‘Imagine a world free of angry drivers’ Square Enix is coming into April Fools with one of my favorite jokes of the day — a pitch for a ChocoGo app. It’s a ride sharing app where users can “tip greens” and use their favorite lovable birds to get around. I love the presenter, as he seems like he’s constantly holding back laughter using phrases like “husbandry.” I’m surprised he didn’t claim that ChocoGo would “disrupt” the industry!...

In a showing of support for the recent review debacle still underway at CNET, staffers from Ziff Davis including 1UP writers (and thatoh-so-dreamyJeremy Parish) put together a small but profoundly effective demonstration in front of CNET’s offices. I say “effective” because it’s quite uplifting to see competition swept aside in favor of solidarity within our profession; Jeff Gerstmann’s firing, provided the circumstances surrounding it turn out to be true, is one of thecreepiestgoddamn things to happen in recent months and will likely prompt a lengthy discussion on the nature of the gig....

“Suda-verse Badminton” is my future GOTY No More Heroes 3is packed with hintsabout the future ofthe series. But for now, none of them are happening. Suda told us that while working onNo More Heroes 3, he decided to put the series on pause. The game’s polarized reception had nothing to do with it. It’s more about Suda’s priorities. His plan for the next decade is to work on games starring characters owned by his company,Grasshopper Manufacture....

Won’t Starve Klei Entertainment, the studio behind homegrown hits such asDon’t StarveandOxygen Not Included,has announced that it has sold a majority stake to Chinese conglomerate Tencent. The news was revealed onKlei’s official forumsby studio founder James Cheng. The sale is something of an inevitability, given that Klei and Tencent have worked together closely of distributing the studio’s releases throughout Chinese territories. In the forum announcement, Cheng spoke of his confidence in the new partnership, stating that Klei will retain full autonomy of its future projects, with no change to the studio’s current infrastructure....

Investment to ‘scale up development efforts’ and more Hearing stories about thedevelopment ofJourney, we’re fortunate thatgamecompany was able to pull through and finish the game given its financing woes. At least for the time being, the studio is set — an additional $7 million in funding from private equity firm Capital Today and other investors has been raised for the team’s unannouncednext game. “With this new investment, our studio is able to scale up development efforts to focus on making the best game possible in the same spirit asflOw,Flower, andJourney,” wrote studio manager Sunni Pavlovic....

Whether you love it or hate it, I just plain love it. There’s something that’s just incredibly awesome about the creepiness factor of the King. And the fact that they are making available these Xbox 360 games on the cheap with him involved makes my life all the better. So, before we can actually get our greasy fingers on the games, check out all the screenshots we just got handed. 24 more screenshots after the jump!...

A Twitter Q&A A Twitter Q&A session on theofficial PlayStation Bloghas confirmed that a subscription to PlayStation Plus won’t be required to playThe Elder Scrolls Online. Game director Matt Firor says that just the alreadyconfirmed monthly subscriptionwill be needed for the PS4 version, along with the PC and Mac releases. Matt answered a few other questions, revealing that players on PS4 won’t be on the same servers as PC/Mac players and that there will be separate “megaservers” for Europe and North America....

Dropping hot Everything, at all times, is dangerous in a battle royale. Everyone has the explicit goal of killing you, and that doesn’t make for a lot of downtime and easy breathing. Rarely, though, is the environment trying to kill you too. PUBG‘s Season 9 introduces a very unstable battleground. A new map called Páramo is being added. Páramo takes place in the Andes mountains on an active volcano.Battle RoyalemeetsDante’s Inferno....

The top three winners of theNintendo Short cuts contestwere announced a few days ago (yeah, sorry, way late on this). Here are the winners: 1st place:Good vs. Wiivil— Jack Paccione, Jr., Staten Island, NY2nd place:Koopa Force— Marc Duddleson, Monroe, NC3rd place:The Nintendo Office— Christopher Preksta, Pittsburgh, PA Somy guesseswere completely wrong. How about you? Did any of you think Good vs. Wiivil would take top prize? Here is what Jack Paccione won as well as the other winner’s prizes:...

How many timelines end in me dying? Those who don’t have a 3DS or Vita and want to get in on theZero Escapegames will be excited to know that the collection, dubbedThe Nonary Games, will be releasing on June 10, 2025 for PS4 and Vita with a PC release scheduled for the next day. The compilation combines the first two chapters of theZero Escapesaga into a single package to catch people up to last year’s finale,Zero Time Dilemma....

Bring back chunky Mario I think it’s pretty safe to say that Mario is one of the most instantly recognizable and beloved video game characters in history, and I think we chose well to have him represent the medium we hold so dear. There are many facts to what makes Mario so universally adored (which is in no small part thanks to the decades-spanning voice performance ofCharles Martinet), but one of them is his chunky little character design, which doesn’t look as prominent in his upcoming movie....

Stream machine Console streaming is taking off. Sony certainly made it easy enough with the PS4, despite quality concerns from people worried about that sort of thing. Twitch has announced a broadcaster growth, “from around 600,000 in October to more than 700,000 in November.” It continues, “In addition to more than 100K new broadcasters signing up since the launch of PlayStation 4, PS4 owners make up ten percent of all content on Twitch based on minutes broadcast....

Lena Headey is a good narrator The Final Fantasy XV delay is mostly okay (I’d rather them deliver a massive day-one patch on the disc than take the approach Hello Games did withNo Man’s Sky), but it…complicates things when it comes to theKingsglaivemovie. You see,Kingsglaivewas supposed to arrive with the special edition of the game, but now those folks will have to wait until November to see it — lest they spring for an earlier copy of course, because the film is still coming to home video on October 4 (earlier digitally)....