AR Games in Real Life: The Winners

Last week’s ‘Shop Contest asked readers to imagine the 3DS’ AR Games as a kind of special lens through which we see the world as it really is, not as our feeble minds perceive it. What they showed us was quite disturbing, indeed. First off, plenty of folks tried a Star Wars angle. Both ARYXANDRE…

AR Games in Real Life Finalists

When Will the One-Year Career Come to an End?

It really doesn’t matter how many times My Player is an NBA All-Star, nor how durable he is on the Road to the Show, or to Glory, or to the Masters. Every one of them will suffer a career-ending injury: The release of next year’s game. More than five years into its modern concept, the…

Valve Turns to ‘Singleplayer-Plus,’ not ‘No More Singleplayer,’ Says Chief

Practically anything said institutionally by Valve, or especially by its co-founder, Gabe Newell, is parsed for any potential meaning to the unannounced, eternally awaited Half-Life 2: Episode 3. So when Newell, in an all-access feature charting the development of Portal 2, said the game was “probably” the last one with any isolated single-player experience, Half-Life…

Black Ops PS3 Bundle Coming in Three Weeks

A pair of retail sources informs Kotaku that a Call of Duty: Black Ops PlayStation 3 bundle will be available in North America on May 24. The unit—which features a 160 GB hard drive—lists for $299.99 USD. Kotaku has reached out to representatives of Activision and Sony Computer Entertainment. Any comment will be updated here.

Which One Is Worse?

At this point, after 17 days with no end in sight, it’s fair to ask the question. the PlayStation Network Outage, or the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death: Which is worse? Let’s leave aside the data breach, though it is one of the largest in history, and is the feature of this disaster that…

Gears of War 3‘s Big Head Mode in Action

Gears of War 3 will offer a novelty big-head mode, and those in the game’s multiplayer beta saw it in action yesterday. In addition to quadrupling the dome size, COG and Locust will speak in higher pitched voices. This should make headshots a lot sillier. Click to view Xbox 360 Games – E3 2011 –…

The Best Videos of the Week

Maybe you couldn’t keep up with your favorite Gawker Media sites this week. Or perhaps you could just use something fun to do this afternoon. Well, whatever the reason, we’ve got your prescription: Here are some of the best videos we watched during the crazy, post-bin Laden week that was. Video of Osama’s $1,000,000 Secret…

Modern Warfare 3 to Get a June Reveal

To no one’s surprise, there will be a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. (C’mon, when Electronic Arts’ CEO is talking tough about Battlefield 3 versus Call of Duty, he doesn’t mean Black Ops.) Official PlayStation Magazine‘s latest edition includes a teaser for the game’s big reveal in next month’s edition. See it here.

The Zero-Dollar Perfect Game

2K Sports will give you a million bucks if you toss a perfect game, under a set of conditions that read like the terms of a hostage negotiation. So far, no one’s claimed that prize. But Box Scores can verify its first perfect game submission, worth exactly $0 – because it was thrown on MLB…

Sony Scrubs Personal Data Published by Hackers

Reuters’ Japan bureau reports that hackers uploaded data they’d stolen from Sony servers during the PlayStation breach, but that Sony quickly had the unnamed website removed. The information concerned some 2,500 users and was at least 10 years old. The information was collected during a 2001 sweepstakes campaign and concerned names and partial addresses; no…

Do You Have Happy Scrappy Hero Pup?

One second, I’m on the phone with the distribution house now. I need one of each of the following – You know, on second thought, let’s just skip the quote this week. (You can watch the scene here. Language NSFW.) Hardware • Any Xbox 360 console sold and shipped by Amazon (4GB, 250GB, or either…

Watch Gamers Kill Osama in Recreation of SEALs Assault on Compound

Gamers can play through the final, fatal moments of Osama Bin Laden’s last stand in Abbottabad, Pakistan in the latest, last episode of video war game Kuma War II In The Death of Osama bin Laden, players are randomly selected to take on the roles of either U.S. Navy SEALS or the men defending Bin…

Gee, Kevin Butler’s Been Awful Quiet Lately

Kevin Butler, the voluble, if fake, PlayStation executive, has nearly 84,000 Twitter followers. His approval rating, if it was measured, would assuredly be sky-high among hardcore gamers. And he has been dead silent since the beginning of the PlayStation Network Outage, now in its third week with no signs of ending. Check his feed: April…

Take It From The Big Mouth!

Well, kids, we did it. We survived another work week, watched another seven days of our lives slip away. Hooray! Wait, that sounded pretty grim, didn’t it? Well, this is the place to cheer each other up! In our last semi-nightly open thread for the week, we’ll just take it easy. Have a drink. Have…

China Unveils the iSec, Its First Game Console

China is closed off to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo’s consoles, meaning the first console available for sale in that country – aside from the knockoffs, of course – will be home grown. Today the iSec, renamed from the “eBox” announced last year, was unveiled. Made by a Beijing company that’s funded by Lenovo – China’s…

Sony’s Latest Update on PlayStation Network Status Doesn’t Sound Good

If you we’re expecting to go online with your PlayStation 3 or PSP this weekend, you might want to make other plans. In the latest update from Sony Computer Entertainment on the status of its currently offline PlayStation Network, it sounds like we’re in for a longer wait than we (or Sony) expected. Sony said…

The Family That Plays (Online) Together, Stays Together

Research suggests that family communication improves if the group are playing online video games together, but if a single member is gaming, it suffers greatly as the gaming becomes a substitute for healthy communication. That sounds like a call any counselor could make, but it’s an important finding in the changing nature of family relationships…

PAX 2011 Sold Out of Three-Day Passes

Getting into Penny Arcade Expo’s flagship show in Seattle, on Labor Day weekend, is notoriously difficult if you trek up there without a pass. The three-day variety for PAX 2011 is now officially sold out, according to the expo’s official Twitter feed. They’ve been processing some refunds, freeing up stock incrementally, so there’s an off…

With PSP Sales Like These in Japan, Who Needs the NGP?

Yes, yes, it was a Nintendo DS game that managed to outsell everything else in Japan this week—Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 Professional—but it was the continued strength of PSP hardware in Japan that seemed most impressive. Square Enix’s latest Dragon Quest spin-off managed to reclaim the top spot this week against new competition like…