This podcast ran short, so to make sure it ran at least an hour, the guys ramble about the games that are coming soon. It’s good padding, but still padding.
Enjoy!
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
Aside from cardboard products by Nintendo, there wasn’t much to talk about this week, thanks to the January slog. However, the guys did play games and there was some news to talk about.
This week’s headlines include:
All this and Listener Feedback, too.
Just last week in our gaming podcast we were talking about how Gears of War 2 wasn’t going to make a PC debut because it has a bit of a problem with piracy. We were afraid this movement was going to cause game developers and publishers to stick with console’s “big can of DRM” over the PC for many future releases.
Turns out, Fallout 3 was stolen before it was announced as finished and has begun to show up on torrents around the Internet. This, of course, has lead folks to believe the leak took place at the manufacturing plant given the obvious circumstances behind the event. Sure, the title could have been leaked at the developers studio, but who would want to cause their products sales to suffer? Perhaps a hacker broke into the studio and stole the raw images?
There are plenty of possibilities, but the fact of the matter is this is the “DRM” console version of the game. It has been stolen and downloaded by thousands of people who are going to actually take the time to make it work on their ‘tweaked’ console. Just when we said “it’s too hard to hack the Xbox 360 and its games,” some pirate comes out and does it!
While the pirates set sea with the glorious booty that is Fallout 3, Bethesda’s staying hush about the incident for now. In odd timing, Ubisoft came out, prior to this event, talking in respect to Tom Clancy EndWar saying:
“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two.” (gamasutra)
Perhaps, the pirates want to bring some attention to the console market in terms of piracy so developers continue to produce PC titles? If nobody is safe, there will be no one safe-haven console to run to when pirates are stealing “potential sales.”
Most folks in the game industry are already writing off E3 as an actual event to be attending. Even Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is calling it “virtually useless” for both retail and investors. The writing is on the wall and the reasons are obvious.
Publishers and developers didn’t want to invest the millions of dollars to make E3 a glamour show of epic proportions anymore. The lights, camera and action are all what the industry is about; the hype wagon in full steam. Gamers eat up the hype, bloggers and journalist rely on the hype and action to build readership and keep them coming back for more and retail uses it to gauge new releases and get a grip of the future.
Without the entertainment value of E3 nobody seems to care anymore. Large scale gaming entertainment is reflected in the large scale events and, at the end of the day, we want our conferences and shows to reflect the emotion and exciting of the industry.
“E3 had much more of an impact when it was a show,” comments IGN.com vice president of games content Tal Blevins. “The video game industry is about fun and entertainment, and we should have a show that reflects it.” (gamasutra)
Everyone is sad to see the state of E3, it’s like a cancer patient waiting for their final diagnosis. It’s unfortunate, it’s going to get worse and life will go on without it. In its wake, new shows will crop up while old shows increase in audience, excitement, intensity and cost.
As one show begins to fade others will grow to replace it and developers will yet again find themselves spending millions of dollars to be the best of show.
Hi guys.
Sorry for not leaving a comment on the last episodes (the one you read in this episode was months ago ^^), i was very busy the last weeks with business stuff and some personal issues. Anyway, thanks as always for the episodes and your effort you are putting in to each episode. I respect that very much!
Regarding the topics in this episode: I did not play Civ since …. i think Civ 3? The game is good, but its taking so much time …. sadly i dont have that much time 🙁
I played Life is strange 2, God of War (the old ones because i want to play though all of them before i play the actual one), Overwatch, Borderlands 1 (never played any Borderlands before) Hearthstone and a lot of Magic The Gathering Arena. If my friends are online, we like to play some Apex and/or Division 2 as well. I want to start Blood Bowl in the upcoming days, because i played the Board Game .. 20 years ago 🙂 I also pledged for “Ant Stream”, the retro streaming platform (will be live for early access on may 28th) … i hope this will be good 🙂 Did you heard of it ? What do you think of pledging video games / pc Games in general ?
Regarding the Apex update: the Havoc is ONLY playable with the turbo Charger .. without that it is absolute unplayable 🙂
Did you heard of Splitgate- Arena Warfare? This seems to be a new Arena Shooter which combines Halo and Portal (i think Jonah mentioned it in a youtube review of upcoming games from E3?) Its for free at the moment on steam 🙂
Regarding the backwards compability on PS5: this would be awesome! i would pay very much money for a ps5 which plays ps1,2,3 and 4 (and 5 of course) games. The only problem will be the chip for PS3 afaik.
Red Dead Online? I only see the promotions / advertisments all the time on twitch, but have no intention to play it 🙂
WoW: i really love this game, loved it in the beginning and still love it … problem is, that my friends are not playing it anymore …. and playing a MMORPG on your own is not that fun 🙁 I played the last expansion (as far as possible without a raid / group) and it was great gain. I listen to the music very often and like to see the cut scenes and updates. For sure the vanilla version was harder (in my opinion) but that was great … 40 people in a raid .. defeating Raganros for the first time … what an amazing feeling, so much emotions, better then the first time s** 🙂
First question of the week: The last game which has been released and i did not noticed it was Hollow Knight. I noticed it 1 year (or 2?) later and it so awesome, that i was wondering, i did not notice when it came out 🙂
Second question of the week: I think the game i will still play in 20 years or will not age is Magic The Gathering. But its a card game, so i dont know if this is a “real” game regarding to your question 🙂 If i had to pick a second game, it would be sth like WoW .. i started playing it in 2004 .. thats already 15 years ago 🙂 or one of the so called retro games, like Musha Aleste, Mushihemasama or any of this bullet hell shooters for the 16 and 32 Bit consoles. I still love to play them today 🙂
Thats all for this one. Sorry for this big and long one, i hope that´s ok 🙂
When i will be in the U.S. the next time, i will invite you guys for dinner to thank you for all your work you put into this podcast. Thanks for that!
Greetings,
Ralf