Author: Sam Machkovech

Nintendo's latest high-profile firing resulted in both sides offering different stories about to why it happened. (credit: Nintendo of America)

A Nintendo of America marketing specialist announced her firing from the company on Wednesday—and insinuated that the termination was related to "a whirlwind of controversy and [GamerGate] harassment." However, Nintendo offered a firm rebuttal to that story and confirmed its dedication to inclusive hiring practices.

"Though Ms. Rapp’s termination follows her being the subject of criticism from certain groups via social media several weeks ago, the two are absolutely not related," the company said in a statement issued to press outlets. "Nintendo is a company committed to fostering inclusion and diversity in both our company and the broader video game industry and we firmly reject the harassment of individuals based on gender, race or personal beliefs. We wish Ms. Rapp well in her future endeavors."

Former Game Informer staffer Alison Rapp had worked as a member of Nintendo's "Treehouse" team, which handles various marketing and translation duties, for nearly three years. In February, she found herself in the crosshairs of anonymous Nintendo critics who took issue with Nintendo's localization of recent games, particularly 3DS game Fire Emblem: Fates—which, among other things, removed the Japanese version's "gay conversion" scene.

SAN FRANCISCO—Development woes, legal battles, and little-known hacks: these are the cornerstones of the classic gaming post-mortem. Of the many traditions found at the annual Game Developers Conference, none compare to its video game post-mortem panels, which combine beloved games, legendary developers, and previously-unheard anecdotes in a delicious swirl of nostalgic catnip.

This year's installments lived up to expectations by giving up the goods on nearly opposite ends of the classic-gaming divide: action-RPG pioneer Diablo, which turns 20 this year, and the arcade phenomenon that is Ms. Pac-Man.

Born from speed-up kits

Many of Pac-Man's historical tidbits came to light five years ago when series creator Toru Iwatani spoke at the original game's 2011 post-mortem panel. (I had the honor of asking Iwatini about the game's name-change from the original Puck-Man, to which he laughed and said, "Don't you already have your answer?") But Ms. Pac-Man's genesis story is quite possibly more interesting—most notably because it wasn't created by Namco's Japanese staff.

Street Fighter V's first DLC character, Alex, will be on offer as a free trial download—because Capcom still hasn't figured out how to launch a paid-DLC store. (credit: Capcom)

As good as Street Fighter V's core fighting play felt when it launched last month, everything else surrounding the game felt sorely lacking—and the designers at Capcom have finally admitted as much. Even so, the company's Thursday announcement of a long-awaited patch update went so far as to delay one of the game's major new elements: its paid download store.

"We have taken a long hard look at this part of the store, and after much review, have decided it is not ready to launch just yet," Capcom announced on its official blog. "As Zenny [the series' new paid currency] is purchased with real money, we wanted to be extra careful and make sure it’s fully tested and optimized before launching it."

The download store matters because this Street Fighter sequel will live on as a DLC-powered service, as opposed to the old model of Capcom releasing Super-Ultra-Chibi-Whatever disc editions down the line. The delay may boil down to Street Fighter V existing on both PlayStation 4 and Windows PCs (and allowing cross-platform multiplayer), which means Capcom has to build an internal marketplace that supports both platforms playing nicely with each other.

"Bats, sweetie, listen. You need a breath mint." (credit: Warner Bros.)

Spoiler warning: Our review of Batman V Superman contains minor plot spoilers, but little beyond what you can figure out from the film’s trailers.

Kids have spent decades arguing over which of DC's two major superheroes, Batman and Superman, would prevail in a fight. That's all well and good for a schoolyard, but the bigger question might be why the stars of this week's Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice would find it necessary to wage war. It's the question I kept coming back to as I watched director Zack Snyder do his damnedest to trash both heroes' legacies in one fell swoop.

Viewers will have many opportunities to mock, belittle, and cringe at his take on DC Comics' ultimate fan service fantasy, as Batman V Superman suffers from painful dialogue, flat acting, humorless characters, and baffling plot leaps all over planet Earth. Perhaps worse than all of those shortcomings, however, is how Snyder hangs his film's 2 hours and 40 minutes runtime on the most unconvincing superhero disagreement imaginable.

This patent application may point to Nintendo's next home-console controller—and now, it may be the only thing that Nintendo Wii U fans can look forward to, thanks to a Wednesday report from Japanese business publication Nikkei. (credit: US Patent Application 2015/0355768)

Nintendo's Japanese arm has assured investors that the company will unveil its new gaming console, currently code-named Nintendo NX, by the end of this year, but it hasn't had nearly as much to say about the future of its current major home product, the Nintendo Wii U. That might be because its time is nigh. In spite of a few major Wii U exclusives slated to launch this year—particularly a major new Legend of Zelda game—a major Japanese business publication has now claimed that the hardware in question will cease production by the end of 2016.

A Wednesday-morning report from Japan's Nikkei pegs this year as the final year of Wii U hardware production—a crazy prediction, to be sure, considering that its console successor doesn't even have an official name or release date. However, that report also backs up its claim with the allegation that some Wii U accessories have already been discontinued. Worth noting: Nikkei's report did not go so far as to attach a 2016 release window to the new console.

If true, that may explain why Japan saw some substantial Wii U shortages in the past few months. A Nintendo World Report story in February pointed to a substantial sales drop-off in Japan after selling 250,000 Wii U consoles in December of last year and over 40,000 consoles in January 2016. That count dropped to 4,000 for the first week of February.

Ars checks out Alt.Ctrl.GDC (video link)

Panels, exhibits, and demonstrations at the annual Game Developers Conference tend to err on the wonkier side of the industry, but recent years have included a major exception. Now in its third-annual iteration, GDC's "Alt.Ctrl" showcase has quickly gained a reputation for having the conference's weirdest and (sometimes most fun) content.

But is it actually fun to stare into your own soul by way of a confusing phone call or to control on-screen characters by licking candies or even to make friends with an iPad-loaded toy by offering it colorful pieces of paper-food? Kyle Orland and I took to the GDC show floor with video cameras in hand to find out.

The yellow bar represents the Punch Club piracy rate for Brazilian players—which the dev TinyBuild says spiked the day the game launched in the region with Brazilian Portuguese translations. (credit: TinyBuild)

While triple-A video game publishers tend to hide their sales data with great vengeance and furious anger, indies have become pretty liberal about their stats. You don't have to look very far and wide to find a smaller-fry game studio coughing up sales numbers or even piracy estimates.

In the case of Punch Club game maker TinyBuild, the development team went one further than usual on Monday with a news post that connected the dots between game sales, game piracy, and localization. What happens in a country-by-country basis after translating a game's text and officially launching and promoting it?

TinyBuild found that the most intense piracy impact came the day that it launched Punch Club in Brazilian Portuguese. On that day, the devs tracked a whopping 11,627 pirated users from Brazilian IP addresses, compared to only 373 copies selling to Brazilian users that day. Conversely, TinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik noted that Chinese players were already pirating the game in droves when the game launched in English, meaning they didn't wait for a localized version to dive in.

(credit: Andrew Cunningham)

CUPERTINO, CA—Apple's Monday press event fulfilled our expectations of a new iPad reveal, which came in the form of the iPad Pro—but not the same one as launched last year. Apple's Phil Schiller demonstrated the new 9.7-inch model, whose 32GB, WiFi-only model will launch for $599, while its storage will top out at 256GB for $899.

The new model borrows some of the best elements of the iPad Pro, including a four-speaker array and an updated screen that offers Apple Pencil support, all while sporting dimensions closer to those of the iPad Air 2, including a 9.7-inch, 2048x1536 resolution screen. (Surprisingly, Schiller didn't mention that its body somehow had the same thickness as the super-skinny iPad Air 2 at 0.24 inches). "It's the lowest reflectivity of any tablet," Schiller said about the "True Tone" display that actively measures brightness and ambient light temperature, which he said is also 25 percent brighter than the iPad Air 2.

We expected a processor on par with the last iPad Pro's A9X, and we're getting exactly that processor in this smaller Pro version. It has also seen a camera boost to a 12MP sensor capable of 4K video recording and a 5MP front-facing FaceTime camera with Retina-display flash.

Glass! It's back! (credit: A-to-Z Pawn Brokers)

We're still not sure what Alphabet, Google, or the X division will call any new wearable headset unit to follow 2013's Google Glass, but we know something is in development—and now, at least one piece of unannounced hardware could be yours for the low, low price of $3,250 and counting (as of press time).

Another shot from the eBay listing, which was still live as of press time.

2 more images in gallery

9to5Google spotted an eBay auction on Saturday with the simple title of "Google Glass (black)," and the images revealed an unreleased model that shares apparent similarities with a December FCC filing for a new headset—particularly new-to-"Glass" features like a folding hinge, an outward-facing LED light, and a different charging interface. Additionally, we see the all-caps word "GLASS" printed on the inside of the black-plastic hinge, and the letter A in particular has an artful slant to it—which makes us wonder why Google blacked out its Glass-related social media channels in January. With no confirmation from anyone in the Google or Alphabet camps, we can only go on how much this pawn shop’s hardware resembles that in the December FCC filing—meaning, if this headset is a hoax, it’s an impressive one.

Attempts to contact the San Francisco pawn shop in question, A-to-Z Pawnbrokers, were not fruitful, as the business is not open on Sundays. The Verge also couldn't get a response from the shop about the hardware's origins.

They were dancing on podiums.

(Deleted originals to blur faces of the dancers) pic.twitter.com/pG1BxmtbnO

— Kamina Vincent (@spamoir) March 18, 2016

Gaming industry parties and events used to be dominated with scantily clad models, nearly all of which were female, to promote games and get attendees' attention. Thanks to criticism and larger conversations about gender parity in the industry, that trend has since plummeted in the West. And all of that made a single exception at this year's Game Developers Conference so notable.

On Thursday night, Microsoft hosted a private, Xbox-branded party that included a number of women provocatively dressed in cleavage- and midriff-baring shirts, thigh-high stockings, and short, Xbox-green skirts, all dancing on pedestals to electronic music. The scene, which was filmed by a partygoer and posted to Twitter, resembled something from an average Tales From The Crypt nightclub scene.

The following morning, Xbox chief Phil Spencer sent a memo to the entire Xbox division of Microsoft, which confirmed that the party was "Xbox-hosted," as opposed to pawned off to some other external organizer. Spencer's letter also unequivocally spoke to attendees who complained about being uncomfortable at the party.