The news cycle has begun to explode, as the holiday season looms and Black Friday in sight. Jonah and TJ get into a heated argument about Destiny 2, to liven up the proceedings after the bummer of Stan Lee’s death.
This week’s news include:
The Question of the Week is indeed “How would you fix Destiny 2?”
This week it’s Jordan Lund’s turn to be absent, while Jonah Falcon and Paul Nowak discuss just how bad The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is. This week’s Gaming Flashback is Peter Molyneux’s ambitious title Black & White.
In the news:
There’s also some Reader Feedback, while the Question of the Week is, “How in tune with an MMO’s story are you while playing?”
Apparently the war is in full force and Microsoft’s Don Mattrick is ready to poke the flag in the ground and call it a sure fire victory (in so many words). He said he’s “willing to declare here today that Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than PS3” (eurogamer)
They’re either not seeing the Wii as a competitor or are trying to avoid that evil word considering the growth of the tiny little console in the market. After telling the audience the Xbox 360 has already outpaced the PlayStation 3 and Wii he failed to mention the one-year head start the 360 had over its competitors.
There are, of course, bonuses to talking figures when you were first out of the gate. The interesting facts, which won’t present themselves for years now, will be the end unit sales figures for Wii, 360 and PlayStation 3 when all boxes are end-of-life’d. We’re sure to hear each side declare victory when they’ve decided when the war actually ends. In Microsoft’s eyes, the console war will probably end when they release the next-generation box, barring the fact that they should wait at least one year before claiming the title.
You can’t argue with the facts, Xbox 360 is doing very well in the United States (if we ignore Japan). The Nintendo Wii has sold 8.8 million units to the Xbox 360‘s 10.3 million units. How many units did the Xbox 360 have sold around the same time Nintendo boasts 8.8 million? Probably a bit less.
Press can be a great thing when you have numbers to play with and figures to skew. Oddly enough, if some of us are any indication, we’ve purchased multiple Xbox 360’s because of dead systems. Sure, we’re stupid for actually doing it, but those figures will work into the total units sold for the Xbox 360 hardware sales. Imagine, their failing systems may have actually boosted sales figures a bit; probably not statistically significant but funny non-the-less.
We can’t wait to see what type of numbers Sony and Nintendo are going to fling out. If we ask each competitor, we’re sure they’ll say we’re going to win the console war. Nintendo may just ask, “what console war? We just make game hardware” and you can’t fault them there!
Amazing. This has been the quarter for Blizzard and their crazy announcements, starting with Diablo 3 and their gameplay footage, now you can sign up for Wrath of the Lich King. As I’ve found, you can have an inactive World of Warcraft account and still sign up for the beta.
https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ for US accounts
http://www.wow-europe.com/account/ for European accounts
“Today we opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, which gives players a chance to win an invitation to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King beta. For The Burning Crusade beta, we randomly invited players from the entire World of Warcraft community. With the Opt-In, our goal is to strengthen the beta-testing process by inviting only those players who have expressed active interest in participating. Keep in mind that opting in doesn’t guarantee you’ll be selected for the beta.” (worldofwarcraft)
This is a great opportunity to bring back old gamers, since I was able to sign up with an inactive account, if I were chosen I’d be, in effect, paying to test their game. That’s insanity. You know what? I might just do it.
This announcement comes just as Diablo 3’s energy starts to die down on the news wire, giving folks more reasons to talk “Blizzard” news. Perhaps, after this announcement starts to calm down they’ll announce something about StartCraft 2.
The timing is perfect, considering E3 begins on July 14th and Blizzard will no doubt remain in the news up until this event. Once E3 kicks off their publicity will fade as other developers and publishers fight for the spot light (or will they just not show up at all to the dying event?).
The Blizzard hype machine is in full force!
(Thanks, 2old2play)
