Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays – did you get what you wanted this year?
Let us know what you got from your loved ones.
We have a few fun reward tiers – our most hardcore fans will definitely want an MP3 of one of the crew or any of the crew recording a voice mail or answer machine outgoing message, or the entire podcast bantering for a few moments. There’s also the requisite T-shirt, which will have the awesome Gaming Podcast logo.
Once upon a time the folks at Blizzard Entertainment thought they could support the entire world of World of Wacraft by ad revenue. This would have created an MMO experience which would cost you nothing but a bit of annoyance by ad providers; what would the total audience be if the game was free?
Had WoW launched free of charge they would probably have significantly more users playing the game, but the ad revenue from the sheer amount of people would be nothing compared to a monthly charge for eight million subscribers.
Although only a small number of those subscribers are US based, they’re still raking in the cash compared to an ad-based model, even if they were to have triple the subscribers.
However, the Blizzard exec noted: “We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.”
It’s possible, perhaps, that Blizzard would have fallen under its own weight had they created a world where anyone could play for no charge. Imagine the server utilization, the volume of traffic and the support calls they would get for triple or quadrupal the player base with only ads paying the checks.
Granted, a free system would be excellent in theory, but in practice, making us pay is the only way to throttle our addictions. Sad, but true.
(Thanks, gamasutra)
We’re already looking at the results of an Activision Vivendi union and now Electronic Arts is slowly working towards taking over Take-Two. Activision Blizzard is larger than that of EA but would the Take-Two buy-out grow EA into the number one publisher once again?
For gamers, it’s changing the map of the industry. We grew up with many of these seemingly big companies but their all clamoring together to make the next big mega-power. While they struggle for ultimate domination we, the gamers, are going to either benefit from the competition or become victims, or perhaps a little of both.
Let’s assume EA and Take-Two form one entity, similar to the the Destructicons forming “Devastator,” they can reign hell upon the earth and anyone under their mighty fist shall perish! That might be a bit of an exaggeration but it’s safe to assume they’ll wield mighty power, more than ever before and their epic foe will be Activision Blizzard and, perhaps, Ubisoft. In a battle for sales and consumer acceptance the companies will be willing to out do each other at every step with huge funds at their disposal.
As a consumer, competition is a great way to produce innovation, technological advancements and excitement in the industry. These giant development houses are only this large because we’ve given them our hard earned money in return for entertaining video game titles. World of Warcraft is a major player in sucking money from our wallets in a consistent, addictive, manner while Guitar Hero explores new possibilities in music and rhythm gaming and controller accessories.
With the strong rumor that Halo: Combat Evolved is going to be remade graphically from the ground up, it brings us to the question of why aren’t more games being remade? We’re not talking about reboots like the new emo Devil May Cry, or re-imaginings like the first person shooter XCOM. We’re talking about a true remake like you see endlessly from Square-Enix with its Final Fantasy games on the handhelds – they’re completely faithful to the original, save a new engine, graphics and occasionally an additional mission or two; the upcoming localization of Dragon Quest VI is a great example.
So, we’ve picked out seven games that desperately need a modern remake, sometimes due to their primitive graphics, sometimes due to their incompatibility with the current OS, or the fact you need to do some major tweaking to get them to run (unless GOG.com does it for you, bless their souls.)
These games aren’t old or have already been remade, so you won’t see M.U.L.E., Sid Meier’s Pirates or Seven Cities of Gold – in fact, the oldest of the games is from 1994. You also won’t see games that require little work to be remade, which is why you won’t see Grim Fandango here, either. These games would require serious undertaking. The games also have to remain the same genre and style, so no Elder Scrolls version of Ultima IV, either.
Without further ado, here are five older games that desperately need a remake – in alphabetical order.
I did get what I wanted, because I love money.