Tencent Pisses Off Chinese Fans By Buying Manga Rights

Despite all that you read about the tensions between China and Japan, Japanese manga is highly celebrated in China. Chinese people cosplay as Japanese manga characters. They watch Japanese manga inspired animations. And they read manga—that is, until now. Earlier this year, the Chinese internet giant Tencent signed a publishing deal with Shueisha inc, the…

That’s Quite The Capcom Action Figure You Have There

Lost Planet 2 is one of those games time simply stomped all over then punched out of your memory, but with a sequel on the way, the franchise has one more (last?) shot at relevancy. Which is as good a reason as any I can think of for this amazing Lost Planet 2 figure to…

DOTA 2 Match-Fixing Shows E-Sports Still Learning From Real Sports

Gaming network Starladder TV has handed out a number of serious punishments, including a lifetime ban, for a group of DOTA 2 players caught match-fixing for cash. It’s alleged that Alexey ‘Solo’ Berezin, from the team roX.KIS, bet money on his own team losing a match, which they did in what’s been described as a…

A Monster Hunter Game More People Might Actually Play

Look, I know there’s this underground movement trying to get Monster Hunter going in the West, but most people – myself included – just aren’t feeling it. Mostly that’s down to the combat and reliance on party multiplayer, but I’m starting to wonder if the game’s looks don’t have something to do with it. At…

All Game Of Thrones Needed Was An 80’s Training Montage

Violence! Witty banter! Politics! Nudity! Fancy dresses! Lemon cakes! Game of Thrones has just about everything. Everything except an 80’s movie training montage. Fixed. If you need to know who that is on vocals, it is Australia’s greatest treasure, John Farnham. And it’s from this movie. God, this might be the best paragraph of links…

Caught Flatfooted by Xbox 360, EA Sports Vows It Won’t Happen Again

Few sports video games are truly timeless. Even the best—MVP Baseball 2005, NFL 2K5—show their age and shortcomings immediately, and more than their contemporaries in other genres. It’s the special burden of sports titles, tasked with reflecting both the state of the art and the state of reality inside a one-year snapshot. But eight years…

Beautiful Custom PS3 Consoles Exist To Make You Super Jealous

Sony has a long-running tradition of customising PlayStation consoles, sometimes giving them to celebrities, a tradition that continues to this day. One of the men responsible for these amazing one-of-a-kind machines is Javier Riquelme. Over the weekend he shared examples of some consoles he recently had made for Sony, and they will make you look…

Moneysaver One-Shot: Playstation 4 Bundles

Bundle up, it’s gonna be a cheap ride. Retailers have a tendency to take advantage of supply constraints by forcing early adopters into crappy bundles during a console’s launch. Amazon is bucking that trend with two bundles that offer legitimate savings. The Battlefield 4 Launch Day Bundle includes the console, along with Battlefield 4, a…

Though 4J Studios, which is handling Minecraft‘s Xbox One edition, said it is trying to allow importation of gamesaves from Minecraft on the Xbox 360, Microsoft studios’ Phil Spencer said it won’t happen. “Bigger worlds don’t translate between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.”

Police Blotter: Magic: The Burglaring

Crime is a constant feature of video games writing. Somewhere, someone is doing something illicit with them—sometimes comically stupid, sometimes tragic. Games and consoles are currency, objects of dispute, sometimes even weapons themselves. Kotaku‘s Police Blotter is here to round up the latest in games crime. Disappearing Magic Act SALINA, Kansas—Twenty-eight Magic: The Gathering cards,…

The Week in Games: Ready Player Two

A modest week for new releases trails the end of E3. New Super Luigi U is the only console release, coming to the Wii U eShop on Thursday. Otherwise, there’s the Jak and Daxter Collection for PS Vita on Tuesday. Tuesday • Knights of Pen & Paper: +1 Edition (PC, Mac) • Jak and Daxter…

Can an Oculus Rift Game Make You ‘Genuinely Horny?’ They’re Gonna Try.

Somehow, porn managed not to be the first thing folks started putting on the Oculus Rift when the VR simulator headset started going out to developers. Well, wait no longer. Someone is building “the world’s first erotic virtual reality adventure game” for it. Jeroen Van den Bosch and his startup studio are building a game…

A PlayStation Plus subscription may be required for online multiplayer on the PS4, but it won’t required when the console gets DC Universe Online and Planetside 2, both of which are free to play. DCUO’s PS4 version will also be cross compatible with the PC title.

Moneysaver One-Shot: A 4K TV For $966

Rising pixel counts, falling prices. A lot of people have written off 4K is being something for the far-flung future, both because of its price and how long it will take for content to be widely available. To counter that argument, here’s a 4K TV for $966. Dealzmodo covered it yesterday at $1080, and Gizmodo…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Roll Out the Barrel

Mr. Iwata, Reggie (in particular) and Miyamoto have been great friends to the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest over its three year history, so we’re going back to them again with this pic from E3, which I’d like to think Nintendo shot just for your amusement. This one one was a mortal lock for the contest from…

Here’s a Look at One of the iPhone’s New Game Controllers

With Steve Jobs no longer around to tell us these things aren’t elegant enough for his device, it appears we’ll finally get a proper gamepad for the iOS this year. This will be one of them, made by Logitech. Can’t tell you who gave it to us or where it was seen, but we can…

Sunday Comics: Smash Brothers

Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published June 12. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published June…

Good news! Game Center CX, the great Japanese video game program, is being turned into a feature film. It’ll be out in spring 2014 in Japan.

Protesting Piracy in China with…Blow-Up Dolls

Late last week at Peking University in Beijing, China, men wearing skimpy underwear and carrying inflatable friends streaked the university’s north campus and tried to jump into Weiming Lake. Then, university security showed up. That’s when all hell broke loose. Note: This post contains content some readers might find objectionable. Campus security seized the men,…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Power of Wub: The Winners

For the first time in history, we had a three-time finalist in the latest edition of the Kotaku’ Shop Contest, which sought to make Saints Row IV‘s “Dubsteb Gun” even more ridiculous than it already is. But he wasn’t the overall winner. Who was? Menome! (above) Duck season! Wabbit season! Wub season! Fire! First, the…