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.
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has made some leadership changes in response to their in-ability to get things going in the sales department of the PlayStation 3. Gamer’s continue to refuse to believe the PlayStation 3 is in a bad situation by explaining how badly Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is doing in Japan and Europe compared to the Sony console. And, of course, the Wii isn’t competition to Sony.
“Andrew House, Chief Marketing Officer and Group Executive of Sony Corporation, has been named President, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-Chief Operating Officer (Co-COO) of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) as of May 1, 2009.” (smarthouse.au)
We’ve been told this is the year of the PS3, this is when they bring it all together. Nintendo’s losing some of their grip on the industry with slower sales, even in Japan. The economy isn’t playing nice with any of the consoles and sales continue to drop, reportedly 17% in March compared to last years numbers.
Australia isn’t proving to be any help to Sony, “for example in Australia a consumer can now buy the Xbox 360 for $299 and a separate Blu ray player and DVD upscale player for $199. Combined this is $200 under the recommended retail price for a Sony PS3.”
Here in the United States, we’ve bought more Wii balance boards than PlayStation 3 consoles. One can argue that the Wii is a novelty system but that really casts a dark shadow on the PlayStation 3. The PS3 is being beat out by a novelty item? Can the new SCEE management change the direction of Sony?
This week’s podcast begins on a sorrowful note, as since in the past week guest host Andrew Yoon (who co-hosted episode #374) passed away after drowning during a trip to Texas, while Jonah and Paul eulogize him.
No Gaming Flashback this week, but plenty of news items:
This week’s Question of the Week: “What videogame do you still get emotional about?”
David Braben, founder of Frontier Developments, says retail outlets that buy and sell pre-owned games are “essentially defrauding the industry.” Although multiplayer gaming might not be a huge threat, the single player experience in games may die out because gamers play the game quickly and resell it back to places like GameStop for others to buy.
Developers don’t get a dime when a game goes traded, many gamers will “share” the single player experience with a single copy of the game by reselling it over and over. The end result, retail outlets make a good penny for marking up old games while developers see nothing. This is really how game retail outlets survive because the margins on video games is so damn low.
The story has been heard before, developers want a piece of the action so they’re taking steps to entice people to keep the game with renewed downloadable content on old games; you can’t experience the new content without keeping the game around longer. In the world of low margin games, high cost development and short-lived story lines the solutions to this problem aren’t exactly obvious.
Braben’s idea of a solution is to offer two versions of the game, a not for resale/rental version at a high price, say $160, and a low priced version that cannot be shared (heavily DRM’ed?) for $50. In essence, gamers would no longer be able to trade in games because the idea of spending double for a game so you can resell it makes no sense to most gamers (including myself.)
I did get what I wanted, because I love money.