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Every new console generation brings new anxieties that the price of gaming going up. Right now, many of the big players won't officially say what their next-gen games will cost. Microsoft will, at least. A company spokesperson confirmed to Kotaku that Microsoft's own first-party Xbox One games will cost $59,99, the same price top Xbox 360 games have. And for PS4? Sony's U.S. boss of PlayStation business, Jack Tretton, implied in an interview last February that PS4 games would also peak at $60. Oddly, at E3 this past week, Sony reps declined to say what their PS4 games will cost. "I know the pricing," Sony's head of worldwide game development, Shuhei Yoshida, told me when we met to chat about PlayStation. He checked with his PR minder sitting near us and confirmed that, no, he was not permitted to officially tell me what that PS4 game pricing would be. Not yet. With only Microsoft currently committing to $60, could their rivals actually be targeting $70? There are good reasons for them not to. Spokespeople for mega-publishers Activision, EA, and Ubisoft said their companies weren't commenting on game price yet. As inflation rises, the relative cost of something actually drops. As we pointed out last February, when Tretton made his comment about $60 PS4 games, we pointed out that $60 in 2006 money—2006 being the year the PS3 launched—would run $68.54 in February 2013. It's June, so the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' handy inflation calculator website now puts that $60 in 2006 money up at $69.21. Flip it around the other way and a $60 today is worth $52.02 in 2006 money. One could easily see any game company arguing that next-gen games actually should cost $70. With only Microsoft currently committing to $60, could their rivals actually be targeting $70? That would only be as crazy as Microsoft differing from its rivals on, say, requiring online connections, so it's certainly possible. There's even precedent, primarily from Nintendo, for a platform-maker to sell its games at $10 less than the third-party game makers on the same platform. Nintendo used to sell its games at $50 while the Activisions, Ubisofts and EAs sold games at $60. Nintendo's been up at $60, however, for top Wii U console releases. The arguments against the non-Microsoft companies going above $60 are that A) it'd piss off gamers, B) it would seem further out-of-step with the rise of cheap mobile games and free-to-play games and, C) of course, it's certainly easier for a publisher to maybe cut some corners, leave some content out of the game for paid downloadable expansions, or sell a collector's edition—any of those tactics would let them still be able to say a game sells for $60 but actually get the gamer to spend a lot more on it. Yoshida estimated that top PS3 games have been costing $20-$50 million to make. And for PS4? "Slightly larger," he said, laughing. Make no mistake that the cost of making games is going up and up. That is something Sony's Yoshida could talk to me about and, to hear it from him, game creators are going to have some rather large bills to pay in the next generation of gaming. He estimated that top PS3 games have been costing $20-$50 million to make. And for PS4? "Slightly larger," he said, laughing. "We are just starting!" Yoshida compared some PS4 games to their PS3 predecessors to make some points about getting potentially bigger next-gen budgets under control. "When you compare Killzone Shadow Fall to Killzone 3, for example, or Infamous: Second Son to Infamous 2, it’s clear that PS4 titles have much bigger worlds and there’s more to create. What teams try to do is make the pipeline much more efficient and use a lot more off-shore production ... do more volume with less kinds of resources. So it really depends on the title, but the teams are trying to be more efficient with making contents." He said that he's seeing development teams make more cutscenes using their game's in-engine graphics rather than commissioning expensive FMV and CGI pre-rendered movie scenes. It's not really for gamers to worry too much about how much a game costs, not without worrying that it's then going to cost them more to buy and play the game. The other way for game companies to make more money to off-set swelling budgets, though, is simply to sell more copies. Make an expensive game, sell a mountain of copies of it. Simple, right? Well, it puts more pressure on games to sell, which has its own set of consequences. "We’ve already seen that on PS3," Yoshida said. "Because of the vast difference of quality in titles on PS3, we see top games are selling more and all the others kind of struggle. We see less and less mid-sized B or single-A titles. I think that continues. What we are trying to do is make sure the big titles get more resources and support so that they can succeed and the others go digital or small as something unique." Look over to Activision and its grand total of four games in its E3 booth for a sign of a company trying to only make top-sellers. They're certainly trying to do part of what Yoshida is talking about and one imagines they're selling enough Call of Duty games at $60 to make the presumably giant budgets for games in that series relatively reasonable. We'll know closer to the PS4 and Xbox One's launch the actual price for new games on the new platforms. Here, at least, Microsoft appears to be stepping out first or at least most definitively with something that should please existing gamers. If only the other companies could make it official—and if only prices would drop dramatically from time to time as they do on Steam. Perhaps on consoles with—ahem—more restrictive DRM we might see that. Not just with Xbox One but with the digital shops on any of the consoles from the big three. The takeaway for now: if they all stick to $60, then new games will never have been so cheap. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

E3 2013 is officially at an end. There was a lot to take in, so join Joystiq Reviews Editor Richard Mitchell and Engadget Senior Associate Editor Ben Gilbert as they do their best to encapsulate everything that went down this year.

They talk about the showings from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, as well as some of the industry trends that are cropping up and the Oculus Rift's surprising ability to crack through the jaded, cynical shell of game journalists.

We'll have more E3 previews and coverage over the next few days, so be sure to stay tuned to Joystiq!

Nintendo's longtime chief of all things Zelda, Eiji Aonuma says the development team on the Wii U remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker will not be adding content to their remake of the open-ocean 2002 GameCube classic. But you will be making some. "My main goal in making Wind Waker HD was to stay true to the original and really balance the game," Aonuma told me yesterday in an interview room in Nintendo's booth at E3. "When we released the GameCube version we weren’t able to fully do that and make the adjustments I felt were necessary to optimize the experience. So there will be no new content, but overall gameplay should be improved." That "no new content" pledge means that the two so-called cut dungeons from the original Wind Waker won't be completed and added for this fall's HD remake. "I think when the GameCube version of Wind Waker was released I might have said that I cut some dungeons, but what I was actually meaning to say was that there was a lot of frustration on my part, because there was a lot of content that I couldn’t include that I wanted to. "As for the overall balance of the game, in terms of number of dungeons and amount of content, I think it’s just right. But the one thing that I am trying to improve in Wind Waker HD is some of the process of getting to [some] places took too long. You would travel for a long time, and the payoff would not be there." To help players get the game's hero, Link, to the corners of Wind Waker HD's vast seas more quickly, the re-release offers gamers the chance to get a better sail for their boat that greatly speeds travel. Aonuma's crew is also re-doing the game's notorious Triforce quest, which had players of the original sailing from one end of the map to the other to collect pieces of the magical Triforce artifact before getting to the end-game. "As for the Triforce quest, it was basically a process of finding maps and then following that map to another location," he recalled, "but I think what some people didn’t like is that sometimes you would find a map and it would take you to another map. It was a series of steps you had to take in order to get to the Triforce. Maybe people felt like they were getting the runaround a little bit. "I thought that whole process of adventuring was kind of fun, but it also did take a while to get to some of the maps. "We’re planning on streamlining that a little bit. Maybe you’ll get a map, and it’ll lead you to the Triforce and then you’ll get it and move on to the next one. The longer it took to get to your destination, the more disconnected, I think, the players felt. It’s not that we’re cutting out all of those steps, but we will streamline them." Balance. Streamline. Trim. And then there's the part where you come in. The HD Wind Waker is connected to the MiiVerse message-sharing social network built into the Wii U. Players will be able to use the MiiVerse's drawing and typing interfaces to leave messages to other players of the game. The messages will show up in The Wind Waker HD as bottles. The bottles may wash up on the short of an island or may appear in dungeons. Maybe a crab dropped them off indoors, Aonuma joked. The bottle-based hint system might appear to complete a loop of influence. Old sword-and-magic Zelda games were full of secrets that players had to tell each other about during school recess or over the early Internet. The recent secret-filled sword-and-magic Demon's Souls and Dark Souls games modernized that experience by letting players leave messages for each other within their primarily single-player adventures. The Wind Waker would seem to borrow that idea back, though Aonuma said he hasn't played the Souls games. I mentioned to him how interesting it is to know that some players in the Souls games leave fake hints that are designed to trick and trap you. "We’re going to make it possible to maybe only get bottles from people who are close to you," Aonuma said, "but certainly there will be people who leave less helpful information. That too is part of the experience of interacting with others. My hope is just that lots of people leave bottles." Given that the MiiVerse lets users write and draw anything (with the caveat that the MiiVerse is moderated), one can imagine players adding a lot of humor, artistry or even insights into the game, not just hints. I could even see people adding small pieces of fiction that expand the story. It'll be fascinating to see. The Wind Waker HD will be out on the Wii U in October. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

Warner Bros. Montreal is bringing a new side-mission distraction to Batman: Arkham Origins that will pique the interests of those who've enjoyed the forensic focus of Rocksteady's games. At E3 I put on my detective cowl to try out the new "Crime Reconstruction" mechanic.

It began, as it so often does, on a rooftop on cold Gotham night. As Batman, I saw a police helicopter rise from behind the ledge, ordering me to surrender. Even if I wanted to, a gunshot took the helicopter down before I could respond. It spiralled out of control, tailspinning several stories into the icy street below. Confused, I swooped down to look for survivors. The helicopter was wrecked, and I found a body flung a few feet away: the dead pilot.

This is where the crime reconstruction began. First I analysed the body in Detective Mode with the Evidence Scanner, which takes in all of the crime scene's data in hyper-quick time to play Columbo within seconds. As I scanned, I saw the helicopter's crash trace back in time, in suitably cool-looking virtual blue bittiness. As it replayed, I saw the copter take out a first-story ledge before crashing into the earth below. Scanning the body, I learned he died on impact, and not from the gunshot.

Lots of attention—some of it creepy—has been paid to all the new characters coming to the fourth installment of Nintendo's all-star beat-em-up. It's great that the Animal Crossing villager, Wii Fit trainer and Mega Man are getting people excited. But there's another reason to get hyped: this Smash will be in hi-def. That means a heightened visual approach to the characters you already know and love. YouTuber Master0fHyrule has spliced together from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the newly-previewed Super Smash Bros update and compares how Mario, Samus, Pit and other Nintendo royalty look in both games. Mario actually looks more cartoony in the upcoming game while Samus' armor looks more streamlined—with smaller shoulders—than it used to. What differences are you seeing?

Ubisoft likes to keep the modern parts of its Assassin's Creed games as secret as possible. But at E3, they revealed a few details for the present day part of ACIV: Black Flag. For starters, you're the main character. You'll be playing in the present as an employee of Abstergo Entertainment, the fictional video game company that's part of the series' anti-Assassin company and Templar front, Abstergo. You'll have a job at the company. A desk. Your own computer. You'll also be able to dive into the past of legendary assassins like Assassin's Creed IV lead, the 18th-century pirate-turned-Assassin Edward Kenway. "We want you to feel like you have your own Animus," the game's writer Darby McDevitt told me today during a show-closing demo of the game. McDevitt and co. weren't showing the modern stuff. He was showing me Kenway gameplay—the same demo our Kirk Hamilton recently wrote about. McDevitt did at least describe the modern parts as a "first-person adventure." He declined to clarify whether the modern parts would involve combat, but he said players would be able to poke around a lot, get involved in the modern drama of the Assassins and Abstergo and learn a lot about what's going on in the game's post-ACIII status quo. There will be e-mails and videos to find as well as chunks of what will combine into a 40-minute radio play. That last one was included, McDevitt said, because he recently realized he wanted a way to experience part of his games while he is cooking in his kitchen. Let the inspiration come from wherever, man! Characters will talk to you as if you're in the world, sort of like you're Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life games, he offered. It's from the modern era that PlayStation players will be able to access three platform-exclusive missions (likely timed-exclusive, if history tells us anything) that let them go through adventures as Assassin's Creed III: Liberation protagonist Aveline de Grandpré. McDevitt. McDevitt advised me to imagine that we'd be able to sit down at another Abstergo Entertainment employee's computer and dive into Aveline's experiences. I suggested that the developers could use that concept to let us play in missions of other Assassins. He replied by saying that someone else had asked if the series' other protagonists would be in the game. All would at least be mentioned, he said. We'll have more on Assassin's Creed IV in the months to come. The game will be out this fall for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Wii U.

The heroes and villains of the DC Universe will soon kneel before Zod, as the perennial Superman villain has been revealed as Injustice: Gods Among Us' next DLC character. The announcement was made during the latest installment of Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer series, wherein Conan loses to a blindfolded Aaron Bleyaert.

The segment also revealed a character based on Conan: "The Flaming C," which was co-designed by Conan and legendary DC animated universe pioneer Bruce Timm. We've reached out to Team Coco to find out whether The Flaming C will be coming to Injustice, or if his creation was solely for the show. We'll be simultaneously keeping our fingers crossed for The Flaming C, while also keeping our ears to the ground for more specific information about Zod's release, in the days to come.

[Thanks, Steve!]

When you're tasked with previewing the latest and greatest in kid stuff, it's hard to not feel at least the slightest bit jealous. In my day, our molded lumps of China-manufactured plastics rarely interacted with technology in any meaningful way, and we liked it just fine.

Even so, if you lopped a good 20 years off my current age, it would be impossible to avoid the charms of Skylanders, a series that's successfully merged the worlds of physical and digital play - all with a booster pack-style setup that's only mildly predatory on parents' wallets. As backwards compatibility quickly becomes a thing of the past, Skylanders: Swap Force offers compatibility with every figure Activision has sold since 2011, along with a slew of new features that promise to make this installment the biggest and best its pint-sized audience has seen yet.

Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, says the company isn't changing its sales projections on the Skylanders franchise, or this fall's Skylanders: Swap Force, in the face of Disney Infinity.

"We're still bullish on our projections. We feel like it was only a matter of time, given the scale of the success of Skylanders, that other competitors entered the genre. That's to be expected," said Hirshberg.

"I get this question a lot on Call of Duty. We have tough competition every year. We have tough competition in every category we play in, it's a part of the business. We try not to focus on it. We try to focus on making the best games we can and exceeding the expectations of our fans and bottling magic."

Skylanders has surpassed $1 billion in lifetime sales since launching in 2011. Disney Infinity will launch this August.

The waiting list was full when I got there so I didn't get to play anything. Also all the Luigi Hats and Mario Kart flags were all gone :(  but the most frustrating thing of all was that half the people there wanted to play Zelda.

So you had to watch a single player play the same Wind Waker level that the previous nerd played, for 10 minutes each. Note to Nintendo... you have four controllers and a crowd of people wanting to have fun. Watching one person play an old Zelda game repeatedly is not fun.

I did get to see Super Mario 3D World played a few times, which was awesome. I'm really really excited about it. Mario Kart 8 looked great too, even though it's just more of the same. Donkey Kong Country was also more of the same and had really bad loading times (I assume they'll fix that before release). In fact DKC looks pretty underwhelming after playing Rayman Legends.

So if you have a best buy nearby it's worth checking out (they do it again Saturday), but be prepared to wait a long time to get play.

Nintendo knows that the choice to have the company's top-flight development studio in Texas make another Donkey Kong side-scroller was controversial—so controversial, in fact, that Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime actually addressed it in a video yesterday shortly before I asked him about it. The video stands out as one of the few original videos Nintendo put on their E3 YouTube hub. Their channel is stuffed with trailers and insightful, pre-recorded developer interviews about the company's new line-up. That they made this video implies that Nintendo knew this was a topic that needed addressing. Here's that video: If you're unaware of what's going on here, Retro is a pretty incredible studio that made the critically-acclaimed Metroid Prime first-person-shooter/exploration games for GameCube and Wii and then, a few years ago, the well-regarded side-scroller Donkey Kong Country Returns. Their next project was shrouded in mystery until it was revealed on Monday to be Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. In his video, Fils-Aime mentions "all of the social media" asking about Retro making Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, but he doesn't get that specific. That's where I come in. Fils-Aime and I sat down to talk about Retro and other things yesterday afternoon. This is the portion of our conversation about the Retro assignment. You'll see that Fils-Aime is optimistic that fans will like the game and a wee bit damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't about the reaction to Retro doing a Donkey Kong rather than anything else. Kotaku: There was mixed reaction to what Retro would be working on. Some reaction was: I wish they were making another Metroid Prime.’ Some reaction was: ‘I wish Nintendo would just let them do something new.’ We all agree that they’re an extremely talented studio. To those who are disappointed to see them ‘simply’ making another Donkey Kong Country, you would say… Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America: You know, what I’m eagerly looking forward to is reaction from the Best Buy demos that have been going on today. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is one of the games they’re getting to sample. My bet is that the fan who actually plays that game is super-excited, because, absolutely the team is excited. They’ve done a lot with Donkey Kong Country. All of the things they wished they had done in Donkey Kong Country Returns they put into Tropical Freeze. And so they make great games. I’m glad the fans recognize that. And it’s going to be up to the team to decide what they want their next project to do, obviously [while] working with [Nintendo producers] Mr. Tanabe and Mr. Takahashi in terms of getting directions. You know, Nintendo’s blessed to have over 30 franchises. When you step back and think about it, and you look at all the games we’ve created, we’ve got over 30 franchises. Every time we launch a game there’s always that fan who says, I wish it was… Kotaku: Metroid or Waverace or whatever… Fils-Aime: Exactly! We love that and we love that passion and I’m sure there will be nice pleasant surprises, just like we surprised fans with Kid Icarus on the 3DS. Kotaku: Were you saying, did Retro choose to make the Donkey Kong Country game? Was it their decision? Fils-Aime: I wasn’t in the room when they talked to Mr. Tanabe and Mr. Takahashi, but I just spent some time with Michael Kelbaugh, the president of that studio, and he talked about how they were excited to go right from finishing up Donkey Kong Country Returns into this next project. I'll have much more from my interview with Fils-Aime in the coming days. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo

It's clear what Microsoft thinks of game ownership—the Xbox One's policies don't communicate much of a belief in it. Sony scored a lot of points on Monday, but to be fair, it was a defense of the status quo. Where does Nintendo come down on the subject? Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative face of the company, considers video game ownership to be akin to toy ownership, roughly speaking. To him, that means "as a consumer, you want to be able to keep those things for a long time and have those things from your youth that you can go back to and experience again," he told Eurogamer. Miyamoto drew the metaphor from the idea that Nintendo is "almost like a toy company where we're making these things for people to play with." But it's a very useful counterpoint to those who think a game license versus a game ownership is no big deal—those who think no one will care about the games they bought today when the servers are turned off in 10 years. (As Halo 2 itself showed, people do care.) If you imagine games as toys—or, hell, comic books, or DVDs of classic movies—then, hell yes it matters, and not because they're collectibles. The interactive experiences these things offer are still there, still may be enjoyed, whether or not they're outdated. Even if they are, your memories may make playing them a richer experience. That said, Nintendo could take an additional step toward this toy-ownership ideal. As it stands, you may transfer digital content you own from machine to machine only. If your Wii U or 3DS is lost, stolen or fried, there's no way to pull down what you purchased from the cloud—as you can, incidentally, with an Xbox Live or PlayStation Network account. Nintendo's been forgiving in very extreme cases, but it would be nice to see them finally take that step. Miyamoto: Nintendo's game ownership policy should operate "like a toy company" [Eurogamer] To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood. Image by Getty

In line for Nintendo's booth, Terence Polk checked his smartphone and chitchatted about what he'd come to review. "Super Mario 3D Land," he said, because he was skeptical—not because he was thrilled by what he'd seen in Nintendo's presentation. It was the second day of E3. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Polk, 30, is not an industry analyst, a retail buyer, or a games writer. He works for Wake Forest University, and bolted right at 5 p.m. for the local Best Buy to see "The Nintendo Experience," a coast-to-coast showcase of unreleased games taken directly to the masses, rather than filtered through the opinions, to say nothing of the packed schedules, fatigue or personal pique of guys like me. It opened after work hours today. It returns on Saturday afternoon. (This link has all the details.) "When Nintendo announced it, we said right there we were going to go," said Justin Daley, 23, who made a one-hour trek down the mountain from Boone with his pal Minori Ohashi, also 23. The two have known each other since third grade. Daley got his shift covered so he could be here; Ohashi, who is looking for work, told an interviewer he would be unavailable today. "It's sad, because I'll probably need a job if I want to get these games," laughed Ohashi, a recent double-major in computer science and computer engineering from N.C. State. No one I spoke to in a crawling line of about 50 people to had been to E3, of course. A few had been to industry expositions in their lines of work, so they had concepts of what it would be like in L.A. right now. They didn't think a Best Buy showfloor was anything like it. But there was still a long wait to see next year's games. There were people walking around wearing branded lanyards and carrying baggies of swag. There was even a Nintendo representative slightly terrorized by my unannounced presence. Except for the smog and the fog of second-day B.O. it felt like E3 to me. That's because the people I talked to weren't here for the novelty of playing an unreleased game, or simply to tell friends they did. They won't get the games for free on the day of release for their review. They'll pay for them. Polk, a longtime Kotaku reader I'd befriended on Twitter and came here to meet, relished the shot at forming impressions of a game without taking someone else's word for it. "With a Nintendo system, you know you're buying potential," said Polk, who has a functioning specimen of every piece of Nintendo hardware stretching back to the NES—Virtual Boy included. "You know you will get Smash; you know you will get Zelda, Kart, whatever. You also figure that what you get from Super Mario. will be awesome. But what I saw yesterday, this is not what I bought a Wii U for." Still, the length of the line posed a quandary for Polk. Once it was your turn, you (and a friend, if accompanied,) could go through a single race of Mario Kart 8, or a level of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. For Polk, that meant either testing something that may be a disappointment, or playing something that had really appealed to him—in this case, Mario Kart 8. As we approached the head of the line he stole glances at Super Mario 3D World. "I hope the people in front of us play it," he said. Ohashi and Daley (above, L-R) were here for Donkey Kong Country. Neither own a Wii U, though Daley says he'll have one by the time Wind Waker's HD remake comes out. Both were disappointed that Super Smash Bros., due for release next year, wasn't playable. Its availability in Los Angeles sharply punctured the illusion we might otherwise be participating in Nintendo's E3 rollout. "I saw a video of people playing it on the floor yesterday," Ohashi said, "and that was painful. That game looks like a lot of fun." Josh Allen, 21, a dealership mechanic working in Greensboro, followed E3's keynotes on his laptop during a break at a certification class on Monday. "I'd love to be at E3 when they reveal something like Smash Bros.," he said, fired up by Mega Man's inclusion in the coming Wii U edition. "I imagine there are demos everywhere, that it's crazy hectic. I'd just love to be there." After about a 45 minute wait Polk and I reached the front of the line. The folks in front of us had played Super Mario 3D Land, so I asked him what he was going to play in his one shot. He picked Mario Kart 8. "The graphics just looked amazing yesterday," Polk said. "Running at 60 frames per second, the hovercars, driving on the walls and upside down." He selected Daisy and the Nintendo rep queued up a race. In the end, he was here to play the game that looked the coolest to him. Speaking as a guy who's been to E3, that's what I do when I'm there, too. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

Why is the giant ape of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for the Wii U so damn fluffy? Why is he fighting Vikings? And why is it borrowing a mechanic from, of all games, Super Mario Bros. 2? Producer Kensuke Tanabe has answers, and in one case he is the answer. You see, one of the first games Tanabe worked on as a director was Super Mario Bros. 2, known as Super Mario USA in Japan. That was the game that introduced the idea of yanking fruits and vegetables from the ground to use as weapons to the Mario universe, a tactic quietly tucked away after Mario moved on to bigger and better things. Well, Tanabe is taking it back! Check out the Developer Direct for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze to find out how the newly-fuzzy ape will be yanking it, how he got fuzzy, and the odd thought process that led to Vikings.

Kotaku head honcho Stephen Totilo is absolutely in love with Vine, and he shares his love with you in the form of a trio of bite-sized booth tours of the big three at E3. Microsoft Sony Nintendo

E3 is just one big giant field trip for Nintendo's Satoru Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime and—lurking in the background—Shigeru Miyamoto. This image went up on Nintendo's Facebook page earlier today. The three senior company figures were clowning around with a giant statue promoting Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Let's hope they don't post a follow-up picture featuring a smoking barrel-cannon and Miyamoto missing. To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Ghosts everywhere are quivering in terror, as Namco has made a pair of new Pac-Man announcements. First up is Pac-Man Museum, a collection of games spanning Pac-Man's history. The publisher hasn't announced the full line-up of games, though it will include Pac-Man's "humble beginnings," Championship Edition and Pac-Man Battle Royale. This marks the first time you'll be able to play the multiplayer Pac-Man game without visiting your local arcade (apart from an iPad demo, anyway).

Pac-Man Museum is coming to XBLA, PSN, PC and the 3DS and Wii U eShop. The press release also notes that, for whatever reason, Museum will not include Championship Edition on XBLA or PSN.

In other Pac-news, Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is getting a free update that adds new content, including improved leaderboards, achievements and medals. It also features "access to additional DLC mazes, music and graphics." These include the ability to play with graphics from other Namco games, including Dig Dug and Rally-X. The update, which officially turns DX into DX+, is headed to Xbox 360, PS3, Steam and Windows 8 this summer.

5th Cell is aiming to include the complete DC character library in Scribblenauts Unmasked, although studio co-founder Joseph Trigali admits "there's obviously going to be some stuff missing." Unmasked's character count is at around 2,500 now - last we heard it was "over 2000."

"We definitely started... we wanted to get all the top treatments, all the top IP," Tringali told Joystiq. "There's dozens of versions of Batman, Superman, a lot of the major tier 1 heroes. Then we went through and added the rest of them. DC is such a big, expansive universe that it's not possible to get everything that's ever been created."

Nonetheless, with 5th Cell at least attempting to cover as much of the DC universe as possible, we wondered if the studio was considering DLC for new characters introduced down the line. Wouldn't it be neat if players could mess around with the very latest DC superhero in this thoroughly DC-themed game?

"For the platforms that support DLC, that's always a possibility," Trigali told us. "But there are no plans at this time."

Ah well. Until such a bat-time, we'll have make to do with the game proper, which is coming to Wii U, 3DS, and PC this fall.

I've poked fun at Nintendo about their "It's all about the games" mantra from this year's E3, but it rings true, especially when you've got what procuder Hideki Konno is calling "the definitive Mario Kart" on your hands. It's lovable, playable and now immensely share-able, and it runs at a blazing 60 frames-per-second — potentially even in two-player mode. It might not be running on the most advanced hardware in the world, but damn iof that doesn't look like a blast.

It's not just Wind Waker's graphics that have got the HD treatment. The game's best piece of key art - a simplified version was seen on the GameCube version's manual - has been too. For better or worse. Like the game itself, I prefer the GameCube's more hand-drawn take, but that doesn't mean I hate this. It's Wind Waker art. What's there to hate. You can see the image in full below (click the "expand" button). And download it for wallpaper too, if you like; at 5000x wide, it should fit everyone's monitor.

On the left, 2013's The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker running on the Wii U. On the right, 2002's The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker running on GameCube. The new one looks better, but the old one is still a beauty. Shot with an iPhone 5, so the differences won't be as noticeable as they are in real life. Want to see something sharper? Wii U direct feed from today: GameCube direct feed from back in the day: Wii U still: GameCube still:

The Batman: Arkham Origins 'Knightfall' content for the game's PS3 version consists of challenge maps tied to the Knightfall storyline, as well as the Azreal-themed suit and the "early television show skin" revealed in Sony's E3 conference. Origins Senior Producer Ben Mattes told Joystiq the maps are "specific to the Knightfall storyline" and will include "appropriately themed characters and enemies."

The piece of Knightfall content developer Warner Bros. Montreal is "really excited about" is the early television show skin, AKA the 60s Batman skin of the KAPOW! and BLAM! era. So, did Warner Bros. Montreal consider bringing in a certain Adam West to provide vocals tied to the skin? When asked about that possibility, Mattes took a long pause before simply restating, "Early television show skin." Holy skirting the question, Batman!

On the subject of specific versions, Mattes also confirmed to us the Origins will have specific functionality on the Wii U, but he wasn't prepared to go into details.

"We're not talking about specific features but we're encouraging people to imagine," Mattes told us, "We obviously paid to attention to the Wii U platform and what sort of functionality makes sense for that platform."

We also asked him about whether or not the Wii U would receive the same DLC as other versions, given the speculation about the system possibly not receiving the Deathstroke content. Mattes told us WB Montreal is "not yet talking about" DLC and its relationship to the different platforms.

After some confusion, we've clarified Kevin Conroy doesn't feature in Batman: Arkham Origins at all. Origins Senior Producer Ben Mattes told Joystiq, "We've got Roger Craig Smith, he's our Batman. Troy Baker, he's our Joker. Kevin Conroy, he's not part of this game."

Initial reports indicated long-time Batman voice actor Conroy wasn't in Origins. He then announced at the recent Dallas Comic Con that he'd been working on "the next Arkham" game. Shortly after, Craig Smith was officially unveiled as Origins' younger Batman, leading to speculation Conroy might be involved in some kind of retrospective role. However, it now emerges Conroy was apparently talking about another Arkham game in development, perhaps at series dev Rocksteady Studios - Warner Bros. Montreal is the studio behind Origins.

That would seem to be backed up by Spong's report from last month, which noted a Twitter account ascribed to Conroy tweeted "Confusion in Dallas! I am in new ARKHAM GAME coming soon, NOT ARKHAM ORIGINS coming this fall." The tweet was deleted shortly after being posted - we're not sure if the world's greatest detective is needed for this one.

One of the most cosplayed video game heroines since her debut in 2010, Bayonetta is getting a new look for a her Wii U sequel. If you're wondering how a simple bob works IRL, well, here you are. This cosplayer just began three straight days of holding those oversized pistols for eight hours.

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Here’s the trailer for Just Dance 4, the latest entry in Ubisoft’s makes-so-much-money-it’s-silly rhythm franchise. It’s coming to all next-gen platforms later this year.

Ubisoft has announced Just Dance 2014, previously revealed through the Xbox Live Marketplace. The game will include six-player dances, DJ functions (where you can wave a hand around to move through songs), and a special "Party Master" mode coming to the Wii U. The tunes will be provided by pop artists as usual, including Pitbull and others.

Just Dance 2014 will be available on all next-gen consoles this October.

Yes, everyone was mad when Ubisoft delayed Rayman Legends to port it over to other platforms. However, the bright side of the shift is apparent when you watch the video above. The signature cartoony look, slapstick humor and charming animation will be on more than just one console when the game comes out. All is forgiven, right, guys?

Ubisoft's E3 2013 media briefing kicks off in the Los Angeles Theater at 6:00PM EDT (3PM Pacific, 11PM UK). Hosting duties will once again be commandeered by the frequently animated Aisha Tyler, who will share a stage with the games we expect - such as Rayman Legends, Assassin's Creed 4, Watch Dogs - and perhaps a few surprises.

Once the liveblog activates, you'll be plunged deep into the third of four press conferences for the day. Now that's the definition of insanity.

Bingo cards, predictions and generally just wishing really hard for things is how we typically guess what we'll see during the industry's biggest show in North America. With E3 2013 set to kick off with media briefings from some of the industry's biggest giants, we wanted to continue the tradition of Joystiq making bold proclamations.

A new generation, however, requires a new approach. Though some of the messages we've heard and reported during the introduction of a new gen have been complicated, what we're expecting and what we hope for should be more simplistic.

So we posed three questions to our staff:

• What are you most excited about seeing and/or playing at E3 2013?
• Is there something you're hoping will be announced at the show that you have absolutely no prior knowledge of?
• Considering everything from your personal preferences, high hopes things will work out and everything you've seen and heard up until this point: if you had the money for only one purchase would it be the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or a pile of new Wii U games?