Written Podcast Substitute

Unfortunatey I won't be around this week to do a podcast but, perhaps surprisingly, I had already done some reserch for it. So, instead of letting my hard work go to waste I would put it into a written blog. Not the same, I know, but hopefully it's better than nothing.

Well this week I haven't really been playing anything new because I decided to pick up my PSP for the first time in about a year and instantly found myself addicted to LocoRoco again! I did manage to try Lord of Ultima though which went into open beta this week. Lord of Ultima is the new browser based 'strategic kingdom building simulation' from EA. First impressions are good but I'm sure we'll talk about it more at a later date.

New releases for the week of March 26th include Just Cause 2. We talked about that a bit last week and I think CW might have mentioned that he was looking forward to it once or twice. Something I'm much more excited about that is also coming out this week is Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. I have Heart Gold on preorder so I'll let you know what I think of it in the next podcast. Multi-platform releases for next week include Prison Break: The Conspiracy, Resonance of Fate, How to train your Dragon and the Game of the Year edition of Arkham Asylum. Red Steel 2 is also coming out for the Wii and Sims 3:Create a Sim is released for the PC.

Recent game related news has been a bit short now that GDC is over but there were still some interesting tidbits out there. First off Nick Gibson, a games investor consulting analyst, claims that a lack of a games adaptation of Twilight has cost Summit Entertainment millions in lost opportunity for revenue. I'm not sure how a Twilight game would work to be honest though it would have been successful no matter what. Other people are cashing in on it so I don't see why Summit Entertainment didn't. As we mentioned last week Scene it: Twilight came out a few days ago so maybe that is the first of many. Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami is going to open a new development studio when he has finished work on Platinum Games shooter Vanquish. It will only have a team of 13 to start with and he didn't speak too much about what he would be working on but he did say he would like to see a true-3D horror game.

One of my favourite news stories this week was regarding Tommy Refenes and Apple. Tommy Refenes made a game called Zits and Giggles which was, until recently, sold on Apple's App Store. Last week at GDC he ranted about how terrible the App store was and he compared the iPhone and iPod Touch to the Tiger handhelds of the 80s and 90s. This may have been why Apple removed his game this week but it may have also been to do with the price 'experiment' he was conducting during the past 5 months. Zits and Giggles hadn't been selling too well so 5 months ago Refenes decided to increase the price to $15, surprisingly a few copies were then sold. After this the creators kept increasing the price every time a copy sold and the day it was pulled someone bought the game for $400! I find that crazy. It really shows that people assume something is good just because it's expensive. A lot of people playing 'games' on the iPhone and iPod Touch aren't really gamers and probably wouldn't even label themselves as such.

A few other pieces of news I picked up but didn't really read too much into was that Miyamoto confirmed Pikmin 3 is well underway, Playstation Move title Motion Fighter will have a calorie counter and a gamer broke two fingers whilst playing God of War 3 after rolling over them with his knee. Not quite sure how that last one could happen. What position do they play games in?! I like the idea of a fighting game having a calorie counter though so you know how many you are burning whilst beating people up.

Well I think that about sums up everything I would have talked about during the podcast. I haven't included a feature because we hadn't decided on one yet. Everything is quite brief because it's hard to have a debate on a subject with myself but just imagine it being padded out with CW's swearing and shouting!

Sources:
Kotaku
Edge
Develop