Gaming

Like any Smash Bros. fan, I’ve taken in the news of a Wii U iteration with great joy. Look at the awesome new characters! No tripping? Hooray! It’ll find a sweet spot between casual and hardcore play? Excellent! And yet, there’s a tinge of melancholy about it all: the Wii U doesn’t have a GameCube controller port. More »      

We hope you have your ticket to PAX Australia in July, because they’re sold out. Thankfully, that’s where Kotaku comes in. We’re looking for one person to head to PAX Australia to see it all: the games, the consoles, the developers, the crazy! We want them to blog about their experience for Kotaku Australia, so we’re also including an amazing 17-inch Alienware M17x laptop in the prize. Total value: $3860. Here’s how to enter… More »      

NASA has been aggressive about identifying near-Earth objects that could pose a threat to our planet in the future, as well as pursuing ideas to deal with space rock aimed at Earth. It has taken its efforts to the next level with its new Grand Asteroid Challenge, which was announced at the space agency’s headquarters Read The Full Story

Indie stealth-puzzler Gunpoint has some of the best achievements going around, but did you know it also has some of the best patch notes? Normally something to be ignored, or at best glanced over, creator Tom Francis obviously found enough spare time between counting dollar bills to write patch notes that sound like they were written by a human being, not the PatchNotes3000 Automated Delivery System that every other developer on Earth uses. You can't change the past. At least, you can't change more than the first 11 missions of the past. At least, you can't if you don't have a scroll wheel on your mouse. At least, you couldn't until this patch, which fixes that.With apologies to Mad Men fans, knocking the final boss through his own office window no longer causes him to fall in extreme slow motion.If you bought so many batteries that you can no longer afford the Gatecrashers needed for the final mission, a) wow, and b) you can now sell batteries at that point. Unless your battery fixation prevents you from parting with them, in which case your adventure ends here.If you're having music problems, I feel bad for you son. So I'm working hard to fix them, and in the meantime I've added a button to restart the music: press M if you're not hearing music and should be. I kinda wish the bugs never went away, because I want to read more of these.

Sony’s successful if counterintuitive next-gen message for the PlayStation 4 at last week’s E3 is that things won’t change. No disc DRM changes. No new online checks for PS4. You might think Sony doesn’t want gaming to change in the PS4 era. Oh, but it does. More »      

New details surface surrounding Jason West and Vince Zampella's split

I'm sobbing like a child. My dog, Kayla, pulled her chain loose last night and today we surrendered her back to the pound we rescued her from. I miss my baby! I feel like I fucker up so bad and tonight she's alone in a cage. I keep telling myself it was for the best but my heart is broken. I dont Facebook. I have very little social contacts. I miss our dog. Everyone misses her. All five kids are sleeping but I'm still up crying. This hurts really bad.

You can lend your friends a console disc. You can not lend them a game you buy on Steam. Or at least, you haven’t been able to previously. That might soon be about to change. More »      

Update: Sony has pulled the firmware update for now.Sony has pushed out a new PS3 firmware update. System software 4.45 was supposed to add trophy notification options and improve overall system stability.Unfortunately, it did quite the opposite.The PlayStation community forums have blown up with reports of the firmware causing several issues, including causing consoles to become completely unresponsive.Sony has yet to respond to these issues that have cropped up. In the meantime, PS3 owners are advised not to update to 4.45 at this time (although it may already be too late for some members of the Shacknews community).

A new firmware update for the PS3 is live, but a significant number of reports indicate it's locking users out of their systems. Posters on the official PS3 Support forum noted they couldn't boot their systems after the update, and some users said restoring file systems didn't resolve the issue. According to the PlayStation Twitter account, the 4.45 update includes trophy notification options and improves system stability - hmm. We've reached out to Sony to clarify the situation. While the issues don't seem to be affecting all users, it might be wise to stay clear of the update for the time being.PSA: PS3 users reporting 'bricked' systems after 4.45 firmware update originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments