This week’s episode takes a look at Sony’s State of Play, Ubisoft Forward and Nintendo Direct, and all of the games revealed in each conference. In addition, cryptocurrency gets all the reaction it deserves. Jonah expresses an unpopular GoldenEye 64 opinion, too.
Let us know what you think.
The Steam Deck has been released, and TJ and Scott are just excited about it. They’re able to play indie games on a Switch-like device even though many of the same games on the Switch. Jonah already has Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and therefore already plays games with a controller on his cellphone.
This week’s news includes:
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We review our experiences of PAX East in this podcast and the second half is full of gaming news and community comments. Derrick reflects at his fun experience of Orcs Must Die while Jonah spent some time with LA Noire and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The news highlights include:
This week’s question of the week: Which convention would you want to attend most: E3, PAX or Comic Con?
In 1995 Ensemble Studios formed as an independent studio and kicked out a little game franchise known as Age of Empires. The title has received many accolades from the first in the franchise extended out to all the Age of Empires releases and spin-offs, all-in-all selling millions of copies.
Ensemble Studios had a mission “to create great games and a great place to work,” says Bruce Shelley from Ensemble Studios. Bruce Shelley also helped design Sid Meier’s Civilization and Railroad Tycoon with MicroProse prior to his work at Ensemble Studios. Now, however, he’s a bit upset at the closing of Ensemble Studios because they were profitable, created top-quality titles and had a great working environment.
Ensemble Studios, from his perspective at least, was a place you’d go to work and be happy with what you’re doing. When you’re working along nicely and become blind-sided by the news, it’s not surprising he didn’t take it lightly.
“Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.” (ensemblestudios.com)
What’s the future plans for Ensemble Studios? As we’ve stated before, they plan to live on in spirit, within the bounds of a new name and a new game plan. “I believe the spirit and mission of ES will be carried forward in this new company if enough of the key leaders agree to take part, which I expect to happen. There has been no announcement about what the new studio will be working on when it gets going,” says Shelley.
This is a horrible way to have to launch a hot new intellectual property. Usually creating a new title with a building fanbase would lead to excitement, parties and high hopes for the future of the franchise. Instead, people will be dusting off their resume in hopes to continue a life of game development.
Hopefully the leaders will indeed form a brand new company and build brand new hot products with their entire staff intact. Then, take their titles to a different publisher (besides Microsoft) and make some money and fans.
Hi guys.
Thanks as always 🙂
I played a lot of Magic the Gathering because a new expansion was released. And since wrath of the Koch king classic was released for WoW I got back to it for a lot of hours 🙂
Regarding the topics: I have a simple stereo setup at my pc, because most of the time I play with headset anyway to talk to my friends in discord or listen to music. In my living room I have good 5.1 setup with a new receiver and 5 nice Teufel speakers 🙂
X-com: I played it 10 years ago but I don’t think I will replay it. Maybe … we will see.
Pac-Man 4 sound interesting… maybe I will check it out 🙂
Kirby Games: I think the only Kirby game that I have played is the one for the first game Boy back in the days. Good old times when you spend a lot of time to a single game!
The other games I barely know … i have heard of fire emblem but never played it :/
Please stay healthy and keep on gaming!
Greetings from Germany
Ralf