Man, deciding who to support was pretty easy in Fallout 3. The hardest decision you had to make was "do I want to blow up this entire village or not?" If the developer diary for Fallout: New Vegas below is any indication, these decisions are going to be a little ... thornier this time around.
#tshirts
Reader JC has a design up for voting on T-shirt site Threadless, and we think it's one worth voting for. Unless you hate plumbers. And who hates plumbers? More »
The NPD Group recently conducted a poll among American consumers to track their "spending intentions" for the rapidly approaching holiday shopping rush. Of the poll's 2,003 participants, 9 percent said they plan to spend more money than they did last holiday season (down from 11 percent in 2009), 61 percent said they plan to spend the same (up from 59 percent) and the number of people who plan to spend less than they did last year remained steady at 30 percent. A responsible 30 percent.
The poll also inquired what hot items would end up in respondents' checkout baskets -- 15 percent of those polled said they were planning on purchasing video games, a 5 percent decrease from last year. We know what you're thinking: "If people aren't buying video games, they're probably buying fragrances, right?" Wrong. Fragrances fell from 19 percent to 13 percent. Seeing as how those two items are consistently all we ask for during the holidays, we're not sure what everyone else is dropping their cash on.
The UK's Channel 4 is ceasing 4iP, its £20m digital innovation fund. The division was responsible for digital innovations like AudioBoo and Privates. Any projects currently in development will finish and the remaining 40 percent of the fund will be redistributed.
We remembered that Channel 4 was funding Introversion's Chronometer, but studio co-founder Mark Morris tells us it "never got taken forward beyond the concept stage." Morris elaborated, "Sad news about C4 though, they were doing some good in the business."
#att
Having first been revealed in, oh, 2007, it seems that the Xbox 360 is finally going to be able to play nice with AT&T's U-Verse streaming TV service. Thing is, there's a catch. Well, catches. More »
#clips
US President Barack Obama is in the new NBA Jam, alongside a bunch of other prominent past and current politicians. Sounds like it's worth a chuckle when you read it, but man, you have to see it. More »
Many of you guys know that I love Mega Man games. It’s one of my top 5 franchises, without a doubt. There’s just something I find so engaging about running, jumping and stealing the weapons of others. Oddly enough, my first Mega Man game was Mega Man 2, and I didn’t end [...]
In this Super Scribblenauts trailer, 5TH Cell creative director Jeremiah Slaczka makes a personal, Scribblenaut-ized appearance to outline the new adjective feature. And then proceeds to upstage himself by making a "cuddlesome cowlike Cthulu." And a "brave milkmaid." To milk it. So ... yeah.
Tackling an inexhaustible undead force all by yourself just isn't a wise endeavor. Super Stardust developer Housemarque has announced that its PSN top-down scourge shooter, Dead Nation, will let two players meet in the place where barely human husks lunge violently at any signs of intelligence -- you may know it as the internet.
"Originally, online co-op wasn't going to be included as a launch feature, as the schedule and resources didn't allow it," Housemarque CEO Ilari Kuittinen wrote on the PlayStation Blog. "However, after many late night play-testing sessions and long talks with Sony Computer Entertainment, we decided that this was a must-have feature and it would be unfair to you if we launched without it!" You see, Ms. Croft? It's not that hard.
"At this point, our coders went from working 12-hour days to working 16-hour days, as well as weekends!" Oh ... well, uh ... this is awkward. Housemarque has yet to announce Dead Nation's launch date, though we know that it will cost $14.99.
#xbox360
In 2010, Microsoft's Kinect is a motion-sensing camera that requires no control pad. You are, as the marketing goes, the controller. In the beginning, though, things weren't so fancy. More »
#wow
While Hollywood director Sam Raimi is keen to make a World of Warcraft movie, whether he made it soon was always going to come down to the result of a tussle for his attention between it and another project. More »
We wanna work at Gearbox. No, seriously -- don't tell our boss, but this Joystiq thing pales in comparison. Trust, after you watch the hilarious behind-the-scenes video of Gearbox HQ past the break, you'll probably want to hand over your degree in Sandwich Artisanry and join 'em, too.
#madden
A sponsorship with Verizon Wireless means the three latest "Madden Moments Live" for Week Four of the NFL are 100 percent free. Ordinarily they're redeemed with Madden Coins, which are earned in online play or purchasable outright. More »
If you're a fan of Nippon Ichi's twisted strategy RPG series, Disgaea, you've likely spent a ludicrous number of hours staring at illustrator Takehido Harada's charming 2D character art. You'll get to do so again with Disgaea 4, with the benefit of higher-resolution artwork. By the looks of things (check out Andriasang for some neat comparison and screenshots), the new sprites have lost none of their personality in the long-awaited upgrade.
Disgaeaeaeaea 4 will launch on PlayStation 3 in February 2011 with a limited edition package, including a Nendoroid Petit figure, art book and soundtrack CD. It'll also retain all the original illustrations, allowing you to toggle between the old and new characters. It's nice that the old art is sticking around, but couldn't Nippon Ichi have shipped their used goods to a less fortunate soul, like IGA?
Indulging his inquiry habit, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata spoke with Masayuki Uemura, advisor to Nintendo's Research & Engineering Dept., and Hiroshi Imanishi, Ex-Director and GM, Corporate Communications Division, about their time working on the Famicom (NES) way back in 1981-82. The two veteran developers describe the impetus behind the decision to make the Famicom, the problems competing with Nintendo's own Game & Watch, and the lasting appeal of Super Mario Bros.
Uemura shared how the Famicom came to use its (at the time) unusual 6502 processor. A friend at Ricoh cold-called him and asked for help getting the factory's efficiency up. While working on that, Uemura consulted with Ricoh about processors, and told their engineers about his desire to make a console that could run Donkey Kong. " When I think about it now, I think I was spot-on in asking 'Can we make Donkey Kong?' rather than 'Can we make a circuit like this?'," Uemura said. "It seems like the engineers at Ricoh were starving for the challenge of working on some new technology. Even more important to them was the idea that if they worked at it, they could take Donkey Kong home! (laughs)"
That’s a promo image for Super Mario All-Stars – 25th Anniversary Edition, which we posted earlier today. We now know that Europeans are going to get a crack at this collection, but will it be available in the states?
A closer look at the promo image shows that the NA boxart for Super Mario Bros. [...]
Kirby's Epic Yarn bears little resemblance to traditional Kirby games, and it partners the beloved pink sphere with a new character, Prince Fluff. It turns out, according to an Iwata Asks interview with Good-Feel and Nintendo staff, that there's a good reason for both -- Epic Yarn was originally Prince Fluff's game.
Wario Land: Shake It! director Madoka Yamauchi came up with an idea for "World of Fluff" and designed it around the Prince Fluff character. Nintendo loved the idea, but thought something was missing from the "warm" world Good-Feel had created. Nintendo proposed turning it into a Kirby game last year.
Producer Etsunobu Ebisu said that having Kirby in the world gives Epic Yarn "a greater feeling of existing." Also, we're sure, Kirby gives it a greater feeling of hope for good sales.
#ubisoft
Sony's PlayStation Plus service moves firmly toward "worth it" today, now that Ubisoft has extended the beta program for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood from "select" subscribers to "every" subscriber. More »
