RSS Feeds
peripherals
We Wish This MGS4 Headset Was Real
Posted by Luke Plunkett at 3:30 PM on April 12, 2008
The writer of design blog ProsumeThis says this Metal Gear Solid 4 headset he designed is real, in production, will cost $US 60, is officially licensed and will be available on June 12, same as the game. While I'd love to believe him, I don't, but that doesn't make the design any less pleasing on the eye. In terms of functionality and design it's based off the wireless 360 headset, but MGS fans may see something a little more familiar in the aesthetics and colour scheme, especially if you've been keeping up with the media released for MGS4 (think little wheelie robots). Very classy.
There's word that cheaters (you bastards!) are apparently moving in full force on Mario Kart Wii. Either that, or there's a bug. The Time Trials mode is getting hit hardest with all sorts of impossible times appearing. According to Mercurys Phoenix at the Official Nintendo Magazine forums writes:
Maybe Def Leppard don't know their downloadable content from their full-price retail products. Few weeks back 
A new fact sheet for the upcoming Lego Indiana Jones has been released today. Anything of note? Let's see here..."Tongue-in-cheek humour presents The Original Adventures in a manner only LEGO can whip up"....no. "Explore the globe and solve puzzles that encourage creative thinking through the use of teamwork and unique building situations only possible in a LEGO world". No, no no. "Cooperative gameplay encourages parents to share the legacy of Indiana Jones with their children in a fun and humorous way". Boring. AH. Here we are! "Unlock more than 60 playable characters, including villains and supporting characters (Marion Ravenwood, Short Round, Rene Belloq, Willie Scott, Marcus Brody, Jones Senior and Mola Ram)". Sixty characters, eh? Not super-surprising, since the Star Wars games had a big playable cast as well, but then Short Round was never in Star Wars, either, so this is much more exciting.
Echocrome's out in Asia. Nowhere else. Which is kinda cooky, since the game (at least the Japanese edition) features an English voice-over. While there's still no word on when the game will be seeing an official (online-only) release in the US, a listing has appeared on the PlayStation UK site, saying it'll be "available on UMD for PSP and to download on PLAYSTATION 3 in May 2008". May's not that far away. It's next month, even!
And the entries are pouring in! Above, reader Daniel cosplays as an aeroplane. Here's what's going on: Dress up as an aeroplane or make a three dimensional aeroplane out of anything tangible, but paper. So you can't make CGI planes! And you can't draw them either! But, you can make them out of anything else as long as it's not paper. Rocks, clay, toothpicks, whatever! And remember, that means make and not build a plastic plane model you bought in the store. Send entries to kotakucontestATgmailDOTcom and, like all contests, don't forget to add a "Kotaku" sign. Remember, we're giving away two copies of the game and INTERNET FAME. Haven't figured out if we'll give one out to the best cosplay and one to the best 3D plane, though...
The latest issue of Nintendo Power, which is in the hands of subscribers right now features an interview with Masato Maegawa, the president of the beloved action game developer, whose Bangai-O Spirits is due to hit the Nintendo DS stateside this quarter. The Xbox Live Arcade remake of Ikaruga just went live, but Nintendo Power wants to know when Maegawa and crew will get some WiiWare titles out.
Rock Band's impending European launch isn't getting the kind of PR Harmonix and MTV would like. 
The9 Limited, the operators of World of Warcraft in China, has announced that they recently achieved a peak of one million players online at the same time. That's not the fudgy sort of numbers you get for subscribers either - that is one million World of Warcraft accounts online and playing at one time. That's the biggest number they've seen since the game launched there back in 2005. Of course there are 1.3 billion or so people living in China, so a million is just a drop in a bucket, but that's a very big drop in a absolutely gigantic bucket. To put things in perspective, if a million people stood on your head, your skull would be completely crushed. Them's skull-crushing numbers right there, and before you go blaming gold farming, keep in mind that these are Chinese servers, not people accessing servers outside of the country, so nya. 
Well, this is it folks, the final Friday of regular Smash Bros. Dojo updates and, essentially, the final Dojo Dump wrap up. The final daily update to the official site will be on Monday, but we expect the odd new post, sometime around the launch of the PAL version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Oh, the bittersweetness of it all! You may already know that the Dojo had a bang up post for today, helping the medicine go down easier, but don't think we aren't crying ourselves to sleep tonight!
Don't forget folks, this weekend is the Chessmaster Live Hip Hop Weekend on Xbox Live, where you could win fabulous prizes just for playing a Chessmaster Live match online! Sponsored by the Hip Hop Chess Federation and Xbox.com, players who register either 
What will we do when GTAIV actually comes out? Play it for 1,000+ hours? How lame. We'd much rather waste our time on zany flash ads that only take 1 minute or 2 a pop. For instance, if you're as cool as us, you'll have an awkward conversation with a representative from Goldberg, Ligner & Shyster...which we're beginning to suspect may be more of an escort service than a law firm, but no harm, no foul.
18-year-old Jean Pierre Orlewicz is currently on trial for first-degree premeditated murder, after he and a friend ambushed 26-year-old Daniel Sorenson last November, stabbing him multiple times in the back before sawing off his head and burning his body. After the prosecution spent the better part of yesterday describing a young man fixated on committing a crime, the defence revealed the real reason behind the teen's murderous drive. Hitman:
With a planned nine straight days of obligation gaming, defined as titles I might not necessarily play on my own time, I think I'll be taking it easy this weekend, doing my best to re-beat Ikaruga and keeping my hands controller free. I'd beaten the Dreamcast import version of Ikaruga a few months after its release, but I'm a credit feeder, never to be skilled enough to play with default, no-continue settings.
Dammit, I knew I should have hit up eBay earlier. GameStop has the details on the collector's edition of Fallout 3 due out this spring, and some of the contents look rather familiar. For $US 20 more than the normal edition ($US 79.99 console, $US 69.99 PC), you'll be receiving the much-coveted Vault Boy bobble head in all its encephalitic glory, a hardcover Art of Fallout 3 book, a Making of Fallout 3 DVD, and the game itself. All of this comes neatly packaged in a completely customised Fallout 3 lunch box, which I now have in both broken and non-broken varieties, thanks to the lovely folks at Bethesda. This is one collector's edition that seems well worth an extra $US 20, unless of course you already own half of it.
Microsoft's group manager for the XNA platform, Chris Satchell, wants you to know that user-generated content can lead to bad things. Like cooties.
Since the Resident Evil 5 trailer debuted, it's stirred controversy. And even more recently, it's 
Amazon is in the middle of another 
Sony Computer Entertainment UK's Ray Maguire, amidst a discussion on the Byron Report (chastising it for not keeping up with a growing internet-based industry), made a prediction about the future of games:
Act quickly if you're interested. Amazon's Lightning Deals of the day are apparently all Wii titles. Currently, this means you can score Guitar Hero III Wii with controller for just $US 65. That discount is only good for the next 3 hours or until the deal sells out. Then two more Wii deals will be hitting soon after. (Earlier you missed out on Cabela's Big Game Hunter...our apologies.)
You can't fault a guy for thinking the whole Steven Spielberg making video games scenario seems just a tad disingenuous. On a movie set, the director is quite possibly the hardest working, most involved person on staff. Transplanted as a game designer, they show up every once and a while to check stuff out. But at least Bloom Box producer Amir Rahimi will stick up for Spielberg's gamer cred:
When gamers think "Halo," do they think Microsoft, Xbox 360 or Bungie? That's a question Bungie faces going into the future with its umbilical cord severed from the Microsoft machine—especially when accounting for the millions in branding dollars that tied the Halo franchise so closely to entities other than the developer. Bungie Community Lead Brian Jarrard voiced such concerns to Edge:
Brett Tosti, Executive Producer and Emily Morganti, Marketing Coordinator, from Telltale Games publicly demonstrated Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People this morning at the opening of day two of the Nintendo Media Summit. The WiiWare title, 
According to Bloomberg Japan, Enterbrain (Famitsu's parent company) honcho Hirokazu Hamamura has said that Nintendo might unveil a new DS model at E3 2008. While Ash is asleep and our Google Translate only takes us so far, there doesn't appear to be any other information of note other than Nintendo declining to comment on the rumour.
At the MI6 marketing conference earlier this week, various Microsoft staffers presented a talk outlining how they successfully marketed Halo 3 to the masses. They explained how their main goal in expanding the audience for the third instalment of Bungie's saga was to put a more human face on Master Chief.
Several of you have pointed us to an amazing opinion piece by Naomi Alderman at The Guardian titled "If we deny children access to all computer games, we deprive them of a rich and magical experience", a beautifully written response to recent events in the UK like the 
From worst to first! Just last month, Flagship's Hellgate: London made 1UP's list of the 
I woke this morning to find Kotaku at a crossroads, 