Episode 559: Welcome to 2020

Welcome to the future, as Jonah, Scott and TJ ring in the new year, as this week’s Gaming Flashback reminds Jonah of what his favorite game of the decade was. (Spoiler: Mass Effect 2.) In fact, the game is so good Jonah and TJ talk about it for an hour before discussing the week’s generally weak news.

This week’s topics include:

  • Report: New Switch model launching in 2020
  • The Ni No Kuni movie is coming to Netflix
  • Silent Hill Art Director Masahiro Ito announces a new video game
  • Vice City: Remastered for Grand Theft Auto 5 mod released

Was 2010 the best year for games in the 2010’s? Let us know.

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Xbox 360 Silver Accounts, Free XBL Cross-Platform GamingXbox 360 Silver Accounts, Free XBL Cross-Platform Gaming

Microsoft has announced they’ll be giving Xbox Live silver accounts access to play some multi-player cross-platform games for free until the fall update. Recently, Microsoft announced free online play with Games for Windows titles, effectively giving PC gamers “gold accounts” to play online.

Most people agree the move to give gold subscriptions to PC gamers was done because PC gamers don’t care to play Games for Windows games online if they have to pay for it. The culture of PC gaming is much different than console gaming on XBL, gamers expect the online experience at no cost; they’re already paying an ISP for network access, paying for a match-making system with a yearly subscription is not desired.

Console gamers don’t have a choice, buying the 360 experience arrives with simple to play games (no drivers, no installs) but limited online choices: pay or go away. Now, silver members will get a little taste of network play, along side PC gamers in the cross-platform Games for Windows titles.

“Supported cross-platform titles include Universe at War, Shadowrun, and Lost Planet: Colonies Edition.” (gamespot)

We question the intention here… is this as a good faith move or are they wetting people’s appitite for XBL so they’ll want to upgrade to gold in the fall? Or, maybe there are some logistical reasons to doing this in the Xbox Live infrastructure to prepare for upgrades where making it free solves a few of their internal upgrade paths and, as a side effect, gives gamers some games to play.

Of course, we’ve seen few people playing Shadowrun or Lost Planet lately. Maybe this will re-popularize a few older titles as well.

Episode 324: Next-Generation ShowdownEpisode 324: Next-Generation Showdown

This week’s podcast has no Listener Feedback, and is sort of short because of it. However, in addition to the news items that were on script, there was the surprise news of how much Grand Theft Auto V cost to produce.

This week’s news includes:

  • Xbox One gets November 22 launch date
  • Each Xbox One to be sold at a profit
  • PS4 only supports 4 controllers
  • PS4 and Xbox One won’t support external hard drives for now
  • Sony refunds Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn PSN purchases

This week’s Question of the Week asks if you’ve ever gotten a new version of the console you already owned.

Xbox 360 Japan Sales Drop, PS3 Sales CrappyXbox 360 Japan Sales Drop, PS3 Sales Crappy

The Xbox 360 saw a huge jump last week with Tales of Vesperia from Namco Bandai, but has dropped back down to normal sales (about none). Some are saying it’s mainly because of a short supply as the 360 sold out in Japan as a result of Tales of Vesperia.

In other news, the PlayStation 3 still isn’t selling very well, a bit more than the PlayStation 2 but nothing like the PSP. The DS holds the record yet again, no surprise there, but we always though the 360 was losing to the Wii and PS3. Although the Wii isn’t doing bad it’s not at the same crazy sales pace it is here in the United States.

The drop in sales for the 360 was fast, hopefully it was indeed due to out-of-stock issues, else that drop was faster than the drops we’ve seen here for GTA IV or MGS4!

(Thanks, Kotaku)