This week’s Gaming Podcast gets down and dirty, with plenty of AAAA goodness. The Darkness II contest is still going on this week, and winners will be announced next week.
In the meantime:
All that, plus Reader Feedback.
One of the greatest things Nintendo has done was allowing the DS to be unlocked for regions. This allowed gamers around the world to share their favorite games from all cultures and countries with just a click of the “buy” button at an online store.
The DSi loses this great freedom by locking it down to a region. “Nintendo DS software is region free so you can play any DS software on DSi from any region. You can also browse the internet on your DSi wherever you are in the world and exchange your photos with friends from around the world,” says Nintendo (CVG).
Much like the US Entertainment Industries need to lock down everything and contribute to global piracy, Nintendo follows suit with their hand-helds, tis a sad day indeed. Of course Nintendo reasons it all away by yelling parental controls and making it easier for regions to access their own content.
“DSi is region locked because DSi embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region. Also because we are including parental control functionality for Nintendo DSi and each region has its unique age limit.”
Specifically tailored for each region is a nice way of saying that each region has to pay the penalty of not being “first” (second, or third) to get some cool new features. Although Nintendo could put emphasis on the region the gamer lives in with complete access out of those bounds if they wanted, they’ve chosen to use this as a crutch to lock users out of content.
Users will get their content, of course. It just means more home brews, software hacks, hardware hacks and workarounds for the system. If that’s what Nintendo is trying to inspire, then they’ve done their job right.
However, wouldn’t it be great if they could just come out and say “we don’t want certain people accessing specific content until we say you can.”
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The post Episode 722: Off the Rails first appeared on Gaming Podcast.
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Publishers are doing their virtual E3 announcements, such as Ubisoft Forward and ID@Xbox’s Indie Showcase. There’s other wild news going on, and some not even in the official news items below.
Said news items include:
Let us know what you think.
Paul is back!
@Analyst predicts 66M iPad sales in 2012
The nasty thing about extrapolating numbers to make predictions can fail. I mean Sony Vita sold ok initially, then to simply drop rock bottom immediately after.
Oh man, I sure loved Paul’s comment with Harry Potter 🙂
Ah, you gotta love the planned obsolescence. As for PC games, you get better graphics for the extra performance requests.
@Diablo III gets May 15 release date
It makes no sense to delay the launch for Russia. It will not increase sales in Russia or anywhere else. I say that 3-4 days after Diablo 3 gets released in US, pirated copies will show up on torrents sites.
@Next gen console launch titles will probably use Unreal Engine 3
Well, the rendering can be expanded to cope with DX11 hardware. As far as I know, it can already cope with it (Aliens vs. Predator 2010).
As for it being the only game engine, it implies that only Epic is aware of the API for the new consoles. Careful there with the statements, Epic …
@ looking for executive producer to work on an “AAAA” Xbox title
I think they simply need a fresh idea … the team that produced Halo would do the job just fine … oh wait! They dismissed them a while ago. Smart move!
Lol, Paul, that was a great interpretation. Hmm … maybe I’ll start roleplaying my comments 😛
Family show, right… You can bleep out as many swear words as you like, this will never be a family show.
Well, there weren’t any interesting news stories this week, so I’m not going to comment on them.
Paul, you should read Reader Feedback comically more often! And I do agree that the Flying Beetle in Skyward Sword is a great item because you can use it to scout pretty much everywhere. I also think that Koloktos (the one with the six hands and huge scimitars) is the best boss in the game.
@Episode 255 comment: The theater was sort of packed, and my roommate sat in front of me with the other half of our party. He sort of deserved the head kick, though, so it’s all good.
@iPad Sales: I had an iPad 1 at my last job and liked having it around to browse the Web and look at other content on the couch. But since I had to give it back (the company folded), I haven’t missed it. Only the money I spent for The Daily (peeyoo).
@Unreal: I get the Game Developer trade publication, and Unreal always has an advertorial touting its wares. If it looks good and is easy to develop with, why not?
Thanks for another damn good fucking family show, fo shizzle.
hmm i dont know if my friends dragged me to the movies to see something like alvin and the chipmunks i might have another reason to kick there ass in the theater .
oh forgot to mention last week either version is fine.
also i never got the reasoning behind the serah palin movie. she lost the race but the celebrate her as a great victor? i guess you just do things diffrently in america
oh i forgot to mention that the mgs2 ending was scary because it became alot like eternal darkness on the gamecube but it came so out of left field in what was a normal game up until that point.
66M iPad Sales in 2012? – I wrote something maybe too evil for this show regarding this news piece, so I’ll just say this. I don’t like Apple and I like Paul just a little bit more now that he has shown his hate for Apple as well. I like ya Paul, stay classy.
AAAA Title by Microsoft – Why? Why would Microsoft claim to have a AAAA title? Doesn’t that just completely destroy the point of the game rating system. Now KOEI is going to announce they have a AAAAAAAAAAA title: Dynasty Warriors 231. I’d like to believe all developers/publishers think highly of there games, but it seems sorta cocky to go off of the scale because you believe this game is better than any other title ever put out, and does not deserve the lowly “AAA” spot. But that’s just what it seems like to me.
As always guys keep up the good work. Hope you all are doing well, can’t wait for the next episode.
(to Paul to read, and please in british accent, if possible, of course)
as an answer to the previous podcast, one shall improve his english skillz, i mean, proficiency!
@66 million iPads sales in 2012
those poor bastards, wasting their money in an overcharged piece of eletronic equipament that shall not bring any major improvement over the previous iPad
@Diablo III 15th of may
One shall not leave the presence of one’s personal computer while one’s equipament still works (not fry out into oblivion)
@AAAA microsoft title
thou shall be amusing to see such game when announced right after Call of Duty, n00b warfare 4 (let’s hope CoD just die now, before that happens).
Mr. Nowak, is this better (insert trollface)
one hopes the TD gaming podcast trio (hopefully) understands this message as a form of entertainment, or if you gentlemen prefer, a joke
always wishing the best!!!
*@beggining: “*for* Paul to read…”
and i mean hopefully a trio, not hopefully understand