Our latest Podcast went up over the weekend. I figured many of you probably missed it, so here's Tycho's post from Saturday.
-Gabe out
Welcome to the show notes for Downloadable Content 9/20/2006, "In Breach Of Warranty." The episode is available for direct download at this link, or feel free to subscribe to our iTunes compatible feed here. We have not settled on a schedule, rather, we've just begun leaving the recorder on every time we write. It's different: people can actually just walk in, and without their knowledge they've become a part of the "show." It may become more standardized as we refine our process, but I know better than to make promises on this score. I hope you enjoy it, it's been gone a lot longer than we intended. This helpful guide should help you get the most out of it.
0:01 - I'm talking about Bluetooth pairing, here. Gabe couldn't understand why it was awesome.
2:24 - "Tender" is what I call Brenna in unguarded moments. I don't know why.
2:34 - Believe it or not, and I would understand if you didn't, there are even more shameful stories than this.
3:54 - Rumpole of The Bailey is one of my favorite shows.
4:43 - Apparently, you can play as the Master Hand in Super Smash Brothers? Huh.
6:09 - The "Document" Robert refers to here is the Working Document (a kind of linear walkthrough) for On The Rain Slick Precipice Of Darkness.
8:18 - There's a demo of Sonic the Hedgehog on Live, if you want. We liked it eventually. At first, we didn't quite understand the "rhythm" of it. You'll know what I mean when you play it.
10:10 - "Tell 'em why you mad" is a quote from The Madd Rapper. He has an album of his own I guess, but we never listened to it. The quote is specifically from a song on Biggie's Life After Death album entitled "Kick In The Door."
11:18 - Culdcept Saga was shown again at TGS, and they keep releasing the videos on the US version of Marketplace, so I'm looking forward to playing a stateside release. I've talked about it before. It's the "Magic: The Gathering" meets "Monopoly" game, the sort of ultraniche thing thing you'd never expect to see on that platform.
11:46 - Bioware has a DS group now. Exquisite!
13:09 - The show Gabe was talking about is right here - it was IGN Weekly's 25th episode. It has Splinter Cell: Double Agent footage I've never seen anywhere else, but there's also this strange sort of... I guess "plot"(?) running through it. I don't keep up with the show, so I don't know if this sort of thing happens a lot.
14:44 - I start quoting House of Pain here for some reason. It's the song "I'm A Swing It," from their album Same As It Ever Was. Yes, they continued to make albums after "Jump Around."
15:28 - After TGS, I think it's pretty clear that they plan to release something this year. I don't think their online offering will actually be in place at launch, not in its entirety. It doesn't really mean anything long term - the Xbox launched with nothing on that score, and built up the industry standard service. I'm just saying.
16:14 - Here's those screenshots of "Colors" screenshots I was talking about. I think you will agree: odd.
25:46 - The comic I'm talking about in this part can be found here. It is from the year ninety-nine, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
(CW)TB out.
Poking around at the 'Avatar yesterday, hungry for news, we came across a link to Engadget's verdict on the Zune. At least, the Zune as it is currently conceived - before the animal hunger and ingenuity of the open-source community penetrates it. I got the impression that Engadget was as surprised as we were to find a lot of the gadget's potential - things that seemed natural to expect, seeing as they are currently made manifest by competing devices - was sort of missing in action.
Initially we regarded the device with suspicion, then anticipation, and then white-hot desire based on what a machine with those specifications could accomplish - the wireless fi, the wider screen, a sharp UI, and the indubitable Xbox 360 integration. I've got an unobtrusive Samsung player, yeah, but it's just a little solid state munchkin with 256 embarrassing megs - it's not exactly hitting giant crabs for massive damage. You can plug some headphones into it and it will play music. It's never going to play anything but music, or be a Live Anywhere client, or whatever. The screen on that Samsung is just large enough to see myself scowling in it.
I mean, I do "get it." They're creating a new platform. And the 1.0 version of this platform isn't of interest to the discerning technophile, though we desperately wanted it to be. And I have every faith that some upgrade with an innocuous filename will, in the future, reshape the very soul of the device. But I don't need to have the device in hand while they prepare this apotheosis. Nor do I let food scraps and animal carcasses pile up in the living room because they might one day become petroleum.
Gadgetry is still, thank God, a realm in which I can still mount a defense.
I loved this post from the Engadget thread though, and I think you might as well. Remember, this is just from a regular Joe, like you! Only he has roots and fronds, because he is a plant:
"Despite the fact that Zune won't have all the capabilities the market desires at launch, Microsoft is a dependable company and these features will be addressed at some point in the next year. This includes wireless, of course. It will function as the market dictates.
The Zune aims to be a revolutionary product, not an evolutionary one. The goal wasn't to simply copy the iPod, but rather to create an entirely new device. The look, function and place of this product are inherently unique. To that effect the Zune will find its niche within the marketplace.
I'm very pleased with what's been announced and I'll be purchasing Zunes for the whole family."
It's like, man, listen. I was with you up until the end, there. Zunes for everybody, huh? I guess they pays 'em real good.
(CW)TB out.
1:25 - When we say "This shit about the Zune," the revelation that caused all the hubbub was from Zunester - one of these MS insider blogs (like Zune Insider or Gamerscore). David Caulton, the man who runs the Zunester blog, wades into the comments and is as frank as he can possibly be with the people who comment there. I recognize that people are working hard on it. In the future, I hope that their hard work and my requirements for a device of this kind will converge.
3:20 - The URGE service doesn't really make any sense to me. I currently subscribe to Napster's buffet-style, all you can eat service, and I've been pretty happy with it - but I tried the Free Trial of Urge just to see, and it drove me screaming into the hills. My father might have called the interface "piss-poor." The user experience is just trash, in my opinion. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to pirate music purely out of spite.
3:41 - You might not know exactly what "Plays For Sure" is, so concerns about whether or not the Zune is a PFS device might not make sense. With iTunes, it's basically an end to end service - what Robert would call "Vertical Integration" or "Pwning The Value Chain." They run a digital music service that integrates seamlessly (though not always entirely sensibly) with their own portable music player, I forget exactly what it's called. Some kind of Pod. In any event, you can get that the confidence of that setup by using an iPod and iTunes on a Windows as well, but for the wealth of warring music players and digital music services on the PC side of the equation there had to be some kind of common ground. Plays For Sure could also be called "plays well with others."
4:25 - I switched to Cingular recently, because a) virtually everyone I know is on Cingular, and b) T-Mobile lost a phone I sent in for service and then had the gall to fucking charge me for it. In any event, I'd just gotten sick of the Sidekick. It became clear to me after using different iterations of it for several years that I hadn't really purchased a platform, as I thought I had - the Sidekick is really a service with a custom hardware component. Because I was switching over to Cingular, the incentives were pretty nuts - I picked up two of their 8125 model phones (a.k.a., the HTC Wizard) for a hundred bucks after rebates. It's been a lot of fun, even if it's not the fastest option out there - it's capable, and it wasn't terribly expensive. The Sidekick feels a good deal more "solid" as a consumer device, and I've always loved its gigantic, luxurious thumbboard. But I've had more control over this new device from day one, and I don't need to pay a premium on the hardware just because Paris Hilton owns one.
4:38 - I'm referring to the band Great Big Sea, here. We're sort of obsessed with them.
5:57 - People who interact in social contexts - imagine that! - could probably have many amazing experiences with the sharing features of the Zune. Buses, planes, prisons, workhouses, etc. When one or more parties are members of the music subscription service - something that will operate like I imagine my Napster sub does - you're basically being exposed to music and getting full access to it as a matter of course. That's sort of an optimal scenario, but I understand why someone might be excited about that.
6:40 - Yes, J Allard is behind it.
7:44 - Huge, huge, huge spoilitos in the Chris Morris' "Game Over" Column for CNN Money. I'm not even going to link it. That's pretty low rent.
7:55 - Burger King games, you know, whatever. But the screenshot Kotaku chose for the story is pretty funny lookin'.
8:15 - "Bloodlines" is a Star Wars novel by Karen Traviss. I don't have enough time in this space to elaborate on the intense loyalty this woman inspires in us. I'll tell you about it later.
8:46 - I guess we forgot to mention it. Just like we did for Book One, we'll be heading over to The Comic Stop in Lynnwood to do us a signin' for Book Two. It's on October 21st, from 6pm to 8pm, and I'm pleased to announce that it's actually a joint signing with our pretend enemy Scott Kurtz. He and Kris from Starslip are actually coming up to Seattle for to Hang Out for a while, and it seems rude to keep them all to ourselves. If you want to play in the Charity Poker Tournament Robert described, you have to let the Comic Stop guys know - all the info is available at their site.
9:40 - We thought this was odd. I really liked Sword of the Stars, you might have seen that we consented to advertise it, but there are places where it doesn't go together like you might expect. Tom Chick pulled out the game's spine and held it aloft in his 1up review, and this apparently kicked off some kind of blood feud between himself and SOTS designer Martin Cirulis. Things get progressively worse from there. There are allegations of various kinds. Things are alleged.
9:49 - The "Chick Tract Guy" he refers to is Jack Chick. You've seen these before - they're designed to be seen. I used to hand these out when I was a kid. I'm not proud of it. I've long sense jettisoned the religion, but somehow managed to retain the haughty moral superiority that makes my writing so insufferable. The title of the strip, Zune And Very Zune, is actually a reference to one of the songs I used to sing at church.
12:41 - Here's the newspost I wrote about the Gamespot review "controversy" at the time. Really looking forward to Savage 2, by the way - it's an independent project through and through, and it's only being released online. I hope it goes well for them.
28:11 - See how he laughs at the joke, then stops, and then is like Whaaa? He knew about the three day limit on songs you share from a Zune, but not that you could only listen to it three times during that span of time. So so, and that becomes the boundary of your usage instead (unless you've got the subscription thing I talked about before).
28:30 - This "parrot" thing is an oblique reference to our Harlan Ellison experience, specifically the post entitled Foolscap, but the whole page there is full of strange tales and repartee.
(CW)TB
