Gaming Podcast Episode 218: Introducing Paul

The listeners of Gaming Podcast finally get introduced to the third member of the Videogame Roundtable podcast team, Paul S. Nowak, who only desires hate mail and more time playing Dungeon Overlord on Facebook. This week, the Gaming Flashback looks back at the Gamecube title mentioned by Jordan Lund last week, Eternal Darkness, and the guys respond to the reader mail from episode 217, and if you’re interested in other types of games such as escape rooms you can visit the Room escape games in Portland Oregon just for this.

The trio also discuss the following news items:

  • Microsoft: Halo won’t be a yearly franchise
  • Analyst: Kinect appealed to “more hardcore” than expected
  • 2M users sign up for COD: Elite beta
  • Wizardry Online announced, will feature permadeath

This week’s Question of the Week: How much do you think the Wii U will cost? All this and more in this delightful podcast that will have you begging for more.

0 thoughts on “Gaming Podcast Episode 218: Introducing Paul”

  1. @ Halo won’t be a yearly franchise:
    Right, I’ll take their word for it. Thing is, with their current schedule, yearly franchise or not, they will have sales for the earlier one eaten up by the later game.

    @ Kinect appealed to “more hardcore” than expected:
    Microsoft doesn’t have to do anything. I believe that the game developers will manage to create a control scheme for hardcore game(r)s.

    @2M users sign up for COD: Elite beta
    Protest or not, this is just an improvement in the matchmaking service. Why not play Quake Live?
    What I am saying is that there will always somebody willing to do this for free.

    @Wizardry Online announced, will feature permadeath:
    Permadeath + PVP = niche market. The only thing that can make it worse is high-damage / insta-kill weapons.

    Speaking of MMOs:
    http://thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=19

    @How much do you think the Wii U will cost?
    Man, I hate price guessing …
    I say 150 USD. Middle way between a plain controller and the 3DS. Bare in mind, this is just for the controller.

  2. QOTW:
    I’d say $350 USD including the console and a controller. Which will probably end up being $550 Australian or more 🙁

  3. QOTW – I’m going to say $350. Probably 250 for the console and 100 for the controller. Maybe less for the controller and more for the console, but I’m thinking somewhere around 300. I can’t see it going much higher than 400 though, I don’t think the casual audience that the Wii appealed to will want to shell out the extra 300+ dollars for a new console. Its going to be interesting to see what the official price is.

Leave a Reply

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

Related Post

Gaming Podcast 202: Eggnog BathGaming Podcast 202: Eggnog Bath

This week we’re creating our last gaming podcast before Christmas, no holiday break for us! We’re reading some of our community comments and taking a look back at both Pac-Land and the history of Atari post-2600 release. This weeks news includes:

This week’s question of the week is really simply, have a good holiday. Unless you want to answer the question, “where do you roast your chestnuts for the holidays?”

Episode 511: Grim Sky at RiotEpisode 511: Grim Sky at Riot

The guys discuss the recent report by Kotaku released this week on the shady institutionalized sexism at Riot Games, the people behind League of Legends. There’s also hints of racism as well, especially since everyone in charge is, well, a white male. Otherwise, T.J. gushes about his experiences at EVO, the fighting game convention/competition, and is looking forward to QuakeCon.

The news this week includes:

And Jonah confesses he still hasn’t played GTA5 because, well, GTA4 soured him on the series.

Microsoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 ValueMicrosoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 Value

Rumors float around the Internet questioning when Microsoft will ship a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 or add-on device like they did with the, now failed, HD-DVD. At CES 09 Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, says this request is “way down the list.”

Mr. Bach had some great selling points as to why a Blu-ray player has little value in the world of Xbox 360. The primary reason, of course, being the Xbox 360 developers cannot take advantage of Blu-ray as a development platform for games. This was the price Sony, or the consumer, paid to own a PlayStation 3 since all games are printed on the media and are, in effect, Blu-ray “capable.”

We say capable because not all (any?) PlayStation 3 games currently make full use of the Blu-ray media. Many games will reprint the game on the media for optimization purposes, fill the game with international voice overs for all countries or, otherwise, stuff the media with something that will serve a useful purpose. Sony has near-future-proofed their device by giving game developers years of growth in terms of utilizing the Blu-ray capacity.

Microsoft chose to take the smaller old-style DVD format for games and media. Adding the HD-DVD didn’t add a large deal of risk because, as we saw, they can discontinue the model and not change their core gaming demographic. We still laughed a bit at them, but that was where it ended. Bach also said that it’s not really a great economic time to push a new 360 SKU on potential customers with additional cost just for Blu-ray movies playback.

They could add Blu-ray game development support as well but that would just alienate the “28 million Xboxes” they have already shipped.

“OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.” (gamespot)

Of course, the first thing that came to our mind was “well, you did it for HD-DVD, how is Blu-ray different?” The key areas we can think of really come down to Blu-ray is a Sony technology and they are a direct competitor and, to top it off, HD-DVD allowed them to fight against the PS3 at the media level of the industry. They minimized the risk by making the product a secondary add-on device and, if HD-DVD had won, they’d have the winning format already under production (still not for games).

It seems Microsoft has changed their battle plans a little. They started out talking up the media aspects of the 360, using Media Center, renting movies and TV shows and had the HD-DVD as a subproduct. Today, they’re investing in Netflix for media and everything else favors the games.

Which is fine, we like games.