In his keynote speech at QuakeCon this week, id Software's John Carmack revealed that the company is "extremely unlikely" to pursue software development for the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Wii U, and the PlayStation Vita platforms, citing issues with publisher acceptance and adoption rates.

"I always thought that the Wii U and Vita would be great targets for Doom 3: BFG Edition," Carmack explained. "We should be able to bring that over directly, but [the platforms have] generated nothing for us on the publishing side of things, because they're somewhat marginalized platforms."

"Clearly there's a difference on the handheld platforms," Carmack continued. "While the 3DS is doing okay, the Vita's really not doing particularly well."

"A lot of that has to come from the fact that [...] everybody is carrying a pretty good gaming platform already, and selling a new one to them is a little bit of a harder sell," Carmack said, referring to the widespread adoption of smartphones.

"I'd love to be able to develop on the 3DS and some of the other small platforms," Carmack said. "I'd like to see the games show up on the Vita or the Wii U, just to play with some of the characteristics they've got there, but it's extremely unlikely to happen. There's a finite amount of time and only so many things we can focus on."

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Globacore, a creative technology company specializing in large multi-touch displays, has come up with an interesting marriage of Kinect and Oculus Rift. Dubbed Paperdude VR, this work-in-progress is a first-person homage to Atari's 1984 classic, Paperboy.

As demonstrated in the video above, a player rides a stationary bike and attempts to toss newspapers into peoples' mailboxes. Except for sawhorses, the current version of Paperdude VR lacks many of the distractions and dangers the original paperboy had to pedal through in the '80s.

Depending on your perspective, Paperboy tells one of two different stories: It's either about a courageous suburban paperboy dodging vicious dogs and insane old ladies seemingly hellbent on preventing the flow of news from reaching the public, or it's about an evil kid on a bike who enjoys breaking windows and damaging private property. It's open to interpretation.

Comedy Central announced that its CC: Stand-Up app is now available on Xbox 360. Using a layout similar to YouTube's Xbox 360 app, Xbox Live Gold subscribers can search over 6,000 stand-up comedy videos from over 700 comedians to find anybody but Dane Cook, please.

CC: Stand-Up is compatible with both Kinect and SmartGlass, and the app itself is already available on iOS. Now that we have a Comedy Central app on Xbox to make us laugh, we're waiting on Lifetime to bring us the tear-jerkers via Xbox Live. We need to get our cry on.

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Rare's Kinect sensor showpiece, Kinect Sports Rivals, will miss the Xbox One's launch window, Microsoft confirmed today.

Kinect Sports Rivals was originally slated for release in November, offering up a collection of minigames that require the Xbox One's bundled Kinect peripheral. A representative from Microsoft told Polygon that the delay was necessary in order to give developer Rare enough time to polish up its work before launch.

Kinect Sports Rivals is now set for release during spring of next year.

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Three new game bundles have been released on Xbox Live Arcade, giving hefty discounts to select grab-bags of games. The Action Packed bundle hacks together Bloodforge, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Dungeon Fighter Live, Islands of Wakfu and Unbound Saga. Next up is the NinjaBee Bundle, which includes Band of Bugs, A World of Keflings, Cloning Clyde, Outpost Kaloki X and Ancients of Ooga.

With the exception of Cloning Clyde, all of these games normally cost $10 ($15 in the case of Bloodforge), so the savings are certainly substantial. Take note, however, that these bundles won't give you an extra copy of a game you already own.

TrueAchievements also spotted a Kinect Bundle listed on Xbox.com, which features Dragon's Lair, Wreckateer, Diabolical Pitch, Home Run Stars and Haunt. Strangely, it has no price and there doesn't appear to be any way to purchase it via Xbox.com or the Xbox 360 itself. There was an ad for the bundle in the Xbox 360 games section, though it appears to have been pulled. We've contacted Microsoft to see when or if the bundle will be available.

EA Sports announced that it reached licensing agreements with 19 soccer clubs in Brazil today, and will be bringing those teams to FIFA 14 this year. FIFA 13 had 20 Brazilian teams, but not all of them were exactly "real."

Unlike the English Premier League, Brazilian league team licenses are negotiated on a team-by-team basis. FIFA 14 will include 19 authentic teams, "meaning authentic kits, club name, crest and real players," an EA representative told Joystiq.

"However, unlicensed clubs can still feature in-game under our FIFPro license which enables us to use real player name/likeness," EA added. So of those 20 Brazilian teams in FIFA 13, a handful were unlicensed clubs. That means fully-licensed teams such as Internacional, Nautico and Ponte Preta in FIFA 14 were seen as I. Porto Alegre, N. Recife and P. Campinas in FIFA 13. "We call these clubs 'art generic' because an artist makes the kit/crest look very similar. Football fans know the difference," EA said.

FIFA 14 will only include clubs from the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A league (the top league of three within Brazil's professional soccer system) with the exception of Palmeiras, a popular team that was recently relegated to Serie B. EA does not have licensing agreements in place for use of team logos and kits for two Serie A teams that were in FIFA 13 and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 2013, EC Bahia and SC Corinthians. The publisher is still in negotiations for "additional club and league licenses and will have more announcements to make." FIFA 14 is due out in North America on September 24, and will also come to PS4 and Xbox One later this year.

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A new version of Indie Game: The Movie, the 2012 documentary chronicling the lives of indie video game developers chasing their dreams, will be released on July 24.

This special edition will include 300+ minutes of footage, including over 100 minutes of never-before-seen film that will include epilogues for some of the developers featured in the film. The Team Meat fellers, prominently featured in the film, also provide some new commentary tracks, as do directors James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot.

The special Indie Game: The Movie will be available through Steam and the official site for $15, or for $5 if you already own the first version. If you pre-order now, a DVD boxed set is available for $59 (regularly $69), while the Blu-ray version is down to $69 from $89.

Boxed sets won't ship until August, at which point they'll revert to their full prices. Both DVD and Blu-ray special editions will be signed by the directors, include exclusive artwork from Edmund McMillen, and offer a code for the digital special edition. Indie Game: The Movie is currently available for streaming on Netflix Instant, as a rental or purchase on YouTube and, until July 22, a $2.99 purchase on Steam, thanks to the Steam Summer Sale.

Battlefield 4 on Xbox One will implement some sort of Kinect functionality, though DICE isn't really talking specifics yet. DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson says that DICE has "a pretty pragmatic view" on Kinect and that due to the series' emphasis on skill, input is a big factor when designing features – so motion controls are out.

"You need to have very precise control over what's going on, and trying to do something like that with motion control input does not make sense – not if you want to keep the same kind of formula of the game as we [have] now. You'd need to build a different kind of shooter," Troedsson said in the latest issue of Game Informer (via Videogamer). "But there are other places where it will make sense, and we are going to use it for other things in the game, but we haven't announced exactly what." Voice commands? That seems like the obvious choice, though it's purely speculation at this point.

Battlefield 4, which runs on the Frostbite 3 engine and resurrects the series' Commander mode, is set to launch on October 29. Battlefield 4 will be available on PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One and PC.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is considering Julie Larson-Green, the current Windows chief, to take over hardware engineering for the entire company, including the Xbox division, Bloomberg reports.

Currently, Larson-Green is in charge of Windows products at Microsoft: She led the UI design of Office XP, 2003 and 2007, and she managed the launch of Windows 7 in 2009. Larson-Green recently oversaw the Windows 8 launch, which has been trickier than Windows 7.

This is part of a company restructuring plan that Ballmer is expected to announce next week, at the earliest. In June, reports indicated Ballmer's changes would focus on making Microsoft a "devices and services" company, along with giving Mattrick a larger role.

Obviously that's out of the question now – Mattrick announced his resignation from Microsoft yesterday, and he's poised to take over as CEO of Zynga next week.

Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox One can scan QR codes to save players the hassle of typing in download codes, Xbox Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten confirmed via Twitter. Whitten was responding to a picture posted to Reddit that demanded players be given the option, given the notion that Kinect will be required for the new system.

Whether QR codes will be made widely available in place of download codes on Xbox One is unknown, but the possibility has existed for some time, as Kinectimals even used QR codes on the current iteration of Kinect.

The North American cover for FIFA 14 will feature both Lionel Messi and Manchester United's Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez, EA Sports announced. Fans in the US will have the option of the dual-athlete cover or the global cover, which only features Messi. Hernandez will also have his own solo cover art for the game in Mexico.

The FIFA cover was announced as part of a multi-year endorsement deal signed by Hernandez with EA Sports. The publisher noted that Hernandez will specifically appear on Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game. EA Sports also recently announced that New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur won the cover vote for NHL 14.

The FIFA series has a distinct trend in terms of its cover athletes. Messi seems much more distraught this year compared to the FIFA 13 cover. It's likely that he's fully taken over the "angry shouting guy" duties previously held by Wayne Rooney as recently as FIFA 12. If the trend holds up, we await a ticked-off Chicharito on the box for FIFA 15.

A new Time Warner Cable app coming to Xbox 360 later this summer promises access to 300 live television channels, Xbox Wire has announced. The new Time Warner app, which requires Xbox Live Gold and a Time Warner subscription, will offer more live TV channels than any other on Xbox 360.

The announcement follows Microsoft's Xbox reveal event and E3 press conference, where Microsoft showcased integrated live television on the Xbox One. Microsoft's entertainment division, overseen by former CBS executive Nancy Tellem, also announced an upcoming Halo live-action series in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. Last week, i love bees creator Elan Lee joined the division.

The Kinect that comes with Xbox One consoles includes a proprietary connector that won't plug into PCs, Microsoft tells Ars Technica. That's why Microsoft now has a "Kinect for Windows" version – it launched an early-access Kinect for Windows SDK program yesterday.

"The Kinect for Xbox One sensor will not have an adapter that allows it to plug into a computer," Microsoft says. "The new generation Kinect for Windows sensor will connect to computers using a standard USB3 port."

Microsoft has no plans to launch an adapter that allows the console Kinect to plug into a PC, the site says. Both Kinects are built on a "shared set of technologies," but Microsoft says, "The new generation Kinect for Windows sensor will be a fully tested, licensed, and supported Kinect experience on Windows. Kinect for Xbox One is being built for and tested with the Xbox One."

The Kinect for Windows SDK is available now in Microsoft's early-access program, which runs $400 and includes private support from the Windows engineering team, access to all API, the early sensor and the final version, and the early and updated SDK.

Soon developers using Unity Pro 4 will be able to port their games to the Windows Store on PC, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox One, the Unity blog has announced.

This partnership will see Microsoft and Unity collaborating to add support for "enhanced Kinect gestures and recognition, multiplayer matchmaking, SmartGlass and cloud stuff" in Unity Pro 4 for Xbox One. If an outfit is using Unity to create a game for Microsoft Studios, then Unity tools for Xbox 360 and Xbox One will be offered gratis. Publishing games on the Windows Store will also be free.

Unity is one of the more popular multi-platform engines out there right now. In March, Unity announced it had entered a similar partnership with Sony to offer tools tailored to Sony platforms, including the PS4, and last month Unity made its mobile development tools available free of charge to all indie developers.

Windows Developers anxious to get their code onto Microsoft's next-gen Kinect can apply for a software development kit before its official public release in 2014. Microsoft is accepting applications now through July 31 at 9AM PT, and early kits cost $400. The program begins in November.

Early kits include an alpha sensor and the final sensor at launch, private support from the Kinect for Windows engineering team, access to the early SDK and any future updates, and private access to all API.

Microsoft will alert successful applicants in August.

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Elan Lee, who worked on Halo alternate reality game i love bees at 42 Entertainment, has joined Microsoft as chief design officer at Xbox Entertainment Studios. Deadline says Lee will report to Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive in charge of developing original video content for Xbox.

Where's the cross section between the two? That's likely to be the recently announced Halo: The Television Series, the Steven Spielberg-produced flagship for the new Xbox One's general entertainment offerings.