As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, prediction. Don't get a life just yet.
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Child Killed By Water and Electricity
Tragedy struck as a 7 year-old London boy vacationing with his parents on the island of Phuket died of electrocution, having attempted to unplug his GameBoy from the wall while still dripping wet from a dip in the pool. A truly sad story, and I cannot imagine what his parents must be going through, but the press in the UK are having a field day.am I the only one that thinks this is a serious non-issue? I think a lot of videogame fans are really looking to be persecuted...
Parents aren't as dumb as you might think. This won't "kill sales" of anything. Even the "real" controversies (Hot Coffee, etc) usually end up having little to no effect. Everyone should just chill out.
"She's Like the Wii..."
I think I love this woman. Not because she's hot and holding a Wii Remote, no, that's too obvious. No, I love her because she looks exactly like that girl from Dirty Dancing, which means all I can think about is her playing Wii Boxing with Patrick Swayze to "She's Like The Wind".the chick in dirty dancing is the chick from ferris bueller, right? if so, this girl doesn't look like her! Maybe it is that other movie like the dude said up there...
Mark Ecko Bitter, Complaining
Mark Ecko had a lot of swagger about him when he was hyping "Getting Up", and had just as much swagger knocked out of him when the game turned out to be rubbish and nobody bought it. Speaking with MTV, he gave his own (ie not the actual) reasons for the games dismal performance: Making a one-player game at the end of a cycle of PS2 and missing holiday definitely -- I think I underestimated what all that meant in the equation from a business side If you think that the fashion...sup ytdb? awake and reading Kotaku, huh?
also, yeah, Mark Ecko is just saying the same stuff he's been saying the whole time.
Nintendo Hates Importers, Wants To Collect Them All
Well this is unexpected. Hey, Europe, you thought the DS was a region-free system? Don't worry, I did too. Turns out it's not (at least when Pokémon is concerned). Speaking in regards to the upcoming Pokémon Diamond & Pearl, Nintendo Europe's Robert Saunders told Kikizo: We in no way condone the importing of games into territories other than where they are supposed to be sold.It's just some Nintendo Europe loser.
1) Nintendo Europe is like Nintendo's redhead stepchild. Who really cares about what they say other than Europeans anyway? It's not like it matters to the rest of us.
2) Nintendo Europe also stands to lose the most because of importing, so this statement isn't surprising. In the US, imports are usually just from Japan for games that don't get released in the US. In Europe (and I would suppose Australia as well, maybe) importing can serve to procure the same games for a cheaper price, or to get them sooner. It's a very different beast than the hobbyist importer in North America.
PS3 Loses Another Exclusive, Virtua Fighter 5 Comes To 360
Sega announced just hours ago that the former PlayStation 3 exclusive arcade port of Virtua Fighter 5 will come to Microsoft's Xbox 360. As we talked about a few days ago, the PS3 version will hit stateside on February 20th with the 360 SKU shipping some time in "late summer of 2007" meaning PS3 fans will stil be able to thumb their noses at the 360-only crowd for a good six months. How bad is this news for Sony?One thing nobody seems to be putting together is that development costs won't really go far down. Simply put, rendering everything in HD, high resolution, high detail takes a lot of development, and it always will.
Perhaps these costs will lead to more games being on both Xbox 360 and PS3. If that's the case, that is a huge blow to Sony, whether people want to admit it or not. PS2 had a ton of games that Xbox didn't. If PS3 doesn't have as many, and does cost $200 more, that's a very different situation from last generation.
"It's over, Sony is finished" isn't really the situation, but Sony did have one gigantic cookie last generation, and some pretty big pieces do keep crumbling off of it.
Castelvania's Sweet Swag Pack
So Konami sent along a pretty nifty swag pack to me when they shipped over Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. It included a neat DS stylus that extends to twice its normal size, a little DS game holder for holding both Castlevania DS games, a timeline of Castlevania and a little art book. The whole thing came in this neat box with a fake wax seal.man, I have this, love the CD and artbook, but I had no idea the stylus was telescoping! I feel pretty dumb.
Rumor: Sony Survey Hints At Plans For New PSP?
Right about now, I think a revamped PSP is the only thing that can truly save Sony's handheld ambitions in the long-term. They need to give the PSP a clean break, take stock of the lessons learned from the original then come back and improve on it. Sony sent around a survey last night that, from this weary writer's point of view at least, looks like they may well be thinking of doing just that.uhhh, yeah, a DS emulator on a system with one screen that isn't a touch screen. Have fun with that one.
And I really think that a PSP with a hard drive wouldn't make much of a difference. We've already seen that it's about the games more than any faux-cool stuff Sony can attempt, and if the games on PSP haven't become attractive yet, I don't really think they ever will.
Rumor: Another DS Update In 2007?
News always sounds more exotic when it comes from Jeux-France. But their rumours....they verge on being delicious. I wish we called ours "rumeurs". They sound sexier that way. I bet Jeux-France could bed a woman just by whispering "rumeur" lightly in her ear. Anyway...JF are passing along a pondering that the DS is in line for another update, due sometime in 2007.I don't see it happening. The DS Lite has too much life left in it.
Rumor: Katamari Coming To Wii, XBLA?
January's EGM is running a rumour about the next coming of Katamari, and how it might be making an appearance on not only the Wii but on Xbox Live Arcade as well. The Wii version sounds intriguing, but really, will it be anything more than the same old game with novel, twitchy controls? I hope not, but my magic 8-ball says "LIKELY". An XBLA version sounds both more probable AND profitable.If this is true, I think the most important question is "How will it control?"
Clips: Japanese Man Makes Wii From Tofu
I just saw this over on GoNintendo and got a huge laugh out of it. As a matter of fact, I can't stop laughing about it. The best that I can figure is that this guy is bummed because he doesn't have a Wii and really wants one. So, he decides to make one out of tofu, controllers out of a weird breadstick looking thing and a some sort of Japanese snack treat. He then proceeds to set the whole thing up with a T.V. on which he has taped a badly hand drawn picture of the Wii boxing game.sounds like "Wii hoshii yo" to me too.