Life Inside the Box – 096 – Stephen Who?
This week the whole gang, Brian, Stephen, Kyle, and Kevin are back together again and they dive right into what they’ve been playing including a bevy of indie games and mods. Then it’s off to the news to discuss EA’s new deal with Insomniac games and Sony’s latest attempt to induce gamers to the PSPGO.
LITB Gaming News – Insomniac Games partners with EA for multi-platform development.
The big story of the day it would seem would be previous Playstation Exclusive Developer Insomniac’s announcement of partnering with EA as their new IPs will no longer be exclusive to Sony platforms.
According to Kotaku, Insomniac Games will have the rights to whatever IP they develop under this new venture, as well as the reassurance to current PS3 owners that the “Ratchet and Clank” and “Resistance” will still continue to be developed by the studio for the time being.
The biggest thing I get out of this is what that one analyst has been talking about for a while about how many second-party developers will most likely be drifting towards multi-platform. First Bungie signing on with Activision and now Insomniac Games with EA, he may actually be onto something about this subject.
Of course while some second-party developers may start moving onto multi-platform development that doesn’t mean all of them are going to do the same now.
On another note still keeping in theme with the whole second-parties become independent studios for hire deal; it’s too bad that Rare wanted to be bought and owned rather than become a freelance developer like Bungie and Insomniac seem to be doing. I know they’re fine financially with Microsoft as their eternal sugar daddy, but many don’t seem to hold them with the same respect they used to garner in the last decade.
Meanwhile while Insomniac was acclaimed last generation with a constant stream of R&C games on the PS2, PS3 exclusivity and their new next IP’s have had trouble connecting with the mass market so far. Being open to any platform may help them out now in that regard. – The Ben
Life Inside the Box – 095 – A Triumph.
This week in Life Inside the Box, Brian, Kyle, and Kevin get together and talk what they’ve been playing including a bevy of iPhone games, and a rousing discussion on recent changes to Team Fortress 2, Then it’s on to the news with discussions about buyer motivations for the PS3, Rumors about E3, and an update on the Free Portal downloads on Steam.
Life Inside the Box – 094 – The Great Untitle Episode.
Brian, Grey, Kevin and Kyle check in this week with a round of what they’ve been playing, Then it’s onto the news with a look at EA’s plans to for preowned games, and it’s that time of the month again with the April NPD’s and a look at why the numbers may not be as grim as they look.
Life Inside the Box – 094 – The Great Untitle Episode. [ 49:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
LITB Gaming News – Oh yeah it’s NPD day isn’t it?
Via NeoGaf it’s once again time for the NPD numbers, this time for the month of April.
PlayStation 3 180.8K
PSP 65.5K
Xbox 360 185.4K
Wii 277.2K
Nintendo DS 440.8K1. TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION* 360 UBISOFT Apr-10 486.1K
2. POKEMON SOULSILVER VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 242.9K
3. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 200.3K
4. POKEMON HEARTGOLD VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-10 192.6K
5. GOD OF WAR III* PS3 SONY Mar-10 180.3K
6. WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09
7. BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-10 166K
8. WII FIT PLUS W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Oct-09
9. JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09
10. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV PS3 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 143K*. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV 360 CAPCOM USA Apr-10 108K
Wow, those are some low numbers all around.
Also starting this month NPD is only giving out the exact numbers for the top five games instead of all ten, meaning gamers who really want to know how well a game at number 8 or 10 on the chart will have to beg people in the know for numbers at 6 and beyond; which is how the numbers for Street Fighter IV and Bad Company 2 came to light. Thanks to Microsoft for those tidbits.
The PS2 also is not being reported by the NPD anymore as well, though they’re still tracking it’s sales. If Sony wanted they could let gamers know every month how well the thing’s still doing. However the fact that the PS2 may very well have outsold the PSP this month in it’s ninth year on the U.S. market may not be something they’re that desperate to proclaim in their Press Release.
Those low PSP hardware numbers give the rumblings of a PSP2 being announced at Sony’s E3 presser next more strength, at least to me.
I just hope the PSP2 will have the ability to read UMDs, even if the games made for the device won’t come on them. The saddest part about the PSP situation is that there are actually some pretty high profile games coming out for the thing here in the U.S. this year. Peace Walker, that Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep game, heck even Ready at Dawn Studios is giving the system another gem with a second portable God of War title. There’s still life in the system, but what good is that if nobody is playing the last few hits for the thing? – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – E3 Press Briefing feeds going exclusive this year.
The dog and pony show that is E3 seems to back to it’s old self as the press releases and conference dates for companies are coming out of the woodwork.
As if to make up for the past few years Microsoft has already gone ahead and made plans for not one but two seperate pre-E3 conferences. One will be the usual standard fare of showing off new hardcore games and most likely have Bill Gates appear near the end to hype up something but more interestingly this year is their Natal specific conference.
Excuse me, Natal EXPERIENCE. And just like the now five year old Xbox 360 special MTV did half a decade ago, the two are teaming up again to show off Natal to the world. Exclusively.
According to this Yahoo! Finance news tidbit they’ve gotten a heads up from Microsoft about how MTV Networks will be exclusively broadcasting every spectacle that Microsoft shows off at their briefings.
Via Geoff Keighley’s Twitter he states that “The Xbox E3 Media Briefing has a new home: It will air exclusively on Spike TV. Live to both coasts, HD, and commercial free.”
This is pretty interesting as the last few years gamers interested in watching most company’s E3 Briefings would have a nice selection of venues to choose from. You could simply just find a good stream from both the large and small game news outlets or you could even watch them live from your couch via G4. But, at least for the Xbox Media Briefing you’ll have to catch it on either GameTrailers.Com or Spike Tv.
The one thing I’m not fully sure about here is if any old blog with a webcam will still be able to stream or if this deal means that only his grace Lord Geoff of Keighley and his Spike TV Kingdom have control over all outgoing media while the briefings are going on. He says on his Twitter page “Correct the press conference won’t air on G4. It will also be online on GameTrailers” so I know they have full TV rights, but if GameTrailers is really going to be the only place to get a decent feed of the conference (and it’s not going to be decent if it’s the only feed available online) then this is something new to me. Exclusive press conference rights.
On a similar note Leo Laporte’s just mentioned today that, “We want to do live coverage of E3. We’ve got Brian Brushwood flying out. We’ve got a sponsor. But E3 says no – G4 has an exclusive. What what?”
I don’t know if E3 means floor coverage or what but I’m just as confused as Leo is at the moment.
Oh and one more thing going back to Microsoft’s Natal Experience. One thing they made sure to mention in their invitations to the event is that Cirque Du Soleil will be performing at the EXPERIENCE event. That’s going to be…very interesting at least. – The Ben
Life Inside the Box – 093 – Announce This.
This week Brian, Kevin and Grey get together to talk about what they have been playing including more poketalk, as well as discussion about the newly teased engineer update. Then its on to the news where they go through a bevy of game release announcements including Alpha Protocol and Starcraft II.
LITB Gaming News – Nintendo’s Annual Profits fall 18%
Via, oh let’s go with EDGE today since it kept things short and sweet without any fluff about about how “DA SONY MOVE’S GONNA EAT THEIR LUNCH” like most mainstream news outlets today have written about this news.
But anyway yeah via Edge today Nintendo announced that it’s annual profits for the financial year ending March 31, 2010 were down 18% from last year, with sales down 22 percent to $15.3 billion, operating income down 36% at $3.8 billion, and net profit down 18% coming to a total $2 billion dollars left to add to the war chest.
Nintendo expects Wii sales (now at 70 million sold worldwide) to fall to 18 million units sold in the coming year as opposed to the 20 million sold last year and 30 million DS sales (now at 128 million units sold when you combine the entire DS family) as opposed to 27 million DS units last year.
The increase in DS sales is most likely including the 3DS into the equation. Anyway a few final notes taken from Nintendo’s own PDF of the Report; Wii Sports Resort sold 16 million units, NSMBW sold 14 million units last year and Wii Fit Plus managed around 12 million units. – The Ben
Life Inside the Box – 092 – Podcast Monsters
This week Brian, Grey, and Stephen have another go at the show talking about new casual game Backyard Monsters (much to stephen’s disdain) as well as the latest news on the Activision scandal and Bungies new role in it.
