Episode 419: Virtual Reality

This week’s episode is full of pop culture… well, most of it got sliced off as outtakes, but there’s still plenty of pop culture. What there is a lot of these days is virtual reality, and none of it even involves the Virtual Boy. Jonah, Scott and T.J. discuss some of the rumors going on as well.

The news this week includes:

  • Fallout 4’s Far Harbor will be bigger than any previous Bethesda expansion
  • Outer Rim DLC for Star Wars: Battlefront still having issues
  • Sony hints PlayStation VR may come to PC

Let us know what you think.

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This gaming podcast closes out the year of 2009, we’re going to put in our predictions for the year, we’re going to hear a few comments from listeners and flash back to a game that has yet to be (but is old enough to flash back): Duke Nukem Forever. You’ll also, finally, get the first impressions of Assassin’s Creed 2 and some game news including:

We’ll also ask for your predictions on next years gaming excitement. What are your predictions, in the game industry, for “twenty ten”?

Gaming Podcast Forums: LIVE!Gaming Podcast Forums: LIVE!

Looking for a place to leave podcast feedback and you don’t feel like firing off an e-mail? You can now login/register to gamingpodcast.net and post to our forums! We’ll be building forums for all styles of discussions if people start to use them, it’s an experiment, we’ll see how it goes.

You can chat about topics discussed in the podcast with us and suggest new topics we can speak about on future gaming podcast episodes. We’re also starting our own World of Warcraft podcast guild called Fallen Souls and we’re looking for new members.

We’re looking to open discussions on all genre’s of games, all styles of play and anything else gaming. If you’d like to setup an avatar, you can head over to gravatar.com and build an avatar associated with your login email address and it will appear on the site and in comments.

Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?

A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.

Jacobs says $100-million dollars would be needed to start competing against the giant subscription generator that is World of Warcraft. Although few developers are sitting on $100-million USD, it’s a bit more realistic an investment for a studio to scrape up compared to a billion bucks! A billion dollars is a scary number when you consider that’s the start of an investment that may, or may not, pay off in the end.

Kotick may not be using complete scare tactics, he may be working off experience when dealing with MMORPG’s. A startup MMO isn’t a cookie cutter system, there is a lot of development efforts, $100-million dollars worth, but MMO developers slip dates many times. When you start slipping your dates you’ll start burning more money and, before you know it, you’re a billion in the hole. Jacobs thinks $100-million will cover development costs and messing up, so a billion is still way over budget.

Perhaps this is a bit of a scare tactic, assuming a developer will fail and slip their dates isn’t really a great way to start quoting prices. However, shooting too low isn’t always the best method of building your development assessments. The end result, scream ONE BILLION and you may scare off any potential startup MMO developers.

Warhammer Online lead designer did mention one big barrier to entry: the need for “at least half a million subscribers to be successful.”

(Thanks, 1up)