Author Archive | Jared Newman

First Blog From Major Record Label Emerges. Seriously.

Posted by Jared Newman on April 2, 2009 at 6:39 pm

The music industry is notoriously slow on the Internet uptake. To drive that point home even further, EMI Australia’s new blog, “The In Sound From Way Out,” is apparently the first ever from a major record label. It’s appropriate, then, that the title is borrowed from a 13 year-old Beastie Boys album.

Posts began unceremoniously in late February with a few Pet Shop Boys videos (kudos to Wired for picking up on this now) and continues along at a post or two per day, with sporadic days off. On its face, the blog looks like any other site dedicated to the latest music happenings. There are announcements regarding a variety of groups — the text doesn’t explicitly mention that they’re all EMI bands, but they are — and embedded links to music videos. Today, there’s a post on a really interesting demo package that showed up at the A&R office.

The bloggers seem open to hearing about unsigned bands, too; a box at the top of the screen encourages readers to send tips, and promises to sign groups that the staff really enjoys.

Scanning a couple pages, I quite like the relaxed and open feel of the blog, and that seems to be the point. “As far as we can tell, we are the only major label with this level of openness about who we are and what we do,” the blog’s About page reads. “We hope you respond to that with openness of your own.”

Indeed, the music industry is often stigmatized as a bunch of cold, careless suits. Whether or not music industry blogs such as this can translate into sales is up for debate, but the young, smiling faces of the In Sounds staff are, at minimum, great PR.

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Skepticism Catches Up to Cloud Gaming

Posted by Jared Newman on April 2, 2009 at 3:34 pm

When OnLive revealed its plans last week for a streaming computer game service, it was hard to pick out the criticism with all the buzz in the air. Admittedly, I didn’t bother to question the service’s technical feasibility (I’m still fixated on whether OnLive can really compete on pricing), but now that the dust has settled, there’s plenty of skepticism to go around.

If you missed it, OnLive is supposed to stream high-end PC games to practically any computer with an Internet connection. It does this by handling all the processing on its own servers, and then sending packets of compressed data to the player. A day after OnLive’s unveiling, former Acclaim creative director Dave Perry announced a similar service, called Gaikai.

Shortly after OnLive’s big reveal, an article in Eurogamer challenged the service on processing power and compression abilities. At one point, the article claims OnLive would have to run games at 1,000 frames per second to achieve its claims of 1 ms latency. A video encoding specialist literally laughed out loud when Eurogamer described OnLive’s plans. Still, OnLive is supposedly using new technology, so I’m a little wary of Eurogamer’s argument myself. OnLive founder Steve Perlman told the BBC that Eurogamer wrote “a very ignorant article” that improperly conflates framerate and latency.

Now, a new nugget of doubt has arrived. Crytek, the company behind PC gaming’s gold standard, Crysis, said its own research found that cloud gaming won’t be feasible until 2013. OnLive is scheduled to launch later this year. “They have to provide fast bandwidths and connectivity in order to allow such technology to excel,” CEO Cevat Yerli told GamesIndustry.biz. “So as it was dependent on somebody else, we decided to wait.”

On a related note, Business Insider’s Eric Kangel wonders whether cloud gaming will die if Internet service providers adopt bandwidth caps. Certainly, the dollar per gigabyte model that Time Warner Cable is testing in some cities could make the cost of OnLive and Gaikai spiral out of control.

All of this reinforces what skeptics have been saying all along: Successful tech demos and a bundle of licensing agreements with publishers only go so far. Eventually, cloud gaming will simply have to prove itself in the field.

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Nintendo of America Prez Says No to Microtransactions

Posted by Jared Newman on April 1, 2009 at 5:28 pm

We recently gave Sony the what-for over its views on the iPhone (not a PSP competitor, a marketing exec said), and thanks to Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, it’s Nintendo’s turn to squirm under similar questioning.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime also shows no worries. In short, he says Nintendo’s network of 18,000 DS developers can make better products than the “home-brewed” offerings at the App Store (Um, but what about all the pro developers praising the iPhone?). As with Sony’s argument that it makes hardcore games for serious gamers, I don’t think brushing off the competition is the best strategy, but I’ve already said my piece about that.

Instead, here’s something new: Asked about the iPhone’s recent support for microtransactions — the little extra gaming items you can buy on top of an initial purchase — Fils-Aime said Nintendo is against them. The quote, in part:

“Having talked to a lot of consumers in our market, the consumer wants to pay just once for their overall experience. I’ve heard complaints when consumers buy maps or extra levels. From a Nintendo perspective, we believe selling a game that is fair to the consumer and charging them once instead of multiple times is the best business model.”

As one of the developers in the PocketGamer story cited above says, the pressure is on to keep iPhone games cheap, so naturally there will be lots of in-game content for sale as devleopers try to bring in more revenue. The DS and PSP aren’t shackled by those initially low price points, and with Nintendo’s apparent commitment not to nickle-and-dime the consumer, I’m curious to see which business model will prove more successful.

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The Big Sony News Tomorrow? It Ain't a PS3 Price Cut

Posted by Jared Newman on March 30, 2009 at 3:17 pm

The boy takes the longtime girlfriend out to a fancy dinner and says he’s got a surprise for her. Excitement builds. She’s waiting for the engagement ring. Instead, he pulls out season tickets to the Yankees. This is a scenario I’ve surely seen in a movie, TV show or commercial, but wouldn’t you know, I can’t recall a specific example.

Anyway, I’m reminded of this as the gaming world eagerly awaits Sony’s “global announcement,” reportedly set for tomorrow. Kotaku writes it this way: “Sony dropped Kotaku a line to let us know that something is going down on Tuesday, March 31st. Could it be the long-rumored price cut is finally upon us?”

The excitement, so palpable in those anticipatory words, had to be crushed later in the day. No, Sony tells Joystiq, a Playstation 3 price drop is not in the works. We’ve heard Sony deny the PS3 pricing rumors before, but there’s such finality in the way spokesman Al De Leon delivered the news this time. “SCEA remains focused on the long-term momentum of PS3,” he said. “With the industry’s best software lineup this year, combined with our most aggressive marketing campaign to date, we remain confident in our approach and the value we’re delivering with PS3.”

What’s the big surprise for tomorrow, then? Probably a price cut for the Playstation 2, from $129.99 to $99.99. Joystiq and Kotaku are both calling this one with help from a well-placed KMart source who has access to the store’s price database. Whoopie.

Business Insider also throws out a couple other possibilities, such as a streaming video service for the PS3 (Netflix or otherwise) and a successor to the Playstation Portable. Maybe a big game reveal is in the pipe as well. Whatever. It’s hard to get enthusiastic with all these price cut rumors floating around.

That’s why I’m done. No more writing about PS3 pricing on the word of analysts, retailers, game publishers or other blogs. The thrill is gone; my heart’s just not in it anymore.

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Sims 3 Goes Back to DRM Basics

Posted by Jared Newman on March 27, 2009 at 4:21 pm

Electronic Arts, architects of possibly the biggest Digital Rights Management disaster in PC gaming, are abandoning their wicked ways and going back to a less intrusive copy protection process.

The Sims 3 will use a simple, disc-based authentication system, similar to the one used in The Sims 2. Players won’t have to go online to validate their copy of the game, so presumably there won’t be any control over the number of installs.

A letter from Rod Humble, Executive VP of EA’s Sims Label, says the company has heard the requests from customers. “We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future,” he said.

Humble doesn’t make specific mention of Spore’s DRM, but anyone who followed that fiasco could perceive a reference. The game originally came with three installs and no easy way to deauthorize computers, but EA eventually caved to the outcry and added two more installs and a deauthorization process. Meanwhile, angry players launched an Amazon bomb, and software pirates helped make Spore the most illegally downloaded game in history.

Obviously, this demonstrated that even the most DRM-shackled games can and will be pirated, and as publishers go to greater lengths to stop it, customers will only get more irate. That’s a sad reality, but at least EA is no longer taking it out on legitimate copy owners.

One more thing: The move by EA is part of what seems like a wave of anti-DRM sentiment among publishers. Earlier this week, Microsoft and Steam introduced less burdensome authentication processes, and yesterday Ubisoft released a batch of old games to the Web site Good Old Games without any DRM at all. Perhaps the days of punishing the consumer for pirates’ transgressions are slowly coming to an end.

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Ubisoft Goes DRM-Free for Old Games

Posted by Jared Newman on March 26, 2009 at 5:36 pm

The folks at Good Old Games, or GOG as they like to be called, sent me a beaming press blast today about how they’ve brought megapublisher Ubisoft on board. The Web site’s stock in trade is old video games for download — Duke Nukem, Freespace, MDK, etc. — so now they’ll be getting titles like Beyond Good and Evil and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

But here’s the hook: GOG’s offerings don’t include any Digital Rights Management, so players are free to install as many copies as they want, wherever they want.

Ubisoft has stumbled with DRM in the past. Last summer, legally downloaded copies of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the PC wouldn’t work because they lacked an authentication disc (duh), and the company resorted to an illegal crack from a warez group to fix it (d’oh). A few months prior, DRM rendered Assassin’s Creed unplayable for some rightful owners as it unsuccessfully tried to authenticate over the Internet.

So when Prince of Persia was released for the PC in December, Ubisoft threw its hands in the air and abandoned DRM for the game. Ars Technica suspected that this was just a way for the company to build evidence of how much money they lose without copy protection.

I don’t know whether that’s true, or whether the results from Prince of Persia had any bearing on the deal with GOG, but it’d be great to find out. Unfortunately, the handful of questions I sent Ubisoft’s way have so far gone unanswered.

In any case, I’m not keeping my hopes up for a drastic change in Ubisoft’s philosophy, but I’ll post an update if I hear differently. I suspect the company is willing to play by GOG’s rules in order to get the content out there. The site launched a public beta in September, and its as good a source of revenue for dated PC titles as Ubisoft is going to get. Besides, if there was any danger of widespread piracy for those old titles, it reared its head a long time ago.

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Technologizer: The Guardians of Knowledge?

Posted by Jared Newman on March 26, 2009 at 4:52 pm

typealyzerthinker Do you, our readers, think that Technologizer is resistant to innovation? Organized and efficient? Respectful of authority? Loyal team players?

These were the analyses bestowed upon this blog when I punched the URL into Typealyzer, a free Web tool that reads the text of a blog (though any page will do, really) and determines a personality to match. Apparently, we’re “The Guardians.”

“The Guardians are often happy working in highly structured work environments where everyone knows the rules of the job,” the description reads in part. It also says we “listen to hard facts” (good, as far as journalism goes) and “can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.” For a tech blog? Yikes.

Typealyzer was created by Mattias Östmar of the Swedish media analysis R&D group PRFekt. An article in BusinessWeek says his site uses word frequency analysis to come up with a blog’s personality type, based on the Myers-Briggs model. Östmar’s goal, according to the site’s manifesto, is to “learn more about what motivates and gives us a sense of meaning on a psychological level.” Aside from learning about each other, Östmar hopes providers of goods and services can better reach their audiences.

I’m not thrilled with the analysis we got, so I plugged my personal blog into Typealyzer, and I’m apparently one of “The Thinkers.” Can’t argue with that. Ed Oswald, judging from his blog, is a “Mechanic.”

And Harry? For some reason, typing in HarryMcCracken.com, no joke, confuses the algorithm. “The only supported languages are English and Swedish,” it says. Sorry boss! (Okay, it’s because the URL redirects to another address. He’s actually a “Doer.”)

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At Last, the Wii Gets Real SD Storage

Posted by Jared Newman on March 25, 2009 at 11:12 am

Funny thing about the Internet age: When a video game company announces a significant improvement in its console, there needn’t be any countdown to implementation.

So it went at the Game Developers Conference today, where Nintendo announced common-sense SD card support for the Wii and said users could reap the benefits right now. Sure enough, when I updated my console (which, admittedly, took about 5 minutes), a small SD icon appeared in the lower left side of the Wii menu. Popping an SD card into the console’s front slot and selecting the menu icon revealed a bounty of open channel slots, ready to store my data. Kotaku reports that cards of up to 32 GB are now supported.

While downloadable games — such the classic NES titles offered through the Wii Shop channel — could be transferred to an SD card before, it was impossible to play them without transferring the file back to the Wii’s internal memory. You can now download games directly to the card, or transfer existing ones from the Wii’s internal memory, and load them from the SD menu. To protect against piracy, the Wii still uses a bit of system memory to load these games, but it’s a much more serviceable solution than before.

If you’re the kind of Wii owner who hasn’t drifted far from Wii Sports and maybe a few classic Virtual Console selections, you’ll probably never use the SD support. Still, it’s a big deal because of last year’s addition of WiiWare, a library of new games available for download. Nintendo has been quietly adding titles to the WiiWare catalog since last May, including the excellent World of Goo, but the Wii’s 512 MB built-in flash drive made it difficult to download too many of them. Maybe SD support will change that.

Now, if only Nintendo would allow demos for those WiiWare games, then we’d really have a fully-functional console on our hands…

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OnLive Will Change Gaming Forever. Or Will It?

Posted by Jared Newman on March 24, 2009 at 4:02 pm

There’s a sweet, sweet buzz in the air this week with the unveiling of OnLive, a start-up computer game service that’s inspiring eerie prophecies on the demise of the console and the subsequent rebirth of PC gaming.

It’s a tall order, and I love being a skeptic, but we’ll get to that later. First, let’s talk about the concept.

To use an appropriate buzzword, OnLive is cloud gaming. Instead of relying on $5,000 water-cooled PC rigs with alphabet soup specs, OnLive handles all the processing on its own servers. Thanks to once-impossible compression methods, the data comes to the player over the Internet, allowing even $400 netbooks to play Crysis.

OnLive plans to demonstrate 16 games this week, but some reporters, such as Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, have already watched a preview, and they like what they see. In addition to smooth gaming, OnLive offers player-friendly features such as voice chat and video sharing. With a small device, televisions can run the games in standard definition or 720p high definition.

Game publishers like the idea because it takes the focus off individual consoles and emphasizes the games instead. The possibility of cutting Gamestop out of the equation couldn’t hurt, either, as it puts more money into publisher’s pockets and less into the used game business. Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Atari, THQ, Codemasters, Eidos, Warner Bros., Epic Games and Ubisoft have already signed distribution deals.

With all this in mind, here’s my counterargument to the prophecies:

It seems like OnLive has all the bases covered, but if there’s one serious vulnerability, it’s what we don’t know. The service will be offered as a monthly subscription — presumably, it has to be done this way to pay for server upkeep — but there’s no word yet on pricing or service plans. Obviously that information would be premature now, but eventually OnLive will have to figure out how to attract enough monthly payments to stay viable as a business.

A little rough math shows that a new console every five years and three new games per year (that’s basically the consumption rate we’ve seen in the latest generation, according to Gamasutra) works out to roughly $22 per month, but the actual number depends on the individual player. To truly disrupt that model, I wonder what price OnLive will have to offer and whether it can afford to do so.

I’m not saying the service has no chance of obliterating the existing games industry, but we can’t rule out peaceful coexistence just yet.

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iPhone Games? Sony's Not Worried

Posted by Jared Newman on March 19, 2009 at 5:38 pm

Oh, Peter Dille. The Sony Senior VP of Marketing has a great acid tongue (he recently said game publishers want to “sell razor blades” while Sony shoulders the net loss on console sales), but his latest attempt to bolster the Playstation Portable in the face of the iPhone is off the mark.

Dille said Sony’s not worried about the iPhone’s potential as a gaming device, calling Apple’s game support a “seperate business.”

“The iPhone games and apps are largely diversionary, whereas we’re a gaming company and we make games for people who want to carry a gaming device and play a game that offers a satisfying 20+ hours of gameplay,” he said in an interview with GameDaily.

It’s not clear whether the interview happened before or after Apple unveiled iPhone’s 3.0 operating system, complete with micro-transaction support to the delight of publishers, but I wonder if Dille is singing a different tune now. Downloadable content isn’t necessarily the key to 20-hour gaming — us hardcore players used to get along fine without it — but it’s an indicator of where the iPhone is headed as a games machine.

See, for example, LiveFire, a first-person shooter in development for the iPhone that will offer additional weapons for purchase. If an online shoot-em-up with voice chat isn’t an example of complex, non-“diversionary” gaming, I don’t know what is.

And besides, what’s the harm in supporting simpler games as well? Sony and Microsoft were quick to regard the Wii as a non-competitor, and look where that got them. If I were Sony, I’d be coming up with a strategy to beat the iPhone — and perhaps the company is doing so, and Dille’s comments are just posturing — instead of ignoring it.

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