This week’s episode is three hours long — Jonah’s mic was moving in the first minute, but after that, it’s ok. There’s no news, just discussion of each of the press briefings that preceded E3, as well as some of the games that Jonah got hands-on time with. TJ is sad that he didn’t get to attend this year, while Scott is getting E3 swag.
Next week, back to news items!
Much like Kameo: Elements of Power, Fable 2 ships without online co-op mode on day-one. However, Kameo didn’t promise the co-op mode prior to the games release, or talk about it in their presentations and hype machine conferences.
How does that happen? It’s easy to promise a feature but words do not make games true. More than likely the online co-op was a bit more complicated or had some bugs that needed to be shaken out prior to shipping. Microsoft is talking about releasing a patch for the new co-op play on the first week or so of the game release.
There are two options: ship a product that’s buggy and deal with the online PR nightmare with bugs and day-one patches, or, ship it without the feature and promise it early in the launch phase of the game. Once the code is complete, game software has to go through the packing, duplication and shipping phase. A lot of last minute testing can get done in the time it takes to produce the boxed product.
Hopefully Microsoft is doing some last minute testing to make a more reliable presentation of online co-op which everyone can use. However if it releases with a bunch of bugs…
(Thanks, GameSpot)
Nintendo’s WiiWare channel is reported to be doing well (says Nintendo) and their Virtual Console games continue to invoke nostalgic downloads. Now, as Networked based gaming slowly starts to crawl on the console Nintendo has begun to realize they’re going to hit some storage issues.
The 512MB of internal flash memory is a bit lacking, especially considering you can purchase a 2GB flash drive for under USD $50.00 in todays market. While Sony and Microsoft work to increment their disk capacities in 20GB intervals Nintendo’s still trying to figure out how to solve their internal storage issues.
Although we initially heard that geeks would be the ones to hit the storage limitations Nintendo’s North American President and COO is readily admitting the pending issue, “we have a consumer base who loves virtual console. We have a userbase who really is enjoying WiiWare content. So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on a download basis?”
The challenge in being a Japanese based company is understanding how American users consume your product. We’re much more likely to download content and spend money on products we’ve purchased 20 years ago. This is why we’ve got an American based Nintendo HQ to understand the ways of American thinking and trending.
While Nintendo Europe’s Europe’s Laurent Fischer sees only “geeks and otaku” utilizing the minimal disk capcity we here in the States can consume this space overnight. Imagine if we had downloadable content for Rock Band or Guitar Hero to pull down and play!?
As this becomes, as Reggie put it, a “mainstream problem” Nintendo is going to find their harder core demographic moving to other consoles that do it right and allow for expandability. There is a reason, after all, the other consoles cost a bit more to buy.
(Thanks, IGN)
The famous Michael Pachter, industry analyst has been drawing some strong connections between Xbox 360 gamers and the Netflix subscriber base since 360 launched their Netflix addition. Our family has seen the same thing, we signed up for Netflix a few days after it arrived on the Xbox 360 firmware launch.
Oddly enough, we’ve not used the Netflix addition to the Xbox 360 much after subscribing for Netflix. We’ve utilized the DVD shipment feature and we’re using the Tivo version of Netflix for the living room. Although we’ve found the Xbox 360 Netflix version is much more user friendly and fast.
“Pachter estimates that roughly one million Xbox Live Gold members are also Netflix subscribers, and that 200,000 or so of them signed up for Netflix after the debut of the New Xbox Experience in late November, 2008.” (joystiq)
Prachter believes 35% of all new Xbox 360 purchasers will sign up for an Xbox Live Gold account. He expects “as many as 1 million [XBL Gold members] join as Netflix members in the next year.” We’re fairly certain the Netflix and Microsoft Xbox 360 partnership was a well thought out plan to expand their domination in the industry.
Of course, as we’ve seen, Netflix didn’t just stop at Xbox 360, their Tivo solution is another great way to leverage your downloadable video content. Now, we just have to hope we don’t blow through the 250GB cap Comcast supposedly contains.
Great podcast! Talk about information overload. I learned a lot, but liked it anyway.
CyberPunk 2077 looks pretty awesome, but now that you guys all gave it the seal of approval I’m extra psyched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X2kIfS6fb8
Thanks for the heads up about the free trial of Unreal Champions. That offer was extended through this weekend so there’s still time to pick it up on Steam. It is a ton of fun. plus cool NIN music.
Keep up the good work, cyberpunks.
HI guys.
Thanks a lot for this huge episode! was a little bit work to listen to it, but was very informative 🙂
I want to look at all the shows from every single publisher and figure out, which game i will spectate (is this the right word?). I pre-ordered BF5, becausei want to play it with my friends. In addition i will pre-order Kingdom Hearts 3. My friends want me to pre order Cyberpunk as well, but i did not even play Witcher 3 to know if i like the engine and graphics .. but i love cyberpunk / steampunk 🙂 …. let´s see …i will have some months before the games come out 🙂
My friends also backed this Star Citizen game 2 years ago …. so their decisions are not always the best ones 😀
So, thanks again for this huge work on this episode 🙂
Your loyal listener,
Ralf