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Episode 304: Heart of the Swarm GiveawayEpisode 304: Heart of the Swarm Giveaway
Despite being recorded on April Fool’s Day, the podcast has no pranks, just a long political discussion and has Paul demanding no one say anything about BioShock Infinite. Speaking of that game, the crew announces the winner of the BioShock Infinite contest. This week has a Gaming History about the development of XCOM: UFO Defense.
This week’s news includes:
- Cruel April Fool’s Joke posts fake Half-Life 2: Episode Three Steam page (see image below)
- Path of Exile to feature yearly major expansions
- Gamers want Assassin’s Creed every year, states UbiSoft Montreal
- Former Diablo III director states the auction houses were a mistake
- EA prez Gibeau: “DRM is a failed dead-end strategy”
There is a ton of feedback, plus a new contest to win a copy of Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. The rule is the same as BioShock Infinite: listen to the podcast and comment on what is discussed.
Episode 351: Explicit LyricsEpisode 351: Explicit Lyrics
This week’s episode is shockingly adult, so the warning about explicit lyrics is up. Aside from the dirtiness, the episode features the following news:
- Apple refuses to allow an educational app on female stimulation
- Zenimax announces lawsuit against Oculus
- Sony may be working on newer PS4, PS3 models
- PS4 game pre-loading will begin with Destiny
- External storage coming in Xbox One system update in June
- Blizzard is suing Starcraft 2 hackers for profiting off mods
This plus Listener Feedback and the Question of the Week, “What is your favorite party game?”
Xbox 360 Silver Accounts, Free XBL Cross-Platform GamingXbox 360 Silver Accounts, Free XBL Cross-Platform Gaming
Microsoft has announced they’ll be giving Xbox Live silver accounts access to play some multi-player cross-platform games for free until the fall update. Recently, Microsoft announced free online play with Games for Windows titles, effectively giving PC gamers “gold accounts” to play online.
Most people agree the move to give gold subscriptions to PC gamers was done because PC gamers don’t care to play Games for Windows games online if they have to pay for it. The culture of PC gaming is much different than console gaming on XBL, gamers expect the online experience at no cost; they’re already paying an ISP for network access, paying for a match-making system with a yearly subscription is not desired.
Console gamers don’t have a choice, buying the 360 experience arrives with simple to play games (no drivers, no installs) but limited online choices: pay or go away. Now, silver members will get a little taste of network play, along side PC gamers in the cross-platform Games for Windows titles.
“Supported cross-platform titles include Universe at War, Shadowrun, and Lost Planet: Colonies Edition.” (gamespot)
We question the intention here… is this as a good faith move or are they wetting people’s appitite for XBL so they’ll want to upgrade to gold in the fall? Or, maybe there are some logistical reasons to doing this in the Xbox Live infrastructure to prepare for upgrades where making it free solves a few of their internal upgrade paths and, as a side effect, gives gamers some games to play.
Of course, we’ve seen few people playing Shadowrun or Lost Planet lately. Maybe this will re-popularize a few older titles as well.