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Photoshop is a great and powerful tool. It can take ordinary pictures and make them spectacular... or make them horrible. In China, there are many people with awesome Photoshop skills, and those who don't have any ability usually ask people for help online. Sometimes these requests go wrong. Horribly wrong. Basically, this is what's going on: someone has a boring photo and posts it online. These posters ask Photoshop gurus to edit the photo to make it more interesting. Unfortunately for the original poster, sometimes internet commenters take the photos and run wild.In addition to the Photoshop requests that go wrong, Chinese netizens (like internet users everywhere) also like messing with photos posted by strangers. Sometimes, seemingly harmless photos get tweaked and edited to create hilarious images. Below are a round of some of the Photoshop mishaps found on the Chinese internet. These images were taken from PSyuan.net, a website dedicated to rounding up some of the better Photoshop request disasters found on the Chinese internet. Request: I'm looking for a girlfriend. Please Photoshop masters, make me more handsome!Response: How am I supposed to know what kind of girl you're after? Request: Please make the girls around me a bit more fun! Response: (in pictures) Request: Please make me more intimidating!Response: (in photos)Request: Can you Photoshop it so that we are together? Response: Request: Here are a few pictures (we picked one) of myself, can someone make them cool?Response: Request: Please remove this man next to me, otherwise I can't send this photo to my boyfriend!Response: Hmm, an ugly companion isn't good, let's give you handsome friend for your boyfriend to see! (The joke is that she's with notorious Hong Kong bad boy, Edison Chen)Request: Can you please make me more beautiful?Response: Resident EVIL! Request: Please add a handsome man to this photo! Thanks!Response: Request: Put me in a cooler location! Response: Request: We just graduated, please make this more interesting!Response:Request: Please make the guy jumping in the center more awesome! "More ridiculous" The funnier the better.Response:Request: Please make me cooler. The cooler the better!Response: Before: Please give me some protection! Please, nothing terrible! After:Here are some photos that are just being messed with!Before:After:Before:After:Before:After: Before:After: Photoshop request disasters in China have been a thing for a while now. In Chinese this trend was originally called "大神PS (Photoshop masters please help)", but over time, because of the humorous responses, it became "不要求大神PS (don't ask the masters for help)." Usually these requests are a bit shallow, as they involve making a photo more interesting or making a subject more "beautiful." Some of the earliest Photoshop request disasters date back to around 2008—some even earlier. It remains a popular topic with lots of threads dedicated to it, most recently on Sina Weibo. 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.

But nope. Case in point: a terrifying new gameplay trailer for Darkwood, the procedurally generated top-down survival horror game we showed you two months back. Incidentally, there's an Indiegogo campaign going on for the game, so if Darkwood seems like something you'd want to check out, have a look.

These things take ages to kill.

Insomniac's first multiplatform game in its post-Sony era comes in the form of Fuse, which used to be Overstrike, which used to be more humorous and stylized than the run-of-the-mill gritty, future-tech shooter it ultimately became. Fuse's bland art design and overall lack of personality are disappointing in the context of that initial reveal trailer, but under the hood it's still a generally well made third-person shooter with a clear emphasis on co-op and the imaginative weapons Insomniac is so good at dreaming up. But there are too few of those weapons, and a few too many irksome issues, to lift Fuse significantly above the many, many other cover-based shooters it's competing with.

The game casts you in the role of the four smartmouthed mercenary agents of Overstrike 9, who trot around the globe, hiding behind crates and shooting at faceless armored bad guys to satisfy the whims of their paying clients. In this case, you're hot on the trail of a for-profit terrorist outfit called Raven, who's in possession of the titular super-element, one of those pesky substances that behaves in whatever ways the plot--or the characters' unconventional weapons--need it to. Each of the characters have a single exotic "Xenotech" weapon taped to their arm. Group leader Dalton gets a "magshield" that you activate with the left trigger, which stops bullets and lets teammates shoot through it for extra damage. Naya has a warp rifle that lets you paint multiple targets and then set them all off in a really satisfying chain explosion. Jacob has the most broadly effective weapon with a crossbow that shoots a sort of energy dart that vaporizes enemies and is great for headshots. And redheaded Izzy has a rapid-fire rifle that crystalizes enemies for a few seconds when you pour shots into them, after which you can easily shatter them to pieces. These guys make limp little jabs at each other as the missions progress, but there's not a lot of life in the banter nor the storyline itself, the twists of which are easy to see coming a mile away.

You're free to play Fuse by yourself, during which you can quickly swap between characters to utilize their unique weapons and flank groups of enemies. For the first couple of missions, setting up warp chains or dropping a magshield to take cover behind is pretty interesting, but since each character is stuck with the same primary Xenotech weapon the entire game, the novelty wears off faster than it should. Each agent has a skill tree that you can put points into as you level up--and the way experience is doled out encourages you to use your weapons creatively, so you level faster--but the skill trees don't offer a meaningful level of customization. Instead, they really only offer you the choice between crit effects on your Xenotech weapons or increased damage on your regular ones, and aside from a few weapon-specific secondary abilities, each tree merely gives the same generic abilities to each agent.

Overstrike 9 has gotten a little too serious for its own good.

Certain aspects of playing alone turn out to be irritatingly cumbersome. Most of the time, switching to another character puts you in a compromised position where you're out of range of the action, standing straight up in the middle of a firefight, or facing a wall while a bunch of guys are shooting you in the back. The AI characters will occasionally get in your way, jump onto a turret you're trying to use, or fail to revive you when you're down. Distributing skill points requires you to manually switch to the character in question, dig through the layers of menus to get to the skill tree, then back all the way out to the action and perform the whole process over again. It's a case of a few little things that add up to a big annoyance after a while.

Worse than those quirks, I just ended up feeling bored by the stretches of the campaign that I played through by myself. Aside from a few rudimentary climbing sequences, the entire game is one long linear sequence of large combat-oriented rooms laid out with numerous cover points and walkways. Most encounters give you a chance to knock out a stealth kill or two before the bullets start flying, but the only real choice you have is which cover or walkway you want to return fire from, and what kind of gun you want to do it with. There's so little to the storyline and such a lackluster attempt at humor on the characters' part, the endless shooting at enemies who usually sponge a ton of damage started to wear thin for me about two missions before the game was over.

Fuse is substantially more entertaining with other people. Even though you don't have the freedom to switch around as much and enjoy all the characters' specific weaponry, playing with thinking human allies lets you actually set up intelligent combos and maneuvers that you can't pull off with the AI guys (though, aside from going for headshots with Jacob's crossbow, you're really just dumping bullets into enemies with the same old guns, sometimes through Dalton's shield). Many of the characters' unlockable secondary abilities become more satisfying to use in co-op as well. For instance, Izzy gets a throwable healing beacon that can resurrect downed allies. Playing solo, I tended to just throw that thing at my feet when the fighting got intense, but playing the tougher last couple of missions with friends, I got to feel like I was taking on a useful healing role by aiming the beacon at teammates who were down so I could bring them back remotely and get back to the fighting. Playing with a team actually lets you flank enemies, which is good since what feels like roughly half of Fuse's enemies--from riot shield-equipped infantry to big hulking robot suits with vulnerable fuel tanks on their backs--need to be shot from behind. Solo, it's hard to get those enemies to face anyone but the character you're playing, but in co-op you can actually sort of kite enemies around and draw their ire (or aggro, if you like) so others can get back there and do maximum damage.

If you're going to play Fuse, you definitely want to play it in co-op.

Playing with friends was so much more entertaining for me that I'd go as far as to say it's the only way you should play the Fuse campaign. I actually found three players to be a nice sweet spot, since you get plenty of intelligent tactical potential but can still swap around a bit if you need to take on a different role for some reason. Co-op doesn't fully alleviate the tedium that sets in as you dump round after round into the especially resilient enemies later in the game, but it's a heck of a lot more interesting than plowing through it all alone. If you want more Fuse afterward, you can replay individual chapters to keep building up your agents. I didn't finish any one character's skill tree by the end of the story mode, and only bought three of the the incredibly expensive team perks that increase your experience intake, give you more time before bleeding out, and so on. So there's still plenty of post-game leveling-up to do, if that's your thing. The most rigorous fighting is to be had in Echelon, a wave-based survival mode with rotating objectives that you certainly want four good players for if you're going to tackle it seriously. Bringing leveled-up characters into this mode is a must, and you'll earn a bunch more experience for playing it. But Echelon is tough enough that it also exposes some of the most annoying things about the game's enemies, like the cloaked ones that are hard to see in a firefight and will disable you the second they touch you.

Fuse's gameplay has some good ideas, but they don't carry enough weight in what's otherwise a shooter campaign the like of which you've almost certainly seen before. And it's hard not to think back to the exciting first trailer from two years ago, since many of the shipping game's most outlandish aspects would have been more at home in that highly stylized, wisecracking version that never got made. Fighting in an undersea base and a space station? An exotic Asian assassin who turns out to be someone's ex-girlfriend? A sneering Russian who shoots himself up with Fuse and grows 10 stories tall? It feels like the off-the-wall good ideas Insomniac had for that sillier game have survived, but those ideas are a bit uncomfortably at odds with the serious look and tone of the game as it is now. Fuse plays pretty well, but with smoother execution and a more cohesive identity, it would have an easier time standing out in a genre that, as this generation of consoles comes to a close, is wearing out its welcome more and more.

When the talented Lindsey Sterling is involved in a video, you can bet things are about to get serious. Having brought her own special brand of violin to previous clips like this one, here she's teaming up with musician William Joseph. Who is playing the piano in a flak jacket. If you've ever wanted to see classical music take the place of teabagging in the middle of a Halo firefight, well, now's your chance. You can check out a behind-the-scenes video below. Halo Medley - Firefight - Lindsey Stirling and William Joseph [YouTube]

The Last Son of Krypton mostly pummels evildoers in the face. Yes, there's the good ol' freeze breath and heat vision attacks but those tend to feel a bit impersonal. And Superman always pulls his punches with normal human bad guys. But, what if someone pissed him off so much that he didn't hold back? Well, according to this video by YouTube maestro FreddieW, it'd be newsworthy, to say the least.

If you're against the use of photoshop in cosplay photos, I can understand where you're coming from. But then, if there was no photoshop in cosplay photos, we wouldn't get amazing pictures like the one up top. Other highlights this week include, yes, more Final Fantasy, but also some BioShock Infinite, Doctor Who and, for old time's sake, some Morrigan from Darkstalkers. 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 Zyaaa. As seen on Usagi-Tsukino-krv. As seen on ThelemaTherion. As seen on Evil-Uke-Sora. As seen on Its-Raining-Neon. As seen on DawnArts. As seen on S-Seith. As seen on Nebulaluben. As seen on Rei-Suzuki.

Compared to video game endings on the NES, the Super Nintendo stepped things up a bit. Thanks to the power of 16-bit, devs were able to do much more; ending cutscenes became longer and, similarly to arcade games, a lot of them showed us the best moments and characters of the game in looped sequences, and also put an end to the story with some spectacular pixel art. Let's open up the SNES' giant game library and see what games were the most successful in squeezing out the best looking, funniest and most memorable video game endings. Spoilers ahead!!! Contra III: The Alien Wars Super Mario World Earthworm Jim Gradius III E.V.O.: Search For Eden Final Fight 3 (Haggar's ending) Sunset Riders Knights of the Round Weaponlord Super Metroid Death and Return of Superman Mega Man X Top Gear 2 Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage U.N. Squadron Earthbound Star Fox Shaq Fu Aladdin Actraiser 2 Final Fantasy VI The SNES had a massive library of games, with lot of other, great endings that are missing from our list. Storm the comments and post them with visual support! sources: VGMuseum, Cubex55 To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Happy three-day weekend! Or, to those of you who don't live in America, happy Monday! Given that it's an Official Kotaku Holiday, we thought this might be a good time to revisit some old stories. So we've gone through the archives and dug up some some of our best pieces for your holiday reading pleasure. Today's theme: the people behind the games we play. For starters, check out Evan's brief piece about the best thing ex-Epic designer Cliff Bleszinski ever did, and the story of how Total Annihilation creator Chris Taylor helped save Mike's face. We've also got in-depth looks at some of the people behind companies like the small publisher Xseed, the RPG makers over at Obsidian, and the House of Persona, Atlus USA. Straight out of Japan, look behind some of the surprising ways 8-4 has altered games while localizing them for U.S. shores. And don't miss the story of designer Dylan Cuthbert and how he trained with Shigeru Miyamoto and other big names at Nintendo. Here's a fun look at what it's like for a Canadian developer to work with Nintendo on a game like Luigi's Mansion 2. For a broader perspective, check out Kirk's in-depth report from this year's Game Developers' Conference. And what about the dark side of game development? Reading angry employees bash game companies is always good for some entertainment. Finally, don't miss Fine Art, our regular look at the stellar work of video game artists across the world.

No d-pad. No buttons to mash. No virtual controls whatsoever. Frantic finger-swipes are the order of the day in Combo Crew, an homage to the ancient arcade beat-em ups of our forefathers. Those ancient games of yore gave us a goal — generally rescuing a kidnapped family member or significant other — and set us on a mission that spanned several side-scrolling stages. Our task was to mash buttons until everything on the screen was dead in order to move on to the next screen and mash buttons until everything was dead. The Game Bakers' Combo Crew keeps it simple. There is no kidnapping, just an invitation from a bad guy to join him for dinner atop a tower filled with floor-after-floor of enemies. There is no side-scrolling — each stage takes place on a single screen. And there is no button-mashing. Attacking an enemy is a swipe. Performing a charge attack is a swipe-and-hold. Countering enemy attacks is a well-timed tap, and combo attacks — and there are a ton of unlockable combo attacks across the game's four characters — are a simple matter of swiping with two fingers. Combo Crew is a very pretty game with a lot of character. It's also insanely repetitive, something we've grown to accept in our beat-em ups. The single room stages exacerbate the repetitiousness, but the ease of battling using the game's swipe controls counteracts it, giving the whole affair a "just one more level" compulsion. Or at least that's the case in the floor-climbing King of the Tower game mode. The game's other mode — Combo Crew Mode — sees the player fighting an endless tower of baddies to see how far they can get. The trick is players can recruit their friends to take over should their life get low. The friend will play through the level the player is stick on, with the player gaining their friends points as increased health. It's sort of a social survival mode, though the only means of adding friends seems to be through email, which is just awkward. Swiping is the new button-mashing, and it's a fine way to take out the trash in a tower filled with ne'er-do-wells. Combo Crew could very well be the definitive beat-em up of the mobile age of gaming. Combo Crew Genre: Beat-Em UpDeveloper: The Game BakersPlatform: iOSPrice: $1.99 Get Combo Crew in iTunes — Get Combo Crew in Google Play

This Halo insipred and -themed music video easily wins "the most Spartan costumes featured in a clip ever trophy," as a whole division of Spartans get into an intense firefight in an odd, but awesome setting with a piano in the centre. A pretty large-scale video for William Joseph and Lindsey Stirling's song—, must have been fun bouncing around the field and dodging all those imaginary rockets. Halo Medley - Firefight - Lindsey Stirling and William Joseph [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: It's been a great long weekend for TAY with tons of well-written provocative pieces. Among them: SloopyDrew calls for revolution against a top-down, overly constricted vision of gaming's future. GiantBoyDetective looks at more fictional video games from the insides of TV shows in his recurring Animation Infiltration feature. A piece about the game mechanic that makes DamonsRhee ragequit and the AniTAY round-up deserve your eyeballs, too. Finally, there's a defense by Cimeas of, get this, Fable III. Interesting timing now that the world knows what was inside Peter Molyneux's Curiosity cube. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

About two years after The End came a memorable day: Mark unearthed an incredible stash. Coarse-knuckled and goose-prickling under a wan, strange sun, he hunched over a small old dumpster he found behind the old Winn Dixie, and pried away at it. It took some time, as the thing had corroded shut. The color and iron smell of rust was all in the creases of his palms by the time he got it open. Four whole, green-gleaming cases of Halo-branded Mountain Dew, untouched. Twenty still-unopened canisters of Gamer Snacks: Miniature corn puffs and the like, vacuum-sealed into ergonomic containers designed to be consumed one-handed. Mother lode. By the time he loaded up his beaten red wagon with the spectacular find, a cool, alien night had fallen. Night after The End was a strange and foreign time. Murmurs that sounded like the echoes of an unfamiliar civilization—the ghosts of rubbery vehicles stalking asphalt—seemed to ebb and sigh from far away. Mark passed no one as he dragged the wagon over graveled fields and split sidewalks. The wagon’s grinding and clunking was percussion for his aching muscles. In the park near his shelter a single child’s swing creaked. The red wagon had belonged to his daughter Lula, whom he’d lost in the great transition to the end. Who knew what nightmares played with his child now? He tried not to think of her in a place overwhelmed by glittery black mirrors, unknowable economies, and sleek, fast, nebulous Clouds. Don’t think about the Cloud, Mark told himself. His nape prickled. Despite the strain of his bent back, he hauled faster, his wagon full of desperate provisions shrieking behind him like a nightmarish pursuer. The endless sprawling lane wound its way past a dry river bed to a cul-de-sac dotted with the skeletons of dream houses. The looming moon transformed them starkly, weeping pale light through the empty window frames like eyes, lunar rectangles etched sharply into the landscape. There was little for the wind to stir, but Mark didn’t mind: it looked like a level of Zelda. He took care never to step in the pools of moonlight, keeping to the dark. There was little for the wind to stir, but Mark didn’t mind: it looked like a level of Zelda. His home was the only one in the district that had been finished, secured, before The End. Mark had seen to that. In those days he still spoke to his family; Carissa at the table nervous over the family paperwork, as he floated like a ghost powdered in drywall. They needed to finish their entertainment center, he told her then. She never understood. He’d shown her all the threads online, sent her all the articles. She never believed him, damn it. And now. And now. Covered in a tarpaulin, a long-slumbering speedboat sat in the driveway. He muscled his daughter’s wagon up the concrete stairs, fresh and pale as the day they were poured. As he entered the door, he trod unseeing on the word WELCOME that was stamped into the Astroturf of the mat. It was dark in the foyer. Since The End he’d had to do all of his own electrical work, because no one else could be trusted. The Internet was constantly on, the equivalent of a radio in wartime. Mark was an individualist. Mark knew that he and only he could achieve some measure of the ideal for his family, what little there was left to be had by anyone. They were wrong, dammit. They’d all been wrong. His heavy sigh echoed flatly against walls that still smelled of satiny chocolate Behr paint, mocking him. He left the wagon by the basement door, stashing a can of Dew and a cannister of Snacks in the utility pocket of his leather kilt, and followed the sound of light and noise deeper into the home he had built on the pure currency of ideals. He avoided bumping the credenza automatically, but was still in the habit of flipping the kitchen lightswitch as he passed through it, even though it no longer connected to anything. Vinyl and formica glittered impassively at him on his way to the Living Room. Living Room. A room for living. This was a place to go on living in, he thought. With fatigued relief he surveyed the plush sectional sofa arrayed before the strange glass apostrophe of a coffee table Carissa had once adored. Here, the CONSOLE loomed, the hearth of all Mark’s efforts since the end. The End had not touched this place, and this place alone. The CONSOLE was the centerpiece of the altar that dominated an entire great cavernous wall of the room. It sat like an omnipresent little sage beneath the broad black, chrome-accented Television. Mounted in the wall, the pores of speakers bookended the display. Little luminescent eyes of piercing blue and lime green winked on and off softly, a comforting rhythm, even though he could no longer remember the specific purpose of each. There were three remotes. As a failsafe only he now knew their intimate patterns: The power to the receiver, then the speakers, then the cable box. A program in progress jangled to life, an abrupt assault on his senses in the dark Living Room. High-volume blaring bells and whistles, the thunderous cheer of a crowd of people Mark would never meet. The program had the scratchy veneer, the tinny echo of something recorded in a prior age, well before The End. Mark was inches from the screen, now. A face quite like his came looming back, speaking urgent dialogue amid the surround-sound thundering of falling bombs, the rattle of gunfire. On the screen, a frenetic, victorious ding ding ding as a jocular announcer enjoined someone named Pete to COME ON DOWN, and on the screen the camera snapped to a person with PETE sketched on his sunny nametag. Pete had a delighted face. The contestant leapt to his feet, ran with fists in the air to a great revolving stage full of fabulous showcase prizes. A wood-paneled rec room full of consoles. A picture of a ski vacation. A speedboat. The contestants would have to guess the prizes, Mark recalled. Or bid to buy them. It was hard to discern. It didn’t matter. The prices didn’t matter. He already had his dream. He wasn’t here for the TV, anyway. The TV was never just a TV. Not since The End. Especially after The End. “On,” he told the CONSOLE, his voice sounding alien with disuse to his own ear. But it remembered him even still, and it blossomed awake like a geometric flower across his glassy frame of vision. This, this, this, he thought, pupils dilating, a game, a game, his broken-nailed and rust-knuckled fingers grasping for a sleek black wedge that sat in the middle of his wife’s once-beloved coffee table. His mouth felt suddenly dry, and he opened a can of Mountain Dew. It made an effervescent hiss. His fingers fitted easily over the black wedge’s twin vibrating triggers. His thumbs ticked its alphabet, the four-letter, omnidirectional vocabulary of The End. His body seemed to tumble forward on its own. “Mark,” the spectre of Carissa’s voice called from far away. Mark was inches from the screen, now. A face quite like his came looming back, speaking urgent dialogue amid the surround-sound thundering of falling bombs, the rattle of gunfire. Behind the couch, the rear speakers shuddered gently on their subterranean stalks. He clutched the controller. He pulled the trigger. He would fight The End here, if nowhere else. This was the only place he had agency over it. “Mark,” came the echo of Carissa again, as Mark’s disembodied arms within the screen, every fine hair visible on his virtual forearms, gripped his enemy. The impression of her voice was drowned by the guttural aspiration of an enemy combatant’s slit throat. He could almost feel the wash of gore over the arms that weren’t his. Almost there. Almost there. It’s almost real. “Dad,” came a child’s lilt. Two shadows fell on him from behind, or so it seemed. A trigger on the controller vibrated as he pulled it, an explosion of vibrant red washing over the room. Perfect, he whispered under his breath. The End never came, he thought to himself, it’s not over, it’s not over. “Dad! I want you to watch me race!” “Pause,” Mark replied, and the CONSOLE obeyed, the contorted faces of his enemies freezing on the screen. Lula plaintively held her tablet up, merry little cars bouncing on the screen to a gentle tune, awaiting a co-pilot. “Dad, I want to play,” she said. Carissa stood beside their child in her dressing gown, a figure like pale smoke swallowed by walls of hardware, looming ceilings, static-resistant dreams. “You’ve been promising to look at my mods for two weeks now. Will you just put that old thing down and come play?” “When this is over,” he said, jerking a crooked thumb at the Entertainment Altar, where the twisted wartime vista hung frozen and grotesque in the center of the Living Room like a macabre artwork. “It is over, Mark,” Carissa sighed, and she went back upstairs. Leigh Alexander is editor-at-large at Gamasutra, columnist at Edge and Vice Creator's Project, and contributes gaming and culture writing to Thought Catalog and Boing Boing, among others. Her work has appeared in Slate,NYLON, Wired and the AV Club, and she blogs at LeighAlexander.net.

Ryan and Jeff buckle in, close their eyes, and hit the gas as they jump back into this storied franchise.

Guess the Japanese economy is picking up? On Friday, two Yubari melons, weighing over 8 pounds, sold for 1.6 million yen (US$15,730). That's a couple grand more than last year's priciest melons. Things are looking up! What's more, this is the third highest price ever paid for Yubari melons, AP reports. Typical melons are certainly not this expensive. And while AP reports that Japan is a country "where a single apple can cost more than $5", the news service doesn't mention that apples typically cost between a dollar-fifty and two bucks in Japan. That's still kind of expensive, yes, but the vast majority of people are not shelling out thousands of bucks for fruit—heck, they're not even shelling out hundreds of bucks. (They are buying two dollar apples, though.) Like wine and truffles, expensive melons are a status symbol for the country's extremely wealthy. As previously mentioned, the hundred dollar Yubari melons are sold at swanky department stores as gifts; they are different from the "cheaper" melons sold at local supermarkets. This year's high melon prices seem to show that the rich, at least, are optimistic about the country. Oh, and that they like melons. Luxury cantaloupe melons in Japan fetch US$15,730 [Channel News Channel] Photo: artemisphoto | 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.

Online in Japan, teens often tweet things like, "I studied so much, my head hurts", "I studied so much, my nose is gonna bleed", or "I studied so much, I'm going crazy." But what about when you study so much, you can defy gravity? For the past week or so, Japanese teens have been uploading photos of themselves sitting in chairs that are balanced precariously on desks. To accompany the images, they are writing things like, "I studied so much, I crossed dimensions", or even, "I studied so much, I turned into a god". Note that a couple of the images were posted on Twitter, like this. Yikes! This is definitely do-not-try-this-at-home territory. Personally, I think the images look better when they are rotated like such—but that's just me! The meme looks to be somewhat inspired by an earlier camera trick, that turned lockers into a tower. This latest effort hasn't yet quite reached the viral heights of earlier schoolyard memes, but it certainly is striking. As in many countries, high school in Japan can be incredibly stressful, with students' academic future resting on test scores. Creating funny photo memes—such as the Dragon Ball, Harry Potter, and Attack on Titan pics—seems to be a way for some Japanese students to blow off steam. Sounds like a good use of the internet to me! Photos: junkatu1, a_mrns, boyakiwww, andro1125, dwnq3838, MAXIMUMCANON 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.

A young Chinese man in Sichuan province is in a little hot water with his wife and the courts because of his affinity for video games. The man, Zhang Ping, is being taken to court by his wife for neglecting his household chores in order to play online games, reports News Guangdong.com. 25 year-old Zhang Ping married his college sweet heart, Wang Juan, in 2011. The two enjoyed a short period of marital bliss before everything started to go wrong. Originally, Zhang was a "model husband;" after returning home from work, Zhang would help Wang with the household chores. Late last year, Zhang started to change. According to Wang, Zhang became lazy. Instead of helping his wife around the house, Zhang began laying around playing video games. Whenever Wang asked Zhang for help with anything, his reply was to blow her off. Help make dinner, "the weather is too hot, let's go out and eat." Help clean the floor, "why bother? The floor is clean." Zhang's favorite excuse to use was this one: "I work all day, my work is boring, I need to relax. Video games excite me, it helps me relax". Zhang's reluctance to do any house work caused a lot of grief between the couple. Wang says the couple would fight and argue all the time because of Zhang's attitude. When it got too much for her, she decided to petition the courts for a divorce from her husband. Wang's petition cites Zhang lacks responsibility, and that he is an overly selfish man with an attitude problem. At the court hearing, Zhang said he doesn't agree with his wife's request for divorce and is willing to work things out. Unfortunately for Wang, the courts also didn't agree. The judge asked the two to work together to reach a mutual understanding. After listening to the judge, Wang agreed to drop the lawsuit against her husband. Top photo: Tom Wang / Shutterstock.com 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. [老公沉迷游戏不做家务 悍妻怒极告上法院求离婚] [News Guangdong via Tencent] Eric is Beijing based writer and all around FAT man. You can contact him @ FatAsianTechie@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @FatAsianTechie.

Yesterday, GameTrailers TV host Geoff Keighley revealed that, according to his sources, the PlayStation 4 will employ some form of digital rights management when dealing with used games. Twitter's gamer community took it upon themselves to show Sony how bad an idea this is. Spurred by Keighley's words, numerous gamers on Twitter are currently bombarding Sony with messages about the PS4's supposed used games DRM. The campaign was started by NeoGAF user famousmortimer who, in a forum thread, asked people to tweet several key Sony personnel, among them Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida, about their displeasure. "The gist of it is that Sony is listening to the backlash that Microsoft is getting and they are basing decisions off of this," wrote famousmortimer. He went on to request fellow forumgoers to respectfully voice their concern, to "help give a little more momentum to something Sony seems to be leaning towards already." And that is exactly what happened. Some asked Sony not to go down the same route Microsoft did, referring to their decision to implement an activation fee for used games:While others tried a more emotional approach:Sony has yet to comment on the issue, and we will update you should they do. All we know is that the people have spoken: no DRM, no restrictions. #PS4NoDRM [Twitter] #PS4USEDGAMES [Twitter] Is Sony listening? Let them know... #PS4NoDRM #PS4USEDGAMES [NeoGAF] Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

Twitter account @vmlvlltl recently uploaded a message: "At noon on May 26, 2013, I will kill people at Sapporo Station." This was @vmlvlltl's sole message, and the user's name was "Phantom Slasher Notice" (Toorima Yokoku or 通り魔予告). The account is now suspended, but Twitter users in Sapporo began re-tweeting the threat and warning each other. Yesterday at Sapporo Station in Japan, numerous Twitter users began reporting sometime around noon that a "suspicious" person dressed as a Stormtrooper was wandering around Sapporo Station. The Stormtrooper had his blaster drawn, and more and more people on Twitter began reporting that they'd seen a "killer robot"—as he was dubbed by those seemingly unfamiliar with Star Wars. Many other Twitter users commented on how "scary" the incident was and asked if the police arrested the "killer robot". Others cracked jokes. "I wanted to go to see the killer robot," tweeted @mamikawaguchi. "The hell is a killer robot?" asked @watazamurai1. "The Phantom Killer is a Darth Vader foot soldier?" asked Twitter user @kagikakko2 (note that the original Japanese expression has no connection to the Star Wars movie Phantom Menace). Photos show the Stormtrooper surrounded by the police, who "seemed", as one Twitter user put it, to take the Stormtrooper into custody. Also around that time, Twitter users (via Matome) began tweeting about another odd individual in Sapporo Station, described as "a person only in underwear". The police arrived on the scene and, according to those on hand, took the underwear man into police custody. "Aw, crap (lol)," tweeted user @Tadamari. "I wanted to take a photo, but he's already clothed and taken into police custody (lol). I guess this is the (Twitter) offender? (lol)" @Tadamari added that failing to get a photo of this event was "the mistake of the century". Online in Japan, people seemed to be somewhat scared, amused, and bewildered by the whole thing. As unusual as it seemed, the incident did bring back memories of the horrific 2008 attack in Tokyo's Akihabara. The attack was first announced online, which is perhaps why the police were quick to move in on these suspicious individuals. Photos: shibaxx, ya_to_, imachiiiiii, summer_sunset12 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.

Kick ass better, faster, and together with the help of Insomniac Games.

Whether you're in the US or the UK, chances are most of our readers are off on holiday today. So...enjoy. An extinct cockroach that looks just like a Jawa. Funny, yes, but the story is also slightly tragic; the species was only discovered very recently, living inside a volcano in Ecuador, but ever since it erupted in 2010 they haven't been seen since. Maybe science should check the Jundland Wastes. Extinct Cockroach Bears Uncanny Resemblance to Jawa [Motherboard]

TV host and industry pundit Geoof Keighley has said on tonight's Bonus Round TV show that, according to his sources, Sony is looking at some form of digital rights management for the sale of used games. It's not the first time such a rumour has popped up; we told you the same thing over a year ago, and Sony's vague, open-ended statements on the matter to date have done little to ease people's fears. Hearing it again, weeks after the PS4's reveal, only adds to speculation the console will, like Microsoft's Xbox One, seek to take a little control (and money) back from resellers like GameStop. Our only hope? That the flood of negative reaction to Microsoft's approach will convince Sony - who have yet to publicly announce their plans in this regard - to quietly walk away from the idea. We checked in with Sony about this last week, and will update you if we hear anything more. Bonus Round [GTTV]

Dan the Ad Man, who normally works in...advertising, has found the spare time to put together this amazing Street Fighter video consisting of "motion sculptures". Taking inspiration from this clip, it visualises the movement involved in Street Fighter moves, not the characters. Beautiful stuff. Street Fighter Motion Sculptures [Vimeo, via Gamefreaks]

Heavy Gear Assault has swapped out its parts and announced new goals for its fundraising project, including single-player episodes and Oculus Rift support. Stompy Bot Productions is looking to raise $800,000 on Kickstarter and has donation options on its own site. Currently the game has generated $26,000 with 33 days to go on Kickstarter.

At $800,000, Heavy Gear Assault will now get episode one of an offline, single-player campaign. Episode two is a stretch goal of $900,000, episode three is at $950,000, and at $1 million, Stompy Bot will throw together a single-player/co-op mission generator.

This weekend, Stompy Bot announced Heavy Gear Assault will support Oculus Rift, but has yet to divulge information regarding a development schedule or how that affects fundraising.

Bungie's Destiny, the first game the studio have worked on since they walked away from the Halo franchise, is coming to all kinds of home consoles, but for some reason, it's yet to be announced for the PC. Which, considering it's part-shooter, part-MMO, is weird. Don't get too bummed out, though, PC gamers: for within the farcical boundaries of video game PR talk, Bungie's senior writer Eric Osborne has told IGN "We haven’t said yes, and we haven’t said no "The more platforms we take on, the more work it ultimately becomes, and what we don’t want is to compromise the core experience on any platforms. We have a lot of people who play on PCs. We have a lot of appetite to build that experience. We haven’t announced it yet, but we’re looking forward to talking more about that kind of stuff in the future." If Google Translate had a "video game marketing" language, that last sentence would normally come out saying "yeah, a PC version is coming, we'll just announce it later". It's not a guarantee, of course, but it's a lot better than a "no" or "probably not". Destiny Could Get PC Version, Cross-Platform Saves [IGN]

The ever-wonderful Castle Vidcons nails it. If you bought into Molyneux's hype and were expecting something better from his mobile "game", you only have yourself to blame. Comic #106- Ye Gods! What’s Inside! [Castle Vidcons]

Paul Goldschmidt fishes for the 1-1 slider way outside of the strike zone. He kicks dirt over the batter's box chalk, walks in a counterclockwise semicircle, fidgets with the brim of his helmet, and digs back in. Jon Garland rolls his shoulders and sweeps his foot twice over the pitching rubber. Now I may press X. In the playoffs, in September, these gestures could have meaning in a moment larded with dramatic tension. In a video game, in May, it is simply the slow tango of baseball, and it takes two to dance it. Todd Parker, a 43-year-old technician for the electric utility in Worcester, Mass., has a hard time finding a partner willing to play MLB 13 The Show in this slow, deliberate way when he comes home from work at 3 p.m. Considering the game I just described was 17 minutes old in the first inning, it's not hard for me to understand why. Leave aside the fast-twitch action of video games. Even as a spectator sports fan in the DVR age, you are constantly driven to shell each possession, each series of downs, each at-bat and each play down to its most consequential result. Viewers who have recorded the broadcast or time-shifted their viewing of it may fast foward not only through timeouts and advertisements and player substitutions, but also missed shots and whole quarters of a game that doesn't look like it's going their way. In live programming, DirecTV's Red Zone channel is constantly cycling through NFL games where a score is about to take place. Of all sports, none offers as much interstitial, untelegenic chaff as baseball, whose MLB.TV service will condense for a subscriber all of the consequential moments in a nine-inning, two-and-a-half hour game down to just 20 minutes, and still leave him feeling as fully informed as if he had watched the entire thing live. But it is this kind of filler that Parker consumes in bulk when he plays MLB 13 the Show. Like every sports video game, it lets a player shuttle forward through the post-play, to the action, with a button press. Parker is part of an extreme minority that do not take the opportunity. The Show, I've noticed over the years, will gently chide users for their hyperactive thumbs. Play-by-play announcer Matt Vasgersian always goes through the day's starting lineups and if you button through it too quickly, he'll interrupt himself. "Whoops, well I guess we're all ready to go," he says, with a tone that implies something unnatural just occured, because he would never be caught like that in real life. "It just didn't seem like baseball when you're click-pitching," Parker told me later. He and his best friend from high school, another 43-year-old guy from New York named Tony Wilson, have been playing MLB The Show online (and sometimes in person) on the PlayStation 3 since the title debuted on that console back in 2007. Early on, the two settled on ground rules for proper play. "I had a big thing about letting the announcers get us into the game, and show us the stadium," Parker recalls. "In the third inning, The Show used to always do a panoramic view of the stadium. I would never let him X through that. Any view of the stadium I could get made it seem more real to me. "Baseball moves at a leisurely pace," Wilson said, "you're either with that or you're not. Just because a game allows you to skip past that doesn't mean that you should." The need to hit the button is almost Pavlovian in a sports gamer, though, especially when you're used to playing offline in singleplayer modes. I'm in my third season of Road to the Show, MLB the Show's career mode, and I didn't get there by stopping to pick daisies on the highway median. I'm constantly Xing through the computer's foul balls. The only animation I truly savor is when I get a called strike three for the third out of the inning. I love watching the catcher hook-shot the ball back to the mound. I watch that to its end every time. I didn't last an inning playing this game Parker's way at the beginning of last week. Yet it wasn't for a lack of patience. You have to be good if you're going to weather any deficit and come back to win, because a bad inning just takes forever in real time, and is crushing to the psyche. Parker, in addition to being a superfan, is very good at this game. We had set the match for Hall-of-Fame pitching difficulty, and even with Arizona's Patrick Corbin—undefeated through nine starts—I could not get out of the first inning (we restarted twice.) In one I gave up a three-run bomb to Troy Tulowitzki. In another, I gave up a grand slam to Todd Helton. It took an act of extreme will not to pound the button as Helton dragged his old legs around the basepaths. Buttoning through a play not only gives you the prerogative of cutting to the chase, it's also a means of putting the last bad result out of your mind. Parker and Wilson are both members of an online league—The Adult Sim League—which they joined over TheShowNation.com forums, where players of a like mind can get together before joining up. Parker has the Pirates, Wilson has the Giants (both are Red Sox fans). Only they and the league's administrator will play out games according to their unofficial, slow-pace, watch-everything rules. There are 27 other members of the league, playing an 84-game schedule. "I'm adapting every year," Parker sighed. "In five years, I'll probably be Xing through plays like everyone else, too." Sports video games are increasingly asked to deliver not necessarily the sports as they are played, but the sports as they are seen on the television. They get dinged for boring time-out graphics or repetitive booth analysis, or anything that sounds like the commentators' audio library is not actually watching what's taking place on the field. The truth of the matter is that a lot of sports video game commentary sounds repetitive because we're only hearing a fraction of it. The between-play moments are when the booth teams are commenting on the events of the day, the events elsewhere in the league, or the preceding game. These are the ones gamers are most likely to X through. Of the best sports games each year, The Show is the one most often cited for repetitive commentary. But that perception may come from the fact that so many users—myself included—are buttoning through the sequences that would show off it's variety. "Our script writer goes to great lengths to cover as many different types of situations as possible," said Jody Kelsey, the game's senior producer. "By not Xing through presentations, even we sometimes get surprised that we have a line about an obscure situation or play that occurs." Parker, Wilson and their likeminded friends are not puritans. They do button through replays of routine outs. When batting in a multiplayer game, someone also must press X to initiate readiness for the next pitch. If not, a quirk in the game will select the pitcher's primary pitch type for him automatically. So you have to be paying attention when you play the game this way. Hitting against Parker, I always waited until a pitcher swept the rubber with his cleats, if he was throwing from a full windup. "It's definitely a commitment, playing the game this way," Wilson said. "I feel like the gaming companies have done a decent job on their end—the inning ends, they give you who's coming up the next inning, just like you're watching the game. What I'm giving the other guy is the decency of knowing who's coming up next." It's not all eye candy, or the fantasy of believing that you're inside a TV broadcast, Wilson said. "There's a little bit of intel there. What I'm giving the other guy is the decency of knowing who's coming up next. Why do you button through that? "What are you really saving? 15 minutes? Is it really going to kill you, for 10 seconds, to watch that great takeout slide at second base?" STICK JOCKEY Stick Jockey is Kotaku's column on sports video games. It appears Sundays.

Well, we had the big Xbox One reveal. The big news: TV, sports, TV, sports and all that, and oh yeah, apparently Air Bud is gonna be in the next Call of Duty. If you saw the video and didn't immediately think this week's 'Shop Contest was gonna do it doggie style, you must be new around here. So, Activision has not yet released any assets of the service dog (there are, like, five official screenshots) so these three exploitables are screengrabs from this video. You're more than welcome to capture your own frame and use it. The close up of the dog ain't that great because it chops off his ears, but you're smart, creative individuals, I'm sure you guys can come up with something. Source Image: Who's a good doggie? Who's a good doggie ...? Source Image: CoD Dog doing mocap (closeup) Source Image: CoD Dog doing mocap (longer shot) Feel free to swap in other famous video game dogs as well, or put CoD Dog in their scenes hint hint Asshole Dog hint hint Duck Hunt. 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.

22 Cans' Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube ended today, revealing a live stream of tweets using the hashtag #whatsinsidethecube to the public. Peter Molyneux noted via Twitter that the last person to chip away at the cube is located in the UK, and was the sole person to see what's actually at the middle of the cube, which is seemingly a link to a video and more than just a collection of tweets.

"The winner should have a message on their cube now!!! Asking them to email a special email address, hope they share," Molyneux tweeted.

Curiosity launched in November 2012 on the App Store, and had players around the globe chipping away at pixel-like squares on the multi-layered cube to collectively get to its core. We will update as we learn what was really inside the cube, providing the winner decides to share it with the world.

A few months ago, if you'd told me Microsoft would completely annihilate what positive momentum it had going into E3 with an awkward series of awkwardly contradictory PR messages, I wouldn't have thought it possible. Then, this past week happened, and suddenly I don't know what to think anymore.

Microsoft's unveiling event for the Xbox One wasn't necessarily all that terrible on its own merits. It's really the post-show messaging where everything fell apart.

Following Tuesday's unveiling of its new next-generation console, the Xbox One, a lot of people on the Internet are very upset at Microsoft. Not just in the typical ways one of the Internet typically gets upset when a corporate event meant to showcase new technology fails to yield the precise types of products and features that said person expects--nay, demands. Rather, the core gaming audience effectively revolted at the prospect of Microsoft's new machine, the games (or perceived lack thereof), and new media technologies Don Mattrick, Phil Harrison, and the rest of the console maker's revolving door of tie-less suits trumpeted for a solid hour this past week.

Nobody seems to have expected this kind of vitriolic reaction. Some vitriol, sure, but outside of the mainstream press (who were ostensibly the target of this particular event), nobody seemed very happy about the Xbox One by the time Wednesday morning rolled around.

Granted, by the time the sun came up on Wednesday, nobody seemed entirely sure what Microsoft had even said about its new system. The core messages were relatively clear--the box is powerful, Kinect is better (and now required), it can do live television, and it will have Call of Duty, because of course it will--but the lingering questions that have been plaguing Microsoft's non-messaging for the last few months were still lingering. If anything, they became increasingly mucked up as time went along. The question as to how the system might handle used games turned into an outright debacle as mixed messages came from various interviews at the event ("There could be a fee involved!") and Microsoft's own support staff ("There are no fees involved!"). On the always-online subject, Phil Harrison suggested it would require a check-in with an Internet connection every 24 hours. Now, Microsoft PR is just citing that as a "possible scenario." In the few instances where clear answers were given, they weren't often what the dedicated gaming audience wanted to hear.

For a company that has spent an abnormally long amount of time waiting to show the world its new hardware, Microsoft's post-event chatter seemed confused, addled, and utterly unsure of its own messaging. That's sort of bizarre when you consider what a targeted attack the event itself was. Some of the anger toward Microsoft's event is genuinely unwarranted, specifically because the company had been quite up-front about the fact that this conference was for a broader, mainstream audience. The event the core audience was hoping for, the one with lots of games and less talk about ancillary things like TV signals and NFL partnerships, would be coming at E3. It said this several times, in fact, so if you were one of those people screaming "BUT WHERE ARE THE GAMES?!?" at your screen, you likely did this for naught. Based on Microsoft's own words, we should expect to see quite a few games at E3. Whether they'll be any good or not, we obviously don't know, but proclaiming that Microsoft has instantly abandoned providing interesting games for the audience that helped buoy the Xbox brand for more than a decade seems, at best, premature.

Of course, Microsoft did itself no favors by not offering up any minor concessions to the core audience this week. Microsoft's messaging was hyperfocused on the Xbox One as an all-purpose entertainment center, and with only an hour to cram in what it could, it chose to stick to the easy targets. When it did talk about games, it talked about a Call of Duty sequel and a bunch of EA Sports games. Forza Motorsport 5 was Microsoft's only big franchise to make an appearance--unless, of course, you count Steven Spielberg's vaguely interested-sounding announcement of the Halo live-action series he's stamping his name on. The Remedy reveal presumably would have been Microsoft's offering to satiate the core gaming masses, but the trailer shown was so opaque, confusing, and downright nonsensical that nobody seemed to get any kind of impression out of it whatsoever.

Any time Remedy makes a new game, it's a cause for excitement. But MAN did that trailer for Quantum Break do absolutely nothing for me.

But again, with only an hour to broadcast a message aimed at an audience with an incredibly diverse array of needs, interests, and financial capabilities, Microsoft's conference wasn't really a disaster. It was focused, moved from bullet point to bullet point with relative ease, and the personalities on stage (such as they were) managed to avoid doing anything too hilariously blundering. Really, the problem is what came after. No one at Microsoft should have been surprised that questions from the press members in attendance skewed toward the many, many rumors that had surfaced in the last few months. Since Sony announced the PlayStation 4 in February, all we've talked about is how Microsoft might counter that unveiling. As we waited and waited for Microsoft to finally show its hand, dozens of writers have written lengthy missives about the most hot-button rumors over and over and over again. You couldn't have telegraphed what press members were going to ask harder if you'd actually sent Microsoft a goddamn telegraph with all the questions on it.

The total lack of coherent messaging from Microsoft on oft-talked about topics like always online and the used games market is really the most insulting thing about last week's whole debacle. I can accept an hour-long press conference that is decidedly not for me, but when you offer the press hours upon hours to talk to executives, try out the device, and basically just mill about talking about what they've seen, I don't understand how you don't spend the entire few weeks prior drilling exact messaging into the heads of anyone who might even think about talking to press. Even if the answers aren't what we want to hear, you deflect. You say that information is forthcoming. And eventually, Microsoft did, albeit after many of the less-pleasing rumors were essentially confirmed by people like Phil Harrison, before becoming decidedly less confirmed later that same day by people like Phil Harrison.

Some of that vagueness likely stems from Microsoft not being entirely ready with all its different service plans. It likely has solid ideas of how it expects to handle things like used games, online checks, and whatever else. But those things could very easily diverge from their current road map sometime between now and the holiday season, and to promise one thing, and then end up doing another, never goes over very well.

Except, that's sort of what happened anyway. With messaging unclear and executives either going off the reservation or just talking nonsense (or both), then being quietly "corrected" by PR later on, it presents an image of a company disorganized; fractured, even. Whether or not you believe the "six months behind" rumors as they've been presented in recent weeks, you have to admit that such disorganization seems fitting with that scenario.

As bad as Microsoft's messaging was, it was especially fatal given the overall tone and tenor of the event--one of absolute, unflappable confidence. Again, as much as you might not have liked the content of the Microsoft presentation, its laserlike focus on the features it believed were most important to the mainstream audience felt consistent with a company that acted like it had nothing to prove. Even Don Mattrick, who has often presented a stiffer, less slick stage presence to previously over-groomed executives like J Allard, seemed completely in his element. Microsoft was talking like a company that felt it had all the momentum going into E3, and foresaw no scenario in which that would change, thanks to its various new innovations.

Sony's unveiling of the PlayStation 4 felt much more like that of a company that knew it had some work to do to to satisfy its audience. By comparison, Microsoft's seemed all but sure you'd just be satisfied with whatever was shown.

In fact, it most immediately reminded me of the tone struck by Sony during its PlayStation 3 roll-out. That's a comparison others have made before, but this week really solidified it for me. Sony, after having led for two solid console generations, built the PlayStation 3 largely around the notion that developers, publishers, and players alike would flock to their new system simply because it had the word PlayStation branded on it, and that it was super-duper powerful. While the PlayStation 3 was by no means the total incompetent disaster some make it out to be (in worldwide sales, it's practically neck-and-neck with the 360 at this point), Sony did spend a good chunk of this generation staring up at both Microsoft and Nintendo, a position it was hardly accustomed to as the primary leader for the two generations prior.

Perhaps as a result, Sony's PlayStation 4 press event was anything but preening in tone. Practically from the word go, Sony essentially admitted that the PlayStation 3 had problems, and that the PlayStation 4 was very much about addressing those problems. They spoke of an easy-to-develop for system architecture (a far cry from the cluster*crag* that was the Cell processor), touted support from numerous developers and publishers ranging from Square Enix on down to indie stalwart Jonathan Blow, showed a few actual game demos, and basically presented a console that was all about making the PlayStation brand better than what it had been. Compared with Microsoft's presentation, Sony's conference was practically an act of contrition.

Microsoft, on the other hand, seemed either unaware, or uninterested in the problems of the 360 era. Granted, the Xbox 360 didn't have the same developmental challenges that Sony did, but areas like Xbox Live Arcade (which is effectively being discontinued), the company's disinterest in allowing indies to self-publish (nothing is changing there, apparently), and system breakage (it's not like the red ring of death disappeared all that long ago) were mostly ignored. Instead of those problems, Microsoft (barely) addressed new problems, like the used games market, and backward compatibility.

It also did this with the absolute minimum display of sympathy or understanding for the consumer. The company keeps saying it has a "plan" for used games, though if it's anything like the one MCV details in this report, there is the distinct possibility that retailers may simply give up on used sales as a viable revenue stream. The merits of what Microsoft will/won't do to the used market is a whole other topic for another day, but even if Microsoft did have a decent, consumer-friendly solution to negate the losses suffered by game makers at the hands of used game retailers, they'd have a hell of a time convincing anyone at this point.

And backward compatibility? Microsoft just says no, because the architecture is different, and therefore that would be too hard to pull off. Mattrick's "If you're backward compatible, you're really backward" comment is one of those things that probably sounded really clever and funny in his head, though comes off as incredibly dismissive when spoken aloud. Never mind that the 360 is a system that is perhaps known best for its ability to self-destruct on a whim, which puts a lot of people with extensive 360 libraries in a precarious position going forward.

Consensus seems to be that retailers of used games will be the ones suffering more at the hands of Microsoft's used games policy, rather than consumers. Still, will there even be a used market if GameStop can't get its customary 100% of the sale?

By not having solid answers to questions people have been asking publicly for months, Microsoft has painted themselves into a strange, unfortunate corner. Again, I have no problem with the basic content of what Microsoft showed. As Wired's Chris Kohler smartly noted this week, game consoles are in a terrible position right now, and the entire market is exceedingly uncertain. Microsoft's appeal to the casual player who wants an all-purpose entertainment device for the future isn't some grand betrayal, but more likely a savvy play by a company trying to weather an inevitable storm. The problem is, it failed to present that information to its dedicated audience in a way that made them feel like they were even part of the equation.

Now, short of a strong showing of awesome games at E3 turning public opinion around, Microsoft will have to spend the summer explaining to its audience why its console isn't the soul-sucking, anti-consumer machine it's suddenly being made out to be (which it may very well be, in fact, but we just can't be certain yet). For my part, I'm still reasonably hopeful that the games will deliver, and that both the PS4 and Xbox One will be machines worth getting excited about. The race just seems a hell of a lot closer now than I expected it would be back in February.

What a difference a few months makes.

--A

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. Nerd Rage by Andy Kluthe. Published May 24. Read more of Nerd Rage Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published May 24. Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published May 20. Read more of Awkward Zombie Manly Guys Doing Manly Things by Kelly Turnbull. Published May 24. Read more of Manly Guys Doing Manly Things Brawl In The Family by Matthew Taranto. Published May 24. Read more of Brawl In The Family Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published May 24. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Brentalfloss the Comic by Brent Black, Andrew Dobson and Dan Roth. Published May 22. Read more of Brentalfloss the Comic Virtual Shackles by Jeremy Vinar and Mike Fahmie. Published May 22. Read more of Virtual Shackles Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published May 20. Read more of Corpse Run