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Gaming Podcast 160: Latchkey KidGaming Podcast 160: Latchkey Kid

February 9, 2010| schommer| 0 Comment| 9:48 pm

This weeks gaming podcast includes community feedback, game flashbacks to FX Fighter for the PC and gaming history about Hideo Kojima. The gaming news of the week includes, but is not limited to:

Madden NFL heading to Facebook
Sony Thinking of Charging for PSN
Web Access To WoW Auction House
Profits are up for Square Enix
Learn to do Karate on the Wii

This week’s question of the week is pretty simple: What’s “the best” video game to movie that you’ve seen?

Gaming Podcast 154: 2010 PredictionsGaming Podcast 154: 2010 Predictions

December 29, 2009| schommer| 0 Comment| 3:26 pm

This gaming podcast closes out the year of 2009, we’re going to put in our predictions for the year, we’re going to hear a few comments from listeners and flash back to a game that has yet to be (but is old enough to flash back): Duke Nukem Forever. You’ll also, finally, get the first impressions of Assassin’s Creed 2 and some game news including:

Duke Nukem Not Done
PSP 4000 Advertisement was a mistake
Sony to combine international shipping and video game distribution
Square Enix Doesn’t separate gamers into categories

We’ll also ask for your predictions on next years gaming excitement. What are your predictions, in the game industry, for “twenty ten”?

Eidos and Square Enix Birth Great ThingsEidos and Square Enix Birth Great Things

April 27, 2009| schommer| 0 Comment| 12:36 pm

tombraider Eidos was founded in 1990 and has been the king of its own destiny since its inception. As part of Square-Enix, Eidos and its destiny were called into question, would they continue to run the show or would they become one with Square-Enix. Square-Enix has come out to say they’ll be leaving Eidos to themselves and allow creativity to flow between the companies.

“This is an exciting beginning to what I believe will be an incredible journey. I am very happy that Phil Rogers has agreed to lead Eidos in what I see as an international marriage between our two companies, a marriage that will give birth to great things. Eidos is a content rich company and a culturally significant business to the Square Enix group.” (kotaku)

Square-Enix is playing it safe with this acquisition because this isn’t a great enviroment for shaking things up internally within a development studio. Eidos is well known for Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex, Thief and many other great projects and have built a solid foundation for the future.

A mind-share between these two groups is a powerful enemy to the competitors if they’re able to open a good dialog between the two companies and share resources, tools and engines. In a world of cost savings and salary cuts, leaning on each others resources to build a better product is a win.

At least we won’t have to call them Square-Enix-Edios because that’s just a mouthful!

TD Gaming Podcast 110: Early ReleaseTD Gaming Podcast 110: Early Release

February 15, 2009| schommer| 0 Comment| 12:07 pm

It’s almost a two gaming podcast week as we’re releasing this episode “wicked early” — sorry, we’re from New England. Derrick’s heading off to Germany on business and we’d hate to miss a week because of the trip, so here you go. This week we flash back to Pac-Man, cover some gaming history on Disney Interactive Studio and plow through some game news:

Ex-Ensemble Studios Folks Form New Studio
NCSoft Profits Down
Activision Threatening to sue EA
Microsoft Opening Retail Chain
Square Enix to Buy Eidos
Midway files chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

This week we’re asking the listeners the question, do you believe Microsoft will be successful opening a retail chain? We also handle a few user comments including one regarding Don’s rapping career or lack of a career.

Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360Final Fantasy XIII – Xbox 360

July 14, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 3:30 pm

Yoichi Wada of Square Enix has let the cat out of the bag. The cat is Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 and it will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. This may be an end to an exclusive era for Sony as all their big brands jump to non-exclusion.

This is probably a result of gamers slow adoption of the PlayStation 3 hardware for various issues, one being cost. Personally I think Sony’s move to say “no price cut” in our near future is a grand mistake. It is well understood that they want profitability over quantity but you’re losing your exclusives to a broader audience.

Each generation of consoles brings new industry trends and, for now, exclusive games from third party developers is too risky when you look at overall cost to produce a block buster title like Final Fantasy XIII. Consider the sales of GTA IV, although they were in the millions, imagine how low it would have been if they only released on the PS3. They’d might have actually lost money on the game.

Square Enix can see the writing on the wall, that writing says “ship on as many mediums as possible.” Gamers are split between consoles with a huge segment on Wii and Xbox 360, if you can at least ship on one of those consoles along with the PS3 you’ll do better financially.

(Thanks, Kotaku)