Episode 287: Dead Cats

This week’s Gaming Podcast is chock full of news and reader feedback. Rather than do a Gaming Flashback, a conversation about the middling sales of the PlayStation Vita is discussed, while Paul is anxiously looking for a black Wii U so he can play Epic Mickey 2. We also hand out the indie game prizes to our two winners.

This week’s news includes:

  • Star Citizen hits $4.5M stretch goal, biggest crowd fundraiser ever
  • Black Ops 2 1.03 patch doesn’t fix server issues
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed
  • Spector: Epic Mickey 2 takes “choice and consequence to new levels

This week’s Question of the Week: What was the best game you ever played that cost less than $5?

In addition, this is the two days of Kickstarter funding. Help the TD Gaming Podcast with its Kickstarter fundraising.

0 thoughts on “Episode 287: Dead Cats”

  1. @Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed:
    “I didn’t ask for this” – Deus Ex guy (sue me, i forgot the guy’s name)
    “But i’ll take it… gladly” – Me

    @QOTW:
    I have a list…
    Cthulhu Saves the world (epic fun awesome RPG)
    Terraria (bought for 2.50)
    Space Pirates and Zombies (2.50 as well – all hail Ganben)
    I could go on, but these are the high awesomeness ones!

  2. Have not yet listened to the podcast, but I thank you very much for the games. Made my crappy day a lot better =D.

  3. Jordan, glad to hear about the job.

    @Star Citizen hits $4.5M stretch goal
    Jonah, good point on stretch goals. If I ever ever come up with a project that requires funding, and if I put it on Kickstarter, it’ll have all the requirements mentioned, no stretch goals.

    @Black Ops 2 1.03 patch doesn’t fix server issues
    Ah, EA’s way of pushing Origin … just kidding!
    Still, gotta hand it to them the way they do their testing :P. You can test for server outages, bad network conditions, you can test that.
    What can I say, COD lost me at Modern Warfare 2. It became just waay too action movie like. Now, Medal Of Honor, that’s a modern warfare game that I liked!

    @Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed
    Meh … i liked Mortal Kombat, but that’s pretty much it on games turned into movies.

    @QOTW:
    Ib. Free game, no microtransactions. It went waaay above my expectations, becoming a point of reference for “story and characters beat graphics”.

  4. @Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed: Seriously, how many video game movies have been announced and then they run into problems? Just wait until you actually have finished something, and just announce it with a trailer because I’m getting sick of this. Halo, Uncharted, God of War, Castlevania, World of Warcraft, Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock and Gears of War are just a few of the many that will probably never see the light of day.

    @Epic Mickey 2: Seeing as the sequel got pretty much the same reviews as the 1st one which I loved, I will probably end up playing this. Would be pretty excited to play it if I hadn’t like 6 new games which I would like to play.

  5. @Kickstarting the Party

    As fun as Kickstarter sounds, I stay away from it. I am very conservative about how my games are made and frown upon the Rise of Communism in gaming. I still think that Kickstarter is just a passing fad and will eventually wither away.

    @Patchy Black Ops

    Haven’t played multiplayer. Although I own the Xbox 360 version so I should be safe. People expect Xbox games to run well on-line because we pay the Gold Tax and are entitled on it. Maybe PS3 should have had a payed subscription. It’s on-line is a mess compared to Xbox 360. It’s not just Black Ops that runs bad.

    @Deus Ex

    At least it wasn’t Uwe Boll…

    @Taking the Mickey

    Jonah’s right. Epic Mickey 2 is taking a critical beating. It doesn’t matter how many endings you have if your AI partner puts all effort ensuring that you never make it to the end.

    @QOTW

    GunZ Online. I played it back in 2006 before it went freemium. Back then there weren’t that many free on-line games. Especially action games that weren’t MMORPGs. That made GunZ stand out and I sunk a good few life-times into that game. Occasionally I come back there but the smell of nostalgia is not enough to keep me interested for long. Better games to play these days.

Leave a Reply

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

Related Post

End of 100 Million Dollar Games?End of 100 Million Dollar Games?

Gigaom had a great writeup about how Grand Theft Auto IV marks the end of “next generation” as we know it, stating, in more words or less, the game is a failure. GTA: San Andreas sold 21.5 million copies during its time on the shelf while GTA IV has sold roughly 9 million copies as of June 7th.

Granted, the game is still on the shelves and will still get sales, but the mass of “hardcore gamers” have had their fill and either purchased it or will not. The end result? A huge tapering of sales numbers for the graphically impressive game. Take-Two spent USD $100 million to develop the game which had great opening sales records but has gone down drastically since.

Imagine the title gains them USD $30.00 per sale in profit (considering distributors get the game for roughly USD $45 to $48.00 USD), taking into account shipping of the product, marketing and all the materials that go into producing a copy, they’d have to sell a large quanity of game titles to break even, which I think they have done.

Nobody is in this industry to break even. A block buster title should make block buster profits, right? Else, why bother to spend the 100-million when a Wii title can double or triple the profits with six months of development?

(more…)

Episode 701: Carts and GlitchesEpisode 701: Carts and Glitches

The guys continue from #700 by discussing, among other things, the upcoming Dark Forces remaster.

The news includes:

  • Xbox Partner preview
  • Cities: Skylines 2 studio promises performance issues can and will be fixed
  • PlayStation 5 Slim disc drive seems to require internet connection to install
  • Xbox sees record-breaking Q1 gaming revenue
  • Hogwarts Legacy Switch Day One update is larger than game’s cartridge size

Let us know what you think.