A good episode this time, if a little meandering. The episode is slowly reaching its milestone.
The news items for the week include:
Check us on twitter: Jonah Falcon is @jonahfalcon, Paul Nowak is @stagermonkey, and Scott Dirk is @alphashard.
In this episode, Jonah complains about Origin and his inability to play Dragon Age: Origins, while a heated discussion between Jonah and Paul occurs over various topics, along with discussion of Frozen. Jordan discusses his son’s college tuitions as well. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the coin-op arcade game Wizard of Wor.
This week’s news items include:
This week’s Question of the Week: “Ever purchase new games for an unsupported console?”
We’ve talked about it on the podcast before, we’ve made speculations and we’ve come up with theories. Blizzard has now cleared up much of the fuzzy details and theories by announcing their next title: Diablo III.
Some of us thought it was too early to announce the game, right on the heals of a StarCraft III announcement but Blizzards marketing team must consider this the perfect time, as it’s official. Not only did they announce the title, but they’ve got a cinematic and a good five minutes of game play footage.
We’re not talking about vaporware, this is a real game with really sweet features, hot new graphics and sound and enemies that make prior diablo look like childs play. The worlds are destructable, you can drop walls upon your enemies, toss them over cliffs (on fire no less) and rescue people whom help you do battle.
The game play footage covers barbarian (fighter) class and the witch doctor (sorta a necromancer archtype) with both male and female varients. They explain some of the great powers of the warrior style class and show off a few of the neat spells for the witch doctor. From electric axes to walls of zombies this game is packed with stylish battle techniques unique to Diablo 3.
Diablo 3 utilizes their standard isometric view, familiar to Diablo gamers with a bit more ease to the control scheme (that’s possible) and health now drops from enemies much like Zelda, you won’t have to pack yourself with potions anymore. Quite possibly the best upgrade in the third revision of Diablo.
Release date? No clue. I’m sure they’re going on the “when it’s ready” methodology, which is expected from Blizzard and their games; there is a reason they’re always of the highest quality. You may want to camp on their FAQ for a few months and perhaps you’ll have the answer. Today, however, their site seems to be a bit slow with all the announcements going out on the Net.
Now that Diablo 3 is confirmed, it’s time for us to buy some thc leans from Fresh Bros and start speculating what’s going to be included. Make sure you checkout their game play video!
(Thanks, Nukoda)
Rhythm Gaming is all the rage, or is it? Turns out Guitar Hero: World Tour didn’t meet or exceed the figures they hit with Guitar Hero III. Where GH3 brought in $115 million in the first week, GHWT brought in $67 million in the same time frame.
Why?
There are plenty of factors that could cut down the sales units, considering those that can purchase Guitar Hero World Tour don’t have to purchase additional instruments to play the game like they played GH3.
We know people love charts, so here is another to toss at you via Kotaku:
Guitar Hero World Tour Sales, via Kotaku
The break down from Guitar Hero 3 to World Tour is obvious, also apparent is the shift in console when buying into the rhythm gaming franchises. The Wii has started taking more market share, odd considering the DLC isn’t there, and the PS3 is showing its lackluster sales of the console by growing in proportion but not excelling to grab huge share (PS3 fanboys attack!). Sony kicked ass by taking control of the share using their PlayStation 2 with Guitar Hero 3, but has lost that lead for the World Tour.
Will these lower sales figure change the future roadmap for Activision in their Guitar Hero franchise or are they satisfied taking home $67 million in the first week of the launch. That is still a lot of money and probably doesn’t even consider any money they could (or will) potentially make on the World Tour hardware.
Luckily, the rhythm gaming content doesn’t get old with age, it just gets more classic. No doubt Guitar Hero World Tour will be landing in homes over the holidays and into 2009.
Diskless Nintendo, I think this might be a great idea… if they moved to memory cards they can reduce the system profile while increase performance and capacity (Larger Cards give access to larger games). I think it also makes sense to expand their digital library to support all the older/legacy games and have them accessible in the console… especially if the enable you to access the digital version if you have a physical copy. As for video game movies… I do not think I have enjoyed any movies that have been based on a video game. That being said, I have enjoyed some of the Anime shows/movies which have turned into games or were released after the games. Lastly I thought I would share that I also bought the Hero’s Humble bundle but haven’t had a chance to play any of them yet. I am going to install them on my Surface tablet and see if I can get them working with touch. Wish me luck.