Author Archive | Jared Newman

Valve Gives Mac Gaming a Boost

Posted by Jared Newman on March 9, 2010 at 5:04 pm

Some serious PC gaming is about to come to Macs, with Valve announcing that its Steam platform will support Apple computers in April.

Valve says it’ll treat the Mac as a “tier-1” platform, meaning that its games and all updates will be released simultaneously for Windows and Mac. A new feature called Steam Play will let people play the same game on a Windows PC and a Mac for no added cost, with saved games transferring between computers.

Valve’s a heavy hitter in PC gaming, with iconic first-person shooters such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. And Steam, a platform for digital game downloads and online play, has 25 million members. That number will soon inflate with Mac support, and there’s a good chance other game developer will give Mac ports more serious consideration; DICE, the maker of recent blockbuster Battlefield: Bad Company 2, is already mulling a Mac version.

Why now? Thanks to Wikipedia, I found this 2007 Kiziko interview with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, in which he explains that Apple never seemed particularly interested in gaming. “I just don’t think they’ve ever taken gaming seriously,” he said. “And none of the things developers ask them to do are done. And as a result, there’s no gaming market there to speak of.”

Apple has since made a few moves that show the company no longer ignores gaming. Indeed, the iPhone has proven that games are a lucrative market, so why not give the personal computer some love? Newell didn’t elaborate in the Kiziko interview what he wanted from Apple, but I’ll wager that Apple has addressed Valve’s concerns. Given the way Valve teased its announcement of Steam for Mac, it seems there’s a lot of love going around. Nothing wrong with that.

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Gay Xbox Live Gamers May Now Spell It Out

Posted by Jared Newman on March 5, 2010 at 3:42 pm

Microsoft took a bold step today by letting gamers include their sexual orientation in their Xbox Live nicknames, or Gamertags.

Previously, Microsoft deemed the words “gay,” “straight,” “lesbian,” “bi” and “transgender” to be unacceptable, fearing that players would use them in a derogatory way. Those fears are justified to anyone who spends a few hours playing Modern Warfare 2 or Halo 3. Anonymity does some revolting things to human behavior.

Players’ Gamertags can now include all the words mentioned above, but the service’s updated code of conduct strictly limits the terminology to those five words only. Marc Whitten, Xbox Live’s general manager, explained Microsoft’s reasoning in an open letter:

Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community.

It took a while to get here. In 2008, a player named theGAYERgamer made his case public after Microsoft banned his Gamertag. In late February, a player claimed her account was suspended because her profile said she is a lesbian. This prompted a blog post from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, among other responses, so I’m guessing Microsoft finally felt there was enough pressure to make some policy changes.

Whitten promised that the code of conduct will be enforced more stringently to prevent misuse of the terms. That probably entails taking a closer look at Gamertags to make sure they’re not being used as insults. But the real hard part will be monitoring players’ responses to these nicknames. Hopefully Xbox Live’s moderators can do a better job of booting people who toss around homophobic, ethnic and racial slurs without fear of repercussion.

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Sony Phone and Tablet Will Take on Microsoft, Too

Posted by Jared Newman on March 4, 2010 at 5:57 pm

Sony’s got big plans for the Playstation brand, reports the Wall Street Journal, whose anonymous sources say a phone and tablet that run Playstation games are in development.

The prevailing thought is that these devices will compete with Apple’s iPhone and iPad, but that seems too obvious. All high-end smartphones and tablets are competing with the iPhone and iPad to some extent. The main target here is Microsoft and the Xbox brand, or at least it should be.

When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 Series, the gamer in me loved hearing that Xbox Live would play a role. We’re short on details, but Microsoft has at least confirmed that its WinPho7 phones will play some Xbox Live games. Depending on how Microsoft plays it, this could be the company’s first major foray into portable video games.

Meanwhile, Sony has repeatedly insisted that Apple isn’t a gaming competitor, as if iPhones exist in some bizarro market that isn’t stealing Sony’s business. It’s a hollow argument, but one that I’ve already refuted to death. If I was a Sony executive, I’d at least be worried about Microsoft.

To put all this another way, there’s a good chance the console wars will spill over to mobile phones, and that’s a good thing for gamers. It’s about time Sony’s gaming division and Sony Ericsson stopped pretending the other one exists (I know, the Sony Ericsson Aino has PS3 remote play, but not for games).

Just one question: If Sony’s planning on bringing Playstation games to a tablet and smartphone, what does that mean for sweet, sweet buttons?

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Modern Warfare to Become a Litigious Mess

Posted by Jared Newman on March 3, 2010 at 10:01 pm

Some really strange things happened this week between Call of Duty publisher Activision and Infinity Ward, the studio that created the franchise and developed last year’s blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Long story short: The studio’s two heads, Jason West and Vince Zampella were abruptly fired for “breaches of contract and insubordination,” according to an SEC filing. Shortly thereafter, Activision announced that one of its internal studios, Sledgehammer Games, would be making a Call of Duty game for 2011. Infinity Ward developed the last two Call of Duty games released in odd-numbered years.

It makes for high drama, but it’s mostly inside baseball. Things just got interesting, however, with the announcement of a lawsuit from West and Zampella against Activision. In addition to seeking compensation for royalties Activision allegedly owes, the former Infinity Ward heads are looking for control over “Modern Warfare-branded games,” reports G4’s Patrick Klepek.

If West and Zampella prevail, think of the implications. Activision’s already releasing Call of Duty games annually, alternating between studios to keep things fresh. Modern Warfare, as its own franchise, could theoretically become its own franchise and sit next to Call of Duty on store shelves. You could get three games with the same DNA in a two-year span (and somehow I don’t think gamers will get tired of this).

The funny thing is, last year I wildly predicted that a full Modern Warfare spinoff was conceivable. Of course I had no idea it might happen through messy internal politics and lawsuits.

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The PSN Problem, Or How Sony Got Scooped By Its Own Customers

Posted by Jared Newman on March 1, 2010 at 4:39 pm

You know things are bad when Sony tells Playstation 3 owners not to turn on their consoles for fear of data loss, but they’re even worse when the warning comes 16 hours, and an entire night, after the company first acknowledged problems with the Playstation Network.

This morning, Sony announced that PS3 consoles, with the exception of the new PS3 Slim, can’t connect with the Playstation Network because of a bug in the system’s clock. What’s worse is that simply turning on the consoles can cause “errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.” As such, Sony advised staying away from the PS3 — unless you’ve got a Slim — until they can fix the problem, hopefully within 24 hours.

As with any tech service outage, it’s appropriate to look at whether the official response was adequate. In this case, Sony’s clearly was not.

Information moves astoundingly fast in the gaming world. I first got wind of the problem at around 4 p.m. PST, reading a Twitter update from Game Informer’s Philip Kollar. His PS3 Trophy information was gone, and he couldn’t play any games. That was two hours before Sony itself acknowledged the problem and said it was looking into it.

Before long, Sony’s customers blew the story open. Reports of internal clock issues were everywhere, mainly stemming from the popular gaming forum NeoGAF. By midnight, one user had posted a detailed FAQ on who was affected, what to do and what’s at risk by turning on your console.

That’s exactly what Sony should’ve done. Instead, the company sat on the issue until Monday morning, when spokesman Patrick Seybold posted a sterile message explaining the errors. The warning to PS3 Fat owners was buried in his blog post. That was the last we heard from Sony. Among the perfectly valid questions that were unanswered: How will a fix will be delivered to people who can’t go online? What other data is at risk of being lost? Will people get their trophies back?

Kotaku’s reporting that consoles are now coming back to life (but no word from Sony, mind you). Sony still has some explaining to do, and gamers deserve an apology not just for the outage itself, but for being kept in the dark.

Update: Sony’s made it official that service is back, that a non-existent leap year was to blame, and that the problem resolved itself once system clocks hit March 1.

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Nintendo DSi XL Will Be an E-Reader, Too

Posted by Jared Newman on February 25, 2010 at 5:29 pm

Nintendo’s DSi XL will double as an e-reader soon after it launches next month, though it won’t have anything close to the book selection of Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

The DSi XL, a chunkier, larger-screened version of Nintendo’s wildly popular gaming device, goes on sale in the United States on March 28 for $190. The “100 Classic Books” collection, which includes classic public domain works from William Shakespeare, Mark Twain and others, will be available in June, Bloomberg reports.

Sound familiar? That’s because Nintendo already released the books-on-a-cartridge to the United Kingdom in December 2008. I’m not sure why it took so long for the collection to come stateside, but reading the books on the DSi XL, with its 4.2-inch screens, sounds more pleasurable compared to the original DS and DSi, which had 3-inch and 3.25-inch screens respectively. And despite the growing competition among e-readers, Nintendo’s device could be the most book-like, with two displays that you can hold up side-by-side.

Nintendo’s sales and marketing vice president Cammie Dunaway told Bloomberg that the company’s not trying to get a piece of the e-reader market. Let’s face it, without a cloud book store or the promise of weeks-long battery life, the DSi’s not equipped to do so anyway.

But I do think publishers would be wise to start bundling books onto DSi cartridges. Imagine the entire Harry Potter series on one cartridge — what a great gift that aunts and uncles who clueless about video games can give to their niece or nephew who has a DSi. As Dunaway said, “It’s just one more way to enjoy your device.” It shouldn’t start and end with the public domain.

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Calling it: The Holiday Game Glut is Dead

Posted by Jared Newman on February 24, 2010 at 4:29 pm

It’s finally happening. This year, the most promising video games won’t be held for the holiday shopping season, as they have been for as long as I can remember. Instead, noteworthy game launches are scattered throughout the year, giving us things to play in the spring, summer and fall, and it’s wonderful.

This dawned on me today after hearing that Nintendo will launch two of its biggest releases in the next few months. Super Mario Galaxy 2 got a May 23 release date, and Metroid Other M will launch on June 27.

It’s not that blockbuster games are never released in the spring and summer; Grand Theft Auto IV came out in April 2008, as did Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Sports Resort launched last July. But as I look over release dates for 2010’s noteworthy games, the majority will arrive between now and the end of June. That’s not including all the games released already this year, such as Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Heavy Rain and Dante’s Inferno — several of those are merely the result of a 2009 holiday season abandoned by publishers.

Here’s a short list of games that will arrive before the end of June, not including Nintendo’s two sluggers: God of War III, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Super Street Fighter IV, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Lost Planet 2, Alan Wake, Max Payne 3, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Skate 3, Singularity and Alpha Protocol. Move out to September, and you’ve got Civilization V and Brink. It’s possible that Halo Reach, scheduled for a fall release, could arrive in September as well, seeing as Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST had September launches.

Some things won’t change. July and August are still dry, but there will be such a backlog from May and June that it won’t matter. And I doubt the 2010 holiday gaming season will be dead, with Microsoft and Sony releasing motion control devices. But perhaps publishers are realizing that games are a year-round hobby, not just a toy for the kids on Christmas morning. I hope the strategy works out financially, so the cycle holiday gaming overload is broken for good.

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Redux and Boxee Make Hours of Uninterrupted Randomness

Posted by Jared Newman on February 23, 2010 at 4:48 pm

Could you sit on your couch and watch a steady stream of randomly-selected videos from YouTube and other sites? Redux hopes so, bringing its service to television through Boxee’s software for set-top boxes.

I hadn’t heard of Redux before its Boxee partnership was announced today, but it seems destined for the television. You set up an account and select from a list of interests, such as humor, art or video games, and Redux automatically creates a playlist, letting you sit back and watch without hunting for new clips. You can also follow like-minded people through the service — or sync with people you already follow on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace — to see what they’re watching.

It’s easy to see Redux’s disposable entertainment as something to play in the background at a party or after stumbling back from the bar — things like the Toronto Raptors’ mascot swallowing a cheerleader, a random fight on a bus, or an epic steel drum solo. At a computer I wouldn’t necessarily need these videos chosen for me, but from the couch it could be fun to turn on Redux and let the user-made content come to you.

There are some things I wish were different about the service. I personally don’t like the user comments that pop up when watching a popular video, so it’d be great if you could toggle them off. And because I don’t have a set-top that supports Boxee, I’d like to see Redux on other set-tops, Blu-ray players, game consoles or televisions. I’m told both of those gripes will be addressed in the future.

Redux, however, doesn’t plan to add premium content, which is a shame. I can understand that the service is all about people sharing videos made by other people, but I’d love to see Redux apply its brand of serendipity to TV shows and movies. There’s only so much user-made content I can take now matter how it’s delivered.

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Project Natal Meets a Stopwatch, Lags a Little

Posted by Jared Newman on February 22, 2010 at 10:40 pm

Last week, Microsoft brought some of the east coast press up to speed on its 3D motion-tracking camera for the Xbox 360, codenamed Project Natal. It was essentially the same demonstration presented at E3 last year, but Russ Frushtick of MTV Multiplayer used the occasion to time Project Natal’s responsiveness with a stopwatch.

The lag between movement and action on the screen floated around a tenth of a second. That’s not huge, but it’s enough to notice. Microsoft could improve Natal’s response time before it’s released this holiday season, but Frushtick notes that even Hollywood motion capture cameras aren’t lag free.

The report ties in nicely with a think piece by Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, who compares motion control to the uncanny valley — a theory in robotics that the more a robot resembles a human, the more people are repulsed by the resemblance. The uncanny valley has also been used to describe eerily realistic video game characters.

Crecente argued that Natal is so accurate at tracking motion, its flaws are hard to ignore. Compared to the Wii’s “good enough” approach, which still captures the essence of motion control, Microsoft could stumble despite having a technologically superior product. Even with the Wii’s MotionPlus accessory that attaches to the Wii Remote to make it more accurate, games have avoided “one-to-one” controls — where your actions are duplicated precisely on the screen — because they’re too realistic, diluting the fantasy of play.

That issue of fantasy versus reality is bound to come up as game developers experiment with motion control, not just for Project Natal, but for the Wii MotionPlus and the Playstation 3’s upcoming motion-sensing wand. I’m reminded of Tony Hawk: Ride, a game that used a skateboard-shaped peripheral, but flopped because it too closely duplicated the frustration of learning to skate.

If developers try to create lifelike simulations with Natal, they’ll fail if there are any flaws in the technology, such as lag. But if they can somehow translate motion into a more idealized version of itself (e.g., your sloppy karate kicks gain black belt form on the screen), Natal could be a hit.

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Sony’s Universal Game Controller Patent: Curious, Indeed

Posted by Jared Newman on February 19, 2010 at 1:41 pm

The eagle-eyed patent watchers at GoRumors have spotted a strange patent application from Sony, for a video game controller that works with all consoles.

Sony calls this device the “Universal Game Controller,” so there’s no question as to what purpose it would serve. The patent describes an LCD touch screen device that communicates with several consoles at once through a wireless receiver. Instead of physical buttons, there are virtual ones, displayed on the touch screen in context with whatever console you’re playing at the moment.

Sony only specifies the consoles by brand — Playstation, Nintendo and Xbox — but says it would be backwards compatible to emulate controllers that are no longer available.

I’m skeptical. The patent doesn’t mention motion controls or accelerometers at all, a glaring omission as Sony and Microsoft develop their own motion controls to catch up with Nintendo’s Wii. All three consoles will use different methods for interpreting gestures anyway, so a universal motion controller would be futile.

Technical obstacles abound as well. Sure, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 accept USB controller input, so you could plug in a universal receiver that way, but connecting the Wii and older consoles would be a challenge, if not impossible, without special adapters.

Also, I can’t imagine Nintendo and Microsoft would appreciate Sony jacking into their consoles with its own controller. That seems like a Palm Pre-iTunes situation waiting to happen.

Logistics aside, a universal controller based on a virtual button pad isn’t ideal for consoles that weren’t designed around it. I’d much rather see Sony release a version of its existing Playstation 3 controller that played nicely with other consoles. Even PC compatibility would be nice; in that regard, Microsoft’s wired Xbox 360 controller is already more universal.

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