2019 is slowly coming to a close, and the guys start wondering about what awaits in 2020, as some truly exciting titles await.
This week’s news items include:
Let us know what you think.
Unfortunately, Skype decided that since Jonah’s webcam was connected, he wanted to use the webcam’s mic instead of the actual mic Jonah uses, making it sound like he’s in the next room talking to the others. It’s unfortunate, since this was the 350th episode of the Videogame Roundtable and longtime co-host Paul Nowak took the time from his busy schedule to join in the landmark episode.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
When I was a little boy gamer I would spend a bit of my allowance on Electronic Gaming Monthly a great little gaming magazine. Unfortunately, young gamers will never understand what the industry was like twenty years ago. In a time before the Internet, the only place to get gaming news for a young kid was a glossy magazine. Today, EGM closes its doors and we’re losing a historic piece of gaming history.
Granted, there were other glossy magazines prized by young boys too, but we were old enough to purchase Electronic Gaming Monthly, now known as EGM by the hip and cool. Although EGM was founded in 1989, many adults between the age of 29 and 35 probably spent their youth flipping through the pages reading the reviews and editorials.
The days of the magazine are drawing to an end for many industries, with video game websites covering everything from truly hardcore to highly niche, we all demand our information as soon as possible. If a company like Ziff Davis is selling its properties, we want to know the minute it is announced, when 1UP is purchased by UGO we want to know the minute the ink dries. Why? Because we can.
January 2009 marks the last issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. After Hearst Corporation (owner of UGO) purchased 1UP from Ziff Davis it was announced that EGM would be seeing its last issue. Sure, there was a chance this would occur without the acquisition as well but the sadness wouldn’t be any different. We’re sure the staff will find a great home writing for another publication or in the online world, but it is sad just the same.
Along with the sad news of EGM closing, we’ve heard a number of folks at 1UP have also been effected by Hearst Corporations purchase of 1UP which has many people out of a job during tough economic times. There has been rumor the 1UP podcasts being ditched as well, but we have heard nothing official yet (please comment with official stories if you hear).
Of course, 1UP is “officially” rejoicing at the news but we know this is part of the “smoke and mirrors” that is an acquisition. A few, now former, 1UP folks have been using twitter and game forums to voice their own “opinions” of the purchase.
This is a rough economic time for many people, printed magazines, online publications and others. The only shining light is knowing many of these individuals will find new places to call home or start brand new online publications to compete against their old company. Talent will not go restricted, they will no doubt group together to form new aged publications to show off why the big boys are flailing in the dark.
We wish them all well in their efforts to find success.
We’re all used to Sony falling on their face at E3 in the last few years, but, this year, things were different. They’re information was delivered well, they had a great presentation medium using Little Big Planet‘s game engine as a presentation platform over the standard PowerPoint slides and everything went smoothly.
The format for displaying their facts, figures and sales numbers was well played. Nobody wants to sit in front of a chart and listen to an executive blab on about what they did and where they’re going. But, when you add some Little Big Planet flair, such as having the graphs built within their game engine and Sack Boy hopping around on the statistics things smooth over well.
I was confused on why they chose to display the Little Big Planet graphic engine followed by Resistance 2 and then taper into talk about the PlayStation 2 with game previews. It seems more appropriate to bring in the PlayStation 2 product line first, then blow the crowd away with the current generation graphics. Instead, we were awed by the epic Resistance 2 graphics and then presented with old generation stale game engines… silly.
They went on to show off the wide array of PSP games arriving and a little trailer for Resistance Retribution for the PSP. The game system is definitely more mature than their DS competitor but seems to have a bit less sales momentum.
Overall, Sony did one right by talking about their three tiered solution to gaming instead of focusing too much on a single system. PlayStation 3 numbers are good but not mind boggling (like Wii) and their PSP product is doing much better than it used to and the PlayStation 2 numbers are high but falling compared to last year (as would be expected).
By focusing on the full suite of products they’ve put their eggs into many baskets rather than rely on their bleeding edge flagship product which still needs time to grow.
Well done Sony.
