PixlBit

Heads up, I'm being mean and pushing back this week's issue one day. Why? Because I can! Bwahahaha!

Just a heads up, a good friend that lives out of state is in town this week, so I'm not certain when the next PB & Jason will come around. There's a chance it will tomorrow, but if not, it will be next week. Sorry about the absence, but the good news is, this is a one-week thing at worst!

If you're severely RG color-blind, and you just glance at the two, they look even more similar. I'm not that bad off, mind you, but it's a pretty funny thing to think about.

Thanks!

As far as the extra paygate for the Xbox goes, I just don't get it. When Netflix was a console exclusive, it made a little bit of sense. Not a lot, but a little. However, it becomes increasingly clear that so many of these features run based on ads, subscriptions, or both, and reaching as wide an audience as possible is vital for the stability of their businesses. I can't speak to the politics of it all, nor to how it would play out for these various businesses, but if I were NetFlix and the like, I'd say it's time to issue an ultimatum to Microsoft about providing their service on the console and the Xbox Live paygate.

Anyway, I realized after recording that I left off the Pokemon Box subscription service. I'm not happy about it, but it also depends on how things play out, since it isn't mandatory yet. If GameFreak has still provided a standard means of Pokemon transfer from the last generation to Gen VI, then I don't see an issue, but if the box subscription service is the only way, then I don't necessarily think that's great.

And lastly, I love the idea behind the Vita TV. Played right, it means a lot of things. However, I also forgot about the Vita's proprietary memory cards. Those things make me sad.

Headphones!

Hey everyone, I made it back about 15 minutes ago. I'll be writing up previews of Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, and Mario Kart 8, and recording PB & Jason tomorrow, given the time. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get my hands on MK 8, but I saw a lot of it in person, and it looks fantastic. Keep your eyes peeled on the main page, and we'll have all the info you crave.

Except any cloud functionality will require Xbox Live Gold. So if a game is built to take advantage of the cloud computing Microsoft is touting, then without Gold, it either will not function, or it won't function as well as it would otherwise. Microsoft suggests developers have the option not to require cloud usage and/or have the games switch to a different graphical capability without the cloud, but they said it would be up to developers to do such a thing. Given what we know of developers like EA and sometimes Capcom, I hate to be a pessimist, but I'm sure many games just won't function (or will barely function) without an active connection thanks to all of this.

I'm saying that an Xbox Live Gold fee will likely be required to do much of anything with the console, which means if you want to play the games, you'll probably have to have the console and Live Gold in all but a few cases. That's what I'm saying.

Eh, word is that a lot of developers and publishers are being paid to make things "look" exclusive to the Xbox One. I wouldn't be surprised if the Insomniac game is going to see release on five consoles and the PC or something like that. Maybe not five, but you get my picture. Exclusive to Xbox One might not have the meaning we think, it could just mean the timing is exclusive or some small portion of content is exclusive.

Edit: At the same time, I'm personally tired of all these games, like paid timed exclusives and that sort of thing. It doesn't help any aspect of the industry one bit, and it just annoys gamers. I'm getting to the point where I just don't want to deal with games where the developers or publishers take the approach of taking money to restrict their content on other platforms.

I figure you get the cost of buying a game with any game console, so I didn't want to gripe about that, of course.

The important thing to remember is that "Exclusive" can just mean "timed exclusive."