If the kids are nagging you for the R-rated video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA5) this Christmas, be warned: Santa’s going to have supply problems.

Two of Australia’s major retailers, Target, and now Kmart, have pulled the controversial game from their stores in the wake of claims of misogyny and violence against women, including the ability to have first-person sex with prostitutes and even watch it.

In one example, a sex worker was killed with an axe in the game. A Charge.org petition bearing 40,000 signatures on it was sent to Target and yesterday, the company announced it was pulling the game.

The petition said GTA5 is “a game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get ‘health’ points – and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking”.

Here’s what Target’s General Manager Corporate Affairs Jim Cooper said yesterday in announcing the decision.

“We’ve been speaking to many customers over recent days about the game, and there is a significant level of concern about the game’s content,” Mr Cooper said.

“We’ve also had customer feedback in support of us selling the game, and we respect their perspective on the issue.

“However, we feel the decision to stop selling GTA5 is in line with the majority view of our customers.”

Mr Cooper said Target would continue to sell other R-rated DVDs and games.

“While these products often contain imagery that some customers find offensive, in the vast majority of cases, we believe they are appropriate products for us to sell to adult customers.

“However, in the case of GTA5, we have listened to the strong feedback from customers that this is not a product they want us to sell.”

Today, Kmart has joined them, with Gizmodo Australia revealed, with the company apologising “for not being closer to the content”.

The retailer’s two-line statement simply said:

Following a significant review of all content in Grand Theft Auto Games Kmart has taken the decision to remove this product immediately.

Kmart apologises for not being closer to the content of this game.

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The next title in Ubisoft's blockbuster "Assassin's Creed" series is coming out next year and it's going to be set in Victorian London, gaming news site Kotaku first reported.

Kotaku managed to get a 7-minute preview of what the next game will look like. In the new game set in 19th century London, the player is an assassin tasked with killing members of the secretive Knight's Templar organisation.

Here's what London will look like in the new game:

Kotaku says that the preview video showed the main character fighting enemies on the roof of one of London's stagecoaches. You can even see gas lanterns lining the street in the background:

After that fight, the assassin follows his target into Charing Cross station, one of Victorian London's busiest areas. He dons a top hat to fit in with the crowd:

The new game will also let you swing through Charing Cross station on a grappling hook before stabbing unsuspecting pedestrians, as seen here: 

It's also reported that the in-game version of Victorian London features dirty back alleys, gambling in pubs, moving steam trains, and the River Thames.

After Kotaku posted the leaked images, Ubisoft took the unusual step of confirming the leaked game, issuing this statement to media outlets:

It is always unfortunate when internal assets, not intended for public consumption, are leaked. And, while we certainly welcome anticipation for all of our upcoming titles, we're disappointed for our fans, and our development team, that this conceptual asset is now public. The team in our Quebec studio has been hard at work on the particular game in question for the past few years, and we're excited to officially unveil what the studio has been working on at a later date. In the meantime, our number one priority is enhancing the experience of Assassin's Creed Unity for players.

The "Assassin's Creed" series is known for presenting amazingly real looking settings of different cities. Previous games have taken place in 15th-century Florence, Venice, America during the Revolution, and Paris.

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There are three guaranteed spots on the Mount Rushmore of video games: Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari; Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo’s Mario and Zelda franchises; and Ralph Henry Baer, who is commonly known as “The Father Of Video Games.”

Baer died on Sunday. He was 92. 

Baer was born in Germany, but his family fled to the US before the start of World War II. In the 1960s, as the price of TVs was starting to fall, Baer said he dreamt of using a TV set for other applications, like games. 

He was working for a military defense contractor called Sanders Associates from 1956 to 1987. Sanders dealt with electronics. He became obsessed with the idea for video games, and according to The New York Times, he ended up writing a four-page outline in 1966 that described how people could play all sorts of games — sports, board, action, and others — on a TV set.

In order to create games for the TV, Baer needed help: specifically, people and money. With $2,500 and his fellow engineers Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, Baer created the “Brown Box,” since it was wrapped in brown tape that looked like wood grain.

There was immediate interest in Baer’s Brown Box. Upon bringing one unit to the patent office, “every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game,” according to The Washington Post.

He licensed the console to Magnavox in 1971, and it was released to the public the following year — its success, selling about 300,000 units, inspired Atari’s Nolan Bushnell to create the first arcade machine, as well as Pong, which was based off Baer’s original idea for virtual table tennis, according to the documentary "Video Games: The Movie."

Baer received many awards over the years for his role as a pioneer of video games; in 2006, President George W. Bush awarded him the National Medal of Technology for his “groundbreaking and pioneering creating, development and commercialization of interactive video games.”

Video game technology has made substantial progress since Baer’s Brown Box — it was a $90 billion market in 2013, but it’s probably exceeded that value since then thanks to development on current- and next-gen consoles like the Oculus Rift. Still, today’s video games may have existed were it not for Baer’s creativity and initial curiosity.

Baer is survived by his two sons, James and Mark; a daughter, Nancy; and four grandchildren. Many of Baer’s original works have been donated to museums across the country, including the Smithsonian.

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The “next-generation” gaming consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, have been on the market for exactly a year now. So even though they’re technically “current-generation,” people still have yet to see a game that truly uses the power of these new machines.

Wait no more. 

Naughty Dog is one of the premier game developers. Their early games (“Crash Bandicoot,” “Jak and Daxter”) are iconic, and their more recent games win awards and critical praise. The company's Indiana Jones-esque action-adventure franchise, “Uncharted,” falls into this category.

The final game in Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted” franchise is coming in 2015, and based on the footage released at The Game Awards in Las Vegas this past weekend, we’ll finally get to see what the PlayStation 4 is capable of.

Before you do anything else, watch this gameplay trailer. At least part of it. (As a side note, I showed this footage to my parents over the weekend, both of whom are pretty skeptical of video games. They watched the entire video, and were blown away.)

Here are some notable screengrabs from that trailer:

The level of detail here is stunning. The rippling of the waves, the erosion and moss on the rocks, and the lighting effects on all those surfaces. Even shining a flashlight is more realistic than ever, in its own imperfect way.

If you manage to peel yourself away from that gameplay trailer, take a gander at some of these images taken from PlayStation’s hour-long panel on “Uncharted 4,” in which the game’s artists describe their design choices in terms of the full body, and even details like the folds on his clothing and fabric textures.

As a gaming rig, the PlayStation 4 is vastly superior to the PlayStation 3, and much closer to a true PC: Its processor has 8 cores compared to one, and it has 8X more RAM than the PS3. And even though it's taken a year, we're now just beginning to see what the new console is capable of.

Still, if this is an early build of Naughty Dog's next game, we can’t wait to see the final version of “Uncharted 4” when it arrives next year.

SEE ALSO: 21 Video Games We Can't Wait To Play In 2015

SEE ALSO: The Top 50 Video Games Of All Time — RANKED

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It’s December, which means everyone’s doing their respective “best of” lists to celebrate everything that happened in the last 12 months. 

While we’re busy compiling our own list of the best games of 2014, YouTube user Malcolm Klock borrowed clips from many of those games and set them to music, editing everything down into a comprehensive two-minute clip.

Klock, who is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, has grown quiteadept at creating end-of-the-year video game montages, and this one’s pretty great. You can see clips from “Mario Kart 8,” the latest “Call of Duty” and “Smash Bros.” games, and many more. Check it out below.

SEE ALSO: Even People Who Hate Games Will Be Blown Away By How Realistic This One Is

SEE ALSO: 21 Video Games We Can't Wait To Play In 2015 Read more:#ixzz3LX7nHuVV

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The wildly popular video game "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" takes place 40 years in the future but supposedly includes only weapons and gear based on current research.

We called up the developers at Activision's Sledgehammer Games to ask for the details.

"Because the experience would be pushing people's boundaries of what is believable, we wanted to show that the research was real," said Michael Condrey, co-founder and studio head at Sledgehammer.

It became a hard fast rule that if the team couldn't point to R&D, prototypes, or at least concepts for their fictional weapons, the creators wouldn't let it into the game. Their sources included The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an R&D group based out of West Point, university researchers, and even arms vendors.

A popular basic weapon in the game is the TAC-19, a directed-energy, pump-action shotgun that shoots a concussive pulse and is highly effective at short range.

Directed-energy weapons are a category that is getting lots of research right now.

"We know today that they're using compressed sound, compressed air, lots of non-lethal forms of directed energy," Condrey said.

The long range acoustic device, or LRAD, has already been used at least once to deter advancing pirates off the coast of Somalia. The weapon, commissioned after Al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, can cause permanent damage to the hearing of its targets more than 300 yards away.

Granted, the LRAD doesn't harness sound in a ballistic capacity, but a starting investment (and a working weapon) in sonic energy was enough to justify speculation by the game developers. In fact, said Condrey, they feel they've been a bit conservative with their guesswork.

"Our game is 2054, it's 40 years out. These things are way, way closer than that," he said.

Then there's the railgun, a very powerful turret players take control of aboard an aircraft carrier in one of Call of Duty's single-player set pieces.

This weapon definitely does have a future.

The US Navy currently has a high-speed railgun that fires projectiles at a speed of 5,000 miles an hour. That velocity makes the railgun's projectiles devastating even without the explosives or chemical propellants of conventional weapons. The weapon, which is electric, cuts ammunication costs significantly while also reaching a powerful new kind of destruction.

The current model was tested on land earlier this year and is set for test aboard a cargo ship in 2016.

"Technology is moving hyper fast today, so the stuff we were finding as prototypes three years ago are real today," said Condrey.

Sledgehammer talked with another source about a world in which an occupying force's ammunition would be manufactured or printed in the theater of war rather than shipped overseas.

"The supply chain management of modern military missions is really expensive and arduous," said Condrey.

Indeed, the Defense Logistics Agency — which sources and ships the military's food, fuel, weapons and more — has a multi-billion dollar budget and spends the most in times of war. The department's director once projected that the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would be accompanied by a $16 billion dollar drop in its spending, so technology that takes on some of the material burden of war could save a lot of money.

But Call of Duty's IMR (or integrated munitions rifle) goes a step beyond temporary factories that use local resources, like sand, to make bullets. This assault rifle prints its ammunition over time.

"It's happening in the weapon," said Condrey. "There's a raw material canister on the weapon that prints as you need them."

Some of the game's craziest technology isn't found in its guns.

"It's not just the weapons and the bullets and the grenades," said Condrey. "The vehicle technology that we show, like the hovercraft technology, the augmented reality ... [it] was all driven from this idea that we wanted to see the research today."

One of the features standing front and center in the game's commercials is the the pair of mag (or magnetic) gloves that allow players to stick to metal surfaces and scale buildings.

"We were talking to one of the local university programs here, and they weren't developing a military application, but they were developing this concept," said Condrey. "They were studying geckos and crickets and cockroaches to figure out: how do things scale vertical?"

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst explored the gecko's case (and DARPA has funded some of the team's research into synthetic adhesives). Applying what they've learned — the lizard sticks thanks to millions of splitting, microscopic hairs under its feet — they've made a grippy wonder material called Geckskin.

Skip to the video's 2:20 mark and you won't have trouble picturing the potential of Geckskin gloves (or socks).

Naturally, Call of Duty's gloves aren't surface-agnostic — since they leverage magnetic force, its wearers can only stick to metals.

As in the case of directed energy, the game makers took imaginitive license from the starting point of a general research path rather than a specific precursor.

The source material provided stronger groundwork in the case of hoverbikes. A longtime staple of science fiction franchises (and the new Star Wars trailer), vehicles that float above the ground instead of using traction mechanisms like tires and treads have a few working prototypes.  

Chris Malloy, an engineer, is behind one of the more exciting ones, simply named the Hoverbike. Malloy is transferring some of the technology from a smaller, working drone he's also created.

Saddled with a test dummy of sorts, a small-scale prototype of the Hoverbike clears some serious height, as opposed to staying aloft just above the ground.

In fact, the vehicle's site bills the Hoverbike as a suitable replacement for one-man helicopters and cites interest from the US Army and Lockheed Martin.

The fact that the game's fiction was based on reality isn't just a way to help those who play the game suspend their disbelief; it also gave Sledgehammer Games a narrative thread to present to franchise fans while they were hyping the game.

Among a series of "developer diary" videos ahead of its release was one on the game's depiction of future technology.

"It's got to be relatable, got to be believable, but we are taking it to an extent that makes it also fun and new," said Glen Schofield, general manager and co-founder of Sledgehammer Games.

At the same time, Call of Duty's fanbase is so loyal that the developers might be able to throw them just about anything. Competitive players don't pick up the game for the storyline, they do it for the twitchy action the shooter presents them with. Fortunately, futuristic technology — making everything on the battlefield faster, stronger, and hyper-connected — only multiplies that appeal.

SEE ALSO: 15 ways video games make you smarter and healthier

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Three professional gamers received lifetime bans in the last few weeks amid allegations of cheating in their e-sport. All three gamers played a first-person shooter game called "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive," one of the biggest games for professional PC gaming in the world.

Furthering the problem is that this all happened on the eve of the last DreamHack tournament of the year, an event with a sizable quarter-million-dollar prize purse for the winning team.

According to a recent PCGamer article, semi-professional German player Simon Beck, known by the user name "smn," was caught cheating by an anti-cheat client during a casual pick-up game, a game often used for practice. 

ESEA, an E-Sports Entertainment Community that tracks league play and actively discourages cheating, reported the problem to Valve, the parent company of the "Counter Strike" (CS) game.

According to a TechGraphs article, the hack worked by enhancing a player's aiming ability. This slight improvement, though not demonstrative enough to easily notice in a fast-paced game, has been speculated to increase a player's shot accuracy by as much as 10%. The cheat was downloaded through a Steam workshop — a practice space where players can modify their characters — and activated when the player accesses their modifications.

After learning from ESEA how they were cheating, Valve upgraded their own anti-cheat system which led to two professional French players — team Titan's Hovik Tovmassian, and Gordon Giry of Epsilon, known in-game as "Kqly" and "SF," respectively — getting caught using the same hack shortly thereafter.

All of the players involved later admitted to the use of the hack software, which has led to rampant speculation as to the scope of the problem in the online community. According to a recent article on The Daily Dot, Beck followed his own dismissal by releasing a list of people he believes are cheating — as much as 40% of professional players, he says — with top tier gamers among them. 

SEE ALSO: 15 Of The Highest-Paid Professional Video Gamers In The World

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This was a huge year for video games.

It was the first full year the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were on the market, and we also saw Nintendo’s Wii U console mature thanks to some quality first-party titles.

There were plenty of incredible games this year, but these were the cream of the crop.

14. South Park: The Stick of Truth

As the "New Kid" who moves to South Park, you're thrust into an epic role-playing game between all sorts of fantasy creatures to obtain the "Stick of Truth." The game is not only enjoyable to play, but it retains the inherent heart and humor of "South Park"— and it looks just like the TV show.

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Buy it here.

13. Grand Theft Auto V

After its initial release last November, Rockstar remastered and re-released "Grand Theft Auto V" last month for the next-generation consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The main addition was a comprehensive first-person perspective mode that lets you see the game in a whole new way. Thanks to this single change, the "Grand Theft Auto" series will never be the same.

Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One

Buy it here.

12. Dark Souls II

The sequel to "Dark Souls" is one of the most difficult, punishing games ever made — but it's also one of the most rewarding. As you traverse various open worlds, fighting off hordes of impossibly strong monsters with very few items at your disposal, you'll be killed again and again. But that means your victories will taste all too sweet.

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Buy it here.

Click here for the story >

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If 2014 was the games industry's transitional year, 2015 could see the major developers and publishers finally getting into their groove with the current consoles.

Both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have hugely promising titles on their slates, while Nintendo is about to pummel its patient Wii U owners with major in-house productions. And of course, it's set to be another ridiculously busy year for the PC and its dominant digital gaming platform Steam.

To get you in the mood, here are our most anticipated titles of the coming 12 months.

The Familiar Names

This is the games industry, so naturally there will be gang of aging Goliaths chucking massive piles of cash around to dominate the charts. At the forefront, London's Rocksteady Studios has its last Batman title, "Arkham Knight," lined up, pitching the caped crusader — and his car — against an anonymous supervillain in a vast open Gotham. There's also "Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain," in which Venom Snake sneaks around a series of detailed environments battling the Soviets, and "Star Wars: Battlefront," in which Battlefield developer EA Dice promises to bring its visceral shooter action to the Star Wars universe. (Dice is also working on the return of its cult sci-fi parkour-fest "Mirror's Edge," but maybe don't hold your breath for that one.)

Sexy treasure hunters will figure highly this year. While "Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End" is set to document the twilight of Nathan Drake's adventuring career, "Rise of the Tomb Raider" (a timed Xbox One exclusive on console, let's not forget) is all about the beginning of Lara Croft's. Both should set new benchmarks for the cinematic action adventure genre. Talking about sexy things, the adult-orientated role-playing epic "Witcher 3" could well be this year's "Grand Theft Auto," filled as it is with crunching violence, psychopathic characters, and ... let's say "loving relationships." We mean sex.

On a lighter note, Nintendo is set to continue its strong run with the new "Legend of Zelda" title, which promises a major shake-up to the formula, including a true open-world environment, and more mature art style. We also love the look of Yoshi's "Woolly World," a gorgeous handicrafty platformer in the style of "Kirby’s Epic Yarn," and "Mario Maker," a creative tool for Wii U that lets you construct your own Super Mario levels. And don’t forget "Splatoon," Nintendo's unlikely answer to "Counter-Strike."

The Big Newcomers

Amid a flirtatious gaggle of mainstream debutantes, we're especially exited about "Evolve," the asymmetrical multiplayer sci-fi shooter, in which four players are hunters and one is a rapidly evolving space monster. "Left 4 Dead" creator Turtle Rock Studios may just have the online hit of the year on its blood-stained hands.

Although there is likely to be stiff competition from "Tom Clancy's The Division," a co-operative squad-based strategy shooter set in a near-future America devastated by a modern plague. It's all set in a persistent environment, complete with dynamic events, where survival elements and trading augment the tactical action. Think "Ghost Recon" meets "DayZ."

On the subject of "DayZ," we can expect Dean Hall's zombie survival game to go through more iterations this year; it'll be accompanied by other undead lurkers including the brutal Los Angeles-based sequel "Dead island 2" and Techland's open-world chiller "Dying Light."

From Japan comes two major genre heavyweights. Bayonetta creator Platinum Games has its giant monster slaying combo romp "Scalebound" charged and ready to fly. Dark Souls fanatics will also be preparing hundreds of hours in their schedule for "Bloodborne," the latest unforgiving action adventure from sadistic genius Hidetaka Miyazaki, this time set in a goth punk world of Lovecraftian horror.

Finally, there are some intriguing console exclusives. Sony has its Victorian-set thriller "The Order: 1886," while Microsoft is set to unleash Remedy Entertainment's transmedia sci-fi romp "Quantum Break." As a showdown, it should at least be more progressive than "Sunset Overdrive" versus "Infamous: Second Son."

The Indie Hopefuls

With all the major console manufacturers desperate to prove their indie credentials (you never know where the next "Minecraft" is coming from, after all), 2015 is set to be another boom year for small studios.

The space exploration sim "No Man’s Sky" has turned up on everyone's must-have list for the year, boasting a vast, freely explorable universe and an emphasis on discovery rather than destruction. Jonathan Blow's follow-up to seminal indie hit "Braid" also looks fascinating — "The Witness" is a first-person puzzler set on a mysterious island that hints at a modern take on the PC classic "Myst."

Then you’ve got Mike Bithell's "Volume," a stealth adventure set in a sort of cyberpunk version of the Robin Hood myth. And on Xbox One, we have high hopes for "Below," a "roguelike" adventure from Capy Games, and the mystical platform adventure "Ori and the Blind Forest" by Moon Studios, highlighted by Xbox chief Phil Spencer at E3 as one of his favourite coming titles. For us, though, one of the treasures of that massive conference was "Night in the Woods," a beautifully illustrated adventure following a disillusioned cat as she considers leaving her backward hometown.

Away from the console wars, we're looking forward to plenty more offbeat experiential adventures along the lines of 2014's "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.""Firewatch" is an eerie mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness; and "Sunset," by the Belgian art studio Tale of Tales, has you playing a cleaner who must explore a single apartment while revolution stirs in the unnamed South American city. The ultra stylish puzzle shooter "SuperHot" also looks amazing, not just for its sparse visual aesthetic but its unique feature: time, and therefore enemy bullets, move only when you do.

There will also be violence. The visceral blast-'em-up sequel "Hotline Miami 2" isn't going to pull any punches, neither is the ridiculous multiplayer animal brawler "Gang Beasts," which was a hit on the festival circuit in 2014 and will be YouTube gold next year.

Well, that's a section of what we have on our must-see list. There will inevitably be a new "Call of Duty" (probably from Black Ops studio Treyarch); EA Sports will tell us that it is revolutionizing "Fifa"; "Halo 5" is coming, as is the sure-to-be-controversial cop shooter "Battlefield: Hardline" (the militarization of the police force has become quite a topic since the game was announced). Who knows how the "Crackdown" reboot will update its anarchic recipe for the current console generation.

Hopefully, though, there will also be plenty of left-field surprises. No one saw the likes of "Papers Please,""Papa & Yo," or "Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons" coming; it would be great to see more emotionally challenging fare along similar lines. And hey, there's always the chance of a "Last Guardian" announcement at E3. Come on, it's 2015 now, miracles may happen.

What are you looking forward to next year? Let us know in the comments section!

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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Despite running SpaceX, Tesla, and talking at tech conferences around the world, Elon Musk still has time to play video games.

The serial entrepreneur revealed his favourite games during a question and answer session on Reddit Monday night.

Here they are:

Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program is all about designing, building, and flying space rockets. Musk thinks this game is "awesome."

BioShock

Musk says he likes to play first-person shooter games with a story. Sure enough, BioShock has a fascinating plot. The game is about an undersea city filled with mutants. BioShock is also based on the political philosophy of Ayn Rand, hence the name of the game's villain: Andrew Ryan.

Fallout

The Fallout series casts the player as a survivor in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of America. To succeed, you need to scavenge for food and ammunition, while working with other survivors to fend off mutants.

Mass Effect

Here's another game about space rockets that Elon Musk likes. Mass Effect is about Commander Shepard, the leader of a gang of inter-galactic space heroes who travel the universe in their quest to save humanity.

Civilization

Civilization games are all about building your own empire, developing technology and armies and becoming the most successful nation in the world. Interestingly, one way to win the game is to build a spaceship and travel to another galaxy.

World of Warcraft

Finally, Elon Musk said that he also enjoys playing World of Warcraft. It's a massive game where lots of people play together, exploring a fantasy land and killing monsters for better weapons and armour. 

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A man in New Zealand fell down a 9 metre hole in China, broke his back, and has just turned the horrific accident into a new slapstick mobile game.

Mark Major, 28, explains on his website that his scary experience inspired "Plummet", which he hopes will be available for iPhone early this year. He tells Business Insider that he's waiting for Apple to review his iTunes app and it should be due for release soon.

Major says he had no warning about the accident. He was walking past a construction site in Beijing when the earth just gave way.

When he woke, with a fractured spine, sore head, and broken pieces of plank all around him, his sole memory was the "free falling plummet". He lay in the shaft an hour before being rescued. He adds that he suffered a "compression fracture" and while he's now fully recovered, still endures pain and limited mobility in his upper body.

Major writes: "Seven years ago, things went very wrong for me when I fell 9 metres down a hole in Beijing, resulting in a broken back. It was an incredibly close call since about 7 metres down, there was a plank that I went crashing through. This crash slowed me down and was highly likely a lifesaver."

Quite remarkably, he's now used the accident to make what looks like a really fun, colourful game. In it, users are thrust into Major's harrowing journey and play as a cartoon version of him. Although, he concedes, he's made his beard hair a little more ginger.

"You guide me through a Beijing construction shaft as I plummet,"he says in a press release. "The hole is randomly generated so each turn is never the same experience. Awesome cartoon graphics are based on the real hole and myself."

It's controlled very simply: All players have to do is tilt their smartphone left and right to move the character; the further they fall, the higher the score. "Just watch out for the edges," Major warns.

Major explains that he designed Plummet after losing his job. With time on his hands he decided to "make good art" out of "the most painful experience" of his life. He says he modelled the gameplay style of the notorious Flappy Bird and the ever popular Temple Run, with an endless game style that allows quick play any time — with the sole purpose of achieving a high score.

He sketched the initial cartoons himself and then enlisted the help of a Serbian designer and a Romanian app developer to build the game. It was finalised and posted for review on Dec. 30.

"After being made redundant from Chorus Ltd. in NZ I built something based on the event. I was inspired by Tim Ferris' book, "Four Hour Work Week"— and a blog post on Chad Mureta on the subject of app creation. I used 99designs and elance.com — it took 2 months to make."

Major is now a self-styled entrepreneur and is releasing Plummet through his new company "Broken Back Games"

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Sony said in a statement Thursday it will delay sales of its PlayStation 4 gaming console in China, citing “various factors." 

The PS4 was set to go on sale in the country Jan. 11. A new sale date has not been set.

According to Reuters, a “company source in China” says negotiations with Chinese authorities are partly why the PlayStation 4 won’t go on sale on Sunday. 

China has enormous potential for a company like Sony: The country is the world’s third-largest gaming market, with revenues reaching $15 billion in 2014. Sony is also relying heavily on its gaming business right now to compensate for some of its weaker divisions, like mobile.

This would’ve been the first time Sony entered the Chinese market. The country only last year lifted its 14-year ban on foreign video games and gaming consoles, which opened the door for Microsoft to release its own console, the Xbox One, in September 2014. (Response to that console has been “chilly,” however.)

But entering China isn’t so simple: The country has strict censorship rules about what games can and can’t contain or show, which would prevent those games — some of them very popular — from going on sale. (Microsoft, for instance, only sells 10 games in China.)

Sony says it is currently applying for licenses for 30 games, working closely with the government to ameliorate concerns of censorship. The company looks to sell the PlayStation 4 for around $467, which is a bit higher than its US retail price of $400. That’s still cheaper than Microsoft’s Xbox One, which costs $595 in China but only $400 in the US.

SEE ALSO: This Is Easily The Best Product Unveiled At CES So Far

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A man from New Zealand fell down a 9 metre hole in China, broke his back, and has just turned the horrific accident into a new slapstick mobile game.

Mark Major, 28, explains on his website that his scary experience inspired "Plummet", which he hopes will be available for iPhone early this year. He tells Business Insider that he's waiting for Apple to review his iTunes app and it should be due for release soon.

Major says he had no warning about the accident. He was walking past a construction site in Beijing when the earth just gave way.

When he woke, with a fractured spine, sore head, and broken pieces of plank all around him, his sole memory was the "free falling plummet". He lay in the shaft an hour before being rescued. He adds that he suffered a "compression fracture" and while he's now fully recovered, still endures pain and limited mobility in his upper body.

Major writes: "Seven years ago, things went very wrong for me when I fell 9 metres down a hole in Beijing, resulting in a broken back. It was an incredibly close call since about 7 metres down, there was a plank that I went crashing through. This crash slowed me down and was highly likely a lifesaver."

Quite remarkably, he's now used the accident to make what looks like a really fun, colourful game. In it, users are thrust into Major's harrowing journey and play as a cartoon version of him. Although, he concedes, he's made his beard hair a little more ginger.

"You guide me through a Beijing construction shaft as I plummet,"he says in a press release. "The hole is randomly generated so each turn is never the same experience. Awesome cartoon graphics are based on the real hole and myself."

It's controlled very simply: All players have to do is tilt their smartphone left and right to move the character; the further they fall, the higher the score. "Just watch out for the edges," Major warns.

Major explains that he designed Plummet after losing his job. With time on his hands he decided to "make good art" out of "the most painful experience" of his life. He says he modelled the gameplay style of the notorious Flappy Bird and the ever popular Temple Run, with an endless game style that allows quick play any time — with the sole purpose of achieving a high score.

He sketched the initial cartoons himself and then enlisted the help of a Serbian designer and a Romanian app developer to build the game. It was finalised and posted for review on Dec. 30.

"After being made redundant from Chorus Ltd. in NZ I built something based on the event. I was inspired by Tim Ferris' book, "Four Hour Work Week"— and a blog post on Chad Mureta on the subject of app creation. I used 99designs and elance.com — it took 2 months to make."

Major is now a self-styled entrepreneur and is releasing Plummet through his new company "Broken Back Games"

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If you remember playing with an original ZX Spectrum video console, you're in luck: It's coming back. And if you don't, chances are you'll want to try out one of the 1,000 retro games it features to see how your parents witnessed the birth of gaming.

Production of a remodelled version of the 1982 classic, now called the Sinclair Spectrum Vega, is underway in Nottinghamshire, the BBC says. The last Spectrum video console was released in 1992. 

The new one is being manufactured by SMS Electronics. The machine was developed by Luton's Retro Computers and will hit the shelves sometime in April.

Check it out:

The new product is centred on a "Joy Pad" rather than a full keyboard. But the games are the same: Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Flying Shark, Sir Fred, Dynamite Dan, and Moon Alert are joined by 1,000 others pre-installed. It has the capacity to run all 14,000 games from the original stable.

It all looks very exciting:

It's also exciting because it's going to cost just £100. The developers had early funding on crowdsourcing site Indiegogo and is being branded as a "budget" device — unlike the first batch, which had a much higher price point as was more of a luxury item. It cost between £125 and £175 in the '80s and operating it was a touch more difficult. Apparently 5 million were sold.

Here it is back in the day:

Manic Miner was one of the best games (I'm told):

Despite the change in costs, those behind the new Spectrum say the 2015 release is true to Sir Clive Sinclair's original design. It's just been tweaked for the modern age and can be plugged into any TV and there are no software rights issues.

The team writes:

TheSinclair Spectrum Vega&takes advantage of major advances in technology to achieve big cost savings by replacing most of the electronics in the earlier computer products. Instead the Vegauses allow cost micro-controller and a clever piece of software that combine to enable the Vega to run all of the games, 14,000 or more of them, which were developed during the years when some 5 million of the original Sinclair Spectrum were being sold.

The console is being marketed by Luton startup Retro Computers, of which Sir Sinclair's company, Sinclair Research Ltd., is an investor. The developers say the Sinclair Spectrum Vega is as "simple to use as any of the popular games consoles, but far less expensive."

Some of the revenue earned through the sale of the product will be donated to the Great Ormand Street Children's Hospital.

Here's a Retro Computers info video:

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It was a career fair at Paulina Raguimov's high school that started her on the path to becoming a full-time video game designer at only 19-years-old.

TechCrunch reports Raguimov was 16 when she attended the career fair.

She had no work experience and she also wasn't the best student. But the folks at the JumpStart booth didn't much care about either of those things.

Instead they cared about Raguimov's passion for games, and her personality.

"Raguimov’s first role at JumpStart was as a production intern," TechCrunch's Kyle Russell writes. "Her responsibilities included quality assurance, the job that sounds appealing when you’re 12 but in reality is incredibly dull: endlessly playing games to find their bugs. She was taught to use bug-tracking tools and how to update the game studio’s documents."

At the time, Raguimov was still attending school, and during a science class, got the idea to create a game based on putting elements together to create things, kind of like the basis of wildly popular Candy Crush.

Her bosses loved the idea and "the team built it as a mini-game within School of Dragons, the studio’s massively-multiplayer online game based on Dreamworks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragons” universe."

TechCrunch reports,

She started building out the concept in her own time, using what she had learned on the job to piece together a 30-page design document. She showed the idea to the studio’s curriculum designer, who really liked it and passed it up to her boss. Who then passed it to the CEO of the company. “Suddenly,” Raguimov says, “it was a top priority to get it out.” As this was happening, the studio promoted her from intern to production assistant.

The game did really well.

Now she's working at the studio full-time, and is contemplating persuing college as well.

You can read her full story over on TechCrunch.

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Price makes all the difference.

Microsoft's  Xbox One video game console finished the year on a high note, outselling Sony's rival PlayStation 4 during the key holiday months of November and December, according to recent data from NPD. Microsoft's machine has regained positive momentum, particularly in the United States.

Sony remains in the lead globally, but the PlayStation 4's dominance -- which appeared absolute just two months ago -- has begun to waver.

More like the Xbox 180

The Xbox One has transformed significantly over the last 14 months. At its late 2013 debut, the console was 25% more expensive than the PlayStation 4, did not include any games, and required the use of Kinect 2.0.

But prompted by a widening sales gap, Microsoft took aggressive action, slashing the price of the Xbox One, ditching Kinect, and offering a multitude of free games. Today, you can purchase the Kinect-less Xbox One Assassin's Creed Bundle (which includes two games) for just $349 -- $50 less than Sony's PlayStation 4.

Despite falling short of analyst expectations in September, Microsoft benefited from the holiday shopping season. In the U.S., the Xbox One was the best-selling console in both November and December, and in terms of unit sales, it outpaced its predecessor, the Xbox 360, by 50% at that point in its lifecycle, according to a company blog. Moreover, Xbox One gamers appear to be more active, buying more games during those two months than owners of the PlayStation 4.

These results come as a surprise to me, as the Xbox One appeared to be in dire straits going into the holiday season. Although Microsoft had offered a variety of promotions throughout 2014, the PlayStation 4 had consistently outsold the Xbox One -- at times by a wide margin -- each and every month. Given the increasing connectivity of the platforms -- many games, including Titanfall, Destiny and Evolve are based almost entirely around online play -- it appeared that network effects were benefiting Sony.

Sony looks to have the stronger software lineup in the first half

It seems clear, however, that buyers can be persuaded if the price is attractive enough. While Microsoft has not offered exact sales figures for the Xbox One, it's probably still lagging behind the PlayStation 4 -- which, according to Sony, has sold at least 18.5 million units globally. Still, the gap may be close enough now to ensure that the two machines stay competitive.

Microsoft has a strong slate of games planned for 2015, but the PlayStation 4 should benefit from two major exclusives coming in the first half of the year. The Xbox One will get marquee titles such as Halo 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider next fall, but the PlayStation 4 will get The Order: 1886 and Bloodborne in February and March, respectively. With the Xbox One offering no substantial exclusives in the first half of the year, Sony could regain the lead.

Disaster averted

Investors have questioned the importance of the Xbox One to Microsoft as a whole, but the company has remained steadfast in its support of the brand. Former CEO Steve Ballmer declared that Microsoft had accomplished "two-and-a-half tricks" over its multidecade life -- creating Windows, bringing microprocessor technology into the data center, and Xbox. Its new CEO, Satya Nadella, has since reiterated Microsoft's commitment to gaming.

Its a good thing, then, that Microsoft was able to retake the lead in November and December. With its competitor outselling it, at times, by a ratio of 2-to-1, the Xbox One was not in a good place early last year. To its credit, Microsoft appears to have turned the situation around completely.

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A man in his late 50’s, who is grieving his son who just recently passed away, took to Reddit on Monday to ask for help playing the popular video game “World of Warcraft.” 

He began playing because his son loved “World Of Warcraft,” and he “wanted to connect with areas of my son’s life I never understood.”

Since asking for guidance on the game, wondering where he should start, dozens, possibly even hundreds (via private messages) of Reddit users have responded to his initial post, offering condolences, tips, and even offering to play with him.

“I am in shock,” he said. “The outpouring of support and condolences boggles my mind. I would like to thank all you individually for your support and kindness. That total strangers would extend their sympathies to me and that a game was the catalyst is something amazing.”

The man says he is “humbled” by the collective love offered by complete strangers of the Reddit community, especially by those offering their “support and friendship both in the game and in real life.”

“This means so much to me I can’t accurately describe it,” he said. 

Check out the whole thread on Reddit, it’s really worth a read.

SEE ALSO: The New Tesla Car Has A Button Called 'Insane Mode' — Here's What Happens When You Press It

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Because assembling Ikea furniture is so much fun (sarcasm), a new video game called "Home Improvisation" is letting you live that experience virtually.

They're calling it "the world's most fun and cooperative furniture assembly experience."

The game's furniture is assembled by clicking, dragging and rotating the pieces until they fit into their specific holes. Up to three friends can virtually join you in assembling the flat packs, or you can "labor alone and slowly descend into madness."

The game was created at this year's Global Game Jam competition in just 48 hours by a small developer team called The Stork Burnt Down.

It's available now for free on Mac and PC. Check out the full demo the video below.

SEE ALSO: The 20 Most Expensive Zip Codes In Silicon Valley

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NOW WATCH: 13 Things You Didn't Know Your iPhone 6 Could Do

EA Sports has been using its latest “Madden” game to simulate the Super Bowl for over a decade — and it’s been right for 9 out of 12 years.

But “Madden” has never been this accurate before.

For the first time, it nailed the exact final score of a Super Bowl. And it was scarily accurate in other ways, too.

It predicted Tom Brady would net four total touchdowns, and it missed his total yardage by only 27 yards — “Madden” predicted 355 yards, he got 328.

“Madden 15” almost perfectly predicted Julian Edelman’s entire game — it was off by only one catch and three yards!

It even foresaw Tom Brady leading a fourth-quarter comeback, from down 24-14 to go up 28-24, and it predicted the game-winning touchdown pass to Julian Edelman.

OK, so “Madden 15” didn’t foresee the Seattle Seahawks' Jermaine Kearse make a 33-yard juggling catch with just over a minute to go, and it didn’t predict Seahawks QB Russell Wilson would throw an interception one yard from his own goal line with 26 seconds left in the game. 

But it did predict Brady would win the MVP. And the rest of the stats speak for themselves.

Check out EA Sports’ video below.

SEE ALSO: Patriots rookie who made the Super Bowl-winning interception was working at Popeyes 4 years ago

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