Episode 544: Kickstarter Fraud

This podcast deals with the shady dealings of a Kickstarter — no Gaming Flashback this week though.

The news includes:

  • An ambitious GTA Online-alike won’t be allowed to finish its Kickstarter campaign
  • Tetris Effect headed to PC next week via Epic Games Store
  • Joy-Con drift is becoming a real problem on the Switch

Let us know what you think.

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End of 100 Million Dollar Games?End of 100 Million Dollar Games?

Gigaom had a great writeup about how Grand Theft Auto IV marks the end of “next generation” as we know it, stating, in more words or less, the game is a failure. GTA: San Andreas sold 21.5 million copies during its time on the shelf while GTA IV has sold roughly 9 million copies as of June 7th.

Granted, the game is still on the shelves and will still get sales, but the mass of “hardcore gamers” have had their fill and either purchased it or will not. The end result? A huge tapering of sales numbers for the graphically impressive game. Take-Two spent USD $100 million to develop the game which had great opening sales records but has gone down drastically since.

Imagine the title gains them USD $30.00 per sale in profit (considering distributors get the game for roughly USD $45 to $48.00 USD), taking into account shipping of the product, marketing and all the materials that go into producing a copy, they’d have to sell a large quanity of game titles to break even, which I think they have done.

Nobody is in this industry to break even. A block buster title should make block buster profits, right? Else, why bother to spend the 100-million when a Wii title can double or triple the profits with six months of development?

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Episode 265: See You After E3Episode 265: See You After E3

This episode is a little late due to the holiday, but at least it’ll give everyone something to listen to when there’s no episode next week due to Jonah Falcon and Paul S. Nowak heading to E3.

In the meantime, the gang covers the following news:

  • THQ: “Linear is not a dirty word for an FPS”
  • Pachter decries on-disc DLC as “just plain greed”
  • Crysis 2 returns to Steam
  • The Old Republic still has one of the biggest dev teams in industry

Along with the usual Reader Feedback, the crew this time asks the readers to ask some questions, instead of the other way around. Let us know what you want to know.

Episode 421: Pursuit of HappinessEpisode 421: Pursuit of Happiness

This week’s episode morphs from a discussion about abusive workplace practices to pharmaceutical company practices. Otherwise, it’s just a discussion about the games people play and the people who play them. Also, a bunch of pop culture discussion.

This week’s news includes:

  • GameStop to launch video game publishing division
  • Sources leak potential Nintendo NX and controller specs online
  • Nintendo’s cloud-like patent approved
  • Ark: Survival Evolved lawsuit settled

The Question of the Week, “What games are you looking forward to this coming Summer?”