For some reason, this episode was never uploaded, though it was recorded two weeks ago. The Gaming Flashback is Mass Effect, and the news includes:
Jordan Lund and Jonah Falcon finally get back together after an eventful E3 2013, as Jordan finished his not-so-stellar review of The Last of Us. Part of the podcast was from Jonah’s live television show on MNN, which recapped Microsoft’s decision to reverse its online policies with the Xbox One.
The news this week includes:
This week has a contest: win a free Large T-Shirt of Titanfall, by answering the question: What game at E3 impressed you the most?
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)
This week we’re pulling a 2-person shift while Don is away being sick and tired. We substituted his astute comments with extra epic insight… okay, we just did as best as we could without him. We flash back to Venture, we do an audio review of Zuma’s Revenge and we kicked it free style with some news:
Halo: ODST Reviews are inThis week’s question of the week, can big companies still innovate with new games?
