Episode 241: Air Quotes

This week features a long podcast, as there’s a ton of news to report. Jonah tries air quotes on a pure audio podcast, while Paul refuses to believe The Legend of Zelda: Skyword Sword failed to hit the top 10 in software sales.

In addition, the Gaming Flashback checks out the JRPG Ys.

This week’s news includes:

  • Ubisoft polling gamers for next Assassin’s Creed setting
  • Electronic Arts bans a user for saying “badass”
  • Newell: Piracy is “almost always a service problem” and not price, DRM agitates
  • Christwire makes mock petition asking Pres. Obama ban Skyrim
  • Holiday shopping madness sees woman pepper spraying for 360
  • Microsoft refunds victims of Marketplace phishing scam

All this, and a bunch of reader feedback, as well as the Question of the Week: “Did you buy videogames as holiday gifts for friends and family?” Let us know.

0 thoughts on “Episode 241: Air Quotes”

  1. @Ubisoft polling gamers for next Assassin’s Creed setting: I would love it if they used multiple settings for Assassin’s Creed 3.

    @Newell: Piracy is “almost always a service problem” and not price, DRM agitates: I agree with him completely, even though I think game prices are a little bit steep for me at my age.

    @Christwire makes mock petition asking Pres. Obama ban Skyrim: Trolls will be trolls. This is just silly and it’s sad that it even got any attention.

    @Microsoft refunds victims of Marketplace phishing scam: I’m really pleased that they seem to be taking the Valve route, to be nice to the customers instead of treating them like insignificant numbers.

    @QOTW: I won’t buy holiday gifts for anyone. Period.

  2. @”Badass”: Are you kidding me? This looks to me like a broken forum filter. And why oh why do they still use a single database for forum band AND account bans?

    @Piracy is “almost always a service problem”:
    Yes and no. Yes, a bad service will lead to higher piracy rate. Still, 60 USD is too high for Romania , so price-point triggered piracy still exists, at least in my country.

    And Newel is not entirely honest there: when launching in Russia, besides doing it at the same time with the rest of the world, they also reduce the price of the games: around 20 USD versus 60 USD in the rest of the world.

    @mock petition asking Pres. Obama ban Skyrim:
    Paul, they made you read this because the petition is funny.
    And the truth is that politicians don’t really give a crap.

    @Holiday shopping madness:
    Woohaa !! 🙂 Wait … doesn’t this qualify as an assault? Normally she should be charged …
    This is pretty sick … you can get discounts at other times, no really need crowd up the shops during one day.

    @Microsoft refunds victims of Marketplace phishing scam:
    Microsoft went above what was required from them. I mean you cannot blame Microsoft from whatever clicks you made.

    @QOTW: … yes. I guess it says a lot about myself 😛

Leave a Reply

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

Related Post

Blu-ray Doesn’t Validate Your Console, SonyBlu-ray Doesn’t Validate Your Console, Sony

Is Blu-ray dead? Tech Sites around the Net are calling it a “death spiral” and we’re now looking at the downfall of the winning high definition format. Many non-PS3 Blu-ray players are still in the USD $200.00 range, a bit high for mass market adopters, and people aren’t planning to run out and buy a Blu-Ray player in our economic slump.

What’s the market share of the Blu-ray product? Four Percent. Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 have a lot of battle scares after the fight with HD-DVD to “win” the format war. In the end, Sony won the battle but the war was not with the HD-DVD format, it’s with the average Joe consumer.

Does this effect the PlayStation 3? One of the up sells of the PlayStation 3 was the Blu-ray capabilities, it games and it’s an entertainment device all-in-one. It’s a great deal right?

“The advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.” (zdnet)

The obstacles against the Blu-ray format are huge, especially with NetFlix coming to the Xbox 360, high definition download options and licensing costs on the Blu-ray to movie creators. Blu-ray won’t die in this generation of PlayStation 3 consoles but many folks, including Apple, are pausing to see if it has any chance at all to break into the industry.

Four percent just isn’t enough to inpsire confidence.

Episode 378: Hilary 2015Episode 378: Hilary 2015

This week has a very special guest, former IGN editor and current Dog and Thimble podcast host Hilary Goldstein, as he teams up with Paul to razz Jonah incessantly, as well as add a certain amount of NSFW spice to this week’s proceedings.

The news items include:

  • Rock Band DLC hints at a comeback
  • Sony appears to have ‘abandoned’ its trademark for The Last Guardian
  • Final Fantasy 15: Episode Duscae demo detailed
  • Nvidia’s big March 3rd event – is it a gaming phone?
  • After raising $114,000 on Kickstarter, dev goes silent
  • BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk has come back from retirement

All this and Listener Feedback.