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Boy, boy, crazy boy; get cool, boy! Something's coming, I don't know what it is, but it is gonna be great! Not just lyrics from West Side Story; those could be the mottos of E3, come to think of it. This outstanding tribute to the console wars by AVByte (via NeoGAF) breaks down the coming Microsoft vs. Sony conflict in the best way possible—via song and dance. The music and lyrics are by Antonius Nazareth, and the video was directed by Vijay Nazareth. Good show, guys.

For some reason, dinosaurs wearing high-fashion hats slide across the screen if you enter the Konami Code on the British Vogue website. Hail Britannia, I guess.

This trailer isn't for Guillermo Del Toro's Kojima/Kanye-approved, GLaDOS-featuring robots vs. monsters film. No, it's for Yuke's fighting game based on the property. And it is, unfortunately, not really looking so hot. Robots are cool. I like robots! But if you're going to try to sell me a game about robots fighting monstrous Kaiju from the bottom of the sea, you've gotta show me at least one Kaiju. If I'd watched this ad and had no idea what Pacific Rim was, I'd think that the Kaiju were just more robots. Furthermore, I don't remember that music from the movie, but if you're gonna make a soundtrack for a Pacific Rim game trailer, all you have to do is play this track: Put on that ass-kicker and I wouldn't even care if the game itself didn't have any Kaiju. Okay, okay, I'm probably being overly harsh. This might be an okay game. Though if they're going to make a game based on Pacific Rim, shouldn't it be a Kinect fighting game where you and a co-op partner have to perfectly coordinate fighting moves to command a Jaeger? Will Kinect 2.0 allow for mind-melding? Both the game and the movie are out on July 12.

Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore may have inadvertently confirmed the Lumia 1020 with picture data.

It's a AAA freebie avalanche as Infinity Blade II, Superbrothers, Badland, Where's My Water? and Tiny Wings have all gone free on the same day.

The Pokemon television series has been around for a while now—long enough that Ash Ketchum's character design has changed a number of times over the years (sometimes, not so subtly—the same goes for Pikachu). Now that there's a new game coming, there's also a new anime series to go along with it. Said season starts airing in Japan on October 17th, but we can already see Ash's new design—it's the last Ash on the right in the image above, which was posted to Reddit by 009reloaded. Overall, the design changes continue to make Ash more and more svelte. A sign of different fashion and beauty standards over the years? Either way, I don't know about you, but the latest Ash looks cooler, if not classier, than earlier designs. His clothes are fitted, making him seem less like a kid. And the hat's minimalism may not be as iconic as original Ashs' hat, but it manages to convey the idea of a Pokeball effortlessly. I like the new Ash, although I appreciated Pikachu better when he was chubbier. Cuter that way and all. What do you think? Evolution of Ash (His hat looks like Red's now, don't you think?)[009reloded]

Did you cheer when Sony delivered that epic smackdown retort to Microsoft’s unpopular policies during its E3 press conference this year? Did you gasp at the shiny newness of The Division? Were you choked up at seeing Mega Man in the upcoming Smash Bros. game? You shouldn’t have been. The hobby/medium that you’ve loved has no pulse anymore. Only one man has the spine to tell it to you straight. Laugh if you want. But deep in your broken hearts, you know he speaks the truth. He's been right before. Want to see more of Zac's work? Head over to his personal blog and game-themed site Magical Game Time. If you're feeling commercial, you can buy prints and shirts here. He'll be back on Kotaku with a new comic same time next month!

If everything goes according to Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts' plan, a "fully-simulated economy" might be one of the coolest aspects of a game involving gorgeous spaceships shooting each other. Sure, that 300i is a gorgeous ship, but keeping it fully-stocked with missiles is a complicated process. First, the factory making the missiles needs raw materials, so it generates missions for players and AI units to bring some. If the space adventurers are successful, then great. If they're, for instance, constantly set upon by pirates, the factory will generate missions to eliminate pirates in the area. If production falters, the price of missiles can go up, which could leave that pretty 300i open to the sorts of folks that don't worry about buying missiles because they keep stealing all the materials. The economic plan goes much deeper than that, as explained over at Star Citizen's official website. It's actually much more complicated than Chris Roberts' real-world economic plan, where I open my wallet and give him everything inside of it. The Star Citizen Economy [Roberts Space Industries]

The news is sad and brutal. Ryan Davis, 34, longtime Senior Editor at Giant Bomb passed away last week just a few days after getting married. Davis' passing was announced today by his heartbroken colleagues at Giant Bomb.Goddamnit.It's always too soon. It's always so painful. We always wish we had more time with them.Like many of you, I got to know him through his media presence. I was late to the Gamespot shows he did with Jeff Gerstmann, but I was a loyal listener to the Giant Bombcast for years. At first I couldn't tell the difference between Ryan and Jeff's voices, which seems weird now. I figured it out quickly enough. Ryan's was the one that was quicker to laugh. Well, it was more of a giggle, wasn't it? On the show he seemed ever-cheerful. He was our affable host. He seemed eternally gracious.A few years ago, he started letting me appear on the Bombcast. These would be the main times I would see him from year to year, and so my mental image of him is sitting behind some audio equipment, headphones on, eyes darting at whatever they need to dart at while making the best gaming podcast on the Internet.I think I was an okay guest on Ryan's podcast. I tried to be informative. I didn't try to be funny. The other guys and guests were funny. They'd be the ones to make him laugh. Still, I didn't feel good about my showing. I saw Ryan the next day. Ran into him at E3 where he was unusually smartly-dressed (that's photo proof in the image up top). I am not an insecure person, but I told him about my doubts and second-guesses. Don't worry about it, he said. He told me I did fine. But maybe I should have been in a different segment with the newsier people? No, he told me. He wanted me in the segment I was in. He wanted that mix of personalities. It was just what he had hoped for. He had a kindness and a confidence about the whole thing that stuck with me. He was a good guy.I've mostly interacted with Ryan through Twitter and Facebook. I was delighted to see he'd tied the knot. I'm now crushed that he is gone.My and all of the Kotaku team's hearts go out to Ryan Davis' family and friends. I've got a couple of Bombcasts on my iPhone and now I think I may never listen to them. I like the idea that there will always be some new laughter of his to hear. So long, Ryan. I look forward to hearing you again. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: GranArcanum writes about the daily challenges that gamers face. JJtheTexan continues his survey of Nintendo’s lost franchises. And, RombleTom offers up an essay about the women in The Last of Us and video game feminism. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

This hilarious Peter Molyneux life simulator imagines what the life of the creator of Fable and Black & White might be like. So many ideas!

Some of the most popular and celebrated iOS games are currently as free as a bird - a tiny-winged bird, that is. Yes, Andreas Illiger's adorable Tiny Wings is one of several big-name apps going free at the moment, and while nothing's been announced as yet, our spider sense tell us this has something to do with the App Store's fifth anniversary, which Apple is celebrating on Wednesday, July 10.

Freebies spotted so far include Epic's Infinity Blade 2, the delicious Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery: EP, Disney's charming Where's My Water, and the beautiful Badland. We'll keep an eye out for others, but for now we're going to stare at you with one eyebrow raised and wonder why you're still reading this instead of loading up the App Store.

Guess that frenetic scavenging and robot-dodging won't be just terrifyingly exciting—it will also be beautiful. Big Robot, the creators behind the heavily British tweedpunk sci-fi survival sandbox that is Sir, You Are Being Hunted, have released seven new screenshots showcasing the somber beauty that's present in their game. It's good of them, considering you'll hardly have time to admire the scenery once you'll have a group of bloodthirsty robots trying to smoke you out of the bush you're hiding in. Sir, You Are Being Hunted is expected to hit PCs this month. Here's an early dose of its beauty. Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

Even if you don't care about sci-fi shooters, you might wanna look at this. What you're seeing up top is the backstory of City Interactive's (Lords of the Fallen, Sniper: Ghost Warrior) upcoming old-school style sci-fi FPS, Alien Rage. If the two-minute movie did pique your interest, have a look at what the developers have to say about it: Unleash a fury of powerful weapons as you blast your way through armies of Alien forces hell-bent on taking you down! Battle through 14 intense levels and prepare to face a barrage of beastly-sized bosses that will test your every skill. Each of your 10 weapons comes with two firing modes and you’ll need all of them! Battle hardened Alien forces will attack you from every direction using various flanking and attack moves. Built with powerful up-to-date graphics technology, awesome physics, destructible environments… experience a truly intense, old-school styled shooter game! Wide variety of Alien enemy forces including Infantry, Warriors, Flying Drones, SpidersHuge boss fights – Over 21 enemy types including 8 beastly-sized bosses to challenge and destroy through 14 LevelsStrong thru-the-gun experience with 10 powerful weapons each with two firing modesSkill shots, head shots and shooting accuracy heavily rewardedPlayer-triggered destruction of environments and cover helps to advance through levelsBuilt with powerful up-to-date graphics technology, awesome physics, destructible environments That actually does sound pretty neat. And if City Interactive spent as much time and effort polishing the game as they did that wonderful cinematic trailer above, we might have something quite entertaining on our hands. We shall see when Alien Rage hits this Fall on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

Square Enix has announced when you'll be able to get your hands on the mobile game, and there isn't long to wait.

The level of camouflage technology Snake from Metal Gear Solid 3 uses to blend in his surrounding environment—in this case, a brick wall—is truly impressive. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest, funniest game-related screenshots and art that we can find. Send us suggestions if you've got them.

Valve is an iconic game company. It has a unique corporate structure. One former employee said it "felt a lot like high school", complete with popular kids, troublemakers, and everyone in between. Then, there's the alleged "weird paranoia". "Now we’ve all seen the Valve handbook, which offers a very idealized view," former Valve employee Jeri Ellsworth, who was the head of Valve's hardware lab, recently said on The Grey Area podcast (via Develop and VG247). "A lot of that is true. It is a pseudo-flat structure, where in small groups at least in small groups you are all peers and make decisions together. But the one thing I found out the hard way is that there is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company. And it felt a lot like high school." "There are popular kids that have acquired power, then there’s the trouble makers, and then everyone in between," Ellsworth continued. "Everyone in between is ok, but the trouble makers are the ones trying to make a difference. I was struggling trying to build this hardware team and move the company forward. We were having a difficult time recruiting folks—because we would be interviewing a lot of talented folks but the old timers would reject them for not fitting into the culture." Earlier this spring, Ellsworth was among a handful of longtime Valve employees who were suddenly dismissed. Ellsworth said that the hardware project she was working on at Valve was "cancelled by proxy" as the key hardware engineers were let go. The hardware team apparently caused a "weird paranoia" that caused a group to "round up all the undesirables and get rid of them". Ellsworth admits that what might have gotten her dismissed was how she complained about being unable to hire anyone for the hardware team. She said she was getting frustrated. "I was fired for being abrasive," she said. "And I probably was." Ellsworth recalled the day she was fired, and she overhead a mechanical engineer say one of her team members got fired. Then, she went straight to her team and found out that she was fired, too. "I couldn't believe it," said Ellsworth. "The handbook said that if you get too far off course they will tell you about it." "I'm sounding bitter, and I am," Ellsworth said. "I'm really, really bitter, because they promised me the world and then backstabbed me." Ellsworth did point out that she was talking about her experiences at Valve—experiences that sounded brutal towards the end of her tenure. "I'm still really friendly with the folks there and the ones I wasn't friends with before we became friends since," said Ellsworth. "My heart goes out to them—it's probably completely different, and they may have got their machinist." Kotaku is following up with Valve and will update this article should the company comment. Jeri Ellsworth former valve Engineer [TheJenesee via Develop via VG247] Photo: Ed Sozinho | Office Snapshots To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Normally, playing video games at work in China is frowned upon. Unless you're working in the games industry or covering the games industry, gaming at work can lead to trouble. However, for one branch of China's military, video games are just a part of their daily training regimen. Much like the armed forces in the US, the Chinese military is broken down into many different portions. The Chinese military consists of the navy, air force, and army, which are all part of the People's Liberation Army. In China, however, there is one extra group; the People's Armed Police. The main focus of the People's Armed Police is vastly different from the other branches of the military—their job is to deal with internal issues. They're also the first branch of the PLA that has openly stated that they use video games to enhance the lives of their troops. Reported by Phoenix News online, the PAP recently put out a report about how they deal with troop morale in the 800,000 strong organization. One morale boosting exercise involves creating walls called "smile walls," where pictures of smiling and happy members of the PAP are hung up. However, the part that PAP members seem to be most excited about is the military recreation room. According to Phoenix, the military recreation room is exactly as its name implies: a recreation room for the PAP members. Inside the room there are various "gaming" devices and computers that are loaded with video games. The PAP doesn't exactly sound out what these gaming devices or games are but they do point out the genres. There are gunslinger games (probably arcade light gun games), battlefield games, console-grade first-person shooters, fighting game simulations, and co-operative games. According to the PAP, the troops have had a lot of fun since the opening of the military recreation room. On top of the recreation room, the PAP says that their squadron training room also uses video games, such as Counter-Strike and domestically developed FPS The Glorious Mission, to help train soldiers for battle. This type of video game war training is similar to what is already being done in the United States and other parts of the world. One member of the PAP, named Deng, said that playing games has helped him train his vision and reflexes. Deng says that playing games, both online and offline, improved his observation skills, adaptability and collaboration awareness, and even helped him in his everyday tasks. [记武警特色文化活动 电脑游戏锻炼善战本领] [Phoenix News Online] 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. Eric is Beijing based writer and all around FAT man. You can contact him @FatAsianTechie@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @FatAsianTechie.

MSi, the Taipei PC gaming company, released a new video that shows how to build a MSi Z87-GD64 Gaming PC. Or something. Apparently, all you need is a Philips screwdriver, a bikini, and a bad English language dub. Oh, don't forget the cheese ball pop music! Because that's how you build a gaming PC, right? Um... No. On YouTube, people are making the obvious comments about the video, but there were more insightful ones about why the PC building element is all wrong—not to mention the video itself. "First of all you don't hold the CPU like that, and you don't touch the gold plates on the memory," wrote YouTube user Dawie Fourie. Numerous other YouTube users pointed out that this was no way to hold a CPU. "MSI this is the last straw," wrote YouTube user Luke Yorn. "Why didn't you use a real expert instead of this over the top crap?" How to build a MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING PC [MSI@YouTube via @Grummz]

This is the "Gold Ring" Quarter Pounder. Priced at 1,000 yen, it was only available for one day, this past Saturday. The burger was inspired by jewelry. Because jewelry tastes delicious? McDonald's always had yummy-looking hamburgers in its promotional images—and less delicious-looking ones in real life. But if you are paying ten bucks for a burger, you want it to look like a ten-dollar burger, no? The below image is the Japanese equivalent of the "Expectations vs. Reality" meme. Some of the Gold Ring burgers actually looked okay—it really seemed to depend on where the burgers were prepared as well as who took the photos. The Gold Ring Quarter Pounder was stuffed with two bacon slices and pineapple. As Gigazine shows, the burger came in a special little box (that was inside a box), a deluxe bag with a ribbon, and a fact sheet. That's right, a fact sheet. Those who wanted fries and a medium drink needed to cough up a total of 1,200 yen (about US$12) for the meal deal. One McDonald's even had an embarrassing "V.I.P. seat" for customers who shelled out for the special, 849 calorie Quarter Pounder. Online in Japan, people pointed out that with the same 1,000 yen what you could buy this much food: Many felt like this Quarter Pounder seemed overpriced! "Normal Quarter Pounder cheese tastes better," wrote one commenter on 2ch, Japan's largest forum. "The box probably cost 850 yen," wrote another. "It probably uses the same pickles as the 100 yen burger," wrote one Twitter user. The burger did have its fans, with people on Twitter saying it was a tasty burger. If you missed the Gold Ring, fret not, McDonald's Japan is rolling out two more pricy, one-day only Quarter Pounders: the Black Diamond Quarter Pounder on Brioche with truffle sauce on July 13 and the Ruby Spark Quarter Pounder with chorizo and avocado on July 20. Photos: yamaguty, ShinoClear, kradness55, Gigazine, Mob_Character_A, mistclast, GetNews 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.

On Twitter, upon being asked whether the light bar on the PS4's DualShock 4 controller can be turned off to conserve battery power, Sony worldwide studios president Shuhei Yoshida confirmed that the light bar, in fact, cannot be turned off. [Thank you, ThatVGBlog.]

Yeah, let's go with that. Since we last saw it, Starbound, indie group Chucklefish's upcoming 2D sci-fi sandbox title, made leaps and bounds in development. And being a good, feature-rich sandbox, the game will have, alongside the usual spelunking, exploring, mining, and building, a full-scale music system. Here's Chucklefish: You’ll be able to craft musical instruments including a trumpet, violin, guitar, piano and drum. Once you’ve got one of these instruments you’ll be able to hit various keyboard keys to play different notes. But more interestingly the instruments are able to read ABC notation. Essentially you’ll be able to share tunes with each other as regular text. Copy and paste them into your Starbound directory and your player will use his instrument to play the song in game. You’ll be able to play songs in multiplayer and even synchronize different instruments with each other to form a band. The above video, which is a charming guitar-and-flute rendition of GLaDOS' "Stay Alive" from Portal, is actually the second demonstration of the game's music system—there being an earlier, more simple rendition of Beethoven's "Für Elise" among the developer's videos. It's quite amazing how far the system has come in just one week. Starbound is slated to be released on PC this year, and can be pre-ordered from Chucklefish's website. If what you read above didn't whet your appetite, maybe the screenshots below will. 7th of July Progress [Starbound] Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

This weekend, tragedy struck. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed in San Francisco. Over 180 people are injured, and two are dead. Nineteen passengers are still hospitalized, with six still in critical condition. Two thirds of the passengers were Asian, which is why the Chicago Sun-Times's headline is angering some online. As pointed out by AsAmNews, the Sunday headline read, "Fright 214". There is, of course, a long tradition of mocking Asians—especially Chinese as well as Japanese—by not differentiating between "L" and "R" sounds in English. Case in point: the "fried rice" scene in Lethal Weapon 4. For many, the headline appeared to perpetuate the stereotypical Asian accent. "First, its pretty sick to use a play on words in a headline for a tragedy," wrote AsAmNews. "Secondly, this one’s pretty racist." Some commenters on AsAmNews agreed that it was racist, with one even calling it a "sick joke". Others seemed to think it was simply in poor taste and unintentionally showed bad judgment while covering the crash. It felt oddly reminiscent of ESPN's "Chink in the Armor" headline. Sun-Times Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk told the Asian American Journalist Association that his staff didn't even think about how the headline could be perceived as insensitive. "There was nothing intentional on our part to play off any stereotypes. ...If anybody was offended by that, we are sorry," Kirk told AAJA. "We were trying to convey the obviously frightening situation of that landing." The Asian American Journalist Association thinks the headline might have slipped through due to a lack of diversity among newspaper staff. Some will say that getting upset over something like this is being hypersensitive, that the Sun-Times didn't mean malice, and that this loses sight of the tragedy at hand. And as insensitive as the Sun-Times headline seemed, there were also Twitter users writing all sorts of awful things and even a Korean newscaster on Channel A that, according to Searchina, actually said, "We're lucky that the people who died were Chinese." (And yes, online in Chinese people are incredibly angry about this news anchor's remark.) But, intentional or not, the headline doesn't exist in a vacuum. You’re Kidding Me, Right? Check Out This Headline in Chicago Sun Times. [AsAmNews via Bejing Cream] Chicago Sun-Times publisher responds to ‘Fright 214′ headline [AAJA] Photo: Justin Sullivan | Getty 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.

Finally. Just as every calendar year sees a new FIFA and new Madden, 2013 sees the release of Robot Vacuum Simulator 2013, which follows...Robot Vacuum Simulator 2012. You can download and play it right now. Which I'm assuming you already are, since that's one of the best trailers I've ever seen. Even if you don't want to play it, you should at least head to the developer's site to see the game's feature list. Also: I'm shocked this was made by people who do not work for the Nintendo Minigames Department. Robot Vacuum Simulator 2013 [Site, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Apple's App Store turns five this week, and to celebrate, many of the biggest and best apps - including games - seem to be going on sale for, well, nothing. Among the games currently available for free (the sale isn't official yet, so people are finding more games as they keep searching) include Sword & Sworcery, Infinity Blade 2, Where's My Water, Tiny Wings and Badland. If any of those games have an iPad version, they're free as well. Get on it.

You have ten hours. Green Man Gaming's "666 Sale" that just finished up took their servers straight to hell. Lucky for you, for the next ten hours all of their deals are available again. Most of what's on offer will be Steam activated, and code GMG10-VTTCS-VYH18 takes an additional 10% off. Click here and go through each day to see all the sales. Our best picks: • Borderlands 2 + Season Pass ($13.50) • DMC: Devil May Cry ($22.50) • XCOM: Enemy Unknown + DLC Packs ($12) | But, this is also on Amazon for $20 bundled with Civ 4 and 5. • Bioshock Infinite + XCOM + Borderlands 2 + NBA2K13 ($54) • Civ V: Gods and Kings ($7) Keep up with Shane Roberts on Kinja and Twitter. Check out Dealzmodo for more great tech deals, and Deals.Kinja.com for even more discounts. This is a Moneysaver One-Shot, a post focusing on a single deal, sale, or category. Join us every weekday at 2:15pm ET for the full Moneysaver roundup, brought to you by the Commerce Team. We're here to bring Kotaku readers the best gaming deals available, and to be clear, we also make money if you buy. We want your feedback.

You know it's a good week for cosplay when you can see outfits from Persona, The Hobbit and Final Fantasy XII, all in the one place. Other highlights? That BioShock Splicer mask wasn't just made as a one-off by the wearer, he sells them from his Etsy store. And that Korra shot...phew. To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fancy Pants is Kotaku's weekly round-up of the best in video game cosplay (costume play), where fans dress up as their favourite characters. As seen on Skinz-N-Hydez. As seen on tealpirate. As seen on Anastasya01. As seen on Ivycosplay. As seen on Nani-Mizu. As seen on dani-foca. As seen on MoonFoxUltima.

I mean, I know it's a driving game, a genre that's long had the luxury of looking better than other games, thanks to the fact they only have to render a track and some cars. But still. Look at this. This isn't some fancy cinematic trailer. The game, which is playable right now for its community of backers, actually looks this good. I'm serious. I've got a build and whenever I boot it up I think I've travelled five years into the future. Project Cars is still in development, and will hopefully be out next year on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U. Obviously, the footage here is from the PC version. You can read more about Project Cars' pioneering funding and playtesting model here.

Cube World's alpha launch has been a rocky one—eager fans waiting to get their hands on the immensely charming voxel RPG likely haven't been able to buy the game yet, even though the developers have been trying to sell it for days now. At first, it seemed like it was just immense demand that was breaking the servers. In actuality, it's an intentional distributed denial of service attack, which disables the servers with high traffic. "Initially we assumed the fault was on our side, like our download/updating system could be broken, so we closed the sale and improved our system," Wollay Funck, developer behind the game, told Kotaku."But it turned out that all these problems were the result of DoS attacks. It seems that someone is trying to systematically damage us and our business. The attacks usually occur during evening/night as soon as we open our store or user registrations. The attackers obviously want to prevent us from selling our game." These are recent traffic stats. pic.twitter.com/6gjxjMwDfp — Wolfram von Funck (@wol_lay) July 6, 2013 "Being just a small team (my wife and me), we didn't expect such things. We just tried to make our game available in its early state in the best possible way, which is on our homepage, where we can directly communicate with the community and provide patches and updates easily." They're working their best to try to issue a fix, thankfully. "Fortunately, we can sell the game outside of the attacks without problems, and, we're now extending our servers and team to handle the remaining issues. We don't have an ETA for this yet." As of this writing, the game is still not available for anyone that wasn't lucky enough to be able to make an account on the (currently unavailable) website already.

Not in the 13-year history of the Smackdown/Smackdown vs. Raw/WWE/WWE 2K series has The Ultimate Warrior—one of professional wrestling's most intense, controversial, and just plain weird superstars—made an appearance. Apparently that will change with WWE 2K14. The forums of SmackDown Hotel, a wrestling enthusiast site, last week published an image of the August edition of WWE magazine, carrying an ad for WWE 2K14 that lists Warrior (as he is now known, legally even) as a preorder bonus. The Ultimate Warrior last appeared in 2009's Legends of Wrestlemania and 2011's WWE All-Stars, both of which were more arcade-style wrestling games, with cartooned player modeling and over-the-top moves. The WWE 2K line is (yes, non wrestling fans, I can hear you snickering) the simulation version, featuring storylines, more realistic moves and whatnot. Warrior and the WWE have had an at-times strained relationship, but so did the WWE and the Macho Man, Randy Savage; those two managed to patch things up before Savage's death in 2011, and get him into All-Stars and WWE '12. (Savage also appears in WWE 2K14.) I've pinged a 2K Sports representative to ask if they can go ahead and confirm this. You can see the image of the magazine page for yourself at the link. WWE 2K14 hits shelves on Oct. 29. Ultimate Warrior CONFIRMED as Pre-Order Bonus! [SmackDown Hotel via Operation Sports. Image via WWE.com]