Episode 502: Spring Flu

Jonah suffers from spring flu this episode, which you can probably here in his voice. There’s a long discussion about isometric roleplaying games, and for the first time in a while, there’s no Gaming Flashback.

This week’s news items include:

  • id Software partnering with Mad Max dev Avalanche Studios to develop Rage 2
  • Radical Heights developer Boss Key Games shuts down
  • Platinum claims it will “turn the action genre on its head”
  • Redditor leaks potential Star Fox racing spin-off from Retro Studios

Let us know what you think.

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Episode 243: Bashing MicrosoftEpisode 243: Bashing Microsoft

The latest episode, which is on the short side after having a really long one two weeks ago, sees Paul returning from the flu with somewhat of a shady attitude this week. Meanwhile, the Gaming Flashback is the 1976 coin-op arcade game Blockade.

The news for this week includes:

  • Gabe Newell teases something for E3 2012 with a “3” in it
  • Richard Garriott working on Ultima successor
  • Microsoft includes “do not class action sue us” clause for Xbox Live
  • Bizarre circumstances surround GSC Game World

All that plus Reader Feedback and the Question of the Week, “What was your favorite handheld game?”

Sony’s E3 Conference: Fairly ImpressiveSony’s E3 Conference: Fairly Impressive

We’re all used to Sony falling on their face at E3 in the last few years, but, this year, things were different. They’re information was delivered well, they had a great presentation medium using Little Big Planet‘s game engine as a presentation platform over the standard PowerPoint slides and everything went smoothly.

The format for displaying their facts, figures and sales numbers was well played. Nobody wants to sit in front of a chart and listen to an executive blab on about what they did and where they’re going. But, when you add some Little Big Planet flair, such as having the graphs built within their game engine and Sack Boy hopping around on the statistics things smooth over well.

I was confused on why they chose to display the Little Big Planet graphic engine followed by Resistance 2 and then taper into talk about the PlayStation 2 with game previews. It seems more appropriate to bring in the PlayStation 2 product line first, then blow the crowd away with the current generation graphics. Instead, we were awed by the epic Resistance 2 graphics and then presented with old generation stale game engines… silly.

They went on to show off the wide array of PSP games arriving and a little trailer for Resistance Retribution for the PSP. The game system is definitely more mature than their DS competitor but seems to have a bit less sales momentum.

Overall, Sony did one right by talking about their three tiered solution to gaming instead of focusing too much on a single system. PlayStation 3 numbers are good but not mind boggling (like Wii) and their PSP product is doing much better than it used to and the PlayStation 2 numbers are high but falling compared to last year (as would be expected).

By focusing on the full suite of products they’ve put their eggs into many baskets rather than rely on their bleeding edge flagship product which still needs time to grow.

Well done Sony.

Google is Not Looking to Buy ValveGoogle is Not Looking to Buy Valve

Yesterday a rumor started which said Google was looking to purchase Valve Software, the makers of Half-Life, Team Fortress and, of course, Portal. While Valve Software boasts a 20-million unit sales on their archive of awesome games, what interest would google have in gaming?

From google’s own corporate mission statement: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” How would gaming fit into the dynamic of organizing the worlds information?

Some have said they’d be interested in Valve’s Steam system for distributing games and products. That seems far fetched considering all the CDN solutions on the Net, especially those focused towards media related projects like Liberated Syndication (Wizzard Media), which we use to host our gaming podcast, or other video solutions which would fit more into the Google playing field (considering the large purchase of youtube.com)

Today, Doug Lombardi of Valve, pubically said that Valve Software is willing to be purchased but stated the Google rumor was “a bit of fiction.” (kotaku) While Valve Software has shown they can make awesome titles with stability and dedication, knowing their open to being purchased is slightly disturbing.

I’m always happy for those “little guys” that make it in the big world of cut throat game development, there is some satisfaction knowing the smaller developers are making big waves against publishers like EA and Activision. Valve has changed the way we download games electronically and continues to expand their dominion; if Valve Software was purchased by a bigger company, would we still get the same quality and innovation from the developers?