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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.

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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

Look at your keyboard. It's filled with keys! Some of them you love using. Some of them you probably rarely use. In Japan, a new survey (via R25) revealed which ones were totally unpopular among the country's PC users. For those who don't know Japanese, be aware that when people type the language, they use the same QWERTY keys that English speakers use (software converts the touch typing into Japanese characters). The keyboards are slightly different, but on a daily basis, folks in Japan are clacking away on alphabetical characters. According to a poll of three hundred Japanese men and women (150 men; 150 women) between the ages of 25 and 34, the top five personal computer keys that people don't really use are: 5. "Insert" 3. "F12" (tied with below) 3. "F6" 2. "F3" 1. "Pause/Break" The "Pause/Break" key can, as Answers.com points out, launch your system properties. It also was used in DOS commands to pause scrolling and has been used to pause games. These days, it's not uncommon for some computers to ditch the Pause/Break key entirely. What about you? Which keys do you rarely use? PCキーボード「使わないキー」は？ [R25] Photo: Shutterstock 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.

The world does not need any more MOBA (League of Legends, DOTA 2) games, thanks. The ones we've got are more than enough for that crowd. What we do need more of, though, are space combat games, and if they've got to try and bring something fresh to the MOBA genre to do it, then so be it. This is GoD Factory: Wingmen, an unfortunate name for a very promising-looking game. In terms of structure, it's all MOBA. You construct your own "character" (in this case, a starfighter), team up and try to destroy the other team's carrier, all the while protecting your own. In terms of gameplay, though, it couldn't be further from the clickfest LoL or DOTA fans are used to. GoD is a space shooter, and a reasonably serious one at that, going the "realistic" route in that it takes zero-gravity, drift and alignment into account. Developed by Nine Dots Studio, it's currently up for voting on Steam Greenlight. GoD Factory: Wingman [Steam]

Pixel Press appears to hit that sweet spot where technology, ambition and design come together to bring to life something you could once only dream about. It's part-game, part-app which comes in two parts. The first is a basic sketching kit, a downloadable and printable template that's basically just an enormous sheet of squares. Users can colour in those squares to create the pixellated design of their choosing. When they're done, the app is able to read the special sheet design and turn it into a video game platforming level, users able to add stuff like a skin and music, as well as test to make sure the app works. While it appears to be geared mainly towards students, there's no stopping anyone older from trying their hand at it either. It all sounds a bit magic, but the fact it's restricted to grids makes it all seem a lot more practical. Those after a more comprehensive run-down of how it all works, the team's Kickstarter page has a nice clear breakdown of the tech and their goals. Pixel Press: Draw Your Own Video Game [Kickstarter]

This morning we're looking at the art of Justin Fields, who over the last few years has worked at some of Hollywood's best concept and effects studios, such as The Aaron Sims Company, Amalgamated Dynamics and Halon Entertainment. If you've been to the movies lately you've probably seen his stuff; Fields got the chance to contribute to Iron Man 3, and is also working on a number of upcoming films like the Wachowski's Jupiter Ascending and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And games? He most recently worked on Blink, an impressive first-person stealth title that we've covered previously. You can see more of Justin's work at his personal site and CGHub page. 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. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

It can sometimes feel like the world is being buried beneath independently-developed PC games, leaving us with far too many to keep up with. So Pixel Prospector has done us all a favour and put this clip together, rounding up 55 of the best-looking indie games either on the way or out recently, dropping them in the single highlights video. 55 Fresh Indie Games [Pixel Prospector]

Bit of a quiet week in cosplay last week, so there's not much new stuff to share. Thankfully, there's some new shots of favourite old costumes to get us through the dry spell. I'll never get tired of seeing cel-shaded Borderlands cosplay. Never. Such a simple but effective touch. I will also post any and all Half-Life 2 cosplay I come across. Especially when it forgoes the obvious and pays tribute to the game's best-dressed cannon fodder. 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 TimmCosplay. As seen on VampBeauty. As seen on Nebulaluben. As seen on sweet-little-world. As seen on ArtisansdAzure. As seen on keruuu. As seen on neko-tin.

Got time for one last set of Next Xbox rumours? The Wall Street Journal has some.

This is Frontiers, a game designed and being developed by two men. Something that blows your mind when you see footage of the game in action. Developers AAD Productions describe it like this: FRONTIERS blends the feel of first-person RPG classics like Daggerfall with the relaxing tempo & simplicity of a point-and-click adventure. Discover ancient mysteries, live off the land and fight deadly creatures, all in a beautiful & massive open world. An open-world RPG? With a relaxing tempo? Good Lord, it's like they asked me what I wanted from a video game and decided to go out and make it. Frontiers will hopefully be out next year. Frontiers [Facebook, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Spicy Horse's Oz game combines the undead with "an Oz not of our remembering" - it's called OZombie, and it stars Dorothy, Toto, the Lion and the Tin Woodsman. The Scarecrow, who always wanted brains, is cast as the villain in this iteration, and instead of carrying around a basket, Dorothy gets a repeater.

Spicy Horse is unsure which game it will make next, OZombie or Alice: Otherlands, and it all depends on whether the studio can regain the Alice rights from EA. If Spicy Horse and EA work out a good deal, then Alice it is. If not, OZombie gets the green light and probably a Kickstarter.

"Actually, the more I think about it - and the more I see/hear feedback from you guys - the more I'm personally leaning towards Oz," Spicy Horse founder American McGee writes on the OZombie Facebook page. "There's so much fun stuff to explore, so many interesting characters and locations to discover. Wonderland will also be there, if not today, if not the next project, then perhaps the one after that?"

Keep in mind (and mind your brains) that OZombie is entirely separate from American McGee's Oz, the game Atari canceled in 2004.

Cards Against Humanity was once a Kickstarter asking for $4000. It's since made over $12 million in revenue. Here's a great writeup on how the game, and its creators, got there.

There are genuinely attractive Kickstarters, there are joke Kickstarters, and then there are Kickstarters like this, which somehow manages to be both at once. Flying Assault Butts is a campaign to add a...very special new miniature to your tabletop game of choice. Of a butt. Warhammer, Warmachine, an RPG, whatever. It can now have an assault butt. There is backstory. In the Grimdarkmost far future, war has engulfed the galaxy. A plague has come from the furthest dimensions of the unknown, wiping out whole populations. The plague causes an unspeakable agony as the victim's butt takes on a life of it's own, tearing itself away to attack mindlessly. Perhaps it's some government science project gone awry. Perhaps it's, I don't know, magic or something. What I do know is: The Butt Wars rage. Now: awesome news. Because the campaign has already blown past its original target, there are more butt designs on the way to complement the original "batwings". Like the pirate Captain Buttbeard. And the The Rampaging Rumpagon. Wonderful. The campaign isn't done yet, so if you want to contribute - and maybe bring the world more tabletop butt monster designs - please, do so. Miniature Wargaming - Flying Assault Butts [Kickstarter, via BOLS]

Deathstroke is a playable character in Batman: Arkham Origins, according to this preorder offer (of course) from Amazon. Click this link and then on the Arkham Origins box in lower right to see it. [via TheSlanted]

Crime is a constant feature of video games writing. Somewhere, someone is doing something illicit with them—sometimes comically stupid, but potentially tragic. Games and consoles are currency, objects of dispute, sometimes even weapons themselves. Kotaku's Police Blotter is here to round up the latest in games crime. Faces of Resisting Arrest WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—A guy whose head looks like someone chose the randomize feature in MLB 13 The Show's player-creation menu is in jail after burglarizing his cousin's apartment, reports WPBF-TV. Deputies say Florida Man Doyle Washburn Jr. (pictured) relieved his cousin of a PlayStation 2 and attempted to crawl out of a bedroom window with the merchandise, valued at $25 in GameStop store credit if it has the component video cables. He had "what appeared to be cords in his pants," says WPBF, so, good, then. Washburn resisted arrest, said deputies, which required a beating "hobbling," and a visit to the hospital for an X-ray. Washburn tried to run away there, but a deputy beat on him some more "tackled him against the wall." New Photo GameFace, right here. Kill/Death Ratio Doesn't Mean What You Think, Lady SLOUGH, ENGLAND—Some kids bring home a nasty note from their teacher. A 15-year-old at a special education school in England brought home cops in body armor and a search warrant, after his teacher mistook conversation about Call of Duty for a plot to buy a firearm. Though the matter has been cleared up, his mother is none too happy, reports The Daily Telegraph of London (in its print edition yesterday). The school's head teacher justified the reaction, though. "Although there was no weapon, if we hadn't taken action and there had been, the consequences could have been devastating." Don't Fake Burglary, Robble Robble HOPATCONG, N.J.—A 33-year-old man faked a break-in at his own house in order to pay a debt, police say. NJ.com reports Christopher Kelly, 33, reported he'd been burgled of a Timex watch, several Wii games, and, uh, $2,600 of his girlfriend's cash. Police thought it odd that security video at a nearby store didn't show anyone in the area around the time of the burglary, that drawers in the bedroom were left open but otherwise untouched, and, oh yeah, an adult was sleeping upstairs during the time of the burglary and heard nothing. Kelly's girlfriend thought he was at work at the time but it turns out he had been fired about a month before. She later recorded him admitting he faked the whole thing to pay someone back. These Aren't the Victims You're Looking For GREENVILLE, N.C.—Cops in this eastern North Carolina city say a couple of burglars busted down the wrong door but still cleaned out the residence of its liquifiable consumer electronics. Police say four men "were looking for something specific," according to WNCT-TV and forced their way into the apartment before realizing they were in the wrong place. They took a TV, mobile phones and "an Xbox gaming console." School Days, School Days, Dear Old Torrented SDKs MIDDLESBROUGH, ENGLAND—Johnathan Waring, a student at Teesside University faces a potential prison sentence of 10 years after pleading guilty to distributing the PlayStation 3's software development kit over the Internet, which he had obtained through the games development course he was taking at the time. "The court heard that his actions could have cost Sony millions of pounds worth of damage to its system," reports the Evening Gazette, in that the SDK could show others how to defeat antipiracy measures. The offense occurred sometime in November or December 2011. Just Say No to Copyright Infringement WINNIPEG—Cops raided a head shop here not necessarily because it was selling weed, but because its bongs infringed on a bunch of copyrights, among them Angry Birds and Nintendo characters, and that sends a real bad message to kids. This might have been a creative way to crack down on on a paraphernalia dealer, but it didn't put him out of business. "The Joint" has slyly rebranded itself as "The Joint: Tobacconist and Glass Gallery" and is back open for business on St. Mary's Road for 'Peggers with need for natural or homeopathic medicine supplies. [CBC News] Lots of strange things happen in the pages of your local newspaper or on the 6 o'clock news. If you see something, say something. To me, that is. I'd like to write it up. Remember: You need not reveal your identity. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

I spend a lot of time staring at our release calendar. For my job, I mean. I don't just sit there staring in a fetishistic way; that would be super creepy. Rather, I use it a lot to try and figure out what games we have/need for upcoming review and Quick Look content. If you ever bother to look at this page as I do, you may have noticed that since April, the calendar's been a bit dry. In fact, for a long while there, last week's calendar only showed one new game: Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, an eShop download for the 3DS. By the time the week began, that calendar began to fill out a bit more, with such rousing titles as the (delayed) XBLA version of Monaco, a PS2 Classics re-release of Fatal Frame II, and the advergame Doritos Crash Course 2.

Though I sort of wish it weren't hitting, quite literally, THE DAY after E3 ends, I'm thrilled that a game as big as The Last of Us is coming out in a space where most big games fear to tread.

Yep, it's official: We are in the thick of the spring/summer doldrums.

It happens every year. By the time the holiday season winds down, game releases begin to dry up. It used to be that we wouldn't see much of anything for the entire first half of the year, though in recent years the first quarter has at least been a steady home of big releases that either slipped out of the holiday schedule, or just floated into March to help pad out a publisher's fiscal report. This February/March was actually pretty heavy with quality game releases. But now that we've gone past the end of every publisher's fiscal year (which ends on March 31), the quality has begun to take a precipitous dip.

Things aren't as bad as they used to be by any stretch, but as I look through this year's current release calendar, all I see for weeks on end are one, maybe two noteworthy releases pocking each month's schedule. This week, we got the one-two punch of Metro: Last Light and Dust 514. Two weeks after that, the Insomniac-developed multiplayer shooter Fuse (which one gets the impression EA couldn't figure out a better release week for). The week after that, Capcom's futuristic adventure Remember Me is the biggest game of the week (see previous parenthetical, substitute Capcom for EA). Then, the week of E3, Animal Crossing: New Leaf hits, followed that Friday by The Last of Us. Eventually we'll see the likes of Game & Wario, Shin Megami Tensei IV, and Deadpool, but that's about it until the calendar picks up again in August.

Such is the way of the spring/summer release calendar. A few big games spread across months of time, like butter scraped across too much toast. This notion of back-loading game releases into the holiday season is practically as old as the industry itself. After all, video games began, at least from a marketing perspective, as an offshoot of the toy industry. It's irrefutable fact that people spend more money on toys and video games during the holiday season than they do any other time of the year. That's been true even during our most recent recession, and it's seemingly been the guiding ethos for publishers looking to find an ideal calendar spot for all their big games.

But just because sales invariably pick up heavily in the holiday months doesn't mean that there isn't value in those long, hot, slow summer months. Microsoft practically owned the digital game market when it introduced its Summer of Arcade push. Out of that promotion, hugely popular downloadable titles like Geometry Wars 2, Braid, Shadow Complex, Limbo, and Bastion have emerged. Now Microsoft even has competition from Sony, with its PSN Play program, which theoretically should inspire both companies to be pushing for higher quality summer content. Then again, considering what a drag most of Microsoft AND Sony's summer digital lineups were last year (a few outstanding games like Sound Shapes and Dust: An Elysian Tail notwithstanding), one can't help but wonder how much either company will be pushing their respective campaigns this year. Especially when you consider that both have new consoles to focus on peddling.

The Vita has some fun indie games popping up in the PSN store, but it's not like Sony is actively promoting this stuff much.

The conventional wisdom says that kids and older student types don't buy games during the spring and summer because they're outside, traveling with family, or in weeks like this one, hard at work on finals. That's all fairly accurate to a degree, provided you're still working under the notion that video games are primarily bought by, or for, kids/college students. I imagine that's still a very big chunk of the overall gaming demographic, but we're long past the point of adults buying console, handheld, and PC games being an aberration.

And even if you are thinking solely about the kids, okay, then why not make the spring and summer months the designated home for all major handheld games? Kids who travel will eventually become bored of whatever they've traveled to see, and will look for time to spend with their 3DS and/or Vita. Given that the Vita is now well over a year old, I am legitimately flabbergasted that Sony hasn't made a bigger push to put more noteworthy Vita games out during the next several months. Right now, the only major title I'm aware of coming up for the Vita any time soon is Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault (though thankfully, there are some good downloadable indie titles popping up here and there as well). Sony might be dedicating more resources to PS4 development and promotion right now, but if there's any notion still floating around in the heads of Sony's executives that the Vita might still be salvageable in the US market, then why not focus toward getting big Vita games into the hands of players when they would theoretically have the most free time? Assuming, of course, there are any big Vita games currently forthcoming...

Nintendo doesn't even have that next-gen console excuse. If anything, the 3DS is what's keeping Nintendo in decent working order these days. There are no shortage of big, upcoming 3DS games, but few of them have release dates prior to this August. In fact, only Animal Crossing and the 3DS remake of Donkey Kong Country Returns are hitting store shelves prior to the end of the summer. Mario Golf: World Tour could potentially still be squeezed in there, but even still, that's not exactly a banger of a lineup for an entire four-month period. I was legitimately shocked when, during Friday's Nintendo Direct, Iwata had nothing of note new to offer for the 3DS' summer lineup. I figured if they were having an event focused on summer releases, then maybe there would be more, like, you know, actual summer releases.

A game like Pokemon X/Y will sell to its intended audience no matter what time of year you put it out. So why not put it out at a time when the competition is light to begin with?

Nothing is going to change this year's release trajectory. With so many eyes squarely focused on this holiday season--one of the exquisitely rare "new consoles" breed--this summer's release schedule is largely expendable, peppered with last hurrahs for the current slate of hardware, and leftover, less eminently marketable games publishers clearly hope will benefit from minimal competition. By the time we do get to the end of August, dozens of huge games will start converging on the ever-narrowing weeks between then and November, all vying for a limited number of dollars. The bottleneck will result in some big games doing extremely well, and a lot of other games being called "disappointments" in their publishers' future financial conference calls. I assure you, it's going to be an absolute bloodbath.

It doesn't always have to be that way. There are 52 weeks every year when publishers could theoretically be releasing new games. Instead of building every major development cycle toward a narrow window of supposedly ideal retail conditions, spacing out our releases over the entirety of the year could help relieve some of the tension of the big holiday push. And if you're so worried about games coming out in the summer and dying at retail in the fall, then why not time some big, meaty DLC to release around that holiday season, both as a bonus for people who already bought, and an enticement for those who haven't yet? It's not like we haven't figured out any number of ways to extend a game's lifespan in recent years. Pretending that people will only buy games so long as they hit store shelves around the holidays feels like an archaic way of thinking, one long overdue to at least be experimented with and tweaked, if not overhauled altogether.

--A

Next week we should have plenty of absurd things and derpfaces coming out of the Next Xbox reveal, so it's premature to parody that right now. We need a more timeless exploitable, something like—oh, yeah, this bigass statue of Robocop. Here we go. The statue, remember, was a Kickstarter initiative to place a tribute to Detroit's greatest protector in the city of Detroit, whether the hell Detroit likes it or not. It doesn't really matter that the thing is unfinished, it's Robocop, go to town. Source Image: Bigass Robocop statue. While most of you are smart enough to figure out how to upload images, here are some simple steps to take for those less familiar with the practice. 1. Create your 'Shop and save it to your desktop. 2. Go to the bottom of this post and click "Discuss." 3. This brings up a comment window. Click the icon that looks like a picture. 4. This brings up another window called "Insert Image." Click "Choose file" if you're uploading your 'shop from your desktop 5. Alternatively, you can upload the 'Shop to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. Then paste the image's URL into the field that says "Image URL." Note: this must be the URL of the image itself, not the page where it is displayed. That means the URL ends in .jpg, .gif, .png, whatever. 6. Add editorial commentary and hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, upload the image to imgur and paste the image URL as a comment. I promise I will look at it. 7. I'm not sure if we still have file size restrictions under Kinja but it's probably a good idea to keep your image size under 1 MB. This is especially true for animated .gifs. If you're still having trouble uploading the image, try to keep its longest dimension (horizontal or vertical) under 1000 pixels. Alright! Have at it. Thanks very much for your participation. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

Welcome to Kotaku's Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Brawl In The Family by Matthew Taranto. Published May 14. Read more of Brawl In The Family Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published May 17. Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published May 13. Read more of Awkward Zombie Manly Guys Doing Manly Things by Kelly Turnbull. Published May 16. Read more of Manly Guys Doing Manly Things Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published May 15. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Brentalfloss the Comic by Brent Black, Andrew Dobson and Dan Roth. Published May 16. Read more of Brentalfloss the Comic Virtual Shackles by Jeremy Vinar and Mike Fahmie. Published May 13. Read more of Virtual Shackles Another Videogame Webcomic by Phil Chan and Joe Dunn. Published May 17. Read more of Another Videogame Webcomic Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published May 16. Read more of Corpse Run To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

If you went up to the average student and asked them if they wished school was more like a video game you would almost certainly get a passionate "YES!" I'm sure if you asked most adults they'd also put their vote in favor of making their tedious work day more fun and exciting. Gamification is in no way a new idea, but it's one that is still evolving at a rapid pace. For the last two years of my adult life (which coincidentally are the only two years of my adult life) I have had the pleasure of being a 6th grade teacher in central Indiana. Gaming has always been a huge part of my everyday routine and in the middle of my first year of teaching I decided to bring a gaming aspect to my classroom. With a designer friend and an extensive knowledge of video games I created the classroom management system called ClassRealm. ClassRealm is a way to help students get more involved in their school work and in the classroom in general. Students can earn experience points, levels and achievements by doing simple school related items such as participating in class discussions, helping clean up the room and getting assignments done on time. It worked exceptionally well with my first year class and I decided to do a little write up on the results. Kotaku writer Owen Good was kind enough to published my story on a lazy Sunday in March and the response was outstanding. After the original article was posted I received dozens and dozens of emails from people all over the world telling me they wanted to use ClassRealm in their classroom or saying they wished their child had it at their local school. I was overwhelmed with all the requests and the amount of people who wanted to help or be a part of ClassRealm in some way. I decided if we really wanted to fund ClassRealm (which wasn't fully developed at the time) we needed to Kickstart it. I wasn't sure if I could even Kickstart a classroom management system, as it wasn't a game or video game in the traditional sense. I assembled a small team of computer savvy friends and a wonderfully talented illustrator from Australia and we set up our Kickstarter in a little over two months. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do. Coverage from local news, WIRED magazine and gaming sites helps us gain exposure across the web, but we were asking for a lot - 65 thousand dollars. Pitching gamification is a difficult task. Gamers know that educational based gaming has traditionally been pretty lame. Sure, when Mario teaches typing it's more entertaining, but it hardly makes a difference. Why give money to a system that you, personally, are not going to use? It's not a game for gamers, it's a game for students. Many educators on the other hand have a view towards gaming that is less than accepting. Video games are violent. They rot our students brains and make them into mindless zombies. Why would you want to promote video game concepts in the world of education? Gamers and educators - these were my two biggest audiences and many were on the fence as to whether it was worth the time and money to collaborate. Even with these obsicles we managed to raise 25 thousand dollars. Which is phenomenal. It's outrageous. Who gives 25K to a group of young adults to make a video game based classroom system? The support we got was fantastic (Even one of my heros, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, mentioned it as "important"), but in the end 25K isn't 65K. We had failed and now all I had was a great idea and no money to make it happen. A team and no way to pay them. A product which people emailed me about daily, but I had no way of giving them. I don't link a lot of Kickstarters but this one is special and I think...important. kickstarter.com/projects/13672… — cwgabriel (@cwgabriel) May 11, 2012 I kept talking to friends, developers, and designers about possibly helping us create the online interface for ClassRealm that we so desperately wanted to build, but the conversations always fell short. Who wants to build a system for free? Even your best friends are smarter than that. I felt like I was stuck in a catch 22. I didn't have enough of an online system built to pitch my product and gain funding. I didn't have enough funding to make the online system so I could pitch it. It's the classic start-up conundrum. Fans of ClassRealm offered ideas and sometimes even berated me for not putting all I had, money wise, into the idea. I felt selfish, but on a teachers salary I wasn't exactly bringing in loads of cash to begin with. A wedding and a new house added to my mental agreement that I shouldn't throw all I had into my idea, no matter how much I believed in it. A few other gamification sites approached me about maybe building on top of their structure, but once again it didn't work out. I tried as hard as I could to contact the folks behind ClassDojo, with the hopes that they would want to collaborate and make ClassRealm a reality. They never responded, no matter how hard tried to contact them. I even applied for a job with them just to get their attention, but to this day I have heard nothing back. I guess my ideas didn't warrant a response in their eyes. In December of last year I was named by Kotaku as one of their "Gamers of the Year", which was a great surprise as I had been off the news grid for some time. It was also another reason I felt I had to find a way to get ClassRealm out to more classrooms. My original team, while supportive, felt it was best to move on from ClassRealm. Just put it on the shelf for a rainy day or for a time when we had more money and more resources. As heartbroken as it made me I had to agree with them that it was the right move... for them. I, on the other hand, was going to keep at it. Surely someone somewhere would take a chance and help us create this system. Through some connections I managed to line up a lunch with two of the higher-ups at a company called Evanced Games. The company works on reading programs, educational games, and educational software for schools and libraries across the world, so they seemed like a perfect choice to adopt ClassRealm. The Evanced guys listened intently as I described all I had done and how ClassRealm had helped my students throughout my last year of teaching. Eventually it got to the point where they said that while ClassRealm sounded great it wasn't really something they could fit into their schedule. They suggested that they would pass it on to one of their higher-ups and see what they thought. Sure, why not. I'd held out hope this long, why not wait and see. What happened next was unexpected, as I had gone in feeling it wasn't even a possibility. Evanced Games offered me a summer job. Doing what, you ask? Working on, evaluating, pitching, and creating educational games and programs. They wanted to pay me to combine two of my biggest passions. Needless to say I was overjoyed and told them I was very interested in working with them. Their ideas for reading programs and bringing educational games out of the classroom are phenomenal. I've been assigned the title of "Educational Game Specialist", which is quite possibly the raddest job title in the history of the world, and I'm counting down the days until I get to start my new summer job. ClassRealm, much like gamification itself, has evolved rapidly since I first thought it up in late 2011. I still use it in my classroom everyday. While the system still sits in the back of my mind waiting to reach its full potential, I have a whole summer of working on educational games to look forward to. I haven't given up on ClassRealm. Not even close. But for now all my ideas for an online system and the expansion of ClassRealm will have to wait. The experience I gain as a teacher and at my new job as a "Game Specialist" will surely help me make ClassRealm into a system that will inspire teachers, students, and parents everywhere to admit something they may have never believed - gaming belongs in the classroom. Have ideas for ClassRealm or just want to talk gaming in education? Shoot me an email at ben@classrealm.com or hit up my personal Twitter account. I always love to talk about possibilites.