This week’s episode, which has been posted a little late due to life interruptions, has Jonah ranting about Mass Effect Andromeda, which T.J. and Scott pine for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wind.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
In 1995 Ensemble Studios formed as an independent studio and kicked out a little game franchise known as Age of Empires. The title has received many accolades from the first in the franchise extended out to all the Age of Empires releases and spin-offs, all-in-all selling millions of copies.
Ensemble Studios had a mission “to create great games and a great place to work,” says Bruce Shelley from Ensemble Studios. Bruce Shelley also helped design Sid Meier’s Civilization and Railroad Tycoon with MicroProse prior to his work at Ensemble Studios. Now, however, he’s a bit upset at the closing of Ensemble Studios because they were profitable, created top-quality titles and had a great working environment.
Ensemble Studios, from his perspective at least, was a place you’d go to work and be happy with what you’re doing. When you’re working along nicely and become blind-sided by the news, it’s not surprising he didn’t take it lightly.
“Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.” (ensemblestudios.com)
What’s the future plans for Ensemble Studios? As we’ve stated before, they plan to live on in spirit, within the bounds of a new name and a new game plan. “I believe the spirit and mission of ES will be carried forward in this new company if enough of the key leaders agree to take part, which I expect to happen. There has been no announcement about what the new studio will be working on when it gets going,” says Shelley.
This is a horrible way to have to launch a hot new intellectual property. Usually creating a new title with a building fanbase would lead to excitement, parties and high hopes for the future of the franchise. Instead, people will be dusting off their resume in hopes to continue a life of game development.
Hopefully the leaders will indeed form a brand new company and build brand new hot products with their entire staff intact. Then, take their titles to a different publisher (besides Microsoft) and make some money and fans.
If you’ve got an Xbox 360 arcade edition or an older console without a hard disk, you’ll want to clear up at least 128MB of your flash card before powering on your console after the fall update hits. Wait, you’re flash disk isn’t 128MB in size? Oh oh.
Latest reports are stating that consumers that own a 360 without a hard disk, albeit a small group, will not be able to simply install the fall update as the rest of us because they don’t have enough disk capacity. What is Microsoft doing about that? Microsoft’s Larry Hryb says saying they will be “offering storage solutions” for such customers.
We’re wondering, are they going to actually ship people free hard disks? Perhaps a coupon for a larger flash card? Interesting indeed!
“The new Xbox experience will require 128MB of free space. A hard drive is recommended for the optimal experience, to take advantage of some new features, and to be able to enjoy the great movies, TV shows and games available on Xbox LIVE. While we expect the majority of consumers to download the New Xbox Experience without a problem, a small percentage of Xbox 360 owners do not have enough memory to accommodate the update. To help ensure all Xbox LIVE members are able to download the New Xbox Experience and enjoy its new features, Microsoft will be offering storage solutions to the Xbox LIVE community. We are not sharing details of this offering yet. Be sure to check xbox.com for more details in the coming weeks.” (1up)
It was really only a matter of time before the Xbox 360 out grew the fact that they allow consumers to roll with a diskless console. No other console limits you by having both a disk and diskless option; we know why they did it, but now it would seem their having some growing pains.
No doubt, the next Xbox 360 console will come complete with hard disk! Hopefully you were wise and got the bigger console complete with disk.
Nintendo plans to capitalize on the monumental success of Wii Sports by doing what they do best, building a hot game with an accessory backing its success. The new Wii Sports Resort will be a mini-game set like Wii Sports and Wii Play but with a beach setting and games like frisbee.
Frisbee? How can the Wii motion controller handle a Frisbee toss? Wii Motion Plus of course! We believe they’ll be packing the game in with the Wii Motion Plus to add more value to the purchase. Honestly, this adds more value to the accessory as a driving force to make sales and increase margins. Game accessories are a great way for Nintendo to profit, consider the pack in game marketing material.
As Wii Play has shown us, historically, gamers want the accessory and the bundled game is just icing on the proverbial cake. Wii Play, as a game, was lacking in many ways and would be, as a stand alone product, a definite must-not-have title. But, considering the amount of Wii controllers sold, this allows Wii Play to show up high on best games sold month over month.
Wii Sports Resort takes this to a new level by using the term “Wii Sports” in the game, allowing the masses to flock to the store to get anything that can reproduce the fun of the original title. Nobody knows, yet, if it will reproduce the same fun factor but the accessory is neat.
(Thanks, joystiq)
