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WoW Players Can Soon *Gasp* Change Sides

If you’re a WoW player, you’re one of two things. You’re Alliance, or you’re Horde. That’s it. That’s where the line is drawn. Or…it was. Pretty soon, that won’t matter anymore. Blizzard have begun work on a new service that will let players switch sides. Alliance to Horde. Or Horde to Alliance. Whichever way you…

Dreamkiller Impressions: “Emotional Painkiller” Doesn’t Sound As Cool

Dreamkiller is a first-person shooter starring a “punk rock chick psychologist” who projects herself into her patients’ dreams to cure their psychotic behavior by killing their nightmares. Sound familiar? If it does and you’re not thinking of the anime, Paprika, it’s likely because Dreamkiller sounds a lot like Painkiller. Painkiller you might remember is that…

Want Serious Sam HD On Your PS3? You Better Speak Up

Developer Croteam is bringing Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD to Xbox Live Arcade this summer and, eventually, the PC. But what about the other platform capable of handling the seriousness of this first-person shooter, the PlayStation 3? Croteam CEO Roman Ribaric tells G4 that there was a PlayStation 3 version planned, but the developer…

Rolando Being Pulled From App Store [Update]

Rolando is, at the moment anyways, the perfect example of how to do an iPhone game right. Anyone who hasn’t yet sampled its delights may want to hurry, though, as the game’s about to be yanked from the App Store. With the game’s sequel Rolando 2 due out this week (July 1), publishers Ngmoco want…

Texas to Texas

To: Bash From: Crecente Re: Let’s Try Shiso Pepsi! This morning we left El Paso, after spending the weekend with my mom and step-dad there, and Trish drove us across a chunk of the state to Fort Worth, Texas. We’re going to be spending a day in the city looking around before heading out for…

PlayStation 3 Bundles Don’t Get Any More Precious Than This

If you don’t already have a PlayStation 3 and your heart isn’t a deep, deep black, consider Best Buy’s current offer, featuring one of the better value-added bundles, featuring both Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet and Pixar’s Wall-E on Blu-ray. That makes the actual hardware somewhat of a steal, considering these are two must have (or at…

Pachter: Used Games Sales At 100 Million Annually In U.S., Not A Threat

Gaming’s most-quoted financial analyst shared some unconventional wisdom about used games today. In a 210-page annual report about the state of the gaming industry that begins with him thanking Kotaku and other websites for “keeping us on our toes and always asking us to think about the industry in real-time,” Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael…

Fable III “Confirmations” Come From The Darndest Places

Is Lionhead working on Fable III? In some capacity, almost definitely. Considering the success of Fable II, not developing a third game in the series would be throwing money away. But we didn’t expect this kind of Fable III “confirmation.” So who’s mentioning Fable III now? The New York Times, which is typically not wrong…

Chinese Gov’t Tries To Officially Ban Gold Farming

Friday, the Chinese government attempted to address the reported $500 million gold farming industry, said to employ some 400,000 workers, in the form of a ruling on the exchange of “virtual currency” for real world cash. Officially, China’s Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Commerce said that in-game monies “will only be allowed to…

MJ Loved MK

Add Mortal Kombat to the video games Michael Jackson was into. The recollections of the recently-deceased pop star continue to make the rounds in the media. And video games have gotten another mention, even though we weren’t asking this time. Author Paul Theroux recalls in today’s U.K. Telegraph a phone call the writer had with…

This Week’s Wii Rock Band 2 Update Is A Lovely Potpourri

The Wii version of Rock Band 2 now has access to nearly 350 downloadable music tracks, thanks to this week’s rich update, full of Pearl Jam, Mission of Burma, The Offspring and more. Sixteen new tracks will be available for download via Rock Band 2‘s in-game music store starting tomorrow, including new singles from Harvey…

Carmack: Just About Everything id Makes Coming To iPhone

Doom Resurrection and Wolfenstein 3D Classic are only the beginning for id Software on the iPhone, with everything from Wolfenstein RPG to the upcoming Rage making their way to Apple’s platform. As a matter of fact, Wolfenstein RPG has been completed for quite some time. As id’s John Carmark explains it, his excitement over getting…

Video Game Question For The Advice Columnist

An eight-year-old boy’s parents are concerned about the violent games enjoyed by their son’s friend, who often invites their son over. They don’t want to nix the friendship, ban gaming during visits or question the other parents. What to do? The Chicago Tribune’s advice columnist had the following advice on Sunday: Sooner or later, raising…

Kotaku Joins The Bonus Round To Chat About The Future Of Game Controls

Last Friday, we sat down with GameTrailers’ Geoff Keighley, Shane Satterfield and Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter to discuss the future of video game interfaces, from the Wii Vitality Sensor to Microsoft’s Project Natal. Someone taped it! In part one of our Bonus Round discussion, Keighley, Pachter, Satterfield and I touch on the Xbox 360’s…

First New Rock Band Unplugged DLC Hits

A rather nice variety of tracks make up the first batch of new DLC for Rock Band Unplugged since launch, with Stone Temple Pilots, Mötley Crüe, Avenged Sevenfold, and Dream Theater getting the Frequency treatment. The downloadable song grand total for Rock Band Unplugged rises from ten to fourteen today, with the introduction of four…

In Defense Of The Classic Controller

By Leigh Alexander. At the E3 debut of Project Natal, Microsoft’s Don Mattrick called the controllers we’ve known and loved “a barrier separating video game players from everyone else.” Wait. Isn’t that the point? Should video game controllers really disappear? We’ve heard a million times about how the cultural presence of games is growing exponentially…

QuakeCon 2009 Is Going To The Gaylord

id Software‘s annual gathering of Quake, Doom and Wolfenstein fans will happen August 13th to August 16th. And it will happen at a new location, the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas. QuakeCon festivities were previously announced to throw down at the Hilton Anatole Hotel, but it appears that id Software and company have had a…

Doom Resurrection: The iPhone Game That Nearly Wasn’t

With the rail-shooter Doom Resurrection for the iPhone hitting the App Store at any moment, Kotaku spoke to John Carmack about design decisions, multiplayer, and why the game was nearly canceled months into development. id Software‘s John Carmack is one of the masterminds behind some of the greatest first-person shooters of all time, often referred…

Ogle Blizzard HQ’s Epically Mounted Orc

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard moved into its new Irvine, California digs in late 2007, 240,000 square feet worth of space in which to develop more Starcraft, Diablo and WarCraft. This year, Blizzard headquarters added some lovely Orc art. The bronze Warcraft statue measures some twelve feet in height. It moved onto the Blizzard campus…

This Week On Live Arcade: Worms And The King Of Fighters

Two completely different types of combat hit the Xbox Live Arcade service this week, with Worms 2: Armageddon and The King of Fighters ’98 Ultimate Match. Worms 2: Armageddon is the sequel to Worms Armageddon, released 10 years ago for the Dreamcast, PC, PlayStation, and Nintendo 64. The gameplay is tried and true: use various…