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20Sep

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Gaming

The Massive Xbox Leak: 11 Big Reveals

This week brought us a wonderful treasure trove of leaks from deep inside the highest echelons of Microsoft’s Xbox division, accidentally shared online as a result of the company’s legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its now-greenlit Activision acquisition. These confidential emails, slides, and images of potential new products from the Xbox manufacturer reveal the inner workings of Microsoft’s gaming division, as well as whispers of some possible new games from Bethesda. Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even BiggerRead More: Looks Like Microsoft Was Responsible For Leaking Its Own DocumentsThe leaks happened courtesy of Microsoft itself, as it provided these sensitive documents to the court via a publicly accessible link. Yesterday Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spence...

Baldur’s Gate 3 Is Great On PS5, Just Rougher Around The Edges

2Sep

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Gaming

Baldur’s Gate 3 Is Great On PS5, Just Rougher Around The Edges

Baldur’s Gate 3 is an excellent game. The PC version of Larian Studios’ D&D epic will easily be a frontrunner in game of the year discussions come December, and the PlayStation 5 version is a comparable experience, at least if you don’t have a beefy enough PC to run the game well. That said, it definitely has more technical troubles than the PC version, although most of what I’ve come across hasn’t been game-breaking.Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even BiggerThe biggest culture shock between PC and PS5 is playing with controller, which uses the same control scheme as the one you can use on PC now. Having put over 100 hours into the game on PC with mouse and keyboard, I do find the DualSense is hurting for buttons in a game with this many actions to use and menus to scroll th...

Microsoft And Sony Reach Deal For Future Of Call Of Duty On PS5

16Jul

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Gaming

Microsoft And Sony Reach Deal For Future Of Call Of Duty On PS5

Photo: Barone Firenze / Activision / Kotaku (Shutterstock)Microsoft and Sony have finally reached a deal for keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation once the Activision Blizzard merger goes through. The surprise agreement comes after months of fighting between the two companies and is a sign the acquisition is all but inevitable. Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger“We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tweeted on July 16. “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”It’s not immediately clear what the terms of that agreement are, and whether they are si...

9 New PS5 System Perks Making It Way More Convenient

18Mar

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Gaming

9 New PS5 System Perks Making It Way More Convenient

I spend a lot of time putzing around my PlayStation 5: deleting games here, downloading them there, looking for old saves, and trying to talk to friends. It’s made me appreciate every new firmware update, no matter how small or niche the improvements it makes are. And earlier this month, Sony delivered a bunch of satisfying tweaks.Players got a preview of March’s big 7.0 firmware upgrade back in February, revealing Discord integration, new save data transfer options, and more. It recently went live, and it’s a far cry from the usual opaque “improves system performance” updates. It’s not as big a deal as the PS5 finally getting folders, and there are still plenty of other new features I’d love to see, but it’s another milestone in the platform’s continued improvement.Use Discord to voice ch...

29Jan

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Gaming

Phil Spencer Defends Future Of Halo Amid Cuts And Criticism

Image: 343 Industries / MicrosoftThings haven’t been going great for Xbox recently. Microsoft is facing stiff resistance in its attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard. It released hardly any big exclusive blockbusters last year. And it just cut over 10,000 jobs last week, including many senior developers at Halo Infinite studio 343 Industries. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tried to remain upbeat and do damage control on each of these points and more in a new interview with IGN.“Every year is critical,” he said. “I don’t find this year to be more or less critical. I feel good about our momentum. Obviously, we’re going through some adjustments right now that are painful, but I think necessary, but it’s really to set us up and the teams for long-term success.”This week captured both the p...

2Jan

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Gaming

10 Best Things From 2022 We Can’t Live Without

What do you mean you don’t know what this is? Isn’t it obvious?Image: Impact Acoustics / Kotaku / LUMIKK555 (Shutterstock)2022 was the year I decided to get serious about my retrogaming setup. I was tired of having a 104lb CRT dominating half my computer desk and a PlayStation 2, MiSTer, and whatever other consoles I was currently interested in always in peripheral vision. After a bit of thought I concluded that the TV and all the consoles would be better off on a wheeled cart. A retro cart, if you would. It could live in my closet, or be wheeled out to wherever seemed fun. So I started speccing that out.The best form factor ended up having two lower shelves—for the consoles, a smaller TATE-friendly/PAL-compatible PVM-1354Q CRT a friend had recently sold me, and bookshelf speakers—with the...

24Dec

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Gaming

Getting A PS5 Or Xbox Series S/X Is Sorta Easier 2 Years Later

After two years on the market, you’d probably think scooping up a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X would be simpler by now.Sure, there’s the semiconductor shortage the world is still contending with and a supply-chain bottleneck that’s expected to last until 2023 (if not 2024 according to some estimates). But, as Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan said at the annual PlayStation Partner Awards ceremony in Japan on December 2, the company has apparently “resolved the long-term supply issue of the PlayStation 5" in Asian markets. Oh yeah? Then why, when Kotaku called several brick-and-mortar stores just a few days before Christmas this year were we told inventory for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles was either very limited or completely gone?The truth of the matt...

12Dec

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Gaming

Microsoft Gaming CEO Says Sony Just Wants To Hurt Xbox

Image: Diego Thomazini / Kotaku (Shutterstock)Public squabbling between two of the biggest console gaming companies has intensified. On a recent podcast appearance, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer blasted Sony for wanting to grow by “making Xbox smaller.” The accusation comes after the Federal Trade Commission decided to sue to block Microsoft’s takeover of Activision because of a pattern of making recently acquired games like Starfield exclusive.“Sony is leading the dialogue around why the deal shouldn’t go through to protect its dominant position on console, so the thing they grab onto is Call of Duty,” Spencer said during an interview with the Second Request antitrust podcast last week (via VGC). “The largest console maker in the world raising an objection about the one franchise that...

29Oct

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Gaming

The Scariest Things That Happened In Gaming In 2022

Image: Warner Bros. / Devolver Digital / Bandai Namco / Innersloth / Kotaku / Mia Stendal / Bibadash (Shutterstock)On an average day, my friends might ask me how my job is going. I’ll smile, tell them “It’s going great,” and then launch into a story about one of the most fucked up things they’ve ever heard of. And now I get to give the recap to you.Spooky season is upon us, but the chronically online gamers at Kotaku know that terrifying shit is happening in our space all the time. It’s not just the games that are occasionally horrifying—it’s also how the industry grinds humans into dust, how giant corporations are increasingly looking to put the screws to the average consumer, and how abuse of power comes as no surprise. Some of the spookiest gaming news stories this year are sad. Some of...

24Oct

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Gaming

Every U.S. PlayStation 2 Game Manual Is Now Scanned In 4K

Physical game manuals are hard to come by these days, especially as the industry begins to heavily lean into cloud streaming and digital-first infrastructures. But if you remember those good ole times when game boxes came with chunky pamphlets for you to peruse before jumping into your recent purchase, a games preservationist called Kirkland seeks to preserve that nostalgia for posterity by creating high-quality scans of the manuals of yore. In fact, he’s just finished uploading his complete set of U.S. PlayStation 2 manual scans.Launched in the U.S. in October 2000—22 years ago this Wednesday—Sony’s PlayStation 2 was one of the most popular consoles ever. With more than 4,000 games released worldwide and selling approximately 158 million units globally, just about everyone had a PS2. Game...