The MagCast
Episode 5
Friday November 2, 2012
Quick Hits:
*Playstation's New Store Update
*Deadly Premonition
*Dust 514
*NIS's new IP
*NIS making a direct sequel to Disgaea
*Cliffy B wants to "Fix" Resident Evil
*Holiday Price Cuts
*Pokemon MMO
*Scribblenauts Unlimited
*Harvest Moon: A New Beginning
*Dragon Quest VII remake
*More Nintendo Land...
*Nintendo Being Nintendo
*DudeBroII
*GoG adds Mac Support
*Steam is now on Linux
*DLC News:
*-Nintendo's Views
*-Skyrim's Dragonriding Morrowind DLC
*-Creepers in Farcry3
*Hotline Miami and Pirates
Freeplay: Where the real world and gaming collide!
*Darth Vader in Kingdom Hearts III
*PSY's Gangnam Style coming as DLC to Just Dance 4 (appearently due to popular demand?)
*Jon St. John of Duke Nukem fame on: 50 Shades of Grey
Main Topic:
*More on Digital Distribution
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Quick Hits
**Playstation's New Store Update**
In the last episode, we mentioned that the store is getting a sexy new look. Well, it did, in Europe at least, and the store broke within hours of launch. Some users see dial up speeds and others can't even access their wallets, defeating the purpose of the store entirely. Let's hope Sony can fix this soon before it launches in the US and Japan.
**Deadly Premonition**
Deadly Premonition... director's cut? Said to have "over 100 improvements"
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/10/17/deadly-premonition-the-directors-cut-to-have-over-100-improvements-says-swery/Some of the improvements are(and this is for PS3 only, this re-release)
HD visuals
Updated Controls
New Story Content
and, of course... post-game DLC
... and uh, Playstation... Move... support.
**Dust 514**
Dust 514, a PS3 Exclusive, is an ambitious FPS. It is to be the first cross platform, cross title, cross genre game in history. In Dust, you play as a soldier geared as you see fit. It totes the largest multiplayer maps in a shooter to date, each larger than the combined maps of recent CoD and Battlefields, where huge numbers of gamers fight for control. The game has some impressive integration with Eve Online, a PC Real Time Strategy game. A soldier in Dust can call for an orbital strike on a target and that strike will be performed by a player in Eve. Similarly Eve will have cross dependency with Dust. The wars are fought in Eve on the Galactic Scale while the battles in Dust are on a planetary scale. A lost battle in Dust could mean the loss of control of a planet in Eve. In Eve, if you send ships and troops to a new planet in an offensive, the players of Dust will fight on the surface of that planet. It is all VERY ambitious indeed. Dust 514 is currently in closed beta.
**Nippon Ichi Software's new IP**
- The team behind Disgaea is working on a new game called "The God and Fate Revolution Paradox"
For PS3
Before we talk about it, let's share the trailer with those in the stream.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duAnMPdFWTAIf NISA picks this up for localization, what will it be renamed as?
Let's Guess!
Bot's
"Eternity Paradox"
"Manifest THIS" Box art is Destiny grabbing his crotch
**NIS Disgaea sequel**
[Lantis, if you would, please, read this story, ask us opinions, just take the lead here]
A few days ago, Nippon Ichi Software announced Disgaea Dimension 2, or D2. This will not be Disgaea 5, which has in fact been confirmed to be in developement, nor will this be a Disgaea port/remake. This will in fact be a full fledged Disgaea 1 direct sequel.
The story picks up directly after the the first Disgaea with Laharl once again as your main character. Returning characters include Etna, Flonne and we expect prinnies.
Disgaea Dimension 2, for PS3, will release in Japan for $90 for the standard release and $136 for the limited edition on March 20. The limited edition will include a hardbound art book, the two disc soundtrack, and Etna and Flonne figurines.
NIS has mentioned that they hope to keep the Dimension sub series going into the foreseeable future.
**Cliffy B wants to "Fix" Resident Evil**
Cliff Bleszinski, THE man behind the uber successful Gears of War series, has recently left Epic Games. He likely left to spend time with his new wife and also to move on from the Gears series. Anyway, he recently tweeted interest in the RE series. It reads:
Hey, Capcom. Call me. We can fix Resident Evil. Together.
I for one wouldn't mind this. Mostly because RE is TRYING to be a western game. Although in an ideal world, they would split the franchise. Ones series following the current cast in a Gears type game. The other series would follow the classic cast in a classic RE game. They can alternate releases every other year just like Forza is doing with their simulation racer and their arcade racer.
**Holiday Price Cuts**
In an effort to confuse parents this holiday season, the Xbox 360 is offering three versions of the system each with a $50 price cut.
Xbox 360 Holiday Price cuts for all! Somewhat. $50.
$350 for 250 GB HD + Kinect Bundle
$250 for 250 GB HD
$250 for 4 GB HD + Kinect Bundle
Not to be outdone, Nintendo will be confusing casual gamers and ignorant gift givers by putting out the Black Wii bundled with Sports Resort for $130 right along side the release of its successor the WiiU, also in black and white bundles. Black Friday will be a HUGE success for retailers, and a confused disappointment for gamers. Happy Holidays!
**Pokemon MMO**
http://www.Pokemmo.euPlay a pokemon MMO with your own FireRed Rom. No real co-op or anything. More like you play in a world full of fellow trainers. Chat, trade, fight. Looks amazing!
**Scribblenauts Unlimited**
Nintendo takes a page from the SEGA's guide to whoring your mascots.
Mario and the gang, and Epona and a Goron!
The Nintendo characters will “behave in the fun and fantastical ways they do in their respective game worlds”
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/10/17/scribblenauts-unlimited-on-wii-u-has-nintendo-characters/**Harvest Moon: A New Beginning**
Harvest Moon 3DS A New Beginning Trailer! Also, the release date has been bumped up to November 6th. Get a huge plush cow from Natsume(a foot tall!) from their online store by pre-ordering. That ends the 29th.
Pre-orders from the Natsume store will ship October 23rd.
The new trailer shows off customization! Did you get your AC in my HM?
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/10/18/harvest-moon-a-new-beginning-english-trailer-shows-off-customization/**Dragon Quest VII 3DS Remake**
Dragon Quest VII is one of the best selling games on PS1 of all time. It is also the best selling Enix title on PS1.
Well, this February, Japan 3DS owners will be able to relive this classic title. Not as a port or eShop ROM, but as a fully 3D remake.
In the original, the game was a 3D world with 2D sprites. This time, the game will use cell shaded 3D character models.
Little is known so far but from a screenshot printed in the Japanese printed magazine, Jump, if you squint hard enough, you will see that the character outfits change depending on their current job class and that the battles will no longer be in first person. Likely they will be handled like in Blue Dragon where the battle camera was positioned behind the party but moved to showcase attacks.
Dragon Quest VII on 3DS will utilize StreetPass to allow players to exchange lithographs.
The Dragon Quest series is wildly popular in the East, but here in the states, it is quickly fading. It is entirely possible we will never see this title localized.
**More Nintendo Land**
The final three attractions for Nintendo Land have been shown to the public and include Yoshi's Fruit Cart, Captain Falcon's Twister Race, and Octopus Dance.
Yoshi's Fruit Cart strives to showcase the interact-ability between the TV and GamePad. You use the GamePad to draw a path that Yoshi's Cart follows, all the while the TV shows fruit you must collect and obstacles you must avoid.
In Captain Falcon's Twister Race, the GamePad becomes a steering wheel while on it's screen is a map of the racetrack. Hopefully the analytics Nintendo would be smart to collect will show this played more than the others and we will be graced with a full retail release of F-Zero instead of this minigame.
Finally Octopus Dance, because tentacles.
In this dance instruction simulation, you use the GamePad to mimic the dance moves of your octopus instructor.
If you miss out on getting your copy of Nintendo Land, fear not. You will be able to download this full game from the WiiU's eShop for a price tag of $59.99.
**Nintendo being Nintendo**
-Wii U online chat
Nintendo isn't planning on making first party headsets. Even though the GamePad has a built in microphone, you cannot use it for voice chat. You will have to plug in a licensed headset from, say, Turtle Beach or MadCatz into the headphone jack on the GamePad.
Voice chat on individual games that support it. Games confirmed to support voice chat include Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed III.
All these games support the Pro Controller, the one that looks sort of like the 360 controller, even thought the Pro Controller has no headset jack. So to play using the Pro Controller online and chat, you will have to play with the Pro Controller in your hands with a headset on your head that plugs into the 10 inch wide GamePad on your lap. JUST ADD A FRAKKING HEADSET JACK TO THE PRO CONTROLLER!
Having only some games support online chat makes it sound like there is no party system in place. It will likely up to the game servers, not Nintendo servers. Which leads us to believe that online games will be played on servers hosted by the game publishers rather than by Nintendo themselves. That can easily lead to pay to play, lagtastic, and neglected servers.
**DudeBro II**
Full name:
DudeBro- My sh*t is f*cked Up so I got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight Up Dawg Time
http://www.grimoireassemblyforge.com/dudebro2/site/-looks like early Duke Nukem, Contra and the SNES were in an Orgy and months later the SNES still isn't sure who the father is.
There's a new trailer showing what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0-rVYuOgc0DudeBro II is an indie game straight out of NeoGAF. A few members floated a joke around and decided it was time to get serious. They formed the Grimoire Assembly Forge and have been working on this game ever since.
**Good Old Games on Mac**
GOG adds Mac support!(Good Old Games). 50 titles are going to be available. 8 will be free for signing up.
Seems to be Macs aren't exactly the "no games" platform they used to be with this, the app store, and Steam.
Also, 32 pay-what-you-want games from Interplay to celebrate GOG's 4th year.
**Steam now on Linux**
Steam is now accepting beta requests to test out Steam on Linux. For many Linux users, the reason they have stuck with Windows on a second machine or in dual boot is for games. Steam wants to fix that.
This is also a possible early step towards the much rumored "SteamBox". With this, Big Picture Mode, and posting job openings for hardware design, the rumor mill will keep running for a long time.
**DLC News**
-Nintendo's Views
Nintendo had amazing profits from the DLC Fire Emblem: Awakening on 3DS, $4.8 million in Japan alone. With profits like these, you would think, at least from a business perspective, DLC ALL OF THE GAMES!
Well, Nintendo recently stated otherwise in a recent investor Q&A. Nintendo president says that there will be more paid DLC to come for more titles, however in some games, paying for DLC doesn't fit the theme of the title.
As we have already seen such results as the ones yielded by the Fire Emblem title, we will see more downloadable content and add-on content from now on. However, we do not intend to make downloadable or add-on content available for every type of game. We would like to supply consumers with only add-on or downloadable content which they are happy to pay for as compensation for creative work.
Does Nintendo have morals? For games such as the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Leaf, there will be no paid DLC in order to avoid a situation commonly found in mobile and facebook games where your enjoyment is based on "the power of money".
-Skyrim
The rumors may be confirmed, Morrowind may in fact be a playable area in the near future. Also, ride dragons! The new DLC, codenamed Dragonborn, has quests that name locations and armor sets straight out of Morrowind. There is also talk of being able to ride a dragon.
All of this came from PC players that took a deeper look into the newest update on the PC version of Skyrim. File names include: "DLC2" and "DragonMounted"
-FarCry 3
Ubisoft has shown off some screenshots of a Minecraft texture pack/reskin of FarCry 3.
**Hotline Miami and Pirates**
Hotline Miami is a new indie game available now on PC. Being that it is indie, almost by definition that means the maker is broke. But that doesn't stop him from joining the community of those pirating his game. On the PirateBay, he is known as Cactus69, where he said,
Hey there!
I'm Jonatan Soderstrom, me and my friend Dennis Wedin made this game. We're working on an update that hopefully will take care of any/all bugs, and we'll try to do some extra polish in the next few days. Would be great if you could update the torrent when the patch is out! It'd be great if people get to play it without any bugs popping up.
Hope everyone will enjoy the game!
For the "Error defining an external function." problem, try restarting your system and play again, it can pop up when your computer has been running for a while. We'll try to figure out if there's more to it than that.
Later in the same torrent, he helps another user configure his 360 controller for use on PC.
On twitter, he is a bit less forgiving but definitely understanding. He says:
I don't really want people to pirate Hotline Miami, but I understand if they do. I've been broke the last couple of months. It sucks.
**Darth Vader in Kingdom Hearts III**
Disney recently purchased Lucasfilm and rumor has it, Star Wars Episode VII is on the way. While this is confusing emotionally, at least George Lucas won't be destroying the franchise anymore. With this acquistion comes ownership of Darth Vader's image, as well as all the characters from Star Wars. Which leads us to speculate on whether Darth Vader will be teaming up with Jafar against Cloud Strife in the next Kingdom Hearts.
*PSY's Gangnam Style coming as DLC to Just Dance 4 (appearently due to popular demand?)
*Jon St. John of Duke Nukem fame on: 50 Shades of Grey
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****Digital Distribution and Digital Rights Management Part 2****
-Digital Distribution:
((we already covered cost of DD vs retail))
Digital Distribution is on the rise in the video game industry, right behind music and streaming TV.
On Live attempted to be based entirely on the Netflix model. Stream a game to your local device. No installs, no downloads, no patches, no hassles at all. The games are played on the On Live servers so you don't even need a high end gaming rig to enjoy PC and classic console games. However, On Live recently went bankrupt, scaring the industry a bit in terms of streaming games. Hopefully it will bounce back and blaze trails for others to follow.
Mobile gaming (not handheld) is based on it.
Cell phones and tablets have finally caught up to the handhelds in terms of computing power, surpassed them at times. They also are making billions if not trillions a year in game sales. The negatives in the minds of those that call themsleves core are the lack of physical controls, the fact that most games are shovelware, and also that most of the revenue is collected from what the industry calls whales. A whale is a person that spends what I would consider a ludicrous amount of money on micro transactions. Allistair Pinsof of Destructoid.com did a wonderful article on this and I will link it in the show notes. [http://www.destructoid.com/social-games-feature-lulz-236545.phtml]
-DRM:
DRM is an attempt to protect an intelectual property. You don't need DRM in a physical book because I can't make a quality copy of the book. You are capable of coping music and software. That's why DRM came to be.
It does not stop pirates from pirating. At all. It just takes one person to crack the protection and it is just as piratable as non DRM games.
It adds to the final cost of the product. People spend hundreds of hours and millions of dollars to create each game's DRM. How is that cost covered? Aside from charging more for the game, it means a game has to sell even more copies in it's first three weeks to be considered a success before the powers that be decide whether or not to continue to support the product.
There is no universal DRM for say, music. That's one of the reasons the iPod sold so well. It was first to deliver a great store so that's the main reason but once users found out they can't play iTunes music on any other player, they are locked in for life or they have to abandon their digital music library.
It happened with Microsoft's PlayForSure DRM when they switched to Zune DRM. Consumers that had bought music on MSN Music using PlayForSUre DRM could not transfer their music to their Zune or elsewhere simply because the DRM used for it was obsolete and abandoned by the industry.
We are already seeing a repeat of this in the eBook market. Different standards for each device means that once a device is no longer supported, your books are locked into an aging and unsupported device.
-Digital Distribution is great for small and indie devs:
Digital Distribution with the Indie scene- community power via Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight.
Kickstarter is crowd sourcing.
Greenlight on Steam is a system in which indie devs can submit games for the community to vote whether or not they would be interested in it if it hit Steam. Once you get enough up votes, you are evaluated by Steam with the ultimate goal being your dream hitting the Steam marketplace. 30 have been Greenlit thus far.
Are these systems a good idea?
Is the community a good gatekeeper on content quality?
Why?
Why not?
*Wrap up with Questions and Hate Mail
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