Culture

E3 Day One Podcast: Microsoft, EA, Xbox One X

Jason and I kick off our Kotaku Splitscreen E3 coverage with reactions to EA and Microsoft’s press conferences. Is Xbox One X a good name? Was Janina Gavankar enough to carry EA’s disappointing show? Are we more stoked about BioWare’s Anthem than Destiny 2? (The answers: No, no, hard to say.) Listen here: As always,…

Podcast: What We Expect (And Hope) To See At E3 2017

It’s Video Game Christmas on today’s Kotaku Splitscreen, and with E3 now underway, it’s time to for one last chat about our hopes, dreams, and predictions. We open up the show with some brief talk about Mass Effect: Andromeda’s turbulent development (4:03) before jumping into E3 talk, going through each press conference to talk about…

Sunday Comics: Still Gonna Buy It

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published June 6. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published June 5. Read more…

Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Speedrunner Gets Owned By Log

Last night speedrunner Zant was attempting a Master Sword RTA run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when the log he was flying on decided to reverse direction and wreck him instead His eventual time of 2:42:27 was still good enough to earn 7th place in the category overall (the Master Sword…

This Week In The Business: Violence, Extortion, Racism, And Zelda

QUOTE | “Violence in the normal course of video gameplay is generally acceptable for advertising, but montages where gratuitous violence is the focal point is not.” – YouTube continues to limit the type of content creators can profit from after advertisers decided they didn’t want their brands associated with some objectionable content common on the…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for press conferences about video games. Also, maybe playing some video games, but probably just hearing about new ones. To be honest, I will be spending the weekend arranging a complex multi-monitor setup to cover E3 press conferences in all their glory, so I will probably not have much time for games.…

Finally, You Can Flirt With Vulcans

Today on Highlight Reel we have Vulcan flirting, boat bait, hitbox porn, and much more! Watch the video then talk about your favorite highlight in the comments below. Be sure to check out, like, and share the original videos via the links below. Subscribe to Kotaku on YouTube for more! Sniper Elite 4 – It’s…

We Talk About Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s Turbulent Development

On this week’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen, Jason Schreier and I spent some time discussing his lengthy reported story covering the troubled five-year development of Mass Effect: Andromeda You can listen to that segment in the video above, and subscribe to Splitscreen on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. We’ve got a pretty cool plan for…

Nice Garage You Got There, Fallout 4

Ioan Dumitrescu is an artist based in Bucharest who has worked on games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Fallout 4 and Crysis 3, and movies like the new Beauty and the Beast Note: the top image is based on an illustration by Ilya Nazarov We’ve featured Ioan on the site before, but since it’s…

Track: Late In The Day | Artist: Supergrass | Album: In It for the Money Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Check Out The Incredible Amount Of Detail In A Video Game Vehicle

Strike Vector is a game we’ve featured on Fine Art before—back in 2013!—but we’re circling back round to it today to focus on one very particular aspect of it that I thought was interesting enough to share. Outside of the team making the game itself, a small crew got together to make a trailer (first…

Toy Time Celebrates Ghostbusters Day With Playmobil’s Ecto-1

On this day in 1984, horror comedy classic Ghostbusters was released in U.S. theaters. Three decades later we’re still playing with toys based on the film. While the figures might look silly, Playmobil’s Ecto-1 is one of the coolest renditions of the Ghostbusters’ iconic ride yet. 2017 marks Playmobil’s first foray into licensed toys, after…

There’s A Little Blizzard In This iOS Game

Brian Huang spent five years as a cinematic concept artist at Blizzard, where he got to work on games like StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft and Titan, the project that would go on to become Overwatch. He’s since left to make his own games, the first of which is called Guardian Kingdoms It’s a 3v3…

Track: Notget | Artist: Bjork | Album: Notget (single) Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

What We Loved About The Wonder Woman Movie

After a run of mediocre to downright disappointing releases, DC Comics finally gets a movie worth eating overpriced popcorn in a room full of strangers. It’s as if all the world’s been waiting for Wonder Woman and the power she possesses. Compete’s Maddy Myers and I saw the movie over the weekend, and we have…

2017’s Best* Video Game Concept Art 

As is tradition around the time of E3, The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) have announced a selection of pieces for the Into the Pixel exhibition, a collection of some of the best concept and promotional art in video games. Judges for the 2017 edition (which includes…

Track: Band On The Run | Artist: Wings | Album: Band On The Run Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Track: Gas Giant | Artist: Arcadea | Album: Arcadea Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The Final Steam Greenlight Game Actually Looks Pretty Cool

Valve officially turned out the lights on Steam’s user-driven Greenlight service today, ending an era defined by inconsistency—both in regards to game quality and Valve’s policies. The final game to be submitted, though? It looks pretty neat. The Underground King, which is not finished yet, bills itself as a narrative/racing/manager RPG where “you recruit the…

Steam Greenlight is officially retired. Today, Valve shut down the portion of their service that allowed users to upvote prospective Steam games. It will be replaced with a more straightforward game submission process called Steam Direct on June 13. Valve is hoping a $100 fee, upgrades to their algorithm, and changes to trading cards will…