Feast your ears, its The Axe Factor! This week, we take a look at retail game sales in 2012 and ponder how the influence of console gaming is determining the course to a digital-download future. Plus, Mass Effect 3 with Kinect, Resident Evil 6, and more!
This week:
What We’re Watching:
Mass Effect 3 – Better With Kinect Featurette
Mass Effect 3 – CES 2012 Kinect Walkthrough
Resident Evil 6 – Debut Trailer
Max Payne 3 – Design and Technology Series Part I – Creating a Cutting Edge Action Shooter
Max Payne 3 – Design and Technology Series Part II – Targeting and Weapons
What We’re Reading:
5 Reasons Game Retail Isn’t Dead
What We’re Playing:
Mirror’s Edge
Kingdom of Amular – Reckoning (Demo)
Asura’s Wrath (Demo)
The Darkness II (Demo)
Vote in The Axe Factor Poll:
Just a thought as I’m listening to you guys…
Seeing the Kinect ME3 video makes me wonder why this couldn’t be done with the PS eye or any other camera mic device. Features is nice and I cannot knock a game for having more features so long as I’m not required to use them.
Hey guys, I’m loving the show and actually paused to write this…
I just wanted to say a couple things about SWTOR FYI only no spoilrs here.
It is actually a prequel to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) another BioWare RPG very similar to mass effect in terms of dialogue and story stucture, this game also featured companions and their inherent story quests and also the light dark system implemented in swtor (I would definitely recommend looking it up on youtube)
Now… SWTOR is set several hundred years before the events KOTOR 1 & 2 and SWTOR has been described as KOTOR 3-12 or something ridiculous like that, so the story is now considered official star wars lore.
Anyway I’m glad your loving the game, I have been waiting 5 years for this and I made the decision a long time ago to ignore all other MMO’s
Whoops its actually a sequel set 300 years after KOTOR… sorry people i couldnt edit
The demo of Asura’s Wrath completely sold me on the game. The crazy over-the-topness of the game is great. Cyber Connect made the recent naruto games. I really feel like they just wanted to make their own anime. This game is very much like some kind of Dragonball anime. I can’t wait. I want to know how the rest of the game is.
I am totally amped for ME3 to come out and I have to say having the Kinect voice control can’t be a bad thing, as long as it’s like @himdeel said above, where the user isn’t forced to use it as part of the gameplay. If it adds a feature not required, I consider that a bonus. Now trying to justify a $99 expense (got my Kinect on sale w/3 games after Xmas) with a add-on like this is tough, but it may be what we are stuck with because I don’t know if I see Kinect used for much more in the hardcore gamer catalog.
Also @Brent, you can also use the voice commands to select apps from the dashboard, If you say “Video” and then say “Netflix,” it will start Netflix (which by the way I completely hate the revamped look and feel on my 360. Among other things, it’s harder to choose other episodes than before, but this is a whole other rant).
Awesome show guys! Rock on!
Just an addendum. I played the KoA:R demo last night and came away pretty impressed. I was just playing it to get my free stuff for ME3, but I came away liking the game, although not enough so that I would buy it when it’s released. I may wait til it hits that $30 price point. I reminded me of the film tie-in game LoTR: Return of the King action/adventure game for PS2 (which wasn’t bad), but much more in depth with the RPG elements like Fable. Gotta agree with Lorin though about the camera but also I’m not keen on the walking/running animations.
However, just so you guys know, if you are playing it for the ME3 stuff, you need to play through the whole demo and watch the ad at the end to get everything offered. I (foolishly) quit with about 20 min left so I need to play it again all the way through.
Wow, great timing, I had an hour to kill and nothing to do.
As for the retail discussion, I don’t see how anyone can argue for the power of retail without even mentioning used games. They’re the only way Gamestop and the like earn any money on their stores, it’s a great for poor gamers and even if they refuse to realise it, it earns the publishers money as well. In this sequel driven industry, used games are a great way to get gamers invested in a franchise, and thereby securing a pre-ordered new sale for the next game.
Used games are the big reason that retail has staying power right now, and in a few years when the web infrastructure is improved, that and the people that likes the guarantee of a physical copy (such as me) will be the only things keeping them alive.
Sweet show dudes! And the 1 reason why retail isend dead is gamestop. Thos greedy muthafuckers are squizin to mutch money out of peopel. Most of them are ignorant parants that dont know jack shit about gaming. But i did try the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and it was alot beter then i expected. Sure it copies some other games. But its prety good. Sure thay took advantage of Mass Effect and used that to get peopel that might not have tried it otherwise to try it. But i did squize in some BF3 on the PC and i just want to say to all Axe heads out there that all the aircrafts can be controled realy easy with a combo of W A S and D keys for speed and strafing left and right and movement on the arrow keys on the keybord. The mouse shouldent be used while in a plane. While flying a helicopter is could be more easy using the mouse. If you have a PC, then find a empty server and do some practesing there. If not you can level up the vehicles there buy capturing the flags in conquest. Not sure if it works for the rush mode. Only work if the server match starts with a minimum of 1 player then you can do whatever sins its ranked lol. =) And the Darkness 2 was prety cool stuff. I grabed and i grabbed a garbage can lid and threw is and it cut the dude in half or was it his head? I dont remember. Point is he died a painful and gorry death. And i keep wondering thos ignorent fucks REALY dont know what thay are fucking with. If thay did thay whould never attak Jackie or the darkness. Sins thay both tend to not realy take that cindly to dumb fucks trying to kill him. And that happens alot in games like uncharted 1, 2 and 3 whare half a fucking country throws themself at Drake and he kils them all. And it dident work in 1 and 2 and thay still think thay have a chanse in 3. And like Kratos. Wow his enamies are even more stupid then stupid. His name say all you need to know. Kratos is the god of fucking war. How mutch chanse do thes dumbass enamies that Kratos fight think thay have? None so sit the fuck down! And Starkiller’s enamies are also a special bunch. Thay cant take him. I mean a fucking Stormtrooper atacks starkiller and he actualy thinks he have a chanse. Sure i know its a game and thay do that to make you fight a half a fuckin country worth of enamies in the games. I just think the reason you fight a half a country worth of peopel could be more creative. And i did try the Battlestar Galactica online f2p thing. And its ok at best. Not realy that mutch to do and not mutch fun to be honest. But grate show and i enjoyed it and i cant wate for Mass Effect 3. And the Mass Effect 3 firefight or horde mode inspired game type might actaly be real bad ass. Even more so if thay work it into the story whare Commander Shepard trains a squad and that could later be used as a spring board into feature mass effect games. Anyway thats it from me for tonight. Im out laterz!
glad to hear you guys again. i personally think retail games will remain as long as we gamers continue to show strong interest in the boxed product. Not only that but, with how the big 3 are handling their full game download pricing, i’m in no hurry to go full digital. thats my slice of the axe in this matter.
I just wanted to pause in the middle of the video to chime in. I’ve had this underlying thought, a fear you might call it, in regards to this idea that some day the only way we’d get a game is via download. It also connects somewhat with one of Nadia’s points from the article as well. Basically, I’m one of those collectors she’s talking about. I still have my SNES and all the legendary cartridge RPGs and I really love being able to get them out of the closet, set them up on an old tube TV and play the shit out of some awesome 16 big games. Similarly, I practically never buy full-sized games (ones that were otherwise released in retail) because I have this fear that if something happens to my data, and the publisher goes under, I’ll be SOL.
I have to admit here, I may just be ignorant about some aspects of how this might work, so I’ll just explain it with an example and hope it makes sense. So given that I go back every year and bust out my SNES and play through Chrono Trigger, I imagine that in 10 years time I’d love to whip out The Witcher and play it through as well. So I downloaded The Witcher from GOG.com on sale and I loved the shit out of it. Let’s say that in 5 years time CDPR goes bottom up, their parent company dissolves, and my computer fries in a short-circuit fire. So I rebuild, and look up The Witcher only to find that in their collapse, CDPR sold property rights to Activision which is not releasing the game for re-purchase or re-download at this time (presumably indefinitely) * this is admittedly the point at which I might be totally wrong
Now in my example, the situation would be the same as if my house burned down with my SNES and Chrono Trigger cartridge inside, accept that the game is a physical copy that lots of other people bought as well- i.e. there is a used market for them and I could find it on ebay to buy myself another. Knowing how IP rights laws are, I see the above example as almost a necessary outcome. How am I going to go back and replay Braid, Amnesia, or LA Noir if the IP owner isn’t selling it (or offering re-download) in the future?
I guess one could challenge that as gaming gets more diverse and widespread I won’t have those desires… but then I think to how much I treasure popping in Chrono Trigger or Super Mario 64. I can’t image that we aren’t being left with great gems along our march into time the way we look back and remember the gems of our past. Some of the experiences I’m having now a days I want to be able to experience again someday. I DO want to be able to say to a friend “you have got to try this out! Here borrow this and tell me what you think” or “OMG you never played XYZ!!?? Holy shit you gotta borrow this and play it. You owe it to your grandchildren to experience this game man.”
Perhaps the culture of sharing things like this is going to be one of those things that dies off as our industry moves forward into the future. Perhaps that moment of “Holy crap, you never played this!?” will be replaced by “XYZ had 158k thumbs up in 2009, you might enjoy ZYX which should still be available by [distributor.com]” but alas, that idea kind of makes my heart hurt. Am I alone in this?
I completely agree man, my friends and I lend games back and forth all the time. There have been multiple times I have exclaimed “Holy crap, you never played this!?” and lent it to them on the spot. It’ll be a sad day when I have to say that and then say where they can download it and how much it’ll cost them. And I’ll tell you what, over 1 million “likes” from strangers don’t add up to even one recommendation from a friend.
I think ME3 could work with Kinect but I have played the first two without it. Max Payne looks AWESOME. I wonder if she is talking about retail store or retail online, cause if retail store closes and we go to digital download, retail online would still be there. I loved Amalur’d demo. I like the Darkness Demo. The Asura’s Wrath demo felt more like an interactive movie than a game.
I don’t know what demo Lorin played but my time did not have that problem. It is really good and I can’t wait to pick it up.
I thought you’d enjoy Kingdoms of Amalur more. I’ve played through the demo multiple times to try the classes.
I think it’s important to note that the demo is running on an older build of the game. IGN is doing a review in progress of the game, and the review cites that there are very few bugs compared to the demo.
As for the camera; its hard to say if that will be fixed…but at least we can expect less from the bugs department.
I will never stop buying retail, as the digital games are not cheaper, you can’t sell or trade them, and they take up hard drive space that you have to purchase, and it’s verylimited for someone like myself that installs my games when I play them (on 360 at least. Ps3 either makes it mandatory partial install, or won’t let you on 90% of the games).
I fear I’m drifting from Lorin & Brent. Don’t care about the Vita, as I can play those games on my couch with a great tv & sound (but I at least see the point of having one). I don’t see how Kinect is at all interesting, or worth your limited time on TAF (and it saddens me that Brent has been duped into having one). He can play Forza & GT5 with manual transmission & manual clutch & do fine, but the freakin’ Bioware wheel selection is too much? WOW! It takes about 2-3 button presses to command teamates in ME games. It takes all of the right bumper to move between tabs on the XBL dash, but you think saying, “Rex…Special Move,” or, “Movies (before having to use the controller for the other 90% of the selection on the dash),” while background noise, accents, etc that make wrong selections is even remotely worth playing ME or browsing the XBL dash with (which is a $150 investment for those of us without Kinect)? I would LOVE to know after Brent tries the ME thing if he uses it in game. That would make mighty Odin’s ball if he knew about that, lol.
Also, WTF? Why so many pop ups here all of a sudden. It was great when the redesign took place, or they weren’t so invasive, but I don’t like my entire screen being overrun by an ad, only to have it stay on the bottom of the screen when I cancel it.
Ads help this site stay up. If you’re unhappy, adblockers exist for your browser.
If someone tells you there’s actually no pop-up whatsoever on this site…time to get an anti-spyware running…
Pup-ups? Good thing I use no-script and AD-Block plus. Never see any ads here
I think its an mix between Low-quality internet infrastructure and Console gaming influence. Obvious years from were gonna just be able to downland an full game in an matter of minutes. When I download games from Steam I usually get around 2.0-2.5 MB/s, sometimes more or less depending on other factors and I get my games downloaded and ready to play within an few hours. Majority of people who play games would much rather just go out and buy that box copy instead of waiting.
Secondly the Console maker’s are pushing consumers to buy at a physical copies. And it’s gonna stay like this for years to come, up until being able to download titles quick, I think Next-Gen will have an much bigger push for digital download, with faster internet connection and bigger hard drives. Plus having digital only eliminates used game sells something Publishers are trying to put an end to.
RE 6 does look like an very fun action killing zombie game, but it didn’t have that touch what made the earlier titles so great. Rockstar as already got me sold on Max 3 and for Mass Effect 3, I’ll try the demo but I won’t be buying it.
Been playing SWTOR and just been enjoying it very much. Started with an Smuggler character got to lvl 13, then Brent announce what sever for the Guild. Then I made an Bounty Hunter on Hanharr but my Smuggler got deleted, So I made another Smuggler on Hanharr which runs great, since I do live in California.
Wow. Perhaps its my area (Central Texas, USA) or my internet speed but my Steam download speed is usually 856 kb/s – 1.2 mb/s with a highest ever max of 1.8 mb/s. A lot of the time I see Steam begin nice and high in the mid 1.5s but it seems to ‘recognize’ and then bump me down to a slower speed a few seconds in.
Great show as always!
I read through Nadia Oxford’s post and I agree with the both of you on how it’s…hard to agree with all her points.
I agree with Lorin about the first reason she mentions, that it is a console dominated market and that retail does “appeal” more to consoles. Unfortunately, it’s related to the ridiculous price of hard (and flash) drives for consoles. Considering some games take a ton of space these days, a console’s hard drive can’t sustain a proper game collection.
My hard drive for my PC costs a meager 110$ for 1.5TB…and it actually has a fast read speed…
The second thing is broadband. The internet infrastructure in North America, actually, the telecom infrastructure as a whole, horrendously sucks. It is understandable from a logistics standpoint that a less densely populated area puts more weight on upgrading the existing lines, but it remains an unacceptable excuse. If you think the US has it bad, Canada has it worse. The large corporations in control of our telecom control the regulatory committees, pretty much screwing the consumers for whatever they want. /endrant
That’s my biggest obstacle. If I browse the internet regularly, stream videos on YouTube, watch Netflix and bought all my games online, I’d pop my monthly bandwidth cap so fast it’s not funny. What’s worse? That’s by buying everything and not resorting to piracy.
I agree with one of her points though and it’s the ease to just pop in a disc vs having to pay attention to your bandwidth spending. When Netflix came to Canada, they were swarmed with complaints when the internet billing came in at the end of the month because people didn’t know that streaming movies legally made them pop their bandwidth…mostly because they didn’t know they had one…
Gamestop is an impulse purchase heaven? Not on my list. Even the used games are far more expensive (here in Germany) than in similar shops. I buy from a lot of places and 98% is a physical medium. I like to have it “in my hands”. So the local shop (not gamestop), ebay and amazon are my top sources.
Great concentrated show Brent and Lorin!
I’m getting the ME3 for the PC so no kinect for me, I’m not a fan of how the kinect is implemented for more hardcore games at he moment.
I usually get the Collectors edition’s on retail and the top 3-5 games a year I look forward to the most. The rest of the games I get them as downloaded, through steam or Origin.
I’m glad that the Max Payne 3 game is delayed since I have too much on my plate at the moment. I’m looking forward to it very much. Loved the first two games.
RE6 is looking as of RE4 to become a zombie-action game instead of a horror game, even in RE4 has the game mechanic become more actiony than previous installments.
Good to hear that the SWtOR guild is comming along niceley.
Too bad to hear about your KoA:R experience Lorin, I got it for the PC, Brent get it from Origins or steam on the PC, much better graphics and appearenlty less buggy. I hod very few bugs with KoA:R. I had a shield through the body bug in the equip meny, thats it, but it corrected it self fairly quick. I had a ton of fun and it is as Lorin described it, Skyrim meets Fable with it’s on twists on fantasy with a Action RPG gameplay mechanic.
Alright! That is it for me, Cry havoc and let the axehead army be heared!
brent, I bought rochard on the PSN because it was on sale and I had heard you raving about it, and I have to say I really like the game so far. Definatly recommend it for people who haven’t played it.
Lorin, how much cheaper do you think PS vita games will be on PSN than in retail stores? I’m pretty sure I’ll be buying vita games from psn and not physical copies. I think I read somewhere that Vita games are 20 % cheaper on psn than in stores in japan.
Like many people say I too like to have physical copies of games, but my mindset towards digital releases have changed in the last few years. I no longer buy PC games other than from Steam and I also find myself using PSN more, but I still buy a console game from a retailer if its full price. I think its paying a certain amount, that my head says, “well you better have something physical to hang on to if you’re going to spend that kind of money”
but I think its all about finding a service that you can trust with your digital games. Steam lets you download and install a game as many times as you want. My Ps3 died last fall and I was really happy that I could download everything that I had ever bought on PSN again free of charge. I don’t want a service that says: “hey you can buy this “thing” download it 3 times and then you have to buy it again crap”. PSN will probably be where I get my Vita games aswell.
great show as always. Still waiting for that Deus Ex show;)
I don’t know how much cheaper Vita games will be digitally, that is still a big unknown which I wish Sony would just announce. I fear we will not know until Feb 15th when the early bundle comes out. But I am buying the 32GB card and planning on purchasing all my games digitally. I did also notice recently that GameFly will carry Vita games too.
I know I’m too paranoid now to ever want to download stuff as opposed to buying it at retail. I used to download quite a few games on XBLA. Nearly every single one I’ve regretted in time. I suppose that’s my fault for buying them in the first place. But then, what can I do with them? They waste HDD space, but deleting them makes them even more useless.
I really only picked up 5 games in the past few years digitally. Well, 3 games and two different bundle of games. And really the only reason I bought them was because they were incredibly cheap. That’s about the only thing that balances my paranoia. I know certainly that I’ll never purchase full-retail games digitally… ever. The day we go all digital (the never, the better), I’ll just stick to playing everything I already have.
Good show again guys, now it’s time for my opinion on retail for the UK specifically.
Every year after the Christmas rush I hear about how on-line sales keep on increasing and the high street sales are falling, I have only purchased 1 game in 5 years from a retail store, every other game I’ve got from somewhere like amazon or shopto etc. as they are cheaper and I sell my games on amazon or ebay once I’ve finished playing them rather than go to the retail stores to trade my games in for credit.
I only tend to buy from the brick and mortar retailers websites when they have a collectors edition that I want and I can’t get it from anywhere else. But recently I got an email from one of the retailers saying I could buy the pc digital version of deus ex human revolution for £7.99 (most likely to compete with steam). So how much longer will it be till you can buy digital game for consoles from the retailers, but this will only delay the end of the retail model.
From the internet angel, well this year a lot more towns and some villages are going to be getting fibre so will be able to get up to 100 MBit internet (I’m currently getting 6.5, which still takes less than delivery time for the physical item to download a game). I’ve also noticed that some ISP’s are offering packages when you have a bandwidth limit during peak hours but from midnight to 8 am your internet usage is unlimited so I cant see this as a hurdle to digital distribution.
Personally for me buying games from retail is already over and I can’t wait to be able to get full AAA games digitally on the console for the same cost as buying one from amazon, from the parents perspective I’m not sure how many buy from the retail stores as I see them more likely to buy from the supermarkets when they do the weekly shop as supermarkets have the top 10 games on every platform for sale (except pc).
Hope this all makes sense, now back to some ‘mace in the face’ action in Skyrim
I actually enjoyed both The Kingdom of Amalur and The Darkness Demo. Not so much with Asura’s Wrath, that demo felt restricting. Although seeing in action made me like it more than I did before. I doubt I will be picking this up.
KOA, love what I saw, definitely better than Fable, (Skyrim… not so much), but I personally can’t wait to own it. The darkness was cool, I agree with Brent in the fact that I can see a lot of potential for repetition here.
So my gaming purchase as of now till march is KOA and ME3. and maybe some Live games for Feb.
Kinect. All I can say is that I have one, and im so so glad that is was the childrens grandmother that bought it and not me. Not even the kids like it however…
I can think of one instance where it would be fun in its simplest sense and actually may get used. Take Borderlands 2 for instance, they should totally implement it for when your playing 4 player co-op and stood next to a multi person vehicle. Shouting ‘shotgun’ blocks all other players from riding shotgun. That simple, that stupid, but the only instance I can see gamers actually liking the ‘feature’ and importantly finding fun in using it.
As for KoA: Reckoning. Im hugely disappointed in the title now after playing the demo. I guess I sadly set my expectations way too high considering the promise from the people behind the game. The game feels like it is targeting a younger audience as it is very simple, very colorful, seemingly linear, and sadly to me, quite boring. No longer on my radar for the foreseeable future unless a complete pack with all (inevitable) DLC comes around very cheaply. I completely fail at managing my own expectations when it comes to RPG’s I guess…
Forgive me Lorin if i’ve said too much or offended you, God knows i try to make a fair point and it must have been my passion that drove me a little bit over the line of criticism into rudeness. Seems i just missunderstood the whole point of your opinion on the matter as Brent pointed out. All the best guys, keep on rocking :]
lol….np. Passion is good and I was just giving you s*#t
I see, touche
i just played the darkness 2 demo and i really liked it. i still have darkness 1 in my backlog that i need to get to. im super excited for max payne 3 no question, im wondering if you guys even care that it will have MP? i dont think either one of you touched RDR MP do you think youd be interested in max paynes? i might give it a shot just because i love the franchise.
good to see lorin is getting back into mirrors edge i remember loving that game but i never finished and now i want to revisit. just a side note you mentioned how your doing free running well ive been watching youtube vids of Alex Honnold. in case you enver heard of him hes the real life spider-man lol this dude basically climbs moutians with no safety gear. if you havent seen him in action do yourself a favor and check him out, its amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leCAy1v1fnI
Damn, I can’t for my mind understand how someone can do something like that. I would never have the balls to try something like climbing without any security.
That is a crazy video. Parkour is nowhere near that crazy!
Regarding internet infrastructure I am really happy that I was born in Sweden instead of the US since you guys really seem to have shitty internet connections. And since I can’t resist to gloat a bit I have a 100/100 fiber connection for about 60 dollars/month (which is reasonable cheap)
For reference, new PS3/Xbox-game costs about 90 dollars here in Sweden.
And like Brent I am really excited for Max Payne 3. I have just becomed interested in the game with the trailers and so forth. Since I am a hardcore PC Gamer I am a bit worried that Max Payne will suffer from conzolites. I really hope it won’t but since I know that most developers suck at developing for the PC these days I won’t buy the game on release but will hold off until a site focused on PC Gaming reviews that game.
Awesome show like always and I look forward to the next one
Why is everyone so hyped about Mass Effect 3′s demo? Why spoil the story even if it’s just a one hour demo out of a 45 hour game? Why be let down by any bugs the early version (compared to the final game code) might have?
I understand some might be afraid of another Dragon Age 2 flop, but from what we’ve seen ME3 seems like ME2, whereas DA2 looked nothing like DA:O. That thing stunk like a dead fish being eaten by a dumb bear.
I second that. I won’t play the Mass Effect 3 demo. I preordered the collectors editon. So I will play it anyway. And I still have to work me through ME1 and ME2 with my badass redhead female Sheppard
(for some reason, I can’t edit my comment, Firefox keeps crashing)
@Lorin, Mirror’s Edge is a fantastic game! Beautiful city vistas, excellent ambient atmosphere, leet first-person parcour gameplay, smooth animation etc. To top that, the music is really beautiful and totally fitting the game! I can only imagine how it looks on a 3 monitor ATI Eyefinity setup
! The sound design is top notch (as is everything by DICe), especially on a 5.1 setup. It isn’t really that long of a game. I finished it in two sittings and it only lasts about 5 and a half hours. I only played it last April and I now can’t wait for a possible sequel by DICE. They have talked about it and what the best way to make a sequel could be.
@Brent I almost can not believe that you have no real option for high speed internet. I thoght in the US almost everybody has high speed internet. In Germany, people living in the countryside do have limited Internet. But “normal” people can get 16MBit almost anywhere.
Personally I have a 100MBit internet connection.
I got a friend here in Germany, living at the Czech boarder (literally) and the only thing he got available isISDN with a wooping 64 kbit/sec. Something I left behind me about 10 years ago. That was fast enough for us playingg Diabol 2 coop, hope it is enough for D3 as well.
I forgot to mention. Here where I live you have about 6 different vendors for internet with 3-5 different packages.
Yeah, it is the same thing here where I live in Sweden.
That would be awesome here, but no, the U.S. government is completely fine with having local monopolies when it comes to cable providers. Now that we’ve petitioned SOPA and PIPA to enough to be delayed (probably not killed), consumers in the U.S. should start petitioning for more competition when it comes to cable/internet providers. But it won’t happen… *sigh*
For that we have a state institution. In Germany it is called “Kartellamt”. They make sure that nobody gets an monopoly on something. For example one of our bigger cable providers where bought by another provider. The “Kartellamt” only allowed it under special conditions. For example the new cable provider has to make all normal digital cable channels free. If they don;t do that they are not allowed to buy the smaller cable provider. We have something similar on the European level, too.
I have now a very fine tuned buying behavior. For PC I order my games in the UK. You can get brand new PC games for around 27 GBP. Then I activate them on steam or origin
Download takes about one hour or so. The only reason for me why I don’t buy digital only is the price. ME3 on steam is 60 EUR. Imported from the UK I pay 40 EUR.
For console games I do wait until they are around 30 EUR for a used game. After I played through them I sell them again.
Same with me. The prices for new games on steam are incomprehensible, when you can get the disc version from a shop in another country for 30 % less, shipping included!
Editing does not work
Supplement: I am using a data plan with no bandwidth limit. So I can pretty much download what I want. That is the reason why I immediately delete my steam games if I don’t play them for a while. If I am interested again (like Mass Effect 1 now) then I download them again. For that reason I would like to see steam on PS4 or xbox 720.
I played all 3 demos mentioned above. Asura’s Wrath disappointed me the most. It was almost all quicktime events, almost all of them you can fail, and the game will keep going. Seriously, I’m not kidding. You can fail over 50% of the quicktime events and the game will keep playing.
Kingdoms of Amalur I played on both PC and PS3, and I had a ton of fun. I had no performance problems on either as well. Lorin, you’re the minority on this one. Don’t forget though, it’s not the final build of the game.
The Darkness 2 was absolutely the best of the 3 IMO. I was blown away at the melee plus gunplay combination. The presentation was done really well. I’m glad they delayed it because the polish really shows.
Mirror’s Edge is one of my favorite games this gen. Lorin, I’m disappointed you didn’t get it on PC. That game is screenshot heaven when maxed out. I usually switch between my screenshots for backgrounds and that game is the one that shows up the most.
That’s a good point. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t buy it on the PC and play it in Eyefinity! Duh….
Did anybody else experience weird technical issues with the KoA-Demo, on PS3?
It froze on me, when I tried running it the first time. The second time, when I could actually play it, the sound just stopped working about halfway through the demo, and the game started fast fowarding through all dialog automatically.
… but apart from that, I actually enjoyed the demo quite a bit XD
Although I have to agree, that it feels a little like “Skyrim: the Light Version”. Lots of ability trees, weapon types, etc., but it doesn’t really stand apart from all the great RPGs that came out last year.
Yeah, I have to admit, that it if it hadn’t been for the all the heavy hitters of 2011, I’d might be a little more intrigued.
On the rumours about RE6…
supposedly some website “unintentionally” leaked, that it has 6 player co-op and/or 8 player competitive play. As every playable character has a partner, the return of co-op seems to be quite a reasonable assumption, but 6 players seems a little exaggerated. But if it were to be true, that would be really intriguing.
Co-op was what sold me on RE5, as it was LOTS of fun. But I sure could do without cranky 3rd-Person competitive play.
Great show guys, I saw the Mass Effect Kinect support and….. meh. Not really that exciting for me at this point but who knows what the future may bring.
Anyhoooo, I have to disagree with a lot of the reasons that were given in Nadia Oxfords article. I work full time in a locally owned gaming store where we buy and sell video games (not gamestop), trading card and board games, and I have become more familiar with the retail side of the gaming industry ever since.
So her first reason being the retail model being what console gamers are used to, yes very true I can’t argue with that, especially since recently becoming a PC gamer myself I have noticed that finding a hard copy PC game is freakin impossible anymore.
BUT, her point about retail stores (in this case me) educating mom and dad about video games is pretty far off. I get questionable parents in the store pretty often, but more than anything the parents are just as informed as the kids are and have a pretty good idea of what they are shopping for and they never seem confused or stumped in the case of digital downloads. Most of the time the parents are as you said Brent “have been doing it since they were kids themselves.” When it comes to buying for their gamer gift wise, I quote her article “Even if Little Johnny takes to downloading with ease, his game-illiterate parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends will want to know what he’s buying, how he’s buying it, and what they can do if they want to give him a gift.” I prove this wrong with 2 words… Gift Cards. Pre paid gift cards or points cards completely eliminate the need for a parent to get too well versed in the digital market at least from what I have seen. This last holiday, if a parent needed an easy gift idea, a gift card or Xbox live points ect was always the easy way to go. So basically parents don’t need educating and if they do… Google magic
Impulse shopping. Sure maybe, but the ability to download free demos everywhere makes impulse buying pretty rare anymore. Now that playstation has their “play this game for the first hour, and then decide if you want to buy it.” I think impulse buying is pretty much gone just through ease of access to that kind of material.
I personally think that the retail market isn’t dead because of (not solely) the buy/trade system in game stores everywhere. Gamers love the idea of playing a game for as long as they want, and when its taking up needed shelf space, they can take it to their favorite game store and trade it in for credit towards a new title. Personally, I don’t trade my games and i have my own reasons for being a video game packrat, but as long as their are gamers who love the trade in system, retail gaming will have a very solid advantage over digital.
uhg i can’t fix my grammar mess ups
I’m wondering if the kinect funtionality will translate to the pc. It shouldn’t be that hard to use it with a mike to create the same effect…
Regarding the argument over why we haven’t yet transitioned to digital download only games sales, I agree with Brent and Lorin that the main barrier is that the broadband infrastructure still isn’t in place. Most world cities have pretty okay internet options, a decent choice of providers and sufficient download speeds that it is feasible, but there is a huge number of gamers living in smaller towns, or in the countryside where provider choice is dismal, and we pay way over the odds for crappy 3 mbps connections.
While I think a digital download only future is a long way off, I have been noticing a worrying trend lately. In Northern Ireland, Gamestop has recently announced they are closing all of their brick and mortar stores, and this follows a huge number of Game (another UK based games specialist) closures. Independant game retailers are pretty much non existant now. Here in the Republic, Gamestop hasn’t announced any closures, but it’s only a matter of time. Looking at their website, it appears their online prices are significantly cheaper than in store prices (Resident Evil Revelations is €45 compared to €35 in their online store).
Like you guys said, most gamers are parents, or at least young adults accustomed to online shopping, and I honestly think that within the next few years there will be a major transition to online retail, particularly given the ongoing global recession, and the lower overheads involved in online retail. While it might be sad to see the loss of highstreet game stores, this could be a potentially good thing for the industry, since it makes selling and trading games on a huge (Gamestop) scale more difficult, and may lead to more sales of new games, which is obviously where the developers get their money from. We can of course still sell our old games, but it will be done on a smaller scale that won’t hurt the industry as much as Gamestop currently is.
The likes of Wallmart and Tesco will still sell games in store, though probably a more limited selection, but hardcore gamers looking for hardcore games will still buy them online. Of course I could be totally wrong here, but if I’m not, I don’t think the transition from highstreet shops to online retail would be such a bad thing! The ultimate (and inevitable) transition to digital download once internet infrastructure catches up does scare me though. Without shops competing with each other, there will be much less incentive to lower game prices, which could be a very bad thing if PSN/360 digital game prices are anything to go by.
Whats up guys? Watching that Kinect ME3 with a friend, we both started arguing how useless the kinect actually is in that scenario. Why cant we have the same functionality using the headset that was included when you bought the console? Why not use ANY headset on all platforms if the microphone is the only thing used on that ridiculous 100 + USD add on? The idea that you are able to speak the lines instead of choosing them is actually a really cool detail that would definitively add to the immersion of the game, not to mention make the game more dynamic when in battle. To limit gamers of that experience just because they dont want to spend more money on the kinect is ridiculous. The Kinect doesnt process any information, its the Xbox. If modern consoles can have such precise voice recognition, it should be included as an option for all players and not on an add on that happens to have a microphone.
I’m a big Max Payne fan whose been anticipating MP3 for some time, but the new game looks to me to be just another GTA installment with added Bullet-time effects and some animation tweaks. The Max Payne games are rooted in crime noir and pulp fiction, that’s what set them apart from other 3rd person shooters. I don’t see that so far in the trailers for Max Payne 3. Looks like style over substance. Guess Rockstar were less interested in making a Max Payne game and more interested in testing out new gameplay mechanics for the next GTA installment.
For me, I buy retail because i dont have enough space on my hard drive
I really enjoyed playing Kingdoms of Amalur. Got interested in this game when I first saw the fighting mechanics. It really seems to me that there is something more to them than bashing a few buttons, the demo was just good enough for me to strongly consider getting this title…But still the past has taught me play it safe and wait for reviews of people I consider to have similar taste to mine, so I’m gonna wait a bit more after the release. Also I haven’t had bad experience regarding framerate, I’ve played the demo on the PS3. Don’t know if it was pure luck or if the PS3 version has less problems on the technical side. I strongly recommend this demo to anyone who likes fantasy rpg games and titles like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Onimusha and simmilar ones that have more emphasis on the fighting mechanics
You know the worst thing about the death of game retail is that there’ll be no more New Game Smell.
Lorin and parkour, now that really blindsided me! Was I the only one who had images of Kung Fu Panda running through my head? :p
As for Max Payne, I’ve allways liked how those games were kind of a greek tragedy, with Max spiralling down a black hole and bottoming out with a Shakespearean ending. The worse the nightmare grew for Max, the better those games were to play.
The Axe Factor for me would be if Rockstar can keep Maxes story going even deeper down the hole and not copping out with some struggle-for-salvation rebirth.
Kung Fu Panda? Why you gotta cut a brutha?
where is the links for the battlefield squads didn’t you mention them brent?
Lorin, no offense at all meant by this, but I’m continuously stunned on almost a weekly basis now by all the monolithic older games that you have not played. Is it just that you were not playing any games in the late 90′s/early 2000′s or something? At least go and play RE4. You of course can judge a game as a standalone thing, without examining its predecessors, but I think it’s also important to have some historical context for a game when its part of a series.
Uh… I clicked on a poll choice and was rewarded with the message “this poll cannot find nonce”.
Why is the poll looking for nonces? I know a nonce back in England. He loves to cross dress. I could introduce the poll, if it so wishes…
And one more thing… I have been real sick and busy recently. Hence the lack of comments. I shall be back, though…. Boring you weekly with what I ‘ave been mostly playin’!
Hi guys, I’m a long time listener, first time writer.
Being someone who bought every PS3 game retail. I reflected on the “what we’re reading” article. At the end, I concluded that none of the reasons applied to me. Simply put, in Australia, the offer on PSN for digital download is far from attractive. What I mean is that a new game that’s sold for 110$ AUD on PSN can be easily found on the retail shops for 89$ or less. Even older games like GTA4 and its DLCs are more expansive on PSN than buying them separately in retail. What I’m saying is that either Sony Australia doesn’t understand the idea that digital copy doesn’t require shelf space and therefore should be cheaper, or they are deliberately promoting the retail model.
For me some of the features demonstrated in the ME3 kinect demo are beyond awful.
The ME series has always been driven by story and character. It’s my experience of the world through Sheppard’s actions, so the connection between me and the main character is essential. The in game selection interface represent my thoughts and choices, and the nudge of my finger is the most efficient way of transmitting my decision to Sheppard. As long as it’s not clumsy or complicated like Skyrim, it’s perfectly adequate. The kinnect feature of telling Sheppard to change a different weapon, use his/her own abilities or say something along the line of what the player just said would bring me out of the connection because I’ll be a 3rd person telling Sheppard what to do.
That said, I would love the feature of commanding my team mate to do certain tasks via voice interface. It works because:
1.) Sheppard doesn’t repeat what the player says.
2.) It’s what normally happens when you tell people to do things, which means it’s the projection of the player’s order as Sheppard with even less interruption.
As a result it will enhance immersion. However it’s not a new feature because Rainbow 6 Vegas2 has already implemented it… horribly.
I played the Kingdom of amalur demo and i liked it. I called up my friend that I play co-op games with and told him that this is our next game only to figure out that there is no co-op.
So never played alot of RPG games and none of them co-op I asked the community for a game like this with co-op and I have now bought Fable 3 and will probably be playing Fable instead of Amalur.
@lorin dude it’s crazy to learn that you do Parkour! I remember you saying you’re in Colorado Springs, does that mean that you take classes at Apex Movement? If not you should check them out. The Parkour community in CO is huge.
I don’t even understand the problems with internet connections you talk about. I live in Portugal, I have a 120Mbps internet connection, I pay monthly and can download whatever I want and never pay more for it. About half of people with internet connections here have 20Mps plus internet bandwidth. And what do you mean you cannot choose your internet provider? Why? It’s so stupid! I have 5 different providers to choose from, and we are a very small country. I had DSL until I moved recently, I had 12Mbps. So why can’t you? Sorry, but it just blows my mind…