What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...
QUOTE | "Nintendo's on track to become primarily a software company."—Bing Gordon, investor and EA veteran, weighs in on the business strategy and future for the house that Mario built.
QUOTE | "PCs are far more user-friendly than consoles."—Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli talking about his new partnership with Trion for Warface and how the CryEngine company is preparing for the future.
QUOTE | "The PS3 even at $149 would be a compelling deal."—Steve Peterson, West Coast editor for GamesIndustry International, talking with other editors in a roundtable about the magic $99 price point and how and when the console makers can get there.
QUOTE | "The success of the 4GB Xbox 360 should have been emulated a long time ago."—Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter talking about the rumored PS3 super slim model, which is said to include just 16GB of storage but sell for a much, much lower price.
STAT | 17 million—The number of iPads Apple sold in the last fiscal quarter, representing a whopping 84 percent jump over last year's third quarter period for the company.
QUOTE | "There is absolutely no plan to replace John as the CEO."—Larry Probst, chairman of the board at Electronic Arts, talking at a shareholder meeting about John Riccitiello amidst concerns of the company's falling stock price.
QUOTE | "Zynga's cheerleaders may wave their pom-poms all they like, but ... this isn't a company that's going to be an industry leader."—Rob Fahey, veteran journalist and former GamesIndustry editor, talking about Zynga's massive share price collapse and disastrous earnings report.
QUOTE | "It's a shame you can't sell big numbers unless you make a shooter."—Enric Alvarez of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow developer Mercury Rising talks about a challenging, shooter-dominated marketplace.
STAT | $2.75 million—The amount that EA spent on Facebook advertising for the shooter Battlefield 3, which proved to be very efficient ad spending for the publisher.
QUOTE | "Mobile gaming is invading the last bastion of game consoles and PCs."—PopCap VP of Worldwide Publishing Dennis Ryan commenting on a new survey that shows mobile becoming the primary gaming platform used at home for many players.
STAT | $1.3 million—The approximate financial investment required to do a port from PS3/Xbox 360, to Wii U, according to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot who clarified that his company "doesn't have a huge investment" in Wii U.
QUOTE | "There is always going to be room for high-end games where you want the highest graphical fidelity or the biggest open world."—Harvey Smith, co-creative director on Arkane's upcoming Dishonored, talking about the growth of the market to include big budget games, mobile games and more.
In truth, the developers at EA Canada weren't sure at the time how far they could take the feature. The video itself only showed a commentator pointing out someone's unhappiness with an offside call, not a yellow card. I was later told that developers wanted to include booking for dissent, but a big concern was, in standard team play (or multiplayer), who on the team would get the yellow card. If it was assigned to a player who had already picked up a yellow card, then he would be sent off, and then the swearing really begins. I suppose also, in local multiplayer, they'd have to control for your opponent or someone else in the room swearing at the screen in an effort to get you booked, too.
Evidently it was too complex to implement in this year's game, as that video above declares: No one will receive a yellow card for swearing in the Kinect microphone. However, it will affect in-match commentary, storylines for your Pro or Manager, and can also result in stricter officiating for the remainder of the match.
So all you potty-mouths can go forward and swear with near-impunity. And I'm told that FIFA has a very robust, multi-lingual vocabulary, which I'm sure everyone will want to put to the test.
Three collector's editions headline the usual summer clear-out of stock as we transit to August. Walmart gets really desperate with a three-for-one come-on—for PSP games. Sixty savings, bonuses and deals await below.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Collector's Edition (360) is $49.99, free shipping from NewEgg. Next best is $60. [Dealzon]
• Dead Island Game of the Year Edition (360, PS3) is $19.99 plus $3.49 shipping from GameStop. Next best is $30. [Dealzon]
• Final Fantasy XIII-2: Collector's Edition (360) is $47.99, free shipping from Toys 'R' Us. Next best is $50 at Amazon, elsewhere $60 and up. [Dealzon]
• Oct. 30 release Assassin's Creed 3 (360, PS3) is $47.99, free shipping from NewEgg through Sunday. Next best is $60. [Dealzon]
• July 31 release Risen 2: Dark Waters (360, PS3) is $44.99, free shipping from Toys 'R' Us. Next best is $59. [Dealzon]
• Diablo 3 (PC) is $39.99 after rebate, free shipping from TigerDirect. Next best is $50. [Dealzon]
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• Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends (360, PS3) is $31.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $47. [Dealzon]
• Just Dance Greatest Hits (360 Kinect, Wii) is $30, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $38. [Dealzon]
• Akai Katana (360) is $29.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $40. [Dealzon]
• Inversion (360) is $23.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $40. [Dealzon]
• Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Limited Edition (360, PS3) is $14.99 from Best Buy. Next best is $20. [Dealzon]
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations (360, PS3) is $9.99, free shipping from Best Buy. Next best is $24. [Dealzon]
• Two Worlds 2 (360) is $9.99, free shipping from NewEgg. Next best is $17. [Dealzon]
• This weekend Walmart offers a "4 PSP games for $19.96" sale. Choose from 61 titles, and shipping is $2.97. Example combo: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII plus Major League Baseball 2K11 plus Thrillville: Off the Rails plus Diner Dash: Sizzle & Serve would save $15.41 off their usual combined prices of $38.34. [Dealzon]
• F.E.A.R. 3 (PC download) is $7.69 from Green Man Gaming. Next best is $20. [Dealzon]
• Turtle Beach Ear Force DPX21 Gaming Headset is $99.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $120. [Dealzon]
• Razer Banshee StarCraft II Gaming Headset is $64.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $105. [Dealzon]
• Samsung S22B310B 21.5-inch 1080p LED Monitor (Refurbished) is $115, free shipping from Buy.com. Next best is $180. [Dealzon]
• OCZ Agility 4 SSD 2.5" 512GB is $349.99 after rebate, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $370. [Dealzon]
• HP Envy 4 Sleekbook 14-inch laptop with Core i5-2467M, 2GB Radeon HD 7670M, 32GB mSSD is $699.99, free shipping from HP. That's cheapest ever by $50 and $125 off last week's price of $825. [Dealzon]
• Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 15.6-inch laptop with Core i5-2450M, GeForce GT 555M, 500GB 7200RPM HDD is $679, free shipping from Lenovo. That's cheapest ever by $20 and $40 off last week's price of $719. [Dealzon]
• Lenovo IdeaCentre K430 Desktop with Quad Core i5-2320, 12GB RAM, Radeon HD 7450 is $649, free shipping from Lenovo. That's a new low by $50 and $70 off last week's price of $719. [Dealzon]
• CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra GUA250 Desktop with AMD Quad-Core FX-4100, 8GB RAM, GeForce GT 520 is $498, free shipping from Walmart. Next best is $609. [Dealzon]
The following listing of digital download bargains are grouped by distributor. For more, see Deals4Downloads' roundup.
Amazon
• Burning Hot Bundle is $7.99, save 80 percent.
• STORM: Frontline Nation is $9.99, save 67 percent.
• Red Faction Guerrilla is $8.55, save 57 percent.
• Major League Baseball 2K11 is $10.05, save 50 percent.
• Might and Magic: Heroes VI is $28.15, save 44 percent.
Beamdog
• Tank Universal is $3.40, save 66 percent.
• Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is $17.99, save 10 percent.
Desura
• Star Sonata is $4.99, save 50 percent.
• Planet Stronghold is $12.49, save 50 percent.
DotEmu
• All Cossacks and American Conquest Series is $7.98, save 60 percent.
GameFly
• Defenders of Ardania is $5.00, save 66 percent.
• Max Payne 3 is $29.99, save 50 percent.
GamersGate
• Section 8 is $4.95, save 83 percent.
• Majesty 2 Collection is $4.99, save 75 percent.
• AI War Alien Bundle is $16.99, save 62 percent.
• Tom Clancy's Collection is $24.99, save 50 percent.
Gametap
• Homefront is $9.97, save 50 percent.
• Red Faction Armageddon is $9.97, save 50 percent.
Get Games
• Binary Domain is $9.99, save 75 percent.
• Metro 2033 is $4.99, save 75 percent.
• Saints Row: The 3rd is $17.99, save 64 percent.
GMG
• Bridge Constructor is $6.99, save 65 percent.
• Hitman: Codename 47 is $3.99, save 60 percent.
GOG
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is $7.49, save 50 percent.
• Little Big Adventure 2 (Twinsen's Odyssey) is $2.99, save 50 percent.
• The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time is $2.99, save 50 percent.
Impulse
• Empire and Napoleon Total War - GotYE is $7.49, save 75 percent.
• Rage is $9.99, save 50 percent.
iTunes Store
• Civilization Revolution (iPad) is $0.99, save 86 percent.
• 2K Sports NHL 2K11 (iPhone) is $0.99, save 75 percent.
• Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 (iPhone) is $0.99, save 67 percent.
Steam
• Orcs Must Die! Game of the Year Edition is $3.24, save 75 percent.
• Borderlands: Game of the Year is $7.49, save 75 percent + Free Weekend.
• Stellar Impact is $4.99, save 50 percent.
Kotaku thanks our coupon partners for providing these and other great deals. Be sure to bookmark and search their Kotaku hashtags (#dealzon, #deals4downloads and #dealtaku) for updates throughout the week. Further, to our friends across the pond and north of the border, check the #ukdeals, #europedeals and #canadadeals hashtags and be sure to flag any deals you might have with that.
As always, smart gamers can find values any day of the week, so if you've run across a deal, share it with us in the comments.
Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week's best content.
First up is the image above. We look into the real eyes and mustache of Mario, thanks to deviantART artist CALLit-ringo. Be sure to hit up the link for the full-sized image. Thanks to dotcore for the find.
Moving on to our Best Of content this week, we kick things off as usual with a comment from the community.
Our favorite comment of this week comes to you from rathorial:
ALL choice in video games is an illusion. The thing people don't seem to get correctly, is that every mechanic in a video game is an illusion of you doing something. If I'm playing through a character action game, all these complex animations and hit detection are being simplified to button press combinations and me moving the analog stick.
All the matters is the system presenting you the illusion doesn't suck. If the illusion is strong, the player buys in. Bayonetta is a strong illusion of combat, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is a garbage illusion of combat. Witcher 2 or Fallout: New Vegas are good illusions of player choice, while Mass Effect1-3 and Dragon Age 2 are bad illusions of player choice.
I do think Diablo 3 would be better if my character stuck up for himself, and had a personality to go with the voice. It would be even better if I got to make the damn choices in the game, since all the combat is built around me deciding what abilities and runes to use, along with what type of equipment...it just seems so natural for you to do the same with how you communicate with the world. Heck, then Diablo 3 would actually be an RPG, instead of an action game with RPG combat and character customization mechanics...seriously nothing you do outside combat makes it an RPG.
Though, if you wanted the humor angle we all also enjoy this comment from WolfRogers. You should check the article for context:
Well folks, Gotta Go!
Stephen Totilo talks to a God of War: Ascension developer about the violence in the upcoming title. More »
Evan Narcisse explores the first black female lead in Assassin's Creed. More »
Lisa Foiles unveils some of the most impressive gender-bending cosplay. More »
Kirk Hamilton is underwhelmed by the Diablo III ending. More »
Jason Schreier finds a nifty way to play Zelda as a flash game. More »
Evan details the comics and inspirations that went into The Dark Knight Rises. More »
Jason interviews the man behind an anti-bigotry gaming site about getting attacked with racial slurs. More »
Professional gamer Athene answered your questions live. More »
Kotaku's Dos and Don'ts to buying video games. More »
Kirk sizes up Astro's new headset. More »
Kirk chats with the lead writer on Spec Ops: The Line about killing civilians in the game. More »
Mike Fahey is not as pleased with The Dark Knight Rises. More »
Guild Wars 2 content designer answered your questions live. More »
Evan makes a connection with a small polygonal figure. More »
Patrick Wyatt, former Blizzard executive talks about the early making of Warcraft. More »
Kirk talks to the artist for Darksiders II about Death (the character, not the thing that puts you six feet under). More »
Kirk enjoys the many, many coins in New Super Marios Bros. 2. More »
Patricia Hernandez gives us some not-so-serious advice on how to be a jerk to your opponents in video games. And some serious advice on how to combat the jerks. More »
Jason wants to see better villains in JRPGs. More »
Ah, the poetry and metaphor of the prison sequence in The Dark Knight Rises! How would one ever turn that into an awesome video game level?
The answer: by adding lots of dudes for Bruce Wayne to punch.
Video games are excellent at many things, but adapting movie scenes that don't have a lot of action in them? They stink at that. Games usually need to give players something to do, and "something to do" often = "someone to beat up or kill." Interaction is the essence of video games, ater all, and violence is the easiest interaction to render. So the creators of the official Dark Knight Rises take some lovely and relatively quiet scenes from Christopher Nolan's movies and fill 'em with action. It certainly wrecks the tone, but then again, most James Bond video games turn the cinematic version of Ian Fleming's suave spy into a commando.
Oh well, the rest of this Batman game is more promising and a tad more faithful to the movie.
There have been few if any comic-book movie performances as startling and singular as Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight. At once loose and strong, purringly deadly and weirdly vulnerable… it was a shambling shaggy dog performance for the record books.
There's no way to know now where Ledger drew his inspiration for the character, but after watching this video of Tom Waits in 1979 (as pointed out by Newsarama), it's shocking how much of a similarity there was. Skip the video to 1:30 and listen to that voice. Woah.
Was Ledger's Joker the best movie villain of all time? Who might be better? Have we run out of Batman villains to put in movies? Is Batman ready for a break? Should Tom Waits play the villain in a film? I'd see that.
A long and exciting week draws to a close. Feel free to talk super heros or anything else, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum. Have a lovely weekend.
1979 Tom Waits = Heath Ledger's The Joker. See For Yourself [Newsarama]
Most games have bosses—and there are multiple in-game reasons for that. What punctuation does for sentence structure, video game villains do for narrative: namely, pushing the pacing forward.
Bosses give you reason to act: if Bowser never kidnaps the princess, there's no game! A boss can also act as a good mastery check, which is why Zelda bosses often revolve around whatever new weapon you acquired in the dungeon.
Some might be tempted to call bosses anachronisms—things in games that we no longer need but we keep around anyway. But Wired thinks otherwise, citing the need for villains and bosses as deeply rooted in the social psyche. It's not just a game thing, though some of the reasons we have villains—like wish fulfillment—are practically married to the medium.
Bosses are a good way to confront our 'shadow selves,' which can be thought of as the entity which is the complete opposite of ourselves—whether good or bad.
These are—to simplify—the parts of ourselves that we hide for the sake of society. Confronting this part of ourselves allows us to grow as human beings. What happens in the Persona games, then—which sees players battling "shadows"—is highly metaphorical. In Persona 4, the bosses are literally the characters' shadow selves.
But this also means that the most devilish, disturbing villains are a mirror of ourselves, of the society that created them. And this is why, as cliche as it is, bosses like to throw the "We're not so different, you and I" idea at us, like Lazarevic does in Uncharted 2. It's true!
At the same time, the more evil a villain is, the better they allow us to face our fears—so maybe the creation of monstrosities is a necessary sacrifice. It's for the sake and health of society-at-large which, according to Freud, is highly repressed. So repressed, we may need a Ganon, a Dr. Robotnik.
Payback is another gratifying product of the inclusion of villains. If villains are around to let us blow off steam, then that means villains are the most suited for video games, no? We can defeat bosses, and if the mechanics are tight, doing it feels great.
This aspect is so important that games go out of their way to provide the most ridiculous, if not fantastical bosses, like the oddly-majestic beasts in Shadow of The Colossus or the Centipede Demon in Dark Souls. The sense of payback is that much grander.
Plus, the bigger and better the villain, the more heroic the player can seem. When games like to be our personal power fantasies, this part is important!
Really, the reasons why we're so in love with villains is fascinating. Now if we could only have all villains and bosses be good.
Why Do Supervillains Fascinate Us? A Psychological Perspective [Wired]
I have not played The Void, but it's on my list. And I've definitely heard enough about the game to make me think that the developer, Russian studio Ice Pick Lodge, has some interesting video game ideas.
Their latest idea, which they're funding via a fairly low-priced Kickstarter (at least by video game standards), is a puzzle horror game called Knock-Knock. Players will play as a grumpy insomniac in a cabin in the woods who is visited by a number of scary apparitions and beasties.
It's sort of tower-defense, sort of survival horror, and sounds like a nifty concept for a game. That's in part because the art, much of which looks mostly finished, looks fantastic. I mean, look at these suckers:
The game idea sounds fun as well, particularly this bit:
You could come across some useful loot which might contribute to your survival. The assortment and the stats of the items is always random, and the inventory is limited to 5 slots, so you would have to choose your gear preferences every single night.
I'm detecting a bit of roguelikeness here… cool by me.
The pitch video itself is also odd and funny, though not quite as great as Techno Kitten Adventure.
Knock-Knock [Kickstarter]
Would you watch this movie? I would watch this movie.
Artist Kogoro Kurata makes robots. Huge robots. In a shed.
Previously, Kotaku featured Kurata's amazing work.
Recently, Wired Japan checked out his latest project, Kuratasu, and took some stunning pics of an amazing creation. Have a look.
人が乗って操縦できる巨大ロボット「クラタス」、完成目前の勇姿を公開! [Wired Japan]