Justin and Ludwig are out this week so Griffen McElroy and Dave Hinkle are filling the void. Although Need for Speed Shift received a tepid response from many upon arrival, opinions have been more positive in the past weeks and Dave has been enjoying it as well. Gran Turismo PSP doesn’t fare as well though with Dave calling it shallow and more of the same. Chris has been enjoying WET and commends it for committing to its presentation.

Starting out the news this week is the announcement that Gamecrazy is shutting down 200 of its over 600 locations. They are putting all of their inventory on clearance so check the Joystiq post to see if there is a doomed location near you. The guys talk about recent hardware issues from the big 3 and move into the lack of a goodwill UMD trade-in program for the PSP Go. This is a big misstep for Sony and is actually punishing PSP owners who would like to “upgrade.”

Super Street Fighter 4 has been announced and it will tweak fighter balance and add 8 new characters to the original game. Many have called for it to be made available as DLC to SF4 owners, but Capcom has said that it can’t be done due to underlying code issues. Capcom has also stated that the game will not be full-priced though, so it’s not all bad.

Covered games and topics: Need for Speed: Shift, ODST, Gran Turismo PSP, The Beatles: Rock Band, WET, Gamecrazy, hardware issues, no PSP Go goodwill program, ODST disc read issues, DSiWare locked to hardware, Super Street Fighter 4, emails

Things are a little different this week: Justin’s on his way to Honduras (true story!) and Ludwig is at a South African gaming expo (no, seriously) so Chris is joined by Joystiq’s own Griffin McElroy and Dave Hinkle for what’s sure to be remembered as the Most Important Joystiq Podcast Ever. Why? Because we talk about major flaws affecting every major gaming platform, Billy Ocean, Blast Corps, and getting served.

Runtime – 1:23:25

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