Kotaku: Posts

Kotaku

Kim Kardashian’s Once-Massive Mobile Game Is No More

I wasn’t sure this day would ever come: Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, the once wildly popular mobile RPG in which players had to climb the Tinseltown ranks from the E-list to A-list, is shutting down. 10 years ago, this Android and iOS title dominated each store’s download charts, made gamers out of regular ol’ people,…

Read more...

Kotaku

Pokémon Concierge Has The Best Vibes Of Any Show In The Series

Pokémon Concierge is concentrated delight and whimsy cutting through Netflix’s rancid vibes. While the streaming service has been more than willing to cut jobs within its animation branch and has opted to use AI to fill in the gaps it’s created while raising its subscription price, Concierge is such an entertaining…

Read more...

Kotaku

2023 Was The First Waluigi-Less Year Since 2000

2023 felt off. Something was wrong with the vibes. And now I know what cursed the year to be so awful: Nintendo forgot about Waluigi.

Read more...

Kotaku

Horror Game Studio Shuts Down Due To Cyberattacks, Poor Sales

Just two months after the third-person action-horror game Stray Souls came out, developer Jukai Studio abruptly shuttered its doors, citing myriad issues including poor game sales and multiple cyberattacks from an unknown perpetrator.The developer took to X/Twitter on December 22 to announce the sudden closure. Part…

Read more...

Kotaku

Bethesda's Biggest Game Ever Is Free And Remastered

Before Starfield, before Skyrim, before Fallout 3 and Oblivion, before your parents even knew how to make you, there was The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. It was, and remains, Bethesda’s biggest-ever game, and now a fan-made rebuilding of the entire vast world in Unity has reached its 1.0 release. Oh, and it’s…

Read more...

Kotaku

Best Buy Will Soon Stop Selling Blu-rays And DVDs

The days of walking into a store and spending hours slowly exploring aisles of movies new and old are ending, as Best Buy’s previously reported plans to stop selling physical media begin in 2024.

Read more...

Kotaku

Kotaku Asks: What Hugely Popular Game Just Isn't For You?

We all have our favorite franchises and one-and-done games, be it classics like Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy, Tetris, or more modern series like The Last of Us, Halo, or Uncharted Others we happily play, but they don’t become go-to favorites. And then there are those games that we’re just so definitely, clearly,…

Read more...

Kotaku

Baldur's Gate 3 Actors: Intimacy Coordinators Should Be 'Industry Standard'

Read more...

Kotaku

Cyberpunk 2077 Dev CD Projekt Red Wants To Stay Independent

As the games industry continues to consolidate itself through a combination of developer acquisitions and studio closures, CD Projekt Red, the beloved studio behind Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher, wants to keep the independence it has had for almost 30 years now.

Read more...

Kotaku

The 18 Best Games For The Xbox Series X And S

We’re now in the fourth year of the latest console generation, which means more new games are finally coming out and development on older Xbox One versions has all but wrapped up. So what’s the best that Microsoft’s current hardware has to offer?

Read more...

Kotaku

Jack Black To Play Steve In 2025’s Minecraft Movie

It rather beggars belief that there hasn’t been a Minecraft movie already. The Microsoft-owned behemoth is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, and seems ripe for a guaranteed $1 billion+ box office. However, despite rumors dating back as far as 2014, it wasn’t until 2022 that details seemed to…

Read more...

Kotaku

GTA V Is Leaving Game Pass, But These Great Games Will Remain

If you’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V or GTA Online via Game Pass lately, you might need to pony up and buy a copy to sustain your criminal enterprise. Rockstar’s crime saga is expected to leave Xbox Game Pass in about two weeks.

Read more...

Kotaku

Xbox Game Pass’ January Offerings Kick Off 2024 With A Bang

It’s the first month of 2024, which means it’s time for a new crop of Xbox Game Pass titles to satiate your growing appetite for games. And January’s offerings are solid, serving up everything from hundred-hour-long RPGs to survival horror remakes to quaint action-adventures and more. If you’re a Game Pass member,…

Read more...

Kotaku

The 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies On Netflix That Aren't Rebel Moon

Zack Snyder’s homage-a-thon Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire came out with a bang for Netflix, but as of today it’s barely clinging to the streamer’s top 10. If you’ve been holding out on watching (maybe you’re waiting for a binge when Part Two: The Scargiver releases April 19?), here are 10 other Netflix sci-fi…

Read more...

Kotaku

You Need To Play Persona 3 Before It Leaves Xbox Game Pass

Persona 3 Reload, the from-the-ground-up remake of Atlus’ beloved PlayStation 2 role-playing game, is coming out on February 2. But while the 2006 classic is getting a modern retouching very soon, it won’t include everything added to the original in the updated Persona 3 Portable and Persona 3 FES editions, the former…

Read more...

Kotaku

So, Uh, What's Up With The Steam Awards?

The results of 2023’s Steam Awards are in. Each year, Steam turns to the community to vote on the year’s best games across a wide variety of categories. This year saw Larian Studios’ RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 grab game of the year, while Lethal Company, a first-person cooperative horror game, got the “Better With Friends…

Read more...

Kotaku

Mickey Mouse Game Changes Name After Antisemitic Accusations

If you haven’t heard, the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse is officially in the public domain, and Nightmare Forge Games wasted no time announcing a horror game starring that version of Disney’s mascot called Infestation 88. However, upon announcement, the team was met with immediate pushback regarding the…

Read more...

Kotaku

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Will Kick Off A Bloody Tournament Arc

Jujutsu Kaisen wrapped up earlier this week after a long and fairly grim season. You won’t be surprised to learn that it’s got another season in the works, once again courtesy of MAPPA.

Read more...

Kotaku

Call Of Duty Ghost Thirst Propels Character To Top Of Fanfic Site

Some of you may be surprised that a gay Call of Duty ship is in the top ten of fanfiction site Archive Of Our Own’s annual, unofficial roundup, but I’m not. Not long after the 2022 release of Modern Warfare II, a bevy of TikToks bimbofied Call of Duty character Simon “Ghost” Riley, who is only ever shown in-game…

Read more...

Kotaku

Ubisoft Swiftly Corrects Star Wars Outlaws ‘Late 2024’ Release Window

Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure game that follows scoundrel Kay Vess between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, previously had no release date beyond a very broad “2024” window. Today, however, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced that it would launch in “late 2024.” This…

Read more...

Kotaku

The 26 Best Games For The Nintendo Switch

Some of our posts include links to retailers. If you buy something from clicking on one, G/O Media may earn a commission. Because editorial staff is independent of commerce, affiliate linking does not influence our editorial content.

More than six years after its release, the Nintendo Switch is still dutifully chugging along, and still without the long-rumored Switch Pro. Compared to its supercomputer competitors, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5, it’s by no means the most powerful place to play games today. But it’s still the…

Read more...

Kotaku

Three Decades Later, Someone Has Finally Beaten Tetris On NES

Classic puzzle game Tetris has been around for over three decades, and in that time, plenty of people have reached its various endings, usually by clearing four rows of bricks at once like a digital demolitioner. That’s a challenge in and of itself, but now, someone has taken the concept of “beating Tetris” to the…

Read more...

Kotaku

Sony Fined For Playing Hardball Against Third-Party Controllers

According to France’s Autorité de la concurrence, a government body responsible for regulating competition, Sony hasn’t been playing nice with third-party controllers on PS4. The regulatory body has fined Sony 13.5 million euros (roughly 14.8 million USD) for deploying “technical countermeasures [...] which affected…

Read more...

Kotaku

Way Too Many Games Were Released On Steam In 2023

Steam is by far the most peculiar of online storefronts. Built on top of itself for the last twenty years, Valve’s behemothic PC game distributor is a clusterfuck of overlapping design choices, where algorithms rule over coherence, with 2023 seeing over 14,500 games released into the mayhem. Which is too many games.

Read more...

Kotaku

Former ActiBlizz Employees Weigh In On Bobby Kotick’s Legacy

2024 is starting off strong: The controversial Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision Blizzard King, is no longer heading up the Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch 2 publisher. We knew this was going to happen—shortly after Microsoft completed its massive $68 billion purchase of ActiBlizz, the company…

Read more...

Kotaku

These Incredible Cyberpunk 2077 Mods Will Make You Question Reality

Leave it to modders to push the boundaries of what was once (and arguably still is) one of the most impressive visual showcases of modern gaming: Cyberpunk 2077. A skyrocketing post on Reddit shows off some pretty remarkable graphical feats that one enterprising player has achieved. Featuring a handful of mods that…

Read more...

Kotaku

Square Enix Will Be ‘Aggressive’ With Using AI For Development, CEO Says

It’s just two days into 2024 and a major video game company is already talking about its big AI plans. If you thought we were leaving AI discourse behind in 2023, I’m sorry to tell you that you were very, very wrong. A New Year’s letter from the current Square Enix president details the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth…

Read more...

Kotaku

Baldur’s Gate 3 Nude Scenes Are Getting Xbox Players Banned

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been on Xbox Series X/S for just under a month, and while there have been a few technical issues with the RPG since arriving on the platform, none has been more far-reaching than one that sprouted up over the weekend banning Xbox accounts that record and upload clips of sex scenes or any moments…

Read more...

Kotaku

Mickey Mouse Is Out Of Copyright And Straight Into Horror

The New Year brought the excellent news that Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse has finally entered the public domain, after decades of Disney, er, convincing Congress to keep extending its copyrights. With that, derivative works that don’t directly contravene Disney’s trademarks are now allowed by law, and with that,…

Read more...

Kotaku

Meta’s Quest 2 VR Headset Is Cheaper Than Ever

First the price went up, and now, following the release of a newer headset from Meta, the very popular Meta Quest 2 has dropped to a new low of $250, making it a much easier buy for the VR-curious.

Read more...