Episode 564: Sony’s Pricing Problem

This week’s episode talks about Sony having issues, and that’s not even taking into account their pulling out of a convention due to the coronavirus scare. This week’s Gaming Flashback looks at the classic dark puzzle platformer Limbo.

As for the news:

  • Sony breaks PS5 pricing tradition for Xbox Series X launch
  • Next in No Man’s Sky: an organic spaceship you can grow from an egg
  • Xbox Game Pass for PC will get Yakuza 0, Two Point Hospital, and more soon (from PC Gamer)

This week’s Question of the Week: “What is your favorite videogame commercial or trailer?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 485: Review BombingEpisode 485: Review Bombing

This week’s episode is unremarkable. Don’t expect any surprise guests or news, just a lot of chatting about comics and wandering way off the topic of video games.

The news items for the week are:

  • Valve implements methods to curtail Steam review bombing
  • Matsuda insists Deus Ex not being discontinued
  • Star Citizen releases new video, makes another $500K in a Day
  • Kamiya wants to work on Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe remakes

Let us know what you think.

Sony’s E3 Conference: Fairly ImpressiveSony’s E3 Conference: Fairly Impressive

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.

Episode 703: Shadow of WarEpisode 703: Shadow of War

This week, TJ finally decides to play Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and there is a debate on whether he should play Shadow of Mordor or just watch a Let’s Play of the game first.

The news includes:

  • Cities: Skylines 2 DLC has been delayed and weekly patches have come to an end
  • Warner Bros says Wonder Woman won’t be a live-service game
  • Knights of the Old Republic remake reportedly not in active development
  • Insomniac’s Wolverine reportedly due 2025

Let us know what you think.