Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

LittleBigPlanet will receive new Mass Effect costumes and stickers this week including Shepard, Liara, Wrex, Garrus and more.

There's a special bond that exists only between a human and a pet. And that bond only grows stronger when the human conscripts the pet to take on other pets in gladiatorial battle, Pokémon-style. In that spirit comes this video from Ty Green, which is just the right blend of incredibly dumb and goofily charming.

At the beginning of the month, Katie Couric got some heat from gamers over her one-sided, fear-mongering episode about violent game addiction. On Friday, Couric gave voice to those dissenters and issued a 'Mea Culpa' follow-up on her show. Pulling some fairly ruthless quotes from both Twitter and Facebook, Couric admitted that it was probably a terrible idea to have nobody at all to represent games: “Mea Culpa: It probably would have been a good idea to have someone on the other side of the debate” she said, adding that she attempted to reach out to the ESA and Bungie, who both declined to be on the show. I can understand how Katie Couric's producers thought they had done their due diligence. But given how the episode turned out, I also understand why Bungie or the ESA would decline, particularly when they did not have a say on what went into the final edit of the episode. What’s more, Katie Couric’s producers were not completely blind to what they were doing. Yes, the ESA and Bungie declined, but the day after we ran our original critique of the episode, I received the following email from Christopher Ferguson, a video game researcher at Texas A&M: I happen to be a video game researcher who studies aggression and addiction. You might be curious to know that one of the producers of the Katie Couric show contacted me perhaps a month ago, possibly to be on. At the time I warned them about making some of the very claims that were made or insinuated during the show. Obviously the decided not to use me. Ferguson went on to tell me that he’d spoken to their producers for 30-45 minutes, giving them a detailed overview of his research (You may also know Ferguson from Jason Schreier’s thorough piece on violent games research). I remember specifically going over the issues with pathological gaming with them, about 3% of gamers may exhibit these issues, mainly due to overuse leading to interference in other areas of functioning. I cautioned them that comparisons should not be made to substance abuse, and that it remains unknown whether [pathological gaming] is a unique phenomenon or simply symptomatic of underlying problems. I noted that all pleasurable activities have the potential to become “addictive” in a small number of individuals and gaming is not unique in that sense. I also talked to them about the aggression literature, that it is, at best, inconsistent and many of the studies have considerable methodological flaws. I pointed out to them the declining youth violence rates, that other countries that consume more video games per capita have some of the lowest violence rates, and that video game use is not a commonality among mass shooters (I mentioned the spate of high-profile gun violence committed recently by elderly men, for instance). What was also interesting about that show, I don’t know if you caught it, but Jim Steyer’s comments about the media violence research being a sure thing are actually undercut by a recent report from his own organization, Common Sense Media, which acknowledged inconsistencies and limitations in the field.‘ I really love that we live in an environment where people can get called out for presenting a bogus, baseless argument about games. I’m glad that Katie Couric kinda-sorta owned up to doing what she did, and that she chose to present quotes that called her own piece out. This is definitely a step in the right direction. But Couric's producers knew exactly what they were doing when they aired the episode—they had heard dissenting voices and were advised by least one researcher about what was and was not responsible. They simply chose not to include that as part of the discussion. To contact the author of this post, write to chrisperson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @papapishu.

Seven months after the publication of an article about the troubled development cycle of his studio’s last video game, Denis Dyack is finally sharing his views on the article. Naturally, we have some thoughts about his reply. Dyack’s response appeared online on Sunday in the form of a 33-minute video, which you can watch above. In the video, Dyack makes his first public statements about our October 26, 2012 article entitled What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights’ X-Men Destiny? The article was reported and written by freelancer Andrew McMillen and edited by me over the course of several weeks in the latter half of last year. Dyack had refused to comment about the article while it was being reported. He is doing so now, he says, out of a concern that the article is negatively impacting the Kickstarter campaign for Precursor Games’ Shadow of the Eternals and gamers’ willingness to help make Precursor’s planned spiritual successor to Dyack and Silicon Knights’ excellent 2002 game Eternal Darkness a reality. It’s probably worth reading the article before watching the video. I’d long hoped Dyack would comment before the article’s publication. He had been made aware of the contents of the article well before we ran it, but chose not to lend his insights and voice. He says now that he declined out of fear of giving McMillen’s eight anonymous sources, all former Silicon Knights employees, credibility. “When I first saw this article, I [didn't] believe—because there was not a single credible source where nothing could be verified—that anyone would actually believe this,” Dyack says in his video. “I knew that what they were saying and accusations about me embezzling money from Activision and being terrible to people were not true. I never really thought that people would believe it.” The above statement exhibits one of the more puzzling aspects of Dyack’s video: that it disputes things that weren’t actually in the article. McMillen’s report includes no mention of embezzling money, but multiple mentions, by former employees, that people who were supposed to be working on X-Men Destiny were at times pulled away to work on other company projects. It is just one detail of many describing Silicon Knights' development priorities. The embezzlement charge is more severe, of course, and was something McMillen had heard rumored during his reporting. Reporters hear many rumors and try to deduce whether they're true. This rumor doesn’t appear in the article, which should show how much credibility McMillen and Kotaku were ultimately able to give it. It is similarly baffling that Dyack quotes a forum member named “mappster” who claims “The quotes in the article say that Silicon Knights split from Nintendo due to the name of the console and the Wii's limited graphics.” Dyack responds to that by saying:“None of that is true whatsoever.” I can add that none of that is in McMillen’s article, so it’s a non-issue. These references to things that weren't in our article are distractions. They are extreme claims, both presented and rejected by Dyack, and they pull attention away from the issues of effort, management, creative vision, communication, morale that McMillen's sources describe when chronicling the tough development cycle for the X-Men game. The idea, presented in our article, that people were pulled off of the X-Men game to work on other Silicon Knights projects is in dispute. Our article describes that as occurring during the early part of Destiny’s development. Here, it’s the word of Dyack and his current colleagues that this did not happen vs. those of the former studio workers interviewed for our story. Dyack says “At no time ever did Silicon Knights divert anyone from X-Men Destiny… to another project.” Yet McMillen’s sources say they saw it happen. From the article: "SK didn't take the development of XMD seriously the entire time I was there," a source says. "They were working on an Eternal Darkness 2 demo that they could take to publishers. While I was there, they were even siphoning off staff from my [XMD] team to work on it." Sources allege that many of SK's programmers, artists and designers were not contributing to the final quality of XMD at all—at least, not in the first year of the game's development McMillen’s story, as published by Kotaku, was always intended to present a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a bad game. It explored the culture of Dyack’s studio, described personalities and recounted meetings of the game’s creators. It described the studio’s approach to working on the game and an increasingly-troubled relationship with the game’s publisher Activision. In his video Dyack says, “We are really sorry how that game turned out. I would think that there were some mistakes made. But all I can tell you is that we put nothing but our best efforts into this project.” He does not explain what those mistakes were. McMillen strived to. The creation of any game is messy; the intent of this article was to show why this particular game didn’t come together into a game the caliber of which Silicon Knights used to be known for. Much is now being made by Dyack and those following the story that McMillen’s piece for Kotaku consisted of comments from eight anonymous sources. The assertion is that, because these people did not come forward and identify themselves, they may be making things up. They may simply be disgruntled employees trying to hurt Dyack. This does not track with the correspondence we've had with these sources. McMillen’s story was not a quickly-written opinion piece or a breaking news report, and so he and I put a considerable effort into scrutinizing his sources and their claims. Because the sources were anonymous, I required that I needed to know who they were and eventually spoke to some of them. I did my own reporting, not included in McMillen’s piece, to also satisfy my curiosity about whether what we ultimately published seemed right and reasonable. Other outlets, including Wired, had considered publishing McMillen’s piece and had chosen not to. I can’t speak to why they did or did not but only to the thoroughness with which this story was further reported after Wired passed on it as well as vetted by McMillen, by me and by our company’s lawyers. Given the amount of work that was done on McMillen's piece for Kotaku, it's safe to say that the piece Wired declined is not the piece Kotaku published. Stories based on anonymous sources can be problematic. This is true now as it was in October, when Andrew’s story ran with full disclosure that it was based on anonymous ex-SK employees. Readers were given the opportunity to judge the story on those merits. This is but “one side of the story,” McMillen had written: Management at Silicon Knights refused to be interviewed on the record for this story, despite repeated requests over many months. A spokesperson for the game's publisher, Activision, also declined requests for comment. Accordingly, keep in mind that what follows is but one side of a very complex story. When sources decline to be identified, we have to ask ourselves why. We have to be watchful of agendas, of blindspots, and of overstatement. We do this. Anonymous sources aren’t a new thing for Kotaku and we have a lot of experience separating nonsense from truth. Our wariness of anonymous sources greatly influenced what did or didn’t make it into the piece and how what was included was characterized. This is just as important: when companies and the subjects of stories refuse to comment, we must also ask ourselves why. There are myriad reasons, but one common one is that they may believe that silence can kill a story. It's true that a subject’s refusal to engage may reflect that the allegations in question aren’t worth responding to, but it also may reflect the idea that those allegations are relevant and that not talking about them might scare a reporter from posting a one-sided story. This is an element of reporting that can present a publication with the sometimes-difficult conundrum: to publish a one-sided story or nothing at all. “I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I have come here today to say I haven’t made any mistakes,” Dyack says in his video. “I have made a lot of mistakes. I have said a lot of things that I shouldn’t have said. I have done some things that I regret. And all I can say is that I have learned from them, that I have changed the way that I think about things and I really want to move forward in a positive way and focus on what I do best—which I think is focusing on creative.” I’ve interviewed Dyack numerous times. The conversations we had about the game Too Human were among the most thoughtful I’ve ever had with a game developer. His new project at Precursor, where he serves as chief creative officer, could well be his comeback. And if it is, many who loved Dyack’s older games will cheer. None of this changes that X-Men Destiny’s development was troubled and that those involved have divergent impressions of what went wrong. Given that Dyack is ready to move on, I’ll encourage our readers to look to Dyack’s future. Check out Precursor’s Kickstarter. And if you like what you see—if you’re excited about what they’re promising—give them some money and help make their new project a reality. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

Good news: the next Penny Arcade RPG will be out on June 7. Even better news: the most recent one is free today. Go check it out!

This is the kind of nailbiting match that shows exactly why Dota 2 is an amazing team game.

It's not all science experiments and Aerosmith songs on the International Space Station; sometimes you've got downtime, and sometimes you fill that downtime by playing games. But what kinds of games to astronauts play? The guys at Tested talked with Canadian astronaut (and up-and-coming Bowie impersonator) Chris Hadfield about the games he and his crewmates play aboard the ISS. Among them: Scrabble (with the pieces velcroed to the board) and… space darts. Hadfield demonstrates the darts, and then the Tested guys come up with some more games for him to play in low-grav.

We speculate on tomorrow's Xbox announcement before getting down to this week's other business.

This is it. Tomorrow, during an event that will likely set a new benchmark for dubstep and flashing green lights, we'll finally get to see Microsoft's next gaming console. About time, right? Sony announced the PlayStation 4 in February, and now, just a few weeks before E3, we're finally going to see the other major part of the next-next-next generation: the third Xbox. So just what is up with Microsoft's next Entertainment System™? Luke has already compiled a great list of everything that has been rumored so far, but I want to talk a bit about what we'll likely see at the big Seattle event, which starts at 1pm Eastern tomorrow. (We'll be hosting a livestream and covering all of tomorrow's big news right here on Kotaku, of course.) Let's go through the major bullet points. Xbox... something? Tomorrow, the name Durango will go the way of Orbis. RIP Durango and Orbis. Miss you bros. It's okay, though. No matter what Microsoft has decided to call their next machine—Xbox Infinity, Xbox 720, Xboxtaku, whatever—we'll get the hang of it eventually, just like we got the hang of Xbox 360, and Wii, and Wii U. Err. Well, okay, maybe they shouldn't call it Xbox U. We certainly won't hear everything during tomorrow's smoke-and-mirrors show. Don't expect specifics on the price, release date, or launch lineup, for example. But we will most definitely hear the next Xbox's name, whatever that may be. (My guess: Xbox. Just Xbox. If only to screw with people, Apple-style.) Games? Nobody wants games. For quite some time now, Microsoft has positioned their Xbox not just as a gaming console but as an entertainment device. Multiple rumors from all over the Internet have suggested that the next Xbox will be seriously mad if you only use it for games. Microsoft's new device may support cable in some way—we hear it has an HDMI output and input—and it will most definitely be an all-purpose Swiss army knife of a console that lets you watch movies, record TV, stream online videos, and toast waffles. In other words, a bulk of tomorrow's conference will be about the multimedia services that Xbox Next has to offer. With another big Microsoft presser hitting in just three weeks at E3, it's safe to assume that they're saving some of the system's big game announcements until then. That said... Call of Duty: Shoot People: Return of the Shooting ...we will see the next Call of Duty tomorrow. There will be guns. There might even be explosions. Angry men will shoot at things. Bank on it. Expect at least a few minutes of footage from Call of Duty: Ghosts, along with someone talking about how amazing it's going to be on the next Xbox's version of Xbox Live. Maybe we'll hear about some of the cool new things that developers can do with Achievements on the new system. Maybe they'll tell us how to avoid getting called racial slurs by thirteen-year-old boys. Futbol!!! We're also going to see some FIFA. Expect gorgeous graphics and a whole lot of chatter about how the next Xbox will revolutionize the way you can play soccer. (This time, you'll be able to play with other people!) Wild Wild West Do you live in Japan? Sorry! Tomorrow's big event is at 1pm Eastern, which is actually 2am in Japan. Perhaps Microsoft is admitting defeat in the East, where they've never quite been able to sell consoles. My guess: we're not going to see much of a Japanese presence at tomorrow's event, if we see any at all. Unless Square Enix shows up and plays the Luminous Engine trailer, which would make it the funniest event in gaming history. One gimmick to rule them all According to Paul Thurrott, a Windows Super Site writer who first nailed down the May 21 date for the big reveal event, we'll see Microsoft's fancy IllumiRoom technology tomorrow. It's basically a giant projector. This is what it looks like in action: Will this be part of the next Xbox? An accessory? A silly gimmick? I guess we'll see tomorrow. Online what? Tomorrow, after months and years of rumors, we could finally find out the truth: will the next Xbox require an Internet connection for games to work? Well, or we could find out nothing. Microsoft could be annoyingly vague—"Today's gamer is always connected, and this console is for them."—and refuse to answer questions about how any online-only functionality/anti-used-game protection works. Don't expect them to be clear about everything. So, okay. Here's my final, totally unsubstantiated prediction for how the day will go: 2 minutes of introduction, bragging about Xbox 360, introduction to [XBOX NEXT NAME]30 minutes of entertainment features and cable15 minutes of the new Xbox Live15 minutes of random developers talking about how awesome Microsoft is7-8 minutes of Call of Duty7-8 minutes of FIFASURPRISE GUEST APPEARANCE! Could it be Rockstar? Bethesda? BioWare? We'll see a sizzling teaser, and it will be a DURANGO EXCLUSIVE. Everyone will freak out. There will be GIFs everywhere. Reporters will write that it's a real landscape-changer, that Sony should be seriously worried about the next Xbox. And then the game will never come out. Okay. Your turn. What do you expect to see tomorrow?

Cthulhu Saves the World developer Zeboyd Games announced that its series finale Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 will launch on Friday, June 7 for Windows and the Xbox Live Indie Games service.

To mark the occasion, Zeboyd and Penny Arcade are giving away free Steam codes for Rain-Slick 3. Zeboyd assures that the giveaway has no strings attached, but fans have a limited window of opportunity to hop on this deal, as the offer ends tomorrow.

Zeboyd Games resumed the Rain-Slick series after the departure of previous developer Hothead Games, producing a pair of JRPG-inspired sequels. Rain-Slick 3 was supported with a wealth of free DLC, and the upcoming sequel will likely follow suit.

Earlier this year I posted a list of five snacks I must eat in 2013, and on that list was a product from Frito-Lay that promised to shake up the status quo, challenge conventional snacking and fly in the face of more than 100 years of molasses-coated history. Cracker Jack'D, subtitled "Snacks with Impact" seemed like a bold move for such a famous brand. I was ridiculously excited. It's just trail mix. I was going to dance around the fact that I've been counting the days until the wide-release of seven varieties of trail mix (one variety, the controversially-caffeinated Cocoa Java Power Bites were absent from my assortment), but what's the point? There is no revolution to be found in these seven bags, but there are almonds and oat clusters, peanuts and pretzels, and several varieties of corn. The original Cracker Jack in an American institution. Frederick William Rueckheim began mixing molasses, peanuts and popcorn together during the 1893 World's Fair, the precursor to Starkfest. The name Cracker Jack came about after an enthusiastic sampler, upon tasting the mixture, exclaimed, "Holy shit!" (In 1896, "holy shit" was pronounced "crackerjack".) The inclusion of the name in a classic song forever embedded Cracker Jack in the American conscious. Sing along with me! "Give me a little of that Cracker JackYou ain't caramel coated Cracker JackThe surprise, bitch you gonna get waxedThis that shit, you can't do nothin about" Man, that song takes me back. Perhaps Cracker Jack's storied history is why Frito-Lay deviated so wildly from the formula with Cracker Jack'D. If they'd just released molasses, peanuts and popcorn with a burst of cherry-citrus or bacon, we'd feel betrayed. Instead, we feel like we're going on a hike. We've got seven flavors to hike through, and not a lot of time, so let us get down to brass corn nuts. I apologize for the lack of photos of each individual variety — instead of exporting my camera explorted. Sweet'n Savory Clusters — Salted Caramel Let's start with the most Cracker Jack-ish of the Cracker Jack'D line. This is essentially regular Cracker Jack, only with salted caramel instead of molasses. I'm not sure why this made it into the Jack'd line instead of being relegated to normal variant status. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that salted caramel is a big hip thing right now. Go to Starbucks right now and say salted caramel. They'll hand you things. They'll probably want money for them (disclaimer: my wife works for Starbucks, and I pay for nothing). This mix isn't so bad, as long as you eat it by the mouthful. Should you get a loose caramel bit by itself the saltiness can be overwhelming. Maybe that's the impact the tagline was talking about. Really just made me crave the original. Hearty Mix — PB & Chocolate Now we're talking. The least healthy of the Cracker Jack'D varieties is, as expected, one of the most delicious. Here we are introduced to the concept of the oat cluster, the staple of the Hearty Mix sub-category. Coated with chocolate and slightly too-sweet peanut butter, the oat cluster gives the mix a wonderfully light and crunchy texture that begs to be devoured in one sitting. Nowhere has 3.5 servings per bag been printed more erroneously. Hearty Mix — Zesty Queso Sweet not working for you? Zesty Queso is here to delivery a cheesy bite that almost tastes creamy, which is what one looks for in a queso-flavored product. I was worried the rolled oats that fared so well covered in chocolate and PB wouldn't survive the trip to zesty town, yet they made it in one piece and dominated the mix. It tastes so good I hardly even noticed the almonds, a dense interloper on an otherwise light and crispy journey. Hearty Mix — Cheddar BBQ More creamy cheese and rolled oats, only this time the tang is a little sweeter thanks to three of the best letters in the alphabet — B, B and Q. Yes, that's technically only two letters. Also, shush. Between this mix and the Zesty Queso, I am really beginning to re-think my aversion to almonds. Paired with a tangy taste they're almost pleasant. Perhaps they just need to hang out with better friends. Hearty Mix — Berry Yogurt Will the rolled oats train ever stop? Yes it will. It stops right here, were the creamy sweetness with a hint of something-berry ruins the good thing the Hearty Mix and I had going. I like my yogurt in yogurt form, rather than in a pseudo white chocolate arrangement. The flavor is diluted and weak in this configuration, leaving me unprotected from the furious assault of my nemesis, the almond. Curse that almond. Intense Mix — Buffalo Ranch Half of you are going to start hating me in about two seconds. Corn nuts are horrible. Why do people put these in their mouth? It's like biting into the carapace of a long-dead, nearly petrified insect. And when you've got one thing that's hard to eat, might as well add some more. Along with the corn nuts, the Intense Mix varieties also feature incredibly hard pretzels and some sort of skinny corn chip. It;s all hard and corny and the buffalo ranch taste tries desperately to hold on. At times it almost overtakes its kernally companions, but then it fades, and I am left with ew. Intense Mix — Spicy Pizzeria This tastes nothing like a pizzeria. Does taste sort of like pizza, though it's cursed with corn, just like the Buffalo Ranch. "Cursed with Corn" would look great on the package. I went into this Snacktaku review aiming to answer a simple question: "Is the Cracker Jack'D line worthy of the Cracker Jack name?" After eating the better part of seven bags' worth of trail mix, the answer is no. What they are worthy of, however, is the name Cracker Jack'D. The bastard offspring of King Cracker Jack deserve a bastardized name. It doesn't mean they are bad — it just means that Cracker Jack didn't marry their mother, and you can't blame them for that. To contact the author of this post, write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @bunnyspatial.

Sam Fisher is a one-man army...except, uh, when he's a two-man army. When that other guy is around, I mean.

Sales for Street Fighter IV and Worms 2 join with five freebies to kick off the new ASU week.

The world's first reveal of the PlayStation 4 hit earlier today. Yes, it was blurry. And frantic. But those 39 seconds held some images of actual details from the upcoming console. We just don’t know what they are yet. So let’s take some guesses. Please tell us what you think each part does, won't you? The mosaic above contains stills from the PS4 teaser video, with various vents, ports holes and rounded bits captured for your perusal. These things are probably important, right? They must be, or else they wouldn’t be hightighted in a teaser. Or maybe Sony’s marketing department just put a unit on a lazy susan, spun the thing around and picked out a few random shots to troll us all. Either way, see what sense you can make of this hardware design by annotating the image above.

Less than a day before we see Microsoft's new console, Sony's promising more PS4 details in the coming weeks.

Alex Onsager created Pokemon Fusion—a website which lets you splice together the sprites of two different Pokémon, allowing you to create a fresh, possibly horrifying combination—a few years ago. The website isn't new. This past weekend, however, Tumblr artists took it upon themselves to create artistic renditions of their favorite fusions. The results are fantastic. Here's a small selection of the art, although you can find a ton of Pokémon fusions under the "Pokemon Fusion" or "Pokemon Fusions" tag on Tumblr. The one above, if you couldn't tell, is Psyduck + Charizard by crybringer. Original sprite fusion here. Some more: Magneton + Ponyta by Rodentblood Pikachu + Venonat by spaceprincessarts Mankey + Bellsprout by duckdraw Tentacruel + Rapidash and many others by pokeaday Kangaskhan + Sandslash by tcdrawsstuff Lickitung + Ratata by stopped-mid-autograph Gengar + Squirtle by kirono Oddish + Primeape by psi-cadet Bellsprout + Geodude by captainsandcavaliers Caterpie + Arcanine by temporalderivative Dewdong + Bulbasaur by emcee-ironchef Oddish + Charmander by tanukikai Cubone + Exeggutor by necromorph-slavinglovemachine Caterpie + Ninetails by paper-jam-dipper Cubone + Rattata by gaymaidz Weepingtails + Kingtails by zhoid Beedrill + Charmeleon by groldergoat Zubat + Slowbro, plus others by catsbooksandtheholylance Electrode + Vulpix, plus others by nevertoomanyspiders

Reeling from the recent cancellation of Star Wars: The Clone Wars? You may or may not be pleased to know that Disney/Lucasfilm just announced a new animated series in the massive sci-fi universe. The series is called Star Wars Rebels, and it's set between Star Wars: Episode III and Star Wars: Episode IV in what Disney's press release writers call "an era spanning almost two decades never-before explored on-screen." Which... hey. That sure seems like fertile ground for vidya games. Maybe EA has some things planned during that time period as well? The Adventures of Young Lando? A first-person shooter starring young Han Solo? A baby Luke tamagotchi? The possibilities are endless.

Skittles or Steak? I hate to admit it, but I like both. For me, it is not a choice. Nothing quite works like a steak for dinner. But, when I go to the movies, and I want to indulge, it’s Skittles for me. It is a bit embarrassing to admit. For me, it’s Skittles and Steak. I like both. You must be wondering what this has to do with games. Or why Kotaku would run my piece on candy and beef. This will take a minute, but let me explain. I can’t keep track of the number of people who have told me they don’t believe the new consoles, long rumored to be coming from both Microsoft and Sony this fall, will succeed. I’ve heard this from some industry analysts. I’ve heard it from friends. I’ve even heard it from some pretty dedicated gamers. When I press them, most everyone says they see games on smart phones and tablets taking over the game biz. They see the massive numbers of apps—mostly game apps—being downloaded onto iOS and Android devices and see the demise of console gaming as inevitable. They see the multi-year decline of console software at retail, as reported by NPD, and they think the console gaming is done. They see Apple’s PR machine touting the 50 billion apps downloaded, and they’re even more certain the battle is over and that the future is all about mobile. For them, consoles are over. I can’t keep track of the number of people who have told me they don’t believe the new consoles... will succeed. Mobile games are awesome. It is a rare day when I don’t play a game on my iPhone or my new Samsung Galaxy S4. I play them everywhere. At home. In a taxi. On a plane. Sometimes when I am trying to get to a next level, I get up in the middle of the night to play. This may seem unusual, but the numbers speak for themselves. Mobile gaming is exploding globally with no end to the growth in sight. What I notice, though, is that the vast majority of my mobile gaming is done five and ten minutes at a time. Sometimes fifteen. Sometimes, I am watching TV while I am playing. Sometimes I am writing something and need a break for a moment or two (like now). Or, I am eating a burrito. When I am playing a mobile game, it takes some, but not all of my attention. All the research I have read tells me that my experience with mobile games is very much the norm. We all do it. We do it often, in short sessions. Most of the time, we’re doing something else while we’re playing. Put down that burrito, because console gaming is very different. I don’t have the fastest thumbs, so playing with any skill at all requires my focus. I am fully engaged. All-in. The room with the biggest TV is the most important entertainment room in my house. And there, console gaming rules. In the room where the entertainment stakes are the highest, console gaming wins. When I am exploring Columbia, or taking down Necromorphs, solving Portal Puzzles, or running as Faith over building tops (OK, so I still love that game), I am all-in. Fully committed. It is a commitment I am happy to make. The room with the biggest TV is the most important entertainment room in my house. And there, console gaming rules. Console gaming and mobile gaming. Both are awesome. For me, and I believe hundreds of millions of others, neither is going away anytime soon. Mobile and console scratch different itches. Satisfy a very different hunger. Mobile is here to stay. But, I firmly believe that after eight long years of waiting, we’re all ready for the next generation of consoles to bring us to a new frontier of immersive gaming. Now, back to Microsoft and Sony. I believe that console gaming is going to explode on the scene of consumer electronics with this next generation of consoles. Sony and Microsoft absolutely need to deliver new boxes that really impress us. They need to deliver platforms that enable game experiences that are not possible on current consoles. It is not just about graphics, although it is partly about graphics. It is also about recognizing that a lot has changed with online devices and the cloud since the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were originally introduced. Our expectations are much, much higher. The next generation of consoles needs to deliver. And, more than anything else, the great developers who create games for these platforms need to wow us with great games and experiences that go well beyond anything we’ve played before. It's about recognizing that a lot has changed with online devices and the cloud since the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were originally introduced. None of us has seen the future. But based on everything I know and what I have seen, most everything is pretty much in place for all of these things to happen, and to put console gaming front-and-center again. I see 2013 as the year that brings gaming pizzazz back to the living room, where it all really started. But I do have this nagging fear that it is not too late to snatch defeat from the jaws of probable victory. I keep asking myself how this might happen, and I come up with a four potential pitfalls that could turn my predicted console victory lap of 2013 into something a bit less grand. Trip on these, and what could be the start of a game console-driven revolution in the living room quickly turns into something that passes with more of a yawn than a cheer. The first and most obvious of these pitfalls is if Sony or Microsoft forgets who brought them to the dance in the first place. Gamers. I certainly see the temptation to emphasize all sorts of experiences that these boxes might bring to the living room. These new machines can do a lot. The risk is that either or both of the new platforms emphasize these “value-add” experiences too much, both in the user interface on the consoles themselves, or in the story they tell consumers when they unleash their avalanche of advertising. To paraphrase a political slogan, it’s about the games, stupid. The first and most obvious of these pitfalls is if Sony or Microsoft forgets who brought them to the dance in the first place. Gamers. The risk here is real. Both Sony and Microsoft want to be seen as revolutionary companies. To capture that bit of magic that Steve Jobs had running Apple. Reinventing the Living Room sounds so big and sexy. It will read as brilliant in the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, People and The New York Times. But the risk of complexity in the new console UI (User Interface) is real. Give us too much on the screen, and we’ll never find our games. The risk is that too many choices and a UI design to appeal to too many audiences, means nothing stands out. Ensure the box delivers awesome game experiences, better than anything we’ve experienced before, and millions of gamers will line up at midnight to buy it. Delivering a box that raises the question of whether we should buy the new console over the $100 Apple TV device or a $60 Roku player will cause too many gamers to wait it out and commit only when the smoke clears. A second potential pitfall has to do with supply. Consumers today have gotten used to getting what they want, and getting it immediately. We want it now and we want our friends to have it now, so we can play together. The window of time to establish a new world order in consumer electronics is no longer measured in multiple years, as it was in the early 2000’s. Today, it is measured in a year, if not a handful of months. Past console launches have been severely hampered by a lack of supply. A new console launch with only a few million units available will simply frustrate all of us. Limited supply means the new consoles will launch with a whimper and whine, not the cry of attack. If Sony and Microsoft want to see the next generation of consoles take high ground in the consumer electronics war this year, they are going to have to invest to make sure there are enough of the new consoles out there. The window of time to establish a new world order in consumer electronics is no longer measured in multiple years. It is measured in a year, if not a handful of months. The third issue is price. Last time out, Sony priced their fully-featured PS3 at $599. This made some sense with a launch hampered by a lack of supply. It won’t make sense, either for Sony or Microsoft. Not if they decide to invest in enough supply to really compete for consumer attention in a world used to new hot products from companies like Apple and Samsung selling 5 and 10 million in the first month. Getting the price right is a very important part of the equation. The stakes are enormous. The fourth issue involves how they handle a few third-rail topics. The question of the always-on connection is one that causes some gamers’ blood to boil. Gamers will want, and learn to love, the good parts of consoles being more connected to our digital lives than was possible with the machines launched eight years ago. Some gamers fear the new consoles could be more about a DRM-walled garden than about enabling new types of connected gameplay. More about squashing second-sale (used games) than allowing us to play the games we own at our friends houses, in dorms or at home, without having to bring the disk with us. I don’t believe consoles managed as walled-gardens will succeed longer term. I don’t believe consoles managed as walled-gardens will succeed longer term. We will want console games that seamlessly connect with our iPhones. Games that change and update in the background while we’re sleeping, to make tomorrow’s gameplay different and far more dynamic than today’s. I believe we’ll all want the ability to bring meaningful achievements in our PC and mobile game to our new consoles, and from our new consoles to our PC and mobile games. It needs to be simple, seamless and without a bunch of headaches with multiple registration, identity and pay gates. The walled garden will fall eventually. At launch, Sony and Microsoft must avoid putting up new and alarming DRM schemes, and focus on enabling the cool new game experiences that seamlessly connected consoles allow. Sony and Microsoft must avoid putting up new and alarming DRM schemes, and focus on enabling the cool new game experiences that seamlessly connected consoles allow. I am a huge believer that this is the year we put focus back on console gaming in a way it has not been for some years. To put Sony’s and Microsoft’s next consoles in the same frame as Samsung’s and Apple’s hottest products. To do this, I believe they need to do a few things right: They need to make it about games and gamers. They need to invest to make enough consoles and prove they can compete with the supply chain prowess of companies like Apple and Samsung. They need to price sharply to ensure consumers buy what they make. And they need to think open platform more than walled garden. If they avoid the pitfalls that would keep them from getting all of that right, I am quite sure console gaming will (once again) be the next big thing. So, if you are still debating whether mobile gaming will kill the next generation of consoles before they ship, my answer is no. Did everyone who loves Skittles stop eating steak? Of course not. John Riccitiello is the former CEO of Electronic Arts.

"Hold me," This Is Not A Ball Game begs me with her adorable French accent, tears running down her cheeks. Whimsical music plays against a backdrop of cardboad circus silhouettes, the lions and strong men and acrobats bearing witness. I hold up my hands, each finger a tiny gaming app critic, waiting to slice her to ribbons. "I can't." Thank you, random Edwards Scissorhands flashback, for helping me nail down my feelings for Absurd Interactive's This Is Not A Ball Game. It's a game I desperately want to enjoy, and I can feel it wants me to enjoy it, but I can't get past these damn critic fingers to where love lies waiting. This is a beautiful fantasy that just happens to have a circus-style ball tossing. The game begins with a wonderful cutscene, a magical fairy with a delightful voice explaining that I am the only one who can save her, restoring magic to the world by participating in a series of carnival games. Why, here's the opening now. I don't have to watch, because the entire unskippable thing plays every single time I start the game. Every time. This Is Not A Ball Game never lets you skip a video. Every new game concept has an unskippable explainer video, to the point where I actively dread the introduction of new features. That hurts, but it's not damning. No, what's damning is having a set number of plays before you have to wait for an arbitrary timer to refill. What's damning is, instead of giving the player a set number of balls for each level, you let them throw as much as they want until the level's three star crash to the ground, and when they run out, make them buy more. What's damning is the difficulty level rapidly ramping up to the point where buying special balls is almost required. How can a game so gorgeous, so whimsical and fantastic and charming be so repulsive? Will I ever free myself of these critic fingers? This Is Not A Ball Game Genre: Ball GameDeveloper: Absurd InteractivePlatform: iOSPrice: Free Get This Is Not A Ball Game on iTunes

The makers of Hard Reset will be picking things up where 3D Realm left off.

Jezebel Asses Out and Buttcheek Chic: The Billboard Awards Red Carpet | Deadspin Miguel Delivered A Diving Leg Drop To Two Fans At The Billboard Awards | Gizmodo Flashback: How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet | Lifehacker Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet to Lose Weight

This is an official video for Sony's next home console, not like the flashier fake that made the rounds last week. Not a lot to go on here, but it'll probably be black, right? And square? Of course, this new drip of marketing represents Sony trying to play spoiler to the imminent reveal of Microsoft's next Xbox, which happens tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see just how much—or how little—each company divulges about their next-gen machines before the annual E3 dog-and-pony show starts.

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: GiantBoyDetective opens the gates on GIF Club again, so you can share all you favorite small animations with the people of TAY. And BigDaddy delivers a screenshot-filled reader review of Metro: Last Light right here. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

Microsoft is holding a conference tomorrow for their big reveal: the next Xbox. That means there is one day left for the Internet to have fun with rumors, jokes and parodies. Machinima, not one to miss out, took advantage of the last remaining day before the new Xbox becomes a real-life thing and our jokes will inevitably start to focus on what facts we're given. The best way to explain what's going on in between the DRM, cartridge and software cracks is probably what one of the current top comments on the YouTube page says: "did Tim and Eric buy Machinima or something??" Indeed, my friend.

Granted, none of this is in-game footage, but whatever. BATMAN.

Here's another trailer for the upcoming Hardware: Shipbreakers, a strategy title being worked on by some ex-Homeworld devs. It looks great, but then, so has everything else the team has released so far. Some gameplay footage would look a lot better.

Professor Dong Wong Cho of Chungbuk Provincial College in South Korea has an idea about violent video games. And it's truly bonkers. According to Professor Cho's latest study, violent video games make graphics cards run hot and emit more radio waves. Thus, the scholar argues, this means violent video games are more harmful for the body. M'kay. Korean site Inven (via tipster Sang) reports that the professor's study apparently revealed that a game's graphics card temperature was 36°C when idling. Now, that sounds about right. The card's temperature apparently increased to 45°C during a racing game. But then, Professor Cho's study stated that when a "violent game" was played, the temperature supposedly shot up to 57°C. In turn, the game emitted more radio waves. Korean site Inven was bewildered by Professor Cho's research and pointed out that using a graphics card to decode HD videos can increase temperature to around 80°C. What's more, Inven also noted that people in computer design are often running programs that use GPU acceleration, putting them in a more harmful environment than the vast majority of "violent game" playing gamers. To prove that this isn't a "violence" issue and that Professor Cho's theory is bunk, Inven played Manhunt on PC. While Manhunt isn't a new game, it is certainly violent. It also hardly put any heat on the computer's graphics card. As Yonhap News (also via Sang) noted, Professor Cho hopes to present his findings at an upcoming Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering seminar. Previously, Professor Cho has apparently published research on how drinking for three days straight will cause liver damage, how watching porn will cause unmarried men liver damage, and how smartphones cause people to have irregular voices. He sounds like a very serious researcher! Online in South Korea, people are flabbergasted by his latest research. Some are even joking that 3DMark or similar graphic benchmarks should be labeled as "harmful". 폭력적인 게임일수록 전자파가 높아 위험하다 [Inven] 폭력성 게임일수록 컴퓨터 전자파 상승 [Yonhap News Thanks, Sang!] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. 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 fall, fighting game franchise BlazBlue is getting an animated series in Japan called BlazBlue Alter Memory. More details on ANN or the show's official site. To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. 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.

It's another familiar week of UK cha-... oh wait, it isn't.

After Dead Island: Riptide sliced through its competition for three weeks, this time it's dethroned by another follow-up in the form of Metro: Last Light. By debuting in top spot, it does what Metro 2033 failed to do when it placed fifth in 2010.

Chart-Track says Metro 2033 sold stronger than Last Light in its launch week. Back then, Metro 2033 was fighting March megatons like Final Fantasy 13, God of War 3, and Battlefield Bad Company 2. In contrast, May 2013 has been dead quiet - emphasis on dead.

Having said that, this week sees another new release in the top ten via Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. The spinoff charts fourth this week. We expect the next 3DS Poke-game to do slightly better.

In other movers and shakers, Last Light only nudged Riptide into second place, making this week a 1-2 for Deep Silver and Koch Media. Tomb Raider drops out of the top five for the first time in its 11th week, slipping down to sixth. Meanwhile, Injustice: Gods Among Us and The Walking Dead (packaged retail edition) shuffle into eighth and seventh.

Just three months after hacks by China’s People’s Liberation Army came to an abrupt halt, the country is once again attacking US targets reports the New York Times. Hacks on organizations like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times ceased three months back when it came to light that the perpetrators had stolen data—from blueprints to clinical trial results—from American companies and government agencies. Now, though, according to security experts and American officials, attacks have started once more from Unit 61398, China's hacking HQ. A report by Mandiant, a private security company, has revealed that "attacks had resumed", though the company was unwilling to name the affected parties because of privacy agreements. It did, however, admit that "the victims were many of the same ones the unit had attacked before". That doesn't really narrow it down much, and could suggest targets ranging from Coca-Cola Company to Lockheed Martin. What is clear, though, is that the Chinese certainly aren't holding back, as the Times points out: [O]ver the past two months, they have gradually begun attacking the same victims from new servers and have reinserted many of the tools that enable them to seek out data without detection. They are now operating at 60 percent to 70 percent of the level they were working at before. The news comes as a blow for the Obama administration, which recently took the bold step of naming and shaming China, for the first time officially fingering the company for hacking the US. Clearly, China has no intention of stopping the attacks, but it remains unclear what the best course of action is for the US government. Until that's decided, it's clearly something that big businesses are going to have to face up to. [New York Times] Image by Shutterstock / Andersphoto