Jonah considers Elden Ring too grind-y, and talks about the name of an infamous handheld console.
News items include:
Let us know what you think.
Apparently the war is in full force and Microsoft’s Don Mattrick is ready to poke the flag in the ground and call it a sure fire victory (in so many words). He said he’s “willing to declare here today that Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than PS3” (eurogamer)
They’re either not seeing the Wii as a competitor or are trying to avoid that evil word considering the growth of the tiny little console in the market. After telling the audience the Xbox 360 has already outpaced the PlayStation 3 and Wii he failed to mention the one-year head start the 360 had over its competitors.
There are, of course, bonuses to talking figures when you were first out of the gate. The interesting facts, which won’t present themselves for years now, will be the end unit sales figures for Wii, 360 and PlayStation 3 when all boxes are end-of-life’d. We’re sure to hear each side declare victory when they’ve decided when the war actually ends. In Microsoft’s eyes, the console war will probably end when they release the next-generation box, barring the fact that they should wait at least one year before claiming the title.
You can’t argue with the facts, Xbox 360 is doing very well in the United States (if we ignore Japan). The Nintendo Wii has sold 8.8 million units to the Xbox 360‘s 10.3 million units. How many units did the Xbox 360 have sold around the same time Nintendo boasts 8.8 million? Probably a bit less.
Press can be a great thing when you have numbers to play with and figures to skew. Oddly enough, if some of us are any indication, we’ve purchased multiple Xbox 360’s because of dead systems. Sure, we’re stupid for actually doing it, but those figures will work into the total units sold for the Xbox 360 hardware sales. Imagine, their failing systems may have actually boosted sales figures a bit; probably not statistically significant but funny non-the-less.
We can’t wait to see what type of numbers Sony and Nintendo are going to fling out. If we ask each competitor, we’re sure they’ll say we’re going to win the console war. Nintendo may just ask, “what console war? We just make game hardware” and you can’t fault them there!
The last podcast of 2019 is also the last podcast of the 2010’s, as Jonah, TJ and Scott discuss the past year of videogames, while mentioning some of the news from last week, like the announcement of The Wolf Among Us 2 and the Xbox Series X. The last podcast is also the longest ever, clocking in at over 2 and 3/4 hours.
The Question of the Week: “What was your favorite videogame of the past decade?”
Square Enix, like many developers today, look to combine their efforts with like-minded individuals making video games for our industry. Recently they put out a bid to pickup Tecmo and expand their development archive to new heights by jumping into a few more genre’s without starting at the ground floor.
Tecmo, has decided to opt-out of the friendly bid for the company and has decided to persue a merger with KOEI instead. Square Enix could opt for a hostile take-over bid, much like we’ve seen occur to others in the industry but their smarter than that, Square Enix President Yoichi Wada went on record saying:
“If they truly dislike Square Enix, there is no point. All creators would leave the firm the moment the deal was done. It would be the equivalent of buying a building.” (reuters)
Although Tecmo hasn’t spit upon Square Enix and said they “hate” them, declining the take-over bid explains a lot about the direction Tecmo plans to go, and those plans don’t include Square Enix.
It would have been interesting to see what direction Square Enix would take with Tecmo. Perhaps Square Enix will look to another development company to bid on.
Hi guys.
As usual: thanks a lot for your effort and work to bring us this and every other episode 🙂
I am not able to say so much to this episode because I don’t know all the games you talked about ?
I played a lot of Magic Arena as usual, some WoW and since it is released some days ago: Itorah, a hand drawn Meteoidvania Indie Game.
But some things I can say sth about:
Dorfromantik: I own this game and it is really relaxing and I can play it over and over again. You can’t loose in some way so it’s not frustrating 🙂 I really recommend it 🙂
PS5: I am happy i gut a PS5 some months ago, but sadly I did not play so much with it. I only played some hours God of War with the 4K HDR Upgrade.
Gizmondo: I owned this console and yes it had a SIM card in it 🙂 I never played with it, it was only a nice upgrade for my retro gaming collection. I sold
It for way to much money in my opinion, but because of the fact that it is rare and I owned the packaging box, manual and all that stuff it was a nice catch when I bought it 🙂
Super Mario Guide: why is this a topic? Such an old game and now it is a topic? ? but I think some collectors or hardcore fans are really interested in this thing. The game is still played a lot by speedrunners, afaik?
Switch Topic: I really love my switch. It doesn’t need any upgrade, because the games for this console should not be such graphical monster games in 4K HDR… I like it for the simplicity. You can play the games even if you don’t have that much time, they are easy to understand, easy to solve or finish and you can can get back to them after weeks and are in to it after some minutes. No need for an epic storyline which is hard to follow. But for sure that’s my opinion and I understand every person who wants complex storys, hardcore mode and complicated as hell 🙂
Sorry for late commenting, but I wanted to drop the lines to make you know, that I am still a listener and follower even if I don’t comment every episode 🙂
Guys, that’s all from my side. Please keep on the good work, stay healthy and enjoy whatever you do 🙂
Greetings from Germany,
Ralf