Episode 748: Five Nights

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The news this week:

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered‘s PC specs and features detailed, as Sony reiterates no PSN account required, EA Sports College Football 26 to increase NIL payouts to $1,500, Palworld update 0.5.0 patch notes bring crossplay to the game, Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope says ‘it’s a tragedy’ his 2013 immigration sim now feels so on-the-nose, Xbox lists Hollow Knight: Silksong as part of “incredible” upcoming indie line-up, Apple & Google face antitrust charges as EU defies threat of Trump tariffs.

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Episode 327: Not-Love LettersEpisode 327: Not-Love Letters

This week’s podcast has Jonah having a new job, while some really long Listener Feedback letters lengthen the podcast. In fact, several discussions between Jonah and Jordan were cut and will be in a near-future Outtakes episode.

This week is full of news as well, including:

  • Star Wars 1313 was to have starred Boba Fett after all
  • Shadow of the Eternals dev Precursor Games disbands
  • Techland: Dying Light isn’t another Dead Island
  • China lifts console ban, Microsoft collaborating with BesTV to make new console
  • Watch Dogs ships on two discs, requires install, 30 FPS cap on Xbox One and PS4

That plus the long Listener Feedback, and Jordan has an appeal to veteran listeners to write in.

Would You Buy An Apple-Based Console?Would You Buy An Apple-Based Console?

Does the console market need any more competitors? We’ve seen record sales in the game industry for titles like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV along with huge expectations for Resistance 2 and some new Sony PlayStation 3 projects. Yet, the tiny little Wii product holds best sales records around the world as the heavy hitter, Microsoft and Sony, compete for the most awesome spectacle show of graphics.

Competition is a great way to drive down costs, drive up expectations and give consumers new innovative products with better quality. Imagine if Apple got into console development and produced a new highly sexy product with the hype and consumer desire of the iPhone or iPod.

“Apple has the infrastructure in place through iTunes to create a real value proposition for those that want to extend the capability of their console beyond gaming and has the cash — about $20 billion — to not only invest in the best components on the market, but in an online gaming experience that could rival Xbox Live.” (kotaku)

Apple’s showing a huge surge in recognition and sales thanks to the iPod and growing desire for Apple hardware competing against Microsoft’s Vista operating system. As more consumers turn to Apple for their music and mobile gaming needs, Apple must see windows of exploiting the gaming market further.

More importantly, nobody can pull off digital rights management (DRM) and locking consumers into a product line like Apple all while they beg for more. Consoles are little boxes of DRM waiting for happy consumers to buy into the concept all while avoiding the hacking and bittorrenting like you’ve been seeing on Spore in the last few weeks. Had Spore been released on a console this DRM fiasco would have been avoided because gamers don’t even realize (or care) that a console locks them into playing and, more importantly, buying the game for the hardware.

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