Happy Podcast Day! -- GDC Edition

It's been a busy week folks, we're not gonna lie. There's just a hell of a lot going on and not a lot of it is actual news, at least for our purposes. If you get into the whole big business, commerce vs. art, games journalism kinda thing (and believe you me, we really do), then you will probably appreciate the glut of recorded audio flowing through the large set of interconnected tubes this week.

The list is the usual, but the formats have changed for some. The CAGcast stays its regular, once-a-week format, while the folks at Joystiq and 1UP have eschewed tradition for daily GDC podcasts. We especially suggest the 1UP Yours! with Amy Hennig and Lorne Lanning -- wait for the amazing debate at the end, worth every second.

Joystiq Podcast (feat. Chris Grant, Ludwig Kietzmann and Justic McElroy)
The CAGcast (feat. CheapyD and Wombat)
The 1UP Show and 1UP Yours Podcast (feat. Garnett Lee, Shane Bettenhausen, Bryan Intihar, and Shawn Elliott)


With all this good stuff, we haven't even had time to check out this week's Bonus Round or Game Theory, assuredly both excellent as well. Any suggestions for the weekly podcast roundup can drop be left in the comments!

GDC: Mid-Week Fire Sale

Gadzooks! GDC is in full swing! Joystiq's own Ludwig Kietzmann is live bloggging the Microsoft Keynote, as we speak! Announcements abound, so beware, and hit refresh often. (They've been teasing Gears of War 2 all over that piece.)

Furthermore, the 1UP Yours crew are podcasting every single day, Tuesday thru Friday, with ridiculously impressive guests and always hilarious but intelligent banter. At least someone grants game development more creedence than toy development!

Oh, and there's a link to this press release for Gears of War 2 on the NeoGAF boards. While, like Microsoft, we're not inclined to comment on speculation or rumors, this press release reads like the horoscopes. That's all we're saying. Now, bask in the bedlam that is mid-week GDC coverage!

Enrichment Center Located.....in San Francisco?!

Those folks over at Joystiq sure are brave. Not only have they stepped up to the challenge presented to them at GDC this year, but they've also fared the streets of the dark and mysterious San Francisco Bay Area and found a second Enrichment Center. That's right, 'Still Alive' was clearly no joke.

Though they didn't encounter any cake-promising computers bent on destruction, they did snap a few pictures to prove that the terror is real. Considering what kind of reactions were to be had in England when news of you-know-who coming back surfaced, us here at QPHQ wouldn't be surprised at all to see mass denial. Lucky for us, we don't need no magic where we're going -- we gots us a gun.

(via Joystiq)

Psychic Controller released this year, Judgement Day that much closer

Kotaku is reporting from GDC08 on a swanky "psychic controller" from Emotiv that will pop up on shelves in "select" retail shops sometime this year for the pretty price of $300. According to the company's Tan Le:

"The wireless device slips onto a gamers head, its 14 or so slender metal branches sliding through hair to rest against the scalp. The metal arms, which are coated with a proprietary material, detect the electrical current conducted by the brain and transmits the data to an in-board chip that deciphers the information and translates it into data that can be used by the program to control games."

Neat! We are now officially in science fiction territory -- something that is quite scary for my feeble little brain that grew up in the 80's and 90's. Maybe I've just been watching too many Terminator and Matrix movies.

Kotaku's Brian Crecente got some hands-on (er...hands-off?) time with it at GDC, and posted his thoughts this morning along with a video. Now people can look even sillier when they play games!

(Image courtesy of Kotaku, natch.)

RRoD at GDC: Brits Are the Best

Damn BBC, you everywhere girl! Wandering around the internet this morning yielded British comedy of the driest variety -- dot.life writer Darren Waters clearly captured video of one of Microsoft's own Xbox 360's encountering the dreaded red ring of death....wait for it....on the 2008 Game Developers Conference show floor.

In fairness, us here at QPHQ feel it entirely necessary to address the rest of the internet regarding news coming out of GDC: Seriously, there's nothing else? We know it's only been a day, and that you're all very busy, but surely the conference has more important information to yield -- right? RIGHT?! Bah. Bah I say.