TJ announces his nuptials the previous week, finally marrying his live-in girlfriend of 10 years. All that, and many parables that had to be cut from the podcast lest it last 90 minutes.
That said, there’s plenty of news this week:
Let us know if you spent $50,000 on a virtual spaceship.
When you’ve had a bit too much to drink, there are two choices: move on to tequila shots or… Mario Party for the Wii! Mario Party is amazingly fun when you’ve had a few too many drinks while sober it’s mearly “meh.”
Now, Ubisoft is trying to capture the drinking demographic, or more appropriately, the party crowd. The goal is to create a mini-game set created for partying and having fun with your Nintendo console. Enter, Play Zone, a new mini-game collection for the Wii.
Do we need yet more mini-game collections for the Wii?
“With our new Play Zone party titles, the Wii gamers who like to spend time with friends and family will have fun with the Wii through innovative and involving mini-games,” said John Parkes, Ubisoft’s EMEA marketing director. (next-gen)
Again, more “innovative mini-games” in our future? Ubisoft knows how to make a quick buck on casual games, no doubt, with their Petz franchise doing a killing for very simplistic games (which my daughter finds extremely fun).
The idea of more mini-games is slightly cringing but we do so enjoy a drunk game of Mario Party… maybe this is a good move.
This weeks gaming podcast includes a bit about a popular gaming podcast: Link. We also touch on Mercs, in our gaming flashback and tackle a bunch of news articles:
EA Committed to taking risks in 2009This week we’re answering a few listener questions, tackling the question about what you drink when pulling an all-nighter game-a-thon and asking a few new questions such as, do you like horror films and/or horror games?
We also review Pudge, for the iphone/ipod touch.
The success of the Nintendo console, the Wii, has proven to change the industry in many new and creative ways including reinvigorating slow product sales at Toys R Us. “The company went from a loss of $42 million at the same time last year to a profit of $13 million for the three months ended August 2nd,” says Gamasutra who spoke with CEO Gerald Storch.
Revenue was up 6.3%, in part, thanks to the Nintendo and its hot moving Wii and Wii Fit products. While Nintendo struggles to supply enough units for the strong demand, Toys R Us has no problem emptying their stores of any hardware they receive.
Months after the Wii launch we witnessed parents waiting in lines before the store opens just to see if they had Wii’s arrive for the opening. Although we’re sure it was a hassle to answer the phones with the typical response, “no, we’ve got no Wii’s in stock,” the long term plan has proven successful.
Have you finally managed to get yourself a Wii? Did you pick it up at Toys R Us?
Congratulations TJ!