This week’s Gaming Flashback has no cake — instead it’s the history of Portal. The guys try to keep the podcast meme-free as they discuss Valve’s first person puzzle platformer.
There’s also non-Portal related news items, too:
Let us know what you think in the Comments section.
After a problematic week, Episode 375 is now up, with tons of news. So much that there’s no room for a Gaming Flashback or a Gaming History.
The news includes:
This week’s Question of the Week: “What, if any, was your favorite part of Rock Band?”
If you’re a Netflix subscriber and own an Xbox 360 you’ll be able to watch the entire library of Netflix programming on your console. This deal, recently announced at E3, puts Microsoft in a great way in terms of being the console to buy for multi-media entertainment against its Rival Sony.
While the Wii can’t even play a DVD, Sony holds a lot of power of its Music (having its own labels helps) and its ability to play Blu-Ray movies. Microsoft’s HD-DVD player DVD player doesn’t handle high definition movies, although most new consoles have HDMI and all the high definition goodies ready to go.
Again, this won’t cost current Netflix subscribers any additional cost, “and movies and TV shows can be shared with the avatar-based community called Live Party, just announced earlier this morning.” (Kotaku)
This may not inspire you to run out and purchase an Xbox 360 console but it may be a deciding factor when pitting it up against the PlayStation 3 when shopping for a current-generation system.
Wii Motion Plus is Nintendo’s next big hardware up sell, an add-on that should make the Wii controller more realistic and flexible when playing highly sensitive “real movement” games. The hardware has been looked at by many in the industry as fixing imperfections in the current hardware, a patch of sorts.
The Wii Motion Plus is going to be bundled with Wii Sports Resort, a title that’s obviously playing off the biggest Wii hit Wii Sports. Latest reports are showing the game title missing from the upcoming release lists, so, it’s not too far fetched to assume the hardware will be delayed along with the game, considering this was the first game to rely on the Wii Motion Plus hardware.
The delay is rumored to be due to a few problems with the Wii Motion Plus, more than likely during the final stages of testing the prototype products. In Nintendo’s defense, they’re usually very good about due diligence when it comes to producing hardware and software, taking the time that is needed to get something into the customers hands that’s acceptable quality. All eyes are on Nintendo with the Wii Motion Plus because people see this as the final “fix” to make the Wii controller do everything it was promised to do.
While Nintendo doesn’t see the original controller as broken (nor do the millions of customers buying them everyday), this new hardware should make it more sensitive for games that require perfect movement… games like Wii Sports Resort?
At this point we’d expect to hear news of a slight delay by Nintendo soon. We’d rather see it arrive late than utterly broken and useless.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
I wanted Killer Instinct on the mini SNES.