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Sony has announced its PlayMemories video editing software for the Japanese PS3, following an announcement in Europe. Along with this news comes details of the services provided with the app, including five gigabytes of free, cloud-based storage.

PlayMemories Studio (that's the PS3 app) users will be able to upload their videos and photos to the online service, called PlayMemories Online. From there, they'll be able to view and manage that media through the PC-based PlayMemories Home and iOS/Android PlayMemories Mobile apps. So if you only want images to enter your eyes through a Sony portal, you can quite nearly accomplish that.

#lordoftherings Ever since EA binned The White Council, I've been dying for an open-world RPG set in the world of The Lord of the Rings. I am also far from the only one, as a team of modders has been working on building themselves just that, using Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games as a base. More »

Keep your cool, Mega Man fans -- as previously announced, that version of Mega Man X above still isn't a new character in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Nope, it's just Zero dressed up in a Mega Man costume, one of the new looks seen in the "Weapon Expert" costume pack available now.

Elsewhere in the pack, Devil May Cry's Trish gets a new costume for her "Gloria" look, Hawkeye gets a makeover from the time he spent in the Marvel Universe as "Ronin," and Taskmaster also gets a new look, from Udon Entertainment's comic art. Interested players (or anyone who just wants to pretend Mega Man is playable) can grab the pack right now for 320 Microsoft Points, or $3.99 on PSN.

As of tonight, the Vita Store is live in North America, selling games and renting movies. Check it out. More »

#portal The cake might be a lie, but this 1/1 scale Portal gun looks as real as one can get without being able to shoot holes in walls. More »

#zelda Come on, be honest. Someone, somewhere along the line would find a way to screw everything up. So these make-believe movie posters are probably as good as we're ever going to get! More »

- Harada’s relatives had a coffee shop, and as a kid, he’d place the Space Invaders game
- Harada’s parents forbid him from playing video games
- Harada: “No. (laughs) They wouldn’t buy me a Nintendo Entertainment System, so I had to play at a friend’s house or sneak into a game arcade to play. So as reaction to that, when it came time to get a job I decided, “I’m going into the game industry no matter what!” My parents cried over it.”
- He was a psychology major in liberal arts, which isn’t video game related
- He happened to get his first job offer from Namco
- Harada started off in sales rather than as a developer
- Harada: “Harada Right. I actually never even thought, “I want to make games.” My thinking was filled with imaginary thoughts like, “How much fun would it be and how much freedom would I have if I could make my living playing games?” (laughs) I thought about what would be the best way to get a big number of people involved in playing games, and I decided to work in sales and do video game events.”
- This was a reaction to his parents not sharing his idea of how much fun video games can be

Read the rest of the story...

A snippet from EDGE...



It's not a confirmation, but the wording seems to indicate that there is some forward movement on localization. This seems a bit more assured than the recent comments coming from Capcom.

Let's pretend you work at Bethesda Game Studios. Congratulations! You've just shipped The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game that would go on to win multiple 'Game of the Year' awards. You're tired, probably haven't seen your family in months, and you have a week off. What do you do? Work on Skyrim, of course!

During his DICE 2012 keynote, Bethesda Games Studios game director and executive producer Todd Howard discussed an annual tradition at the company: a game jam, where staff are allowed to create anything they want on company time for one week. This year, the only stipulation was creating something within the -- at the time -- recently released Skyrim.

In a sizzle reel presented to attendees, the public was shown what the minds at Bethesda could create. On the list? Mountable dragons, epic mounts (like flaming horses), giant mudcrab bosses that rival any other games, a new skill tree focused on lycanthropy, Kinect-enabled shouts (like this!), the ability to build homes, adopt children, use spears, and much more.

Howard was quick to note that the features shown in the video -- which were all running within the game -- were experiments. "How much of this stuff sees the light of day? To be determined. Could it be in a future DLC? We don't know. Could various parts of it just be released for free? We don't know."

And what was id Software's John Carmack doing that week? "[He] shot a rocket into f***ing space!" Howard said, showing actual footage of a rocket Carmack sent out of the earth's orbit. We'd still rather have dragon mounts. Check out the list of 'Game Jam' features after the break.

#nintendo Meara Lynn Nichols, an employee at Nintendo of America, has been reported missing by her husband after failing to return home from an appointment at her son's school. More »

#theelderscrolls Skyrim's offical Creation Kit hasn't even been out a week (or half a week!), and already, there is some amazing stuff being done. More »

During his DICE 2012 keynote speech, Bethesda Games Studios game director and executive producer Todd Howard revealed that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been played by "over ten million people." In December, Bethesda revealed it had shipped ten million units worldwide.

Of the "over ten million" players, Howard says that "many million" are playing the game on PC. Based on Steam statistics Bethesda has seen, "the average playtime is 75 hours," something Howard said is "amazing." Our assumption is that there are a number of players worldwide who have yet to power down their machine since the game's November 11, 2011, launch.

The PC version of Skyrim continues to evolve, with the recent release of the Skyrim Creation Kit and its partnership with Valve to become the second featured title -- behind Team Fortress 2 -- in the Steam Workshop, which highlights user-generated content and streams it into games.

"It's something we'd like to see come to consoles one day," Howard said, adding that giving players the ability to "take and change" the game helps to make the experience unique. To Howard, games are the "ultimate combination of art [and] technology" and allowing the players to become their own "director."

Finally, your indecipherable ramblings can be heard by your comrades. A recent patch for Battlefield 3 on the PS3 has corrected a known issue involving inexplicably mute teammates. In reality, teammates talk a bunch.

EA recently revealed sales of over 10 million for Battlefield 3, so this should come as good news to what we'd classify as "plenty" of PS3 players. And now that this adjustment is out of the way, DICE can get back to dealing with those pesky cheaters. If the developer could do something about those jerks who always steal the jet, only to crash it in ten seconds, we'd be all set.

Just watch out for those pesky cracks on the sidewalk. Not everyone comes back in one piece.

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While some people may say that 2D gaming is a relic of ancient platforms, smarter gamers know that 2D requires just as much work as 3D. Perhaps that's why the guys at Arc System Works are showing off the process of bringing BlazBlue characters to life. Hit up the link below to see how ideas are taken from concept to finished product.

#theelderscrolls At D.I.C.E. 2012, Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard just showed an amazing highlight reel of mods the studio built into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim during a week-long "game jam" after the game's release. Features like mounted combat, a lycanthropy skill tree, and one enormous mudcrab, the width of the horizon, were all shown. And that was the tip of the iceberg. More »

#openthread Greetings, Kotaku readers, and welcome to our hump-day open-thread. Hey, we've reached the peak! It's all downhill from here. More »

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If you're going to donate some cash, make sure you let it be known that you want this title on Nintendo platforms!

You might have to go back to clown college if you don't.

During his keynote at the DICE 2012 games industry convention in Las Vegas, Bethesda's creative director Todd Howard showed a sizzle-reel containing various ideas his team have put forward for the future of the game...

#review The first Darkness game was released in 2007. With some original ideas for the genre and a setting that wasn't space or a war, it was a surprise hit, and people still say nice things about it today. More »

Oil Rush is now available on Mac! Buy it once. Play it on both Mac & PC!

In the post-apocalyptic flooded world of Oil Rush two things running short: oil and time. The last survivors, desperately seeking to seize control over the remaining of oil on the dying planet and crush their enemy, have started the global naval war that turned the whole world into a massive battlefield. Are you equal to the task of winning the last war to end all wars? Find as you play through the 16 missions of single-player campaign which is offering variety of tactics and environments, from half-flooded jungles to cold northern seas. In these harsh and cruel times, oil is thicker than blood.

Double Fine announced tonight that its new project will be funded via Kickstarter donations. The game is described as "a brand-new, downloadable 'Point-and-Click' graphic adventure game for the modern age." The project is seeking $400,000 total and donations will be accepted until March 13th at 8...

#psvita The most recent PlayStation Store update has quietly delivered five PS Vita titles—discoverable by search—that show the digital versions costing between $3 and $5 less than their retail versions. More »

Updates to PixelJunk Eden have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

- Added a menu item to reset hints so they will be displayed again
- When the game is run directly without using the Steam Client, the game will first prompt the player to log into Steam. This means no matter how the player starts the game his acheivements, savedata and ranking will be stored within Steam

Remember Star Wars: Battlefront 3? It was never really made, but was never officially canceled either, and the idea faded into the background some time in 2010. Not everyone is ready to let the dream go, as PlayStation Lifestyle is reporting a slew of data that it says suggests developer Spark Unlimited is working on Battlefront 3.

Lifestyle's evidence includes a job opening at Spark listing "a 3rd Person Action/Adventure sequel in a high-profile science fiction franchise currently greenlit for full production development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC markets;" a Spark employee's LinkedIn profile that describes a sword-fighting game for a well-known IP; and another that lists a triple-A third-person shooter that's been in development for three years.

Spark Unlimited's previous projects include 2008's Legendary and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, and 2004's Call of Duty: Finest Hour. Battlefront 1 and 2 were developed by Pandemic Studios, which was bought by EA and eventually shuttered in 2009. Before closing, Pandemic said it was not working on Battlefront 3, and no developer has officially claimed it since.

Spark's coming title could be one of many unannounced sci-fi sequels, such as Star Wars: Jedi Knight 3, yet another XCOM revamp (why not?) or Asteroids 3D: When Spinning and Shooting Doesn't Work. Spark says it plans on publicly announcing its sci-fi secret this year.

Double Fine has announced that it will finally return to its adventure game roots. Utilizing the crowd-sourcing power of Kickstarter, Double Fine will hope to fund the project. As rewards for funding, the developer will offer bonuses such as "advance access to the game, original art from its development, and a bowling night out with the team."

The project is already listed on Kickstarter, asking a hefty $400,000 for its completion. Double Fine also plans to "create a unique, serialized documentary available only to Backers," developed by the team at 2 Player Productions.

According to the Kickstarter page, the game will be in development by a small team over a six-to-eight month period. The game is described as "a classic point-and-click adventure utilizing modern touch technology."

In related news: though Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Peterson had offered to help fund a sequel to the cult-hit game Psychonauts, Double Fine isn't ready to announce the title. "These things take time to figure out -- if they can be figured out -- so please don't expect any Psychonauts 2 announcements any time soon," video game icon Tim Schafer wrote on Twitter.

Schafer promises he and Notch are having a "lovely chat" about the possibility, and jokingly says the indie millionaire is a tough negotiator -- at his insistence that the game be dubbed "PsychoNotch."

The European Union provides us a small-scale glimpse into the potential functions of a truly global society -- and more recently, a global society in crisis. The unified currency of the EU, the Euro, was on the brink of collapse recently and all of its member countries are still running damage control.

Now, France in particular is facing another monetary hurdle, as its tax incentive for game development has expired and casued "genuine concern" the EU may not renew the exception that would reinstate it. State aid is normally forbidden under EU law, but in some cases it is allowed -- without an exception, game-development tax incentives would be banned in all EU countries, including France and the UK, Develop reports.

French developer Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain) said that if the tax break is not reinstated it would relocate its operations to Canada, which does offer incentives for development companies, Develop adds. And according to TIGA, The UK's game-development workforce -- which sees no tax breaks -- fell 10 percent between 2008 and 2011, with 41 percent of its workers relocating overseas to countries such as Canada.