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Hyperspace Beacon: PR nightmare
It's my sincerest hope that we never again have a news week like we did last week. Every mistake that could be made in MMO development was made this past week. Obviously, the biggest news revolved around the 38 Studios fiasco. Perhaps it's hard when you're in the midst of a development cycle and concentrating on deadlines and milestones to see the larger picture and the proverbial writing on the wall. It should have been obvious to the developers behind the scenes the project was doomed, but I say that with 20/20 hindsight. Of course, Star Wars: The Old Republic won't be outdone by 38 Studios. BioWare had to flood the feeds with its own bad news in the form of layoffs. Then almost in the same breath, it announced that the game will be merging servers. I guess SWTOR couldn't be outdone by itself, either. It had to add insult to its own injury. Although the timing of the layoffs was a bit surprising, those of us observing from the outside could see the server merges coming. The stories in Star Wars aren't just about good conquering evil, but they are also about redemption and good coming out of a bad situation. The tragedy of Luke's aunt and uncle being killed was the catalyst that started his journey to becoming a great hero and Jedi Knight. Darth Vader was ultimately redeemed when he killed the emperor. But is there the same redemption for SWTOR? Will it ultimately become the great game everyone was hoping that it would be?
Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET: Apple's rough media week
Last week's show celebrated ten years of Apple's retail stores with NPD Group's Ross Rubin and Gary Allen from ifoapplestore.com, anticipating a week of good news about Apple. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Yes, there's the Apple Store 2.0 reboot featuring snazzy, customized iPad information stations... but between the clamor of Mac Defender malware and the anxiety of patent-challenged iOS developers, there was bad news aplenty; add in the Foxconn factory fire and it just got worse. We'll look back at the week that was and look ahead at the week to come; join us, won't you? To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the TalkShoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 PM EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cell phone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here (if you like Blink, the pro version is available in the Mac App Store). Skype users with SkypeOut credit can simply call the main TalkShoe number; it's also a free call with Google Voice's browser plugin. Talk to you tonight.
The Daily Grind: Do you prefer good news or bad?
Today we're going to be a little bit meta for our discussion topic of the day and ask a very simple question with larger meanings: do you consider yourself on the positive or negative side of the fence? When you see news on the site, do you prefer the good news and the uplifting stories, or would you rather see things with a bit more bite to them? Certainly the negative can be a fair bit more entertaining, and if there's a game you don't like (which many of you seem to have) it's kind of nice to feel vindicated in your dislike. Positive news, on the other hand, can only bolster morale if you're a fan of the game in question -- but you get a lot more fuel out of that than a thin shot of schadenfreude. So. All things being equal, if we post a story about Game X, which you neither play nor have any strong opinions about -- are you happier if it's good news or bad news? And as a point tied to that, do you generally consider yourself to be a more positive person or a negative one?
Nintendo's annual pre-E3 bummer
N'Gai Croal at Level Up picked up on a trend based on the pre-E3 output of the big game companies: they tend to get their bad news out of the way a week or two before the show. The resulting Level Up article highlights some of Nintendo's recent examples of this strategy, including the unfortunate news this week regarding Super Smash Bros. and Metroid Prime 3. Did anyone else think it was weird whenever a big announcement like this would come out before E3?It makes sense, though, to let us all exhaust ourselves talking about bad news before the show starts. Then we can start being impressed by the actual show content.One interesting note: this implies that Nintendo knew how their choice of console name was going to be received. We still have trouble with the name, and we're ... you know.
