Depressingly, sexual harassment in a development studio is once again the lead news item this week, and from a studio most gamers would never think it could happen. That, and major seismic shifting in the power structure of the digital storefront landscape.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
This episode sees the debut of a new co-host, videogame writer T.J. Denzer, who joins Jonah Falcon and Scott Dirk for this long episode, discussing Star Wars, spoilers, and other news that didn’t make the cut. This week also has the first Gaming Flashback in over a year, taking a look at The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
This week’s news includes:
Question of the Week: “What is your favorite strategy game?”
This week we’re giving our impressions of Wrath of the Lich King, taking a look back at Ikari Warriors for the arcade and NES. This weeks news covers a few cool topics:
7-11 getting into the video game marketThis week we’re taking a historic look back at SNK Playmore, a company that managed to collapse yet rise from the flames under a new name with their old SNK franchise licenses. Also, we’ll announce the winners for our Bejeweled Twist Contest.
The Xbox 360 price drop rumors flow like water and it’s all but officially been announced at this point. What about PlayStation 3 and their price? No.
Nobuyuki Oneda, the Sony’s chief financial officer said, “our plan is not to reduce the price. Our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability.” (gamespot) This makes complete sense coming from their chief financial officer, as their motivation is to make money, not lose it.
The question remains, how will they actually make money if they’re no longer in the race for competitive market prices? Considering game licensing must Net them some amount of profit Sony’s idea seems to be the exact opposite of their original PlayStation method: saturate the market and sell them all games.
So far we’ve seen very few “need to have” games for the PlayStation 3 console while Xbox 360 continues to build a substantial library and Wii continues to break sales records for apparently no reason. When a game publisher has to decide on a platform to launch a new game, why would they choose the one that doesn’t care to be competitively priced in the market? The one that doesn’t care about quantity of sales?
Sony intends to reverse the entire razor blade philosophy where one sells a cheap razor and charges users for the blades over and over again. Their take on this concept is to sell really expensive razors and put out small half-quality blades. Is that a good market strategy at this point?
