Paul returns to the show to drown his sorrows in the discontinuation of a game series he loved, and the podcast ran so long it has to be split into two parts.
The first half of this podcast includes the following news items:
Stay tuned for Part 2.
Episode 425: Paul’s Return Part 1
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Gaming Podcast 165: Static ElectricityGaming Podcast 165: Static Electricity
This weeks gaming podcast, we’re flashing back to Bikini Karate Babes. We’re looking at the history of David Crane, or trying to get through it while getting distracted by a bunch of banter. The gaming news this week includes:
- Sony’s Motion controller due out this fall
- Pandemic and Ensemble Studios take blame for closures
- Sony losing another exclusive developer, possibly (rumor)
- More DS 2 rumors surface
This weeks question of the week is pretty simple: What game from your childhood do you recall loving the most–life changing. Don’t go watch any video’s, take it from your memory.
DRM Free Spore Steams Forward!DRM Free Spore Steams Forward!
Gamers get upset when developers sneak ugly hacks onto their computers when they just want to play video games. Although gamers really only revolt when they know their being exploited, Spore is a fine example of how not to lock down a video game. Using SecuROM was a bad decision on the part of Electronic Arts, no matter what their PR spin tries to tell us.
Imagine a world of DRM free spore and you may be imagining reality using the Valve’s Steam software download architecture.
“The moderator specifically mentioned Spore but it’s possible this extends to other EA games that used SecuROM as well (like Mass Effect). If a game on Steam uses third-party DRM, it’s supposed to be mentioned on the product page.” (cinemablend)
We’ve been complaining about the Spore DRM for month snow on the gaming podcast, perhaps we’ll have to shut our mouths soon enough.
(Thanks, GameStooge)
Sony’s Software Development Beta ProjectsSony’s Software Development Beta Projects
It seems we’ve seen a lot of great concepts from Sony for their PlayStation 3 product line but very little has managed to hit the software virtual shelves. We’ve heard of Sony’s Afrika for the PS3 back at E3 in 2006 and we’re looking at it for 2008’s holiday lineup.
We’ve heard about Sony Home for years as well, but that’s now in some type of beta. It was supposed to be an open beta but that didn’t seem to work out and now it’s closed beta only. Recently they pushed out a firmware update that bricked PlayStation 3 consoles or at least screwed up many of them in varying levels.
Are they just really bad at software development and road map predictions? As a hardware development company they’ve put out some hardcore products, stone cold stable in terms of design and efficiency from the Walk Man to the PS3. Their products are practical in design, for the most part, fairly pretty, stable and function as designed. Yet they come up short on software time and time again.
One of the contributors at 2old2play had some things to say about Sony’s development efforts:
“Having worked at Sony as a Creative Designer two years ago, it doesn’t surprise me that they have still yet to release Home. While there, I was working on their Station Launcher application which was supposed to be released in late 2006. However, the Launcher app is still only in Beta to this day.” (2old2play.com)
In many ways their the anti-Microsoft in their approach and commitments. While Microsoft ships hardware that has what must be a 60% failure rate Sony ships hardware which works fairly well. On the flip side, Microsoft publishes a large quantity of software for all their products and has done very well in the business. Nobody can say it’s 100% perfect but it tends to get better with age or, at least, grow on you.