Video Game Coverage

PewDiePie is looking to cash in even more on his YouTube video empire, and he's getting a little help from the creators of The Walking Dead.

He's getting a brand new show, and it sounds highly entertaining.

The new series will be featured on YouTube's subscription service, YouTube Red. The show is set to be called Scare PewDiePie, and will be a half-reality, half-prank show.

The Walking Dead creators and Maker Studios will team up to drop PewDiePie into real-life versions of some of the horrifying video game situations he encounters.

YouTube Red will be available Oct. 28 for $9.99 a month.

Other original shows on the service includes projects by the Fine Brothers and College Humor.

The actual song doesn't kick in until a minute into the video. That's when this team of Destiny players rocks their bodies to Backstreet Boys' "Everybody".

They really make the most of the emotes and new dances that the Taken King expansion brought to Destiny last month. And they also are awesome.

Happy Wednesday!

Microsoft held an imaginatively-named Windows 10 Devices event in New York Oct. 6. While they showed off some impressive new phones, a new Surface and a new Surface laptop, we were most interested in seeing new Hololens stuff.

We were super-impressed with the E3 Minecraft demo and have been salivating for more mind blowingness from the augmented reality helmet.

During today's event, they introduced Project X Ray and for the first time, let us see a wearable 'hologram'.



That's when the robots started bursting through the walls.



As with the Minecraft demo, we find this type of interactivity with the surrounding environment super fascinating.

Unfortunately, it's going to come at a price.

Microsoft set a developer kit price at $3,000, shipping in the first quarter of next year.

Time to start saving pennies.

This might possibly be the best of both worlds? Maybe?

Yesterday, Kotaku reported on rumors they heard about microtransaction coming to the popular social shooter Destiny. They also talked about Bungie using the money gained through those transactions to fund DLC, allowing the developer to give it away for free.

This is all part of a new plan that could start as early as this month, according to two people familiar with Destiny's development. Rather than sell big expansion packs like they did last year, Bungie is planning on giving out quests and missions for free, sources say. This will likely involve big drops every few months until the fall of 2016 but could also include trickles of smaller stuff throughout the year.

That means the game's next paid expansion will be Destiny 2 in the fall of 2016, as has been known for a while now. That'll be $60.

And then Oct. 6, Bungie confirmed it:

This coming Tuesday, October 13th, Tess Everis will return to The Tower with a new look, a new storefront, and some new items to sell, courtesy of Eververse Trading Company. Initially, Tess will offer eighteen brand new emotes. Like the trio of emotes offered via The Taken King Collector's Edition, these emotes are completely optional, and won't impact the action game in any way.

To acquire these items, you'll first need to pick up some "Silver," a new in-game currency that will be available for purchase through the store associated with your console. Images and descriptions for each available emote, along with pricing information for Silver will be made available Tuesday, October 13th, alongside the launch of the in-game storefront right here on Bungie.net as soon as the content is live.

So if you want to customize your guardian for a small price, you can!

If you want free DLC, you get that too!

If you don't want either, you don't have to worry about it at all!

See, best of both worlds.

Maybe the kid was running Flan's Mod?

All a Virginia Beach mother wanted to do was order a foam Minecraft sword for her son's eighth birthday from Toys R Us. Well, apparently, someone in that supply line had a sh*tload of ammunition they wanted to get rid of.

Because when the online shopper opened the UPS delivered package Sept. 30, that's what she found.

Local channel 13 News Now has the story:

Jasemin Stephenson says she ordered a "Minecraft Foam Diamond Sword" from the toy store's website last week.

When the package arrived Tuesday, Stephenson says she found 800 rounds of 9mm ammunition in the box, along with the sword.

13News Now has reached out to Toys "R" US and is still waiting to hear back.

Crazy, right?

Here's the video from 13 News Now.

Nov. 10 is soooo far away.

This super neat explainer shows off how the Pip Boy will detail character development and evolution. It looks like it will be quite a bit more complex and interactive than the system in Fallout 3.

It also looks like it's using quite a lot of resources from the free to play mobile game Fallout Shelter that Bethesda released in June.

Come on months, pass quickly already!

If you want to see more check out the educational videos that the developer has been dropping.

Nintendo celebrated the 30th birthday of Super Mario Bros. with the release of this excellent little video documenting the creation of that iconic game.

Shigeru Miyamoto explains his inspiration and process for how the lasting gem came into being.

Technically, Sept. 13 was the 30th anniversary, but who knows when that is relative to today, what with modern time zones and all. So, Google got into the spirit today with a nifty little Easter egg.

If you type "Super Mario Bros." into search, a question box will appear in the results and you can go ahead and collect all the coins you want.

Unfortunately, you do not receive an extra life if you click it 100 times.

Happy belated b-day Super Mario Bros. Thanks for introducing me to a life long habit of reality avoidance.

We've known for a bit that iconic singer Mariah Carey would be the new spokeswoman for free-to-play mobile game Game of War: Fire Age.

Well, TMZ got ahold of the commercial and now you can see medieval warriors call in help via smartphone, hear about a 'hero coming along' a few times and try to catch a few seconds of Mariah wielding a flaming crossbow.

Oof.

Of course, the multi-platinum singer is taking over for Kate Upton. You know you know her. Here's another look at her 2015 Super Bowl commercial if you need/would like a reminder.

We're not sure if this game is any good. All the b00bs they throw at us hasn't left us wanting to actually try it. Someone must be, we can't imagine these ladies consider their time to be cheap.

Have you played this celebrity-led, silly-looking game?

Twitch has dominated the new market of video game streaming and now YouTube wants a cut of the action.

As they announced at the beginning of the summer, YouTube has planned to launch YouTube Gaming, a separate site dedicated to streaming, watching and chatting about video games. On Aug. 26, they began a slow release of the new platform.

Mashable says the introduction is fairly painless:

Getting started is a simple process of navigating your browser over to gaming.youtube.com and following the steps in a setup process (that includes phone verification). You'll need to set up encoding software, fill out the necessary info for your stream and tick off any optional features. There's a checklist right there on the setup page, but Google also put together a more involved guide to getting set up.

YouTube Gaming supports streaming from PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox One consoles, provided you've got a capture device sending video from the console to your computer. Google specifically calls out Elgato's HD60 as a YouTube Live Verified device, but there's a good chance that other game capture solutions work as well. If you've got one, try it out before you run out and buy something new.

Apparently, mobile apps for Android and iOS are also around the corner so you can watch your gaming of the go.

The launch comes only a year after Google prepared a heaping ton of money to purchase Twitch, but then Amazon swooped in with $970 million and bought the streaming service.

There's no telling yet whether the search giant will have any luck in a space already dominated by Twitch and executives at the leading streamer seem to think not.

Matthew DiPietro, Twitch's SVP of Marketing released a statement Aug. 25, basically bragging about how their numbers are so much bigger:

For our current stats, we have 1.5 million broadcasters (11K Partnered channels), 100 million viewers per month who watch 106 minutes per person per day on average, and 38 million installs of our mobile app with 4.7 billion minutes watched across 10.3 million unique devices.

Well, we suppose this is one way to market a football video game.

Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Julio Jones, Rob Gronkowski, Colin Kaepernick, Antonio Brown and Buffalo Bills Coach Rex Ryan all chose, presumably of their own free will, to join this EA Sports commercial for the annual Madden Game.

It's somewhere in between that insane Kickstarter success Kung Fury and a sci-fi Karate Kid. Including Colin Kaepernick as Al Pacino from Scent of a Woman of course.

And yes, there is a dinosaur.



It's also nice to see McLovin' doing some work.

Is it just us or does this seem really similar to Tay Tay's Bad Blood video.

The game will release Aug. 25.

Christopher Caldwell of West Palm Beach Florida dreamed big when he decided to try and steal a Playstation 4 by shoving it into his pants.

A local crime blog details the proceedings and even makes the story more compelling, because he didn't stop at just the console.

A loss prevention officer at a Walmart Supercenter on South U.S. 1 in Port St. Lucie told Port St. Lucie police July 7 he saw Caldwell in the bike department.

Caldwell, of West Palm Beach, is accused of sticking the PlayStation 4 in his pants.

"Christopher then began concealing the accessories into his pants as well," the affidavit states.

He left without paying and was stopped.

He started putting accessories down his pants as well?

How big were these pants??

Unfortunately, the documents do not tell us whether they were hammer pants:

Calvary pants:

Or harem pants:



It's all just left to our imagination.

Nintendo will release Super Mario Maker Sept. 11 and the game includes a new power up for the red-overalled plumber. Unfortunately, it gives him the ability to look really deformed.

The game will have a Luigi Mushroom, which is meant to make the titular hero more like his green-sporting brother and not only in the taller and thinner appearance. The 'power up' will also make him jump higher and have less traction.

The Mario wiki tells the origin of the new mushroom:

According to Takashi Tezuka, the form came from a bug that happened in development that made Super Mario skinny. It looks similar to a normal Mushroom with a short cap and a very thin base. It is randomly found in Question Blocks, along with Super Mushrooms, but Luigi Mushrooms are rarer. A Super Mushroom can't overwrite the effect of this mushroom,.. but they can fuse together.

Yeah, but it also makes Mario look like a hunchbacked buffoon! A lanky, awkward creep who slinks his way oilily into the upper reaches of the stratosphere only to grab gobs more mustache wax off the highest gross shelf.

Watch the weirdo do things here:

We're not the only ones who think this. Kotaku expressed their disgust well.

A new Fallout 4 video exists on the Internet, provided you're over 18 and don't have a problem going to a pr0n site.

Bethesda Software went to Gamescom last week in Cologne, Germany and showed off some footage of the upcoming RPG sequel. However, what they showed of the anticipated title was only behind closed doors and no one should have captured any of the private showing.

One enterprising person decided to get a hold of that footage, but Bethesda kept using copyright claims to remove it from YouTube and other sites, according to Kotaku.

In response, fans turned to other means of sharing the footage, such as file-hosting sites. These, too, sometimes got hosed—or got overloaded with requests, making it difficult to watch the footage. And so Fallout fans have turned to more unorthodox video hosting services, like Pornhub (WARNING, obviously!!) to host said Fallout 4 footage. Titled 'HIDDEN CAMERA SHOWS AUDIENCE TEASED BY BIG BUTT MAN IN TIGHTS LIVE,' the seven-minute-long video showcases off-camera footage of Fallout 4. Hilariously, it's tagged under categories like 'big ass' 'POV' and 'homemade.'

If you are so inclined, and of age, you can watch the footage here. But this link goes to an adult site, so get ready for all the gratuitous ads that promise to increase your ahem desirability...

The quality is terrible and the person describing the gameplay speaks only in German, but if you simply can't wait to see more of what's in store in devastated future Boston and the wasteland around it, click on you brave soul.

Even if you hate where you work, count your lucky stars that you don't work for Konami.

A report from the Japanese outlet Nikkei recently found out some terrible employment practices from the legacy video game company behind some enormous titles like the Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill franchises. Kotaku kindly translated it for our English consumption.

Nikkei's report alleges that the culture at the corporation's video game division, famous for its console games, worsened in around 2010 when a mobile title called Dragon Collection became a smash hit. As a social game for phones, development costs were low and profit returns were huge. Not long after, the report says, Konami's corporate bosses shifted the company's focus away from traditional, hardcore games and towards cheaper, and potentially more lucrative social titles.

The allegations from the report cover some of the following crazy details:

• The studio behind the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V use computers allegedly not connected to the internet and are only able to send internal messages.



• Employees are monitored during their lunch break with time cards and if they take too long, their names are announced to the whole company.



• There are cameras in the office not for security, but rather to monitor the movements of the company's employees.



• Most Konami employees don't have their own permanent company email addresses, instead are given a randomized one that changes every few months.



• If game developers aren't thought to be useful at that time, they are reassigned to jobs as security guards, cleaners or in pachinko machine factories.



• The report describes one former employee who announced leaving the company on Facebook and then all the fellow employees who "liked" the status were reassigned into new jobs within the company.

CRAZY, right?

And it sounds like it's at least partly true from game journalists in the know.

The Nikkei report on Konami lines up very well with a lot of what I've heard from employees before. It sounds rough there.

— Mitch Dyer (@MitchyD) August 3, 2015

Konami has run into a swath of recent fan turmoil. First by systematically removing Metal Gear Solid mastermind Hideo Kojima from having anything to do with the company. And second, by ending the Guillermo Del Toro revamp of the Silent Hill series after the well-received P.T.demo.

Many speculate that Kojima is trying to focus on its less costly business endeavors like it's chain of fitness centers and its many pachinko machines.