09: Gaming Tech is Essential!
Welcome back to the Wildcast, episode 09! The big news is having the website live finally! It’s a work in progress, but for now this is the first time where the website will be integrated with the episode.
It’s been a big week for gaming tech. We had another PS5 game showcase with the anticipation of price and pre-order info. Pre-orders went live early and broke the internet. The next day the internet broke again when the Nvidia 3080s went on sale. Understandably, consumers were not happy about both of these fiascos. Especially when the spotlight turned to botters buying up stock and reselling it for a fortune on eBay. Seems like in 2020 we would have retail websites that could handle heavy traffic and prevent bots. Hmmm. Some tech YouTuber’s said that these things are not essential and to relax. While I get their point, I feel like electronics are essential. Especially in these times. Gaming tech is all I have to keep my sanity.
In less frustrating news, I managed to get in a little bit of gaming this week. I played some Stardew Valley on Switch and fell for the hype and loaded up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Spoilers, it’s a taxing on your system as you have heard. I also found some time to get in a Twitch stream of Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning!
This week’s collection revisit is to Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn’s NA launch party at PAX Prime 2013. I was fortunate enough to attend the launch party and meet Yoshi-P and have him sign a copy of FFXIV ARR for me. I was actually the first person in line for the event and featured on the Facebook post/album on the Final Fantasy XIV Facebook page.
First in line! :D
The doors opened! Look at that smile on my face! So excited!
Look at my big head right dead center lol :D
Yoshi-P and me after he signed my game! :D
On to the news! Starting with the PS5 game showcase on the 16th things were looking up. I had wanted to do more coverage of the showcase, but by the time I got to really dig into it there was way more interesting news. My only real takeaway from watching the showcase was that they never actually announced the pre-order info. That’s frustrating, why not use the showcase when you have all the eyes on you anyway. The pre-order date actually came from Geoff Keighley on Twitter? Why? Unfortunately, this was just the beginning. The big deal was most online retailers launched pre-orders without telling anyone and it was before the official day.
The official(?) announcement of pre-order date didn’t even come from Sony.
After everyone scrambled to get pre-orders in, websites slowed to a crawl or crashed. I was on Best Buy’s site mostly cause Amazon was actually sold out before I even knew that pre-orders were live early. It took about 6 hours of refreshing to get an order to actually work. Wouldn’t have been that long actually, but my bank flagged the transaction as fraudulent. So I had to call them and get them to unlock my account but I ended up going Paypal anyway and it took me another 4 hours before I got an order to go through. So I went to bed frustrated but at least I got a pre-order in. Who knows when it will show up though. :D
At least Sony admitted it was a disaster and pledged to do better.
As frustrating as it was to try to get a PS5, at least they had millions(?) of units. The RTX 3080 launch detonated on contact. Immediately at 6AM Pacific, most retailer’s websites were overloaded and crashed. There are plenty of factors for this, it’s a global pandemic, the 3080s are great performers, much more demand, etc. Also, with reselling quickly escalating in the industry, the bots are beating humans to the limited number of cards.
Thankfully Nvidia says there are more cards coming soon. But will they have enough and will they add order protections to make sure people actually get cards instead of the bots?
https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-signals-rtx-3080-founders-edition-will-be-back-in-stock-next-week
What really has me fired up this week is the question of whether new gaming tech or hardware is essential or not? The obvious answer is no, it’s not. As Gamers Nexus put it, it’s not food or water. Fair point. Although, I’d argue that it can be essential to some people. What if all you care about is gaming? What if you live and breathe gaming? What if you live alone and with this pandemic don’t have anything else besides gaming to maintain sanity? Among other reasons, I’d like to say that yes, a PS5 or an Xbox or an Nvidia 3080 are essential! Check out this week’s episode for more!