Episode 439: Audio Problems

This week’s episode has some bad audio thanks to a quick replacement mic being used to record the episode, causing a hiss. This is probably the reason the show is short-ish, coming in well under an hour.

This week’s episode includes the following news:

  • Miyazaki gives clear answers on the future of Dark Souls, Armored Core
  • Sony exec criticizes Hello Games’ marketing for No Man’s Sky
  • Blizzard is moving away from the ‘Battle.net’ name
  • Pokémon chief says Nintendo’s NX is both handheld and console, you should totally look into how tiktok marketing works, see here for more

All this and Listener Feedback. This week’s Question of the Week: “What is or was your favorite handheld console game (not mobile)?”

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Imagine we told you the story of a game where you hack things up over and over and over and over by clicking the mouse to gain items. These items allow you to go into harder areas of a dungeon and hack things up over and over again. Would you buy into it? Probably not.

Yet Diablo, since its inception, has fascinated gamers with the fundamental goals of hacking and slashing your way to a hellish beast in hopes to hack and slash him as well. It does, however, have a firm storyline which has gotten better with age and usually marvels gamers with graphic advancements set to blow the mind.

Diablo II had some nice graphics, but they were not mind blowing and earth shattering but the game continued to be fun to play. So fun, some gamers continue to play Diablo II even today, grinding out armor and weapons. What’s the fascination?

Blizzard Entertainment seems to be born on the wind of success, each title pulling more gaming headlines than the last. Diablo III has taken over gaming RSS feeds, headline news and has presented itself on social media sites like it was the second coming (perhaps, just the opposite?)

Diablo 3, graphically, and functionally, seems to highly exceed the levels it set with the last two titles. Destructible environments being one of the best additions to the franchise, along with new classes, weapons and enemies.

The core of the game, based on the gameplay footage, is fundamentally the same: beat baddies in excess and capture cool items. Blizzard has mastered the “grind” for items and the repeated quest plots in all of its title, especially World of Warcraft, but they’ve done it in an addicting manner. We know its repeatative yet we desire to continue to play. Work of genius.

How much Diablo 3 can a single person play before growing bored? For most, boredom is quite the opposite of the hack and slash experience, choosing to sit down with their Fritos and Soda and waste away the days.

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Since the release of Peggle on February 2007, gamers around the world have caught on to the addictive casual game. Now those that didn’t download Peggle on Steam, Popcap.com or other electronic download site can buy at packed boxed version in retail outlets!

Peggle hits retail stores and the world will never be the same! You can download it for your ipod, on your PC and on your Macintosh but never before could you purchase it in a local store. Although, it seems, boxed casual games are the rarity, not the norm, the more outlets a developer like PopCap gets the better.

MSNBC listed Peggle in the top five most addicting games of all times, PC gamers couldn’t get enough and, eventually, Xbox Live gamers will have that same experience. If you’ve never played Peggle I suggest you run out and buy it when it arrives in retail stores… or just buy it online the way you could do for the last year and some change…

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Will Sony Reduce Prices and Heat with 45nm Chips?Will Sony Reduce Prices and Heat with 45nm Chips?

Reportedly we’re going to see smaller 45 nanometer cell processors in 2009 which leads to similar cost savings as we saw in the Xbox 360 hardware. Cost savings appear on the manufacturing side, of course, along with less power consumed by the processor leading to less heat generated by the console.

The Xbox 360 was able to benefit from chip reduction when for stability and overall heat issues, although the stability is still out for debate at the moment. The concept is fairly simple to understand; heat causes problems in closed systems with few fans and a high degree of complex components. Reduce the heat means reducing the overall need to cool and get air flow into the hot little box.

Console hardware is owned by a broad audience, not all of which understand technology and its ability to boil an egg. Consumers toss consoles and their power supplies in closed cases within their entertainment system and restrict air flow further. Any reduction in heat is a good thing for the console developer.

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