This week’s episode takes a look at the success of World of Warcraft Classic and maybe yet another Batman game.
News:
Let us know what you think.
This week we’re flashing back to Star Wars, an arcade classic from 1983. We’re looking back at the history and forward progress of ArenaNet, co-founded by some Blizzard folks. In the news, we’re looking at:
John Riccitiello, EA’s CEO says the recession is a blessingWe also learned that Don’s got some issues with not sucking at Mass Effect.
Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.
This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.
Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.
Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
This episode has some audio issues due to circumstances requiring Jonah to tape from outside in the NYC streets. Otherwise, this week’s news is Poke-mazing as some major issues hit the video game world this past week.
The news includes:
This is the contest’s last week. The Question of the Week is “How much is too much data to share with a game company?”
