Episode 452: Goodbye Princess Leia, Hello 2017

The year has ended, as the last podcast of 2016 was recorded last week, and released today. There’s much discussion that was cut out and saved for a future outtakes episode. Regardless, there’s plenty of show to go around, and the sound quality is also far better than ever thanks to Jonah getting a professional headset and mic.

This week’s news includes:

  • Nintendo registers trademark that could point to a SNES Classic Edition
  • Windows 10 may be getting a new “Game Mode” option
  • The next game by That Dragon, Cancer‘s dev is not what you’d expect

This week’s Question of the Week is “What game in 2017 might you buy that you normally wouldn’t?”

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Episode 310: Halo Makes You Feel OldEpisode 310: Halo Makes You Feel Old

This week’s podcast features a Gaming Flashback of Halo: Combat Evolved, one of the longest such game segments in the podcast’s history, encompassing a third of the podcast.

This week’s news items includes:

  • Blizzard decides against rolling back Diablo III servers following gold exploit
  • Defiance to get 5 major DLC packs in the next year
  • Report: Next-gen Xbox console called “Xbox Infinity”
  • Obsidian expresses desire to develop Star Wars RPG
  • EA to stop licensing with weapons manufacturers, will keep using branded guns

There’s only one reader response, but there is a Question of the Week: “What videogame genre are you completely burned out on?”

Episode 231: Plus One PaulEpisode 231: Plus One Paul

Paul has some angry comments, Jonah has some angry comments, while Jordan just chuckles and makes a Freudian mistake. In between complaints, the Gaming Flashback looks at the Amiga classic Syndicate, and the following news items:

  • The Lund Report: August 2011 NPD
  • Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 PC controversy rages
  • THQ: Next-gen consoles will be discless
  • Quantic Dreams claims they lost 10M euro on used games
  • 3DS sales jump 260% following price drop
  • Syndicate reboot finally confirmed and unveiled by EA

Finally, the Question of the Week: What was the most disappointing remake or reboot of a game you’ve played? All that and Reader Feedback, too.

End of 100 Million Dollar Games?End of 100 Million Dollar Games?

Gigaom had a great writeup about how Grand Theft Auto IV marks the end of “next generation” as we know it, stating, in more words or less, the game is a failure. GTA: San Andreas sold 21.5 million copies during its time on the shelf while GTA IV has sold roughly 9 million copies as of June 7th.

Granted, the game is still on the shelves and will still get sales, but the mass of “hardcore gamers” have had their fill and either purchased it or will not. The end result? A huge tapering of sales numbers for the graphically impressive game. Take-Two spent USD $100 million to develop the game which had great opening sales records but has gone down drastically since.

Imagine the title gains them USD $30.00 per sale in profit (considering distributors get the game for roughly USD $45 to $48.00 USD), taking into account shipping of the product, marketing and all the materials that go into producing a copy, they’d have to sell a large quanity of game titles to break even, which I think they have done.

Nobody is in this industry to break even. A block buster title should make block buster profits, right? Else, why bother to spend the 100-million when a Wii title can double or triple the profits with six months of development?

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