Rest In Peace, PlayStation 2 (2000-2012)

Having stopped shipping in Japan last year, The Guardian has confirmed with Sony that PlayStation 2 production has now ceased worldwide. Let that sink in for a second. There are no more PlayStation 2 consoles being made. Anywhere. Once the new consoles already on shelves are gone, that’s it. While it’s almost 13 years old,…

The Speakys—Your Games of the Year—Have Been Named, Now Pick the Best

The votes are in, and you have spoken. The second annual Speakys, the Kotaku community-voted awards organized by GiantBoyDetective, have named their individual category winners. From here, the category winners will be faced off in a vote to determine the Speakys’ overall game of the year. Remember, tomorrow Kotaku will be conferring its Game of…

Did Sports Video Games Really Get Any Better in 2012?

Earlier this week, Metacritic bemoaned 2012 as a year of poorer review scores for video games than the one preceding it. Fewer titles surpassed the all-important 90—which practically guarantees job security to those who developed or greenlit the project—than in 2011. Interestingly, the three console platforms’ average review scores all improved slightly. This isn’t proof…

The Week in Games: A Long Winter’s Nap

The Week in Games is back but, as is expected in January, we don’t have much to share. The western release of Anarchy Reigns is the lone console title. It doesn’t look like things pick up again until next week, when DmC: Devil May Cry arrives. Monday • Sesame Street TV – Season 2 (360…

1993: The Birth of DLC

There’s a past-is-prologue quality to a lot what wwwtxt curates and sends out over its Twitter feed, exemplified by this nugget published on Friday. wwwtxt is not a bot. It’s Daniel Rehn, an artist and “media archaeologist,” who culls discussions before 1995, the beginning of the commercial Internet as we know it. The sources include…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Balloon Snake

It’s been a while since we’ve had this kind of an it-shops-itself exploitable: Solid Snake made out of balloons, with a mesmerizing stare that could be made to express any emotion or fit any situation. Some folks already got a head start on this when Tina posted the image on Friday. We’ll let everyone else…

Author of The Warriors, Cult Film Adapted to Hit Video Game, Dies at 88

Sol Yurick, the writer whose 1965 novel “The Warriors” was adapted into a film 14 years later—which then became one of the best adapted works ever in video gaming—died this weekend. He was 88. Yurick’s work itself was a loose adaptation of a story told 2,300 years before: Anabasis, which chronicles the journey of Greek…

Sunday Comics: Some of My Best Friends are …

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published Dec. 31. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published Jan. 4. Read more of…

We’ve All Been Fooled by the ‘Firefly MMO‘ [UPDATE 2]

If you think there’s going to be an MMO based on or “inspired by” Firefly, well, you’re not alone. So did I yesterday, and we’ve all been trolled. [Update] This story has taken a few more turns. The upshot is that it may not be a hoax after all. For the latest, check out this…

A Note About Sunday Comics

Nerd Rage, by Andy Kluthe, has joined our lineup, beginning today. We haven’t gotten rid of Nerf This, which many of you have pointed out doesn’t carry much of a gaming theme. That said, it was voted in by the readership, and I don’t feel like being a dick to Nerf This creator Scott Ferguson…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest Year-End All-Star Extravaganza

Anything goes and anything went as we asked you to revisit the exploitables and callbacks of the year that was 2012. halfbeast’s bitchin’ fightstick leads our roundup of overall finalists, with hat-tips to all-stars sciteach, uscg_pa, and returning champ Pan_1da7. Thanks to all who participated. There’s a ‘Shop Contest tomorrow, etc. AirCairo azureguy Galogon halfbeast…

GLaDOS Did Appear in Pacific Rim‘s Trailer, but Won’t Return for the Movie

When Pacific Rim‘s latest trailer (above) went out last month, a lot of people thought, “Wait! I know that voice!” And indeed, it sounds like Jax Teller reading from “The Life and Death of Sam Crow” as an enormous sea monster destroys a bridge. Oh yeah, GLaDOS from the Portal series can be heard as…

Street Fighter X Mega Man will get a Version Two to “tighten” some issues. Capcom says it’ll be here “very soon.”

Load “BioShock Infinite”,8,1

Irrational Games’ Ken Levine finds a diplomatic answer to a sticky question. If you think that’d load slow on a Datasette, think about downloading it on a 300 baud VICModem.

This Week in the Business: ‘Prospects for PS Vita in 2013 Don’t Look Any Rosier.’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Prospects for PS Vita in 2013 don’t look any rosier.”—West Coast editor for GamesIndustry.biz, Steve Peterson, outlines the biggest losers of 2012 and why Sony’s portable unfortunately made the list. QUOTE | “I played Mario Galaxy 2 for about an hour…

Report: Warner Bros. Interactive Interested in Bidding on THQ’s Assets

A bankruptcy judge yesterday did not approve the bidding procedures THQ proposed in selling off its assets, which THQ’s creditors had complained was rigged to sell the whole thing to a private equity firm for $60 million. Now comes a report that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is an interested buyer. The word comes from Distressed…

The Moneysaver: Walking in a Winter Download-land

Digital downloads lead the list of offers this week, particularly as Steam’s always-popular holiday bonanza is closing down gets an encore lasting through Monday. Green Man Gaming has discounts on 10 preorders between now and April, and a coupon code currently on offer will stack on that, so give it a look if what you…

The Best Of Kotaku, This Week

Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week’s best content. You see that up there? That up there is what we call wishful thinking, also known as a potentially awesome video game realization of one of the best comics there is: Calvin & Hobbes. Unfortunately it’s currently just a…

I Don’t Understand Why These Skyrim Mudcrabs Are So Funny

Help, I think I’m suffering from a mild case of idiocy. What is it about this video by YouTube user NormalDifficulty that I find so amusing? Is it because the mudcrabs are so posh, wearing tophats, monocles and whatnot? Is it that they sound so accusatory? How they gang up on the adventurer? Maybe the…

Forget Wikipedia. Let Urban Dictionary Tell You About The Biggest Games.

Urban Dictionary is so weird. Once, it was used mostly to define slang. But now? You can search for just about anything and it’ll have a number of amusing user-defined entries. It’s like Wikipedia, only more unruly. Here are how Urban Dictionary users are describing the biggest gaming franchises. It’s as silly as you might…