eldavojohn writes "You might recall back in June when it was noted that North Korea was developing and exporting flash games. Now, the isolated nation state is apparently home to some game developers that are being published by a subsidiary of News Corp. (The games include Big Lebowski Bowling and Men In Black). Nosotek Joint Venture Company is treading on thin ice in the eyes of a few academics and specialists that claim the Fox News owner is 'working against US policy.' Concerns grow over the potential influx of cash, creating better programmers that are then leveraged into cyberwarfare capabilities. Nosotek said that 'training them to do games can't bring any harm.' The company asserts its innocence, though details on how much of the games were developed in North Korea are sparse. While one of the poorest nations in the world could clearly use the money, it remains to be seen if hardliner opponents like the United States will treat Nosotek (and parent company News Corp.) as if they're fostering the development of computer programmers inside the DPRK. The United Nations only stipulates that cash exchanged with companies in the DPRK cannot go to companies and businesses associated with military weaponry or the arms trade. Would you feel differently about Big Lebowski Bowling if you knew it was created in North Korea?"
Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIIIis to receive a long overdue release on Xbox 360 in Japan.
The RPG will launch for Microsoft's console on December 16 for 4,980 yen, (£39 / $60), a year after its December 17, 2009 PS3 release, according to Famitsu (via Gamasutra).
With Microsoft and Sony poised to release their motion-control devices, Wii-related PR buzz has been somewhat muffled. Even Nintendo's own hardware focus has moved on to the 3DS. Though its sales remain extremely healthy, you'd be forgiven for thinking Wii was winding down. THQ believes otherwise, and has bet the fate of a new device on it. The device is uDraw, a Wii graphics tablet which allows you to wield a stylus against its slippery plastic surface and see the results appear on the TV screen.
Coconut Dodge developer Futurlab is working on yet another game for the PlayStation Minis platform -- this time a space shooter. The studio already has a concept: mixing classic vertical shooting with a new teleporting gimmick; and it already has some music. What it needs now is a name. This is where you come in. Like PixelJunk Shooter, the developer is asking for your suggestions, awarding prizes for the best name ideas.
Of course, it's hard to name a game without knowing more about it. "In our shooter, there is a reason the world scrolls vertically, and a reason that you can't turn around," explains Futurlab, "everything is being sucked into a giant black hole!" Additionally, you'll be able to "save other people that are being sucked into the black hole" via your ship's unique teleporting ability. And ... well, that's all we know.
Hopefully, you can come up with something a bit more fitting than our suggestion -- COOKIESz.
Microsoft has announced that it will release a high-end Xbox 360 Kinect bundle in the UK on November 10.
An Xbox 360 250GB with Kinect and Kinect Adventures will be ';available for a limited period”; for £299.99, alongside the previously announced Xbox 360 4GB console with Kinect and Kinect Adventures for £249.99, the company said.
Classy coffee tables are classy, but also boring. What they need is exactly what this one has: a cleverly-disguised set of professional arcade cabinet components. More »
Kinect will launch in Japan on November 20, Microsoft has confirmed.
The Kinect accessory bundled with Kinect Adventures will cost 14,800 yen (£114 / $177). The device will also be available with the Xbox 360 4GB and Xbox 360 250GB, both packing in a copy of Kinect Adventures, for 29,800 yen (£230 / $356) and 39,800 yen (£308 / $475) respectively.
Following a series of leaks in the Japanese gaming press, Square-Enix has confirmed Final Fantasy XIII will finally release on the Xbox 360 in Japan this winter. Previously, only the PlayStation 3 version of the game had been available in the territory. Asked why there had been such a delay in bringing the Xbox 360 version of the game to Japan, producer Yoshinori Kitase said: "We feel that there are…a lot of people in Japan ...
Final Fantasy XIII, which was previously an PS3 exclusive in Japan, is coming to the country's Xbox 360 console. Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada has been catching all kinds of hell from Japanese gamers for the decision. More »
bgweber writes "There's been a lot of discussion about whether games should adapt to the skills of players. However, most current techniques limit adaptation to parameter adjustment. But if the parameter adaptation is applied to procedural content generation, then new levels can be generated on-line in response to a player's skill. In this adaptation of Infinite Mario (with source [.JAR]), new levels are generated based on the performance of the player. What other gameplay mechanics are open for adaptation when games adapt to the skills of specific players?"
D3's Earth Defense Force 2017 wasn't a great game, but it holds a rather special place in our hearts. The campy action game had you running around, rocket launcher in hand, blasting apart swarms of giant alien invaders. Pretty much everything exploded on the screen, making it one of gaming's great guilty pleasures.
It seems like someone's prepping another title in the Earth Defense Force franchise. A teaser site reveals the new subtitle, Insect Armageddon ... and absolutely nothing else about the project. But, considering how straightforward these games tend to be, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this new title: insects and explosions. Lots of insects and explosions.
In 2005, Nintendo published Nintendo DS game "Brain Age" in Japan, a title that claimed it could train players' brains. In 2010, Microsoft's Kinect is getting its own brain game. More »
Stardock founder Brad Wardell (a.k.a. Frogboy) has announced on the official Elemental forums that this week will bring patch 1.08 for the game, which will finally implement multiplayer, as well as more performance optimizations and bugfixe in the wake of the game's troubled launch. Elemental's multiplayer was one of the game options that had been pushed back due to all of the other issues, so stalwart fans of the game are looking forward to mixing it up with others.
Wardell also says that the content connected with the Random House-published tie-in novel will be unlocking soon, so players who've bought the novel will get that. And Stardock is also planning to reveal some of the work going on for the mod community,
"along with easier in-game submissions of mods that aren't maps." Wardell says that's scheduled for the next few weeks, so it seems like he and his team are still working hard to win back players disappointed with how the launch went.
Tycho: Frequently during panels at the Penny Arcade Expo our own Gabriel will receive compliments on his work. This is as it should be; the visual leap between the first strips and today's thrice-weekly offering is so absolute as to bring the true authorship of the earlier comics into question. You may click here for a harrowing, educational juxtaposition. Anytime there is a PAX, the Discrete Joy Events (or "DJEs") become crystallized into a single, spherical glorb - and the process of fully remembering the event takes weeks. It's the reverse of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, where during the normal prosecution of ...
The latest issue of Famitsu has hit the stands and it contains an announcement for Capcom's Ace Attorney series. It seems that the adventures of Miles Edgeworth have been successful enough to warrant a sequel, as Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is currently in the works. It's even going to be playable at the Tokyo Game Show next week.
Andriasang is reporting that a clue from the announcement, "CHESS," refers to one of the game's systems. I hope it means that there's a button you can press to make all the characters break out into songs which use chess as an allegory for the Cold War. We should be so lucky.
There's a continuing back-and-forth discussion between traditional game developers and web developers over the best way to approach the medium of social games. The stances are represented most frequently by caricatures: the game developer wanting games to be sprawling entertainment experiences and art pieces; the web developer wanting them to be Skinner Boxes that manipulate players into virtual currency purchases. San Francisco startup Lolapps doesn't sit at either end of this spectrum, showing that dichotomy ...
There were some who scoffed at Dead Rising: Case Zero, amused at what they considered to be a paid demo. After hundreds of thousands of sales over the past week, though, who's laughing now? More »
John Romero may forever be known as the man behind Doom and Daikatana to hardcore gamers, but he's since diversified his resume quite a bit. While he remains the head of MMO developer Slipgate, Romero is now acting as a consultant for casual game developer LOLapps. The company boasts over 100 million users of its various Facebook apps, such as Gift Creator and Quiz Creator; its most recent title is Critter Island (pictured above), "a game where you can decorate an island for tourists and invite friends to come visit."
Romero recently joined the team to work on an unnamed Facebook game, one that will likely follow the company's mantra to "[marry] web and game technology to the kind of mini virtual worlds that are popular on Facebook." We're not exactly sure what that means, but it should sound thrilling to venture capitalists.
"This is where the excitement is now," Romero told VentureBeat, marking the next step in the developer's rather unique career.
Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid, has a verified Twitter account. He uses it to post pictures of his lunch. Boring, dull stuff. But today, he spiced things up by posting a picture of a girl in her underwear. More »
The majority of this clip for The Old Republic shows everything that is wrong with both Star Wars' expanded universe and the drudgery of MMOs. Until, that is, the last ten seconds. More »
Autobots and Decepticons have some new playmates thanks to new Transformers: War for Cybertron DLC. It's available today for 800 MSP and $9.99 on Xbox and PS3 respectively. Keep reading for full details, screens and a trailer of the new content in action.
For a month, Gears of War fans have been urged to pick sides over whether or not we're going to have a Carmine survive the next Gears title with profits from the event being donated to Child's Play. The votes have been tallied and the winner is... not going to be revealed. What teases.
But generous teases and all thanks to the gamers who have been buying "Save Carmine" and "Carmine Must Die" t-shirts both for their avatars and original, meat-based equivalents. All told, the Carmine campaign has raised $150,000 for Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity, which puts games in the hands of sick kids in hospitals all over the world. Damn, people. Pat yourselves on the back.
Back in 2008, Japanese game company Square Enix revealed that role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII was coming to the Xbox 360 — everywhere except Japan. That has changed. More »
You know how every time 3D gaming comes up, everyone complains about needing to wear glasses and how 3D TVs are too expensive? It isn't just consumers. If you were the head of a development team, how would you justify the time and resources required to develop for 3D technology, unless, maybe, your company manufactured 3D TVs? That's the dilemma facing Namco as it develops the penultimate fighting game super-mashup... ...
Did you know your copy of Resident Evil 5has been sitting on your shelf, feeling neglected for months now? When the DLC for the game hit, you promised you'd get back to it, but you forgot, didn't you?
Sounds like expanding the amount of showroom floorspace for the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle has paid dividends, with a new attendance record set for the weekend's festivities. More »
Another Silent Hill, another bout of ambivalent caution, right? In many ways the Sonic the Hedgehog of horror games, SH is one of those franchises that has been so completely and utterly wonderful in the past that, despite its own success having now cannibalised it by way of mediocre sequels, some of us just can't let it go.
Hope. It brings you nothing but pain.
With Silent Hill 8 coming as another farmed-out sequel by another low-profile, non-Konami developer, and series composer and guiding light Akira Yamaoka now officially departed, I was just about ready to finally walk away myself. But having read the new press release, I'm now forced to continue to pay attention again. Am I setting myself up for another fall here? ...
This past weekend was one of the best weekend of my life. PAX is a family reunion for Destructoid. We see many familiar faces and make so many new friends. This truly was the best PAX experience for us yet and we still have plenty of more PAX content coming your way.
Jim chats with the voice of Duke Nukem, the Helghast can dance, we have Forums, Nick reviewed Batman: The Brave and the Bold and more happened on 09/07/10.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla Labs has started an initiative to promote and develop gaming based on Open Web technologies. They write, 'We are excited to present to you the latest initiative from Mozilla Labs: Gaming. Mozilla Labs Gaming is all about games built, delivered and played on the Open Web and the browser. We want to explore the wider set of technologies which make immersive gaming on the Open Web possible. We invite the wider community to play with cool, new tech and aim to help establish the Open Web as the platform for gaming across all your Internet connected devices.' To that end Mozilla Labs will launch Game On 2010, a game development competition, at the end of September."
This week's North American PlayStation Store update may sensually seduce you to drop some dollars on new Rock Band tracks or invest in something new, like the side-scrolling, puzzle-solving, physics-based game TerRover. More »
We absolutely recognize that we should focus on the new PSN game, TerRover, this week, or acknowledge that Dragon Age: Origins' "Witch Hunt" DLC is now available, but we we can't help but take note of something down in the "themes" section. There's a "Hot for Teacher" premium theme available now for PSP and PS3. We have no idea what it is, but now we can't get that Van Halen video out of our heads.
Choose your platform to view the corresponding release list:
(Note: Continue past the break to view both release lists.)
Want an early sneak peek at LittleBigPlanet 2's fancy new features? Beta invitations will be going out this week, but they will be reserved for "users who've been really active in LittleBigPlanet," according to a post on PlayStation Europe's forums. If you haven't been playing, sharing and creating lately, you may be out of luck. "Unfortunately we are not able to recruit any further Beta Testers at present."
After a long weekend, we like to get back into the swing of things with a little off topic conversation, now happening nightly (more or less) at Kotaku. What shall we discuss tonight? More »
At this point, I ought to just have a percentage of my paychecks go straight to Terry Cavanagh. Everything he does I seem to either enjoy, or at the very least, find interesting.
Arguably his best game, VVVVVV, is now on Steam. If you have ever enjoyed a platformer before in your life, you should consider getting it. I mean, $4.49 is a small price to pay for one of the genre's greatest titles to come in the last ten or so years.
And hey -- Steam! You guys like buying things from there, right? Thought so.
Aided by a standard-issue Street Fighter IV FightStick, this guy pulls off all of Ryu's Trials in Super Street Fighter IV - using one hand. And he collects the achievement for it, to boot. More »
According to andriasang.com, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero will hit Xbox Live in Japan starting September 8. The game was delayed last week, reportedly because of some inappropriate content contained in the free trial version of the game. We're not sure what's inappropriate about justly sentencing zombies to a gory death, but the issue has presumably been resolved. Would-be Japanese zombie slayers will be able to purchase the game for ¥600.
Of course, now we have to wonder if tomorrow's other undead XBLA release, Plants vs Zombies, will be deemed inappropriate as well. After all, flinging butter at an unsuspecting zombie is just wrong.
Square Enix has revealed the follow-up to its portable Final Fantasy fighting game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, in the latest issue of Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. More »
Maybe you had trouble picturing our description of Rock Band 3 for the DS -- that it looks and plays almost exactly like Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP. Don't worry though, because we're saving you all that mental taxation by posting and actual trailer right here. Alll you have to do is watch!
Following a series of leaks in the Japanese gaming press, Square-Enix has confirmed Final Fantasy XIII will finally release on the Xbox 360 in Japan this winter. Previously, only the PlayStation 3 version of the game had been available in the territory. Asked why there had been such a delay in bringing the Xbox 360 version of the game to Japan, producer Yoshinori Kitase said: "We feel that there are…a lot of people in Japan ...
There's a continuing back-and-forth discussion between traditional game developers and web developers over the best way to approach the medium of social games. The stances are represented most frequently by caricatures: the game developer wanting games to be sprawling entertainment experiences and art pieces; the web developer wanting them to be Skinner Boxes that manipulate players into virtual currency purchases. San Francisco startup Lolapps doesn't sit at either end of this spectrum, showing that dichotomy ...
PAX 10: The Helghast pay tribute to Michael Jackson
Community blogs of 09/07/10
