The podcast is back, with a healthier Jonah joining Jordan. No Dan or Paul however.
The news:
Question of the Week: “What are you most looking forward to in 2014?”
Another late podcast, as Summer is in sight, and E3 looms ahead. Some minor audio issues with the podcast, but still the same podcast-y goodness we can expect from Paul and Jonah.
The news includes:
All that and Listener Feedback.
Yeah, we recorded this on April 2 and are just releasing this on April 12 — because during this time Jonah went to PAX East, then visited his mother in NYC, and things have calmed down about now. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the overly cute LittleBigPlanet… and to think it was a major topic of conversation in the early days of the podcast. How time has passed.
This week’s news items include:
You’d think that wouldn’t be enough news for 90 minutes, but that’s ok. We go off on tangents all the time.
The same company that brought us the NES Advantage has proven the Wii control scheme isn’t as bad as critics speculated. The beauty of adding the “waggle” technology is limiting your button count to a reasonable level without overwhelming gamers.
We’re seeing casual gaming on the rise both in the press and in the public. Yet, each “next generation” console brings new features and functionality to the consoles, games and accessories. Since NES birthed the SNES we’ve seen button count increase on controllers.
Nintendo has usually been conservative on buttons, trying to work “shape” over sheer volume of buttons, barring the C button count on the N64 controller. Nintendo controllers change shape with each generation and they’ve evolved, not innovated, their way around with the Wii control scheme. Each function of the controller exists, on its own, in other products but nobody has built a fully functional controller in such a way for a game console until now.
Sony took pieces of this concept in their PS3 controller and its ability to detect “tilt.” Xbox 360 stuck with the beefy controller with lots of buttons and analog sticks. Not just a D-Pad but two analog sticks and a ton of buttons to press, some pressure sensitive as well. What of our next-generation console? Maybe a few new buttons?
Or, maybe a few new motions? Wii evolved the control scheme and Sony validated their decision, what’s next? Are the controllers just too damn complicated in today’s world? Or, perhaps limiting the buttons brings in more gamers, like Grandma and Grandpa, to play your console as well.
Hi guys, great show again. 🙂
I like the idea of turning in a CD or just even having the old DRM code to get a digital version of the game. This is what Blizzard does with their library. I was able to get digital versions of Warcraft III and StarCraft because of my old DRM codes I had been holding on to. I think more companies should do that since we did buy the game, why should we have to pay again for a digital version?
@Steambox: I thought there was only going to be one but apparently there are going to be 13 of them priced from cheap to VERY expensive. This may be a good and easy way for people to find the steambox that will be suited to their needs.
@Sony streaming old games: I agree that I want this and that they should make their entire library available. The fact that Jordan still has a functioning backwards compatible Ps3 didn’t go unnoticed. I’d love to get one myself but the issue is they stop making these consoles so it isn’t easy to get an old console to play an old game. Much easier to just get an emulator (at least for PS1 and PS2).
@QOTW: I am most looking forward to Pillars of Eternity, it promises to be a great RPG game. Among other Kickstarter games like Wasteland 2 and Shadowgate.