I just had to turn off the pre-E3 podcast midway through. It was a mess. 

Basically Darth yelling "Oh shit we just lost (insert name)"

Will start listening to new one now. 

Listening to the new one now. 

I do live in Afganistan. 

NSMB talk. Uh huh. Where can I find these videos of later levels?

gamingeek said:

NSMB talk. Uh huh. Where can I find these videos of later levels?

 My NSMB Wii thread. Theres link in my first post to all of IGN's NSMB gameplay videos. Also, the official trailer shows a number of different levels including footage of the fabled single player mode.

People better listen to that way too long podcast damn it.

GG always comes through.   You happy, I allowed endless ocean 2 talk, even if I was mumbling insults at it in the background.

I have a topic for this weeks podcast, how it seems this gen still has a long way to go. This comparable time last gen, four years in, we already had lots of talk of new consoles. This gen there is no hints at all of anything happening in the next year or two. In fact there seems to be more reinforcement that this gen is staying cause of all the new motion controls.

Usually PC gaming is our glimpse into the future, last gen at this time they had games that blew us away, stuff like HL2 (yeah it got ported but it didnt look the same). I could tell the PC was an entire generation ahead of the consoles. This gen I dont see much difference, PC games look better but nothing so crazy that I feel it cant be done on consoles.

So the question can be why is this happening, are you ok with it, is it a good business move or a bad one for each company.

Dvader said:

I have a topic for this weeks podcast, how it seems this gen still has a long way to go. This comparable time last gen, four years in, we already had lots of talk of new consoles. This gen there is no hints at all of anything happening in the next year or two. In fact there seems to be more reinforcement that this gen is staying cause of all the new motion controls.

Usually PC gaming is our glimpse into the future, last gen at this time they had games that blew us away, stuff like HL2 (yeah it got ported but it didnt look the same). I could tell the PC was an entire generation ahead of the consoles. This gen I dont see much difference, PC games look better but nothing so crazy that I feel it cant be done on consoles.

So the question can be why is this happening, are you ok with it, is it a good business move or a bad one for each company.

We had talk of new consoles because the Big 3 started talk of new consoles.  There were plenty of us stating it was too soon.

Dvader said:

I have a topic for this weeks podcast, how it seems this gen still has a long way to go. This comparable time last gen, four years in, we already had lots of talk of new consoles. This gen there is no hints at all of anything happening in the next year or two. In fact there seems to be more reinforcement that this gen is staying cause of all the new motion controls.

Usually PC gaming is our glimpse into the future, last gen at this time they had games that blew us away, stuff like HL2 (yeah it got ported but it didnt look the same). I could tell the PC was an entire generation ahead of the consoles. This gen I dont see much difference, PC games look better but nothing so crazy that I feel it cant be done on consoles.

So the question can be why is this happening, are you ok with it, is it a good business move or a bad one for each company.

 Didn't Ubi say recently that 14% of their dev team was working on next-gen consoles, though?

NPD: just say NO!

So you guys are talking NSMB.

Steel says its very smart. I think it is, but I also feel its very cynical. Leveraging a title they test bedded on DS on wii, appealing to this family get around the TV audience of the system.  

It's a game whose design decisions are influenced more by cynical money making reasons than design flair. They could make the ultimate 2-D mario platformer, the true next game in the series after Yoshis' Island. Or do it like we all hoped Super paper Mario would turn out, a responsive, fast paced platformer.

This retro, going back to the original thing to get lapsed gamers thing, get the family involved kinda gets my goat. What about those of us who aren't lapsed and have plugged their coffers with cash for years, why not make the 2-D mario platformer for us?

I think it will be a good game, but its just veered the ship off course compared to what I would actually like. Omitting online is really bad for single player guys.

I think it will sell well, not sure if it will rival Galaxy's 7 million sales.

Natal talk.

The problem is that they are going for this no controller whatsoever angle. So like you guys say, no analogue stick? How do you move. You can use it with the 360 controller but then you can only move your legs (so stupid kicking your legs) or swaying your body while having your two hands tethethered to a traditional controller.

So there HAS to be a controller designed around it, at which point it becomes the Sony controller.  

Interesting on the speed of cameras. I read that Natal has a program which predicts what you are going to do to speed things up. I didn't realise there were speed problems. Some impressions mentioned lag, but no more than the standard wii remote and it seemed to work fine in that ball demo.

One thing that worries me is voice recog, in any other game I've tried its been sketchy. There are so many different accents in the world and so much potential for it to f- up.

Menu navigation was pretty useless to me. When its as easy as pointing with the wii remote and clicking to get through a menu, its really no different pointing with my finger. And how do you confirm a selection? Crook your finger? Eh.

Having a conversation with a game, its NOT going to happen unless AI jumps ahead 10 years in a single bound.

That said, in complex interactions, if it picks up what you are doing with your hands in terms of fingers gripping, clenching, flicking. If it picks up that intricacy. That is really cool, but again you need a method to integrate it with a proper game design. On the one hand it can do Elebits amazingly, on the other hand, you cant even move about the environments? I mean really, its forward thinking, yet limited at the same time.