The GAMES DAY Podcast

Episode 41 - Gaming News: This week on the show, we’ll be...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:54:14 -0500

Episode 41 - Gaming News: This week on the show, we’ll be talking gaming news! We’ve had our ears to the ground and our eyes to the sky - and there’s lots to talk about! I’ve got an update on the new PoP title, we cover the PSN/3 outage and Sony’s inability to update their fans, Infinity Ward execs being axed, plus lots of other great stuff. Thanks for watching on Vimeo and iTunes (and if you’re watching on iTunes, don’t forget to rate the show). As always, send feedback to fans (at) gamesdaypodcast (dot) com.

The many styles of Kratos - awesome artwork by the...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:02:29 -0500

The many styles of Kratos - awesome artwork by the ultra-talented @theinternat

Mimeoverse developer blog

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:45:17 -0500

Mimeoverse developer blog

Portal 2 coming Holiday 2010!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:16:21 -0500

Portal 2 coming Holiday 2010!

Design Outside the Box. This video is really hard to watch (the...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:42:50 -0500

Design Outside the Box. This video is really hard to watch (the presenter is a bit weird) but it’s full of brilliant ideas and commentary on the world of video games.

Sony out(r)age and PR blunders

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:11:00 -0500

As I’m sure you all know, Sony’s PS3 original (fat) console suffered from a worldwide outage on the evening of Feb 28, 2010. PS3 slim units were unaffected.

According to non-Sony sources, there is a problem with the clock on the CPU that runs the front of the console (power, eject, etc.). This problem is preventing players from being able to access neither downloaded (and paid-for) content nor offline games. Unplugging your unit from your network, like these goggles, does nothing. Apparently the PS3 slim units don’t have the same CPU that the fat units do, and are working fine. According to @jeffgerstmann from GiantBomb: “Is now the appropriate time to tell you that my PS3 Slim has been working perfectly through all this madness?”

For me, the real story in all of this is Sony’s main PR team’s inability to keep fans/users/customers up to date on what’s going on. Have a look at the above screenshot (click it to see larger). You can see that PlayStation’s Twitter feed was last updated 13 hours ago with a message reading basically, “if we find out anything, we’ll let you know”.

Meanwhile, PlayStation Europe’s latest tweet was 1 hour ago (at this time of writing), saying, “We will update you the second we have some news”.

While it’s excellent that PlayStation EU’s team is on the ball and issuing updates, what I find weird is that there isn’t an overarching team that provides messages to both outlets 24/7. The main team should be firing out a consistent and same-messaged updates (as limited or information-free as they are) at least once an hour.

This issue isn’t just a broken controller - it’s a massive, international outage that affects a lot of players. It’s affecting players who want to play offline, or play games that have no online component at all (BioShock 1, for example).

Sony’s inability to communicate with the world is going to have a few repercussions:

They are going to lose sales. Can’t quantify this at all, but with consumers dreading Toyotas because of lack of quality and communication with the public, this PSN outage isn’t going to look good for them.
Sony looks incompetent. Not only does it look like they aren’t able to fix their own equipment, but it also looks like they aren’t capable (or interested) in communicating fixes, updates, workarounds, etc. with their customers.
More importantly, users who are looking for info, updates, ANYTHING are going to be looking online for it and maybe relying on non-Sony sources of information. They’re going to go to the most popular blog they can find (welcome!), find some bits of info, and start removing batteries from their consoles, voiding warranties, and possibly getting hurt.

What’s weirder about the whole thing is that I’m sure the lack of updates coming from Sony has to do with time zones. Europe has a leg up on the rest of us and will post a times that the USA team cannot. But the USA reaches into the Eastern time zone. Fans in New York who wake up at 8am should be able to get updates from Sony as soon as they log onto their machines.

Here’s a lesson for Sony that we learned the fourth time we live streamed an episode of The GAMES DAY Podcast. Not all of your users are located where you are. Saying something’s happening at 8:30pm leaves out users in another time zone (in our case, the West coast of the USA) who tune in three hours late to see your show. Assuming your users can wait to find out what’s happening to their gaming consoles for three hours while your team gets out of bed and gets to work isn’t going to cut it.

All of that aside, the bigger group of people that are affected by the outage are game developers who use the PS3 fat units as their development or test consoles. Hopefully no one wants to test a game, commit a build, or otherwise do work. This outage will result in the loss of thousands of dollars while testers and employees either sit around and wait for fixes to come, or run out to stores and buy PS3 slims.

Maybe it’s a massive effort on Sony’s part to get people to adopt PS3 slim as their main or new consoles? Regardless, when Sony releases their yearly numbers, be sure to completely discount whatever spike occurs in PS3 slims as the values will have been skewed by this event.

Through this whole thing I also realized that there is no Sony Canada PlayStation team on Twitter. Maybe I’m missing something.

Update: Sony has posted something. Kotaku has more.

Playstation Network is down tonight (Feb.28, 2010). When you go...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:44:51 -0500

Playstation Network is down tonight (Feb.28, 2010). When you go to the URL above, you get this friendly message. Love it.

"We’re aware that many of you are having problems connecting to PSN, and yes, we’re..."

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:18:32 -0500

“We’re aware that many of you are having problems connecting to PSN, and yes, we’re looking into it. Stay tuned for updates.”

- via @SonyPlayStation on Twitter. This is keeping me from being able to play any Borderlands DLC at the moment.

Episode #41 Game Gnews is Good Gnews...

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:10:35 -0500

Episode #41 Game Gnews is Good Gnews...:

This week on the show, we’ll be talking gaming news! We’ve had our ears to the ground and our eyes to the sky- and there’s lots to talk about! I’ve got an update on the new PoP title, plus lots of other great stuff. Is there anything on your radar for the month of March? Let us know! See you Wednesday March 3 at 8:30pm…

Join our Facebook discussion and tell us what news should be on our radar this week!

-Ian out!

In light of Episode 40, Super Mario Bros glitches!

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:43:42 -0500

In light of Episode 40, Super Mario Bros glitches!

Episode #40 - It’s a Me, Mario! Mario- it could be argued...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:31:34 -0500

Episode #40 - It’s a Me, Mario!

Mario- it could be argued that he is the most recognized video game character ever. He’s also likely responsible for saving video games from obscurity in the 1980’s after Atari started to tank and there didn’t seem to be much else coming up to take its place. But along came Nintendo with it’s fabled Famicom (released in North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System) and a whole new world opened up. I remember the first time I played Super Mario Bros. on the NES- it was magical. I couldn’t stop playing. I loved video games before this, but after? I was a changed person. Mario has seen a lot of action in his near 30 years of existence. On this week’s show, we’ll be talking about Mario and all of the spin-offs he’s been involved in. What about you? Are you pro-Mario? Anti-Mario? Mario-neutral? Tell us about some of your favourite and not-so-favourite Mario moments!

The New Super Mario Galaxy 2 trailer is up! Watch it while you...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:55:48 -0500

The New Super Mario Galaxy 2 trailer is up! Watch it while you can!

Super Mario Galaxy 2 E3 trailer. More info on SMG2 was provided...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:23:17 -0500

Super Mario Galaxy 2 E3 trailer. More info on SMG2 was provided by Nintendo today at a press mixer/junket/summit! @nintendo: we didn’t get an invite this time. We’ll be watching for one next time.

Super Mario Bros 3 mural - just in time for tonight’s...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:12:29 -0500

Super Mario Bros 3 mural - just in time for tonight’s Mario show topic! The image links to a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of how the mural was created. So much fun! Tune in tonight at 8:30pm EST for lots of great Mario talk!

Check out this collection of awesome old arcade marquees. Such...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:50:25 -0500

Check out this collection of awesome old arcade marquees. Such sweetness! Love the teeth in the Alien Syndrome one. Loved Zaxxon as a kid, mainly for the marquee/logo.

GameCube vs. Famicom

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:45:49 -0500

GameCube background music:

GameCube background music sped up 25x:

The original Famicom theme:

Found over at Nintendo Everything

Graphics- can’t live with ‘em, can’t...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:43:55 -0500

Graphics- can’t live with ‘em, can’t live…. wait a minute- that doesn’t work. Ummmm…. aw, heck- let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? Graphics have come a long way since the infancy of video games. From two white bars bouncing a white dot across a black screen, to crudely-assembled monochromatic icons, to full cinematic sequences that are virtually indistinguishable from live action, graphics have developed in leaps and bounds over the last 30-odd years. The current generation of hardware is capable of producing some mind-blowing spectacles.This week on the show, we’ll be talking about graphics in general- games with great graphics, games with disappointing graphics, games that pushed the boundaries of what a particular gaming system is capable of. Obviously we’ve got our own thoughts on this, but tell us- what are some of your favourite examples of graphics- good, bad, or ugly?Thanks for watching on Vimeo and iTunes (and if you’re watching on iTunes, don’t forget to rate the show). As always, send feedback to fans (at) gamesdaypodcast (dot) com.

Topic: Episode #40- That Ubiquitous Mustachioed Plumber-guy...

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:23:29 -0500

Topic: Episode #40- That Ubiquitous Mustachioed Plumber-guy...:

Mario has seen a lot of action in his near 30 years of existence. On this week’s show, we’ll be talking about Mario and all of the spin-offs he’s been involved in. What about you? Are you pro-Mario? Anti-Mario? Mario-neutral? Tell us about some of your favourite and not-so-favourite Mario moments!

Ian out!

Shank quick look by Giant Bomb. Added to must-bye list (and...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:09:00 -0500

Shank quick look by Giant Bomb. Added to must-bye list (and maybe even to Episode 39 of The GAMES DAY Podcast!). More on Shank at their website! Based on Klei’s about page, they make games for PC and XBLA and PC Online. Klei is the company behind Shank (they did n+, eets ChowDown, etc.). Here’s hoping Shank comes out for XBLA (the PAX demo was XBox, judging by the onscreen controller guide). - MH

Sky Siege by Augmented Reality, for iPhone ($3)

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:14:28 -0500

Sky Siege by Augmented Reality, for iPhone ($3)