Episode 603: Blizz Connection

This month seems to be full of conferences, as Nintendo Direct was streamed the previous week, BlizzCon 2021 aired this week, and Sony’s State of Play is due next week. The announcement of Diablo II Remastered was only the highlight of the BlizzCon show.

The news this week includes:

  • BlizzCon 2021 announcements
  • Xbox will reportedly hold an event related to Bethesda next month
  • Skullgirls 2nd Encore’s new fighter Annie out in March
  • Stardew Valley: The Board Game sells out in one day
  • Watch Dogs: Legion‘s online mode is coming in March
  • Minecraft Dungeons ‘Flames of the Nether’ arrives alongside a free endgame update

All this plus Listener Feedback. Let us know what you think at the Facebook page.

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Xbox 360 Price Cut Official: September 5th, 2008Xbox 360 Price Cut Official: September 5th, 2008

The undeniable rumor, as expected, has come to be true and Microsoft’s Major Nelson has revealed September 5th as the day the Xbox 360 shall drop in price. Although not surprising, this is really the first good price drop for the 360 hardware which does not involve phasing out an old product line.

The price breakdown is as follows:

  • Xbox 360 Arcade $199
  • Xbox 360 $299
  • Xbox 360 Elite $399

This is a US price cut, Japan had their price cut last week. We’re not sure about how the rest of the 360 regions will shake out, but they’ll probably end up with a price line much like the one above.

Anyone surprised? Anyone going to run out and buy a 360?

(Thanks, Gamestooge)

Sony’s Software Development Beta ProjectsSony’s Software Development Beta Projects

It seems we’ve seen a lot of great concepts from Sony for their PlayStation 3 product line but very little has managed to hit the software virtual shelves. We’ve heard of Sony’s Afrika for the PS3 back at E3 in 2006 and we’re looking at it for 2008’s holiday lineup.

We’ve heard about Sony Home for years as well, but that’s now in some type of beta. It was supposed to be an open beta but that didn’t seem to work out and now it’s closed beta only. Recently they pushed out a firmware update that bricked PlayStation 3 consoles or at least screwed up many of them in varying levels.

Are they just really bad at software development and road map predictions? As a hardware development company they’ve put out some hardcore products, stone cold stable in terms of design and efficiency from the Walk Man to the PS3. Their products are practical in design, for the most part, fairly pretty, stable and function as designed. Yet they come up short on software time and time again.

One of the contributors at 2old2play had some things to say about Sony’s development efforts:

“Having worked at Sony as a Creative Designer two years ago, it doesn’t surprise me that they have still yet to release Home. While there, I was working on their Station Launcher application which was supposed to be released in late 2006. However, the Launcher app is still only in Beta to this day.” (2old2play.com)

In many ways their the anti-Microsoft in their approach and commitments. While Microsoft ships hardware that has what must be a 60% failure rate Sony ships hardware which works fairly well. On the flip side, Microsoft publishes a large quantity of software for all their products and has done very well in the business. Nobody can say it’s 100% perfect but it tends to get better with age or, at least, grow on you.

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