Valve continues to have problems in the wake of Epic (and now Discord) giving developers more of the earnings pie, as the year draws to a close. Meanwhile, T.J. explains his gamertag.
This week’s episode includes the following news items:
Let us know what your favorite game of 2018 was.
It’s Contest Time, as Gaming Podcast is giving away a swag bag that includes The Sims 4 and some videogame merch from E3. Most of the 87 minute podcast deals with more E3 talk, and 5 minutes spent on news items.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you thought of E3 this week in the comments.
(Must be a continental US resident to win the contest.)
Does the console market need any more competitors? We’ve seen record sales in the game industry for titles like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV along with huge expectations for Resistance 2 and some new Sony PlayStation 3 projects. Yet, the tiny little Wii product holds best sales records around the world as the heavy hitter, Microsoft and Sony, compete for the most awesome spectacle show of graphics.
Competition is a great way to drive down costs, drive up expectations and give consumers new innovative products with better quality. Imagine if Apple got into console development and produced a new highly sexy product with the hype and consumer desire of the iPhone or iPod.
“Apple has the infrastructure in place through iTunes to create a real value proposition for those that want to extend the capability of their console beyond gaming and has the cash — about $20 billion — to not only invest in the best components on the market, but in an online gaming experience that could rival Xbox Live.” (kotaku)
Apple’s showing a huge surge in recognition and sales thanks to the iPod and growing desire for Apple hardware competing against Microsoft’s Vista operating system. As more consumers turn to Apple for their music and mobile gaming needs, Apple must see windows of exploiting the gaming market further.
More importantly, nobody can pull off digital rights management (DRM) and locking consumers into a product line like Apple all while they beg for more. Consoles are little boxes of DRM waiting for happy consumers to buy into the concept all while avoiding the hacking and bittorrenting like you’ve been seeing on Spore in the last few weeks. Had Spore been released on a console this DRM fiasco would have been avoided because gamers don’t even realize (or care) that a console locks them into playing and, more importantly, buying the game for the hardware.
If you’re wondering what happened to Episode 405, it was recorded, but Jonah’s power supply self-destructed, and wasn’t available til Wednesday, and by then it was too late to post it. (It will be posted at some point in the near future.)
Instead, check out these week’s news:
Question of the Week: Do you or have you pulled videogame all-nighters on weeknights?
