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Eurogamer.net Podcast #30

With special guests Andy Payne and Pat Garratt.

We simply won't stop casting pod for your pleasure. Still reeling from the treacherous No Toms edition of the show two weeks ago, editor Tom Bramwell this week cleared the decks and brought in outside help for what we're calling the No Staff edition - starring Brammers, Mastertronic MD Andy Payne and VG247 editor Patrick Garratt.

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Naturally none of us has been playing anything current, so this week we have a good old jibber jabber about some of the games of, well, 2008. Patrick has been playing Fable II and Tom has been playing Fallout 3, so there's lots of excitement about decapitation, cross-dressing and the dichotomy of good and evil.

Perhaps the highlight though - as you might expect for three men who spend most of their days trying to explain how money comes out of the internet - is a long discussion about digital distribution and some of the inconvenient realities of it.

We talk about tax, for example, and Andy - who is also a leader in Get Games, a joint venture between Mastertronic and Eurogamer - talks about the shift away from bricks-and-mortar game sales and how the High Street must refashion itself to remain relevant.

Of course that's not all. We also discuss important events of the day, such as the R4 cartridge ban, worldwide sales of PS3 and Xbox 360, Microsoft defending the Kinect price, and, inevitably, the news that you could possibly be called upon to teach Rio Ferdinand how to play Halo.

We also talk about shelves.

In unprecedented scenes, we also have DUAL GUEST HYPHENATION for the first and possibly last time as we give away a code for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Onslaught on Xbox Live.

Background reading!

Astonishing, face-shattering breakthroughs with every download - that's the Eurogamer.net Podcast. Thank you for supporting us for 30 episodes. Check back next Tuesday at 3pm for the return of honeymooner Ellie Gibson.