The gang discusses the just-released Captain America: Civil War as well as mention the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse film, but they also do get into this week’s news, which is heavy on the Nintendo side.
The news includes:
This week’s Question of the Week is “What era war would you like to see in a shooter?”
This week’s gaming podcast is a bit short on news and lacks a gaming history segment but we still managed to bust out a 1-hour show, so who knows how we pulled that off. The news is light, perhaps because of the US semi-holiday known as Columbus Day or because no company wants to rattle the news waves while they’re working on finalizing holiday launch titles. In any case, we’ve got Chrono Trigger as our flash back and this as our news:
The question of the week, what actor do you want to see do a voice-acting role in a video game?
Sony’s been talking about how they’ve overtaken the Xbox 360 here in the States, perhaps this is because Microsoft shifted their attention to pwning them in Japan? Xbox 360 sold 25,000 units to PlayStation 3‘s minor 9,673 units according to Edge Online, that’s 2.5 times more if you’re into that math thing.
Seriously though, Microsoft didn’t really shift any effort, they just got a Japanese style game called Tales of Vesperia from Namco Bandai. Go figure, when a Japanese focused game arrives for a console Japanese gamer will go out and buy it.
The big barrier to the 360 in Japan is the games and their contents. Microsoft is in tune with the needs and demands of the United States gamers, it usually involves FPS titles and excessive killing. Japanese gamers are not exactly huge FPS fans, we’ve seen the Asian community dominate in RTS style games (Starcraft is a great example) and they’ve always had interest in MMO’s, especially micro-transaction based games and we all know that’s the land of Final Fantasy. Is it so surprising the Xbox 360 moves off Japanese shelves when they have a game or two the gamers actually want to play?
This is only partly Microsoft’s fault, Microsoft doesn’t specialize in Japanese games anymore than Square Enix excels at western style games. The big difference? Square Enix doesn’t manufacturer its own console hardware. It is Microsoft’s console and they should have an interest in making games the Japanese people will like, thankfully Namco Bandai came through for them this time!
So, this episode covers that fact that Nintendo is about to announce their next device, which they did earlier today: the Nintendo NX is now called the Nintendo Switch. The official Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer was also unveiled today too, and the multiplayer aspect is discussed. Jonah advises TJ and Scott to try The Stanley Parable as well.
This week’s news includes:
All this and two Questions of the Week!
