So far, Nintendo's 3DS looks to be a bust. This could change; the portable is still early in its lifecycle. But Japanese gamers aren't exactly snapping the machine up. There must be reasons for this. Turns out, there are.

Online research firm Goo polled 1,110 Japanese consumers (39.5 percent were men and 60.5 percent were women) about why they haven't purchased the Nintendo 3DS. Here are the most popular reasons:

19. Waiting for my friends to get one
19. DS games look magnified and are hard to see
18. There's no Famicom on the Virtual Console
17. The buttons look hard to use
16. Can't transfer DSi Points
15. Waiting for a version with a larger screen
14. Saving for Sony's NGP
13. Can't play Game Boy games
12. There isn't a 3DS color I want
11. Can't play Game Boy Advance games
10. Worried it'll be heavy to carry
9. The battery life seems bad
8. Satisfied with the PSP
7. Satisfied with cell phone and smart phone games
6. Waiting for games I want (like Pokémon, Zelda, etc)
5. Skimpy launch titles
4. Might get ill from the screen
3. Worried about eye strain
2. Satisfied with the DS/DSi
1. It's pricey/waiting for a price drop

If you haven't picked up a 3DS, let us know why in the comments section.

ニンテンドー3DSの購入を見送った理由ランキング - ゲームランキング [goo ランキング]

I hope you like the colour brown, because it's the real star of this year's Madden 12 cover art, both versions of the game looking more like a Gears of War map than something from a game played on bright green fields.

The regular edition of the game, featuring cover star Peyton Hillis, can't help it. He plays for the Cleveland Browns. Who wear brown jerseys.

The game's Ultimate Edition (which includes a hand-signed card from the cover athlete), however, is graced by former Rams RB Marshall Faulk, and in an effort to make him look all Hall of Famey, he's been cast in Bronze. Well, he's had an awful Photoshop filter applied on an embossed cover, but the intent is there.

This will be the second time Faulk has got himself on the cover of the game, having first appeared on Madden 03's box art in 2002.

Hug pillows, or "dakimakura" as they're called in Japanese, are otaku bedroom staples. But what if you didn't hug the pillow, but the pillow hugged you?

That's the concept behind this "dakaremakura" that features Super Sonico, the virtual idol created by game company Nitro Plus.

Out this August, this "hug me" pillow cover features two outstretched arms, which, as Kotaku Japan points out, is reminiscent of Jesus. Most likely, that isn't the intention, but rather to make a more huggable pillow.

Super Sonico hug pillow order form (Skynet)

In Japan, hug pillows aren't only an otaku thing. More conservative ones are snapped up by those, young and old, hoping to have a better night's sleep.

In the otaku subculture, hug pillows have a different meaning—nerd folklore insinuates that they provide more than a good night's sleep.

With this latest innovation, surely spreadable legs are next.

抱くより抱かれたい...すーぱーそに子の「抱かれ枕」登場（ギャラリーあり） [Kotaku Japan]

Age of Empires Online, which is a lot more enjoyable than it sounds on paper, will be out in August. Here's a damn fine trailer to go with that announcement.

I never thought I could be sold on a war game with a trailer showing nobody being killed, and yet here we are.

AoE Online differs from previous games in the series in that rather than being linear campaign-based games, you own a persistent city-state from where you can upgrade and equip your troops and select quests.

It's out on those quests where you engage in traditional AoE fare, mining trees and killing men in armoured skirts, etc.

The game will be out on August 16, available both online (where it's free to play) and at retail, where your money gets you upgrades online purchasers would have had to pay for.

Aya Hirano rocketed to fame with roles in anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and video games like Eternal Sonata. But in summer 2010, Hirano decided to make the leap from voice actress to TV celebrity, pissing off her rabid fan base in the process.

On May 29, a Twitter account believed to belong to one of her fans, 24-year-old Tomokazu Furuichi, posted this tweet: "I've already killed Aya Hirano." Other tweets read that Hirano died or committed suicide. This wasn't the first for Furuichi, but it could be the last.

The name on the account is "古市友一" or "Tomokazu Furuichi". The tweets show an obsession with Japanese comedy, namely Takashi Okamura's Mecha Ike and Picaru no Ashi, both of which are Fuji TV programs. The tweets went in spurts, taking breaks from obsessively talking about Picaru only during Japanese soccer matches and March 11's earthquake.

In late March, the tweets zeroed in on Hirano more and more, with tweets asking Picaru's producer to boot Hirano from the show. Tweets to Hirano became more confrontational. "Kill yourself," read one tweet. "Die die die die die die die," read another. On Japanese bulletin board 2 Channel, Furuichi also apparently wrote that harm would come to Hirano and Fuji TV was going to blow up.

24 year-old Tomokazu Furuichi (FNN)

According to FNN, Tomokazu Furuichi, was arrested yesterday in Sapporo, and said, "There's no mistake in what I wrote."

Due to anime and video games, voice actresses like Hirano become otaku favorites. There are magazines dedicated solely to voice actresses. Popular voice actresses release photo books—one voice actress, Rie Tanaka, even has her own hug pillow and trading cards. But voice actresses are not mainstream celebrities, thus making them seem more approachable, attainable even, than idols on television.

Hirano attempted to buck that trend, appearing on talk shows, discussing her romantic relationships (a no-no for "perfect" idols). She even became the spokesperson for Denny's in Japan. She became mainstream, much to the ire of her hardcore fans. "Fan" is short for "fanatic", and some fans are just that, fanatics.

In Japan, Nintendo has a practice of releasing more mature titles in black boxes. In America, pretty much the opposite is about to happen.

From now on, a range of Mario's DS games in the US will stand out on the shelf with a bright red case, drawing the eye of the customer towards the fact that, hey, these games are probably better than most of the other ones.

It's an interesting branding strategy on the part of Nintendo, though, because between the black Wii boxes and now this, it opens the door for a whole rainbow of plastic game boxes. Green for Zelda, orange for Metroid...something for Tingle.

We've heard that the touch-screen controllers used in Nintendo's next home console will have a camera. It appears that California-based OmniVision, who among others works with Apple on its iPhones, may be supplying those cameras.

OmniVision specialises in camera solutions for handheld devices, and for a few years has supplied the swish back-facing camera sensors (cameras this small only have a lens and a sensor chip) for Apple's iPhone family.

In a quarterly results call last week, the company revealed that it had got hold of a "significant design win" for a new gaming console due out later this year.

Assuming Microsoft don't have a massive surprise in store at E3, that leaves Nintendo's next console and Sony's NGP handheld as the only two possible devices. And with Sony making its own cameras, well, that really only leaves Nintendo.

Anyone who has used an iPhone 4 will tell you its camera is freaking amazing, so it'll be neat to see if something even approaching that level of quality makes its way onto Nintendo's next control pad.

OmniVision hints ramp up for 8MP iPhone camera, Project Cafe [electronista, via EatChildren @ NeoGAF]

For the past few years, Nintendo has run a series of interviews on its website called "Iwata Asks", giving us behind-the-scenes looks at some of the company's most important games and pieces of hardware.

This interview, though, does not involve Iwata. And was never on Nintendo's website. Because it was conducted in 1991, and involved the developers of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Painstakingly translated by GlitterBerri, the interview could be found in a Japanese strategy guide for the Super Nintendo classic, and involved "celebrities" like series creator Shigeru Miyamoto and soundtrack superstar Koji Kondo.

It's amazing reading because, unlike today's carefully stage-managed meetings between the press and developers, this is a bunch of Japanese nerds answering some fairly standard questions in some fairly strange ways.

Take Miyamoto, for example. Despite LttP boasting a great "two world" mechanic, where players could switch between a light and dark game world, when asked what he wanted consumers to notice from Link to the Past he says "This time around, I'd like you to pay attention to the bottle system."

Right.

And Kondo, who we normally associate with the famous scores to games like Mario and Zelda, is instead most proud of the cutting-edge technology of...stereo sound, saying "For this game, I tried to do the sound in stereo. I wanted to have it so that when there was a mouse crawling around in the darkness, you're be able to hear which direction the noise was coming from, for example."

He was also "really proud of the chicken noises".

This is interesting not because they're crazy, but because it highlights two things: one being the crushing modesty of many Japanese developers, especially in the "good old days", but the other being the possibility that many of the reasons people love LttP may not have been seen by developers as that big a deal.

Take the game's almost timeless graphics, for example. Not a single one of the lead developers mentions the game's simple, iconic art style. Indeed, Toshihiko Nakago says that one of the biggest problems faced was "making the graphics more realistic".

Aside from these awkward interview responses, there is also a ton of fascinating info to be had about the game. Did you know, for example, that at one stage the developers contemplated making the game compatible with the Zapper peripheral?

Or that Miyamoto was even by 1991 thinking that Zelda was being held back by its fantasy setting?

These days, fantasy games with swords and magic are quite common. When we first started out, there wasn't a market for that, so that's where the game got its appeal. However, now that we're doing a series, we've got no choice but to continue using swords and magic. But the more we do that, the more we're reluctantly forced to go in a different direction than we were aiming for. I feel like there's no challenge in swords and magic anymore.

One final interesting note is that at one stage Miyamoto had planned for the game to take place across not two worlds, but three. In the end, this was pared back because "players would've gotten confused".

Fans of Zelda or just game development should really give the whole thing a read. While it's cute seeing relatively simple answers given considering the relatively simple mechanics of the game being developed, you also get a real "fly by the seat of their pants" feeling, as these men pushed forward making games free from the constraints and tropes of clearly-defined genres that so bog down the developers and games of today.

Bienvenidos, Kotaku. I trust you had an enjoyable three-day weekend, should you happen to be a resident of these United States. If not, then I apologize. Let's get right to it. It's Tuesday (yes!) which means we got a themed open thread on our hands.

It's been a while since I asked you about the recent purchases of your lives. Did you buy a new car? A house? A bunch of organic bananas? What about some great video game purchases? Brag about them (or publicly regret them) in the comments below!

I'm saving money for a home, so my most recent noteworthy purchase was a pair of tickets to see Thor. And food. I am still eating.

Feel free to talk about anything, including some of these things.

• DC Comics is reinventing its universe (again) - Starting over in a sense with brand new #1 issues this year. Also shipping day and date digital comics with normal releases.
• ASUS introduces the Padfone - Awesomely, I might add.
• WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk - So, don't buy a Padfone!!
• World's first BMX triple backflip - Totally rad, as advertised.
• Literally Unbelievable - People who believe stories from The Onion are real. I literally cannot believe I forgot to post about this the other day.

In addition to releasing dozens of new screen shots for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard's second chapter in the real-time strategy trilogy, the developer also offered us a look at some early, Zerg-centric concept art.

Kotaku also spoke with Blizzard senior artist Sam Didier about his team's work on the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion. He explained the concepts behind two of the game's new characters, Abathur and Izsha, and touched on some of the other new elements seen in our hands-on preview of the game, including those lovable Space Yetis.

Click through the gallery above to see more and click to expand each image for a (very large) full-sized look.

Concept art for Izsha, Kerrigan's Zerg advisor. Didier calls her a "level-headed Zerg" who doesn't act on passion, the way the Queen of Blades does.

"We didn't want you to be playing with a Matt Horner equivalent or a Swann or Tosh," Didier says, referring to the cast of characters featured in Wings of LIberty. "We wanted you to be playing with monsters. As it is now, Kerrigan's still human-looking, but we wanted her among this theater of chaos."

"We really wanted to push the Zerg-iness of this game, that's why they're so off the wall. Izsha's a little more feminine and human in the face, but the rest [of her] goes into the rafters of the Leviathan," he says, resulting in a disgusting, monstrous creature.

Abathur serves as Kerrigan's mutation engineer, spending much of his time in the Leviathan's Evolution Chamber.

"Abathur's just a horror," Didier says, describing him an "evil scientist" character with little regard for the results of his actions. Part spider, part lamprey, part caterpillar, he's "the uninhibited version of Kerrigan," according to Didier.

"Kerrigan, she's still pretty hot for a Zerg, right?" Didier says. "But the other characters, I wanted to make sure there wasn't a whole lot of humanity about them."

The Yetis of Kaldir were designed to contrast the insectoid and reptilian qualities of the Zerg, but were quite simply a warm-blooded mammal that could benefit the Zerg.

"We just wanted to have a cold environment creature that you can kill to assimilate their DNA and that seemed like the simplest right off the bat—a space Yeti," Didier says. But the Yetis gameplay impact is also by design, as the generally neutral critters of StarCraft's worlds needed a bit more "personality."

"This is the first time we didn't want a critter to just be a victim," Didier says. The Yetis will attack you, they'll attack your enemies. "We wanted something that was very aggressive."

Didier would not confirm whether Space Yetis were a fourth playable race in a future StarCraft product. He's just laughed the notion off.

A painting of a collection of Zerg egg sacs, used in a StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm loading screen. It may provide some insight into the interior of the Leviathan, the massive Zerg transport that carries Kerrigan, Abathur and Izsha from planet to planet.

We're not yet sure if we'll see any other rooms inside the Leviathan, but we will see the Evolution Chamber change over time, showing off your personalized Zerg swarm and evolutionary choices you make during its campaign. Didier said he didn't know how many units will be available for evolution upgrades, but did offer the following details.

"We're planning on filling it, but whether it's [with] 8 or 18 units, the final number we don't know," Didier says.

One thing Didier says we won't see on the Leviathan? "An infested jukebox."

A Zerg hive, encased in ice on the frozen planet Kaldir. This painting was used in a StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm loading screen as well.

Concept art of the planet Char, which the Terrans control in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and Kerrigan visits to reclaim parts of her brood.

Kerrigan says hello to an Ultralisk.

Painting of planet Kaldir.

Painting of planet Kaldir.