Episode 464: EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II plans

Since the podcast recording last Wednesday had audio issues and the news was, frankly, boring, the crew decided to record a new 464th episode on Easter Sunday, after some more interesting stuff was announced near the end of the week. That, and Scott expresses his enthusiasm for Thimbleweed Park, the spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, using a SCUMM-like interface.

This week’s news items include:

  • Diving into Project Scorpio’s backwards compatibility, 4K, VR, and 1080p support
  • Nintendo discontinues the NES Classic Edition
  • It looks like Star Wars: Battlefront II will ditch the Season Pass

All that and some Listener Feedback.

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Episode 499: A Long DelayEpisode 499: A Long Delay

Yeah, we recorded this on April 2 and are just releasing this on April 12 — because during this time Jonah went to PAX East, then visited his mother in NYC, and things have calmed down about now. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the overly cute LittleBigPlanet… and to think it was a major topic of conversation in the early days of the podcast. How time has passed.

This week’s news items include:

  • You can play de_dust2 in Far Cry Arcade
  • No Man’s Sky coming to Xbox One later this year

You’d think that wouldn’t be enough news for 90 minutes, but that’s ok. We go off on tangents all the time.

EA Feels The 310 Million Dollar DaggerEA Feels The 310 Million Dollar Dagger

Halloween is a scary time of year, no less when you’re posting a $310 million net loss. EA CEO John Riccitiello sees “weakness” at retail in October and we’re betting this isn’t the end of the road of sorrow for game publishers around the globe.

Electronic Arts isn’t unfamiliar with bad times and we’re sure to see them make constant adjustments to their headcount, game releases and press as the economy goes into a bit of a slump. Although the game industry won’t see as big a hit as the financial market, everyone is going to watch their spending during slower economic times.

That slowness is a red flag for the mega-publisher, which says it’s “proactively making cost adjustments now.” One of those adjustments is the axing of some 600 EA employees across the globe. (Kotaku)

Last year Electronic Arts lost a “small” $195 million during the same time, not exactly a gold star on the financial records but it sure looks better than this loss. A few games may crumble under the economic pressures, Tiberium for example, but let us not forget the good times! EA posted some nice figures for Spore, Madden NFL 09, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

So, they mixed a few sequels with a few new franchise hits and gave gamers some pretty hot titles for the year. Of course, hot titles in our hand do not always translate to positive revenue in theirs.

Episode 563: Welcome to the CloudEpisode 563: Welcome to the Cloud

This week, the gang discuss the provocative article by Forbes about Microsoft ignoring Sony in favor of combating Google and Amazon in the cloud space — and how Sony is renting Microsoft’s servers. No Gaming Flashback this week, though.

The news includes:

  • Microsoft: Amazon and Google are ‘the main competitors going forward’
  • Stardew Valley creator is working on two new games
  • Capcom removes Denuvo DRM from Devil May Cry 5

Question of the Week: “What’s your favorite videogame trailer or advertisement?”