This week the guys discuss the mistake that was World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in the Gaming Flashback. They also discuss all the mergers and merger rumors in the videogame industry in the past few days.
The news includes:
All this and responses to the Listener Feedback about Starfield.
This week we’re busting out the Gaming Podcast love with some gaming news, community comments and we’re flashing back to Tag Team M.U.S.C.L.E for the NES and looking through the history of Greg Costikyan. For those interested in Herr Alien’s link, here is the article about Modern Warfars woes. Also, the Will It Blend iPad video. This weeks gaming news:
Thanks for all the feedback and answers to the questions last week. This weeks, we’re asking a tough question… what game exists in the market today that rivals the overall play time seen by games like Minesweeper and Solitaire?
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.
Much like Metal Gear Solid 4, Sony is looking for LittleBigPlanet to move consoles from the shelves because all types of gamers are going to want this title. Personally, the desire to want and the stronger feeling of need are two separate problems; everyone will want the game but many will need to buy a PlayStation 3 for MSRP.
Although the prices are slowly dropping for a PS3 unit, hardcore gamers are the ones that will rush out and spend a bundle of money for a console just to play one game. If not hardcore gamers, fans of the franchise (MGS4 for example) and LittleBigPlanet is still working on building a fan base for their new franchise.
The platformer LittleBigPlanet, for many, isn’t worth $399 plus the price of the game. That’s asking a lot, but Sony still thinks it can happen:
It’s going to be a hardware seller. Not only do you have the platforming experience that a lot of other games will have, you have this creativity that really is exclusive to LittleBigPlanet. (kotaku)
Would you run out and get a PS3 for LittleBigPlanet? I’m tempted, but that $399 barrier is truly a large obstacle to clear.
