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.
This week we’re taking a stroll down memory lane of Deus Ex, hitting up some information about Warren Spector and crashing through some good game news including:
New Guitar Hero Game a “best of” compilation.Of course, we forgot our Question of the Week, so let’s ask it now: How many bad/buggy patches and content updates would you accept before you give up on the developer? Ton’s of great comments this week, hopefully you’ll remember to answer the question we forgot to ask in the show.
Also, check out the show if you’ve got a PS2 and want two volumes of Popcap’s casual games, as we’re looking to give them away.
The Steam Deck has been released, and TJ and Scott are just excited about it. They’re able to play indie games on a Switch-like device even though many of the same games on the Switch. Jonah already has Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and therefore already plays games with a controller on his cellphone.
This week’s news includes:
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Although PlayStation 3 is still third in worldwide sales, behind the Xbox 360 by about 5-million units, the PS3 community services now have as many online gamers as Xbox 360 says Sony. Sony posted on their blog saying, “with 14 million active accounts and 273 million pieces of content downloaded, we know that you’re thirsting for this digital entertainment.”
Although US sales of the 360 are killing the PS3, the community membership does give gamers a reason to get online with the PS3. Nobody wants to buy into a console that has very few active online games or an easy way to find friends (*cough* Wii). Having 14-million users helps them bridge the sales gap by building gamer confidence. Social networking is the new term; gamers want to socialize with each other online and with their consoles.
Microsoft recently announced their 14-million subscriber base and continue to update folks when they hit big milestones. The main difference, LIVE is a subscription system — those 14-million gamers are also paying for the service (we’re not sure if silver memberships count in that figure) and this means income for Microsoft while Sony does their service for free.
Although Microsoft is making money on their service, no doubt Sony will bypass their total membership because it has no cost barriers to play. The biggest cost barrier to get on Sony’s network is the PS3 itself and many gamers hold out for price drops which aren’t coming anytime soon (so says Sony). However, building a larger community on a free network allows Sony to siphon gamers to buy downloadable content, games, music, movies and all the goodies that go with these services.
It seems a better idea to triple your audience with a free service knowing a large amount of “hardcore gamers” attach themselves to the easy to buy content on said service. So, is it better to make US $50.00 a year on half the population or give triple that population an opportunity to spend more money on content?
“Thanks to all of you, PS3’s momentum is stronger than ever. There are nearly 17 million PS3 systems around the world, and in the United States, PS3 hardware sales are up nearly 100 percent from where we were at this time last year. Software sales have tripled from a year ago. Yes, we’re proud about everything we’ve accomplished, and we’re even more psyched about where we’re going with our holiday software lineup” (playstation.com)
Eventually gamers may have access to Sony’s Home project, which could raise the community figures and give Xbox 360 something less to brag about. Although, we’re sure Sony would rather be boasting “number one” console again, at least they’ve finally got a win on their side because 14-million users is only the beginning for them.
Plus, it’s hard to argue free.
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.