Seven Years Later, Sony’s CEO Doesn’t Mind All the Memes

From five-hundred ninety-nine U.S. dollars and Riiiiiiidge Racer seven years ago to more flattering presentations today, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has been one of the gaming industry’s most .gif-able and meme-able public figures. Hirai wants you to know he’s cool with that. Of course, Hirai might be sanguine because Microsoft is gettin’ toe up about…

No Retro Games in Future Animal Crossings—With One Possible Exception

The first Animal Crossing game released in the U.S. in 2001 let players add joy to their villager’s treasure-digging and furniture-arranging lives by collecting and playing emulated Nintendo Entertainment System games. There were Nintendo games within that Nintendo game. That’s not coming back, the series’ creator told Kotaku “Please consider it’s not happening ever again,”…

The Week in Games: At Least Someone’s Still Excited About Xbox

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Xbox is the only thing that has investors excited about Microsoft, so it makes little sense to divest.”—Analyst Asif Khan, talking about other analysts’ comments that Microsoft should sell its Xbox business QUOTE | “We could kill this industry if we…

The Best of Kotaku, The Week Of June 3rd

It’s almost E3! Kotaku Selects is going to be busy next weekend, but we have plenty of our best stuff to show you from the past week. Check it out over here. I’ll be in LA for next week’s round-up, but Fahey will keep you all comforted. See you guys on the flip side. As…

You Only Need To Vaguely Look Like Ryan Gosling To Reap The Benefits

Doug here is most certainly not Ryan Gosling. But add a hoodie and some sunglasses and most people wouldn’t be able to tell—as shown by this video by MojoInTheMorning Granted, Gosling was filming something in that city at the time, and that probably predisposed some folk to seeking Ryan Gosling out. Still—I can’t help but…

The Internet Response League wants to turn gaming’s popularity into a humanitarian effort. If we took a minute to sort through crisis information (like Tweets) during a disaster, we’d be a huge help. Right now, there’s nothing in place to bring this vision to reality—IRL is looking for collaborators.

The Xbox One Might Seem Like A Horror Show Now, But That Could Change

So far, much of what we’ve seen about the Xbox One hasn’t been good, and yesterday’s news about iffy policies around internet connections, used games, and loaning games isn’t reassuring. Here’s another quote from Microsoft that was lost in the shuffle yesterday—it’s worth keeping in mind. Hopefully, the internet’s backlash against some of what we’ve…

Well-known vocalist Peter Hollens has put together this very nice a cappella version of “The Rains of Castamere” from Game of Thrones You may recognize Hollens from such YouTube performances as “Game of Thrones theme with Lindsey Stirling,” “Skyrim theme with Lindsey Stirling,” and recently, “That one song from The Hobbit.”

Monday Is The Perfect Day For Apple To Reveal A Game Controller

Monday marks the beginning of Apple’s 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference, where the tech giant is expected to reveal some of the enhancements coming to the next iteration of iOS. What if one of those enhancements is support for external gamepads for its iDevices? Indeed, what if Apple, on the eve of the biggest game industry…

Six Reviewers Say The Last Of Us Thrives On Story And Character

Uncharted developer Naughty Dog’s upcoming PS3-exclusive The Last of Us is a grim, grim survival horror game. Critics, however, found that beneath its bleak, dark exterior, The Last of Us hides a deep, extremely rewarding experience. Apart from a few technical issues, like the AI being wonky in places, reviews talked at length about the…

Hopefully This Is A New Move In The Next Smash Bros (And Other GIFs)

E3 is in just a few days, but that doesn’t mean this week is devoid of weird and screwy GIFs the Internet likes to have fun with. Quite the contrary. So before we prepare Photoshop for undoubtedly silly GIFs from the big E3 conferences, let’s see what the Internet has been up to this week.…

How To Dress At The Zelda Symphony. Plus, Other Advice.

It’s a first for Ask Kotaku! I thought my column was getting a little unwieldy, what with how long it was getting, and figured it might be fun to do a video-formatted one for this week. But the gist is the same: you ask me questions, and I give you advice. We’ve got some life…

Luke Schneider of RadianGames makes great mobile games but they haven’t been available on Android. Until now. Schneider’s bringing his excellent Tetris-alike Slydristo Google Play, with other games like the very good Bombcats and Inferno+ to follow. He’ll be bringing some of the RadianGames catalog to Ouya, too.

A Game That Wants To Teach Women How To Masturbate

And here I thought people were joking when they said we’re slowly turning everything into a game. Nope. Gamification has a new target, and it’s female masturbation. Now, masturbation on the whole has a stigma. Hairy palms, what have you. But some would say it’s especially bad with women given societal pressures to maintain purity.…

Report: Gaming Hacker SuperDaE Facing Child Porn, Dishonesty Charges [UPDATE]

The Australian hacker who breached Sony, Microsoft, Epic, Valve, Blizzard and other gaming companies before being raided by authorities in February is facing an array of unseemly charges, according to a report by an Australian wire service. The report by the AAP wire service in The Australian indicates that the teen hacker who goes by…

If nothing else, The Witness—the next title from Braid creator Jonathan Blow—is going to be meticulously detailed. After offering insight about the footsteps, a new development blog post talks about the trees going into the puzzle-exploration game.

I Played The New Animal Crossing With The People Who Made It

I’m a lucky gamer. I get to play games with the people who make them. I know it’s the job and that it’s usually tied to selling something, to puffing up a preview or what have you, but, hey, it’s also fun. It’s odd, too. You’re in this virtual world with the people who made…

Why Voice Actors Matter

If Ubisoft wanted me to pay loads of money for Splinter Cell: Blacklist DLC, then they’d offer an audio track of Michael Ironside doing all the Sam Fisher dialogue. Charge me $20. I’d pay it. Seriously. Back when the first Splinter Cell game came out, I never thought I’d ever care about what Sam Fisher…

Don’t Freak Out About That The Last of Us “Spoiler” You Saw Just Yet

Last week, I was chatting with my boss Stephen about The Last of Us. We were both playing through the game, and he was acting as a sounding board as I worked on my review. Suddenly, I got a worrying text from him: “A reader just let me know some asshole is in our comments…

This Isn’t The Trailer For The New Smash Bros. Game, But It Should Be

Okay, so this “trailer” for the new Smash Bros by seinfeldspitstain is not in any way real. But who cares about that? The sheer ridiculousness of badly rendered Smash characters is worth watching anyway; it’s so silly. Silly, and yet I’d totally play this. (Via Nick Robinson) Super Smash Bros. Universe – E3 2013 Trailer…