Jonah goes off on a virulent rant about NBA 2K20 and the decline of the series as a whole, while offering milder criticism of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. There’s no Gaming Flashbacks, but plenty of news.
The news items include:
Let us know what you think.
This week is just Jonah Falcon and Jordan Lund, but the podcast is double length as the Xbox One dominates the last part of the podcast. There’s also the Gaming Flashback of Bungie’s Oni.
This week’s news includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
Microsoft has announced they’ll be giving Xbox Live silver accounts access to play some multi-player cross-platform games for free until the fall update. Recently, Microsoft announced free online play with Games for Windows titles, effectively giving PC gamers “gold accounts” to play online.
Most people agree the move to give gold subscriptions to PC gamers was done because PC gamers don’t care to play Games for Windows games online if they have to pay for it. The culture of PC gaming is much different than console gaming on XBL, gamers expect the online experience at no cost; they’re already paying an ISP for network access, paying for a match-making system with a yearly subscription is not desired.
Console gamers don’t have a choice, buying the 360 experience arrives with simple to play games (no drivers, no installs) but limited online choices: pay or go away. Now, silver members will get a little taste of network play, along side PC gamers in the cross-platform Games for Windows titles.
“Supported cross-platform titles include Universe at War, Shadowrun, and Lost Planet: Colonies Edition.” (gamespot)
We question the intention here… is this as a good faith move or are they wetting people’s appitite for XBL so they’ll want to upgrade to gold in the fall? Or, maybe there are some logistical reasons to doing this in the Xbox Live infrastructure to prepare for upgrades where making it free solves a few of their internal upgrade paths and, as a side effect, gives gamers some games to play.
Of course, we’ve seen few people playing Shadowrun or Lost Planet lately. Maybe this will re-popularize a few older titles as well.
This week’s episode is 50% longer as the first 20 minutes or so are devoted to the reaction to Jim Sterling’s explosive review of Hellblade and his subsequent recanting later that day. This week has no Gaming Flashback or Gaming History, but there are six news items to make up for it.
The items include:
Let us know what you think.
