Episode 339: Defective Ears

This week’s episode is chock full of very industry-specific news, dealing with sales and numbers and other stuff that would bore Paul.

The news includes:

  • Microsoft acquires Gears of War IP from Epic
  • Sony issues invites hinting at ‘Slimmest’ product launch
  • Apple sells record number of iPhones, iPads
  • Surface and Xbox One hits with buyers during the holidays
  • Japanese newspaper says Nintendo is about to unveil its approach to mobile development
  • Kerbal Space Program lands on various schools’ curriculum
  • Sony’s credit rating cut to “Junk”

Sadly, no reader mail this week.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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

Related Post

Gaming Flashback: Mega ManGaming Flashback: Mega Man

Mega Man, a series franchise was born in the month of December, a series we rarely hear about today but one that inspired many great games in the side scrolling genre. Mega Man was foundation brick in the early Nintendo consoles and a bread winner for Capcom, he was a mascot to represent a genre typically dominated by Mario.

The name Mega Man, in the 1980’s was synonymous with the word awesome. It was also synonymous with the word difficult.

A character that had so much potential you can now find him in mobile phone gaming and the virtual console in Europe.

“In the year 200X, master robot designer Dr. Thomas Light, and his assistant, Dr. Wily, worked on a project to create human-like robots with advanced intelligence.” (wikipedia) Each robot was designed to perform a specific task, Cut Man was designed to cut down trees, Guts Man is designed to pickup heavy things, Ice man for arctic exploration, etc. His assistant grew envious of Dr Light so he reprogrammed the robots to do his bidding, which was nothing but evil. Your job is to undo this evil.

(more…)

Rock Band 2: Backwards Compatible DLC TooRock Band 2: Backwards Compatible DLC Too

Harmonix, MTV Games and Electronic Arts has announced their next block buster killer app: Rock Band 2. First, the most important feature is backwards compatible downloadable content. They’ve surpassed 15-million paid downloads, we want our content and we want to keep all the awesome songs for future games, else we might as well stop purchasing now, right?

The question remains, will we want to upgrade our instruments? They’re saying we’ll have “more variety of instrument choices than ever before with new and improved drum and guitar peripherals, enhanced functionality and innovative new designs – all fully compatible with the original Rock Band instruments.” Will the enhanced instruments really want to make us go out and buy them?

If these new instruments are highly desirable or add any new features to the game (or make newer features ‘easier’) then we may be persuaded to look into new hardware…yet with Guitar Hero World Tour we’re already pressured into considering another drum unit.

So confusing, but yet so much desired. I guess that’s the love hate relationship of a gamer with a passion and a, slight, addiction!

(more…)