Microsoft Just Bought a Company That'll Help the Xbox Win Your Living Room

Microsoft just bought R2 Studios, a company that Apple and Google were both after, to help the Xbox continue its assault on living rooms across the world. R2 Studios, which was founded by Blake Krikorian (the guy who also made the Slingbox), apparently “works on” technology related to distributing and displaying digital media on televisions.…

Midweek Moneysaver: On the Ninth Day of Christmas …

This Wednesday edition of Kotaku’s The Moneysaver catches all the offers, promotions and bargains that can’t wait until the weekend. The Midweek Moneysaver is brought to you by Dealzon. Software Steam’s Holiday Sale continues to roll out new PC download bargains on a daily basis. The limited time offers listed below are all solid values…

Congrats to The Walking Dead for taking the top spot on Paste‘s (truly outstanding) list of the 30 best games of 2012

Let’s Go Back To Final Fantasy Tactics. Oh, What An Intro This Game Had

The time has come. The time when I will finally play Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s been a blind spot for years, a game that I have wanted to play ever since I became terribly addicted to Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on the Nintendo DS. And now, at the start of 2013, I am going to…

I Can’t Decide If This Call of Duty Troll Is Hilarious Or Annoying As Hell

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of infuriating yet hilarious trolling in Call of Duty by YouTube user NormalDifficulty. I’ve definitely come across this type of player before—and really, the only thing you can do is to ignore em, right? They want you to blow up or react,that’s the point of adopting these affectations. But playing along…

All My Life I’ve Been Told I Was Special. It Was A Lie.

As a child of the 90s I was raised on a steady diet of Disney movies and positive reinforcement. I grew up in a house where abundant praise was given for completion of the most mundane of tasks. Failures were justified and assigned an appropriate cause that absolved me of any wrongdoing. In school phrases…

Jay Z Meets One Of The Best Songs From Chrono Trigger

I wouldn’t have immediately thought that Jay-Z and the “Wind Scene” song from Chrono Trigger would make such excellent bedfellows. And yet they really do. 2 Mello has done a mash-up that mixes Jay Z’s “Ignorant Shit” and the Wind Scene tune from the game, as well as the version by YouTuber mklachu (Lyrics NSFW):…

What Do the Ten Top Grossing iPhone Games of 2012 Have in Common? They’re All Free.

For every overpriced Final Fantasy re-release on iTunes there are dozens of free-to-play social games, refugees from a slowly fading Facebook love affair with microtransaction-driven casual titles finding new sources of revenue in the fertile mobile market. In this year’s list of the top grossing iOS games and apps (available within iTunes), the free-to-play game…

It Took A Complete Stranger To Make Me Fall In Love With Journey

Spoilers for Journey follow. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I’d heard about Journey‘s innovative multiplayer feature, of course; it was impossible to follow video game news in 2012 without reading about how your Journey journey can be peppered with silent, anonymous companions who are pursuing the same quest as you.…

Misunderstood Bro Culture And Their Obnoxious First Person Shooter YouTube Videos

You press play. A homemade logo or two pop up—maybe a clan, or a made-up studio. You notice the name of the player—tons of X’s, maybe a 420 reference, and the rest seems incomprehensible. That’s when the top 40 song begins. Then, it happens: a man dies. Cause of death? Headshot, intentionally timed to connect…

A “Violent Games Exchange” outside Newtown, Conn. says it doesn’t blame games for the tragedy, but will still burn them.

The Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter has surpassed its $2 million goal with just over 2 days left.

Watch All Of FreddieW’s Videos From 2012 Mashed Into One Funky Video/Song Remix

YouTube superstar Freddie Wong has a knack for making fun, special-affected videos based on games, tropes in games, and whatever else about games. Now that we’re sitting firmly in 2013, the first year since 1987 to not repeat a digit, Freddie’s got one more video to commemorate 2012: every video he’s made in that year,…

This Fan-Made Robotech Movie Trailer Will Give You Chills

Just this past week, I was talking about Robotech—the adaptation of the Japanese Macross series that was one of the first crossover anime hits from Japan in the 1980s—with a friend of mine, saying how it was essentially a military soap opera for adolescent boys where the drama was acted out with giant robots. And…

Science, Finally (Kind Of) Proving That Yes, Gamers Can Have Friends. Good Work, Science.

Earlier in the year we asked if gamers could do their thing without being a total shut-in. It’s an important conversation, especially given the stereotypes surrounding gaming and the type of person who games. It’s important enough in fact, that scientists decided to research the answer according to The Atlantic. “They found their participants waiting…

CityVille Eternal Spring Greenhouse: Everything You Need to Know

While there might already be a few ways to create or otherwise “earn” Premium Goods in CityVille, wouldn’t it be easier to simply grow crops that produced these Goods when harvested? Apparently Zynga thinks so, as it has released the new Eternal Spring Greenhouse to our game. We’re here with a guide to this new…

Hold On To Your Butts, It’s A Jurassic Park Game Made In The Half-Life Engine

Boom. Boom. What’s that sound? The coffee on my desk is shaking. Boom. Boom. Oh god, look at that. At the window. It’s a super ambitious Jurassic Park game made using Valve’s source engine. Stay perfectly still, and it won’t be able to see us. The game/mod, called Jurassic Life, is a collaboration between a…

Why The Walking Dead Should Be Game Of The Year

The Walking Dead is lovely in the most horrifying ways. Some people have asked me why anyone would want to subject themselves to something that outwardly seems so depleting. It’s depressing. Haunting. This isn’t one of those games where you face a harrowing plot, but end the story on a happy note by conquering the…

Here Are The Worst Games Of 2012, According To Metacritic

The cynical among us might say that all the games we played this year were ‘awful.’ Fewer titles reached a score of at least 90 or higher in 2012 than in 2011, after all. “We have never encountered such a low total number of great games in a single year,” Metacritic stated on a post…

“Hater Used Hate”: This Hip-Hop RPG Video Is Super Effective at Making You Laugh

At first, the vibe of SG Grey Days’ retro-RPG-styled video didn’t grab me. An overworld that looked like something out of a Genesis-era game? Yawn. But when the random encounter battle with a Wild Hater got underway, I couldn’t stop laughing. The clip is for the Frames of Invincibility EP by rap duo SG Grey…