Grab a hammer and nail the headphones to your ears, its time for Force Feedback! This is the show where we turn the spotlight over to you the mighty Axehead army. This week, we’re talking about the Xbox Live price increase, the rumors Brad Pitt will be playing John Marston, used games, BioWare and much more.
Prepare yourself for Force Feedback!
Editor’s note: This week, Tony’s audio sounds a little…hmm, what’s the word? Stupid. Apparently his computer decided to switch its record input to “webcam microphone” the same afternoon his neighbor’s lawnmower decided to switch itself to “really f___ing loud.”
Oh well, its not like he had anything good say.
Mervin Ang
Greetings from Singapore! I’m pretty confident that I’m the only Singaporean fan on this page so far. Just wanna tell you guys how face-meltingly awesome your show is as I think it’s just about the most informative and entertaining gaming podcast out there!
Sean Keys
Hey guys love you show, I have a question though with the annoucement of the price increases for Xbox Live memberships as of November 1, 2010, what is your opinion about the matter?(Is it good or bad) Microsoft has no information to why they are raising the prices of the memberships and I think its a bad move by Micros…oft. The new prices will be $9.99 for a 1 month, $24.99 for a 3 month, and $60.00 for a 12 month(which is also the price of a new retail game.)
Steven Crowther
Hey guys great show,, i was wondering with all the motion control movement and 3D what this can mean for those with disabiltys, i have a spine injury so standing and jumping around aint gonna happen for me, i play games everyday and this scares me that the thing i love doing is in danger, i have 2 people on my friends …list 1 with only 1 hand other with 1 arm, they feel the same, they wonder is Kenect will work with there disabilty, and 3D dont work on people that are colour blind or 1 eye, it feels like they are gonna make me feel like i have my disabilty in the only place that it does not matter in games, anyway even if i was ok i still think it looks fu**ing stupid and wouldnt have got it, but just wanted to see what you guys tink about this topic, PS love the puns DK Money
Andrew Rollins
Hey guys, discovered your podcast literally like 2 days ago and have been backtracking through the battle cry and have to say wish I would have found it sooner. You guys rock!
Austin Clinton
Whats up EBA? As always, great show and the new additions of the Pit and Forceback. I find you guys are probably the best site for the gaming community to come together and talk about all aspects of gaming. On that issue, what occurrences in gaming do you guys think have helped/hurt the industry and have brought it to the point where its at today?
@epicbattleaxe XBL increase would be ok if instead of “we added stuff so we deserve more money” MS said “if we charge more, we’ll do better”
LeadDesignerGuy
@epicbattleaxe Brad Pitt is playing John Marston in the new Red Dead movie, do you think that he fits the role? Who would do better?
Kpkillar
@epicbattleaxe I think BioWare is great I don’t think they are becoming more mainstream they just listened to complaints from fans
Dancejoeydance
@epicbattleaxe that is bullshit that you can trade in at target and bestbuy now! The convenience is gonna kill gaming just like gamestop
GAMETRAILERS
Dreadace
good job boiware selling out to Ea for a quick buck. now all us ME supporters have to wait that much longer for ME3
DracoPaladin
Well I liked Mass Effect 2 more then the first game(I only own a PC so the game was more user friendly to me).But Im in it for the story and Mass Effect 2 definitely didn’t lack RPG elements(dialogues and choices).The shooter parts were improved and although i did want a more RPG sort of inventory I certainly don’t miss that cluttered mess they had in the first game(I realize it was ported from the Xbox and that’s what fu***** it up for the PC version).But they said that Dragon Age 2 you will be able to play it exactly like the first game or something similar to The Witcher or a console game,so i think that whatever you have PC,Xbox,PS3 you wont be left out as the case was with the first being superior on the PC.
Blow-Stang
Enough with all the exclusive pre-order BS. Whether you are PS3 fan or Xbox fan we all should be pissed off!
DrHoax
Awesome show as allways guys. Why dont you just do an episode with Tony and the jew next week..? (the jew did a great job last time)
Label07
Amen to the game editions. Half the time the cheap trinkets that these collector editions include will just gather dust on someone’s shelve. Personally, my incentive to buy Collector/Limited Editions goes mutually with my perspective of purchasing. If a company creates products/games that you enjoy spend a little more money to support that company and hopefully they will keep making that particular commodity.
All these incentives to buy here or there, given by each 3rd party company are getting ridiculous.. but.. As long as their offers don’t affect game play, to me, its a no-harm-no-foul scenario.
Dragon Age didn’t spark any interest from me. Now if Bioware is going to spice up the combat and adjust the game play to faster paced. What would make it for me; Convert the game into an action-rpg where I have control over regular attacking, blocking, and for spells/specials have at least two buttons that are macro’d and a button that when held brings down a circular menu for quick spell/special selections. Now that is only the start. Also, make the game 4 player co-op. However, each player can bring in their custom character (main) or XP/money earned is transferred to respective players profile when they host a game or play single player. Of course, my idea is sure to have some holes in it but they could easily be ironed out with some thought.
For the record all aspects of ME2 were much better. I’m an RPG lover as well and didn’t mind any of the RPG ‘depth’ changes from ME1 to ME2. If Bioware did this to make the game more easily accessible for non-RPG players.. can you blame them, in the end they want to create a product the masses love and make HUGE amounts of money in doing so.
Really enjoyed this weeks show (as if that is a change)!
PJJ88
mass effect 2 is just a fps it’s not a rpg like mass effect
i use a muse pad
EpicBattleAxe
lorin, enjoyed your contributions to the site and very much enjoyed your turn on the pod cast. i think i speak for everyone when i say it would be great to have you chime in every now and again. TBH i don’t usually read many of the articles but hey, you won me over last week
maybe it would be an idea to have one of the other guys (ruben, jess, keith) guest and rotate it every week or whatever, specially now you’ve trimmed down the feedback section (inspired move might i say).
EBC is the ONLY podcast i listen to cos frankly all the others are full of market friendly BS/brown-nosing and bollox that makes me sick and frankly disinterested.
EBA – YOU GUYS FUCKING ROCK!!!!!!!
finally – – PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE mention this on the show cos i piss myself everytime i see it; under the section on the right hand side column of the site under The Axe Lords bit, TG looks totally like Will Riker from ST:TNG
Game_Fan
Well I honestly think that Daniel sounds really pissed that mass effect 2 is coming out on the ps3. I’m not gonna pull any punches because when Mass Effect 2 came out he praised it as the 2nd comiong of Jesus Christ and now all of a sudden he thinks that biowares franchises are being watered down to feed the greed of EA. That’s BS. Mass Effect didn’t sell enough copies on 360 for Bioware to recoupe costs, I think, and that is because the 360 fanbase isn’t really into RPG games. You might not like it but it’s true. I knew from when I started playing mass effect 2 from mass effect 1 that it was sooo watered down and dumbed down that it might as well have been gears of war in space with some character recruitment and planet scanning. Now that it’s coming out on ps3 I think it will sell well enough to satisy Bioware becauser of the ps3’s more mature audience. Look the same thing happened to Final Fantasy 13. Square-Enix, when they decided to bring it to 360, knew that they had to cut content and make the story more linear and shallow and go from point A to point B to make the 360 user base who are used to that sort of thing more comfortable and allow them to get sales on the 360. It sucked for all the fans who have supported it for 15-20+ years because it turned into one of the worst FF games to be released. I’ve finished every FF game that i’ve played except for FF13 and it makes me sad so I sort of feel your pain Daniel, but this is not EA’s fault nor is it because Bioware put ME2 on the ps3. It’s just how they think they’ll get more sales. It’s the fault of the userbase of its respective console and of the userbase of this generation really. That’s how I feel and I enjoyed this episode very much that in fact this is my first time posting here. I hope you guys respond to this with your opinions and look forward to more shows and maybe more debates on here or gametrailers and etc….Keep up the good work guys.
EBA Forums
On delays and incompetency
Engine
I’m watching EBC 87 and I got somewhat pissed at the F3AR segment, particulary at a phrase from Brent that pretty much says that delays are either because of incompetency by the developer (because they weren’t able to deliver the game on time) or because they believe the game is so weak that it can’t compete with other games coming out in the same time frame.
You know.. being a small game designer myself, I was pretty pissed off and I’ll tell you why.
First you have to separate the publisher from the developer, most of the time they are two distinct entities and they have different objectives and priorities.
OurLordDespair
Maybe we’re not being fair…It doesn’t at all affect a triple A title no matter how many times they delay (Grand theft 4 and Red Dead) but as soon as ANY other game does it, suffers (Dark Void and Splinter Cell).
As angry as I get at delays, I will still buy every Silent Hill game they release, day one. And as soon as I get it home and have played through it I completely forget that it was delayed 3 months to get better sales….Then I find out Tomb Raider Guardian of Light is coming out a month later on Ps3 and I think…..’meh if I remember it I might still get it’….I’m always lookin to the NEXT game, because there’s always something about to come out. I can’t even remember a game I have that was delayed off the top of my head…except Borderlands…
Used Games – The Other Side
Jesuno
Let me start off by saying that I always buy games new because I like the idea of supporting a developer that put their heart and soul in a game and gave us the best possible product. Kind of like music, if I download a new CD and most of the music is good, I will go buy the CD on iTunes. But, this practice has bitten me in the ass more than once.
I don’t know what I was expecting from Final Fantasy XIII, maybe to give the old series from my childhood one last go, but I was at least expecting a game, not a 50 hour movie with game parts sprinkled in.
Then there was Alpha Protocol, there were some good ideas that were plagued bugs and bad programming that I found it unplayable.
Now, I could have held on these games for eternity, looking at them forever saying to myself, “Why did I purchase these?,” or I could have done what I did, take these games to Gamestop and trade them in for something I would rather play. Kind of like my little “fuck you” to both Square Enix and Sega. Should companies that turn out bad games be allowed to continue to make a profit from them?
Project12
Companies that don’t make good games are not doing their job properly and something is very wrong. They need to be shown that their current activity is not effective. Not contributing to their profit is probably the best cause of action.
crazyjackal
I hate the scenario of a gamer going into a game shop and buying a $45 used game when the new game is $50 next to it. It’s your right but essentially you’re not supporting the project and if retailers can recycle sales this way, they don’t need to order any more batches and the publishers don’t see any more revenue for their product, they essentially steal sales from the publishers and make a killing of it.
I sell my games at Amazon.co.uk and I don’t buy used but if I did, I’d buy there instead of at a retailer because you can get much more reasonable deals – you’re dealing with a person to person transaction instead of going through some corporation that can profit massively from it.
Don’t be naive bioware is awesome they where making swtor me2 and dragon age all at the same time and now you’re afraid that they will dillude(spelling?) the game hell no. Well they changed the core mechanics with me to me2 but that is a whole other story
I didnt expect a Force-feedback
very nice guys
OH MY GOD I MADE IT IN. I want to thank you guys so much for just existing.
This made up for the lack of EBC this week! Great discussion as always.
Awesome forcefeedback guys… it was a nice surprise and you guys are doing more than an awesome job… i personally enjoy when game companies make exclusive games, because i own a console called ps3 and the last games that i enjoyed and finished more than once, where actually all exclusives (gow3, heavy rain, r&c crack in time) and thats only counting the last 2 months, yeah i know im a litle late for those games, but they were awesome, heavy rain just blew my mind of how into it i got … anyways… when companies concentrate on just doing a good job on one console they become better and more refined…
as always great job, and ill be looking for skirmish 88 soon =)
@Mervin Ang: I’m also from Singapore! Been listening since the 1st EBC vidcast went up on GT.
Proof that EPICNESS travels all across the globe!
I completly agree with Brent. The new Xbob live increase should be optional.
If you do not want or care for the new features (Netflix, ESPN, Hulu, Kinect Vid, Facebook and Twitter) then you should keep paying $50 a year.
If you do want all that, then it will be $60.
I don’t like how they are making everyone pay an extra $10 for all these features and assumimg that eveyone wants them. I just want to play games and demos. For all the other stuff, I have a laptop for that.
true i mean is 50$ not enough for them.. they are using a fact that there are few multiplayer games coming out on X360 in few months and they know people will have no choice
greedy bitches .extra 10$ from how many milions of people around the world year just to add kinetec features?.. wonder what SONY would say about that move!
“Look the same thing happened to Final Fantasy 13. Square-Enix, when they decided to bring it to 360, knew that they had to cut content and make the story more linear and shallow and go from point A to point B to make the 360 user base who are used to that sort of thing more comfortable and allow them to get sales on the 360.”
What a well hidden troll. Do people actually believe shit went down like this? And it doesn’t even matter if did went down like this, since Motomu Toriyama still thinks FF13 is the best game ever.
I do not agree with Jesuno. There is no legitimacy in your bashing of those games, only your personal preference. “Should companies that turn out bad games be allowed to continue to make a profit from them?”. Well no, but what is a bad game? I like FFXIII therefore I will support SE by buying a new copy of the game.
Great show guys looking forward to #88
Lol, we here in Germany will only get the higher price without adding these features like always. We don’t even have Netflix or something similar here on XBOX Live but they charge us around 60 Euro for 12 months here. Sure you can get it cheaper on eBay but that’s the official price here and you get an offer that is not even the half of the stuff you get in the states for LIVE.
@Skippy, feel free to have a read of that topic on the forums (if you haven’t already) and if you want to cry havoc, let your voice be heard by signing up. I agree and actually went into your point in that topic. We always welcome opinionated people no matter what the viewpoint.
http://epicbattleaxe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1251
cool man tanks for the props. i’m already a member but I ain’t too great at this whole “cry havoc and let your voice be heard”-deal. I love to listen to and read others discussions, i find great interest in that, but when it comes to my own writing i am too much of a self-critic. so it rarely occurs. anyways, great discussion! xD later dude
I don’t have a 360 but totally agree with this point.
RE: Used games/gamestop: If the cost of a new game wasn’t sky high there wouldn’t be such a big reason to save 5 or ten bucks on every purchase. Also, it comes down to making a good product at a reasonable price that infuses the product with a certain value that makes a person want to actually hold onto their copy to add to their collection. IMHO $60 is way overpriced for most games out there so WHY WOULDN’T I sell it back when I’m done with the 12 hour campaign and get $50 for it on ebay. Imagine if new games were $20, I would just keep all my games and the used market would die out. I know there is a lot of market research involved in setting a cost of a product… but seriously there are a lot of gamers who just don’t get to play all the games because of the cost. If publishers weren’t so damn greedy and games cost less I think people would actually be looser with their money and buy more and more games. I’m sure my theory completely fails in reality but thats my 2 cents. MAKE IT WORTH OUR MONEY. All those used game gamers playing 3 year old games for $10 each are not contributing to the development of new games, only to Gamestop profits.
proudest day of my life
On the topic of used games. If you walk into gamestop and see the game five bucks cheaper used, I’d fork over those five additional bucks for the new copy, because I know I’m helping out the developer that way. (Side note, I don’t shop at gamestop… don’t open my games for me, thank you very much)
An average joe “casual” gamer walks in, he doesn’t know that. He sees five bucks saving, or ten, or whatever it is. He doesn’t realise that the game dev doesn’t get shit. Even if he did, I doubt most would care. SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) to them and thus they don’t see it, get it or understand how it will affect them.
Awesome feedback guys, thanks for responding to my post. Even though you guys only talked about my twitter post for like 30 seconds I about shit my pants just hearing DK Money Shizzle say Kpkillar.
You guys really set yourselves apart from other podcasts in the way you interact with your fans, and actually respond to us.
I just wanted to say you guys are awesome and my $10 from Xbox Live is definitely going to you. Now where is the donate button?
Bull. Shit.
The only reason microsoft is doing this is because of money. THINK ABOUT IT. Halo Reach and COD Black Ops are comming out soon. Are you really going to cancel you subscription when both of those games are coming out? No you wont. You will pay the $60. And Microsoft knows it.
Fuck you Microsoft. Fuck You.
Hey, Project12 here. Great feedback guys and thanks for the feature.
I’ve got to mention since it’s really bugging me that I actually meant ‘course of action’. ‘Cause of action’ is somewhat different. Sorry about that. xD
1º post ever. From Portugal here. I´ve been following you guys since that time where Jesus was crucified. I really like your podcast. My english is not perfect so please try to follow. Regarding Xbox360, in Europe we are paying 59,99 euros a year since year 1, and most of the country’s don’t have half the content that the US has. In my home land xbox live doesn’t have zune, netflix,Fm radio, no video content except trailer for games. its basically empty. So.. what hurt´s me the most is the fact that many of us have been paying more than US customers for content that only US customers are getting. I hope that those extra bucks that some country’s will have to pay are to increase the amount of content that ours servers lack.
I gotta say I’m really digging this force feedback segment. It feels likes its tightened up the main podcast and left that time to hear your thoughts on topics and then give a real nice chunk of time interacting with us little people. Keep it up! Only suggestion I might bring to the table would be to include some stuff from the comments sections of the posts you put up if possible. The forums are great but for people like myself, the comments are usually where I’ll drop my pennies if I have something to say regarding something on the site.
I think you’re referring to the EpicBattleAxe section of Force Feedback.
The forums have their own section.
Okay I got time, I’ll side with Brent on the ME1 over ME2.
Because:
-Loot
-Loot!
-LOOT!!!
So what’s so great about loot? I DON’T KNOW! ASK BLIZZARD! In their Diablo3 video they made it out to be the best thing about their game(s?). You got a beef about loot, go ask them.
Also WoW has an Iphone app for the auction system (SO I’VE HEARD!).
Or if they are busy ask gearbox (borderlands (Loot with a vengeance.))
Both Mass Effects suffer from single player only modes, which ever way you look at it.
Topic 2 – Used games.
In a perfect world devs & publishers would get their share off Gamestops immense profits. But it’s not going to happen if they don’t do something about it. And I mean USED GAMES – not fucking gamers over with these new and innovating ways of NOT MAKING solid products that games used to be.
Obviously they are legally or financially unable to do so, otherwise they would have done something already?
Hence the massive ram up the gamers anus. Ooh yeah right there. You like it don’t you, don’t you.
Topic 3 – the obvious choice.
PSN > XBL
PS3 > 360
…and PC uber alles, bitzes.
A HAIL from Finland.
P.S. Shout out to Steam for makeing PC(and maCK!) sales more solid in the publishers and developers minds (hopefully). And what the heck, all the other digital distribution alleys aswell.
“PS3 more marture audience”, right. Apparently he doesn’t use internet forums because then he would see how “mature” the audience is. Both the 360 and PS3 fanbase are immature. One not more so than the other. The only reason the 360 has that stigma is because Microsoft includes a headset with all 360s.
I don’t feel bad for developers and publishers. As much as they milk us for extra money through DLC, GOTY editions and collectors editions they’ll get no sympathy from me. Look at all of the games that have parts removed only to be sold back to us 2 weeks after the game comes out, that’s absurd, and don’t even get me started on the nickel and dime DLC and the subsequent GOTY edition that comes out 1 year later where all that content you bought is now free to people who didn’t support the game originally. They stick it to us, so I’ll stick it to them.
Damnit, I’m so sick and tired of these “used games are stealing from developers” arguments.
Seriously, the video game business has to be the one industry to succesfully guilt their customers into feeling resposible for the success of global multi billion dollar corporations.
Let’s try to apply this reasoning to other types of products and services as an experiment:
Don’t share a cab with friends, because that means no extra money for the hard-working taxi-company and drivers that pour their heart and soul in to driving your drunk ass home from the bar!
Don’t buy a used sofa from your parents, because that means no extra money for the hard-working furniture company and designers that pour their heart and soul in to driving cushioning your fat ass while watching sitcoms!
Don’t wear your wifes underwear on the weekends, because that means no extra money for the hard-working panty-industry and lingerie creators that pour their heart and soul in to covering up all kinds of asses all over the world!
The fact of the matter is, these video game companies have only one goal, which is to suck every possible dollar from your wallet. Your ONE responsibility as a customer is to get the best possible deal (with some exceptions depending on morality, of course). There’s really nothing more to it.