Tag Archives | Gaming

Ubisoft Goes DRM-Free for Old Games

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

prince_of_persia_-_the_sands_of_time_2003The 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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At Last, the Wii Gets Real SD Storage

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

wiiFunny 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

onliveThere’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

livefire1Oh, 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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$10 Facebook Pac-Man With Strings Attached? No Thanks!

Posted by Jared Newman on March 18, 2009 at 10:07 am

pacmanNamco is dipping its toes into Facebook gaming with two classic titles, Pac-Man and Dig Dug. Like virtually everyone, I enjoy Pac-Man, so I gave the app a spin.

Sadly, this venture has hardly any redeeming value. After installing the “J2Play” application, which apparently enables Namco’s games and others, you still have to download the game itself. The executable is 13MB and the installed product is 34MB.

To sync the game with your Facebook profile (so everyone can witness your skills), you have to log in every time you start playing, even if you’ve already signed into Facebook in a browser. The Pac-Man game itself does not match the smoothness and graphic feel of the original, and you can only play for 10 minutes before you’re asked to cough up $10.

“Such an epic fail,” one commenter writes on the App’s page. “This is pretty much a textbook example of how not to deploy a game on Facebook,” writes another. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Pac-Man is a quick-fix kind of game. It needs to fire up quickly or the whole purpose is lost. Furthermore, it’s not worth $10.

For good measure, here are some reasonable places to get your Pac-Man fix:

-At any of the various Web sites hosting free flash Pac-Man clones.

-At GameTap, where Internet Explorer 6 and 7 users can play online for free (registration to play through the GameTap client is temporarily closed).

-On Xbox Live Arcade, where $5 gets you the game, community high scores and the comfort of playing from your couch.

-At a real arcade, where you’re likely to get bored before your 40 quarters are gone.

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Calls Increase for PS3 Price Cut

Posted by Jared Newman on March 16, 2009 at 2:26 pm

playstation3The story, linked in Harry’s 5Words, is getting old. Sony’s attempts to hush the calls for a Playstation 3 price cut resemble a substitute teacher trying to calm the classroom — a momentary lull that slowly grows into even greater cacophony.

The latest round began earlier this month, when Electronic Arts Redwood Shores manager Glen Schofield said he hoped Sony could figure out how to reconcile the PS3’s high price tag with the current economic climate. Last week, Media Molecule founder Alex Evans — whose company developed LittleBigPlanet — expressed to Gamasutra that the console’s price should go down soon. Analysts have added to the chatter as well, and today, Bloomberg writes that Sony is facing pressure from publishers.

“Sony obviously still has a ways to go with their pricing,” said Peter Moore, the head of EA Sports. Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft Entertainment SA, said game makers stand to gain any time a console slashes its price.

But Sony is in a bind now, because its console is still too expensive to manufacture. In October, market researcher iSuppli cracked open the Playstation 3 and analyzed its innards. The total cost was down 30 percent from the first-generation, to $448.73, but that still means Sony is losing money on every $399 console it sells. A price drop doesn’t seem wise after the company posted its first annual loss in 14 years.

Appropriately, Sony’s senior marketing VP Peter Dille fired back at critics. “Everybody in the development community would love for the PS3 to be free, so they could just sell razor blades,” he said, adding that the company has to worry about profits as well as the console’s install base.

I’ve read elsewhere that if Sony announces a price cut, it’ll happen at the end of March, after the company closes its financial year. My first thought was “bad call,” as most of this season’s major releases — Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5 and the PS3-exclusive Killzone 2 — have come and gone. On the other hand, maybe a price cut is the right prescription as the industry braces for a momentary lull. That way, Sony will be good and ready for the summer and holiday season.

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The Wii's Identity Crisis

Posted by Jared Newman on March 13, 2009 at 2:05 pm

madworldFor over two years, the Wii was regarded as a family system, and in many ways, it still is, with Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Mario Kart commanding most of the revolutionary console’s popularity. But a sudden turn of events hint of changes on the horizon.

This week’s release of Madworld — a high-profile and thoroughly blood-soaked affair — drew the ire of the National Institute on Media and the Family. The game’s main character uses a chainsaw and a variety of deadly environmental objects to maim his foes, earning more points for more gruesome kills. Here’s a statement from the watchdog group:

“In the past, the Wii has successfully sold itself as being the gaming console for the entire family and a way to bring family-game nights back into people’s living rooms. Unfortunately, Nintendo opened its doors to the violent video game genre. The National Institute on Media and the Family hopes that Nintendo does not lose sight of its initial audience and continues to offer quality, family-friendly games.”

I don’t think Nintendo will abandon the family audience — it’s too big of a market to lose, for one thing — but there are signs that the Wii is moving away from its image as a console strictly for kids, parents and the elderly.

Continue Reading →

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Want to Play Resident Evil 5's Versus Mode? It'll Cost You.

Posted by Jared Newman on March 12, 2009 at 7:39 pm

residentevil5We’re hours away from the midnight launch of Capcom’s latest blockbuster, Resident Evil 5, and there’s already news about downloadable content coming in a few weeks. And it will cost an extra $5.

This isn’t not your typical bonus level pack, either. The new content is a Versus mode, in which several players compete against each other. Paid downloadables have been around for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve seen a standard gameplay mode excluded from the disc and sold for an additional cost. I fear that other publishers will follow suit, leaving more significant content for separate purchase while keeping the initial game’s price tag intact.

With all kinds of post-release content, there’s always a question of “too soon.” How long after a game’s release is it appropriate to offer new material? The question is even more pertinent in this instance, because it regards a mode of play that’s usually part of the whole package.

Now, it’s possible that Capcom simply didn’t have the Versus mode ready in time and excluded it from the disc to meet scheduled ship dates, but it could have been offered for free if that was the case. Or perhaps there’s a mindset that not all players are interested in Versus mode, so it isn’t worth including as a standard feature. But that would suggest an a la carte approach to gaming, and that’s not happening here. Consumers aren’t saving any money by skipping the extra mode, they’re simply getting a raw deal.

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Watch Out, Video Games Will Kill You!

Posted by Jared Newman on March 9, 2009 at 3:06 pm

change4lifeThere’s a lot of bile flying around over a British government ad campaign that takes a hearty crack at video games.

“Change4Life,” a joint effort by the British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK and Cancer Research, encourages families to exercise and eat better — noble goals, for sure, except that the adverts behind the initiative use video games as a scapegoat, to the chagrin of the games industry. Most recently, a print ad surfaced with the text “Risk an early death, just do nothing” and an image of a child holding a Playstation controller, looking lethargic. This follows a video from Janaury that shows a clay figure playing a video game, and then zooms in to show fat cells growing inside the body.

So, now there’s an editorial by MCV’s Tim Ingham, taking the British government to task.

“Change4Life’s heart-in-mouth scapegoating of the video games industry is a troubling indictment of a hypocritical Government which flashes us grins when we generate £4 billion a year for its depleted coffers; but which then turns its back and explicitly tells parents that we’re KILLING THEIR CHILDREN,” Ingham writes. He also talks about how the big three console makers “have all moved Heaven and Earth to provide a more socially embedded and (whisper it) healthy interactive experience with this generation of consoles.”

I’m not partial to the “rah-rah, video games are perfect” argument — they are an inherently relaxed pastime, and no amount of controller-waggling can change that — but I wince whenever games are painted as the root of any particular brand of evil.

Still, I’ve got to hand it to the Brits for doing their job. They got eyes on the initiative, which, judging by the Web page, is pretty rational compared to its advertisements. The “60 Active Minutes” section doesn’t specifically attack video games; it only says that “in this modern world [children have] other things to do and plenty of reasons not to go outside and play or run around.”

Sounds about right to me, and it will be a shame if parents don’t get that far, instead taking the ads at face value and fearing video games more than they already do.

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