• Reviews

  Pocket God Micro-Review: Heaven or Hell?

  You are god. That’s the premise of iPhone app Pocket God from the two-man developer team Bolt Creative. But is it a heavenly experience or a hellish one? In Pocket God, players are a divine hand. As the first sentence of this review explains, you are god. And, as god, you can do pretty much…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  British Sales Charts: You Dance

  It seems our warnings were for naught. And now Britain suffers, with Ubisoft’s Just Dance the best-selling game in the country. You’ve nobody to blame but yourselves. Well, not literally you lot. You probably went out and bought Army of Two, or Bayonetta, or Darksiders. No, you’re looking for somebody to blame, blame your mum.…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  People Still Writing Scripts For Warcraft Movie

  Whether or not famed director Sam Raimi does the Warcraft movie in the near future is anyone’s guess. Just in case he does, though, the movie’s engines are being kept running. Robert Tapert, producer on the project, has told iFM “It’s in development. We’re in the outline/story/script phase”. Which in movie language means early days,…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Wii Balance Board Goes Forth In The Name Of Science

  While the Wii Balance Board‘s usefulness as a fitness device are questionable, there’s no doubts over its ability to perform as a…rehabilitative “force platform”. That’s a device used by doctors to measure the balance of a person recovering from a stroke (or similar injury), employed when the patient is “relearning” how to walk. While lab-grade…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Why There’s A Naked Final Fantasy XIII Character Model

  Looking through the assets on the Final Fantasy XIII game disk data, Japanese website MADOKA Park! apparently noticed something. Something naked. After looking through the disk and turning up character models for all the main characters as well as main Summons and weapons, the site discovered a character model for Oerba Dia Vanille, and she…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Super Mario Bros Wii. Fastest Wii Title To Hit Three Million In Japan

  Going on sale in Japan on December 3, 2009, Wii title New Super Mario Bros. Wii has sold over 3 million games. In Japan, that’s not just fast for a Wii title, it’s the fastest. In its first seven weeks on sale, the game moved 3,002,753 units, making it the fastest title to hit the…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  So, Does Japan Actually Read Game Magazines?

  Apparently! Some people read Japanese game magazines like Famitsu when scans leak early onto the internet. Other people actually buy the print publications. But how many? The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association has released circulation numbers for domestic video games magazines. Data is between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009. Title: Weekly Famitsu Publisher: Enterbrain…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Vietnam Finally Gets The PlayStation 2 (And PS3, PSP)

  Over the weekend, Sony Computer Entertainment began operations in Vietnam, marking the first time the PlayStation brand has been officially sold in the communist state. Sony’s first sanctioned (as in, not privately imported) PlayStation products in the country went on sale on Saturday morning, with the120GB PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable (the PSP-3000) and PlayStation 2…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Etrian Odyssey III Pushed Back

  Upcoming Nintendo DS role-playing game Etrian Odyssey III: Visitor From Star Ocean from developer Atlus has been delayed in Japan. The game was originally slated for a March 4 release. Joining the typical dungeon crawling of the previous Etrian Odyssey games, the third installment will also feature ocean exploring. Atlus attributed the delay to “various…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Plenty More TF2 Updates On The Way

  Over two years on from the game’s release, every Team Fortress 2 class save the Engineer has received a major update. Does that mean, then, that there’s only one major update left in the game? No way. In an interview with Team Fortress 2 community site Community Fortress, Valve’s Robin Walker has said “We’ve got…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  What Do Gundam, Pro Evo and Nintendo Games Have In Common?

  Last year in Japan, people bought tons of ’em, that’s what. Enterbrain, the publisher behind Japanese game magazine Famitsu, has released sales data for fifty biggest selling games of last year. The data was collected for the dates between December 28, 2008 and December 27, 2009. Where applicable, the data in the parenthesis is the…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Party Like It’s 2009 With Yakuza 3 Screens

  So what if Yakuza 3 has been out in Japan since forever. It’s now on its way to the West, meaning we can get excited about it all over again.

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Kenka Bancho, The Badass Gallery of Tough Guy Faces

  This March, fighting game Kenka Bancho is coming to the silver screen in Japan with Kenka Bancho ~ Zenkoku Seiha (Nationwide Domination). It’s bringing hard-nosed facial posturing with it! The cute is provided by idols Erika Yazawa and Mai Satoda. Sneers by the dudes. Thanks, dudes! 里田まい『喧嘩番長 劇場版〜全国制覇』で「夢が叶った」 [Famitsu]

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  The Big Three All See Revenues Drop in 2009

  Revenues were down for most video game companies in 2009, and the big three platform holders were no exception. Pretty clear, but if you need it spelled out a little clearer, nice graphs tend to do the trick. Put together by NPD fetishist Matt Matthews over at Gamasutra, it shows the decline in revenue all…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Why Is Square Enix Raising Cash?

  Square Enix, the company behind Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, announced a ¥35 billion ($386 million) zero-coupon convertible bond. As Hiroshi Kamide at KBC Securities Japan points out, “convertible” means that these bonds can be changed to shares at some point before they mature. While Square Enix has around ¥80 billion in on hand cash,…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  EA Exec & Former EA Exec: Handbags At Twenty Paces

  This is fun. A former EA executive last week went to town on the publisher’s business strategy and that of its boss, John Riccitiello. Rather than let the comments wash under the bridge, however, EA today responded. With snark. The former EA man in question is Mitch Lasky, who sold a mobile business to EA…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  A Week In Comments

  Unpaid Internet Bill Leads to Game-Blamed Stabbing Comment by: Segador Nominated by: (Starman) #number258 I watched a friend go from a quality individual to a fat, pasty, loser in 12 months thanks to his addiction to WoW. He lost his very good IT consulting job because he would stay up past 3am, then crash, not…

  By Brian Ashcraft Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Blizzard Worth $7 Million In 1995, $7 Billion In 2007

  What a difference a decade makes. Speaking with Game Informer magazine, Activision boss Bobby Kotick has spoken of the massive disparity between how much Blizzard was worth in 1995 compared to the price Kotick paid in 2007. In ’95, the Warcraft creators were purchased by Davidson & Associates. For a sum that, in 1995, Kotick…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Rock Band Network Launching Tomorrow

  MTV’s Rock Band Network, an ambitious program aimed at letting “anyone” upload a song to the game’s store, will be launching tomorrow, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a piece on MTV’s plans for the store, the WSJ piece opens with “MTV Games is hoping to goose sales of its flagging “Rock Band” series…

  By Luke Plunkett Published January 19, 2010
• Uncategorized

  Kotaku Off-Topic: Every Kiss Begins with Uranus

  You might think you got your girl a nice sized rock when you popped the question, some gas giant at the edge of the solar system just blew the curve for the rest of us guys. Plenty of chatter today about games. Too much, even. Let’s take a break with some officially sanctioned off-topic discussion.…

  By Owen Good Published January 18, 2010