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There's no doubting Minecraft's phenomenal success, but I've often wondered how much of that is down to the actual game. You know, the part that begins that first day you have to scramble to survive, and ends the time you see/build your first giant dick, when it's become more of a giant LEGO kit than a terrifying survival simulation. Which is a shame, because those early horrors, the feeling of building a home out of the world around you, of exploring a map on an adventure, those were for me the best parts of the game. So it's awesome seeing some independent developers deciding to focus solely on that in the upcoming TUG. TUG is "a multiplayer open-world sandbox-RPG" that owes a lot to Minecraft, from the voxel engine to the crafting, but it's seeking to build something more focused out of the blocks and procedural terrain, with an actual story and intelligent characters to interact with. Some of TUG's more grandiose claims sound a little too Molyneuxy to take at face value, but even accounting for "promise but can't actually deliver" fatigue, this still looks like a project worth keeping tabs on. TUG [Kickstarter]

Years from now the Oculus Rift I hold in my hand will gather dust in your attic. You’ll stumble across it like your very first mobile phone. I can’t believe how big this thing was, you’ll say. How the hell did I walk around with this thing strapped to my head? You’ll say these things because the technology housed within this clunky device — with its low resolution, its cables that tie you in knots — will be as common and essential as a modern smart phone. It’ll be something everyone recognises. It will be a device that transforms so quickly, evolves so rapidly, that you’ll barely be able to keep pace. It will be streamlined and accessible, it will be overdesigned or under-designed depending on what happens to be fashionable at that specific time. In five years time the Oculus Rift I hold in my hand right now will look and feel like a lumbering brachiosaurus. And this is not a criticism; quite the opposite. It’s the highest compliment I can pay to a piece of technology that I expect will change lives and almost certainly transform the way we play video games in the very near future. The Oculus Rift feels like the beginning of something actually incredible. —————— Strangely, it’s the moments when you’re dragged out of the experience that reminds you how potent the Oculus Rift can be. I’m staring down at the ocean; I quickly shift round. In the real world I lift my hands, but I can’t see them. It’s instantly disorientating. Consciously I am aware that my own hands will not appear in this virtual simulation, but sub-consciously I expect them to exist in this space. That’s the dissonance right there. Whoah. This is not real. It's unreal. But the dissonance only serves to highlight how ‘immersive’ the Oculus Rift experience is. In video game writing ‘immersive’ is a dead, lifeless word, but we must use it to describe this experience because no other word will suffice. ‘Immersive’: the adjective has a new weight and meaning through the existence of the Oculus Rift. Here’s another example. As a test my friends placed a chair in real life relative to the point where a virtual chair existed in the virtual world. They placed an object on it and asked me to pick it up. As I leaned forward to pick it up I didn’t move forward in the virtual world like I did in the real world — obviously. The disorientation of these conflating worlds was significant, to the point where my brain tried to compensate. My brain tried to tell me that the chair was actually moving away from me. Mind bending. Here’s a simpler example: I’ve shown the Oculus Rift to a number of people now and every single person has attempted to walk forward in real life in order to move forward in the virtual world. And every single one felt disorientated, confused and weird when they continued to stand still. —————— The Oculus Rift makes small things significant again. Take yourself back to your very first gaming experience, walking in a 2D environment, from left to right. Back then it felt like the most liberating experience entertainment could offer. Now remember the first time you played Mario 64. For the first five minutes you forgot about the Princess, you couldn’t care less about Bowser, you just wanted to run in frantic, careless circles because you could, because that was possible. The beauty of the Oculus Rift is the resurrection of that feeling; that precise same feeling. Something bewilderingly new; new enough that doing something silly and inconsequential feels like the most important thing you could be doing at that particular point in space and time. Ironically it’s when playing traditional games — with traditional goals and traditional verbs - - that the experience starts to lose its lustre. Playing Team Fortress 2, the instant I placed my hands on the mouse and keyboard the novelty of this strange new experience was sucked right up and out through my fingers. It was all too easy to remember I was playing a video games; all too easy to slip into the same old routines. It’s hard to say precisely what the Oculus Rift will do for games, how it will change them, if at all. It’s a difficult discussion to have but I will say this: the Rift brings out the game designer in all of us. Everyone I showed it to removed the device with a crazed look and an idea for how it might be used. Every. Single. One. I can’t wait until I can do this, shoot a gun, move with my feet, explore this type of world, do this thing. They should make a game that lets you this. They should, they could. Hopefully they will. That’s the power of the Oculus Rift — it removes the strait jacket and sends your imagination spiralling in multiple different directions at once, towards multiple different stratospheres. Every single person who has received this device in the mail over the last week has opened the box with wide eyes and a giddy feeling in their gut. Every single one of them has an idea for a game and I can’t wait to see if they can transform these wonderful possibilities into a (virtual) reality. This post was republished from Kotaku Australia.

For the last few days, I've been playing Star Command, a mobile game that's had people excited for a very long time now. Beginning life as a Kickstarter project, it's gone through several major delays, and arrives this week on the App Store an example not just of excellent portable strategy, but of the perils of Kickstarter funding as well. I'm not saying it's a bad game. Far from it. The Star Command that is here, now, is fantastic. Putting you in the shoes of a starship captain, ala Captain Kirk, you're in charge of the running of said starship, from the (albeit basic) tasks of building facilities and hiring crew to the management of that crew and right down to the firing of the ship's weapons. You travel the galaxy completing story missions, can stop off for some grinding to level up your crew, and all the while, the game is surprisingly funny. Because your crew can be named and then killed, ala XCOM, you develop a strange attachment to each of the little guys. Seeing them sucked out an airlock or burned to ashes because you couldn't get an engineer to their damaged work station in time hurts. The real fun comes from the game's centrepiece, a series of 1v1 battles against rival starships. These rapidly degenerate into frantic scrambles for your time and attention, as you have to deal with aliens on your ship shooting the place up, damage to your hull, wounds to your crew and the actual attack against the enemy ship. The first three things are tactical considerations, as you move your crew around the ship assigning them tasks. The actual combat, though, is different. It's Guitar Hero. Or Wario Ware. The firing of your weapons is handled via minigames, most involving quick timing, and while this isn't exactly hardcore strategy gameplay, I liked it; it added an element of risk and chance to the combat instead of making it simply a matter of "bigger ship wins". At times it can all get a bit too much, but that's when the game is at its best, because that's when it's doing what it sets out to be. This isn't a game simulating Bill Adama's model sailboat moments. It's simulating the moments when everything was going to hell and one man had to make the hard decisions. For the most part, the isometric touchscreen controls let you stay on top of this. Sometimes, though, Star Command's ambition is curtailed by the platform, and the platform limits your ability to get the most out of it. Perhaps the most crucial tasks in the game - commanding your crew to repel alien invaders and repair critical damage - can be very frustrating, as when things get busy the screen gets a bit too cluttered, and those same touchscreen controls sometimes can't handle the speed and precision needed to order them around accurately. AI potholes are also a problem. Crew will stand burning to death unless you specifically order them to move, and on many occasions I saw armed crew simply stand with their backs turned while aliens they were supposed to be firing upon closed in for the kill. Star Command is also pretty vague when it comes to telling you what to do. Some things are explained in detail during early missions. Other, sometimes equally important matters are left to the player to fumble through themselves. But hey, this isn't - despite some people's protestations otherwise - FTL. It's an iOS game, one that manages to squeeze a lot of fun (and an amazing soundtrack) into a simple package. What's there, as rudimentary as it might be - all you can really do is fight other ships - is a blast. It's what's not there that's perhaps just as interesting, though. Long before Double Fine's adventure game windfall, Star Command was one of the very first Kickstarter success stories, its scope and gorgeous visuals pulling in twice what the developers had originally asked for. The game that was promised back in 2011, however, isn't the game we're playing here. Star Command's original Kickstarter pitch says quite clearly that, in addition to combat, you can do this: Once you build a ship and hire your crew, you can travel deeper into new sectors to explore the mysteries of the universe. Players can discover strange planets, conduct away missions, explore derelict ships and conduct diplomacy with strange civilizations. Nope. That's not in the product available today. What was billed initially as a sweeping space epic is now "just" a space combat simulator, albeit a pretty damn good one. The development team have obviously had issues with the game, including some fairly substantial financial woes, but if you're one of the thousands of people who threw down cash based on the Kickstarter pitch, you're not getting what you were promised. At least in this version. The developers say that work will continue on the game, with a planned PC edition to serve as a testbed for future additions that can be added to all versions. Other things mentioned in the pitch, like power-ups and companions, aren't in the shipped game either, though there are several instances where menu buttons in Star Command will tell you some features are still coming, they're just "coming soon". I really like this game. I like it a lot. I like the art style, I like the frantic combat, I like the feeling of ownership I have over my ship and crew. Star Command, even in its more limited state, sets out to make you feel like a starship captain, and this game succeeds in doing just that. It's superficial, yes, but when I'm sitting down for ten minutes I don't want to play FTL or a serious PC simulator. I want to give some orders and see cute little things burst into flames. It's just a shame, then, that there's not more to do with those tools. Hopefully the planned PC version can fix this, because if Star Command can get some decent exploration and diplomacy to go with all the action, it'll be one of the best space games around.

Peter Molyneux tells Wired that the Curiosity cube should be done soon. And the reward revealed to the last person to chip away at Molyneux's experiment? It'll "change that person’s life forever," he says.

The Internet makes us stupid. The Internet makes us lonely. The Internet makes us less productive. The Internet makes us unhappy. Surely you've heard any one of these claims? Last year, tech writer Paul Miller felt burned-out on being constantly connected, on being overloaded with information. Maybe there was something else out there? Something people have lost because they're always on the Internet? But instead of unplugging for a while to recalibrate, he made a bold decision: he would unplug for a whole year. See what happens. The hope was that he'd find himself, that he'd become a 'better' Paul Miller. If nothing else, he'd be able to see what the Internet had 'done' to him. Now he's back, and he wrote an article on The Verge about the experience. "Now I'm supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems," Miller wrote. I'm supposed to be enlightened. I'm supposed to be more "real," now. More perfect." ...except that's not quite what happened according to Miller. At first things seemed to be fantastic: And everything started out great, let me tell you. I did stop and smell the flowers. My life was full of serendipitous events: real life meetings, frisbee, bike rides, and Greek literature. With no clear idea how I did it, I wrote half my novel, and turned in an essay nearly every week to The Verge. In one of the early months my boss expressed slight frustration at how much I was writing, which has never happened before and never happened since. I lost 15 pounds without really trying. I bought some new clothes. People kept telling me how good I looked, how happy I seemed. In one session, my therapist literally patted himself on the back. I was a little bored, a little lonely, but I found it a wonderful change of pace. I wrote in August, "It's the boredom and lack of stimulation that drives me to do things I really care about, like writing and spending time with others." I was pretty sure I had it all figured out, and told everyone as much. He also found that he was communicating with some people better thanks to how he was actually fully listening now. And then, old habits were replaced by new ones: By late 2012, I'd learned how to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet. I abandoned my positive offline habits, and discovered new offline vices. Instead of taking boredom and lack of stimulation and turning them into learning and creativity, I turned toward passive consumption and social retreat. A year in, I don't ride my bike so much. My frisbee gathers dust. Most weeks I don't go out with people even once. My favorite place is the couch. I prop my feet up on the coffee table, play a video game, and listen to an audiobook. I pick a mindless game, like Borderlands 2 or Skate 3, and absently thumb the sticks through the game-world while my mind rests on the audiobook, or maybe just on nothing. Actually, he played a ton of video games. He also became a recluse. "I don't seem in sync with the human race," Miller concluded. "There's deeper reasons for most of my problems, that really didn't have a lot to do with the Internet, they just manifest differently on and offline." The full thing is definitely worth a read, and this makes you wonder, doesn't it? How many of our problems and flaws do we like to attribute to the Internet, or technology? Would you really become a 'better person' if you were able to unplug; would you go on to do great things? Is it really the Internet that's holding so many of us back? I'm skeptical, especially since, as Miller states, the dichotomy between 'real life' and 'the Internet' is a false one. They're both real; they both reflect and influence each other. Which is not to say trying to find ourselves isn't worthwhile. Miller did learn things about himself while on his journey, after all. And this journey did let him decide he wanted his life to be more about other people. That's noble. I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet [The Verge] Image credit: Shutterstock

Grant Kirkhope, composer of many standout soundtracks during the Nintendo 64 era, revealed via tweet that he is putting the finishing touches on a collection of tracks for Sega's coming remake of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse.

Kirkhope began working with developer Rare in 1995, producing music for GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, among other games. Kirkhope's first solo composition project, Banjo-Kazooie, remains one of the N64's best-known and widely acclaimed soundtracks.

Kirkhope also wrote Donkey Kong 64's unforgettable "DK Rap." You might say that he's one hell of a guy.

Castle of Illusion HD Starring Mickey Mouse will premiere on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC this summer.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon not only has strong words about violent video games, it also features our favorite pizza-lovin' turtles. If you'd like to see them yourself, GameFront walks us through how to access this easter egg in the video above. Unlike 'scientifically accurate Ninja Turtles', the Ninja Turtles in Blood Dragon seem rather cute. By comparison, I mean. Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Easter Egg - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [gamefrontwalkthrough]

The, uh, not-so-great name a Dutch development team chose for their upcoming browser-based platformer has been cast off in favor of one less cringe-inducing, unintentionally or not. Everyone, say hi to Curio's Starquest. Formerly, this was known as Starcoon and if, like me, some of your best friends are black, you can recognize how that isn't a an elegant portmanteau on this side of the Atlantic. "Coon" is a longstanding racial epithet in American vernacular. Mike Fahey pointed this out on Monday and the developers, a group of students from the Utrecht School of Arts & Technology, responded at once that they would change the name. Today they unveiled the new title. "We decided to avoid further confusion about the title of our game and decided to drop the title 'Starcoon," the team said. "The reason for this change of the title is that we acknowledge the fact that our former title might raise some eyebrows about the use of the word 'coon' of which we missed the controversial meaning due to cultural differences." They're shifting their old website and domain name over to http://curiosstarquest.eu, which should be active within 48 hours. "We hope that with this new title, the game will still get the support it deserves," they say, "as Curio would be most happy to bring joy in the lives of gamers all over the world."

Minority Media, the developer of the emotionally powerful Papo & Yo, isn't shying away from sensitive subjects with its next game.

Mark "Seleene" Heard is not only a former CCP designer, he's part of EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management. Members are chosen through a player-driven election, and are charged with communicating the will of the people to the developers. It's just as crazy as it sounds.

What do films and video games have in common? Nobody really knows what they're doing. A long lecture by film director Steven Soderberg has been making the rounds over the past 24 hours. It's an interesting read with some good thoughts on the film studio system, the idea of "cinema," and the role of independent film. It should also sound really familiar if you follow the video game industry. See, while reading Soderbergh's thoughts on Deadline today, I couldn't help but notice some blatant parallels between film and gaming. For example: Speaking of meetings, the meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are fewer and fewer executives who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer executives that know movies. So it can become a very strange situation. I mean, I know how to drive a car, but I wouldn’t presume to sit in a meeting with an engineer and tell him how to build one, and that’s kind of what you feel like when you’re in these meetings. You’ve got people who don’t know movies and don’t watch movies for pleasure deciding what movie you’re going to be allowed to make. That’s one reason studio movies aren’t better than they are, and that’s one reason that cinema, as I’m defining it, is shrinking. Sounds like the world of big video game publishers, don't you think? We hear so often—and this is generalizing, of course—about executives at big game companies who just don't play games. Replace the word "movies" with "video games" in that paragraph and it sounds almost word-for-word what some game publisher meetings are like. Also, as Soderbergh writes, nobody in the film world really knows whether something will be a hit or a flop: So the obstacle here isn’t just that special subject matter, but that nobody has figured out how to reduce the cost of putting a movie out. There have been some attempts to analyze it, but one of the mysteries is that this analysis doesn’t really reveal any kind of linear predictive behavior, it’s still mysterious the process whereby people decide if they’re either going to go to a movie or not go to a movie. Sometimes you don’t even know how you reach them. Like on Magic Mike for instance, the movie opened to $38 million, and the tracking said we were going to open to 19. So the tracking was 100% wrong. It’s really nice when the surprise goes in that direction, but it’s hard not to sit there and go how did we miss that? If this is our tracking, how do you miss by that much? This might sound familiar to Square Enix, perhaps the most recent victim of tracking gone wrong. The Japanese publisher expected to sell 5-6 million copies of Tomb Raider; instead they sold 3.4 million. Their predictions were totally wrong (and rather unreasonable). Go read all of Soderbergh's lecture: it's fascinating, and the parallels really are uncanny.

This scenery? That's the bulk of what you'll see while trying to survive in Gods Will Be Watching. The premise is simple: you've got 40 days until you can be rescued. You have a crew, which you have to feed and keep sane. You have a radio, which you'll want to fix. Naturally, as you play, other things come up too—I won't spoil those. Whatever it is that you have to deal with, you only get five actions every day, and these can be used on tasks like making a fire, reparations, talking to your crew, hunting, if not murder. Oh, and you can pet a cute puppy, too. That's important. The premise is simple, but the solution (make no mistake, this is kind of a puzzle) is not. I think I got about a dozen days in before a good number of my crew went mad; I was too busy trying to repair the radio at all costs to be able to tend to their mental state. Guess I'd make an awful leader, but I will say that my puppy didn't die. Maybe you can do better than I did? Gods Will Be Watching was created as a part of Ludum Dare 26, an online game jam in which developers make a game over a weekend. The latest theme, though not chosen by Kanye West's Twitter feed, was "minimalism"—that's why this game takes place on a single screen.

Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube is now officially down to its last 50 layers. Even Peter Molyneux is impatient for 22Cans' bizarre iOS experiment to end, telling Polygon: "Enough's enough, for crying out loud."

The game, which is about tapping to remove dots from a cube to reveal the "life-changing" secret within, features a countdown timer running toward the projected end of the experiment, when one person will clear the final layer.

"I thought six months was about the length of time that Curiosity should go on before it closed, and this is almost exactly the six month anniversary of the end of Curiosity," Molyneux told GameSpot. "Bizarrely, as part of that controversy, is that the end of the cube - the last layer of the cube - might well be, I mean probably if you look at our analysis of probability, the same day that the next Xbox is announced. Which would be a bizarre twist of fate." The next Xbox is due to be revealed May 21.

Or a bizarre twist of Pete? Regarding the coincidence, he told GameSpot, "There's an interesting opportunity, possibly, for me to ... well, I can't say any more than that. There may be some words from me around that time. I'm not saying any more." Confirmed: The next Xbox will come in a box made of billions of tiny cubes.

Along with today's news, 22Cans released the above video, which features visual proof that people like Curiosity at least enough to scrawl dirty words into the cube.

If you're not current through Season Four of Breaking Bad, it kills me to give you a spoiler alert, because this thing is fan-tastic. I'm dillydallying around with LEGO City Undercover right now, but if made, I would 100 percent this mofo tomorrow. The work of one Brian Anderson on YouTube, it memorializes what was, at the time, the most awesomest thing I ever saw on television, the penultimate episode of Season Three. It's a scene that I told Kirk, "I could watch 80 times and it would still be awesome on the 81st." And on the 82nd, with minifigs and an achievement-unlocked punchline, is like seeing it for the first time. However, that scene is no longer the most awesomest thing I've ever seen on TV. It was quickly replaced by the infamous Season Four finale, and if you have not yet watched that, there is a brief—very brief—spoiler alluding to it in the character selection menu. I almost missed it the first time (0:22 to 0:23) but it's a spoiler worse than the extended cut scene from 1:33 to 2:31. But oh God, it's got Wendy, and Mike—and Héctor! The minifig face for Héctor is priceless. Your best bet is to just catch up on the show already, and then come back and see this. Because it's got a superbuild Krystal Ship. And Walt's baby-shit green Aztek, too. [via Polygon]

The deal with Context-Free Patent Art is that it takes the weird flowcharts and bizarre drawings from the patents submitted by various companies and designers and throws them up on the web with no explanation about what you’re seeing. I didn’t know that the image up top was for an Addams Family Uncle Fester game that I’d never played or even heard of. Video editor Chris Person linked me to a video of the game in question: So glad that no one's actually getting electrocuted. And, yes, the image below is definitely from one of the Donkey Kong Country games. But which one? What detail does it portray? Is a mechanic that got cut from the game or one that made it in? And this Game Boy diagram looks like some kind of biometric pre-cursor to the missing-on-action Wii Vitality Sensor. Whatever happened to that thing? And this last one? Man, I just don’t know.

A game that is literally Better than Portal, the return of classic Civil War strategy game North & South and board game discounts inside today.

Big changes to Apple's mobile OS could lead to a hold-up on feature rollouts.

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I wish that sentence about Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Ghosts, the next installment in the crazy popular shooter series, was actually true.

Sid Meier's next project is an iOS game set in World War I called Ace Patrol, a dogfighting strategy game created by Meier himself. Ace Patrol will launch on the App Store May 9 as a free download.

Ace Patrol is comprised of four campaigns - all downloads gain access to the British campaign and multiplayer side; in-app purchase is required to access the other campaigns. Of course, you can also throw some coin down on the typical tactical and cosmetic boosts, like new planes and elaborate paint jobs.

Multiplayer pits two squadrons against each other, allowing for either hot-swapping a device or asynchronous matches over Game Center.

LOVE AND KISS. MONDO GIRLS. GIGOLO GLASS. Oh Suda, you magnificent weirdo.

My article on Monday about Respawn Entertainment's first post-Call of Duty game, a sci-fi multiplayer shooter, coming exclusively to the current and next-gen Xbox consoles, turned some heads. So did the part of the piece about Microsoft falling behind with their next-gen machine. That latter bit has become a thing of its own, separate from the Respawn news, which I should remind you is not officially announced but comes from two unrelated, good industry sources (I heard from a third source, who said he'd heard rumors of that Microsoft exclusively plan earlier this year). Putting the Respawn thing aside for the moment, let's focus on the Microsoft next-gen woes bit. This is what I had written, emphasis added for your scanning convenience: We've heard from other sources that Microsoft is not where they want to be at this point in the pre-launch development of Durango. A reliable source—one who was not part of our reporting about the Respawn game—tells us that Microsoft is as much as six months behind in producing content for the new console, despite an expected late-2013 launch. Another tells us that Microsoft recently cancelled several internal next-gen projects because they were not coming together as hoped. These sources have told us that, comparatively, Sony is in better shape and further along with hardware and software development for PlayStation 4. We'd also heard from an industry insider that Microsoft was aggressively trying to sign exclusive games for Durango. Given the lack of internal development at Microsoft—their internal studios, while talented, are outnumbered by those of Sony and Nintendo—and given some of the apparent recent stumbles and slowdowns internally, signing an exclusive Respawn-EA game would suit the Durango quite well. I don't have more news for you on that today. Sorry! But I wanted to expand on that a little. First, bear in mind that we're at least six months—probably even a little bit longer—out from the release of the new Xbox, code-named Durango. We're not even going to be getting official word about it until May 21, most likely. We'd heard official word about the PS4 in February. Did that alone indicate that Sony was ahead? Not necessarily. The impression my Kotaku colleagues and I have long had was that the next consoles from Microsoft and Sony are going down roughly parallel paths and have both been in the works for a while. We've been hearing specifics—not just vague plans but details shared between Microsoft and outsiders—about this new Xbox system since early 2012. We broke news of the codenames for the next Xbox (Durango) and PlayStation (Orbis) in February and March of that year, respectively. While the latter name actually appeared online the December before, the impression we've long had is that Durango and Orbis were aiming for the same part of the calendar. Microsoft and Sony both want you to be able to buy a new console as soon as this Christmas. Over the past year, I've heard from industry sources who've been variously impressed with Sony and Microsoft's plans, though, of late, Sony gets the better buzz and Microsoft is deemed as somewhat scattered. Frankly, I'd be surprised if Sony wasn't scattered in its own way but, yes, lately, Microsoft is generating a little more head-shaking among my and my colleagues' industry sources. You can see some of that articulated in the chunk I lifted from my Monday article about Respawn. With the Orbis and Durango on nearly parallel tracks, comparisons for people who know about both consoles are easy to make. PS4 controllers start popping up at development studios in February, but Durango ones show up in March/April? Easy comparison to make. Microsoft seems less certain about how to proceed, sources tell us. They don't seem as ready for a launch as you'd expect them to be. It sort of makes sense, if you think of Microsoft riding high on the Kinect-fueled success of the Xbox 360 in recent years. Still, they did launch their last console, the 360, in 2005, a year before Sony and Nintendo's PS3 and Wii. One reliable source compares Microsoft's current Durango moment to the situation with the Wii U, which launched without a key promised launch service and with a scant number of exclusive games. Remember the Wii U? Expect something kind of like that for the next Xbox, they say. At least in terms of how it's looking now. So much can change. And it's never easy to make a console. I'd expect all console launches to be like the Wii U's. Because they always are. That's the thing to remember: these consoles never launch all that well. They always launch with a tiny number of games worth having and a great amount of ports and padded content to convince you that there are enough games out on day one to merit that day one purchase. This happened with the Xbox 360, with the PS3, with the Wii U. This is how it goes. The console makers' marketing team tries to play it cool, but these consoles come in hot. You wind up, as I did, with a brand-new Xbox 360 and the only game you want to play on it is a retro-arcade game called Geometry Wars. A year later, at last, the likes of Oblivion and Gears of War have blown you away. But they're not there at the start. Nor are many of the services, like Netflix, that the console is known for. All that said, the "six month" thing I reported has stuck out. What's it mean? It means, as best I understand it, that we'll see Durango launch like the Wii U did. It means developers—internally and third-party—haven't had a ton of time with development hardware. It means that, as I've been told, the games aren't where they need to be and even the machine's operating system isn't up to snuff yet. Nintendo may have some problems unique to Nintendo, but if you thought Wii U's ungraceful launch was just a Nintendo thing, think again. (Christmas 2013 with a maturing Wii U and newborn PS4 and next-gen Xbox just might look a little different than Nintendo naysayers expected.) On May 21, Microsoft will at least probably catch up to Sony in terms of publicly, officially-disclosed information. They may, by then, have a clear message that they can express about everything from online requirements to Xbox Live's new systems to the presence or lack of backwards compatibility for older games. Right now you can safely assume that things are a little confused and stressful on the Durango project. This doesn't mean Durango will suck. It doesn't mean PS4 will automatically be better. But it may effect what we're told by Microsoft, what kind of games will show up on launch day and whether the next-gen of gaming will be something you'll want to get involved with this year. As we know more, we'll let you know. Please remember, console launches tend to be more hype than happiness. It's reasonable to keep your long-term expectations for the next Xbox or any other console high, if you'd like, but in a new-console year, you'd best set your short-term expectations low.

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: contributor Zarynx gets all wistful about rainy weather and how it makes him think of a specific piece of video game music. When do you find game music creeping into your life? And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

A less-expensive and smaller version of HTC's One smartphone may be coming within the next few months.

All the chairs and desks were over turned. On the chalk board, the kanji character "shi" (死) or "death" was scrawled. But that wasn't all. According to reports, police picked up two thirteen year old schoolgirls for the school's vandalism as well as breaking and entering. On the night of February 4, both of them allegedly broke a first floor window at Sakawa Junior High in Kanagawa and entered the school. Then, they supposedly went on a rampage of destruction: The faucet on the fourth floor was left on, flooding the building. Lights were destroyed. Computers and other equipment were busted up. Damages neared the equivalent of US$5,000. According to Yomiuri, one of the girls told authorities, "Got the idea from a manga [we] were reading that had the same scene." Yomiuri did not mention which manga that was. This destruction apparently inspired at least one other junior high school vandalism in the same city. 「漫画見て」学校水浸しにした中２女子２人 [Yomiuri] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

This restaurant in rural China isn't bathed in Wifi. According to the above sign, it's covered in Wife. Online in China, people are apparently amused by the above sign, spotted at a rural restaurant. It reads (via MIC Gadget), "Our Farm Has Been Covered With Wife." While English isn't the country's official lingo, "Wifi" is a fairly common word in China. Heck, public telephone booths in China were converted into Wifi spots that say "Wifi" in English letters. "Wifi" hardly seems to be a rare word! That's why some Chinese wonder, especially after all the attention this mistake has received, if the blunder wasn't intentional—a cheap and easy promotion for the establishment. Certainly the sign maker or the restaurant owner should have known, right? Right? Maybe not. And no, you cannot access the farmer's wife. Get your mind out of the gutter! 陸農莊布條「已有wife覆蓋」 [ETtoday 新聞雲 via MIC Gadget] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

This week, South Korean politician Shin Eui-jin announced a bill that stipulated alcohol, online games, gambling, and drugs need to be strictly regulated. The reasoning? They are a source of addiction, the legislation argues. Rep. Shin Eui-jin, a member of the conservative Saenuri Party and former medical professor, is backed by fourteen other representatives in her push for this new legislation. It would give central authority to regulate online games as if they were addictive, like drugs or alcohol. The Korean gaming industry is obviously up in arms over the bills, saying it does not promote the gaming industry. Rather, they say, it will hinder its growth. One member of the country's gaming industry told South Korea's Inews24 (via tipster Sang), "It is regretful that the government views games in the same category as drugs and gambling. The previous administration viewed games negatively, and it's the same with the current administration. They are talking about a creative economy and yet are constantly trying to regulate one of leading industry for content business." According to Korean game site Gamemeca, the bill contains questionable language like, "The governing body shall have the right to regulate manufacturing, distribution and sale of addictive substances and can also limit promotion of them as well." The implication is that the government could interfere with game development, releases, and promotion. At this stage, the bill has not yet been brought up for a vote in the National Assembly. 게임업계 '게임=도박·마약' 법률안 발의에 충격 [Inews24 Thanks, Sang!] 게임 술-마약-도박과 동급취급! 새로운 규제에 업계 충격 [Gamemeca] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

That is not wasabi. You are looking at green tea ice cream...sushi. No, really. That's vinegared sushi rice (aka "sumeshi" or 酢飯), dried seaweed ("nori" or 海苔), and ice cream. The ice cream sushi is served "gunkan maki" (軍艦巻) or "battleship roll sushi" style. This week on Twitter via Byoukan Sunday, photos of ice cream sushi appeared online. It seems a sushi chain in Kyushu called Uokura offers vanilla and green tea ice cream sushi for 160 yen (about $1.60) a plate. On the menu, it's even located between traditional sushi like "uni" (sea urchin roe) and "negitoro" (tuna and green onions). Most people online could not believe that ice cream sushi actually exists. It's somewhat baffling! Ice cream is traditionally served at conveyor belt sushi restaurants. Those chain restaurants are relatively inexpensive and frequented by families. Little kids often want ice cream for desert—thus, frozen treats. However, the ice cream is usually served in bowls (see above) and not as sushi. This is highly peculiar for Japanese people, too. The odd thing is that ice cream sushi isn't exactly brand new. It seems to have exists for the past few years. There is at least one example of a small, local restaurant in Mie Prefecture serving it, too. You can see an image of that below: That being said, this is still rather uncommon! So how does ice cream sushi taste? The reaction seems to vary from "pretty bad" to "better than you'd think". Nintendo fan site Segment Games recently sampled the ice cream sushi, writing, "When I timidly tried ice cream sushi, surprisingly, it was perhaps not so bad." The site added that the green tea ice cream flavor was followed by the taste of vinegared rice and that you couldn't really taste the nori. Oh. If Japan has seen chocolate banana sushi, then why not ice cream sushi? You certainly won't be able to order this at most sushi restaurants in Japan, but if you are feeling adventurous, you can always make your own. 思わず二度見した [@kamo_kab via Byoukan Sunday) (Top photo: Ciao　ragazzi/ちょっと食い意地/shinshinshin1/蒼天狗の道草ブログ) Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Disney animator Eric Goldberg shows off a traditional animation test for Wreck-It Ralph that never made it in the film, reports Bleeding Cool. The character is King Candy, who did make it into the final film, of course, but in CG form. In case you missed it, here is Kotaku's review of Wreck-It Ralph. Eric Goldberg King Candy Animation Test [Toonmaster707@YouTube via Bleeding Cool]

Kickstarter has proven to be a boon for independent game development, especially if you're an industry veteran making games publishers don't want to bankroll anymore. Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts certainly falls into that category, with his Star Citizen game making over $2 million during its Kickstarter campaign. Which might sound like a lot of money, but it's nothing compared to the game's final tally. Star Citizen's website made nearly $7 million on its own. Which means people told other people they used to play space shooters with that, hey, this guy is making a new one, they went there, donated, washed, rinsed and repeated. All up, the game made $9.1 million. It's a staggering amount of money for a video game to receive when there's no publishing or distributor expenses to cover. Here's hoping it's worth it. Star Citizen [Site]