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.
Paul’s not in this episode due to sickness, so it’s just Jonah and Scott, the former who berates the latter for the lack of any listener feedback. There is a Gaming Flashback this time, with the classic 80’s arcade game Pepper II.
The news includes:
The Question of the Week: “What makes a good expansion?”
Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo has gone on record with his thoughts of the Wii friends code system. He’s a father, with a daughter, so he’s letting his own personal judgment get in the way of a good community built game system.
In talking about the open access of the Internet he said, “I as a father do not feel like allowing my daughter be engaged in that kind of world.” He’s more inclined to protect his children from the dangers of the Internet and random (often insulting) people by requiring a 1:1 paring with real friends.
For many gamers the Wii friends code system is far from perfect. It’s so far from perfect its a barrier to entry and any form of fun on the console platform. Nobody is against protecting their children, a parent will be the first to admit they’re desire to protect their kids over all else, but clearly someone isn’t thinking outside the box on this topic.
The only way to protect your children is to enforce a large numeric key which you must hand deliver (or e-mail) to your friends in order to play? We’ve got more creative enforcement in child safety on our TV sets using the VCHIP which allows parents to password protect certain television programming.
David Reeves, Sony Europe’s President said, “we simply have to suffer a little” when talking about the PS3, Europe and the competition. He was talking specifically about Sony’s loss of market share, mind-share and overall performance in the latest competitive console arena. While Sony’s president dismisses Nintendo as in a separate market, David Reeves said, “we’ve learned from Nintendo how to grow the market and move from hand-held device to device – they’ve done it brilliantly.”
What Sony may be dealing with is the fact that they’re not top dog in the latest battle for consoles. Europe has taken to the PlayStation 3 better than the United States and they’ve got plenty of fans in the region. There has been a recent upside to it all, some light at the end of the tunnel:
“PS3 games sales are up 53% and there’s a healthy 1.1m pre-order book for Killzone 2, the first of a new batch of IPs that Sony will be counting on.” (guardian.co.uk)
Although it’s reported the PSP says are down 15% and PS2 software sales are down 51%, at least the PlayStation 3 is filling in the gap for some of those losses. At some point you’d expect the PlayStation 2 to decline, gamers are probably migrating over to the new hardware.
They’ve got some things to be proud of:
Unfortunately PS3 sales were down last quarter by about 9%, perhaps a response to the harsh economic times. And, of course, the fact that Sony’s VP’s are constantly defending their position in the market is a bit disconcerting. As David Reeves said:
“It’s like Ali v Foreman – go eight or nine rounds and let him punch himself out. We’re still standing, we’re still profitable and there’s a lot of fight in us. I don’t say we will land a knockout blow, but we’re there and we’re fighting.” (guardian.co.uk)
Sony is playing the defensive, guarding themselves against the punches of the competition. Nintendo making headlines for sales, Microsoft coming out of nowhere to try to build market share, while Sony holds out for the tenth round to win it in the end? We’re not yet sure if it’s Ali vs. Foreman or if Microsoft is the next Buster Douglas.
(Thanks, Guardian)
I did get what I wanted, because I love money.