Episode 354: E3 Swag Bag Part 2

The E3 Swag Bag contest is still going on, while Paul, Jordan and Jonah discuss the latest in videogame industry news.

This week’s news includes:

  • Nintendo loses Wii patent lawsuit to Philips
  • PlayStation Now beta gets six new games, but those high prices remain
  • Crytek claims it’s doing fine, despite rumors
  • Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty heading to Xbox One with ID@Xbox
  • Google announces virtual reality app Cardboard

All this and Listener Feedback. The contest question is still up: “What was your biggest takeaway from E3?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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

Related Post

Gaming Podcast 142: HatecastGaming Podcast 142: Hatecast

This episode brings the hate, sarcasm and skepticism in all that is gaming news. We’re also super charged with a gaming flashback on Autoduel and the history of Origin Systems, Inc. But, what really brings it all together is the news of the week:

This week’s question of the week is quite simple: any board games that need to be re-created as a video game?

DSi Will Be Region-Locked, Sad Face…DSi Will Be Region-Locked, Sad Face…

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.”

Episode 414: We’ve Done BetterEpisode 414: We’ve Done Better

This week’s podcast isn’t the best, but at least we tried, right? There’s a lot of chatter, and Scott gets really angry at people criticizing Star Wars.

This week’s news items includes:

  • Iranian state television mistakes Medal of Honor footage for reality
  • Street Fighter 5 Arcade Mode being considered
  • Experimental 5D data storage could store 360TB of games for 13.8 billion years
  • Ubisoft boasts about The Division beta’s huge numbers
  • HTC’s Vive VR Tech will launch in April priced at $799

This week’ Question of the Week: “When, if ever, will you be getting VR?”