Entries from July 2008 ↓

Microsoft are very, very, very determined to win the console wars. And they have both the money and the brains to do it. They have even dragged the Xbox side of the company into profit (despite RRoD). One day it will be their most profitable division.

As the 360 matures into the middle of this current cycle Microsoft are working very hard to ensure that they get as much of the cake as possible when sales volumes are at their highest. With E3 coming up and senior Microsoft executives getting very excited we are obviously going to get some very big news. Here is some of what is going on:

1) Following the lead of the Wii, Microsoft are implementing a gesture interface. This is especially valuable for casual gaming and thus for reaching new demographics. Rare in England have been doing some of the software work on the new interface but one of the driving forces appears to be Dale Herigstad who was largely responsible for the gesture interface in the film Minority Report. This leads to the possibility that there may well be two motion controllers involved, one for each hand.

2) Microsoft want to drop the price of the 360 to $199 or even $149 (in staged decreases) so as to massively increase volumes and put the boot into the opposition. They are aided by the very elegant design of the machine and the fact that they own the IP rights for the GPU and CPU. Already several hardware redesigns have reduced costs significantly. However putting the CPU and GPU together on one chip will be important, as will significantly reducing the size of the whole machine. It is obvious that Microsoft are gearing up to have the 360 as the junior model of a two model range with the upcoming 720 as a premium console.

3) The big hard drives are coming. Up to one terabyte are already rumoured to be in the pipeline. This is essential as Microsoft develop the 360 into being a home media centre and as they move away from physical distribution of content. The 360 uses laptop style hard drives so as these become bigger and cheaper for laptops they will be adopted for the console. As we move into the 720 generation we can expect drives with several terabytes. The more the better.

4) Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts will be the first 360 game to feature some of the new software developments including the gesture interface. Hardly surprising since it comes from Rare, who worked on those developments. Here is a video of the game with Ken Lobb.

5) Virtual user creation system (avatars). Something like the Miis on the Wii or Home on the PS3. Of course Microsoft are a software company and have been able to learn from what their competitors have done so expect a more comprehensive implementation of the concept. This feature is rumoured to have slipped a lot from it’s original street date and has been largely put together by Rare.

6) Social networking on Xbox Live. About time Microsoft fixed this glaring omission and caught up with services like Steam. If they get this right it could become just about compulsory for every keen gamer to own a $149 Xbox 360 just to be part of the gaming community. Even Sony enthusiasts!

7) 3D Dashboard. Once again this is about time too. Integrated with the gesture interface and avatars this will change the look and feel of using an Xbox 360 enormously. Although Live is by far the most popular online console service, at the moment it is looking a bit clunky compare with Home or Second Life. Microsoft aim to leapfrog these other environments with something that will really be state of the art.

If (as seems increasingly likely) this is all true it will give Microsoft and the Xbox 360 a massive leap forward in the marketplace. With an unremitting game release schedule they are providing the content to back this up. (Too Human, Halo 4, Alan Wake, Forza Motorsport 3, Gears of War 2 etc) I can see many industry analysts being wrong again. The only potential blot in the ointment is the upcoming economic downturn. But then people give up entertainment last.

• Lots of Xbox rumours around as Microsoft celebrate their Xbox division profitabilty by consolidating their market position. Here are some: “Microsoft seems to be slimming the system down to a ‘Wii-like’ size. (A Fat overweight Wii )
  This model should have the CPU+GPU Combo Dye with the E-DRAM off to the side.
  That’s all the information I have on that.
  Now I’m not 100% sure on this so do not get hyped up, but speculated release is Late Winter 2008ish?
  Side note, ATI/AMD has been working on a CPU/GPU Combo dye for sometime.
  The Next Generation Xbox after the Xbox 360… thats expected to have a Blu-Ray Drive?, 1TB HDD, and a Quad-Core CPU.
  Speculative Date is considered 2010~.”
• Whilst we are on rumours here is the purported spec for the PSPhone:
  • 4.3″ 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD display at 480 x 272 pixels and 16.77 million colors
  • 2 megapixel camera
  • Built-in web browser
  • Built-in podcasting
  • Flight mode
  • Bluetooth
  • Memory Stick Micro/microSD memory card slot
  • Streaming audio/video
  • Video calling
  • Speakerphone
  • Alarm clock, calculator, calendar, other PIM functions
• ELSPA (in the UK) grow cojones as they come out strongly in favour of the proven Europewide PEGI age classification and against the unwanted beaureaucratic BBFC alternative. Let’s hope the government listens to what the experienced professionals want and not to the empire building QANGO that is BBFC.
• Mod chips still illegal in the USA and the Feds are doing something about sorting the problem. Good on them, it is about time the UK government sorted the UK situation after the courts wimped out. I know that one in a hundred modchip owners has a legitimate excuse for using one. But still the other 99% of modchip users are only interested in stealing.
• Number of USA households with consoles increasing only very slowly. The vast majority of new machines are going into existing console households. Interesting this, mainly it tells us that the industry still has an immense amount of potential.
• Google Lively online world taps into major social networking sites. Ha, both Google’s involvement in virtual worlds and the integration of gaming and social networking have been covered on here a long time ago (apologies for the gloat). The first is a logical extension of Google’s capabilities the second is an inevitable result of human behaviour.
• British Channel 4 TV broadcaster moves into games. I am surprised this has taken so long. Television is a media in decline with lots of talent and masses of IP. Gaming, because of it’s innate advantages, is growing massively but is very short on IP and talent. A marriage made in heaven. When will the other TV channels grow up to reality?
• British government nervous on game industry tax breaks. This is like fiddling whilst Rome burns. The British game industry doesn’t even get the same treatment as it’s film industry despite being massively more economically important. But it is moving to Canada at some speed. So soon there will be nothing left to give tax breaks to, just ask the French about what happened to their game development industry.

Anything that can be represented digitally can be transmitted over the web. And if it can be transmitted legally by legitimate owners it can also be transmitted illegally by thieves. This is destroying the recorded music market, where the download size is small and the MP3 technology widely understood. So musicians are having to rely more on radio station and live performance income. In film it is difficult to replicate the experience of a real cinema and the downloads are big, but with broadband the incidence of theft of movies has become massive. And we all know that when it comes to games, piracy destroys whole formats once technical protection is bypassed. Just now we are seeing this in PC and PSP gaming. Boxed retail on both these formats has been decimated.

Of course all this stealing of huge amounts of data over the internet clogs things up for legitimate net users. Some estimates are that as much as 80% of all internet traffic is bit torrents, the technology used by these thieves (a small amount of this bit torrent traffic is actually legitimate). Obviously this is a huge inconvenience and cost to the whole internet which is why the internet service providers (ISPs) try and control it. They use technical means such as traffic shaping and bandwidth throttling to implement an acceptable use policy (AUP), often without telling the customers.

Quite frankly the ISPs would rather not have the thieves on their networks. Not only are their activities illegal, they also clog up and slow down the internet for everyone else. So consensus is moving to a three strikes and your out policy. Basically individual pirates are sent warning letters about their illegal activities. If they persist after three warnings then they are cut off. Leaving the internet more effective for legitimate users and helping prevent the billions in losses suffered by the music, film and gaming industries. Virgin, a large ISP in the UK is already doing this.

Now the three strikes policy is being implemented in European law. The “Telecom Packet” in front of the European parliament this week puts this in statute, though it will be up to individual countries to implement it. Let’s hope they do, and rigorously. Bit torrent has resulted in the biggest binge of stealing in human history, it is about time it was brought to an end.

Oasis have a new album called “Dig Out Your Soul” on October 6 and they are desperate for some publicity. So they have proclaimed that they are not going to put it on the internet like Radiohead did. Noel said: “That’s not our bag. I didn’t spend a year in the most expensive studio in England, with the most expensive producer in America, and the most expensive graphic designer in London to then give it away. F*** that.”

Obviously that didn’t get enough impact, so now he has followed the fashion amongst publicity seekers and had a go at videogames: “I was up in Liverpool for a week a couple of weeks ago and even on the news there it’s every single night. I don’t even know what Cameron or Gordon Brown are going to do about it. I was watching a documentary on Panorama and another one about kids carrying knives and violence. One of the lads, a little lad, made a telling comment.The guy said, ‘Do you not think there’s anything better for you in life?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, there probably is but I’ve never known anything else’. People say it’s through violent video games and I guess that’s got something to do with it. If kids are sitting up all night smoking super skunk and they come so desensitised to crime because they’re playing these video games, it’s really, really scary.”

Well I won’t argue with what he says about drugs. He is the expert on that. But what he has to say on video games is just a load of hogwash, and every informed and educated person knows that. The Byron Review and Grand Theft Childhood have told us that there is no negative association between video gaming and violent crime. In fact the reverse is probably true, games act as a catharsis thus leading to the reduction in youth crime we have seen in recent years.

Of course Gallagher is hoping for the double whammy. Not only is this getting him lots of publicity for the new album, it might also lead to parents restricting game purchases. And kids spend their money on games instead of music these days. So Noel is giving the competition a good kicking here.

You may think that a lot of game consoles are sold in the world, but the volume of televisions sold is even more massive, currently at about 80 million flat screens and perhaps 70 million CRT sets this year for a total market of 150 million sets. Samsung dominate the market with over 20% of the flat screens and LG have over 11%. Korea have television manufacturing in their pocket.

One of the possible future models for the gaming industry is that the individual gamer does not own any games and does not even download them. Instead the games sit on a server and are played in what is effectively a web browser. This is how most casual PC games work today. And it is what Runescape does. It has huge advantages in game updates, multiplayer, distribution, anti piracy and loads of other areas. The main downside is speed of reaction in shooters and racing games.

But the biggest advantage of server based browser games is that they require only minimal hardware in the home. In fact the hardware is so minimal that it could be built into a modern TV for very little extra cost. So imagine if the Koreans were to do this. That would be, say, 50 million home gaming devices installed worldwide every year. Dwarfing the volume of consoles from Nintendo Microsoft and Sony.

Obviously they would also have to set up the servers and publish the games on it, which would be a massive undertaking. But the upside would be equally massive. Tens of millions of people paying monthly gaming subscriptions, rising to hundreds of millions after just a few years. It could become one of the world’s biggest businesses.

Obviously the hardest hit would be Nintendo but they could end up making even more money as a provider of games for the servers. Sony have the advantage of already being a big player in the TV market. And Howard Stringer has recently said that they want to be number one. You can see why. You might think that Microsoft, as a software company, would be out in the cold. But no, they are ahead of all of us. A year ago they announced a joint venture with Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., a major Chinese TV manufacturer to “jointly develop entertainment products that will link the Internet and television”. I bet that surprised you.

Firstly lets define what is meant by fanboy. What we are talking about is someone who has an irrational, emotional attachment to an inanimate piece of electronic equipment that makes them act in a manner that borders on the sociopathic and sometimes even crosses that border. Most gaming enthusiasts, even those who spend an inordinate amount of time and money gaming, are not fanboys. In fact fanboys probably spend a lot less time playing games than the true gaming enthusiast does. This is because, for a fanboy, the brand and the equipment are often far more important than the actual entertainment of playing games.

The vast majority of video game fanboys support the Sony brand. This makes them vehemently, sometimes aggressively anti Nintendo and anti Microsoft. This may sound pathetic to a normal balanced adult but it is true. Let’s look at some of the reasons that people become fanboys.

• Sony make sexy looking kit. Always have done, always will do. Lots of people will only buy Sony kit just because it looks so good. Nintendo kit is always just functional and the original Xbox was an ugly brick. Microsoft have learned their lesson with the 360 which is very nicely styled. It still isn’t a Sony though.
• The Sony brand dominated the market for a long time. To the point that in mass popular usage the word “Playstation” became synonymous with the word “console”. In the real world Nintendos and Xboxes are often referred to as “Playstations”. This is just like most people calling petroleum jelly “Vaseline” or vacuum cleaners “Hoovers”.
• Sony marketing baffles brains. With Playstation 2 they called the CPU the “Emotion Engine” and issued press releases on the wonderful and amazing things it would do for games. When the reality is that the Xbox was more powerful. Likewise they hyped up the Cell processor in the PS3 saying that the first PS3 down the production line would be the world’s third most powerful computer (this is just from memory so may not be exact, however the claim was outrageous) when in fact there is little difference between the capabilities of the PS3 and Xbox 360. In fact so far the vast majority of games run better on the 360.
• A lot of the great hardcore gaming franchises historically appeared first on Playstation. Mainly because for a long time there weren’t many other options for a developer. Just now the 360 has the best gaming catalogue in this generation but the fanboys haven’t woken up to this. They relive past glories and hope for future promises.
• Gamers spend a huge amount of time playing games. Sometimes 30 hours or even more per week. So the console becomes the gamer’s “partner” in his entertainment. It is his buddy in all the adventures that he has. So he becomes emotionally involved with his little friend. Even though it is mainly a moulded plastic box.
• Gamers spend a very high proportion of their disposable spend on their hobby. This is a big commitment that means making other sacrifices. So for this spend gaming owes something back. Something more than just entertainment. Something bigger and more fulfilling. Something emotional.
• Peer pressure, let’s face it, everyone is a lemming in one way or another. Look at all the yuppies in their BMWs because they have to have the badge. So it is with a certain demographic that Sony targeted with their marketing. If you were in this demographic it became more than cool to own a Playstation. It became essential for your self esteem. Because your peers would look down on you if you couldn’t walk the walk. And that meant you were left with little option but to buy one to gain the bragging rights and in turn put pressure on anyone in your peer group without a Playstation.
• It is an unfortunate male characteristic that they like to form gangs and then bully people who aren’t part of their gang. You see it in every schoolyard. And when men grow up they still do it but in other ways. At the football club, in the pub and at work. In fact anywhere the tribal genetics can break through the thin vaneer of civilisation. So it is with a Sony fanboy, he can get on the internet and join in harassing and bullying anyone and everyone who isn’t a member of his gang. In fact many fanboys enjoy this online warfare so much that they have little time left to actually play games. It is all very Lord of the Flies.
• Defending the honour of your family. To many fanboys the emotional invovement with their machine is such that it has become a member of the family in everything but name. So when something comes along that could be better in any way then it becomes a matter of honour. And the Wii and 360 are both better than the PS3 in some ways. So that means war. It is very obvious that if the competing consoles hadn’t been so good then the Sony fanboys wouldn’t have been so vehement and agressive. This is the biggest single factor in the current Sony fanboy phenomenon.

It is not just Sony Playstation that creates fanboys. Apple have the same effect (though to a lesser extent) with their computers and with their iPod/iPhone. And, quite interestingly, if you look at the reasons above many of them also apply to these Apple products.

Finally fanboys love articles like this. It makes them feel important and gives them a focus for their anger and resentment.

• New Sony patent reveals details of upcoming handheld touch screen console. Maybe. The inventor is Phil Harrison. But if this is all it takes to file a US patent I think I will run off a few this afternoon.
• Japanese researchers develop 42 Gbyte DVD. When you consider that BluRay is 25 Gbyte for single layer and 50 Gbyte for dual layer this is a significant advance. Online delivery may well be taking over from physical media but this still may be something Microsoft might like. Especially with its inherent anti piracy benefits.
• Massive update for Xbox Live rumoured. Including 3D Dashboard, support for gesture interface (motion sensor), social networking and avatars. Combine this with the imminent US price cut and rejig of hard disk sizes and you can see that Microsoft are putting together an even more compelling package. I just hope they sort out the front end of XLA so that it can more easily handle a huge library of games.
• Game file sharing pirates zapped in court. Excellent news that these thieves are going to have to pay up. Pity it’s only £2,750. Adding an extra zero to the punishment would be more realistic. Let’s hope loads more of these thieves get zapped soon.
• Activision executives get $6 million bonus. And quite right too, why should City types who don’t make anything be the only ones to get big salaries? To build a publisher to world number one deserves rewards like this. Let’s hope it attracts some more top class management into the industry. We need it.
• Paedophiles using game consoles to meet their victims online. No surprise here then. These sick and evil people will use every means possible for their perversions. Society is too soft on them when they are caught.
• Excellent Bobby Kotick interview in The Times (which really has switched from being anti to pro gaming). You can see how he earns his salary with some excellent stuff on player demographics, the economic downturn and looking after employees. I wish more managers in the industry were this incisive.
• Huge controversy over torture game. Not what the industry needs or wants. But it does show up just how stupid the BBFC juggling for power and added bureaucracy is. Their ability to do anything about this game would be precisely zero.