Episode 394: Paul Bravely Defaults

Paul is back from being deathly ill, and joins a half-asleep Jonah and Scott, where he and Scott try to have better timing. There’s no Gaming Flashback this week but plenty of weird news.

The list of news items include:

  • Disturbing portrait of Konami corporate environment alleged
  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: player choices more impactful, boss fights optional
  • ZombiU drops the “U,” preps for August launch on PC, Xbox One, PS4
  • Fallout 4 fan releases schematic for 3D printed Pip-Boy
  • Vote to play coming soon for PS Plus members
  • Hitchhiking robot is decapitated, left in a ditch

There’s a new Question of the Week that wasn’t going to be the Question – listen and find out what it is.

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Exclusive Artist Deals In Rhythm Games Not Good?Exclusive Artist Deals In Rhythm Games Not Good?

Rhythm games are the new FPS for a lot of gamers, a broader audience of gamers, and the market is thriving and demanding new titles. Harmonix and Activision are at the front of the battle with Konami following a bit behind but still contending (we think) very soon.

Each company plans to up each other with cooler instruments, tighter controls and new in-game options and multi-player fancies. It’s a business and each competitor tries to gain a lead by whatever means needed to win… or do they?

Harmonix stops short when it comes to purchasing exclusive rights to music artists, for now at least. Harmonix’s Eric Brosious went on blogger record saying, “We prefer not to sign exclusive deals with artists because while it seems like the competitive “business” thing to do, in the long run, it’s really not good for anyone. We think we should be working to get more music out to more people.” (kotaku)

As Marky Mark once said, we need “Music for the people” not for in-game exclusives making us choose between Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles. We’ve seen what EA has done to the football franchise by taking control of the NFL roster, money talks and the best game doesn’t always win.

If Activision decides to buy up a ton of great exclusive content and you’re a rock band gamer, you’ll lose out in a ton of great content. For some gamers, that might mean losing out in some artists you’ve never heard before which also means the artist loses out in new fans. We’ve seen younger gamers fall in love with the sounds of Boston and The Police, bands famous way before the birth of many of the Rock Band fan base.

You can tell Harmonix is a development group with roots in music while Activision is a development group with their roots in business. While exclusive access brings you an advantage, in terms of broadening the culture of music, it does very little. Harmonix may be in the right but will that matter in the end when business deals hit the table?

p.s. sorry about the Marky Mark reference, but it had to be done. Bringing out a bit of my own childhood there…

Episode 459: This Week and LastEpisode 459: This Week and Last

So, thanks to an untimely computer breakdown, last week’s episode could not be run in a timely manner. So, this double-length episode features an off-the-cuff discussion of videogames with no notes, with last week’s episode tacked on. There’s not much editing in the episode, due to the fact Jonah has to rush off to Boston to attend PAX East over the weekend.

Last week’s “news” includes:

  • Middle Earth: Shadow of War leaked then announced
  • Microsoft announces Netflix-style gaming for the Xbox One
  • Videogame industry lobbying to maintain “repair monopoly”
  • Microsoft plans to bring mixed reality to the Xbox in 2018

All this and some Listener Feedback

Storage Solutions for Fall UpdateStorage Solutions for Fall Update

Are you one of those that have a diskless (or low flash disk) based Xbox 360? We’ve been wondering, ourselves, what Microsoft was going to do to “fix” the fact that the upcoming Fall Update is going to require 128MB of disk space.

It seems they’re going to hand you either a 512MB memory card or a 20GB Hard Disk for the price of $20.00. If you’ve got the $20.00, this would be the best route to go as 20GB is way more than a free 512MB flash card. You’ll be hard up to find 20GB anywhere for a buck a gigabyte – definitely a good deal.

Unfortunately, tonights gaming podcast will still have us pondering the news as we’ve already recorded it and asked the question “what are they going to do?” If you want to see if your console qualifies for the storage upgrade, head to Microsoft’s website with your serial number and console ID handy.

(Thanks, GameStooge)