Episode 289: Princess Podcast

In this episode of Gaming Podcast, Jonah states he got to see Wreck It Ralph, while Paul still can’t find a black Wii U. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the 2002 Gamecube launch title Super Mario Sunshine.

This week’s news includes:

  • The Lund Report: Black Friday 2012 NPD
  • Nintendo Power’s last issue released
  • Blizzard acquiredProject Blackstone‘ domain November 26th
  • Rumor: Next gen Xbox coming Holiday 2013
  • Dead Island: Riptide banned in Germany

All this and Reader Feedback, and the Question of the Week is, “Did you read many issues of Nintendo Power?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 289: Princess Podcast”

  1. @ Black Friday 2012
    I was pretty disappointed in how “Black Friday” was handled in Romania. Plenty of retailers increased the price a week before, so that they could do a 40% slash to get the price back to the old value.

    @Nintendo Power’s last issue released
    It also depends how many people want it. Here’s an example: our major cable provider decided to not renew the contract it had with Discovery Channel. Why? Because just 0.9% of the people watched it.
    How many people read “Nintendo Power”?

    @Blizzard acquired ‘Project Blackstone‘ domain
    It could be a preventive buy, I guess. Still, not really hyped about it, Blizzard lost me since always-online DRM; last game I played from them was Warcraft III and Frozen Throne.

    @Dead Island: Riptide banned in Germany
    Funny though, there are plenty of games (not just Gears of War) where players blow other human-like character to bits, and those are still available in Germany.
    But hey, what do I know, perhaps the baddies in those games bleed green goo …

    @QOTW: No.

  2. Not interested to comment on any of the news articles, I just came to ask: “Guess who has two thumbs and got the Wii U before Paul did?”. I did.

    @QOTW: Never

  3. Just found out about this podcast and was amused that there was a topic discussed, I just held a speech on in school. Censoring, banning etc. in Germany.

    The USK is all right, they just rate the games like any other institue that rates games. The problem is the BPjM (the young protection thing you translated). They decide what gets banned and lands on the index etc. They’re not only after games, but after media in general. They just recently banned Steel Panther’s 1 year old album “Balls Out” for no reason given. Wrote them a mail (respectful, of course) and got no answer whatsoever. So did the German Metal Hammer-magazine. Same answer.

    They ban whatever they want to. Sometimes there’s no system behind it. Dishonored came out here completely uncensored, this means I, as Corvo, can decapitate enemies and throw their heads around. Kinda humiliating to the corpse, isn’t it?

    If anyone is interested in how cuts on games look like, I recommend http://www.schnittberichte.com
    especially the Bulletstorm one.

    QOTW: Never.

  4. @QOTW:
    Yeah… Nintendo World yes, Nintendo Power NO.

    Nintendo World had the “Approved By Nintendo” seal, so, i bought them for a couple of years…

Leave a Reply

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

Related Post

Episode 717: Fake Xbox LiveEpisode 717: Fake Xbox Live

This week, the gang follows up on Tim Sweeney from last week, and also discuss Dark Souls 2 modding, the “photorealistic” ant RTS Empire of the Ants, and Resident Evil 4 Remake crossing 7 million copies sold.

The news also includes:

  • Saber Interactive confirms “a number of titles” still in development
  • Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection players tear into Aspyr
  • Halo 2 online matchmaking returns in March thanks to community modders

Let us know what you think.

Kaz Hirai Dooms 360 To Short LifeKaz Hirai Dooms 360 To Short Life

Sony’s PlayStation 3 has a 10-year plan. We’ve heard about the plan, we’ve seen Sony’s current execution and we’re starting to see some of the titles making their way to the PS3 for 2009. The Xbox 360? Kaz, Sony Computer Entertainment’s head man, made his thoughts clear when speaking to Official PlayStation Magazine.

kaz“Last time I checked, they’ve never had a console that’s been on the market for more than four or five years and we’ve committed to a ten year life cycle, so you do the math…,” he says. He goes on to state that the Xbox 360 won’t have a larger install base by the end of their 10-year plan has been completed, “unless things go really bad.”

Of course, nobody says Microsoft’s 10-year plan isn’t to push out yet another console. Is that wise? We don’t really know, but you can’t count them out on it. Maybe they’ll only have half the install base but two consoles in the market within the next ten years, nobody really knows.

The one major hole we can see in his comments revolve around their claims that the Microsoft doesn’t have any history of a console being on the market for very long. If I recall, Sony managed to squeek one by on Nintendo with the original PlayStation, which changed everything for the next ten years. Sony didn’t have a 5-year track record when they started taking Nintendo down, why does Microsoft need to have an extensive resume as well?

As for Wii?

“It’s difficult to talk about Nintendo because we don’t look at their console as being competitors. They’re a different world and we operate in our world — that’s kind of the way I look at things…” (kotaku)

Say what you want about Microsoft vs. Sony, but it sure sounds like Sony doesn’t want to acknowlege Nintendo’s success because it casts a dark shadow on their own product. Nintendo and Sony have been battling for years, that’s just the way it is and that’s how the industry sees it. When NPD releases numbers, when journalists write articles about consoles and when the war is finished one thing remains constant: all three consoles are included in the equation.