Tag Archives: kotaku

Last October, Kotaku published a feature titled “What went wrong with Silicon Knights’ X-Men Destiny?” You can read that piece here. Former studio head Dennis Dyack, now at Precursor Games today posted he response to it in a YouTube video.

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Kotaku editor Brian Crecente has confirmed he’s to leave the site. Crecente had been with the US blog for seven years, and makes no mention of what he’s to do next. Stephen Totilo, previously of MTV and Kotaku’s deputy editor, will assume the role of editor-in-chief. Crecente is the latest in a string of senior US games journalists to move on, following resignations from Joystiq’s Chris Grant and McElroy brothers – Griffin and Justin – over the Christmas break. The three are rumoured to be setting up a new “gaming vertical” for Vox.

Kotaku’s launched a Japanese language site named, obviously, Kotaku Japan.

The US-based blog had previously launched in Australia, the publication now having three outlets.

The new venture has a dedicated team, according to this, with Japan-based Kotaku US editor Brian Ashcraft continuing to contribute to the English language site.

US Kotaku rival Joystiq launched in Japan in April this year.

Stephen Totilo’s told CrispyGamer that his move from MTV to Kotaku will put him in front of a new type of reader.

“What Kotaku allows me to do is reach another audience, a massive and passionate crowd of hardcore gamers and developers who, I think, already do respect the kind of reporting I and some of the Kotaku guys do, and will be happy to get even more of it,” he said.

“It’s exciting for me to get more consistently in front of that audience, although, you know, they’ve already gotten a lot of me because my Kotaku pals loved to link to Multiplayer a lot.”

Totilo confirmed last week that he was to leave MTV to become Kotaku’s deputy managing editor.

There’s a full interview through there.

MTV Multiplayer editor Stephen Totilo has joined Kotaku as its deputy managing editor.

Totilo confirmed earlier tonight that he was leaving MTV after four years.

He’ll be starting at Kotaku in May. Full details through the link.

IGN’s yanked footage of Star Wars Battlefront III due to LucasArts pressure.

The publisher told the site the movie of Free Radical’s project – confirmed as real by insiders – was “the intellectual property of Lucasfilm” and had “been posted without permission.”

It looks as though the Kotaku footage we posted last week has also been pulled.

The off-screen video was taken from an alpha meeting at Free Radical last year.

Free Rad was apparently relieved of the project in 2008, months before entering administration. Pandemic is thought to be working on the game at the moment.

Kotaku’s posted a report on the launch of DSi in Japan, and it doesn’t look like the most inspiring thing in the world.

Basically, some shops had sold out thanks to pre-orders and there were some small queues. There’s plenty of pictures over there to fill you in.

Update: You can find all the screens at native resolution on Shacknews.

Kotaku’s gone live with a copy of big Gears 2 impressions pieces, which contain a bunch of new screens.

There’s a bit on the game’s Horde mode here, and a ton of new stuff on the game’s campaign here.

Killing stuff with guns: go read. Game’s out November 7.

According to this Alley Insider report, Kotaku parent Gawker has made 19 redundancies from its 133 staff. The gaming blog was unaffected by the cuts.

Said boss Nick Denton in a memo:

Here’s the heart of it: we are cutting 19 of our 133 editorial positions and suspending bonus payments at the start of next year. With the savings, we are increasing base pay and hiring 10 new people on the most commercially successful Gawker sites.

…

One reason we’re eliminating these positions is to reinforce the teams on the sites with the most commercial appeal—Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker and Gawker—and the properties such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Jalopnik which are poised to join them.

Full thing through the link.

Kotaku stalwart Leigh Alexander has left the blog for a role as news director at the CMP-owned B2B site, Gamasutra.

She sent out an email last week confirming the move, which was effective as of August 1, saying she’d miss her colleagues at Kotaku but was excited about the new job.

Alexander became one of the most recognisable names on Kotaku thanks to her extensive business reporting.

We wish her all the best.

Here. There’s going to be free drinks, apparently, so if you’re making the trip to LA you may as well. Details through the link.

Watch Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, MTV’s Stephen Totilo and Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal talk for another week about what to expect from E3 after the link. There’s still nothing in there you didn’t know already, but still it’s fun nonetheless.

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Watch Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, MTV’s Stephen Totilo and Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal talk about what to expect from E3 after the link. There’s nothing in there you didn’t know already, but it’s fun nonetheless.

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We thought we’d leave this last night as some of the details involved seemed less than solid.

The confusion focused mainly on a Kotaku story that claimed six publishers were to quit E3. The story’s been edited since publication – as you can see from the original URL – with the headline now reading “Five Publishers Drop Out of E3 This Year, Some Blame ESA President”.

The six publishers in question were Activision and Vivendi (both confirmed as quitting both the show and ESA), Codemasters, Foundation 9, NCsoft and id Software. After Kotaku published the story, ESA contacted the site to say Codemasters would be attending the show, and a note was added at the bottom of the original piece.

The story took another hit when id PR contacted Gamespot to say that it too would be attending E3, but then later contacted the site to retract its statement and promise a further update. As you can see, the Gamespot piece carries three updates at the bottom. The Kotaku story still claims id won’t be there.

The other aspect to Kotaku’s story centred on Mike Gallagher’s ESA leadership, but we wouldn’t go near it with a bargepole, frankly.

Foundation 9 and NCsoft have now both issued statements to Gamespot confirming they won’t be attending this year’s show.

An NCsoft spokesperson said, “The timing wasn’t right for our products, so it really doesn’t make sense for us to go.”

The Foundation 9 comment said, “”Our decision not to exhibit at E3 this year, was in no way in response to Activision’s decision.

“We came to the decision on our own at the end of 2007. Some of our business development folks may actually go to the show as attendees, we’re just not investing in the exhibit space. In addition, we just want to be clear that we have nothing against the show or the ESA in any way; exhibiting at E3 is just not something that fits with our marketing strategy this year.”

The firm make a similar confirmation of non-attendance to Joystiq.

In summary: Activision, Vivendi, NCsoft and Foundation 9 definitely aren’t going to be at E3 this year. Codemasters is going. Atlus isn’t. Not sure what’s happening with id.

There’s a list of companies listed on the official site so far – which at the moment is password-protected – here.

This is fantastic. Kotaku’s gone through all predictions various analysts have made in the last year and stacked them up on reliability. We ignored the first part of this feature. Just because. But someone really has gone to a stupid amount of effort to make the magic happen, here. Do them a favour and look at it. It’s got a coloured graph, and everything.