Entries from May 2009 ↓

In this article 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel thinks that PC DRM doesn’t do much to stop piracy and that the publishers use it more to stop the trade in secondhand games. Which, as I have pointed out before, is pretty much the same as piracy from a publisher’s perspective.

The public really hate DRM because it tries to stop them stealing. The game industry is lucky because we have some of the most effective DRM devices ever invented, game consoles.

Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony, has just given this very perceptive interview and I highly recommend reading it. Here are a few highlights.

“A crisis is also an opportunity.” This is brilliantly incisive. When things are going well there is little for a manager to do. When things get very bad a good manager can make a big difference. I have always said that when all you have is lemons you can still make lemonade.

“It’s clear that customer preferences are changing, and I think this fact indicates what the next steps in TV evolution are likely to be.” This has to be making televisions smarter so they become interactive and handle a wider range of content. The dumb television we have today is a dinosaur.

“We developed brand new, absolutely incredible technology for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), but the cost was high. We’ve adopted a slightly different approach now, and are evolving the PS3 into a platform for Web services.” Yep, the PS3 is coming third this generation, partly because it was too costly to make. And as for Web services, they have the example of the brilliant success that Microsoft have had with Xbox Live.

“Right now is an excellent opportunity for consumer electronics companies to improve their understanding of consumers. Five years ago content companies were regarded as king in our industry, but that was wrong: the customer is king.” He is not wrong here. I am amazed at the number of company bosses who go round with their eyes closed because they haven’t the faintest idea about the realities of what their customers are doing. Every business needs a robust mechanism for putting the customer at the heart of decision making.

“The spread of the Internet has given them the power to dictate how products are used, and an increasing number of people are discovering new ways to have fun, such as by creating their own content.” Something that seems to have passed a lot of bosses by. Just look at rFactor to see how much work customers are prepared to do to create content.

“Understanding customers will also help us uncover hidden customers. The Wii from Nintendo Co Ltd of Japan is an excellent example. They didn’t develop any unique technology; they just realized that there was potential demand out there for something different from conventional games, and thought about how to satisfy different demands from different age groups. They attained results that the PS3 hasn’t; namely, generating profit from hardware sales.” Howard Stringer learns a hard lesson from Nintendo and eats humble pie.

“Sony hasn’t taken open technology very seriously in the past.” Obviously Howard Stringer has been reading this blog! One of the biggest failings of Sony, a failing that has cost billions and repeatedly lost them market position is their historic obsession with trying to create media standards. Let’s hope that they have finally learned.

“Next we will be expanding the PlayStation Network to hardware other than the PS3, because the number of PS3 units sold puts a limit on the scale of the network possible.”  So that means smart televisions and smart phones connected to PSN. Microsoft will be doing the same with Live. So PSN and Live could evolve to be the two most important products in the whole of entertainment.

“Sony has a vertical structure for each product line, an organizational structure that resists change.” Sony’s biggest corporate weakness and one I have pointed out before. We should have seen a PSP phone years ago. And the movie division and the gaming division content should have long since been integrated. Howard Stringer needs to break down walls.

“It was pretty simple, with the manufacturer providing products and the customer either buying them if they liked the goods, or not. The Internet and information technology have changed all that.” Oh yes, the internet allows a company to have a real time two way dialogue with every single customer. Something I love. Yet something that scares a lot of old school managers.

“All content is useless without hardware. Conversely, though, no matter how good the hardware, it can never realize its true value without content. Both hardware and content have to be there for the customer to receive that value.” And there we have it, the conundrum of the modern age. The big problem that Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nokia, Sony and Google all face. The only way is with third party relationships, but they are difficult to manage.

You really need to read the whole article with great care. It is packed with detail that is open to a lot of analysis.

The game industry is booming at retail but lots of developers and publishers are making losses and even going bust. Which is putting thousands of development and publishing staff out of a job. A lot of this is just the normal Darwinian stuff of the survival of the fittest, but some of it is structural and due to some unsatisfactory business models in the industry. Especially boxed console titles, which have become very high risk and boxed PC games which are being killed off by piracy. The good news is that there is now a big pool of available talent out there for those businesses that are starting up or expanding.

rFactor is a motor racing video game that runs on PCs, it is an accurate simulation, rather than an arcade game. And it has gained a formidable reputation despite not coming from a major publisher and so not having massive marketing support.

rFactor is probably the most accurate motor racing simulator there has ever been. The attention to detail is phenomenal, hardly surprising when the developer, Image Space Incorporated (ISI), come from a background of developing simulators for commercial and military use.

Here are some features that I like:

• Distributed mainly online. Little old fashioned cardboard and plastic distribution.
• Really brilliant physics, the best of any racing game to date.
• Does not require the latest and most powerful PC. Just  a 1.4 GHz processor CPU, 512 MB of RAM and 128 MB of video RAM.
• Lots of tools released by the developers to the users.
• Extremely modifiable and extend-able.
• Which in turn means that there is masses of user generated content, add ons and mods. A staggering amount.
• There is a really strong and active global community supporting the game.
• Well organised and extremely popular online play.
• Realism, realism, realism. No other racing game comes remotely as near to the real thing.

ISI have done many of the things I have written about on here before and as an online niche publisher with massive community input they are a great pointer to the future of video games.

In the aftermath of the Winnenden shootings the German government is going to ban paintball because it trivialises and encorages violence. I kid you not. On this level of brilliant logic it is fairly clear that soccer also needs to be banned, in fact any competitive sport. What I don’t understand is why they still haven’t banned table tennis. Tim Kretschmer, the perpetrator of the killings was an extremely keen tennis player who aspired to turn professional. There is a clear case of cause and effect here.

The Germans already have highly repressive video game legislation. This is based on precisely zero science, just ignorant legislators running amok. And the legislation has little effect other than to increase the popularity of mail order and internet downloads.

Of course the best way to stop shootings is to take guns away from the public, why does anyone really need a 9mm pistol, for instance? No guns = no shootings, the best solution. Especially in America.

I have repeatedly written on here about the often abysmal level of game industry management. Duke Nukem Forever has just been cancelled after over 12 years in development. You have to ask yourself what the project management people at 3D Realms were doing. And as this was presumably being paid for by Take Two you have to ask about their financial management and external developer management. The whole farce does not reflect well on how the industry is sometimes run.

Pure speculation this, but more than eminently possible. Apple went from being a computer manufacturer to a consumer toy maker with the iPod. They then morphed into also being a phone manufacturer with iPhone. And in the process they have seen the massive profits that can be made by owning a proprietary gaming platform standard. Having seen what Apps store is making for them, they obviously want more. One obvious route this can take is to join Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo in the home game console market. Apple certainly have the technical expertise to do this.

It costs billions to launch into the console market, as Microsoft will tell you. Fortunately Apple have $29 billion in the bank. Yes, that’s right, $29 billion. You could buy a country or two with that. Also you need management who know what they are doing. Well Apple’s management seem to have had all the right ideas thus far. But that is not stopping them currently recruiting some of the top management in the console game industry.

Then there is the strongly rumoured takeover of Electronic Arts. Apple could very easily afford this and it would give them the guarantee of lots of content as and when iConsole is launched. In fact it wouldn’t make much sense unless Apple were launching a game console.

But the best thing about an Apple game console and the thing that makes it most likely is that it will allow them another opportunity to take on the old enemy, Microsoft.