Episode 446: Free-For-All Edition

This week’s edition is a little different, in that there’s no set format, just a roundtable discussion of the past week’s events. TJ raves about Owl Boy, Jonah talks about N7 Day and the new Mass Effect: Andromeda revelations, and everyone on the podcast discusses how games have really been a disappointment this year and not much is coming. Oh, and a $99 3DS coming for Black Friday.

Let us know what you think.

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Episode 325: Civilized PodcastEpisode 325: Civilized Podcast

This week’s podcast has Dan Quick filling in for an ailing Jordan Lund, while Civilization V inevitably comes up in conversation with the Polycast host with Jonah Falcon. There’s no Gaming History or Gaming Flashback, but tons of news items.

The news includes:

  • Andrew Wilson named Electronic Arts CEO
  • PlayStation Vita TV announced
  • Sega buys Atlus for 14 billion yen
  • Star Trek video game “big disappointment” to J.J. Abrams
  • Chair on Shadow Complex 2: Fans “don’t want it more than we do”
  • Steam adopts Xbox One’s former family sharing program
  • Diablo III auction house closing in March 2014

There’s also some Listener Feedback from the T-shirt winning contestant.

End of 100 Million Dollar Games?End of 100 Million Dollar Games?

Gigaom had a great writeup about how Grand Theft Auto IV marks the end of “next generation” as we know it, stating, in more words or less, the game is a failure. GTA: San Andreas sold 21.5 million copies during its time on the shelf while GTA IV has sold roughly 9 million copies as of June 7th.

Granted, the game is still on the shelves and will still get sales, but the mass of “hardcore gamers” have had their fill and either purchased it or will not. The end result? A huge tapering of sales numbers for the graphically impressive game. Take-Two spent USD $100 million to develop the game which had great opening sales records but has gone down drastically since.

Imagine the title gains them USD $30.00 per sale in profit (considering distributors get the game for roughly USD $45 to $48.00 USD), taking into account shipping of the product, marketing and all the materials that go into producing a copy, they’d have to sell a large quanity of game titles to break even, which I think they have done.

Nobody is in this industry to break even. A block buster title should make block buster profits, right? Else, why bother to spend the 100-million when a Wii title can double or triple the profits with six months of development?

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