RPGCast - Episode 212: "Ohhh Sony"

[sabin1001]

RPGCast - Episode 212: "Ohhh Sony"

Sony shows us how to not respect your customers. Bioware shows us how to fully exploit your customers. Nintendo shows us how to love your European customers. But only 2K Games shows us how to have a dubstep dancing robot.

You can find the links to all our stories on delicious: http://delicious.com/rpgamer/212

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[Overlord_Leon]

Winter Wrap-Up, Winter Wrap-Up!

[Shaymin]

NOA pushed Dragon Quest IX on the orders of NCL - Iwata was comparing the game to Brain Age in terms of the marketing impact they wanted it to have. And since it ended up crossing a million in EU/NA, it seemed to work.

[flamethrower]

What is the intro music from?

[MasterChief]

NOA pushed Dragon Quest IX on the orders of NCL - Iwata was comparing the game to Brain Age in terms of the marketing impact they wanted it to have. And since it ended up crossing a million in EU/NA, it seemed to work.

Considering how Brain Age didn't exactly have staying power after the first game, I wonder how that approach will work for DQX.

[LegendaryZoltan]

Hey, RPGcast. Several points:

1. I agree that this podcasts cast is my favorite. Between Chris, Emanuel, Anna, and John, everyone's personalities and voices create a nice colorful blend. The casts of most other podcasts that I've listened to all have the exact same boring white-guy voice and it's dull to me. So thank you for gathering this group of awesome RPG specialists.

2. WARNING! Star Ocean 3 spoilers in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . I played Star Ocean 2 and 3 and I LOVED that plot twist. That plot twist is not the same as the "it was all a dream" card. When that card is played it usually nullifies some events of the story and we feel cheated or that we wasted our time. In Star Ocean 3 nothing is actually nullified. We just learn that everything happened in another universe. And since any story in an any game happens in a fake world anyway, why would you care if a game takes place in a fake world within a fake world. That doesn't mean the Star Ocean 3 story any less realistic than the FFX story.

3. Blazblue is pronounced blay blue.

EDIT: OK. I just checked to be sure. It is pronounced blay blue. Even if there was an American studio that localized it and they all pronounce it like blazz blue, they are wrong. That means that the Japanese guys who MADE it didn't tell them how to pronounce it. Because they all pronounce it blay blue.

[Quin]

As Blazblue is a made up word, I'm going to give the localization team a pass on it. I'm not going to expect the Tales localization team to stick exactly to the Japanese pronunciation of "バルキネスクリアス" or "エンテレケイア" either. It's possible the decision to pronounce Blazblue as they do in the English versions is down to: Blazblue - Azure Grimoire

[Severin Mira]

I'm pretty sure the localization itself pronounces it "Blaze-blue" (the tutorial in Continuum Shift Extend certainly does it that way), which is at least closer than how we were pronouncing it

[Firemyst]

Zoltan thinks I'm the boring white guy ^^

Aksys was likely quite close to the Japanese side of things, so I trust that their pronunciation is accurate in accordance with the Japanese developers wishes.

[MasterChief]

OK, two points.

First off, while I'm sure many people will buy games at $70+, it won't be as many people as are buying games now. At the very least, people are going to wait for price drops more often. Look at the Vita - the ONLY $50 title is Uncharted: Golden Abyss. It's clearly meant as a test bubble, and I'd be surprised if that became the norm for PSV titles, simply because the higher the price, the less willing people are to take a leap unless it's a super-mega-ultra franchise. People talk about the Super Nintendo days, but back then, gaming was basically a cottage industry, and was way smaller than it is nowadays. Even now, games that don't sell well immediately after launch start dropping price quickly. That trend will accelerate if the "standard" price point goes to $70, simply because you will lose people due to price alone. As for collector's editions, well, they're collector's editions. They're rarely worth anything.

Secondly, people complaining about the PSV being closed down really only have themselves to blame, at least mostly. Sony was thoroughly punished for making the PSP detectable by standard PC software, just as they were punished for making the PS3 with standard USB ports instead of something completely proprietary. The PSP sold too well hardware-wise for the software to falter the way it did, so I don't blame Sony at all for locking down the Vita. Also remember that even they know that stopping 100% of piracy is impossible. The point is to make it hard enough so that Joe Sixpack can't just download and go. It's a noble enough goal.

[sabin1001]

What is the intro music from?

Legendary Zoltan wrote it!


Also, if it was supposed to be pronounced "blay blue" then it shouldn't have a z in it. Blaz or blaze blue it is. Though feel free to submit a segment that tries to educate us.

[7thCircle]

Would be a cooler point if I didn't know another word with a silent 'z' off the top of my head: rendezvous.

And don't say it doesn't count because it's a loan word. So is Blazblue.

[sabin1001]

Would be a cooler point if I didn't know another word with a silent 'z' off the top of my head: rendezvous.

And don't say it doesn't count because it's a loan word. So is Blazblue.

I don't think I can agree that it's a loanword due to Blazblue not being either a) an actual Japanese word instead of a fake-english abomination and b) actually borrowed by English speakers in any sort of general use.

[Heidegger]

Manny, Manny! Who else is British that no one knows is British!?

[MasterChief]

I gotta agree with Chris here. There's a difference between loaned words and made up Japanese gibberish (along the lines of Theatrythm), and Blazblue is the latter.

[TwinBahamut]

The localization of Blazblue was awesome, so just use the "Blaze Blue" pronunciation that they used, even if there were weird cases of the voices saying Blazblue and the text saying Azure Grimoire... Also, have you heard the bad "english" produced by Arc System Works? "Rebel 1: Fight!" and all that. I wouldn't trust their pronunciation on anything remotely close to an English word.

Also, I'm sad to hear that some of you don't like the RPG Backtrack group as much... We try hard.

[Quin]

As far as I know, the system voice track remains untranslated. Continuum Shift Extend on the Vita even gives you a choice of which voice actor or actress you want to hear mangle "Rebel 1: Fight", with the default being Carl Clover's VA, with Taokaka and Jin Kisaragi as unlockable voices (And Rachel/Noel as overpriced DLC!).

[FreakGirl]

First of all, I'd like to say lots of thanks for answering my email on the podcast! I was the one with the FF X / Star Ocean: Till the End of Time question Sorry for giving you guys a bit of a headache there ;-)

I'd also like to know which games Anna would recommend to me. Pleeeassseee

Currently, in Austria (Europe), I have to pay up to 70 euros (= around 92 dollars / 58 pounds) for one Xbox 360 game!
My Mass Effect 3 Collector's Edition is going to cost me 90 euros (= around 119 dollars / 75 pounds)
Now that's a lot of money, especially when you are interested in many genres and want to have the games when they are being released and not some weeks or month later.
RPGs for the PS3 I import from videogamesplus.com and PAL games for my X360 - which I don't have to own right away - from zavvi.com. Zavvi have good prices and just some weeks after release huge price drops, but it sometimes takes more than 1-2 weeks until the games arrive...

BTW. I had a lot of fun with LotR: War in the North in coop-mode. I only had one bug that really...uhm...bugged me. There is a side-quest in which you have to save an elf (? - or some other guy) and he is sitting in front of a tent. Actually you should be able to talk to him. In my case he didn't want to talk to me and just kept sitting there. Guess he liked it there On my second playthrough (out of 3 - my coop-partner wanted to get the 1000GS) he let me save him, though. So it wasn't that much of a big deal.

[risingsun]

Manny, Manny! Who else is British that no one knows is British!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

ALL OF US!

[Paws]

1 a) I can totally vouch all the baseball games Chris goes to the home team loses. Clearly, the solution is for me to go by myself, and for him to sit in the car in the parking lot.
b) Cricket is complicated; ruby is kick the **** of of your opponent and oh, there's a ball in there. See, isn't that easy?

2 a) I have sadly played very little of my box of crap; in part because I'm catching up on games from the last six months I'd already started, copious cross stitching, and MMOing. My gaming setup also has no room for a Move. AP has been a little intimidating to me because I'm totally suck at shooters.
b) I'd appreciate Kat's coverage more if her niche RPG coverage was...well...accurate.

3 Dilemma! I just don't like the SO series, and I got bogged down in FFX not too far from the final dungeon, so I feel like I won't be able to give good advice. I'm going to tentatively recommend trying one of the recent ales games that people like, and the Summon Night: Sword Craft Story series (GBA). I'd also second the .hack (original series) recommendation from the show. Lastly I'll also throw out The World Ends With You, if you liked the other games' stories.

4 a) SKYLANDERS! I'm about a quarter through the PS3 version and will be breaking in the 3DS version this week so I can talk about it on the 'cast, as soon as I'm done finishing Devil Survivor again (how did I get sucked straight back into that game...).
b) I predicted July 17th for TL2 in the official guessing thread on the Runic forum. They're going to the Emerald Comic Con, with a finalized playable version (for what that's worth. It isn't the gold version). Chris and I have always disagreed on the idea that TL2 and D3 aren't competing, so props to Manny for sticking up for it \o/
c) I will be buying Persona 4 Arena. The developer has a GREAT track record, and I really enjoyed both Dissidia & Duodecem. P4 Golden hasn't been confirmed for NA yet, but seriously, there's no mystery that it's coming; it's always been a matter of when.

5 ALEX! Stop playing with stuff on your desk!