A good episode this time, if a little meandering. The episode is slowly reaching its milestone.
The news items for the week include:
Check us on twitter: Jonah Falcon is @jonahfalcon, Paul Nowak is @stagermonkey, and Scott Dirk is @alphashard.
It’s now the US government’s turn to question Sony about its online security, which follows the UK government’s scrutiny into the company’s affairs.
In a letter addressed to PlayStation executive deputy Kaz Hirai, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade has prepared a list of questions related to the intrusion; the list can be downloaded from the New York Times here. The letter asks several questions that Sony has not disclosed to the public, such as:
The Subcommittee’s press release states:
“Given the amount and nature of personal information known to have been taken, the potential harm that could be caused if credit card information was also taken would be quite significant. The Subcommittee on Manufacturing, and Trade has a longstanding interest in consumer privacy, identity theft, and industry efforts to address threats posed by unauthorized access to consumers’ personal information resulting from a data breach.”
The Subcommittee is requiring a reply by no later than May 6, as part of a privacy driven effort “to protect consumer information.”
Meanwhile, Kaz Hirai will be holding a press conference tomorrow from Sony Japan, to address the PlayStation Network hacking crisis.
Harmonix, MTV Games and Electronic Arts has announced their next block buster killer app: Rock Band 2. First, the most important feature is backwards compatible downloadable content. They’ve surpassed 15-million paid downloads, we want our content and we want to keep all the awesome songs for future games, else we might as well stop purchasing now, right?
The question remains, will we want to upgrade our instruments? They’re saying we’ll have “more variety of instrument choices than ever before with new and improved drum and guitar peripherals, enhanced functionality and innovative new designs – all fully compatible with the original Rock Band instruments.” Will the enhanced instruments really want to make us go out and buy them?
If these new instruments are highly desirable or add any new features to the game (or make newer features ‘easier’) then we may be persuaded to look into new hardware…yet with Guitar Hero World Tour we’re already pressured into considering another drum unit.
So confusing, but yet so much desired. I guess that’s the love hate relationship of a gamer with a passion and a, slight, addiction!
This week’s gaming podcast covers some news, history and a classic gaming flashback. We’ll be taking next week off, so this week is extra packed with content… okay, well, it’s normal. We’re looking at Breakout as our flashback and the MB Microvision in our gaming history. This weeks news includes:
Twittercraft – Twitter while in World of WarcraftThis week we’ve got two questions for ya, what console/hand-held system do you bring on vacations and do you go out and buy any games before you head on vacation?
Diskless Nintendo, I think this might be a great idea… if they moved to memory cards they can reduce the system profile while increase performance and capacity (Larger Cards give access to larger games). I think it also makes sense to expand their digital library to support all the older/legacy games and have them accessible in the console… especially if the enable you to access the digital version if you have a physical copy. As for video game movies… I do not think I have enjoyed any movies that have been based on a video game. That being said, I have enjoyed some of the Anime shows/movies which have turned into games or were released after the games. Lastly I thought I would share that I also bought the Hero’s Humble bundle but haven’t had a chance to play any of them yet. I am going to install them on my Surface tablet and see if I can get them working with touch. Wish me luck.