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Heavy Rain Creator: Hollywood Actors Don’t Care About Games

Been some big(ish) names doing video game voice work of late. Robert Downey Jr. Ron Perlman. Kristen Bell. But are they really doing the work? Heavy Rain creator David Cage doesn’t think so. In an interview with NOW Gamer, Cage says: Actors (and their agents) often have so little consideration for games that the only…

World Of Goo Coming To Japan

Indie puzzle physics game World of Goo is going to be released in Japan via Nintendo’s WiiWare in second quarter 2009. Nintendo of America’s senior director of project development Tom Prata, who spoke today at DICE, disclosed the Japanese release. The game has already been released via WiiWare in North America in October 2008 and…

NPD Says PC Retail Sales Down 50%

Speaking at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas today, Anita Frazier of the NPD Group has revealed an interesting little piece of information regarding the PC market, saying retail sales are down by over 50%. That’s over the past seven years. Grim reading, then? Not really. Although NPD “has been having trouble with is digital…

A Week In Comments

PlayStation Store Update: Noby Noby Noby Comment by: RoboticSpacePenguin Nominated by: phinehas Noby Noby Boy is awesome so far. In the first 10 minutes I grew a little and explored. Then I ate some stuff, but didn’t realize I could fart it out. I guess I stored up so much stuff that when it came…

Overlord Does the DS

Overlord: Minions for the DS reminds me of a certain game where you have four different-colored playable characters that you guide with a stylus to work together to solve puzzles. Any guesses? If you said The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, you’re wrong. The developer drew inspiration for Minions from an old Blizzard game…

Sony: We Have Sold 21 Million PS3’s

Sales update time! Sony announced today that the company has sold 21.3 million PlayStation 3 consoles worldwide, a figure that by February is probably a bit higher, as their tally only runs until December 31, 2008. But 21.3 million is the number they gave, so it’s the number we’re running with. Not disclosed was a…

Overlord Wii Lacks Wee

Overlord: Dark Legend had me at sombrero-wearing minions, but I was still worried. I was worried there for a second because it’s a Wii game, so surely they had to tone down the humor a little. I was even more worried to hear that Dark Legend is scheduled to hit the Wii the same day…

U.S. Court of Appeals Rules Schwarzenegger’s Game Law Unconstitutional

The California law passed in 2005 that would have restricted the sale of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18 has been ruled unconstitutional in a U.S. Court of Appeals. Since the law went into effect under California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, we’re obligated to let you know that the law has essentially…

What’s New in Overlord II

Brace yourself: Overlord wasn’t a great game. It was a good game—and it had a good idea—but style choices and control options and myriad technical flaws kept it from being the best evil experience ever. Overlord II aims to change that in two major ways. First, the technical flaws are being aggressively addressed by the…

Team Fortress 2 Scout Update Sends Us To Egypt

There’s no dearth of content coming to the Team Fortress 2 Scout update. Expect new weapons, new maps, the game’s first energy drink, and, oh yeah, new maps! That includes one Egyptian-themed “Capture” gameplay addition. The newest revealed addition to TF2 is “cp_egypt,” a visually striking community made map designed by Sean ‘Heyo’ Cutino, creator…

Mario & Luigi, Street Fighter Help Turn Japanese Hardware Sales Around

Sales of consoles and portable hardware in Japan saw healthier sales this week, most likely due to strong sales of games like Street Fighter IV and Mario & Luigi RPG3!!!. It wasn’t exactly the kind of boost that will see console manufacturers and game publishers popping bottles of Cristal, but it was enough to turn…

Kotaku Signs Syndication Deal

To: Ash From: Crecente Re: Alright, Tea Or Coffee? As you may recall, back in November I started talking about creating a weekly column on Kotaku that could service multiple purposes. I wanted it to be something that touched on the big news of the week and expounded upon it to look at the bigger…

Can the DSi Become the Portable Wii?

Millions of people picked up a video game controller for the first time because of Nintendo’s Wii. Can the Japanese game developer now conquer the pockets of those same freshly minted gamers with its latest portable console? The Nintendo DSi, which hits North America on April 5 for $170, comes with a touch screen, two…

GameStop COO: Used Game Sales Don’t Hurt New Ones

J. Paul Raines bravely faced a roomful of video game developers at this year’s DICE Summit, letting them know that the used game sales that butter the retailers bread do not hurt new game sales. Raines, GameStop’s Chief Operating Officer, told DICE attendees that the company’s used game sales account for only 4% of sales…

Your First (Brief) Look At Mass Effect 2

EA has released the first video teaser for the multi-platform Mass Effect 2 from BioWare. No need to grab some popcorn, you’ll be in and out of the Mass Effect hype machine shortly. We shan’t spoil anything for you, should you choose to pick apart the Mass Effect 2 teaser for clues about the sequel…

God Of War III, MAG Coming This Year, Says Sony

When we got our first look at God Of War III last week, Sony said it would wait until E3 to announce the game’s release date, which now appears could be sometime in 2009. According to a recently issued press release designed to remind us that Killzone 2 ships next week(!), God of War III…

Tour Aion’s Lovely Altgard Zone

NCsoft West takes us on a video tour of the expansive Altgard zone from their upcoming massively multiplayer online game Aion: The Tower of Eternity. Watching the video I can begin to see why fans have latched onto the game with such utter devotion. The damn game looks absolutely gorgeous…definitely a step or two above…

GTA-Style iPhone Game Gets Price Drop

Payback, the top-down, open-world crime sprawler on the iPhone, just got an “experimental” price drop to $5. The GTA-esque game’s creator emailed me to say that the whole App Store thing is quite new and he wanted to test how what sort of impact a price drop would have on sales. So if you’re interested…

Rock Band Adds A Lil’ Bit Of Alt Country

Next week’s batch of fine downloadables for Rock Band and Rock Band 2 go a little bit country. Don’t worry, this is the good kind of country, largely free of thickheaded wordplay and grating twangery. What does that even mean? I don’t know to be honest, but this is country of the “alt” variety, featuring…

FUEL Looking Awfully Confined

For a game with no boundaries and 5,000-square miles to play in, this trailer sure does show a lot of traditional looking race courses. I hope multiplatform, off-road racer FUEL hasn’t lost its way. Last we heard, you to 16 players could race through places like the Grand Canyon. The game also sports full day…