Episode 347: Final Fantasy

This week’s podcast features the Gaming Flashback of Final Fantasy VI, which takes up a third of the podcast as Paul and Jordan enthuse about the Japanese roleplaying game at length – so much so, that some news items were skipped over due to running length. Jonah prepares for his trip to PAX East 2014 for the weekend. He also proclaims Emperor Palpatine dancing in Kinect Star Wars the best thing to ever happen for Star Wars.

This week’s news includes:

  • Amazon says FireTV will boost mid-market games
  • Borderlands 2 Vita bundle hits on May 6, game launches May 13
  • Molyneux predicts Kinect-less Xbox One
  • Microsoft looking into Xbox 360 emulation through Xbox One

A lot of Listener Feedback this week, and the Question of the Week is “What mobile games have you played recently?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 347: Final Fantasy”

  1. Great show guys!

    @Final Fantasy: This was one of my favorite series growing up I started with the very first game when it came out! So imagine having spent hours playing that first game, then when FFIV(2 in USA) came out it looked like leaps and bounds in improvement. To me FF6 was an improvement in graphics, story and characters over FF4. Hearing Paul having trouble differentiating between 4 and 6 got me thinking that the characters may have been a bit bland in comparison. As there is no other “green summoner girl” besides Rydia and no other Dragon Knight other than Kain. I haven’t played those games in years and I still remember their names. The characters in FF6 were very different than in FF4. Also bad Paul getting my hopes up that I had perhaps missed a sequel to FF6 when he had been thinking of FF4 sequel.

    @Backwards compatibility: The problem for me is that the old hardware breaks down and they stop making the older systems so it’s not as easy or cheap to get a hold of. I looked on Ebay for fully backwards compatible PS3 and most were very expensive AND had “Yellow light of death”.

    @Kinect: If they want me to buy a next gen system they SHOULD make a Star Wars Lightsaber or some sword dueling game. There was a Red Katana or something for Wii but that was a FPS with a few sword fights peppered in there. If either the Xbox or PS4 came out with a sword fighting game, especially one I could play with friends I would buy it in a heart beat. Obviously they don’t want me as customer.

    QorW: I think Animal Crossing: New Leaf counts right? I’m having fun playing this with my wife and daughter we go on the island tours. I am like Jordan though I don’t play many portable games I’m mostly a PC guy.

  2. Oh and sorry for spelling errors in last weeks comments. I think I had a dyslexic moment myself and I always think Indy when I see Indie. It’s hard not to when he was a childhood hero of mine.

  3. I forgot to mention I loved hearing the Clue reference to Mrs White’s bit. That’s one of my all time favorite movies.

    I never understood being a Final Fantasy person VS a Phantasy Star person, can’t one enjoy both series? I particularly enjoyed Phantasy Star 3 with it’s Family generational story, I don’t think there is any other game that has you going down the line of a family tree while trying to save the world. I thought it was a pretty great concept that I would love to see more of.

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Episode 317: Is League of Legends a Terrible Game?Episode 317: Is League of Legends a Terrible Game?

In this episode, Jordan’s son Allen gets in on the act, berating League of Legends despite being addicted to it. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the Sierra Online adventure game Police Quest, while the Gaming History is how BioWare prepared to develop their first Star Wars game, Knights of the Old Republic.

This week’s news includes:

This week’s Question of the Week: “What’s your favorite RPG of all-time?”

Imagine a Free World of WarcraftImagine a Free World of Warcraft

Once upon a time the folks at Blizzard Entertainment thought they could support the entire world of World of Wacraft by ad revenue. This would have created an MMO experience which would cost you nothing but a bit of annoyance by ad providers; what would the total audience be if the game was free?

Had WoW launched free of charge they would probably have significantly more users playing the game, but the ad revenue from the sheer amount of people would be nothing compared to a monthly charge for eight million subscribers.

Although only a small number of those subscribers are US based, they’re still raking in the cash compared to an ad-based model, even if they were to have triple the subscribers.

However, the Blizzard exec noted: “We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.”

It’s possible, perhaps, that Blizzard would have fallen under its own weight had they created a world where anyone could play for no charge. Imagine the server utilization, the volume of traffic and the support calls they would get for triple or quadrupal the player base with only ads paying the checks.

Granted, a free system would be excellent in theory, but in practice, making us pay is the only way to throttle our addictions. Sad, but true.

(Thanks, gamasutra)