Episode 419: Virtual Reality

This week’s episode is full of pop culture… well, most of it got sliced off as outtakes, but there’s still plenty of pop culture. What there is a lot of these days is virtual reality, and none of it even involves the Virtual Boy. Jonah, Scott and T.J. discuss some of the rumors going on as well.

The news this week includes:

  • Fallout 4’s Far Harbor will be bigger than any previous Bethesda expansion
  • Outer Rim DLC for Star Wars: Battlefront still having issues
  • Sony hints PlayStation VR may come to PC

Let us know what you think.

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Gaming Podcast 145: Best of Both WorldsGaming Podcast 145: Best of Both Worlds

This week we’re flashing back to Metroid II for the Game Boy, something new and different from the normal arcade/console/pc flashbacks. We’re also tackling a good deal of community comments and hitting up the news wire:

  • Netflix coming to PS3.
  • Analysts think DJ Hero demand is below expectations
  • iPhone developers next victims of piracy
  • Nintendo releasing new bigger DSi in Japan
  • Players of Chinese MMO must play character of the same gender

We didn’t get to cover history this week because we had lots of back-and-forth arguing about Netflix and the PS3 and rants upon DJ Hero and its “obvious” low-demand. This weeks question of the week, are there any good sim games left that are simple?

Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?

A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.

Jacobs says $100-million dollars would be needed to start competing against the giant subscription generator that is World of Warcraft. Although few developers are sitting on $100-million USD, it’s a bit more realistic an investment for a studio to scrape up compared to a billion bucks! A billion dollars is a scary number when you consider that’s the start of an investment that may, or may not, pay off in the end.

Kotick may not be using complete scare tactics, he may be working off experience when dealing with MMORPG’s. A startup MMO isn’t a cookie cutter system, there is a lot of development efforts, $100-million dollars worth, but MMO developers slip dates many times. When you start slipping your dates you’ll start burning more money and, before you know it, you’re a billion in the hole. Jacobs thinks $100-million will cover development costs and messing up, so a billion is still way over budget.

Perhaps this is a bit of a scare tactic, assuming a developer will fail and slip their dates isn’t really a great way to start quoting prices. However, shooting too low isn’t always the best method of building your development assessments. The end result, scream ONE BILLION and you may scare off any potential startup MMO developers.

Warhammer Online lead designer did mention one big barrier to entry: the need for “at least half a million subscribers to be successful.”

(Thanks, 1up)