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What Are You Listening To?

Kotaku readers! How are you? Would you care to join us in tonight’s open thread of random chitchat and maybe even some video game conversation to end your day? This is the off topic thread in which to do it. So let’s do it! Since it’s Tuesday, we like to have a theme to these…

Maybe A Laugh Track and Tower Defense Are Just What Gears of War 3 Needed

Gears of War‘s developers certainly didn’t invent “Horde Mode.” But Epic Games, creator of Gears, is lucky in that every other game developer who copies their popular multiplayer mode gives the studio credit for it when showing off their own take on Horde. Gears of War 3 design director Cliff Bleszinski is the one that…

Crysis 2 Pulled From Steam, Now ‘Only On’ EA’s Origin

You may have missed your chance to purchase shooter Crysis 2 on anything but EA’s new Origin service, the re-branded EA Store that aims to go head-to-head with the likes of Valve’s Steam platform. Crysis 2 has been yanked from Steam, with EA saying it’s now available “only on Origin.” Well, sort of. While Steam…

Ninja Gaiden 3 Screen Shots

Ninja Gaiden 3 Wonders ‘What Does It Feel Like To Kill A Man?’

I’ve never killed a man. Team Ninja leader Yosuke Hayashi says he’s never killed anyone either. Despite that inexperience, he is confident that his next game, Ninja Gaiden 3, accurately explores what it means to stick a Japanese sword into another man’s body and extinguish his life force. “For us, we’re Japanese developers, we know…

jDome

LOS ANGELES, CA | A gamer plays a war game on the jDome during the Electronic Entertainment Expo on June 7, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. More than 45,000 people are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) Hitman…

Nintendo Locks Down Wii U Domains Full of Usual Suspects

Now that Nintendo has revealed the Wii U, it needs to snatch up a bunch of Wii U domain names, lest some squatter claim WiiUMusic.com (or worse). No surprises here, but they’ll perhaps lessen the shock of a Wii U Play or Wii U Sports in our future. [Nintendo World Report]

PlayStation Store Update: Tour Wonderland, Outland, and Midnight Club Los Angeles

The North American PlayStation Store update has arrived. We’re back in the swing of things, with new games, new add-ons for games you already own and things to buy cheaply with your PlayStation Plus account. Perhaps the most notable new entry is Outland, the Ikaruga and Metroid inspired platformer-adventure from developer Housemarque. It is not…

Three More Neat PlayStation Vita Tricks from the New Portable LittleBigPlanet

LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Vita does neat things with Sony’s new hardware, adding double touchscreen controls and gyroscopic tilt tricks to now familiar Sackboy jumping and swinging. But the Vita take on LBP is capable of more. Media Molecule showed us the non-traditional platforming things Sackboy and LittleBigPlanet game creators can do with the next…

9 Minutes of Us *Trying* To Play The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

On the final day of E3, Kotaku intern Michael Epstein and I were running on fumes. I couldn’t hold a camera still and he couldn’t z-target. Nevertheless, we endeavored to play all three parts of the E3 2011 demo for this year’s big Wii game, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Please forgive the shakes;…

EA Sports Is Opening Up Its Own Retail Stores

Publisher Electronic Arts is making a big move in the online retail space, revealing its new digital distribution effort and Steam competitor Origin earlier this month. But the company still believes in brick and mortar—enough to open up its own retail stores, one of which will launch later this year. Chris Erb, VP of brand…

Steam Goes Free to Play

Starting today, Valve’s digital distribution service, Steam, supports Free to Play games (Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online, etc.) with in-game purchases through Steam’s microtransaction system. Players who download the games through Steam will receive exclusive content this week. [Valve]

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations‘ Altered Multiplayer Mode Rewards Better Killers—and Swifter Victims

The unusual competitive multiplayer mode that was introduced in last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will be changed for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations They’re not turning it into Call of Duty or like anything in any other major multiplayer game. It wil still be an assassination game that rewards stealthy players. But the there will be tweaks.…

Disney’s Making Another Video Game Movie, This Time with Some Simpsons and Futurama Talent

Somewhat thankfully, it is not another Super Mario Bros. movie. Instead, Disney’s upcoming Wreck-It Ralph is “the story of an arcade game Bad Guy determined to prove he can be a Good Guy.” Better still, it has some promising talent lined up. The 8-bit video game-inspired Wreck-It Ralph, a movie formerly known as Reboot Ralph,…

These Military Computer Games Are Ridiculously Ambitious

Last week I had a chance to talk to the Bohemia Interactive bossman, Marek Spanel. As one of the brains behind the original Operation Flashpoint, and then the three Arma games that followed, he is one PC gaming’s most ambitious developers. He’s now embarking on a huge project of developing three games across three studios…

Put Your Detective Skills to Work to Discover Minecraft‘s Next Features

Minecraft creator Notch announced via Twitter that the new screenshots from Minecraft beta 1.7 contain hidden information about the upcoming update. While Notch referenced only two screen shots and the changelog, Notch posted five pictures total. One picture was said to be a correction of a previously posted image, one a screenshot taken during daytime…

Roving Hackers “LulzSec” Take Down Minecraft, Escapist Magaine, and EVE Online

According to their Twitter updates, LulzSec has launched DDoS attacks—either on purpose or as a side effect of a mass hack attempt—that has taken down EVE Online, Escapist magazine, and Minecraft, proving conclusively that they hate everyone equally.

Spider-Man, Mega Man X2, Mad Dog McCree… Nintendo Download, are You Trying to Seduce Me?

Your lackluster performance at E3 2012 is complete forgotten, Nintendo, for you have brought the glory of Mad Dog McCree upon the 3DS, given Wii owners Mega Man X2 , and given portable players an early taste of The Amazing Spider-Man Yes, I realize Nintendo has nothing to do with the creation or development of…

Kinect Star Wars Adds a Sense of Misplaced Gravitas To Jedi Fights

I didn’t give Brooks Brown, Lucast Arts community manager, much time to dig into the Kinect-enabled Star Wars game before I began peppering him with questions. “Is this the entire game?” I asked. Turns out what we saw on stage, two guys controlling (or trying to control) jedi as they work their way through a…

Nintendo’s Two Reasons For Making a New Wii Now

We’ve been playing the same old Wii since 2006, which makes the calls for Nintendo to create a new Wii—Wii HD! Wii 2? Wii-As-Powerful-As-The-Xbox-360!?!—about… four years old. As recently as last November, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was telling Kotaku that it wasn’t time to talk about a new Wii yet. Now, it is…