Author Archive | Jared Newman

How Much Should iPhone Microtransactions Cost? (Answer: A Little)

Posted by Jared Newman on October 16, 2009 at 9:27 am

Good news for game developers and people who hate “Lite” iPhone apps: Apple is now allowing purchases directly from within free apps. This feature was previously allowed only for paid apps.

Certainly the decision will affect anyone who develops a “Lite” app that has less features than the paid version, as it’ll let them combine both into a single download. But my mind jumps straight to gaming, which could see a rush of apps with paid microtransactions to unlock extra content or features.

Consider, for example, an MMORPG. Apple’s decision will allow developers to adopt a free-to-play model, charging players for extra items or abilities. Some games, such as Mafia Wars, were already doing this by having players purchase entirely new app for their upgrades, with their stats preserved. But the new solution is much more elegant, as it allows people to keep playing with minimal interruption, and without scrapping the app they already have.

That makes me wonder, what will the economy of iPhone microtransactions look like? If buying small bits of content is going to be a lot easier, I’d expect there to be a lot more of it, except for one snag: The iPhone economy is already dirt-cheap. The majority of iPhone apps are free, and the average price of a paid game, according to a recent study, is $2.50. People aren’t exactly throwing around fistfulls of money on the App Store, so even a handful of $1 microtransactions in a single game could be a tough sell.

I doubt that transactions for less than $1 would be allowed, but I think the cleverest free-to-play game developers will find a way to break it down. Perhaps they could sell credits, $1 at a time, that let you download a handful of in-game items. However they work it out, microtransactions will have to get extremely micro to thrive in the App Store.

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Nvidia Tegra in Next Nintendo DS? So?

Posted by Jared Newman on October 14, 2009 at 12:08 pm

As with any hot gaming rumor, I’m compelled to write about the reports of an Nvidia Tegra chip in Nintendo’s next DS handheld. But deep down inside, I don’t really care.

Unless Nintendo is changing the way it approaches gaming consoles, the underlying technology doesn’t matter as much as the big picture. The Wii staked its reputation on motion controls, not current-generation graphics or processing power. Same goes for the Nintendo DS, which is all about combining a touch screen and traditional button-based gaming on a handheld device.

Besides, the current-generation DS already packs in respectable graphics, and some of the console’s greatest games wouldn’t have benefited from a boost. For instance, the Phoenix Wright series uses 2D animation, never getting in the way of your touch-based sleuthing. New Super Mario Bros. has 3D flourishes, but what really draws people in is the game’s old-school roots. And then there’s Brain Age, which is so simple that I fail to see how a beefer processor and better graphics would improve the experience.

My point is that it’s about the games, not the hardware, and from my experience the Nintendo DS hasn’t suffered from technological constraints.

In any case, I don’t expect Nintendo to move on from its current-generation DS and DSi anytime soon. They continue to sell phenomenally well, with 552,900 units moved in North America alone in August. That’s actually a 6 percent increase from same the period in 2008, and four times more sales than Sony’s PSP.

Continued sales mean that people are going to stay interested in the current-generation Nintendo DS, and all the games it supports, for years to come. If Nintendo does upgrade the DS to a better chip, I won’t be the only one who could care less.

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Twitter Gets “Report As Spam,” At Last

Posted by Jared Newman on October 13, 2009 at 5:39 pm

twitterreportspam Care to rid the Twitterverse of porn spammers, sleazy “social media marketers” and auto-follow bots? A new tool, long overdue, should help.

Today, Twitter added a “Report as Spam” option to user pages. You can also access this option from the drop down box on your followers list, making the all-too-familiar spammer purge more than just a selfless act.

The Twitter Blog says reporting a user won’t trigger any automated actions (so, if you hate us, doing as illustrated in the picture above should be fruitless), but it does flag the user so Twitter’s “Trust and Action” team can take a look. I’m guessing that the Twitter team will prioritize based on who’s getting flagged the most.

If I could ask for one more thing, it’d be a “Report as Spam” link accessible directly from the initial “HotGirlXXX is now following you on Twitter!” e-mail. I can see why Twitter would exclude this, as you’d ideally look at a person’s tweets to know if they’re legit, but there are plenty of times when you can smell out spammers simply from their user names and follower/following ratios. And there are definitely pages I’d rather not see before reporting them as spam.

But I’m happy to see this feature anyway. This may be totally coincidental, but the trending topics I’m looking at now are free of spammers. Could real people be taking back Twitter?

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It’s On! Nintendo Prez Knocks iPod Touch

Posted by Jared Newman on October 12, 2009 at 4:29 pm

As the iPhone and iPod Touch look more like portable gaming platforms, I haven’t tired of watching Sony and Nintendo flail. They’re like two incumbent political parties having identity crises in the face of a new competitor who’s hogging the spotlight.

The latest round of this partisan bickering comes from Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who in an interview with the Washington Post argued that the Nintendo DS does things the iPod Touch does not. As proof, he pointed to the DS’s two screens, Nintendo’s franchise titles such as Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros and innovative games like the recent Scribblenauts, which lets players type out virtually any PG-13 noun and have the object literally appear on the screen.

“All of these experiences are very unique and very different and what you cannot find on their App Store,” Fils-Aime said.

It’s a weak argument. Half the games Fils-Aime mentions use the DS’s second screen to provide superfluous information, and there’s nothing in Apple’s technology that precludes a title like Scribblenauts. But the major problem here is Fils-Aime’s “our console is different” mentality.

Guess what? Every console is unique in some way. Check out Dan Terdiman’s CNet article today on a new breed of iPhone games that integrate your phone and contacts. That’s unique. Or just visit the App Store and pick up a free chess app, a free tower defense game and the entirety of Wolfenstein 3D for $2. That user experience is unique.

The real question is whether one console’s unique experience is better than the competition’s. I’ll concede that Nintendo has powerful franchises in Mario and Zelda, et al, but that doesn’t make up for how Apple is capturing the casual gaming market that Nintendo covets. Nintendo needs to find a solution to that problem, and Fils-Aime needs better talking points.

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Best Buy to Lump E-Readers With Other Random Stuff

Posted by Jared Newman on October 9, 2009 at 11:53 am

Clearly, Best Buy doesn’t know what to do with all those e-readers that it plans to stock, because they’ll soon be thrown into a section that contains electronic Rubik’s Cubes, digital pens and — wait for it — Sharper Image products.

Dealerscope reports that Best Buy’s creating a new retail section called “Gadgets and eReaders,” located near the movies and music, and will soon launch a corresponding page on its Web site. Along with Sony’s Reader Daily and Touch Editions and the new iRex e-reader, you’ll find the Livescribe Smartpen and the Rubik’s Touchcube, among other things.

I understand where Best Buy is coming from. E-readers are hard to categorize. They’re not quite tablet computers, nor are they full-blown media players. They are their own category, but right now there just aren’t enough e-readers (or enough interest in them) to warrant a dedicated section of the store.

But lumping e-readers in with “Funky Gadgets You Don’t Need” (my terminology, not Best Buy’s) isn’t really the best way to foster market growth. Granted, someone who’s going to Best Buy with the intent of buying an e-reader won’t care where it’s located as long as it can be found, but to the casual shopper, e-readers’ placement in an obscure gadget section is just going to make them seem frivolous.

What to do then? Put the e-readers near the iPods and Zunes. After all, e-readers are high end entertainment devices, and they share some common features with media players, such as wireless connectivity, digital content and, in some cases, touch screens. Sony’s Reader Touch Edition can even play music.

The gimmicky gadgets can have their own section, but Best Buy should think a little harder about which devices earn the dubious distinction.

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10 Awesome Free Wii Browser Games

Posted by Jared Newman on October 7, 2009 at 11:59 pm

Free Wii Games Nintendo recently made the Wii’s Opera Web browser free to all, perhaps realizing that only a fool would pay $5 for it. But even with the Internet at the command of your Wii Remote, it’s not clear what to do, especially with no support for Hulu and premium content withheld from YouTube.

Why not play some Wii browser-based video games? The Wii’s browser may only support Flash Lite, but that hasn’t hampered a handful of games designed specifically for the console’s Web browser. I’ve picked 10 of the best, including two-player Tetris, a working Galaxian clone and a full MMORPG, all of which can be bookmarked to play again at any time (To do so, click on the star icon in the browser, then click the icon with the plus sign to bookmark the page you’re on).

So grab a pen and write some of these URLs down, or even better, head to Technologizer through your console, and enjoy some Wii browser games that won’t cost you a dime.

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Xbox 360 Achievements’ Icy Grip Needn’t Get Colder

Posted by Jared Newman on October 7, 2009 at 4:27 pm

I can’t recall my reaction when Microsoft introduced Achievements alongside the Xbox 360, but I definitely didn’t expect them to have such a profound impact on the games industry. Now, one game developer says that Achievements, particularly the easy ones, can drive game sales.

Speaking to Official Xbox Magazine, Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford said there’s a subset of gamers who base their purchasing decisions on a game’s Achievement per minute ratio. “He’s playing a lot,” Pitchford said. “So he’s a very frequent customer, and you want to be in that pile. That’s just business.”

Achievements are the new-age embodiment of the high score, rewarding players for their in-game accomplishments with a universal point system. Having a lot of points, or a high Gamerscore, as it’s called, means you play a lot of games with at least a modicum of skill.

After Microsoft popularized the idea, Sony duplicated it with Playstation 3 trophies, and so did Valve on its Steam PC gaming platform. Entire sites exist for the purpose of documenting achievements, and at least one person is building a reputation for hunting down the most points. There’s a game that mocks the obsession, and heck, at times my inner Atari gamer prods me to play on a harder difficulty, just to get the most points.

I’m skeptical of Pitchford’s claim that Achievement hunters are a lucrative demographic, because they’re probably more inclined to rent a game and mine its points than to buy it outright. But I’m uncomfortable with his suggestion that game designers are “the worst” (emphasis his) at coming up with Achievement criteria — and therefore driving sales. I’m not sure who else he has in mind, but the last thing game design needs is more influence from the business side.

After all, one of my greatest Achievement-related pleasures was playing through Mirror’s Edge without ever shooting an enemy, and I wouldn’t have been compelled to do so without the “Test of Faith” Achievement. I’m guessing the developers were behind that one, as it emphasized the game’s flight-over-fight mechanics. That achievement felt good, and I wouldn’t want it compromised just to pawn off a few more sales on people who care about nothing but easy points.

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Jimmy Fallon: “We Want to Treat Video Games Like Movie Openings”

Posted by Jared Newman on October 5, 2009 at 12:21 pm

Say what you will about Jimmy Fallon’s talk show hosting talent, but the former Saturday Night Live star and Conan O’Brien replacement has won a place in my heart for celebrating, and not demonizing, video games.

On Friday, Fallon hosted Tim Schafer, the game designer behind Brutal Legend. While not the biggest holiday game release — that honor falls to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — Brutal Legend’s comedic tale of demon-slaying in a land of heavy metal, paired with the voice acting of Jack Black, has the hallmarks of any blockbuster, regardless of medium.

So it was refreshing to hear Fallon preface the interview with a ringing endorsement for gaming. “On our show, we want to treat video games like movie openings, ’cause it is a huge thing,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time Fallon brought gaming onto the show. In April, he played Punch-Out with G4’s Morgan Webb, and he sent SNL cast member Jason Sudekis to cover E3. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda went on the show to demonstrate Project Natal. Schafer’s appearance went beyond those demos, as Fallon likened Shafer’s celebrity game designer status to the weight Martin Scorsese brings to a film.

I’m always rooting for this type of thing to occur. Video games, in many ways, have yet to mature, and in some ways they’ll never be like film, but it doesn’t help when they’re viewed as a waste of time. It’s even worse when they’re simply ignored in the mainstream because they aren’t seen as important, like movies.

You get the sense from Fallon that he really is a gamer, and is passionate about the subject matter. Good for him, because he’s tapping into a lucrative demographic that too many other broadcasters won’t even touch.

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Note to Rude Gamers: You Don’t Have the Right

Posted by Jared Newman on October 2, 2009 at 3:36 pm

I got a chuckle today reading about the failed lawsuit of Playstation 3 owner Erik Estavillo, who tried to sue Sony after getting banned from the Playstation Network for bad behavior.

If you’ve ever played a competitive online game, you know the type: Loud-mouthed, cussing, insulting, maybe even racist, sexist or homophobic. It’s not clear which of those offenses Estavillo committed while playing Resistance: Fall of Man, but it was apparently bad enough that Sony kicked him off the entire Playstation Network.

A few months ago, Estavillo sued Sony for $55,000 and asked that the company be enjoined from banning other players, on grounds that his right to free speech in a public forum was violated. He added that his agoraphobia (social anxiety) precludes him from socializing in public, so PSN was his only outlet. Estavillo further claimed that Sony effectively stole his pre-paid Playstation Store points.

Too bad. Game Politics reports that a judge has dismissed the case, ruling that a First Amendment claim isn’t plausible. After all, it’s Sony’s private network, and when you sign on, you agree to Sony’s rules. If there’s any question that PSN is like a public place, the tech law blog of Eric Goldman further notes that Sony’s network wasn’t considered a “company town,” because it doesn’t take on any functions of a municipality, virtual or otherwise. PSN is an entertainment venue, not a public service.

The bottom line is, you don’t have First Amendment rights in online gaming. You do have a responsibility to be courteous to those around you. For all the times that people ignore those principles in Resistance, Halo or Gears of War, I’ve got to pump my fist for the minor victories.

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Sony Stumbles With Blu-ray to PSP Copy

Posted by Jared Newman on October 1, 2009 at 12:41 pm

Starting in November, Sony will revert to its old, closed-system ways by packing a PSP-ready digital copy on its Blu-ray discs.

The reasoning is obvious: If you’re an owner of one device, you’ve got a reason to pick up the other. Why buy an iPod for video when the PSP gives you a chunk of your Blu-ray collection in digital form?

Here’s the problem: Of the two Blu-ray films that Sony Pictures will launch with a PSP-ready copy, only one will include a separate digital copy on DVD, playable on your PC, according to Home Media Magazine. So while Sony is offering the full range of choices for people who buy The Ugly Truth, those who purchase Godzilla won’t get a digital copy unless they have both a Playstation 3 and a PSP.

Sony calls this a “multi-platform” solution, but the only platforms being supported are Sony’s. To me, that seems like a backwards step for the company, which in May was professing its newfound love for open systems. Here’s what Sony chief executive Howard Stringer told Nikkei Electronics Asia in an interview:

“There was a time when it made sense to divide the market with closed technology, and monopolize a divided market, but that’s just not an effective strategy any more. In the Internet universe, there are millions of stars – millions of options that have been created through open technology.”

Indeed, Sony is turning a new leaf in some ways, such as its support for the open ePub format in its e-readers. But the Blu-ray promotion sends a mixed message: We want our hardware to support lots of media, but our media will only work with our hardware.

For perspective, see how Disney’s digital copies are available as a download in either Windows Media or iTunes format, whatever the customer chooses. I’m not sure that Sony could offer those proprietary formats through its competing Playstation Network, but by removing PC-ready digital copies, the company is headed down the wrong path.

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