SfIV feels like it has been developed for Japanese arcades, where 5 new characters to try and a deeper balance is plenty to get new quarters and convince operators to upgrade. At home, that's a harder sell.

Think of how many dogs would attack these things.

In the same way that racing games are exactly what computers render well and make them look good, football games are exactly what they do poorly. There are a large number of people, all grappling with each other, close enough to see clothes and expressions. They all have to make realistic decisions in a very human way…

Is there a good citybuilder alternative to Sim City?

As a developer, there really isn't a lot that you can do on an open platform like jailbroken iPhones. Once a phone is jail broken, any submitted score is questionable. And detecting jailbroken phones is questionable, since what you're doing the detecting with is compromised. You can add layers of obfuscation &…

Necroing an old post but:

The problem is, and I've definite been on the ends of this, you tell a reporter "We're considering how and if to do multiplayer." The reporter writes in their blog, "Developer Chris Canfield says they have multiplayer still on the table." A major news aggregation blog posts "Online…

If you're not familiar with Cherry MX switches, THIS is a good primer from Keyboardco, with animations.

Essentially, Cherry MX Blue are the ridiculously loudly clicky ones for old-school typists. Cherry MX Brown are the less loud (but still loud) non-clicky ones for gaming. Cherry MX Reds, which Das Keyboard just…

The only practical difference between the Brown and the Blue is volume. Brown is loud, Blue is REALLY loud. Blue also tends to have slightly more resistance in the middle, and clicks near the middle of the throw, whereas the browns are a little smoother and click at the bottom.

But really, the practical difference…

The original version was a sleek but deadly black keyboard without any labels, like a silent German submarine. I'd assume the Das refers to Das Boot, rather than being the proper gender for keyboard.

"EEDAR's survey says free-to-play "whales" spent the majority of their gaming time on consoles. "

Actually, from the data it looks like the whales spend about %25 of their gaming time on consoles. %66 of their time is spent on PC's, Phones, and Tablets, which are traditional Freemium venues.

The guy at the 2-minute mark appears to be dual bending!

My guess is that they're pushing SF4 as a competitive platform for arcades, as they tend to do. Major updates (like an SF5) basically reboot your competition base from scratch. Moderate updates can revive an existing competition base, and keep a game profitable for longer. With the minor failure of SF x Tekken,…

1. Maxis / EA needs to rebuild confidence around Sim City as a brand, as they famously destroyed consumer goodwill for purely monetary reasons.

2. They underdelivered on the game itself. For a brand as famous and longstanding as Sim City, their sales numbers and retention rates are terrible. And a lot of that comes…

PS3 and 360 games look similar mainly because cross-platform development tends to pull all graphics towards the middle. Even if there was a 2x power difference, developers would mainly use that for easily adjusted disposable parameters like draw distances and fog effects. Actually takin advantage of a power…

The MBTA has traditionally been open to people making maps of the subway system: It helps spread their message, gets new riders, and their maps play with scale so much as to be painful to use with other transportation mediums.

If this maps was close enough to be a derivative work, chances are the MBTA would let it…

It would be suicide to raise the prices right now. They're competing with Freemium, strong Steam Sales, and the previous generation of consoles for relevance. And they haven't yet made nearly as good a case as previous console generations. Right now is not the time To become even more pricing gated, especially with…

I'd contest the "just drop in another $300 graphics card" myth on PC's. If you update frequently? Sure. But you really only need to upgrade every 5 years or so, and by then usually your main chipset, RAM, and other things have moved so far ahead that the only way you're getting that $300 graphics card to be viable…

You know what the intent is. If you download knowing there was a glitch in the system or someone made a mistake, it's not legally piracy but it is morally piracy. If you're OK with that, then do it.

I actually had two people at work (at a game company) cheer when they saw I by default went to blog.kotaku.com. The blog view was miles better for regular readers.

I'm glad to see Kotaku turning around a revamp in 2 years, which is significantly faster than their previous revamp, and appears to address more concerns…

This is how people acclimate to FPS games as well. It just takes a little time for most people, though some will never become OK with it. The Virtua Boy also took a little while to acclimate to.