Turnover at game companies is high. But Japanese game developers who work on big titles for big companies tend to stay put. But what happens when your company is being eclipsed? In the past few years, the Japanese mobile and social game industry has exploded. Companies like DeNa and Gree are doing great business, while…
The way that licensed products are remixed and reworked in China is endlessly fascinating. Thanks to lax laws (laws that are increasingly less lax), Chinese businesses can get away with things they never could in other countries. Increasingly, more and more Chinese are turning their noses up at knock-offs, demanding the real deal. Still, I…
Aquapazza, the upcoming PS3 fighter, has been pushed back from June 28 to July 26 in Japan. The developer didn’t not disclose why the game was delayed. [Aqua Plus]
Leave it to Japan to explain correct weapon use in manga form. A new book, Drawing! Gun and Knife Combat Pose Style Graphics, claims to do just that. The book has over 800 color as well as black-and-white photos and manga style illustrations of various weapons and females showing how to hold said weapons. There…
English is the most widely used lingo on the internet. But in a few years, that will change. Currently, English comprises 27 percent of the internet. Each year, it keeps getting smaller and smaller. In 2005, English was 32 percent of the net, and in 2000, it was 39 percent. Chinese, on the other hand,…
Remember The World Ends with You? In a recent interview with Tetsuya Nomura, the he said this about the game: “Now, I still can’t say anything… But, something, perhaps there will be something.” Hope it’s not a social game! [FF-Union]
Valeria Lukyanova is the self-proclaimed “most famous woman on the Russian-language internet”. The 21 year-old Ukrainian first made a splash in her native Ukraine and neighboring Russia a few years back with her anime-style Barbie doll looks. Previously, Kotaku ran photos of Valeria, who is also known as “Amatue” and “Boginya” (“The Goddess” in Russian).…
A Windows phone game, developed by Austrian Christian Zangl, has been blocked from release in China not because it contained contentious political commentary. It’s been blocked because it featured the sound of a flushing toilet. According to Microsoft, that makes it offensive to the Chinese market, and “Content that is offensive in any country/region to…
Japan’s biggest girl group, AKB48, starred in a new series of candy ads that aren’t only raising eyebrows, but also ire. In the ads, the girls passed pieces of Puccho soft candy to each other via their mouths, making it look like they are kissing. The commercial has been getting complaints from parents concerned about…
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Dr. Who and Portal get an unlikely crossover in this 3D image by Aussie artist David C. Simon, who actually works as a writer at BioWare’s Austin studio. Aperture Daleks [The Dalek Factor, via technabob]
On Friday, a user on the Flamehaus forums uploaded a very convincing pdf, complete with accompanying photo, of a new book called Valve: Handbook For New Employees Joining the pdf is an apparent email from Valve’s Greg Coomer, saying it was written to “make it as easy as we could for new people to join…
Forget Noir. Forget LA Noire. This is Star Noir. Or, as I’m going to call it, Episode IV: A Noir Hope When Obi-Wan gets Luke and the droids past an Imperial roadblock, it’s good for a laugh and we, as an audience, move on. We never once pause to think about what happened after, to…
Capcom is out of ideas (or at least the willpower) for new Mega Man games. Little Mark here, though, Mark is a fountain of ideas. Not only does he know everything about the Blue Bomber and his games, he knows exactly what he wants from a new Mega Man game. Bonus: I know it’s long,…
That is, unless your city is Tokyo, and Godzilla can stop them. Royal de Luxe is a French performance art company whose centrepiece are enormous marionette dolls, so large they need an industrial-size frame to control and which end up scaled more on a “Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” size than a “Doll for Little Girls”…
Just in time for The Avengers, Hot Toys has released images of its stunning Captain America figure. While it won’t actually be released in time for the superhero flick, it will come with two interchangeable heads, two shields, four sets of hands and a very fancy gun. He’ll retail for over $200, and will be…
Mass Effect is fancy, don’t you know? Fancy enough to wear suits. And all it takes is a fancy camera and a wonderful costume to bring Pokémon ladies to life. Those, and more hard truths in cosplay, can be found in this week’s Fancy Pants roundup. We’ve also got an incredible Cloud from Final Fantasy,…
A false alarm related to keylogging, which seemed like a pretty raw deal for a promising fan remake of classic platformer Sonic 2, turned out to be just the tip of a giant iceberg scientists have named “Drama”. One that’s now sunk the promising game. We later learned that the project, once a community-developed game,…
Japanese artist Shunya Yamashita is to thank for these sketches of the cast of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, used as promotional art for the 2011 arcade fighter. Interestingly, they’re also forming the basis for Kotobukiya’s fancy “Bishoujo” line of Tekken figures You can see the entire collection at the link below. Tekken Tag 2 –…
Just over a week since we last got a good look at the game/s, Nintendo has released a second proper trailer for the upcoming Pokémon Black & White 2 Both games will be out in Japan on June 23, and in the US and Europe sometime in the Fall.
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