VGRT Gaming Podcast 217: Pre-E3 Show

The TD Gaming Podcast and Videogame Roundtable merge, as Jonah Falcon introduces VGRT regular Jordan Lund to his new listeners, as the VGRT Gaming Podcast is born.

The podcast is a little rushed, however, as E3 approaches, giving the duo only some time to discuss the eventful past week, which includes the following news:

For this podcast, this Question of the Week is, “What game do you want to learn about the most at E3” Of course, by the time the next podcast is launched, that question will probably be satisfied. As for Reader Feedback, we didn’t have time to answer it, but we will respond to it next week!

0 thoughts on “VGRT Gaming Podcast 217: Pre-E3 Show”

  1. Jonah, you can simply skip the iOS and Facebook games 🙂

    @NGP to be called the PlayStation Vita: … I liked more the NGP … Now I could be biased, I never saw the ad you guys mentioned.

    @PS4 in development .. oops, no it’s not: Now, if we ignore the PSN security issues, I would consider this kind of inconsistencies funny. Now, what if they’d do the same with PSN? I can imagine the dialog:
    Q: Is PSN secure?
    A1: PSN is air tight secure.
    (a few weeks later)
    A2: PSN is not that secure.

    @Dungeon Empires out of beta: I see this becoming a pretty big game. It blends some sort of ‘Farmville’ and WoW. It’s … nice!

    @Dead or Alive 3DS = child porn?
    Besides the age of the characters, proper rating would make this easily avoided.

    @Call of Duty: Elite announced: good point, Jonah. They didn’t handle the information properly, and that can turn against them, with or without a real reason.

    Jordan, the game you mentioned, ‘Eternal Darkness’, I am following a ‘Lets play’ for it.

    @QOTW: none, unfortunately. Well, maybe Rage. While id’s games are not the most cinematic ones, I have to admit I liked most of what they released.

  2. I have not listened to this episode yet, but I’m sure it will be good. I’m glad to see that you are keeping it going. Listening to the show since last November and I’m happy that its not going to die.

  3. Hey fellas, glad to see the TD Gaming Podcast is still alive! I’ve been a fan since episode #118. Just a heads-up – the Schommers used to use a program called “Levelator” to even out their audio. I don’t know if you guys do as well, but if not it might help your output.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelator

    I’m keeping the Schommer family in my prayers and wishing you all the best as I continue listening faithfully 🙂

  4. Just listened to the podcast, really enjoyed it, but thats what I expected.

    About the “Vita”, I’ve been hearing complaints about the naming , but it seems like no matter what they name it, people are still going to complain.

    PS4 – I’m glad that they aren’t working on a new console, they need to work on getting the PS3 back to where it was before all the hacking, but again, it seems like no matter what Sony does, people will still complain. They just can’t win.

    Bungie – I can’t wait to see this game. Bungie has really only been known for Halo, and I’m very curious to see what they are going to be able to follow it up with. This game will really show what Bungie can do now that they aren’t tied down to one franchise. Also, saw the trailer for Halo 4, seems unnecessary, I thought the trilogy was fine, but 343 seems capable of making a solid Halo without the help of Bungie.

    Call of Duty Elite – I am one of the many that watch Call of Duty commentaries on Youtube, and it was clear to see that the majority weren’t happy about the announcement that you will have to pay. That was before it was announced that you would get most features free. Patience certainly isn’t too common in this community. It sucks that that was the way it had to be revealed.

    QOTW – I am really excited for Bioshock: Infinite. Have been waiting to see more on it since the first trailer came out. I love this series and to see that they are taking it to the sky makes it seem like the series is being reborn.

  5. @Will, PS4 issue:
    It’s more complicated, the ugly way I’m afraid.
    The issue with PS3 is that (1) the root key, the one that validates if the DVD is legal or not, was ‘coded’ in the silicon chip, and (2) that key was discovered.
    This means that anyone can build custom software (or pirate games) and ‘stamp’ them as legal.

    One way to ‘fix’ this is to change the key.
    This means that future PS3 have encoded in them the new key, and all games that follow will also use that key. The issue is that the new PS3s won’t be able to play the older PS3 games (different keys), and that the old PS3s cannot play the new games.

    The PS3’s root key issue was using a sloppy “security by obscurity” strategy.

    The PSN case is strikingly similar: once the hackers discovered the what (old) version of software PSN used, they could then use a list of known security exploits for them.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 398: Only Two MoreEpisode 398: Only Two More

Two more episodes, and Paul is no longer a regular podcast host. On a side note, there will be no podcast next week due to scheduling conflicts.

This week’s news:

  • The Pokémon Company shuts down PAX party with lawsuit
  • 881 E.T. cartridges buried in New Mexico desert sell for over $100K
  • The smaller new 3DS is coming to the US on September 25
  • How GOG rescued 13 Forgotten Realms games from licensing hell

All this and Listener Feedback.

Classic Cinematics: DiabloClassic Cinematics: Diablo



Diablo is a classic title with endings for each class you can play, but all give you the same result: hell and torment. You battle your way through a very difficult game, defeating legions of evils minions, piling their corpses upon the floor as you dig deeper into hell.

Eventually, you battle the essence of hell itself: Diablo. However, the ending does not give you warm fuzzies. The ending shows the results of a man with a burden and ends with the transfer of such burden.

Pure evil. Pure fun. Exciting and well crafted ending. For more talk on cinematic endings, listen to the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 75.

Sony’s Software Development Beta ProjectsSony’s Software Development Beta Projects

It seems we’ve seen a lot of great concepts from Sony for their PlayStation 3 product line but very little has managed to hit the software virtual shelves. We’ve heard of Sony’s Afrika for the PS3 back at E3 in 2006 and we’re looking at it for 2008’s holiday lineup.

We’ve heard about Sony Home for years as well, but that’s now in some type of beta. It was supposed to be an open beta but that didn’t seem to work out and now it’s closed beta only. Recently they pushed out a firmware update that bricked PlayStation 3 consoles or at least screwed up many of them in varying levels.

Are they just really bad at software development and road map predictions? As a hardware development company they’ve put out some hardcore products, stone cold stable in terms of design and efficiency from the Walk Man to the PS3. Their products are practical in design, for the most part, fairly pretty, stable and function as designed. Yet they come up short on software time and time again.

One of the contributors at 2old2play had some things to say about Sony’s development efforts:

“Having worked at Sony as a Creative Designer two years ago, it doesn’t surprise me that they have still yet to release Home. While there, I was working on their Station Launcher application which was supposed to be released in late 2006. However, the Launcher app is still only in Beta to this day.” (2old2play.com)

In many ways their the anti-Microsoft in their approach and commitments. While Microsoft ships hardware that has what must be a 60% failure rate Sony ships hardware which works fairly well. On the flip side, Microsoft publishes a large quantity of software for all their products and has done very well in the business. Nobody can say it’s 100% perfect but it tends to get better with age or, at least, grow on you.

(more…)