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.
Eidos was founded in 1990 and has been the king of its own destiny since its inception. As part of Square-Enix, Eidos and its destiny were called into question, would they continue to run the show or would they become one with Square-Enix. Square-Enix has come out to say they’ll be leaving Eidos to themselves and allow creativity to flow between the companies.
“This is an exciting beginning to what I believe will be an incredible journey. I am very happy that Phil Rogers has agreed to lead Eidos in what I see as an international marriage between our two companies, a marriage that will give birth to great things. Eidos is a content rich company and a culturally significant business to the Square Enix group.” (kotaku)
Square-Enix is playing it safe with this acquisition because this isn’t a great enviroment for shaking things up internally within a development studio. Eidos is well known for Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex, Thief and many other great projects and have built a solid foundation for the future.
A mind-share between these two groups is a powerful enemy to the competitors if they’re able to open a good dialog between the two companies and share resources, tools and engines. In a world of cost savings and salary cuts, leaning on each others resources to build a better product is a win.
At least we won’t have to call them Square-Enix-Edios because that’s just a mouthful!
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.
It’s another brief episode as frictions rise between New Yorkers Jonah Falcon and Paul S. Nowak, while Washington State native Jordan Lund looks on. This week’s gaming flashback in the Nintendo 64’s The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, as well as the following news items:
This week’s Question of the Week: Are you interested in Epic Mickey 2?
