Episode 323: What Is Nintendo Thinking?

Jonah Falcon and Jordan Lund discuss PAX Prime 2013, then delve into this week’s news, Listener Feedback, and discuss the 1990’s developer Psygnosis.

The news this week includes:

  • Nintendo announces 2DS, Wii U price drop
  • Inafune “fought hard” for risk taking at Capcom, creators must be “willing to fail”
  • Godus beta to hit Steam Early Access on 13th September
  • Diablo III‘s new loot system to “cut the legs out” from the auction house
  • Bethesda wants The Elder Scrolls Online available to non-Xbox Live subscribers

The Question of the Week: “How many times have you purchased a new form factor of a console you already owned?”

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Episode 223: Snake FlingingEpisode 223: Snake Flinging

This week is a strange one, as snakes are flung at horses to turn them into unicorns, and Paul keeps finding videogame soulmates from the reader feedback. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the Amiga classic Shadow of the Beast, while the Gaming History takes a look back at the Apple Pippin.

This week’s news items include:

  • Survey: Female gamers enjoy gaming more than sex
  • June 2011 NPD sales figures released
  • Publishers spend XBLA budgets, expect retail content
  • Gamestop thinks next gen consoles will hit in 2014
  • Zynga offered $1B for Popcap
  • Ubisoft confirms multiplayer pass system to combat used game sales

Finally, the Question of the Week is “What games do you play in bed?” Yes, it’s been a weird week.

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?”

Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360

Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.

This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.

Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.

Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.

(Thanks, Kotaku)