The Gaming Podcast is back after a week off, and it celebrates the 10th year anniversary of BioShock with its own Gaming Flashback. They also touch on its sequels, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite.
It’s not all BioShock, however, as the following news items are discussed:
Let us know if you enjoyed any of the BioShock games.
This week is a big episode, as it is chock full of surprising news this week, as well as some long, long reader mail. If that weren’t enough, we take a look back at the IntelliVision game Maze-a-Tron, deal with too much love for Paul, and the mystery that is the popularity of gorillas.
This week’s news includes:
There’s no Gaming History this week, but the Question of the Week is: “What old game do you most want to see remade?” There’s no contest behind it, but you can always take heart in the fact that your question was probably the most awesome.
People see facts and figures constantly and brush them off as, well, facts and figures. But, when people see charts and graphs they “oooh” and “aaaah” over them because the visualization is easy to understand. Now, thanks to the NPD Group and Deutsche Bank, people are seeing some pretty graphs about the console battle. These show just how well the race is going on all fronts of the war.
Although the data is fairly small the colors show it all, the Wii crossed over the Xbox 360 numbers in unit sales and hasn’t stopped since the launch. Here we are, on the third holiday season since the Wii launch, and people still cannot find them in stores. Shortage? Doubtful. Considering the massive sales numbers and the fact that they did take the 360 in numbers it seems the supply just can’t meet the over-the-top demands, but why is the demand so high for the little Nintendo bundle of joy? People just can’t get enough Wii.
The Xbox 360 has much to brag about as well, they’re not first in the race but their nearest next-generation graphic console, the PlayStation 3, isn’t even close. The chart shows them both rising in much the same way, with the same “pops” along the sales chart but in a completely different scale. Since Microsoft doesn’t want to consider Wii a competitor, they’re clearly winning the war in their eyes.
Oddly enough, one of the big pops in Xbox 360 sales where around the PS3 launch. Perhaps these consumers were waiting for both consoles to launch before making a decision? More than likely, it was holiday related and had little to do with the PS3 launch but it is fun to ponder anyway.
What about software sales? We’ve heard the Wii has little to offer in terms of games while the 360 wipes the floor with the competition.
To our surprise, the Wii is rocking the sales figures in terms of software but still doesn’t compare to the Xbox 360. Microsoft pulls out 93-million units while Nintendo takes home a modest 73-million units in software… yet again Sony doesn’t show up to the fight. Looking at November 2007, you can see the Wii jumps significantly in unit sales, no doubt related to the Super Mario Galaxy launch — once they hit that figure they never looked back and continued to climb.
Although a few of us expected Sony’s PlayStation 3 to make huge progress this year, each month they have marginal growth is causing their competitors to excel beyond anyones imagination. We’re starting to wonder how well Sony’s “10 year plan” is going to work out with their competitors taking advantage of the market now when, in 10-years, they will be sitting on their pile of cash to re-invest in the 8th generation of consoles.
(Thanks, GameDaily)
This weeks gaming flashback? Scorched Earth, a great artillery style title. We’re also taking a historic look back at the game innovations developed by Don Daglow. Of course it’s not a full news week without some actual news! This weeks news includes:
Walmart Pushing New Madden GameThis weeks community feedback was epically cool, we’re continuing the questions this week by asking: What game would you invent using the Wii balance board and vitality sensor? Do you have some ideas to solve Nintendo’s problem?
