks Are Buzzing About

Did you hear the one about the ex-BioWare writer who supposedly quit her job because she was being harassed? Hopefully not, because that’s wrong, despite it being today’s supposed hot news. That “fact” is wrong, but it’s been ricocheting all around the Internet today thanks to a writer for a publication called Metro getting a…

Are Video Games Taking Over My Life?

What do you do if you don’t like a video game everyone else in the world seems to like? Are you too worried about getting in your gaming fix? What’s your favorite pudding? These questions and more on this week’s Ask Kotaku. Don’t forget to send me questions for next week! Get wild! Ask me…

The Legend Of Cortana: She’s been damsel and savior, commander and follower, and she was a part of the Halo series before the first game even began. Check out this great (spoiler-filled) feature over at Edge Online about the humanity—and inhumanity—of Cortana.

New Beta Test: The closed beta for Hearthstone—Blizzard’s Warcraft-themed card game—has just begun. You can sign up right here