Author Archive | Jared Newman

Kinect for Xbox 360 Gets a Real Price: $150

Posted by Jared Newman on July 20, 2010 at 9:59 am

Microsoft has cleared up a couple of rumors about a new Xbox 360 model and the Kinect motion-sensing camera, revealing prices and details for both.

The Kinect camera, bundled with one game, will cost $150, the same price Microsoft posted as a “an estimate only” to its online store a month ago. The game is “Kinect Adventures,” a collection of minigames that includes jumping and ducking to avoid obstacles on a moving platform, and moving back and forth in a raft to navigate through rapids.

Microsoft also has a new Xbox 360 model coming August 3, priced at $200 without Kinect. Like the one spotted on Amazon Germany last week, the basic Xbox 360 has a 4 GB flash drive and built-in 802.11 n Wi-Fi. Later this year, the console will be bundled with Kinect and Kinect Adventures for $300. No word on whether the 250 GB console model will get a Kinect bundle.

I’m glad Microsoft went with Kinect Adventures for the console bundle. I tried it at E3, and though it’s not a shining example of what Kinect could be, it’s a better tech demo than Kinect Sports, another minigame collection that just seems too much like Wii Sports. (For that matter, running in place for the hurdles minigame was too much like the Power Pad.)

Microsoft is promising more than 15 games at launch, including Dance Central, arguably the best use of the technology yet. The game is like Guitar Hero for dance, prompting the player to perform full-body dance routines and scoring for accuracy. In another strike at the Wii, Dance Central will cost $50, not $60 like most Xbox 360 games.

Kinect is coming in November, with pre-orders available now. I’m interested in theory, but still waiting to be wowed by the software. That didn’t happen at E3.

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Amazon Sells More E-Books Than Hardcovers

Posted by Jared Newman on July 19, 2010 at 4:18 pm

Say what you will about the tactile pleasure of a hardcover book, but Amazon customers are choosing to read on their Kindles.

For every 100 hardcover books Amazon sold over the last three months, the retailer sold 143 Kindle books. In the last month, the pace has jumped to 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcovers. Kindle book sales have tripled in the first half of 2010, compared to the same period last year.

Keep in mind that Amazon isn’t talking about paperbacks, so I’m assuming those still outsell e-books. But Amazon also counts hardcovers even if there isn’t a Kindle edition, and doesn’t count free, out-of-copyright Kindle books.

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos says the rise in Kindle books over hardcovers is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.” I say it’s more astounding given that anyone can purchase a hardcover from Amazon, but only Kindle owners or Kindle software users have use for an e-book.

I hope book publishers are encouraged, not frightened, by the news. They should be converting books into electronic form faster than ever to capitalize on the e-reader craze. But they might also liken e-books to paperbacks — both are less profitable than hardcovers — by delaying the digital versions to drum up hardcover sales.

Delaying the digital version of books is a bad move because there’s nothing comparable to hardcovers available in digital form. If publishers want to charge more for new releases — and they can with the agency model, which allows several major publishers to set their own e-book prices — that’s fine. But as Amazon’s latest numbers show, Kindle owners are determined to build their e-book libraries, and publishers should do everything they can not to hold those readers back.

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The Case for Call of Duty Subscriptions

Posted by Jared Newman on July 19, 2010 at 9:49 am

Every time an Activision executive talks about charging money to play Call of Duty games online, there’s a chorus of gamers who say the publisher’s digging its own grave. I don’t think Activision is that stupid, but I also don’t think the publisher’s detractors have fully considered how Call of Duty players might be lured to pay extra.

Subscription-based Call of Duty seems like question of “when,” not “if.” Activision-Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick told the Wall Street Journal in June that he’d like to have CoD subscriptions “tomorrow,” if he could snap his fingers and make a change. Chief Financial Officer Thomas Tippl confirmed last November that the company’s looking at more ways to monetize multiplayer. Most recently, a forum member at Xbox 360 Junkies posted video of an inactive “memberships” section while playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live.

Certainly, you could interpret this as evidence that Activision will at some point cut off free, online multiplayer and demand monthly payments from the millions of people hooked on the game. But I think what’s really coming into view is a freemium service, one where the average player can still enjoy Call of Duty for free, while those who wish to pay can enjoy extra features and benefits.

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Droid X on Lockdown, But Hacks Won't Brick It

Posted by Jared Newman on July 16, 2010 at 5:28 pm

If the Droid X’s U.S. launch had just one pockmark, it was the hoopla that transpired when one Android enthusiast declared the phone would become a brick when hacked.

It all started when My Droid World forum admin p3droid declared that a chip called eFuse was triggered to blow when the Droid X’s digitally-signed bootloader is tampered with, rendering the phone unusable. Attempts to run custom ROMs on the phone, such as Cyanogen, would likely produce a Motorola-branded doorstop that only the company could fix. MobileCrunch’s Devin Coldewey ran with the story, as did other sites, and a debate ensued on whether the phone does, in fact, have a hardware-killing security feature.

So Engadget cleared the air with Motorola, who said the phone is not rigged to blow, but it does go into “Recovery Mode” when booted with unauthorized software. This is for security reasons, and for meeting carrier, partner and legal requirements, Motorola said. Re-installing Motorola-approved software restores the Droid X to normal.

Okay, great. But I think the debate yesterday was misdirected. The problem is not that the Droid X becomes a brick when hacked, but that it cannot be hacked. While the lack of a phone-killing security feature means hackers are at a greater liberty to tinker, they won’t get anywhere. Motorola Milestone, the original Droid’s overseas sibling, has the same digitally-signed bootloader, and its security measures haven’t been broken yet. There are workarounds for loading custom ROMs on the Milestone, but they are difficult to perform, and there are other drawbacks, as explained by TheUnlockr.

Any tech topic with the word “brick” in it makes for a better headline, but I’d rather see the discussion focus on why Motorola doesn’t want its users hacking the Droid X, rather than what nasty things will happen to the phone if they do.

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Atari May Plunder Its Classics for Remakes

Posted by Jared Newman on July 16, 2010 at 10:05 am

Atari’s not the company it used to be — literally, it’s been swallowed up by a succession of larger companies since the 1980s — but it can still milk name recognition and classic video games.

The company, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infogrames, is remaking the Atari 2600 classic Haunted House, and a couple of listings on Gamefly suggest that Centipede and Star Raiders remakes could be next.

Given the timing, this wouldn’t surprise me. E3 was crowded with remakes of well-known or in some cases forgotten video game franchises. Fondly remembered games like Goldeneye and NBA Jam are being brought back to life, while franchises that never really went away, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat, are going back to their 2D roots. These are safe bets in the midst of a games industry slump. If Atari wants to jump on the nostalgia train, now’s the time.

The difference between Atari’s remakes and the examples I saw at E3 is that Atari’s games are so old, there’s very little to build from. Haunted House could be a great game, but it’s impossible to say whether the remake is faithful to the original, because the original is so primitive. If Star Raiders gets remade, it’ll probably resemble Wing Commander more than anything else.

Basically, I feel the same way about Atari’s games as I do about the upcoming surge of movies based on very old video games. They won’t necessarily be bad, but they’re just blank slates with recognizable names.

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Jolicloud Netbook OS is All Grown Up in Version 1.0

Posted by Jared Newman on July 15, 2010 at 4:21 pm

If you’ve got a netbook, you might want to take a look at Jolicloud. The free Linux-based operating system tries to combine the best of cloud and local computing, and next week version 1.0 will roll out to longtime users.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Jolicloud for about a year now, but never tried it, and wondered what would become of it after Google previewed Chrome OS. Both operating systems are driven primarily by web apps, with an emphasis on storing things online and syncing to the cloud so it doesn’t really matter what computer you’re on. Judging from a company blog post on the latest version and video preview by Netbook News, Jolicloud has not given up the fight.

The key difference from Chrome OS — aside from the fact that Chrome OS hasn’t launched yet — is Jolicloud’s all-encompassing approach to both downloadable and web-based apps. While the OS makes use of web apps like Facebook and YouTube, it also allows for installed software such as Skype and Boxee, all through a storefront that right now has more than 700 free apps.

There are some other neat features as well, like an HTML5 launcher that you can manage through a web browser on any PC, and a social stream that lets you geek out with fellow Jolicloud users. Users who dual-boot with Windows can even access the Windows file system.

If you don’t have a netbook, just take Jolicloud to be another sign of PC appification (the fact that I didn’t coin that term is yet another sign). Jolicloud is among the first to make the PC look more like a smartphone, and with Android netbooks surfacing periodically and Microsoft possibly considering an app store for Windows 8, it certainly won’t be the last.

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Microsoft Cancels 1 vs. 100, Xbox Live's First Game Show

Posted by Jared Newman on July 15, 2010 at 10:01 am

One of Xbox Live’s most innovative features, the online game show 1 vs. 100, won’t return for another season.

If you missed it, 1 vs. 100 was a trivia show in which one contestant would try to outlast a “mob” of 100 others, each of whom face elimination with wrong answers. Players who weren’t competing could still answer questions from the sidelines, with a chance to rotate into the main game. Semiweekly live shows, hosted by comedian Chris Cashman, offered prizes to the winners.

The game was included with an Xbox Live Gold subscription, and at one point attracted more than 60,000 players to the live show. Microsoft didn’t say why it canned the show, only noting that the development team will move on to other projects. It’s rumored that the original 1 vs. 100 television show, hosted by Bob Saget for two seasons on NBC, could return, so maybe that was an issue for Microsoft.

Whatever the reason, I hope Microsoft comes up with a suitable replacement. As several commenters on Kotaku wisely point out, 1 vs. 100 is a social, casual game that draws in exactly the same crowd Microsoft will try to capture with the Kinect motion-sensing camera. And Kinect support seems like an obvious choice for game shows; imagine waving your arms in celebration and seeing an avatar do the same, or raising your hand to answer a question and speaking the answer.

Kinect aside, the idea of a massive multiplayer online game show is just plain cool. Half the fun of watching game shows on television is trying to answer questions yourself, and 1 vs. 100 let spectators do that by sectioning non-players into small groups to compete amongst themselves. I think 1 vs. 100 had a chance to revolutionize game shows, but like an anxious TV network, Microsoft pulled the plug too soon.

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Multiple Google Account Sign-Ins Tested on Some Lucky Users

Posted by Jared Newman on July 14, 2010 at 3:29 pm

Google’s quietly testing the much-needed ability to sign into multiple user accounts within a single browser session, according to the folks at the unofficial Google Operating System blog.

The multiple sign-in feature applies to Google Docs, Calendar, Reader, Code, Sites and Gmail. Other services will default to the account that signed in first, and using multiple accounts will disable offline mode. There’s no indication of when multiple sign-ins will roll out to everyone; a Google representative told Lifehacker that there’s nothing to announce at this time.

Surely I’m not the only one who would love multiple sign-ins for Google services. If you’ve got separate Gmail or Docs accounts for work and personal matters, switching back and forth is a hassle. Aside from manually signing out of one account to access another, your options are to use a private or incognito session in browsers that allow it, open different web browsers for each account or install a Greasemonkey script in Firefox.

And none of those solutions nix the nuisance I’ve been running into lately: My wife and I share an iPad, and every time she checks her e-mail on the device, I’ve got to sign her out once it’s my turn. Switching between browsers is too bothersome, and enabling private browsing in Atomic Web doesn’t allow for multiple log-ins. I hope Google extends multiple sign-ins to its mobile sites, or else I’m still out of luck.

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