This Week in the Business: ‘Retail’s Worst Nightmare is Coming True’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Retail’s worst nightmare is coming true.”—Former GamesIndustry.biz editor Rob Fahey, talking about the horrible year game retailing had in 2012 and what the future holds as digital takes over QUOTE | “We’ll be able to compete with any AAA game out…

The Moneysaver: The Savings at the End of the Universe

There may be 10 shopping days left until Christmas, but there are only SEVEN left for the rest of all eternity! So get out there and save, save, save with a variety of combos, and discount specials before the Mayan apocalypse wipes us out. Actually, that raises a good question: If there was no tomorrow,…

Drudge Report: Connecticut Killer “Obviously Not Well,” “Suffered From Personality Disorder,” “Played Video Games …“

Now that we’ve got the right name of the killer in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre yesterday, the media profiles are starting to emerge. To the Drudge Report, playing video games is a remarkable enough thing that it bears mentioning in a headline. An italicized headline. Oh, it’s factual enough, but that typeface and…

The Best Of Kotaku, This Week

Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week’s best content. The gorgeous image above is part of my favorite design for a proposed BioShock Infinite reversible box art. It’s one of six choices, but so far my second choice seems to be winning out (as of this writing). Moving…

China Turns Its Japanese Porn Dream into Horrible Nightmares

This is Sora Aoi. She is a former Japanese adult video actress who has been wildly popular in China. If one person can improve the tense relationship between the two countries, maybe it’s her! She’s so popular there that there are the inevitable cash-ins for those fans who want to get very close to the…

Japanese Tooth Brushing Sure Can Be Terrifying

Good dental hygiene is important. So is not scaring the crap out of kids! Earlier this year, a photo appeared online of a Doraemon plush toy that had been filled with teeth in order to teach children how to brush properly. The result was an unintentionally frightening teaching tool. However, that mishmash is no anomaly.…

Controlling Your Toilet? Checking Your Poop? There’s an App for That.

Japanese toilet tech is world class. For decades now, the country’s loos have had more than heated seats and control panels. There’s all kinds of fancy toilet tech for high end models. That’s probably why when Japanese people visit, say, the U.S., the cold toilet seats and lack of throne features truly baffle them. Leading…

Mob Blames Mass Effect For School Shooting, Is Embarrassingly Wrong

In the wake of the terrible tragedy in Connecticut, initial reports said the shooter was a 24 year-old named Ryan Lanza. Online, people quickly located a Ryan Lanza on Facebook and searched through his profile to see if there were any “clues” they could pin the shooting on. They found their clues… but the wrong…

Today Sucked. Let’s Watch Kermit The Frog Sing ‘Rainbow Connection’

Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide. So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it. I know they’re wrong, wait and see. Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and…

Backhanded Box Quotes: ‘Very Very Videogame.’

Welcome back to “Backhanded Box Quotes,” a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic. Far Cry 3 is pulling down a Metacritic 90. The Walking Dead just re-released for retail and was the Video Game Awards’ game of the year. Clearly, video gaming has saved its best for last. So have…

I Didn’t Get Why People Love Giant Mechs. Then I Played Hawken.

I’ve been unfair to giant mechs and the people who love them. If you asked me about mechs a week ago, I’d probably make some awful comment about how mechs remind me of little boys clacking their action figures together, which isn’t appealing to me. I didn’t “get” the love for giant mechs. Sometimes what…

Live from New York, It’s the Week in Gaming Apps

Just because I spent the second half of the week making my first visit to Kotaku‘s headquarters in five years doesn’t mean I had time to play a dozen gaming apps this week. All the drinking does. I did my best to look at a diverse selection of games this week, but when Tina Amini…

Here Are Some Of The Bigass Bosses You’ll Fight In Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

Via Capcom, here’s footage of the Wii U version of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, to be released this March for both Wii U and 3DS. More monsters: So what do you think? Cool? Monster-Huntery? I’ve never actually played a Monster Hunter game, so I need to hear your opinions (so I can repeat them at…

Watching Real-Life Link Shamelessly Smash Pots Never Gets Old

This joke has been made before. Many, many times before. But I can’t resist when it involved Freddie W and the most gleeful looking Link I have ever seen. So gleeful that it looks downright evil. But who can blame a gleeful Link.

Gamasutra’s look at how launch titles have scored has Nintendo on top. Or Microsoft. Or the PS2. Definitely somebody.

The Smartest & Dumbest Things Valve Did in 2012

Oh, Valve. If a company is doing this well, then you know there must be something incredibly sinister going on beneath the surface. I considered trying to infiltrate the shadowy ranks of Valve to uncover their origins (subterranean? Extraterrestrial? Cthulhoid?) but thought better of it for the sake of my health, and the fact that…

Sports Cover Voting Craze Gets Really Out of Hand, Goes Up to 126 Candidates

In 2010, Madden NFL 11 put its cover up to a popularity contest, giving fans three candidates for the honor of regressing to the mean in the coming season. Begun, the cover vote craze had. Two years later, the escalation in cover contests has reached five-blade razor proportions. Madden went from 32 to 64 nominees…

Gorgeous Games of 2012: Far Cry 3

Everyone loves a tropical island. Rolling green hills, crimson sunsets, crashing blue waves; when we think “paradise,” we think of the tropics. With its finely tuned engine and sprawling island setting, Far Cry 3 was easily one of the most gorgeous video games of the year. The drug sequences were awfully pretty, too. Of course,…

Bethesda announces new content coming for Rage (Yes, Rage) in The Scorchers DLC pack, out next Tuesday

Check Out Modern Combat 4 Played on the MOGA Controller

Yesterday the Power A folks celebrated the Android launch of Modern Combat 4: Ridiculous Dialog by giving away (or attempting to give away) free MOGA game controllers with copies of the game. If you managed to score one, this is what you’re in for. And if you didn’t mange to secure a controller, perhaps this…