Episode 319: Someone Is Butt-Hurt About Microsoft

There’s no Gaming Flashback or Gaming History, but there is a crapton of news this week on TD Gaming Podcast, which Jonah Falcon and Jordan Lund eagerly read.

That, and Jordan really wants to know what you have been playing.

The news this week includes:

  • Microsoft officially announces indie self-publishing, to be unveiled at GamesCom 2013
  • Phil Fish explodes on Twitter, cancels Fez II in a huff
  • Shadow of the Eternals back on Kickstarter, no longer episodic
  • Neil Gaiman has announced his first videogame, Wayward Manor
  • Lanning: Nintendo will be around for “100 years,” but probably not Zynga or Microsoft
  • Activision-Blizzard buys out $8.2B of its own stock from Vivendi
  • Paid subscribership of World of Warcraft down to 7.7M

All this and Listener feedback.

0 thoughts on “Episode 319: Someone Is Butt-Hurt About Microsoft”

  1. Good show guys but I’m missing Paul and Dan.

    I heard you mention your playing Shadowrun Returns Jonah, how are you liking the game? I’ve gotten it myself and it seems to have a short campaign seeming to rely on the community to create campaigns themselves like with the Neverwinter games.

    Speaking of Sierra Online and Kickstarter, Hero-U being made by the Coreys was mentioning the various other creative leads also kickstarting their old franchises as well. Although changed since they don’t own the original IP like (Space Quest = Space Venture).

    As for what I’m playing I’m playing Civ V BNW, Minecraft and Jade Empire. It’s my first time playing JE and I got it off GoG and I can see why it got the reviews it did, it is a well deserved reputation. Good atmosphere and challenge in the fights, at least for me since I’m not a great action game player.

  2. @Getting old
    Happy Birthday Jonah. Congratulations on getting one year closer to death. On the bright side, your mid-life crisis is just about over. Roll on arthritis, weak knees and a man-sized diaper.

    @Phil Fish is no longer aPHILiated with FISHy gaming business (damn I’m punny)

    Man. That sounds so childish. But it would have a better effect if FEZ would be Halo or Mass Effect. Personally, I never heard of FEZ until he started making all that racket. In fact , this could have a good post-mortem marketing effect.

    @Shadow of the Eternals back from the dead (again)

    It’s funny how the game is already f**king with you. And it’s not even out yet. I really want to see it released. It will be a nice £5 title, considering that It will sell next to no copies on the Wii U. Although I am afraid that this project will not see the light of day regardless of how many times they put it on Kickstarter. Not until Silicone Knights sell off the IP

    @Neil Gaiman making games

    That sounds terrific. Neil Gaiman is a talented writer, so the story is bound to be good. Lets hope the game can keep up with him. I read a number of his books. Enjoyed all of them. Looking forward to this game.

    @The worldwide Internet sensation

    I played WoW for the first time a few month ago and was very disappointed. It did not live up to my expectations. But that is most likely because I played a lot of WoW clones for the past few years and I am fed up with the genre. I found WoW to be very basic compared to its clones. I am sure it is a good game, but I just have to much of a life to waste my time on this.

    Ps: I haven’t played Walking Dead past episode 1 yet, so I didn’t listen to the last podcast discussion to avoid spoilers. Thought I was successful, but did not expect Jordan’s stealthy revelation about Lee. For the future, it would be nice if you could maybe mention that spoilers will follow or put it in the podcast description, that would be nice.

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Related Post

Episode 353: E3 Swag BagEpisode 353: E3 Swag Bag

Jonah returns from attending E3 last week, as Jordan is a sick latecomer into the podcast. Jonah and Paul relate his near-disaster loss of his iPad Air, while Jordan does his best Don LaFontaine impressions in this episode which is 50% longer than normal.

The news discussed includes:

  • Hirshberg: Console transition pains not a bad problem to have
  • Destiny may possibly come to Windows PC
  • Nintendo’s top designer has “uneasiness” about virtual reality
  • How the Xbox One’s 10% GPU increase works without Kinect
  • PS4, Xbox One seeing much higher digital download attach rates

In addition to the news, there’s Listener feedback, and even better, a new contest to win an E3 Swag Bag – listen in to find out how to win (US listeners only, sorry.)

Microsoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 ValueMicrosoft Says Blu-ray Holds No 360 Value

Rumors float around the Internet questioning when Microsoft will ship a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 or add-on device like they did with the, now failed, HD-DVD. At CES 09 Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, says this request is “way down the list.”

Mr. Bach had some great selling points as to why a Blu-ray player has little value in the world of Xbox 360. The primary reason, of course, being the Xbox 360 developers cannot take advantage of Blu-ray as a development platform for games. This was the price Sony, or the consumer, paid to own a PlayStation 3 since all games are printed on the media and are, in effect, Blu-ray “capable.”

We say capable because not all (any?) PlayStation 3 games currently make full use of the Blu-ray media. Many games will reprint the game on the media for optimization purposes, fill the game with international voice overs for all countries or, otherwise, stuff the media with something that will serve a useful purpose. Sony has near-future-proofed their device by giving game developers years of growth in terms of utilizing the Blu-ray capacity.

Microsoft chose to take the smaller old-style DVD format for games and media. Adding the HD-DVD didn’t add a large deal of risk because, as we saw, they can discontinue the model and not change their core gaming demographic. We still laughed a bit at them, but that was where it ended. Bach also said that it’s not really a great economic time to push a new 360 SKU on potential customers with additional cost just for Blu-ray movies playback.

They could add Blu-ray game development support as well but that would just alienate the “28 million Xboxes” they have already shipped.

“OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.” (gamespot)

Of course, the first thing that came to our mind was “well, you did it for HD-DVD, how is Blu-ray different?” The key areas we can think of really come down to Blu-ray is a Sony technology and they are a direct competitor and, to top it off, HD-DVD allowed them to fight against the PS3 at the media level of the industry. They minimized the risk by making the product a secondary add-on device and, if HD-DVD had won, they’d have the winning format already under production (still not for games).

It seems Microsoft has changed their battle plans a little. They started out talking up the media aspects of the 360, using Media Center, renting movies and TV shows and had the HD-DVD as a subproduct. Today, they’re investing in Netflix for media and everything else favors the games.

Which is fine, we like games.

Episode 734: Third Party ShowcasesEpisode 734: Third Party Showcases

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Among the discussions are the original 1997 Backyard Baseball finally coming to Steam, the original Horizon Zero Dawn removed from Epic Games Store, Hi-Fi Rush 2 already in development six months when Krafton acquired Tango Gameworks and Mario + Rabbids director and Red Dead Redemption lead designer found new studio Day 4 Night.

The news includes:

  • Everything revealed in State of Play September 2024
  • Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2024 Broadcast
  • Sea of Stars free content update Dawn of Equinox adds local co-op, revamped prologue

Let us know what you think.

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