Holy crap guys! All one thousand of our listeners were probably damn confused last week, because we definitely didn’t air. The last time we took a break was probably back in…the brave new world of 2009. I don’t even think Twitter was a thing in those days. Crazy. But seriously, I had some fancy surgery done to my gums, making speeching difficult, and the madness of E3 meant we decided to hold off for a bit. Good idea, too, because this episode is jam-packed with gaming goodness.

But you know what’s missing? Demers. That’s right, this is our first Demers-less podcast in a few weeks. The man was off fighting dragons and rescuing damsels, so we valiantly carried on without him. But at least he can take the segue torch next week as Anand will be going on vacation. That’s right folks — next week is the first Anand-less episode ever. We’ll struggle on, somehow.

Anyhow, there’s far too much game-related banter for me to list here, but rest assured, we give you the lowdown on Kinect, Move the Nintendo 3DS, and some of the fancy games that premiered this year. Who knows, maybe we’ll be reporting from the floor one of these days? Listen here, or at the Not So Much News. And in a few short weeks, on our new website too!

Length: 35:22
Close: Star Trek Theme — Maynard Ferguson
Download: 34.0 MB
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Lots to talk about on today’s episode compadres, so lets get right into it. It’s not like you care about the bodies Anand’s been shuttling to the dump, or the toxic chemicals Demers has been leaching into our water supply anyhow. I’m just a class act, as usual.

• Anand gets his grubby paws on a MAGICAL and REVOLUTIONARY device, and now he’s started wearing turtlenecks and talking funny. I think he’s balding too.
• A friend of ours gave me a bricked T-Mobile G1 to try and resuscitate. It still doesn’t work. I feel like less of a man now.
• The AppleTV might be getting a refresh, complete with iPhone innards and cloud based storage. It may also be able to synthesize food, though “Tea. Earl Gray. Hot” support has yet to be confirmed.
• J. Allard, father of the Xbox, and Robbie Back, father of Anand’s illegitimate son, have left Microsoft leaving resident lunatic Ballmer in charge. Both shaped the current state of the company’s Entertainment and Devices division, and it’s unknown where the company’s now headed. Good then we’re around to DEBATE and SPECULATE. Sadly, that won’t bring our dear Courier back.
• Finally, things get serious as we talk Foxconn, the largest manufacturer of tech products in the world. Sure, all your Apple, HP, Nokia and Dell wares are made here, but it turns out the people doing the building are overworked, underpaid, and now committing suicide. A factory in China…who would’ve thought? Companies are pledging to fix the situation, but is it all talk? (Spoiler: Demers says yes)

And that’s that. We’re proud of today’s episode, like all the others, so listen here, or at the Not So Much News!

Length: 37:16
Close: Born Unto Trouble — Red Dead Redemption OST
Download: 35.8 MB
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Sometimes, there are those weeks when everything goes a little crazy. This week was one of those weeks. Numerous products were cancelled, other companies bought, and a few things announced. Meanwhile, Anand got his arm stuck in a vending machine and Demers slept all weekend. We had trouble keeping up. But without further ado…

• HP, out of nowhere, buys Palm. For 1.8 billion dollars. Huh. At least WebOS is staying put.
• Microsoft, out of nowhere, cancels its Courier multi-screen tablet concept. Or that’s the word on the street, anyhow. Either way, we’re sadenned to see one of the coolest pieces of tech we never had go.
• RIM, as expected, announced BlackBerry OS 6.0. Some of us still care, apparently. Perhaps it’ll run on the FANCY NEW TABLET they’re prepping. Or maybe RIM will just cease to exist by then.
• Infinity Ward is bleeding employees. The usual.
• Bungie and Activision team up for a 10-year publishing deal, and rights to Bungie’s new IP. A little bit crazy? Definitely. But let’s wait to see how this one pans out.

And that is it! This week was a blast, as per usual. And, as a bonus, here’s Swype on the Android:

Listen here, or at the Not So Much News!

Length: 32:31
Close: The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe — Halo OST
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Another crazy week in tech means I’ve gone a little crazy myself. The sun is out, Summer’s practically here, and I haven’t yet threatened to shove Anand or Demers out an airlock yet. Relish those little victories. And now, the news:

• Some dude got a little too tipsy, and just happened to lose his prototype iPhone in a San Jose bar. Gizmodo’s done the full tear down, and needless to say, this guy probably isn’t an Apple employee any longer.
• Microsoft jumped into the phone biz early last week with it’s Kin One and Kin Two, a set of dumphones aimed at the Urban Outfitters Hipster demographic, which I DID NOT KNOW EXISTED.
• Palm might be sold, and we will all weep WebOS-sized tears
• NVIDIA and Intel aren’t getting along right now, which means Apple has to use Intel chips and NVIDIA graphics. That also means Apple had to develop it’s own version of Optimus, the smart, graphic-switching technology. Shocking!
• Finally, Infinity Ward is falling apart, Gears of War is coming out, and Pokemon Light and Dark/Sun and Moon/Black and White were announced last week.

Listen here, or at the Not So Much News!

Length: 39:32
Close: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down – Miles Davis
Download: 38.0 MB
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“The one area in which the success of Halo 1 was totally surprising to us, and completely changed how we thought about Halo 2, was LAN parties,” says Butcher. “We never really thought that people would do a lot of playing Xbox multiplayer on LAN, even though people in our office played it all the time… Well, it only worked five weeks before we shipped the game, but in those five weeks we played a lot of Halo multiplayer!”

“We had a lab full of Xboxes on a LAN, so we played 16-player CTF every single afternoon,” Griesemer remembers. “It was fun, so this was what we designed for – but when we shipped, the vast majority of our fans never got to experience that. They were playing four-player split-screen on the smallest maps. There was a total disconnect.”

“We looked at the small set of fans who were able to do this,” continues Butcher, “and just how much they were enjoying themselves, and asked ourselves if we could bring that to everybody. That would be something really special, really unique.”

The Xbox was the first console I actually bought. Sure, I had owned a Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo and a myriad of other consoles as well, but this was the first I actually funded with my own, hard-earned money. There was something about that small detail of ownership at the time that made my gaming experience much different.

In my last years of elementary school, everyone had an Xbox. Looking back, I must have lived in a small, quirky part of town where Playstation hadn’t taken hold. But as a result, that was all we played. It was Xbox at my house, Xbox at a friend’s house. It was only natural we discovered that little Ethernet port sitting inconspicuously on the back of the console.

Owning my Xbox meant that I could take it wherever I wanted. So when I went to a friend’s house, it came with me. I learned how to turn a vanilla Ethernet cable into a crossover cable at the age of 12. We’d hook our consoles together, somehow drag a giant CRT into the basement, and play. That situation that Griesemer talks about? That was us. Playing 8, 12 or even 16 player Halo was the only way I played that game, for the longest time.

To this day, I’m still convinced that mutliplayer in Combat Evolved is the best of the Halo series. I’ll try, now and then, to get my current friends to play. But it’s really not the same. Combat Evolved was a game built for LAN, built for us dozen teenagers huddled in a basement. Perhaps its just nostalgia for a decade past, but I haven’t had a gaming experience like that since.

The above quote is from a Eurogamer article “Better Than Halo: The Making of Halo 2″