Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

I just thought that I would share this great video with you. Very Minority Report. And a good example of a gesture interface used in gaming.

So, as predicted, Sony have removed the UMD drive from the PSP and replaced it with 16 Gbytes of internal flash memory with the option of adding Memory Stick Micros. Content will be downloadable from the Playstation Network (PSN) and will include films, TV and games.

Online discuss has centred on the lack of a touch screen, lack of a second analogue nub and what looks like difficult ergonomics. So there isn’t really a wow factor out there.

It is ironic that Sony, who are championing physical content distribution using Blueray, have abandoned it with the PSP. Also this is another arrow in the back of high street game retail, who are becoming increasingly redundant. The writing is well and truly on the wall that their business model is on the way out.

What will make this device will be the available games. Developers and publishers don’t like PSP because of the immense piracy rate. For the PSP Go launch Sony have rustled up Gran Turismo, Little Big Planet, Metal Gear Solid and Jack and Daxter. A good start, but is it sustainable?

Personally I think that this is too little, too late. Just like the Zune HD. The world has moved on since these devices were thought up. Now an iPhone or an Android phone like the Samsung i7500 has these previous generation devices for breakfast.

And, also ironically, Sony, from a different division, have Android phones on the way. So the PSP Go is yet another example of the lack of joined up management at Sony. Their right hand doesn’t know what their left hand is doing.

• Seven Hollywood studios including Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros and Disney have teamed up to sue iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP. iiNet is accused of doing little to stop its subscribers from sharing copyright works via BitTorrent. We are going to see a lot more of this if the film, music and gaming industries are going to survive. We are currently experiencing the biggest glut of stealing in the history of mankind and the ISPs are the only people who could possibly reduce it. It’s not nice to see that the Hollywood studios understand this better than the gaming industry.
• Microsoft fail in their attempt to reach a broader demographic. Lips just isn’t any good. Eurogamer give it 5 out of 10 because of flawed game play. There is no excuse for this, Nintendo have taught us just how polished games need to be these days.
• Oh the sweet serendipity of two widely diverse articles on here coming together. Ann Diamond is a z list celebrity who was paid by the Daily Mail to say how bad video games are. Now she is being paid by Popcap, a dynamic publisher, to say how good their games are. “PopCap is working with one of videogaming’s toughest critics to see if casual gaming can aid weight loss.” This is excellent marketing all round. Ann Diamond gets the chance to restore some credibility to her image whilst PopCap ride on her notoriety in this area.
• Future publishing is now worth only £30 million after reporting minisculey improved results. They are reaping what they sowed here with a disastrous historic lack of an internet strategy. Basically they didn’t see how chopping down trees as a communication medium would fall away so quickly. The new management are obviously correcting this but from a long way back. They should do it which makes these shares a bargain. Unless they get taken over first.
• Developer whinges that XNA game prices are too low. Maybe in comparison with boxed retail console games, but these are vastly overpriced. I don’t see how he can complain when he knew what he was getting into. If he doesn’t like the way XNA is run he can always develop for the iPod or nGage.
• Chris Lewis, VP of the Interactive Entertainment Business for Microsoft EMEA drops some  hints about the next generation (phoenix) and how important scaling is to Microsoft: “I think this generation will be longer, because there is so much scalability. When you look at NXE, that is a complete revision of the interface and the look and feel and every aspect of the system. That’s not predicated by new hardware. We have fundamentally done that through software and services. So if you think of that scalability and the opportunity to enhance and develop what we do with this platform, then I think it’s very, very possible–and indeed appropriate–that this generation will be longer. But we’re not specific about when that will happen, and we don’t have a particular timeline that we share right now.”
• The game addictiveness debate rumbles on, fuelled by Wrath of Lich King. We have to accept and allow for the fact that games can definitely be addictive. But that there are far worse addictions and vastly worse things in life. Dr Richard Graham, a child psychiatrist at London’s Tavistock Centre, told the BBC: “The problem with World of Warcraft is the degree it can impact and create a socially withdrawn figure who may be connecting with people in the game and is largely dropping out of education, social opportunities.” I don’t see anything massively wrong with people preferring to live a virtual reality, they are lucky to have the choice.
• Carphone Warehouse, a UK retailer, is giving away free PS3s with new phones. How the mighty have fallen. That Sony need to resort to this sort of marketing in peak season tells you exactly how well they are competing in the market.

Plenty of them this year.

Surfer girl did an open letter, supposedly from John Riccitiello full of such delights as: “all physical products published by EA will see two editions, one that is free of advertisements and one that features advertisements, which will have $10 below the advertisement free edition.”

Bungie came up with this visual Halo 3 spoof.

ThinkGeek put a lot of work into this one. It involves a new Wii peripheral and a game called Super Pii Pii Brothers. Very well crafted, it took people in.

World of Warcraft coming to console with Molten Core is another that a lot of work went into and which some believed.

Microsoft put four seperate Xbox jokers into theirs. Once again very well crafted but less believable than some.

PS3 Addict photoshopped a CBR 600 motorcycle into Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Nicely done.

PSXExtreme have Sony launching a $150 PS3 with no BluRay drive.

GTA IV to feature masturbation and intercourse. Yep, sure.

There were more, but some have already been taken down, so the links above may not last too long.

Will the tabloid newspapers ever grow up and realise that games are just another form of popular media? Judging by this story it seems to be unlikely to be any time soon. What we have is a casting website called StarNow which is used by all sorts of performers and their customers. It is also used by television and print media to find people for their stories.

So to anyone interested in games the following advert is a bit disturbing:

Did computer games make you turn to a life of crime?

Listing no. 63806 – All regions, UK
A national newspaper wants your story and will pay hundreds of pounds to the right person. Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime and if it’s something we like, we’ll call you straight back.

Payment details: paid role

Created: 27 March 2008
Applications accepted for at least another month
Application criteria: Males & Females aged 0 to 60 from UK

So there you have it, a national newspaper will pay you hundreds of pounds if you help them stitch up the games industry. This is the standards of the British gutter press today. I can even have a good guess as to which newspaper this is.

Many thanks to willc for finding this.

On November 29, at the Reuter’s Media Summit John Riccitiello said: “Is it ripe (for mergers), or has it already been picked? I would argue that it’s been largely picked.” So he was telling the world that consolidation in the video games industry was pretty much all done.

Then on December 2 Vivendi bought Activision. Which relegated EA to the position of number two global games publisher. And confirmed the trend that big global media companies need to be in gaming and are buying the industry out.

So on December 10 this blog asked the obvious question, who is going to buy Electronic Arts? Because it really does look like a juicy target for one of those massive media companies like News Corporation. How to acquire a powerful worldwide gaming presence in just one purchase. A typical Rupert Murdoch move.

Then on February 7 there were rumours that Viacom was going to buy Take 2 for $1.5 billion. Which made sense in the overall scheme of things. But it turned out to be so much hot air. Nevertheless, with these things there is rarely smoke without fire so Viacom were probably thinking about something.

If they were they have had a shock because on February 15 Electronic Arts put in a near $2 billion bid for Take Two. This was rejected so EA upped the bid slightly only to be rejected again. EA even have a special website to explain what they are doing. The proposed merger would bring the classical consolidation advantages of removing duplication, especially in sales, marketing and distribution. They would also be able to get rid of wasteful competition in sporting games. Best of all it would make EA the number one publisher again and make them so big that even the biggest predator would have to think twice before trying to gobble them up.

As the December 10 article here said: “The main way to remain independent is to rapidly become a lot bigger.” So, does John Riccitiello read this blog? 

In this article they tell you stuff that you have been reading here for some time.

However they use a very dodgy graph:

They seem to have the 360 and PS3 captions the wrong way around! Seriously there is still no good reason why anyone should buy a PS3. Next year Sony will be releasing some AAA exclusives (MGS4 Q2 and GT5 Q3) that will change this. However by then there will be even more good reasons to buy a 360 instead.

The fundamental problem for Sony (now they have solved the retail price anomaly) is that the development community have switched a lot of resources away from their machine. So, ultimately, it will have a smaller library of games to run on it. So it makes a far less appealing purchase proposition for the end user.

Another problem with that graph is that it shows no seasonality in Wii sales. This just cannot be right.