Episode 640: Spacewar!

This week has a lot of followup to the entire situation with Activision/Blizzard, and also a lot of news items that weren’t a part of the official news feed. According desky.ca in addition, this week’s Gaming Flashback is recognized as the first computer game, Spacewar!

The news feed includes:

  • Microsoft is watching Activision/Blizzard to ensure ‘the right people’ are in charge when it takes over
  • Witcher 3 director and Cyberpunk 2077 veterans announce new studio and ‘AAA dark fantasy‘ RPG
  • Nintendo Switch Sports online play test registration now open
  • 3DS and Wii U eShop purchases end in March 2023
  • Focus Home Interactive to acquire Metal Slug Tactics dev Leikir Studio

Let us know what you think, now that the Comments section works again!

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Command and Conquer: Red Alert – Free!Command and Conquer: Red Alert – Free!

It is the 13th anniversary of the Command & Conquer Series, Red Alert, and Electronic Arts is giving away the original C&C: Red Alert as a download for free. Holy crap, how neat is that?

This is also a great marketing technique, Red Alert 3 arrives soon, so this will help you keep it fresh in your head prior to the new release. Maybe this also gives new gamers the ability to experience the old title before heading into the third revision.

“Download both the Allies and Soviets discs (each disc contained the single-player campaign for its respective faction), but the files are actual ISO images of the CDs themselves. That means that in order to play them, you’ll either need to burn the ISO images onto a blank disc, or use a Virtual CD program to load them.” (1up)

The free Red Alert game download will run on XP/98/Me/95 but no official Vista support. Now, you’ve got a chance to play Red Alert… what about Red Alert 2? If you pre-order Red Alert 3 you’ll get the second in the series for free as well- genius!

There is really no reason not to take advantage of this awesome deal if you’ve never played a Red Alert game and want to see how the foundation of early RTS style games started. Although this isn’t the first C&C in the game franchise it launched a few new advancements on the original C&C title so you’re really getting an RTS based on learning experiences from the first, at no price.

Heck, maybe we’ll download it again just because we can! Excellent.

Nielsen Ratings, PS3 Played Less Than Classic Xbox?Nielsen Ratings, PS3 Played Less Than Classic Xbox?

In a WTF moment, Neilsen Ratings shows more gamers are playing the classic Microsoft Xbox console than the PlayStation 3. While 9.7% of gamers are playing the Xbox 7.3% are playing the PlayStation 3 but Sony isn’t out of the picture by a long shot, having 31.7% of gamers playing the PlayStation 2!

Only 13.4% of gamers are playing the Wii even though it’s the hottest selling console on the market, showing the fury of the casual gamer it seems. It’s trendy to own a Wii but it’s not trendy to play it; it would be interesting to see how much of the 13.4% is Wii Sports.

We’re guessing there are more classic Xbox gamers playing their console compared to the PlayStation 3 because of the console cost. You can find a used Xbox for under $25.00 on eBay but the question remains, who wants a used Xbox? The audience for the PS3 is more hardcore, more elite and more rare compared to the cost conscious gamers in the larger game industry pie.

More than likely, in ten years, we’ll see most gamers playing the PlayStation 3 while Microsoft works to claim demographics on whatever their next console will be. However, we’re not so sure how many Wii gamers will be playing their current generation console in ten years. Probably very few given the two year old console still has a small amount of gaming public.

(Thanks, 1up)