Episode 680: E3 Gone

E3 2023 has been officially canceled, and there’s speculation that E3 might be over — the guys have an idea how to fix it, however. Vampire Survivors wins Best Game at the BAFTA’s, an Easter Egg is found in Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Sony’s not having a good Spring.

The news includes:

  • 11 members of Congress argue Sony is unfairly hurting Xbox in Japan
  • The “Gamers Lawsuit” against Microsoft has been dismissed
  • MultiVersus open beta ends in June & the game will go offline till full launch in 2024
  • Sony PSVR2 headset off to slow start as Metaverse push sputters

Let us know what you think.

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Episode 302: Just a TwosomeEpisode 302: Just a Twosome

This week Jonah and Jordan go it alone without Paul, which is unfortunately since the Gaming Flashback is the classic Nintendo 64 title Paper Mario. It might be just as well as the events of the last week made the crew ramble on about the industry at length, making the post much longer than usual.

This week’s impressive news items:

  • John Riccitiello steps down as CEO of Electronic Arts
  • Firaxis announces Brave New World expansion for Civilization V
  • Will fans back an Alice 3 Kickstarter, asks American McGee
  • Lord British explains Shroud of the Avatar‘s offline gameplay and DRM
  • Facebook of Italian automobile company mentionsGran Turismo PS4″
  • Team Meat sitting out on developing for next-gen consoles

Lots of Reader Feedback, but no Question of the Week this week – just too much show.

Bioshock PS3: Later But BetterBioshock PS3: Later But Better

Bioshock arrived on the Xbox 360 almost August of 2007, about one year from this month. It’s set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 in October of 2008, over one year after the Xbox 360 version. Is it too late?

For those that have decided to buy a PlayStation 3 and hold out on the Xbox 360, it will be their first time with full access to the Bioshock title. For everyone else, it’s the same game with prettier graphics and a slight update in difficulty.

Bioshock was well received by both reviewers and video game players last year, will this be a repeat or simply sit on the shelf begging to be played? Bioshock sold 490,900 copies the month of its original release, we’d love to know if it can do it twice.

Kotaku is reporting that “they’ve instead decided to cut off pretty much all of your ammo, leaving you in many instances to pick up a gun with a single bullet in it. It’ll also jack up the price of plasmids, reduce the amount of health vita chambers give you and just generally make the game, oh, impossible.”

Harder, prettier graphics but … too late?

DSi Will Be Region-Locked, Sad Face…DSi Will Be Region-Locked, Sad Face…

One of the greatest things Nintendo has done was allowing the DS to be unlocked for regions. This allowed gamers around the world to share their favorite games from all cultures and countries with just a click of the “buy” button at an online store.

The DSi loses this great freedom by locking it down to a region. “Nintendo DS software is region free so you can play any DS software on DSi from any region. You can also browse the internet on your DSi wherever you are in the world and exchange your photos with friends from around the world,” says Nintendo (CVG).

Much like the US Entertainment Industries need to lock down everything and contribute to global piracy, Nintendo follows suit with their hand-helds, tis a sad day indeed. Of course Nintendo reasons it all away by yelling parental controls and making it easier for regions to access their own content.

“DSi is region locked because DSi embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region. Also because we are including parental control functionality for Nintendo DSi and each region has its unique age limit.”

Specifically tailored for each region is a nice way of saying that each region has to pay the penalty of not being “first” (second, or third) to get some cool new features. Although Nintendo could put emphasis on the region the gamer lives in with complete access out of those bounds if they wanted, they’ve chosen to use this as a crutch to lock users out of content.

Users will get their content, of course. It just means more home brews, software hacks, hardware hacks and workarounds for the system. If that’s what Nintendo is trying to inspire, then they’ve done their job right.

However, wouldn’t it be great if they could just come out and say “we don’t want certain people accessing specific content until we say you can.”