Episode 438: League of Denzer

As Jonah and T.J. chide Scott for going into an F-bomb rage over the iPhone’s price, the holiday season looms, and T.J. talks about his renewed relationship with League of Legends.

This week’s news items include:

  • All Battlefield 4 expansions are free until next week
  • Sony confirms layoffs at London, San Diego Studios
  • Valve tackles dodgy devs cheating Steam review scores
  • League of Legends surpasses 100 million monthly players

All this and one Listener Feedbnack we didn’t get around to listening to, so wait til next week.

0 thoughts on “Episode 438: League of Denzer”

  1. My roommate has the white PS4 that was bundled with Destiny.

    I recall playing DotA when it was new in 2005, but I haven’t played it in years because I disliked teammates “feeding” (dieing a lot) and being killed by multiple opponents because my teammate(s) wouldn’t declare MiA (missing in action) heroes in their lanes.
    Regarding why people in RTS and MOBA games click constantly might be to help their reaction time, as I, too, did that; it would let me know relative server latency.

    I never played LoL, HotS, or DOTA2, but I have spectated DOTA2 to see my PC’s performance, and DOTA2 got a Vulkan update, so I’m hoping for the next Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, or Valve game to use a good Vulkan implementation.

    I enjoy watching Super Mario Maker, “Retro” category games, nostalgic games, and high requirement games because I’m using an old PC until Zen arrives, and I, too, use Twitch to preview games.; it, also, serves as “background noise”.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Phil Harrison’s Building a 100 Million Dollar FranchisePhil Harrison’s Building a 100 Million Dollar Franchise

Once upon a time, Activision Blizzards CEO Bobby Kotick kicked a few franchises to the curb: Riddick and Ghostbusters. No doubt, this was a result of the Activision and Blizzard merger requiring some resources to the merged together while others were cut from the lineup. Phil Harrison, the new big suit at Atari/Infogrames has raised these little birds from the ashes with a dream to build them into 100-million dollar franchises.

While Bobby Kotick said the titles, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises,” Phil Harrision sees it as a personal challenge to prove him wrong.

“What Bobby, perhaps unhelpfully said, was that those games were franchises which wouldn’t make $100m of revenue and generate sequels. If that’s his benchmark, then fine — and we’d love to aspire to the same benchmarks. But you know what? I would love to turn Ghostbusters into a $100m franchise, just to prove him wrong.” (1up)

In many ways, this is the difference in attitudes from a large firm compared to a smaller firm with strong goals and a vision for success. Activision Blizzard is big now, perhaps the biggest publisher in the industry, they can’t be bothered with minuscule 80-million dollar franchises. Others, like Atari, strive to take a title from nothing to something of greatness. Granted, Atari’s failed in a lot of franchises, but with their new ex-Sony executive behind the helm things could turn around and this might be the first step.

Most of the best game franchises in existance today started from nothing but a dream. Big publishers don’t have time to dream, they’re too busy making money off the fanboys of their current franchises.

Xbox 360 Price Cut Leads To 100-Percent Sales IncreaseXbox 360 Price Cut Leads To 100-Percent Sales Increase

Why release a single block buster game with a two week pop when you can simply lower the price of your console and boost sales by 100%? That’s a question Sony may be asking themselves right now, as Metal Gear Solid 4‘s hype may have lasted years but the sales and console unit sale boots lasted a month.

Gamers show how they feel about costly consoles with their wallet. With 100% increases in sales, it’s clear that many gamers have been holding out from the “next-generation” of consoles because the price was too high. Now, Microsoft can report huge sales numbers this quarter with a special thanks to their price cut. Imagine the sales boost the PlayStation 3 would have if it was competitive in price?

Microsoft could have kept the savings of manufacturing costs to themselves but they chose to pass savings onto the consumers. The increase in unit sales means more households own the product and newly released games will probably see larger spikes now that people have invested in the 360 console.

End result, developers will want to produce games for the Xbox 360 because they’ve got a larger audience and publishers will be less likely to pick Sony as an exclusive because the 360‘s got sway in the market. It might not be a Wii in total sales records but it’s not half bad!

(Thanks, gamasutra)

Asassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft’s Future ProjectAsassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft’s Future Project

We received a new franchise in 2007 called Assassin’s Creed, it was way hyped and released with mixed success, you either love it or you were bored to tears. We loved it, but many were bored to tears. Many assume Ubisoft learned a lot from their first release and will fix some of the repetition from the initial game with Assassin’s Creed 2 if one were to be created.

Ubisoft was asked by gamespot if they’d release a date or confirm the 2010 release of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Ubisoft had a very simple answer: “we’re not answering that question” and “what we just can say is that we are working hard on the product.”

They won’t promise a date for Asassin’s Creed 2 but this at least gives us an indication that they’re working on a game to follow up the initial release. There are plenty of creative concepts that can be done even better in a second game release including branching out the quests to make them a bit less tedious and repeating. The graphics were stunning, the moves were fluid and the battles were a dance of blades.

We’re waiting. Bring it on Ubisoft.