Xbox

Xbox One Is Getting a $50 ‘Holiday’ Price Drop, Will Cost $349

Starting on November 2, the no-Kinect Xbox One and two of its related bundles will be sold at a discounted price of $349. The price cut applies to the Kinect-less XBO Assassin’s Creed Unity bundle and the also Kinect-less XBO Special Edition Sunset Overdrive bundle, the contents of which are detailed in the announcement (and…

Eight Words I Never Expected Hear From the Head of Xbox

“I don’t need another military space marine game.” Whoa. Okay. In an interview with IGN, big boss of Xbox, said that while the company was committed to its core first party franchises Microsoft is also working on something new. “I think new stories, new characters give us a new canvas to try new things… I…

Let’s Rank Fatal Frame, Best to Worst

The Fatal Frame series is one of the creepiest survival-horror game series out there and certainly my personal favorite of the genre. But as with all series, some games are better than others. So let’s rank them, shall we? A few notes before we start. These are not Kotaku‘s picks for the pecking order of…

Better Version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hits Xbox 360 Next Week

A graphically improved version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will be hitting Xbox Live on October 26, just in time for the game’s 10th anniversary. But there’s a bit of a catch. The updated version will run at 720p and will have Achievement support, with 11 hidden achievements. Full list in the image below:…

Players Try To Cheese Destiny‘s Hardest Boss, Fail Miserably

Hahaha oh boy. That didn’t go over too well, did it? In Destiny‘s big, epic raid, there is a final boss named Atheon. And there used to be a method of “cheesing” him, as in killing him quickly and unethically (depending on who you ask). Players would be able to push Atheon off the level,…

You Can Adjust “Bounce” in the New Dead or Alive

For their upcoming fighting game, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, the developers at Tecmo Koei have created a new engine to bring their characters to life. Called the “Yawaraka Engine” (やわらかエンジン) or “Softness Engine,” it is the result of attempting to up the visual realism of character skin in order to make characters look…

​Titanfall Is Adding A Co-Op Horde Mode

Titanfall is a lot of fun, but there’s no denying that it feels a little… thin. The game’s exclusive focus on player-vs.-player combat left many of us wishing for a bit more variety. Good news: The game’s latest update will add a cooperative mode to the game, and it looks pretty cool. The mode is…

How Much Destiny Has Changed Over The Last Year

Since its first announcement or teaser trailer is released into the wild, a game is bound to make certain changes up to launch. But it can be quite revealing to see just what was left out and added into the game by comparing marketing materials to the final product. In this case, coreRoss goes through…

Why You Should Play The Longest Journey and Dreamfall

With the first episode of Dreamfall Chapters coming out today, now is the perfect time for me to inform you why you should play The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. (Spoiler: it’s because they are awesome.) In the time before I discovered JRPGs, point-and-click adventure games were my favorites. From Space Quest and King’s Quest to…

Humankind Has Played More Than 6 Billion Hours of Halo Online

When we talk about a franchise as popular as Halo, sometimes the numbers get so big as to grossly outsize human comprehension. Today, Microsoft announcedthat the tentpole franchise has sold more than 60 million copies to date, and that people have put in over 6 billion hours into the online modes. That means that we…

​Bungie Left A Spooky Message In Destiny’s Loot Cave

The original loot cave in Destiny is dead, but its spirit lives on. In fact… it may be haunted. As part of the latest update in Destiny, Bungie has added a bunch of hidden remains to the Loot Cave in Skywatch. When you disturb them, the following takes place: “A million deaths are not enough…

Men Arrested For Smuggling Cocaine In Xbox Consoles

Four young men have been arrested after they allegedly smuggled “kilos of cocaine” into the US stuffed inside some Xbox consoles. Officials with Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and the Border Protection Office of Philadelphia say the accused have been bringing the cocaine into the United States from the Dominican Republic, hiding it in both Xbox…

​Two Ways To Fix Achievements On The Xbox One

Let me start by saying that I realize I’m crazy. The obvious response to anyone ever talking about Achievements is “Why do you care? They’re not worth anything.” At present, my total Gamerscore sits at 117,365. It may sound like I’m bragging but I’m not. I honestly don’t care about my total Gamerscore number. All…

Newbie Lessons Learned After A Few More Hours Playing Diablo III

Following a four-hour Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition online co-op session with Kirk Hamilton last night (I’m a Demon Hunter, expert difficulty, was at level 50 and at the end of Act III) and still being a novice to the whole thing… Expert difficulty level is too easy for level-50 characters. (We switched to Master…

What Sleeping Dogs Gets So Right About Being An Asian American

There’s a scene in The Godfather that really resonates with me — not because I relate to it, but because I do not. It’s when Michael has dinner with Don Sollozzo, and they begin speaking to one another in Sicilian. There are no subtitles, and the first time I watched it, I was irritated. “What…

Evolve’s “Big Alpha” Test Begins at the End of the Month

Turtle Rock Studios’ 4v1 multiplayer shooter, Evolve, will be having its closed “Big Alpha” test at the end of October. The specific dates are October 30 to November 2 for Xbox One, and October 31 to November 2 for PC and PS4. To apply, you need to fill out the form here (or here, if…

The trailer for the upcoming backer-exclusive alpha version of historical RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance paints an idyllic picture of a medieval village. Presumably, it shows what the place was like before that corpse-packed-battlefield dealio. The game is still on track for a late 2015 release on PC, Xbox One and PS4.

Microsoft Technology Will Finally Let You Give Video Games the Finger

Now, here’s some Kinect functionality that I wouldn’t mind in a video game. I could’ve used this when I reviewed that awful Steel Battalion game a while back. This video from Microsoft Research surfaced a few days ago, showing off the continuing evolution of the company’s Kinect motion tracking initiative. The system on display here…

MMO-racer The Crew will be a few weeks late, arriving on December 2 instead of November 11, Ubisoft announced in a blog post. Good news is that this means there will be another closed beta test, which Ubisoft says they’re planning to carry out in November, this time on the PS4 and the Xbox One.

Watch Dogs: Bad Blood: The Kotaku Review

I was very, very close to advising you not to bother with Watch Dogs‘ big downloadable episode Bad Blood I was in a weird predicament, because, up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d barely played any of Watch Dogs, even though it came out last spring. I’d heard about (and read) some pretty negative…