Episode 510: Red Dead Surprise

This week’s episode didn’t initially have a Gaming Flashback, but the crew accidentally started one with 2010’s Red Dead Redemption, which shouldn’t be a flashback since it fails the “10 Year Rule”, but it was so fun to talk about, it became one. They also found some interesting stuff in a thin-news week, which is the usual for Summer.

The news includes:

  • Valve adds temporary fix for fake item scams on Steam
  • Halo devs not working on Battle Royale mode for Infinite
  • Nintendo Switch sales near 20m, down slightly on last year
  • Playground Games staffs up for the rumored Fable reboot

Let us know what you think.

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Gaming Podcast 211: Short and SweetGaming Podcast 211: Short and Sweet

This week we had to cut some segments short due to some work we’re doing on our house that had us tied up. We’re just doing up some news this week and community feedback. This weeks news includes:

And, here is the story about The Boy Who Stole Half-Life II. Here is our Question of the Week: Will all MMOs eventually follow a free-to-play model?

Distributed Game Development Using ContractorsDistributed Game Development Using Contractors

Gamers around the world have noticed a large trend in the video game industry in the last 15 years, massive growth with massive projects and unbelievable costs, goals and sales. We’ve seen the impossible become achievable in epic projects like World of Warcraft and huge sales figures from Halo 3 but we’ve also seen game titles fall down in a burning wreck.

Each studio tries to beat the next studio with crisp realistic graphics, real time physics engines, life-like explosions all with huge costs. Does it all sound familiar? If you’re a movie buff you’ve probably seen movie studios cranking out the same style of movie, high computer graphic effects with talented high priced actors making longer and longer films.

The only big difference? A game studio hires most of their talent for full time positions and then has to figure out what to do with them when the project ends. Perhaps this explains Microsoft’s effort to remove game studios like Ensemble, Bungie and FASA, it’s all too much to handle when a high budget project ships and time frees up in the studio.

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The Beatle’s Change Wii Price Point, Rock Band StyleThe Beatle’s Change Wii Price Point, Rock Band Style

By now everyone is used to paying more for Rock Band than meets the eye. The game disc is usually packed in several bundles for guitars, drums and, of course, stand alone. With The Beatles: Rock Band, MTV Games plans to release one product SKU, a game only disc. That game only disc, on the Wii is going to cost the same as other consoles: $59.99.

beatlesYou remember when Wii games were $49.99 and everyone made titles that hit this price point or lower? MTV isn’t going to stick to this standard, regardless of “last gen graphics” because you’ll buy it anyway, right? Rock Band is one of those games that has hit huge strides in the market over the last few years as people buy big plastic instruments to rock their house.

Now we’re going to see if those same people willing to pay $10.00 more than normal in order to play The Beatles songs. The Wii has a large audience of gamers but they’re the style of gamer that wants a good value for their product, after all, the Wii is cheaper than every other console and the games probably should match its differences compared to games for the other consoles.

This is an interesting decision, as the market plunges into despair MTV gouges games for $10.00 more because “The Beatles” happens to be in the title. Are you going to pay more for the Beatles? Not us.

(Thanks, 1up)