Last week’s podcast couldn’t be uploaded thanks to some good old-fashioned California power outages. This week’s episode is full of snark — enjoy.
The news items include:
Let us know what you think.
Microsoft has come out and validated some earlier rumors about Xbox 360 Avatar’s and their 3D dashboard design. Apparently, this is to build more of a community and bring a bit of the Mii-like influence from the Nintendo Wii to the 360 hardware.
It seems Microsoft is taking some of the concepts from the Nintendo Wii which were poorly implemented due to the lack of any real network community and bring them to live with a more integrated useful system. This proves Nintendo was on the right track but shows off their lack of integration and fear of bringing people together.
“Create, share, and have fun with all of your friends… but avatars are just the beginning. The new Xbox is tailored for the living room. Here we are at the community channel — instead of a list of friends, you actually see them.” (joystiq)
Nintendo’s cute little idea of Mii’s and sharing them with friends was fantastic, a great bullet list feature, but rather useless. Typing in friends codes gets old way too fast and there really isn’t anyway to vocally chat with people on your friends list anyway, so who cares?
Microsoft has proven to know a bit about the community space, has parental controls and a fairly reliable LIVE system for making it all happen. Although Nintendo should look at this with a bit of pride, given duplication is the best form of flattery, they could learn a few things about how to work a community into your console too!
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.
This week we’re tackling a very small bit of E3 news because our recording occurs on Monday night. We did, however, get a bit of Microsoft E3 news and do not worry, we found lots of other great topics to discuss this week. We also tackle some great user write-ins and other crazy stuff.
Another PSP Coming: PSP GoThis weeks history: The Bard’s Tale and we’re taking a look at what Satoru Iwata has done for Nintendo and the shoes he had to replace. The question of the week is crazy this time around, if you played the Video Gamer class in an RPG, what attributes and abilities would you have?
