Wednesday
14Oct2009
Van Hemlock News for 11th October 2009
Jon Shute | Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 1:39AM 
News for week ending 11th October 2009. Tune in later in the week for the second half of the show, in which we talk about what we've been playing, and somebody confesses about owning something...
You can follow us on twitter as @vanhemlock and @jonshute, read our blogs at the new www.vanhemlock.com to catch the latest updates or leave us a comment at www.virginworlds.com or on iTunes. Or you can just enjoy the show.
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Reader Comments (6)
"You should be listening to us instead of playing on a hand-held console"
I listen to this show on my PSP :)
You got the nVidia story way wrong. They aren't stopping their GPU production, just their chipset, which were for intel CPU's. But due to lawsuits and performance problems, they are stopping with the chipset business. Graphics are still moving ahead, along with their mobile chipset and other projects.
Also, when talking about online stores that compete with Steam, you missed mentioning the second largest of them, Direct2Drive. Never used it, but they've been getting a lot of press from their five year anniversary where they were selling tons of great games for only $5.
And what the hell is a "quid"?
I'm looking forward to the forums. it'll be nice to have somewhere to chat about these kinds of things in a more (can i say) refined atmosphere. I hope I'm not the first to say this, but the first bells are starting to ring for VirginWorlds. This place could well be the new home for the thinking gamer-man.
Any ETA on said forums?
Anyway much respect for the amount of work you are putting in to this. Two beefy podcasts a week!
Thats what i love about this gig; I get to learn so much too! :D
PSP can play podcasts, check! Although to be honest, I'm happy enough with a cheap old £15 dedicated MP3 player, not being a mobile gamer and all.
NVidia Cards not finished? I'll have to do more reading around on that, but hope we did get that wrong - I like those! Mind you - going off PC Gaming for other reasons too. Think I'll need a proper post about that in due course.
Direct2Drive did slip my mind. Have *heard* of them, but like yourself, never used them myself. Perhaps the 'Developer Rock Star' effect of Valve gives Steam more prominence that it deserves some times?
'Quid' is UK slang for Pound Sterling. I believe the US equivalent is a 'Buck'? I'm so cosmopolitan!
Forums will be along shortly I think - still got a few more bits and pieces to sort out with the basic site yet. Very impressed with the engine so far though. Jon could tell you more about that side of it all. Suffice to say, when they do arrive, I shall be ruling them with a cheerfully indescriminate fist of iron!
Actually http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/10/09/nvidia-on-the-way-to-the-video-card-scrapyard/ is the story and is separate from the whole Intel and faking demos stories. I guess we'll know if it's true in a month or two.
Another digital download service (aside from Steam & D2D) is Impulse: http://www.impulsedriven.com/
If you're into older releases, there's also Good Old Games: http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/
In general D2D and Impulse are better choices then Steam when buying a new game because they don't have as much copy protection rammed into them.... but then with so much of the PC gaming world on Steam, you lose out on the community.