Kotaku older than one year ago

Sony has just announced the cost of the PlayStation 4 when it goes on sale later this year. It'll be $399. That's $100 less than Microsoft's Xbox One. In Europe, it'll be €399 and £349.

Existing Xbox Live Gold members will begin receiving two free games per month, Microsoft just said on stage at E3. The offer is plainly an answer to the robust free game offerings PlayStation Plus has introduced.

A new Just Dance game, called Just Dance 2014, has leaked ahead of an expected announcement by Ubisoft at their E3 press conference. A listing for the game has appeared on Xbox.com, containing screenshots and some brief information on the title, which has given up sequel numbering in favour of a sports game-like annual schedule. The latest opus of the Just Dance franchise will make you dance even more and will be once again the ultimate casual rendezvous of the year. This new opus will be even more social as you will be able to connect and dance with players from all over the world and share a unique dancing experience with them. It becomes the party expert and features today iconic pop culture references. New modes will be available, letting you and your friends experience parties the way only Just Dance knows how! Yes, they used the word "opus" twice. It's listed for just the Xbox 360, and is due in October. Just Dance 2014 [Xbox, via NeoGAF]

As if free Saints Row: The Third and Deus Ex: Human Revolution weren't enough, PlayStation Plus members also get free Uncharted 3, Littlebigplanet: Karting, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown beginning Tuesday.

Earlier today, Masahiro Sakurai sent out a tweet saying that new video from the upcoming installment of the Nintendo all-star fighting franchise will be debuting on June 11. お知らせしておきます。6月11日23時配信のNintendo Directで、新作『スマブラ』の映像が初披露となります。世界同時、ここが初！ お見逃しなく。 — 桜井 政博 (@Sora_Sakurai) June 6, 2013 Translation by Kotaku East’s Toshi Nakamura: "Notice: On the June 11th 11PM Nintendo Direct, the first footage of the new Smash Bros will be aired for the first time. For the first time, simultaneously worldwide! Don't miss it." That 11 p.m. is probably for Japanese local time zones. Also, it’s worth nothing that Nintendo had already said months ago that the company wouldn’t be saying anything about the next Smash Bros. game until E3. Well, that time’s almost upon us. What do you want to see in the new game?

Shortly after opening their Steam Greenlight campaign for the game Paranautical Activity, the two-man studio Code Avarice got a phone call that would have made any indie's day: It was Adult Swim, offering to publish their game on Steam. Yeah, well, not so fast. As Code Avarice's Mike Maulbeck and Travis Pfenning explain in that video above, when Adult Swim—taking a chance on a PC title after dealing mostly with flash and mobile games—went to pitch Paranautical Activity to Steam, they were told no dice. "[Steam's] response was basically, 'We don't want to send the message that indies should seek out publishers to get around Greenlight,'" the duo recalled. Valve, through spokesman Doug Lombardi, confirmed the gist of the statement to PCGamesN. "Our message to indies regarding publishers is do it for your own reasons, but do not split your royalties with a publisher expecting an automatic ‘Yes’ on Greenlight.'" Maulbeck and Pfenning are not happy. "We've got a Greenlight campaign that we haven't even touched in months, and now we have to resurrect it from the ashes," they said. They asked Adult Swim if it would work to promote their Greenlight campaign to get the game on Steam and the response was, more or less, no, because Adult Swim doesn't want to get sideways with Steam/Valve. "We haven't officially decided if we want to go with them," the said. "The fact we have to get on Steam with our own two feet," after getting this kind of an offer from a publisher, "is really a kind of bummer." Valve to indies seeking publisher deals to bypass Greenlight: "do not split your royalties with a publisher expecting an automatic ‘Yes’." [PCGamesN]

Andrew Scott Reisse, an accomplished developer at Oculus VR, the company behind the virtual-reality Oculus Rift headset, was killed in Santa Ana, California on Thursday. He was an innocent victim of a police chase gone horribly wrong. Reisse was apparently out for a walk when an alleged gang member, fleeing the police in a Dodge Charger, allegedly barreled into the intersection of Flower Street and MacArthur Boulevard, hitting and killing the 33-year-old developer. The driver may face murder charges, according to ABC News. Oculus CEO Brenden Iribe and chief software architect Michael Antonov issued the following statement to Kotaku about Reisse on behalf of all of their company : Andrew was a brilliant computer graphics engineer, an avid photographer and hiker who loved nature, a true loyal friend, and a founding member of our close-knit Oculus family. Some of us have known Andrew since college, and have worked with him at multiple companies beginning with Scaleform in Maryland which he helped start at age 19, then at Gaikai in Aliso Viejo which brought him out to California, and finally at Oculus where he was a co-founder and lead engineer. Andrew's contributions span far and wide in the video game industry. His code is embedded in thousands of games played by millions of people around the world. Words can not express how sorely he will be missed or how deeply our sympathy runs for his family Andrew will always be in our thoughts and will never be forgotten. We love you Reisse. We at Kotaku would also like to wish our condolences to Reisse's family and friends. To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.

Knuckles Man.? Rose Woman? Shadow Man? Only two horrible minds could've come up with evil robot antagonists like these. Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman's malevolent subversion of Sonic the hedgehog's friends gets revealed in the latest issue of the Worlds Collide crossover, an Archie Comics event pairing up Sonic and Mega for twelve issues of hi-jinx. This Wednesday, Sonic the Hedgehog #249— part six of Worlds Collide—comes out with the mini-bossed versions of Shadow, Knuckles and other buddies of gaming's fastest hedgehog. What a way to go out, huh? I mean, Knuckles and Shadow have their haters but even they probably wouldn't have wished this on those characters. You can check out more the blue-hero-vs-mad-scientist team-up in the preview pages below.

When I was growing up, I was barely allowed to own any video games. Contrast that with Redditor Mertzlufft, whose father teamed up with him to construct this bananas-looking underground compound, stuffed with more games than any single human could hope to handle. Mertzlufft, now in college, says that the project has been in the works for 5 years. It sure looks like a labor of love to me. I'm guessing that when they power this sucker up, the lights in their neighborhood dim for a bit. And can you imagine the noise? It must sound like the freeplay room at PAX. What I'm saying is, I want to go there. - The arcade my father and I made in the basement (imgur via Geekologie)

New Nintendo Direct. Friday, May 17. 10am Eastern. "Updates on Wii U and 3DS games launching this summer." Right here.

One of the first publishers to dabble in the idea of an "online pass" - whereby gamers were charted a fee for accessing certain online content if they purchased a title pre-owned - has decided to do away with the program. EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg has told VentureBeat. “Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass. None of our new EA titles will include that feature.” Interestingly, Reseburg claims the decision is based on consumer feedback. “Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format. We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.” EA kills its controversial Online Pass program [VentureBeat]

GTFO, the documentary about the relentless abuse female gamers suffer in online multiplayer, reached its funding target of $20,000. Shannon Sun-Higginson is the film's director.

Whoops. A Hong Kong Starbucks made one customer unhappy after totally screwing up a first name. Imagine that! A Starbucks spelling fail? Impossible. On the Hong Kong Starbucks' Facebook page (via HongWrong), a customer posted an image of the fail, writing: This is my sister's cuppa [SIC] from your HKU branch. Fancy your staff not being able to spell an American name like Virginia. Forgiving she has been with every misspelled cup. Her cup was once 'Virgin'. Every Starbucks experience for her has been coupled with fear and anticipation. But THIS is just UNACCEPTABLE. Starbucks HK, you have to buck up or just not spell your customer's name anyway. It is a derogatory attitude even if it is unintentional. What do you have to say about this? On Facebook, the comment has been liked over a thousand times. Some are calling the photo a fake, while others think it's unfair to expect Hong Kong's non-American staff to be able to spell American names. Starbucks is a global corporation! If real, I doubt this was done to be mean. Well, I sure hope it wasn't. This isn't the first "Vagina" Starbucks spell fail—heck, there's even a whole Tumblr of assorted name fails. It is the first fail I can recall that has made a customer angry enough to turn the situation into some sort of vaguely international issue. While it's unfortunate that the customer had such an unpleasant experience, I think the one takeaway is that even though going to Starbucks filled her sister with "fear and anticipation", she continued to patron Starbucks. Is the coffee is that good? In case you missed it, here is Kotaku's round up of cool and interesting looking Starbucks across Asia. This is my sister's cuppa from your HKU branch [Facebook via HongWrong] 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.

Readers are letting us know that Nintendo has this evening taken the very direct step of sending out messages to Wii owners. Not to tell them that their system is being updated. To tell them their system is now out of date. Continuing a recent exercise in the company finally realising "holy shit we really should have called this thing something else", Nintendo's message spells out as explicitly as it can that the Wii U is "an entirely new system". Not a re-release of the Wii, not an add-on, not a variant, an entirely new system. OK? I've never seen a console need to be marketed like this before. When you need to spell things out so clearly, and directly message every single owner of your previous console, well. You appear to have a marketing problem. And a sales problem. [thanks @Starfireturtle!]

Did you know the first two Pokémon sequels were supposed to let you ride a skateboard? It was advertised. Briefly. Then....just quietly removed and never spoken of again. Turns out it's still in the game's code, though, so in addition to combing through old Japanese mags for mention of the item, Aria over at Glitterberri has translated some fan's testing of the skateboard's unused code left sitting on the cartridges. Pokémon historians, it's well worth a read. The Case of the Missing Skateboard [Glitterberri]

Nintendo has created a web-accessible version of the Miiverse, the Nintendo social network. The Miiverse was previously only accessible from the Wii U, but now you can now browse posts about your favorite games and maintain your profile from the comfort of your own PC or mobile device. Mike hopped in to check out his account, since he remembers his Nintendo Network login and I don't. (Hey, I've barely been playing Wii U lately.) At the moment, you can't post new content from your PC, just browse existing posts. Check it out here. (h/t Craig Lupienski)

Way back in August of last year, Rockstar Games started putting out weird tweets into a feed for the Epsilon Program, a religious cult that appeared in GTA IV. Now, the NYC-based developer is featuring an Epsilonism promo video on their official page. A thread on NeoGAF alleges that there’s in-game footage in the looping promo clip. Do those rolling waves and floating clouds look like they’re the product of Rockstar’s RAGE game-building suite to you? Will one of GTA V’s three playable characters be following the 12 Tenets of Epsilonism. “Directions will be provided in one week's time,” says the post on Rockstar’s official site. Kifflom to that.

Debuting earlier today on Japan's “Pokémon Smash” TV show, the latest pocket monster revealed for Pokémon X and Y bears more than a little resemblance to one of the coolest creatures ever to be stuffed inside a tiny plastic ball. Mewtwo, Brute? For those of you who don't remember Mewtwo, he was a complete and utter badass. He could kill you with his mind. He looked something like this. Mewtwo and this new, unnamed Pokémon could be relatives. The main difference is this new guy is (spoiler warning) more aerodynamic, and his tail is on his head. The Pokémon folks are being coy about this guy, encouraging fans to speculate as to what it all means. Hopefully this won't drive them mad before Pokémon X and Pokémon Y launch in October. Note - Seeing a lot of comments saying it's not a new Pokémon, but a new form of Mewtwo. As far as the Pokémon is concerned, a new form or evolution of an existing Pokémon is a new Pokémon. Squirtle is a Pokémon. Blastoise is a Pokemon, and not just Squirtle's new form. Now quit it.

Last night, Mojang, the studio that created Minecraft, hosted a big shindig at the Game Developers Conference, dubbed ".party()". There were flashing lights, a Skrillex set, and according to rumors, paid companions in the V.I.P. room. Rumors that Minecraft's creator Markus Persson says just aren't true. As noted by Misguided@NeoGAF, people—game industry people—are saying that the Minecraft party's V.I.P. section made them uncomfortable. "I guess I'll be the one to say it: I was not okay with the gender situation in the VIP area at the Minecraft party," Bennett Foddy, the developer behind QWOP, wrote on Twitter. Thing is, Foddy wasn't the only one to say it. Other developers and industry types did, too. Here's a round-up via Twitter: Alex May (Eufloria) "It would appear that the @mojang @notch party at GDC had women paid to be there to socialise with the largely male audience. That's horrid." Nick Robinson (Freelancer/Revision3) "wandering through the backstage of .party(), i accidentally stumbled onto the room full of women who were paid to be there. *crag*ing surreal" Infinite Ammo (Alec Holowka's creative arm) "Party with women who are paid to speak to you = creepy Left after about 10 minutes Overheard that these women were paid $300/hr." Terry Cavanagh (Super Hexagon) "But yeah the girls who were paid up be here to party with us was seriously *crag*ing creepy, stop doing that pls" Smudged Cat Games (Infinite Doodle) "Yeah, I spoke to someone who was 'paid to party', as she put it. Didn't seem that interested in game dev. Good rack though!" These claims, however, are being rejected. Via Twitter, Mojang founder Markus Persson denied that women were paid, writing, "We did not pay anyone to party at the .party()." When asked why there were paid-to-party claims, Persson told Kotaku via Twitter, "I have no idea. Nothing like that happened." Kyle McCarty, the event's organizer who says he oversaw "every process of the event", also denied that women were paid to attend the event, stating that these claims were "simply not true" and "100 percent" false. "The point is not a single person was paid to be there partying," McCarthy added, "or mingling, etc." These allegations come as members of the International Game Developers Association resigned after another party earlier this week during which scantily-clad women reportedly made some attendees feel uncomfortable. (Top photo: RichIGN)

Tomb Raider has sold 3.4 million copies in a month, is amazing, and yet still managed to miss Square Enix's internal sales projections, reports Eurogamer. Oh video game publishers.

DeviantArt user Elemental79 did a crazy job converting a screenshot from the classic SNES game Super Metroid into HD using only Photoshop. He recorded the whole procedure in this speed up video to show us how much work something like this needs. He already did the same treatment with Doom, with similar, awesome results and we really hope there will be follow-ups. Super Metroid - Depths of Tourian - Photoshop Speed Art [YouTube]

#watchthis Battlefield players have found all sorts of awe-inspiring ways to do stunts with dirt bikes. But this one takes the cake when it comes to how much air the player grabs, not to mention the rather dramatic ending. More »

#southkorea Last fall, Kotaku reported that Rockman Online (aka Mega Man Online) seemed like it was dead. Today, we learned that the PC game has, indeed, been canned. More »

#caketaku Holy crap. Kotaku reader Will Turnbow and his wife made this cake for their daughter's tenth birthday, and I think it's no exaggeration to say this is the coolest thing you'll see today. More »

#supersmashbros Here's ReallyFreakinClever with an earnest video about the merits of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. You may not agree with all of it; I didn't. But I think he's on-point when he lauds the accessibility of the franchise, particularly when compared to the fighting game genre as a whole (though that's improving nowadays). More »

#pokemon Meet Meloetta. She's special. More »