Episode 516: More Telltale News

The massacre continues at Telltale Games, and the crew discuss the ramifications in this episode. TJ complains about the new Skype incoming call music, and the Gaming Flashback this week is the short-lived 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia. There’s also a new Gaming History, discussing an infamous incident in World of Warcraft back in 2005.

This week’s news includes:

  • Telltale Games has seemingly laid off its remaining staff
  • Nintendo to launch updated Switch next year
  • Overcooked! 2 gets Sunny Island DLC available now

All this and Listener Feedback. Let us know what you think of the Telltale closure.

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Episode 524: Goodbye, 2018!Episode 524: Goodbye, 2018!

This is the last podcast of 2018, and the next episode will be our Games of the Year announcement. Until then, we snark at Pewdiepie, and check some of the news ending the year.

This week’s news includes:

  • Steam Xbox One cross-play tools hinted
  • Americans can get Assassin’s Creed Odyssey free from Google
  • Discord Store to offer developers 90 percent of game revenues
  • Inca announced for Civilization VI: Gathering Storm

Let us know what your Game of the Year is.

Microsoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 ValueMicrosoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 Value

Rumors float around the Internet questioning when Microsoft will ship a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 or add-on device like they did with the, now failed, HD-DVD. At CES 09 Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, says this request is “way down the list.”

Mr. Bach had some great selling points as to why a Blu-ray player has little value in the world of Xbox 360. The primary reason, of course, being the Xbox 360 developers cannot take advantage of Blu-ray as a development platform for games. This was the price Sony, or the consumer, paid to own a PlayStation 3 since all games are printed on the media and are, in effect, Blu-ray “capable.”

We say capable because not all (any?) PlayStation 3 games currently make full use of the Blu-ray media. Many games will reprint the game on the media for optimization purposes, fill the game with international voice overs for all countries or, otherwise, stuff the media with something that will serve a useful purpose. Sony has near-future-proofed their device by giving game developers years of growth in terms of utilizing the Blu-ray capacity.

Microsoft chose to take the smaller old-style DVD format for games and media. Adding the HD-DVD didn’t add a large deal of risk because, as we saw, they can discontinue the model and not change their core gaming demographic. We still laughed a bit at them, but that was where it ended. Bach also said that it’s not really a great economic time to push a new 360 SKU on potential customers with additional cost just for Blu-ray movies playback.

They could add Blu-ray game development support as well but that would just alienate the “28 million Xboxes” they have already shipped.

“OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.” (gamespot)

Of course, the first thing that came to our mind was “well, you did it for HD-DVD, how is Blu-ray different?” The key areas we can think of really come down to Blu-ray is a Sony technology and they are a direct competitor and, to top it off, HD-DVD allowed them to fight against the PS3 at the media level of the industry. They minimized the risk by making the product a secondary add-on device and, if HD-DVD had won, they’d have the winning format already under production (still not for games).

It seems Microsoft has changed their battle plans a little. They started out talking up the media aspects of the 360, using Media Center, renting movies and TV shows and had the HD-DVD as a subproduct. Today, they’re investing in Netflix for media and everything else favors the games.

Which is fine, we like games.

Episode 726: Directly NintendoEpisode 726: Directly Nintendo

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This week is Nintendo’s turn at their showcase. But you know what? There’s even more to talk about. The Beyond Good and Evil remaster showcased, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection also getting remastered, the banana clicking game now 9th most popular of all time on Steam, Embracer Group shuts down Pieces Interactive, Life is Strange: Double Exposure ‘will respect both endings’ to original game, FromSoftware warns new Elden Ring Steam Deck bug making game unresponsive, and Microsoft will be at this year’s Gamescom.

The other news includes:

  • Sims-like rival Life by You has been canceled after indefinite delay

We also have listener feedback. Let us know what you think.

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