Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata says a “free to play” model might be used for new games with no established fan base.

The New Final Fantasy XIV Opening Is a Ball of Fire and Pretty Pictures

Gotta give Final Fantasy studio Square Enix this: man, they can sure make dazzling cutscenes. Here is the new prologue for the revamped Final Fantasy XIV. Square Enix is massively overhauling its massive online FF game. Previously, Square Enix showed off a dungeon in the new Final Fantasy XIV. If you missed that, watch that…

Human Butt Pillows Are Both Expensive and Creepy

Soine-ya is a “snoozing with women” establishment that first opened in Tokyo’s gaming and geek district, Akihabara. Since then, Soine-ya has become popular enough to open another branch in Tokyo’s Shinjuku. Soine-ya is just sleeping with women, not sleeping with women. But for a price, you can rest your head on some woman’s tush. A…

How To Make a Chinese MMO Worse: Put It on Mobile Phones

Chinese massively multiplayer online games are usually nothing to write home about; they have the pretty much the same tropes, similar artwork, and in the end they are just plain boring grind fests. So what happens when you take a generic Chinese MMO and move it onto a mobile device? It gets a lot worse.…

A poll of 1,000 Japanese folks revealed that only 15% want to buy a WiiU. Over 50% don’t feel like buying one!

The Alien from Aliens Was Originally Chinese, Alleges Flea Market Art Find

Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger is credited with designing the Alien (née Xenomorph) from the iconic movies and games. The character appeared in a 1976 work by Giger. But could it be actually much older than that? That’s what one internet user named Zhao is claiming in China. This painting, Zhao blogs, was allegedly…

Corrupt Chinese Officials Gamble with Taxpayers’ Money in Arcades

Arcades in China have an unfortunate association with gambling parlors, due to the fact that gambling in all forms is technically illegal in China proper, sans Macao. Normally, arcade gambling dens are deemed low class establishments where locals gamble away their money in backrooms, however one business executive for a Chinese State-owned enterprise ended up…

One Last Gasp of Cosplay Insanity

With a name like Comic Market, you’d think the late December event in Tokyo would be all about manga. It’s so not. While Kotaku’s Toshi Nakamura was getting an insider’s look at the event, outside in the chilly cold, fans donned colorful, creative, and often crazy outfits, bringing their favorite video game, anime, and manga…

The Lonely World of Japan’s Roadside Arcades

Saitama is located outside Tokyo. And like most areas surrounding giant cities, it gets a bad rap and has earned the nickname “Dasaitama” (ダ埼玉). That’s a word play on “Saitama” and the Japanese word for uncool, “dasai” (ダサい). I’d agree if there weren’t ramshackle roadside arcades which are more than desolate and decrepit. They’re endearing.…

Naruto and .hack// game studio CyberConnect2 is working on three original titles

A Gallery of Hamburger Horrors

The service you get at McDonald’s in Japan is world class. The staff is polite and prompt, and there’s still a focus on presentation. So it’s a shame that McDonald’s just screwed things up. In Japan, McDonald’s is mucking things up with a special promotion. Called “Enjoy! 60 Second Service”, the concept is that if…

It’s A Monitor That Sits on Your Desk. And Your Lap.

Small-time peripheral company GeChic feel that there’s a place in the market for a portable monitor. A slimmer version of your desktop monitor that can run on battery power. After using one for a week I’m not so sure, even if their hearts are in the right place. With an official title of “On-Lap 2501M”,…

Wonderful Lord of the Rings Art That Goes On And On

Chinese artist Jian Guo is a very talented man, and a massive Lord of the Rings fan. The gorgeous images you’re about to see are testament to this. The Hobbit piece up top is a highlight (and a timely one at that), but there are pictures from other Tolkien works here as well. You can…

Fantastic Grand Theft Auto V Art Brightens Up Your Monday Morning

Over the weekend, Rockstar collected every piece of promotional art so far made available for Grand Theft Auto V, cleaned them up, made sure each had a nice big background behind them then then scaled them to wallpaper size. Some feature the game’s main protagonists, some don’t. Some give us a good look at locations…

Get a Good Look At Nvidia’s New Gaming Handheld

PC hardware company Nvidia dropped quite the CES bombshell tonight, revealing a quirky new gaming handheld that doubles as an Android device as well as a means of streaming your PC games to a portable 720p display. To go with the information from Project Shield’s announcement, here’s a gallery of images giving you a good…

StarCraft’s Kerrigan Is The Queen Of Blades Cosplay

The standout piece of cosplay this week is the StarCraft Ghost photo you see above, by Jessica Dru. If you think it looks just like Kerrigan does on StarCraft II, that’s because Jessica actually got her hands on the official Kerrigan costume Blizzard used to promote the game. Some might call that cheating, but I…

Oh Yeah, Nvidia Also Officially Outs the World’s Fastest Mobile Processor

So there I was, prepping a post on Nvidia’s Tegra 4 processor, the successor to the Tegra 3 with six times the graphics processing power and all sorts of nifty advancements that really seem boring now compared to the Shield portable gaming device The Tegra 4 features 72 GeForce GPU cores—at least ten times the…

Nvidia, Out Of Nowhere, Announces A New Gaming Handheld

Nvidia just surprised a whole bunch of people by announcing, of all things, a dedicated gaming handheld during the company’s CES press conference. Based on the new Tegra 4 mobile chip, also announced at the show, it’s code-named Nvidia Shield. There are 5-10 hours of battery life, and it’s based on a clamshell design, sort…

Someone Is Re-Building The Entire Planet In Minecraft

Using a program called Worldpainter, a builder by the name of lentebriesje is trying to recreate all of planet Earth in Minecraft. At a 1:1500 scale. That is a lot of blocks. His Earth is based off this very large, very fancy 3D map of the planet, and while it doesn’t include anything man-made, it…

The World’s Newest Console Is Already Being Used For Street Fighter, Mario 64

If you were unexcited by the fact the new Ouya console runs Android games, remember: if it runs Android, it can run emulated games working on the platform. And as anyone with an Android phone can tell you, that’s a lot of games. Users on the Ouya Boards who are already in possession of one…