Xbox

​The Guys Who Designed the First Xbox Critique the PS4

It’s one thing to think about the PS4 as a black box that delivers games and services to your TV. It’s entirely another to look at it as a piece of design itself. The studio who crafted the imposing look of the first Xbox did exactly that. And hey, they think the DualShock 4 rocks,…

Heist Nabs 58 Xbox Ones More Than a Week Before Launch

The PlayStation 4 had two day-one robberies in the same city, but the clear winner in next-generation crime has to be the Xbox One. Fifty-eight of the consoles were stolen—and stolen a week ago—in Memphis, Tenn., where one unlucky customer has just been arrested. WMCT-TV reports that a 31-year-old Memphis man is facing charges of…

Xbox One Has No Built-In Livestream Option At Launch, But It’s Coming

Xbox One gamers will not be able to upload video to Twitch.tv at launch, Microsoft said this morning. The lack of support leaves Xbox One users without the ability to broadcast live gameplay natively from the console. “Our goal is to deliver it during the first part of 2014,” Microsoft said in the news story.…

​You’ll Be Able to Share Xbox One Game Clips Wherever You Want

Seems like this is the generation where game recording becomes a required feature for consoles. Both the PS4 and Xbox One have the capability to save and share gameplay clips but there’s one big difference: users will be able to share Xbox One gameplay clips all over the web, including YouTube. Microsoft’s new game console…

Why Many Launch Games Get Crummy Reviews

It’s a rare thing to find a console launch title that isn’t either “meh” or “ungh”. There are a number of reasons for this, which you or I could speculate about all day long, but why don’t we see what a guy who works for Ubisoft has to say instead. In an interview with GI.biz,…

​Well, At Least The Racing Looks Good in the New Need for Speed Movie

Look, it’s pretty clear that the Need for Speed movie is trying to draft off the success of the Fast & Furious films. But the upcoming Dreamworks feature needs, like, 1000% more crazy. Aaron Paul certainly looks wounded in the clip for the upcoming car-stravaganza—which comes just days after the debut of the latest NFS…

​The Prettiest Space Game in Years Might Never Come to Consoles

When you’re behind the game that’s broken all sorts of records for crowd-funding—$27,689,361 and counting—you can do what you want when it comes to the hardware that said title will show up on. Cloud Imperium founder Chris Roberts says that Star Citizen “will NEVER be dumbed down for a lesser platform.” And yeah, by lesser…

Dead Rising 3: The Kotaku Review

The real world can be a frustrating place. Stuck in traffic, trapped in line at the supermarket… it always feels like there’s someone in the way. Certain games—the Grand Theft Autos, the Dead Risings—show us a world where it’s okay to act on our worst, most violent impulses. Our forest of problems becomes a lawn…

What’s Inside A Video Game Control Pad

Reader Brandon Allen has put together an incredible collection of photographs, in which he’s dissected a number of famous video game controllers, spilling their guts all over a wooden table so you can gawk at what’s inside. PlayStation, NES, Dreamcast, Xbox, most of the major names are represented. Or, well, dissected. I’ve included a selection…

The Week in Games: One to Go

It’s the Xbox One’s turn to shine this week, arriving on Friday along with 22 games, among them exclusives like Ryse, Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3. And, in either the most unfortunately timed or ballsiest release ever, New Super Mario and Zelda titles come out the same day. Here’s the week in games. Tuesday,…

​Need for Speed Rivals: The Kotaku Review

Everyone in this year’s Need For Speed—racers and cops both—is an asshole. Neither side is likable. Thank God. It’s incredibly freeing to be a total, speed-obsessed jerk, especially when it’s accompanied by amazing visuals and intense velocity. Way to welcome us to next-gen, Need For Speed Rivals Viewed on PlayStation 4, Rivals will make your…

Heads Up: Our Xbox One Review Will Run On Tuesday Night

It’s PS4 day, but what about the Xbox One? Don’t worry. We’ll be getting to it. We’ll have a review of Microsoft’s console live on Kotaku at 9pm PT on Tuesday, November 19 (that’s midnight on Tuesday for those of us on the east coast). The system launches on Friday, the 22nd. Sony allowed us…

So Many Different Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes Bundles in Japan!

When Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes goes on sale next spring, Japanese gamers will have a bundle of different bundles to choose from. First, they can get the retail version, which is 2,980 yen (around US$30) and available for the PS4, the PS3, and the Xbox 360. They can also get a slightly cheaper…

Fable Re-Rated Because Sex is A “Reward”

This is strange. Very strange. When Fable was originally released on the first Xbox the game’s Australian rating was ‘M’. Today the Australian Classification Board revealed that Fable: Anniversary, the HD remastered version of Fable for the Xbox 360, would be rated R18+. Adults only. The reason? “Sexual activity related to incentives and rewards”. Very…

Class Acts

The PS4 And Xbox One, Side-By-Side

Picture this as a very intimate cage-fight, or an even more intimate snuggle between colleagues. Up to you. German site PCGames has gotten hold of both an Xbox One and a PS4, and doing what the internet wants them to do, put them next to each other. And on top of each other. There’s a…

South Park Takes On Xbox One vs. PS4

Last night’s South Park was all about the next-gen console war, and if you’ve ever wanted to watch a bunch of kids fight and betray one another, Game of Thrones-style, over the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, this one’s for you. The premise: Black Friday is coming, and the kids have to figure out how…

Dead Rising 3 Is Going To Be The Best Mega Man Game In Ages

Come for the zombies, stay for the robot boy dress-up party. Capcom’s Dead Rising 3 once again lets its protagonist don fabled armor from the fan-favorite franchise, gifting a Mega Man X costume to any brave soul who completes the game. The Mega Buster, on the other hand, (ha!) takes some work. Completing the game…

This Xbox One Takes Around 13 Seconds To Boot Up

Microsoft’s Larry Hryb has posted a short clipshowcasing how long it takes an Xbox One to boot up from a Kinect voice command. I timed it at 13.3 seconds. That’s going from the moment he stops talking to the point where the dashboard pops up ready for user input, which seems to me the most…

Someone Stuck an Xbox One at the Bottom of a Shark Tank in New Zealand

Sorry, New Zealand—you are not the site of the first Xbox One to be sold in the world, despite this promotional stunt involving an Auckland aquarium. About 150 folks already have theirs and didn’t have to swim to the bottom of a shark tank for it. But Microsoft pressed ahead with this anyway because, hell,…