Jordan Mallory

    Contributing Editor

    A Texas native, Jordan spends the majority of his time writing articles and being broiled alive by the hateful sun. Like all other great men, Jordan is extremely humble regarding his abundant excellence and devastating good looks. When able, he enjoys spending time at his local arcade. By night, Jordan takes his reckless disregard for the haters public by spitting sick verses under the Hip-hop pseudonym JPHONIC. He is also the lead singer and songwriter for folktronica duo Maniac Robot, whose debut EP Superior Vena Cava is now available for zero dollars.

  • PlayStation 4 day-one features outlined, internet required for first Blu-ray/DVD playback

    When the PlayStation 4 launches in North America on November 15, some (but not all!) of its swanky new features will be available for use by the disheveled, exhausted consumers that spent all night waiting for their new console in a tent outside of Best Buy or wherever. This news comes from the announcement of a day-one patch for the PlayStation 4, though it is unclear whether the patch is explicitly required to enable the features listed below. We do know, however, that "at first time use, users must connect to the internet" before Blu-ray and DVD playback will function, according to the press release. Regardless, a launch-day PS4 will be capable of Remote Play through the PlayStation Vita, second screen experiences through PS Link and the PlayStation App on mobile, Twitch/Ustream streaming functionality and game DVR capabilities will all be available day-one. Users will also start out with the ability to play games as they download, use party chat, log-in using facial recognition via PlayStation Camera, navigate the home screen with voice commands, play games online and watch Blu-ray/DVD discs. Other features, such as the PlayStation 4's low-power suspend/resume capabilities, will not be enabled on day one and will be added at a later date. Further information about which system functionalities will and won't be ready by launch day is coming "in the near future."

  • Ouya retail presence expands to all Target locations

    The Ouya's brick and mortar retail presence will grow to include 1,800 Target locations, Ouya founder Julie Uhrman told Polygon. While the Ouya has existed within Target stores for some time, its availability has been limited to select locations, rather than every location, as will be the case now. The Android microconsole's retail packaging has been spruced up to take advantage of its new-found exposure, Uhrman said. Target will push the device in its winter circular, through video adverts in its electronics departments and with special displays starting in December, though the Ouya's expanded availability goes into effect this month. Demo units are planned for early next year – Uhrman called production of the kiosks "incredibly expensive," a fact compounded by the necessity to design a wired controller for the system. In related news, Ouya is also in the process of negotiating availability at Wal-mart. "I would expect something, us to announce something with them soon," Uhrman said.

  • PSN Tuesday: Halloween sale, Rocksmith 2014 and free Hotline Miami for PS Plus

    In addition to the new PlayStation 4 titles up for pre-order, this week's injection of PlayStation Store content brings Rocksmith 2014 Edition, while Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director's Cut and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Premium Edition remind us what gaming was like many, many (read: two-ish) years ago. PlayStation Plus subscribers get a free copy of Hotline Miami added to their collection, and further discounts on games included in Sony's ongoing Sale of the Dead, which lasts until November 4. Spooky-ooky games marked down by the sale include The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, Resident Evil 4 HD, Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, Dead Island Riptide and a bunch of other festively appropriate software.

  • 2DS down to £99 at some UK retailers

    Nintendo's brand-new 2DS handheld, which launched alongside Pokemon X/Y earlier this month, is already about £10 cheaper at certain retailers in the United Kingdom. Originally priced at £109.99, the svelte little device can now be had online for £99 from Amazon UK and Tesco Direct. A couple of brick and mortar installations are also on the discount train, with Sainsbury's matching Amazon's price drop and Argos running its own £99 bundle promotion from tomorrow through October 26, MCVUK reports. It's important to note that this is not an official price drop from Nintendo, but rather a bunch of British retailers taking a proactive stance on pricing ahead of the imminent holiday shopping season. Regardless, £10 works out to about $400,000 at today's imaginary exchange rates, so it's still worth doing.

  • Wii discontinued in Japan

    To put this situation into parrot terms, the Japanese SKU of the Wii is pining for the fjords. Nintendo of Japan's official site lists the console as "discontinued," according to Engadget's translation. Earlier this month we learned that Nintendo planned to halt production of the console, though it was unclear whether the company intended to shut down all manufacturing processes, or only those concerning the Japanese Wii. There's still no indication that supply lines in North America or Europe have been altered, but we've reached out to Nintendo to find out precisely what the dealio, yo. In any event, this means that there are now a finite number of Japanese Wii units in existence. We anticipate that the remaining new Wii units will undoubtedly be pitted against each other in a ruthless battle to the death – or a lot more people will be buying used Wiis, whatever.

  • Report: Gamestop's Black Friday has exclusive bundles, blue PS3

    Gamestop's Black Friday circular has supposedly leaked its thick, viscous deal-goo all over the internet, exposing the retail chain's plans for the most excruciating shopping day of the year – just don't expect any deals on that new PlayStation 4/Xbox One hotness. For everyone staying in this console generation, though, there's some cool stuff going on if you think leaving the house on Black Friday is worth it. You can have your choice of 250-gig PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 for $199.99, the former bundled with The Last of Us and Batman: Arkham Origins, and the latter bundled with Halo 4 and a download code for Tomb Raider. Meanwhile, a Gamestop-exclusive Azure Blue 250-gig PS3/Jak and Daxter Collection bundle can be had for $249.99. For 360 owners, there's also a Gamestop-exclusive Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City boxed set, Dishonored and Splinter Cell: Blacklist at $24.99 each. PlayStation 3 owners can snag Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag for $40 and a year of PlayStation Plus for $29.99. The chain is also running a buy-2-get-1 free promotion on all pre-owned items, provided the free thing you pick out is of equal or lesser value. Gamestop is also granting an additional 30-percent in-store credit on all trade-ins, though whether these two offers stack is unknown. There's a lot of other stuff on sale, so while we check on the trade-in value of a human soul, click all up on this to check out the full 12-page circular for yourself.

  • Report: Gamestop circular shows Zelda 3DS coming stateside

    It's that time of year again, when caveman artifacts paper advertisements are once again relevant to our hyper-connected little corner of the world. Gamestop's Black Friday circular has purportedly leaked, containing within its pages confirmation that Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds-themed 3DS XL bundle will be available in the U.S for $219.99. Considering that the bundle (originally announced only for Europe) is headed to Australia exclusively through EB Games, we see no reason why it shouldn't/couldn't make it here in time for the annual post-Thanksgiving carnival of souls. We've reached out to Nintendo for official confirmation and will update with any new information we can scrounge up.

  • PSA: Tropico 4 'Apocalypse' DLC heats up the Cold War, out now

    A new bundle of mutually-assured destruction Tropico 4 content has landed on Steam and the Xbox Marketplace, adding the thrill threat of nuclear annihilation to your quaint little island meritocracy for the one-time cost of $4.99. The Apocalypse DLC pack adds a Nuclear Shelter building type, a "Survivalist" trait that reduces the amount of food Tropicans require, a hazmat suit for El Presidente and a new mission entitled "How I learned to love the bomb," which requires that the player (and their country, hopefully) survive a doomsday scenario.

  • September NPD: Grand Theft Auto 5 sales boost industry [Update]

    Good news, everyone! The NPD Group reports that the video game industry's performance in the physical retail sector was up by 27 percent year-over-year for the month of September: $1.07 billion this year versus $848 million last year. Predictably, the majority of that boosted income came from the industry's software segment, also known as "where all that Grand Theft Auto 5 money lives." New physical sales for console and portable software during September totaled at $754.3 million, a 52 percent increase over the $497.5 million earned during the same period last year. GTA 5 understandably tops the list of September's 10 best-selling games, followed by Madden NFL 25 and NBA 2k14. Hardware sales for the period brought in $183.2 million, which is 13 percent fewer millions than were earned in September of 2012. The Nintendo 3DS spent its fifth month as the best-selling thing in the segment, while Wii U sales increased "more than 200 percent" over August, though Nintendo abstained from providing specific numbers as to how many Wii U boxes that works out to. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 3 broke the Xbox 360's long-running streak and was the best-selling console for the period, largely thanks to the system's available Grand Theft Auto 5 bundle, according to NPD Group analyst Liam Callahan. The Accessories segment, which contains giftcards, digital currency vouchers, Skylanders/Disney Infinity figures and other various sundries, was essentially flat year-over-year, experiencing just a 2 percent increase in sales at $142.3 million. Update: Microsoft has chimed in, noting that it reached 80 million sales to retailers of Xbox 360 worldwide in September, with console sales hitting $401.2 million. Unable to say the Xbox 360 was the No. 1-selling console last month, Microsoft instead says that it remains the top console in the US in 2013. Clever phrasing, team.

  • Limited edition Monster Hunter 4 3DS coming to Japan

    Japan will receive this limited edition Monster Hunter 4-themed 3DS on November 7, appropriately bundled with a copy of the game and the knowledge that everyone else on the JR Line is super, super jealous. Whether that's worth not having a new 3DS, however, is up to you. The bundle costs ¥19,800, which works out to about $200 at today's exchange rates. We'd recommend snagging one while you can due to the favorable economic climate for dollar-to-yen imports, but "while you can" is pretty much the only way to buy limited edition 3DS units like this. No word yet on whether the bundle will make it to other territories.

  • Slender: The Arrival stalks Steam this month

    Blue Isle Studios' spooky tall-guy simulator Slender: The Arrival will turn up on Steam by the end of the month, according to a newsletter floating around the developer's official forums and Facebook page. The newsletter states that the game will drop by "this Halloween," and that the Steam version will include "new content," though no further specifics were given. More information is expected later this week, so sayeth a developer post on the forums. Slender: The Arrival originally launched for Mac and PC back in March of this year, and is currently available in non-Steam flavors starting at $10.

  • Tekken Card Tournament surpasses 5 million downloads

    Tekken Card Tournament, Namco Bandai's free-to-play mobile/browser card battling thing, has been downloaded more than five million times, the pub/dev announced today. Namco Bandai didn't specify exactly how those downloads break down on a per-device basis, nor was any mention made of how many of your Earth dollars the game has amassed since its release last April. To put that milestone into perspective, Tekken Card Tournament broke one million downloads just four days after its release. At any rate, Namco Bandai is celebrating its accomplishment by applying a 40-percent discount to digital booster packs until 1 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, October 16 – assuming your pathetic excuse for a planet manages to survive that long. This is Parphalatoz the Abhorrent, wishing you a happy Canadian Thanksgiving and a terrible blight upon your cretinous species.

  • Killer Instinct FightStick for Xbox One is up for preorder

    A Killer Instinct-branded version of Mad Catz's forthcoming, Xbox One-flavored Tournament Edition 2 FightStick is up for pre-order on the peripheral manufacturer's official shop. At $200, the extent of the stick's Killer Instinct-ness appears to be its artwork, which can easily be removed and replaced thanks to the TE2's removable bezel. Otherwise, the stick features all of the bells and whistles touted by the prototype we first saw at E3: Sanwa-Denshi parts, multi-setting LED lighting effects, removable cable, easy access to the sticks innards and an onboard screwdriver with swappable heads. The Killer Instinct Tournament Edition 2 FightStick launches alongside the Xbox One on November 22.

  • Steam's Capcom 30th Anniversary sale includes SSF4AE, DmC, non-acronym games

    Between now and Monday, October 14, Steam is having a pretty substantial blow-out on Capcom titles, in celebration of the publisher's thirtieth anniversary. Everything is discounted by at least 40 percent, with daily deals cutting prices on some games by as much as 75 percent. Today's daily deal is Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, which can be snagged on its own for $7.49, or in a bundle with Street Fighter X Tekken for $21.99. Meanwhile, Lost Planet 3, DmC: Devil May Cry, Remember Me and Resident Evil 6 have all been marked down to less than $30. You can also snag a handful of Capcom-published indies like Fairy Bloom Freesia and Satazius for less than a fiver. Click all up right here for the full list of discounted games, and remember that some discounts will change on a daily basis, not entirely unlike ourselves. Think about it.

  • Nintendo opens UK web store with free delivery in this, our year of Luigi

    If you're a resident of the United Kingdom and would prefer to put your money directly into Luigi's pocket, rather than into the coffers of big business, you now have the option of doing so, as the Nintendo UK Online Store has opened for business. The shop offers the expected range of Wii U bundles, limited-edition Pokemon-themed 3DS units, games and other various sundries. While there don't appear to be any sales or surprises to speak of, other than in-stock New Leaf 3DSes, you do get free shipping on every order and free next-day delivery on orders over £200.

  • GTA 5 title update for vanishing online characters, other issues

    Rockstar has issued a patch for the GTA Online portion of Grand Theft Auto 5, which purportedly solves issues with spontaneous character deletion, lost progress and a handful of other issues, save for one specific circumstance. The patch should be live on PSN and will hit the Xbox 360 version "tomorrow at the latest," according to Rockstar. The patch corrects "multiple issues causing character deletion or other loss of progress," except for "some specific instances where players purchase a vehicle and the save does not occur due to a cloud save failure." A fix for that issue is underway and another update will be pushed once the problem is sorted out. In the meantime, infinite loading screens, vanishing guns and ammo, issues with Los Santos Customs and the mod garage should all be a thing of the past. Click all up on this for a full list of this update's corrected errors.

  • GOG's 'Shutdown Promo' grants free games to furloughed government employees

    In what may be the most tongue-in-cheek sale in the company's history, GOG's "Shutdown Promo" lampoons the state of our nation's cryogenically frozen legislative branches with free games for government employees that have been affected by the shutdown, and 50-percent discounts for the rest of us. Government employees that email a picture of themselves holding their furlough notification letter to thanksobama at GOG dot com (seriously) will receive free copies of the following: Capitalism Plus, Capitalism 2, Tropico Reloaded, The Guild Gold Edition, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Theme Hospital and Redneck Rampage Collection. For everyone else, all of these games are available for under $5. The public sale lasts until 8:59 a.m. Eastern tomorrow, but government employees have until noon Eastern on Friday, October 11 to send in their pictures. Oh also, on a totally unrelated note how serious of a crime is it to impersonate a government employee? Asking for a friend.

  • Teleglitch patched for controller support, new DLC adds 'music to kill by'

    On this, the day if its first DLC pack release, Teleglitch: Die More Edition has also been updated with full controller support and a deep, limited-engagement discount on Steam. The Guns and Tunes pack, available now for $1.99, adds "music to kill by and the weapons to make it happen:" Eight new starter weapons/utilities, five new songs that "enhance your Teleglitch experience," and a new option to randomize weapons at the beginning of the game. Folks who pre-ordered Teleglitch before its release last July already own this DLC, the listing states. The game is now also fully compatible with Steam's Big Picture mode, thanks to its newly added controller support. When our own Dave Hinkle reviewed Teleglitch at launch, he described it as "a harsh mistress," saying that the game's true reward lies in "the empowerment you feel from besting the seemingly impossible odds." Snag Teleglitch: Die More Edition for just $3.25 until October 14.

  • Godus v1.3 update adds bronze age, agriculture, weather system

    Peter Molyneux's god game Godus has received a sizable update on Steam, where the game has been available as an Early Access product since last month. In addition to a multitude of bug fixes, the version 1.3 update adds bronze age amenities and agricultural advances, as well as tweaks to Follower behavior and some modified tents. Amongst the 12 new bronze age additions are politics, farming and cartography, according to the update's patch notes. New Farmer Followers can grow crops outside of settlements, which can then be harvested to feed the population. A new weather system will also affect your tiny virtual folk, with lightning storms that damage Abodes located outside of settlements. Meanwhile, felt tents now house and produce Followers, rather than generate Belief. Followers can now also communicate with the player through Prayers, which we assume are delivered via Post-It Note like in Bruce Almighty. Okay, probably not. Molyneux recently told us that Godus' evolution is an ongoing process, and that it can take anywhere from "a day to two weeks" for him and his team at 22 Cans to crank out a new build. "That's an amazing, incredible way to develop a game," he said. "I'm not a designer, I'm a design curator."

  • Take a break and watch penguins dance with the new Vita

    If you can't spare 15 seconds to watch some technicolored penguins dance around with the new Vita-2000, you need to seriously think about the direction your life has gone in. Look at their little beaky faces.