Jake and Mike Videogame Show

I ask this question because I can’t quite seem to nail down the audience that Sony is expecting to find with the PSPgo.

At first, you would assume that they want to increase the portability of the object, thus it’s slimmed down size, and appeal to people that thought the original was too bulky. Or that it’s appeal should be towards the Hardcore audience because of the ability to download retail games straight to the thing. Possibly that it’s audience is current PSP owners that just want something to upgrade to.

But all of those reasons are immediately trumped by its egregious price tag of 249.99.

Any reason that anyone would want to try out the system from scratch, upgrade from an original psp, or just want a handheld system to begin with can be swiftly overshadowed by a deep down fear of spending 250 hard earned dollars on a trivial piece of technology.

I’m not terribly optimistic about the success of this little PSP “upgrade” they’re offering us, unless they have some crazy audience that will love this thing, that I’m unaware of.

-(MS)Mike out.

Jake’s take on the PSPgo:

I don’t get who this thing is for. Who wants this? No one. No one wants to buy this. If you want to buy this then you are stupid.

Seriously though I don’t see what audience Sony is trying to attract with this “new” PSP. Everyone who honestly wants a PSP owns one. The price tag is so high that they won’t get a ton of people looking to “upgrade” and even if they do want to “upgrade” they will not be able to play the games they already “own”. We will talk about this on the podcast I’m sure. I have no idea who they are trying to market this thing to.

-Jake

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Here is the second part! Uhmm……What else is there to really say?

……….Jake digs blondes and I like Mexican chicks. Not everything has to be about Video Games.

-(MS)Mike out.

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Well, here we are, back in the saddle again! Huzzah my friends, huzzah!!

We’ve got a hell of alot of podcast love for you guys this week to make up for our wacky update schedule.

We talk about so many games, that I honestly don’t remember all the many, many things we talked about. I don’t know the order at all, but I know we talk about Wet, Scribblenauts, Mario and Luigi 3, Halo: ODST, Beatles Rock band, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and I’m sure a few other things that i’m missing. So just listen to them, and find yourself in a world of fantasy where your imagination is your car and hopes and dreams are the gasoline!

Also, I noticed that we say “When we were talking about it earlier” a shit load in our podcasts. This one is no exception.

-(MS)Mike out.

Not necessarily a strange move on their behalf, I mean, people spent alot of time and money on that game and they didn’t really get the return they expected on the DS, so switching it over to the PSP to find a more obvious audience seems the obvious move. Hell, by GTA terms, they didn’t get ANY return at all compared to the clout most GTA games normally hold.

I think it will be pretty interesting to see how well the game sells on the PSP because of a few main reasons:

• The game was gorgeous for a DS game, but for a PSP game it is prolly a little below the standards you normally see in a title. I wonder if that will factor into anything when people are looking at it on the shelf and flip it over to check out the back. On top of that, I wonder how much cleaning up they’ll to potentially make it look like a more intensive, graphically.
• If this game sells really well, like most GTA games in the past, it might be some of the most influential evidence to the fact that although the DS audience is enormous, it can’t support an M rated title regardless of how large it is.

So there ya go, I wonder how heavily the sales of this game on the PSP will reflect the infinite debate about M rated titles on any Nintendo console, whether it be for or against the argument.

-(MS)Mike out.

But if you ARE, then there is a good chance you’ll want to see this trailer.

You’ve gotta give it to Kojima, that dude loves giving people 5 minutes or longer trailers to watch for his games, None of that 47 second long BS you get from Square Enix and the likes.

-(MS)Mike out.

Every time Jake and I get into a discussion about games eventually being more downloaded and less bought at a store, at some point in time, I usually bring up the fact that the games should probably cost less but that I’m afraid they won’t. There is a reason why PC games cost 10 bucks cheaper for the exact same game then its console counter part. Theres a reason that 5-20$ is the sweet spot for downloadable titles.

Alot of people just think its because the games are from smaller studios or because that’s just how a dlc title works, but also, a large factor is because they don’t need to spend a ton of money on printing disc’s, paying to get box art done, paying to print manuals and manufacture or purchase cases and all that junk, so they can afford to give you a game for cheaper and still see a return.

Now you could use some of the few full retail games that Sony has released on PSN and attempt to say that, since the games were fully downlodable, that they were indeed cheaper, but I’m not quite sure if that can be 100% yet, because as of today, all the full retail games released on PSN have been online only games that normally have a smaller price tag to begin with, so that skews things a big. Not to mention that they both came with headsets in retail and but didn’t in the download only versions, which also throws off our ability to see if there was a standard as far as the games being cheaper. Then was the digital only release of the PSP exclusive Tekken, which released lower then some PSP titles, but higher than others, so again, no solid comparison in price can be made. Unfortunately, it seems like those are the only examples that I know of as far as any of the consoles offering up a full retail title in a new school way that had any type of price variance you could use to see where their head is at.

Sadly, as much as we all know that cost’s would be down with a digital release, I can’t really picture the titles costing one price digital and another retail. Knowing Microsoft, who I assume will be the first to make a major digital push for their normally retail only games (Aside from Sony testing the waters with the pspGO), I doubt you’ll see any price drop between the two. More likely we’ll either see something similar to Sony so far, where the price is less digital, and more retail, but the retail version comes with something extra, or  we’ll see a bigger push from them next generation rather than this one, and they’ll keep the 59.99 price tag for digital stuff and well see an increase in the price for retail purchases.

Either way, this is really all just musings and hearsay, but it will be interested to see how this road winds up and how successful each of the big three are with their respective takes on the idea of pricing for legitimate game releases in a digital environment.

-(MS)Mike out.

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Welcome back to turkey town you crazy chickens, We’ve got a heck of a podcast for you this week.

We talk a hell of alot of Battlefield 1943 and our love for going commando. We each bring up a few of the games we managed to play in a month that had no games to play in it and Mike touches on his VERY furst experience with an MMORPG.

Its touching, its thought provoking, its tear jerking, its laugh inducing, its fat burning, its a burst if flavor in each bite! Enjoy!!

Also, watch for Mike and Jake to Name drop CheapyD several times, they’re very tricky like that!

-(MS)Mike out.

A whole lot of gaming stuff in the world these days really seems like it should be judged by some type of standard or something. Back in the day when Nintendo had the Seal of approval, you knew that they meant business but we dont have anything like that anymore….Or do we? What if you could walk into a store and be like, “oh, this doesn’t have the Mike Steele Stamp of approval….I better move along”.

Well you’re in luck.

I have invented the Mike Steele Stamp of Approval screening process so that people can finally use me as the medium for whether or not things are worthy of liking or hating because I’m the only one that matters and you know it. Here’s some of the Stuff that currently has the Mike Steele Stamp Of Approval, and some other things that totally didn’t pass the screening process.

Things that are Mike Approved:

Steam

Starcraft, even after 8 years

Retro Adventure titles making a big comeback

The Nintendo DS

Pokemon videogames

PC gaming, oddly enough

Games with Co-op

The way you buy and download titles on the Wii and PSN

The amount of fighting games that have been coming out recently

Things that failed the quality assurance screenings:

Microsoft points

Microsoft XBLA pricing

Games developers confusing “annoying” with “challenging”

People not wearing a headset in Left 4 Dead

The Nintendo DSi store constantly releasing clocks and calculators

The amount of time I have to wait until I can play Borderlands

LucasArts trying to make new IP’s when they could just bring back Tie-Fighter and we’d all forgive them

-(MS)Mike out

So I recently gamefly’d (I’ve got a trademark on that term by the way so if you use it you owe me a nickel) the PSP game Resistance: Retribution and had a pretty interesting experience with it.

The game itself is a pretty standard 3rd person shooter with a cover mechanic. You move from area to area shooting enemies, taking cover, solving small environmental puzzles and mowing down enemies with AI controlled squads every once in a while. There were a bunch of weapons that all kept up Insomniacs design by having awesome secondary fire modes that were as unique as they were fun. Graphically the game was stunning for a PSP title and really showed that that little machine is capable of. From the lighting to the character models and environments, it was easily on par with graphic intensive PSP titles like Crisis Core and God of War.

So with all that good stuff to say, why would I send the game back after only 3 days and without beating it?  Well, the game suffered from its ambitiousness, sadly. Lemme give you the complaints list… (continue reading…)

I’m gonna start this post by saying that I have quite a bit of hands on and close relations with the iPhone and ipod touch, so this annoyed rant is not that of someone on the outside looking in, it is one of the educated wondering what happened to his fellow straight thinkers.

It absolutely blows me away when gaming journalists or tech-pundits say something like, “It looks like the PSP and DS could have some stiff competition in the future!”. AHHHH!!! What?! Seriously? Who in there right mind can really see the iPhone as a competition to even the lower selling PSP, but to see it as having even a glimmer of rivalry to the Nintendo DS is laughable. It eludes me to no end where anyone could find such information in their brain, tug at it and then let it come out of their mouth for the world to hear.

Now, I haven’t backed up my end with alot of information yet, so I’m going to make a few of my main arguments in some bullet points and then elaborate a bit below. So read on if it interests you. (continue reading…)