The gang discusses the just-released Captain America: Civil War as well as mention the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse film, but they also do get into this week’s news, which is heavy on the Nintendo side.
The news includes:
This week’s Question of the Week is “What era war would you like to see in a shooter?”
Is Blu-ray dead? Tech Sites around the Net are calling it a “death spiral” and we’re now looking at the downfall of the winning high definition format. Many non-PS3 Blu-ray players are still in the USD $200.00 range, a bit high for mass market adopters, and people aren’t planning to run out and buy a Blu-Ray player in our economic slump.
What’s the market share of the Blu-ray product? Four Percent. Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 have a lot of battle scares after the fight with HD-DVD to “win” the format war. In the end, Sony won the battle but the war was not with the HD-DVD format, it’s with the average Joe consumer.
Does this effect the PlayStation 3? One of the up sells of the PlayStation 3 was the Blu-ray capabilities, it games and it’s an entertainment device all-in-one. It’s a great deal right?
“The advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.” (zdnet)
The obstacles against the Blu-ray format are huge, especially with NetFlix coming to the Xbox 360, high definition download options and licensing costs on the Blu-ray to movie creators. Blu-ray won’t die in this generation of PlayStation 3 consoles but many folks, including Apple, are pausing to see if it has any chance at all to break into the industry.
Four percent just isn’t enough to inpsire confidence.
Nintendo has announced the continuation in a series that started in 1984 known as Punch-Out!! for the Wii. Once upon a time we all got to pop coins into Punch-Out!!, later we were able to power on our NES and play Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! or, if you’re younger, the version of Punch-Out!! with Mr. Dream (since Tyson’s contract expired with Nintendo and he wasn’t the champion anymore).
At Nintendo’s press conference today they announced Punch-Out, Another Code, Dynasty Warriors and Sins & Punishment 2. Although Dynasty Warriors sounds like it might simply rock on the Wii, Punch-Out really digs down into the history of Nintendo and brings back one of the older franchises.
Perhaps Nintendo is hoping Punch-Out will provide proof they’re serious about the franchise titles on the Wii console. Gamers have been skeptical considering they’re getting one (real) Mario and one Zelda game every few years. Many of us buy Nintendo for their popular mascots and to relive some of the nostalgia of being a kid. Punch-Out may definitely bring back some Nostalgia.
Hopefully, Punch-Out stays true to the original series and is designed to utilize the Wii controller better than Wii Sports Boxing.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
This week we had a huge gaming podcast but we managed to get it all down to 60 minutes of content but it wasn’t easy. We’re digging through some old history, Yoshi’s Story is our gaming flashback and we covered gaming history on The Biography of Yoshi. This weeks news includes:
No new Rock Band in 2009This weeks soap box segment, we’re looking at game audio and which music made the game experience, what game music we best remember. What’s the theme music you remember best?
Also, checkout the TFC information for DRM technologies and comment.
Interview at Casual Gamer Chick with SomaTone.
Here are some reminders!
