Digital distribution hits it big

This may be a topic I’ve already discussed, but since I can’t think of anything else to do a post about barring some sort of iMac/iPod Touch discussion (I’m trying to limit that to 1 post a week) I figured I’d comment on some of the latest developments. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and this article pushed me over the edge. Personally I think digital delivery of video games (Steam, Xbox Live, Playstation Network) and media (iTunes, Miro, Amazon MP3) is awesome. I’m not the kind of person who is too concerned about having a physical copy of my media because, in general, I interact with the bulk of it through digital devices anyway. As a result what it really boils down to is the convenience factor of being able to get games and media over the internet instead of from a store.

About a week ago on the 24th of July a brand new full-length game was released on PSN that I’ve been eagerly anticipating. A follow-up to a cult classic for the PS2 that never really hit it big in the US, is the survival horror game Siren: Blood Curse. Because it didn’t sell very well in the US, Sony has opted to offer it online only instead of putting out a physical copy. I know at least one person who was also looking forward to Siren but was turned off because of that. He’s a bigger collector than I am, so for him to get a game but not be able to add it to his physical collection was a letdown. It bugged him so much that he nearly imported the game from Japan but after calculating the cost found out it would be too expensive.

That’s one way to view it, but on the other hand what if Sony just decided to not release the game to the United States at all? Before digital distribution came along that might have been the outcome. That’s one great advantage, it allows games that might not have the popularity or funding to get a full physical release to make it to fans everywhere. Not only that but the digital versions are generally cheaper – in Siren: Blood Curse’s case the full 12-episode game is available on PSN for $40 (you can also purchase 3-episode chunks of the game for cheaper). The blu-ray version, as is the standard, costs $60. Not bad if you’re like me and never look at game manuals and usually just put a game into storage only to resurface every few months when you get the urge to play.

Sony had kind of a lackluster conference at E3 this year but one thing that impressed most of their fans was they showed that they’re making a serious push to bring original content to PSN. Not only full-length games like Siren, but smaller arcade games like PixelJunk Eden, Fat Princess, and Flower. All are original IPs that haven’t seen the light of day on consoles until now, and all are hotly anticipated after being demoed at E3. So as gamers we get new, unique content while the publishers have an additional income stream which is becoming pretty successful based on the article I linked in the first paragraph. If you don’t have time to read it I’ll give you the cliffsnotes: EA was able to make $90 million in the first quarter through digital distribution of their games. Not bad, eh?

Steam has been working under the same model for years now, so the medium is proven. Now with Netflix offering a streaming service for their movies, Apple rolling out the App Store to delivers games and applications directly to their mobile devices, and all of the major consoles offering some sort of digital distribution for games, it seems this is the wave of the future. I approve, how about you? Leave a comment and let me know!

Now Playing:
A Perfect Circle – The Nurse Who Loved Me
Halo 2, Trism

Cuil.com – potential Google killer?

As I’m writing this post it seems as though the biggest web story today is the emergence of Cuil.  Cuil, which is a gaelic word pronounced “cool” that means knowledge, is a search engine.  Big deal, right?  There’s a ton of them.  What makes Cuil special is that it has been given life by former Google employees.  A little more interesting, right?  Despite there being some nice Google alternatives out there (I love ask.com’s interface) no one has been able to come close to toppling the search engine giant.

Cuil also has a larger search index than any competitor.  They boast three times as many pages as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft’s Live search.  Not only that but they rank websites differently than Google does – it’s completely based on keywords and the content that surrounds them and how it relates to the rest of the page.  If this method turns out to be effective it could put an abrupt stop to the quest for linkbacks or the need for some sites to link farm in order to get a higher ranking in Google.  Of course that completely assumes that Cuil would be able to overtake Google as the standard search engine which, let’s be honest, is a bit of a pipe dream at this point.

The last feature that Cuil has going for it is that it doesn’t harvest user information like Google does.  All searches are completely anonymous and result suggestions are based on the content viewed in the search instead of a user’s history.  That’s a pretty good idea and these days I don’t think anyone is turned off by a little more privacy online.  Again the site is definitely still to be proven, but it has a lot of ideas that could be huge if implemented properly.  We might finally be seeing the birth of a Google killer. 

There still are a couple of un-answered questions regarding Cuil though.  First of all, as I mentioned there’s already been so much time and money invested by many companies into SEO aimed at the Google model, what would happen to all of that if Cuil took the forefront?  If their content-related search rankings really work would content finally become king?  I’m kind of torn on this subject.  On the one hand as a user I’d love for better content to get higher ranks.  On the other hand it might make it more difficult for smaller sites to ever get noticed.  Then again, every system can be gamed eventually so that probably wouldn’t be as big of a concern in the end.

The next question is where does Cuil go from here?  In the beginning of this post I mentioned that they were getting a lot of buzz online, so much so that right now the search is unusable.  With Microsoft searching desperately for a company to help them make a play in the online search game plus the fact that Cuil is from former Google employees, I could see them being bought very quickly.  If not from Microsoft then maybe by one of their competitors as a defensive move.  I dunno, maybe I’m nuts but this seems like a no-brainer if you’re Microsoft.  They could pick up Cuil, leave Yahoo behind to fade away and start making progress in their mission to compete with Google.

All of that is just future speculation at this point, but I think it’d be worth your time to go check the site out and try running a few searches if the servers are functioning by the time this post goes up.  It has an interesting user interface and might just turn up some decent results for you!

Now Playing:
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey

iMac “Review”

So at this point I’ve had the iMac for a few days, and I figured I’d post some of my opinions.  I went back to the video format for this post as well, you can find those after the text.  Everything’s going great so far, I haven’t run into a single problem that I can think of.  Leopard is awesome, boot camped Vista is awesome, basically everything’s going well.

The second part of the video is more of an update on the iPod Touch.  Since my first video I’ve applied the Invisible Shield and also toyed around with the App Store a bit.  I go over both in more detail in the videos if that sort of thing interests you. =)

I’m thinking about making my Saturday posts videos from now on…I find doing the videos easier than writing and linking a post, and I figure I can just as easily talk into a camera about whatever subject matter the post would have contained.  If you have any opinions one way or another feel free to leave a comment!  Anyways, without further delay:

iMac “review”
 

Part 2 – iPod Touch update

Now Playing:
Machine Head – Desire to Fire
Eternal Sonata

Taking the plunge

So I finally did it.  It’s finally done.  That is to say it was done a few weeks ago when I ordered my new iMac.  That’s right, I’ve made the switch to the Mac platform.  I suppose that’s only half-true, I still use Windows on a daily basis, but it’s true that both my primary desktop and laptop computers are Macs.  Of course both run Windows, but the hardware at least is all Apple.  I kind of feel like a shill typing this to be honest.

With the massive swell of people getting in line to bash Microsoft lately I’ve always tried to be the one person showing off their strengths and attempting to quell some of the misnomers going around.  I still think Vista is a solid upgrade to XP, and when I’m stuck in XP there are features from Vista that I miss.  If you asked me to sit behind one of two modern computers, one running Windows XP and the other running Windows Vista, I’d gladly use the Vista machine.  I also love the Live services, I use Office as my primary desktop application suite, and my primary gaming platform is my Xbox 360.  So then, why the change?

I’m not going to beat around the bush and try to come up with some deep-rooted philosophical reason for why macs are superior to PCs.  The truth, and I’m not afraid to say it, is that macs are prettier.  The hardware is prettier, the software (including third party apps in general) is prettier.  I’m a sucker for a slick interface I suppose, and for that reason coupled with a refreshingly simple computer purchasing experience, I went mac.  As I’ve said before, when I get a new machine it generally means I’m ordering a ton of different parts and then spending a day putting them all together and troubleshooting.  I have to be up on specs, component speeds, what the best CPU for the price is and so on.  With my iMac the hardest decision I had was deciding between a wired or wireless keyboard (I went wireless).

Enough of that though, I’m sounding like a switcher commercial!  I guess the point is that I’m still interested in all platforms despite the fact that an Apple product is sitting in front of me right now.  I still use the Microsoft software I mentioned above including Windows, I’m just doing it from a mac.  So far everything has gone pretty smoothly,  the 24″ screen is beautiful and I couldn’t be happier.  I also picked up an iPod Touch along with my mac so I’ve spent some time playing with that as well.  If you’d like to see more about that you can watch my first video from the iMac’s iSight camera, a video that I took last night only a couple hours after it was delivered:

Like I said in the video please leave some comments with software recommendation for both the mac and the touch!  I might start doing these videos a little more frequently too, so look out for that in the future.  I’ll also do my best to refrain from posting about my mac too frequently.

Now Playing:
System of a Down – Radio/Video
Eternal Sonata

Sony’s E3 press conference

This is post number 2 of 2 concerning E3.  Earlier this week you heard what I had to say about Microsoft’s offering, and now I’m going to comment on Sony’s.  Unfortunately I missed the Nintendo conference…my most sincere apologies.  When last we met our beloved hero Sony had been delivered a death blow, and I was very curious to see how they would counter-attack.  Heading into E3 I was the most excited for Sony’s conference, but now that I’ve seen both the Microsoft and Sony conference I have to say that the MS conference was the better of the two.

My biggest area of interest was an apparently fraudulent screenshot I posted in my E3 preview which showed a PS2 game store in PSN.  That wasn’t announced unfortunately, but as much as I was looking forward to it I didn’t really expect it.  After all, the PSN video store (which is now live) leaked well before their conference.  I’m assuming that if the PS2 game store was real we would have seen more concrete details about it.  As I said Sony released their video store though, which is good.  Unlike Microsoft whose conference was mostly based on new content coming down the road, this is one area where Sony was able to offer a deliverable on the day of their conference.  The store went up Tuesday night so I promptly checked it out.

The Playstation Store is now split into two categories – games and video.  The game store is exactly how the Playstation Store was before videos were added, with the addition of a button to flip to the video store.  The video store has a great interface with lighter color palettes so it’s easy to differentiate between the games store and the video store.  I took a brief look at some of the content they’re offering and, for day 1, there’s a nice selection.  The movies come in standard or high definition formats and range in price from $4 for rentals to $15 for purchases.  There’s also some TV shows, $1.99 per episode purchase.  They have a lot of older movies to sift through but there’s also some newer ones as well – one movie in particular that caught my eye was Rambo.  I’ve been told I should see it and so that’ll be my first PSN video store rental.  It should be noted that I’m much more inclined to purchase videos from PSN just because my PS3 has hdmi outputs while my 360 is stuck with component.  The only unfortunate part about this new video store is that it was launched the day after Microsoft previewed their new relationship with Netflix.  As is usually the case, just as Sony and the PS3 are catching up with online functionality someone else comes and pushes the envelope just out of their reach.

The next area that I was eager to hear some news about was Playstation Home.  Home has been in the works for it seems like forever, and especially with Microsoft announcing the avatar platform the day before it seemed more important than ever that Sony gives us some concrete information about their Second Life-esque service.  In the end all we really saw was a trailer for Home, showing some of the themed spaces of the game.  They had already announced that games like Uncharted : Drake’s Fortune would have their own dedicated infrastructure in Home and we finally saw a video of how that will work.  From what I saw it just seemed like a building in Home that was dedicated to Uncharted.  The building was decked out with furnishings with the same theme as the game and so on.  That’s all well and good but I really expected them to announce a launch date or at least do a thorough walkthrough of the service and say that they were going to start an open beta or something.  If Sony is unable to publish Home by the time Microsoft deploys their avatar system via the Fall software update it’s going to be a bit of a failure.  We’ve heard about it for so long that, at this point anyways, it seems like it’s never coming.

As far as games go there was a lot of attention paid to the games that I already mentioned in the preview.  Resistance 2 was featured with a single player demo, and it was really impressive.  Little Big Planet was turned into a presentation platform of sorts showing off the flexibility behind its gameplay based on user-created content.  Killzone 2 was shown in a cinematic trailer.  Aside from those three there was quite a bit of attention paid to upcoming PSN titles which was cool.  I’m really glad that Sony’s taking downloadable games seriously and not just putting out classic arcade games every week.  Games like PixelJunk Eden and Fat Princess confirmed that they have a dedication to putting out original content on a consistent basis.  They didn’t just stop at bite-sized games though, they also talked about full games that would be released on PSN for download.  First they showed Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty that looks to be a downloadable expansion pack of sorts for Ratchet and Clank  Future: Tools of Destruction, a game that I finished not too long ago.  Quest for Booty (it’s fun to type, I must admit) will expand on the story found in Tools of Destruction and will only cost $15.  The other game is Siren: Blood Curse.  Blood Curse is another PS3 exclusive that’s actually a follow-up to a cult classic from the PS2 days.  It’ll be delivered in episodes one at a time which integrates into the structure of the original game quite well.  After playing the demo I’m pretty confident that I’ll be picking up both Quest for Booty and Siren when they drop.

Other news related to Playstation games includes the introduction of Greatest Hits pricing for some games in North America, as well as a very solid PSP offering.  Greatest Hits are basically legacy PS3 games (launch titles) that have seen a 50% price-cut and are re-packaged as a Greatest Hit.  You can find a list of all of the Greatest Hits games here, but the ones I’m most interested in are Resistance: Fall of Man and Ninja Gaiden Sigma.  I’ve been wanting to play Resistance but grabbing a launch title for $60 is a hard pill to swallow.  Being able to pick up two launch titles for the price of an ordinary game is a pretty good value instead.  Hopefully they’ll add more games to the Greatest Hits lineup soon.  As far as the PSP goes, there were a few games that interested me.  There’s going to be a Resistance spin-off built exclusively for the PSP called Resistance: Retribution as well as a sequel Patapon, one of the most unique games I’ve ever seen on any platform.  Also mentioned was a portable version of my favorite PSN game Super Stardust HD.  Those three games alone are enough to make me consider purchasing a PSP, but that’s not all.  All of the videos on the PSN video store can be converted to a PSP format, meaning you can take them with you wherever you go.  That’s pretty enticing.

The only whizzbang game announcement was a brand new franchise called MAG (Massive Action Game).  Although details are sketchy, the biggest seller of this title is the 256-player online mode.  It’s a shooter much in the same vein as a Battlefield game, just on a much more massive scale.  All that was shown during the conference was a trailer, and you can tell that the game is still sort of a concept at this point, but it’s something to get excited about.  MAG was branded as the type of game that only the PS3’s complex hardware could manage but it makes me wonder what sort of lag I’ll see with 255 other players running around.

To sum it all up this year’s conference was heavy into stressing Playstation 3 as a long-term platform.  The first 15 minutes of the conference was all about showing the longevity of the prior Playstation systems, and it seems like Sony is trying to establish the PS3 for as long as 10 years.  The overall theme of the conference was "If you think this is good, just wait until next year!"  That’s all well and good but I don’t know how many people are going to go out and purchase a PS3 based on promises of a better tomorrow.  I said that Microsoft had a solid showing and in comparison Sony had a weak one.  To take as hard of a hit as losing Final Fantasy XIII exclusivity was and not have much to fight back with is…well, bad news.

Now Playing:
Shane MacGowan – Roddy McCorley
Eternal Sonata

Microsoft’s E3 press conference

Microsoft’s press conference this year was very interesting and it hinted at a lot of change in their strategy moving forward.  It started out as you would normally expect – some of the most highly anticipated 360 games were shown off.  These ranged from Fallout 3 and Fable 2 to the star of the show, Gears of War 2.  All were given their chance to shine with a singleplayer demo, and they all looked pretty damn great.  After that, when the "hardcore" crowd was satisfied, the conference took a drastic turn.

With the success of the Nintendo Wii it has become more and more enticing for companies like Microsoft and Sony to try their best to appeal to the the family market of gamers.  What this means is more and more games that are familiar and easy for non-gamers to play become popular.  Whether this is good or bad for the gaming industry can be debated in a myriad of different ways, but it’s important to note that it seems like Microsoft is headed in that direction.  They started out by announcing something that I had hoped for, an overhaul of the Xbox Live user interface.  Despite having less efficient use of screen real estate the new UI is pretty slick looking.  Gone are the fisher-price colored blades, and now everything is integrated much more pictorially.  My biggest complaint about Live’s interface right now is that everything seems to be text.  Obviously Microsoft saw that this was a problem and so they’ve made the interface much more visually stimulating this time around.  Unfortunately it’s hard to explain a user interface without images, so I’ll go ahead and provide one of those now.

Okay so the image is a little small, my bad.  If you’d like to see a bigger version there’s a nice page on Xbox.com that you should check out.  You’ll notice that the first icon in the front (blue) shows a cartoony image of a user.  This is what I was talking about when I was speaking of Microsoft’s efforts to reach more casual players much like the Wii.  This new digital representation of the gamer is called an avatar, and it’s basically a mix of Nintendo’s Mii characters and PlayStation Home’s characters.  You can create and customize your avatar with different clothes and hairstyles which will undoubtedly cost you some MS points from Live.  Your friends list will now be a compilation of your different friends’ avatars instead of just a list of their gamertags.  Your avatar will also take the spot of your gamerpic as identification in games.  I can’t really decide how to feel about the whole avatar thing because I obviously haven’t used it for myself.  It could be cool, it could be a gimmick.  That being said I’m happy to get the user interface refresh, I think the new UI looks pretty slick and it adds some interesting functionality.

The next major announcement after the new interface/avatar functionality was that, at long last, Microsoft has partnered with Netflix.  This is huge!  I never expected them to do this because it seems sort of like a cannibalization of the Xbox Live video marketplace, but along with the Fall update Xbox Live subscribers (gold members only) will be able to watch movies from their Netflix instant streaming queue right from the 360.  It’ll be free aside from the usual $50 a year Live subscription, and they’ve even announced that you’ll be able to party up with your friends’ avatars to watch Netflix movies together as a group.  This sounds pretty interesting but I don’t know if I’ll want to be talking to people while trying to watch a movie.  Alternatively it could be that everyone would just get together and be silent because they’re paying attention to the movie, so I’m still trying to figure out if this is a feature I’ll use.  The important thing about the group watch feature is that it also works when you’re not watching a movie.  What that means is that group voice chat is finally coming to the 360.

After the Netflix announcement they spent a lot of time demonstrating several casual games slated for this holiday season.  Much like the avatars this is another attempt to drink some of Nintendo’s milkshake by enticing the casual crowd to pick up an Xbox 360.  They showed off a sequel to the trivia game "Scene It?" which uses the big-button controller.  From there they moved on to "You’re in the Movies" which invites players to get in front of their Xbox Live vision cam and goof off doing a bunch of different stunts which are animated with a backdrop on-screen (kind of like a green screen).  Based off of the different participants performance rating a movie is compiled using their animations at the end.  Finally "Lips," a karaoke game from the makers of Elite Beat Agents, rocked the crowd with a special performance.  The game comes with a plastic microphone peripheral and works with any .MP3 you provide.  I have to say, during this whole section of the conference I kind of dozed off.  These kind of games don’t really interest me much because in general they set you up to look like an idiot in front of your friends and family.

Towards the end of the conference a representative from Square-Enix took the stage.  If you aren’t familiar with Square-Enix, they’re responsible for some of the most popular Japanese RPG’s including the Final Fantasy series.  I was impressed at first because they announced 3 separate original games for the 360.  It’s obvious that Microsoft was really trying to reel in some of the Japanese market.  Then, at the end of the conference, a megaton announcement was made: Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the Xbox 360.  Me personally, I’m not a huge fan of this sort of game, but FFXIII was one of the last fully exclusive traditional franchise games that Sony had in their possession.  Obviously by securing it on the 360 as well Microsoft has dealt the PS3 a huge blow.

Alright then, what’s missing?  First, Microsoft didn’t announce the rumored motion-sensitive controller.  I think that’s awesome.  As I mentioned in my E3 preview I really hoped that the whole thing was just a rumor and that seems to be the case.  Another huge area that was completely devoid of coverage was Microsoft’s Games for Windows initiative.  In past years they’ve at least previewed some titles for it, but not this year.  All-in-all Microsoft had a lot of interesting announcements this year, I think they had a really solid showing.  I’m looking forward to Sony’s conference today (7/15) because they have some ground to make up.

Now Playing:
The Tossers – Pub and Culture
Eternal Sonata

E3 Anticipation

Remember back when the real E3 was in May?  Back when we’d have all of this news by now?  That’s why it seems really weird that E3 is finally coming around this week.  Before it shows up I wanted to make a post talking a little bit about what I’m looking forward to seeing or, more realistically, not seeing depending on how things go.  It’s actually a surprisingly short list (and yet this post ended up being crazy long), but let’s delve right in!

First off, I want to see that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Clear Sky is on target.  I’ve seen some videos of this game lately and the DirectX 10 visual effects are just amazing.  That coupled with the story and the atmosphere which made me fall in love with the first game and I think this will be a big hit.  I’m just hoping it’s not a sleeper like the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was because this is a franchise that could really get PC gamers excited again.  It hits me in a sweet spot, both because the game’s subject matter (the deserted areas around Chernobyl during/after the time of the disaster) and its unique gameplay.  I’ve already talked a lot about this game in previous posts though so I’ll just throw up the latest trailer and move on:

Next up my interest moves to the consoles I own.  I have to say I’m not really that interested in much from Microsoft this time around.  It seems that the biggest news (these things always leak early, right?) is that there will be a $50 price drop for the 20GB version of the console.  That’s cool for people who are new to the 360 but it obviously doesn’t interest me that much.  There’s also rumors of a new 60GB version of the console which would take the current Premium 20GB version’s place.  How that would work with the price drop I’m not sure, unless the price drop is just to clear inventory.  None of this is confirmed of course so it all might be false, we’ll see.

I have to say that I really hope this whole motion controller for the Xbox 360 thing blows over.  The reason I like the 360 is because it’s a place I can go and still get some classic quality controller games, if I wanted motion controls I would have picked up a Wii!  It seems like another way to segment the audience (the first way being releasing a version of the console without a hard drive) and it just doesn’t seem like that great of an idea.  How can Microsoft expect to topple the Wii at this point?  I’m sure they’re looking at it the same way they looked at the iPod when they launched their Zune, i.e. if they can take just a small share of the market then they’ll be happy. 

I will say that I’m hoping they maybe give us a sneak peak at what will hopefully be a huge Fall update for the dashboard.  I’d like to see a lot of reworked and some functionality added since paying $50 a year is beginning to see a little overkill for what I’m getting.  PSN is starting to catch up in a lot of areas and it’s free so I think Microsoft has to keep finding ways to keep Xbox Live subscribers interested.  Hopefully that means a UI refresh.  There’s also a rumor that they’re introducing a new feature called "avatars" which will be very similar to the Nintendo Wii’s "Mii" functionality.

Finally is Sony.  Sony’s press conference is the one I’m most looking forward to from a few different perspectives.  First, it seems like they’re making the most moves by introducing different services to expand their online offering.  From the recent 2.41 update which I blogged about to the confirmation of a new movie distribution store, Sony is bringing out a lot of new stuff.  There’s also the constantly delayed Playstation Home which will hopefully go into beta sometime soon…basically there’s a lot of potential for new software to enhance the overall experience.  I always keep in mind that Sony is pretty new to the whole online gaming scene and tends to be a little behind/slow to market…what that means is I’m not exactly expecting miracles.  I’m just glad that they’re working on it.

I’m also interested in Sony games though.  If there’s one complaint I have about my PS3 is that there aren’t enough exclusive titles for it.  After playing Metal Gear Solid 4 I’ve realized that the PS3 has so much potential that a 1st-party developer could capitalize on.  The good news is that there are some exclusive titles coming later this year.  The most notable among these are Little Big Planet, a puzzle-platformer based heavily on user-generated content, Resistance 2, and Killzone 2.  Resistance 2 is a follow-up to the PS3 launch title Resistance: Fall of Man which I still haven’t played (I’m waiting for the Greatest Hits version).  Resistance, much like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., has a very intriguing story so for that alone I’m looking forward to playing both games.  They’ve also boasted an impressive online offering of cohesive 60-player multiplayer plus a separate co-op campaign that focuses on the story.  Sounds good!

There’s also Killzone 2 which has had a pretty sordid past.  I remember seeing the original CG trailer for the game and calling bullshot, but the game is really shaping up.  It doesn’t look as good as that trailer did lo those many E3’s ago but it’s still the prettiest shooter I’ve seen.  I’m a sucker for epic large-scale battles and that’s exactly what the latest (real) trailer shows:

These games are more examples of how amazing Sony exclusives can be so I’d love to see some new ones announced.  The last thing I’m truly excited for is a rumored Playstation 2 store on PSN.  There was a single, quite possibly faked, screenshot released on a forum not too long ago showing PS2 downloadable games on PSN.  The most notable game that was shown was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but what I really want is Metal Gear solid 3: Snake Eater since I never got to play that.  As I’ve lamented many times before I never owned a Playstation 2 so there are many other games that I’d like to play and, since I have the 40GB version of the PS3, I don’t have access to backwards compatibility so game downloads are the only way that’ll happen.

To be fair I suppose I should comment on Nintendo too, but since I only own a Nintendo DS that’s kind of hard to do.  There are rumors that Nintendo will show a new revision of their DS console which sounds reasonable at this point.  There’s also the fact that they really need to address the issue of storage on the Wii because many gamers are complaining about running out of space for their Virtual Console games.  Hopefully they’ll sort that out and hell, maybe they’ll show a new version of the Wii?  Expect a post sometime next week on what actually happened at E3 instead of all of this speculation!

Now Playing:
Jedi Mind Tricks (feat. Sean Price) – Beyond the Gates of Pain
Eternal Sonata

iPhone 3G launch

I literally just finished watching Leo Laporte’s spectacular 24-hour live stream dedicated to the iPhone 3G’s launch, and despite only catching the beginning and end I have to give him a ton of props for not only making it all the way through, but for keeping it interesting the whole time to boot.  When I first heard that he was going to try and put out 24 hours of content based around one phone, which has already been covered to death, I was pretty skeptical.  To my surprise there was always something new to talk about, and it was the first glimpse of what I’m sure was Leo’s original vision with TWiT Live – he had “in the field” reporters at tons of different Apple stores across the country feeding him info with live video streams from services like Skype, oovoo and Qik.  Sure there were technical difficulties but this medium is still quite young.  All-in-all it was surprising just how well it worked.  Some of the notable participants who showed up while I was watching include Kevin Rose, Cali Lewis, Randal Schwartz, Liana Lehua, and Jason Calacanis.  Those are just the people who were on via video too!  At around 4:00AM Leo’s time, just when he was starting to fade about 18 hours into the broadcast, Alex Lindsay showed up in-studio only to be followed by Scott Bourne a couple hours later.  I have to admit It was kind of cool seeing the old salty dogs sticking it out in the end.

As important as Leo’s broadcast was to the progression of video broadcasting via the interwebs (his cumulative viewer count was near 300,000, a steady 8,000 watching at any given time) I wanted to discuss the actual iPhone 3G launch too.  I didn’t expect it to be nearly as big as it was.  In almost every location the geeky correspondent designated for that store said that they were seeing numbers larger than they saw at the first iPhone’s launch a year ago.  That’s kind of a shocker because the queues of people lining up in advance (the night before) were significantly smaller than they were for iPhone G1.  I suppose that makes sense.  Most consumers probably thought “well hey, the iPhone is already out and this is just an upgrade so it’s not that big of a deal.”  Then when hundreds of people started showing up a few hours before launch I’m sure they realized they had a significant wait ahead of them, and their troubles didn’t end there.

Long lines are great for Apple and AT&T, but technical difficulties are not.  During a launch in Denver I recall an Apple Store employee coming out to pump up the crowd while I watched the stream.  It was kind of ridiculous now that I think about it, I mean here’s this guy acting like he’s just about to cure cancer when in fact he’s whipping the crowd into a “frenzy” to go spend $200 on a phone with more expensive rates than its predecessor…well, I digress.  After getting the crowd worked up the doors were opened at about 8:04AM Denver time and the first wave of 10 or so customers went in the store.  Now if you hadn’t been following the news about the iPhone 3G’s launch one big area of skepticism was that, this time around, phones were required to be activated in-store after purchase.  That was the plan anyways.  As it turned out, 30 minutes after that first wave of customers went in, the same Apple store employee came out and proclaimed to the crowd that he had good news and bad news.  “It’s time for a lesson in technology!” he exclaimed.  “First off let me say the iPhone 3G is AMAZING. The only problem is that the technology interface for activation, which is wholly unrelated to Apple, is having technical difficulties!”  This wasn’t a problem for Denver alone, reports poured in from tons of different Apple stores across the country that phones couldn’t be activated in-store because AT&T’s servers collapsed under the weight of all the new users.

Now if you recall the first iPhone’s launch there was a similar situation.  The only difference?  Customers were able to activate their phones in the comfort of their own home from behind their computers using iTunes.  Sure there were the “This is taking forever!” complaints at the time because the servers were getting hammered, but at least they didn’t have to stand outside in a line for hours while their frustration mounted.  Another video stream from an Apple store in San Francisco showed Liana Lehua interviewing the first man in line, a man who waited 36 hours dressed in a suit for his iPhone 3G, who was sent out to pack up his tent without even getting his hands on the phone because of activation problems.  Thankfully that wasn’t the case because most stores’ employees started sending customers home with their phone to activate it over iTunes after all.  If stores were unable to sell the phone at all it would have been an epic disaster for Apple.  All the while you have to expect Steve Jobs is somewhere howling.  As I write this post I’m sure there are still thousands of peoples lined up outside of Apple stores waiting to get their iPhone 3G.  In fact, some might be leaving the lines at this point out of frustration.  Of course this is all just first-day server shock and (hopefully for Apple and AT&T) these problems will have cleared up in a day or two, but you would think they’d have seen this coming?

So otherwise, how is the iPhone 3G?  Is it worth all of that heartache?  I can’t comment on the full experience as I haven’t seen one.  What I did see was Leo Laporte demoing the new App Store which looks awesome.  The interface is sweet aside from some confusion about which button to actually click to download an app, and there’s a surprising amount of software available for a first-day release.  Apps range in price from free to $75 (the $75 app is aimed at pilots and is a definite outlier, most were $4.99 – $9.99).  I’m excited to try it out personally, but for that I think I’m going to stick with an iPod Touch.  More on that in the coming week(s).  I’ll be interested to see how all of these activation difficulties will play out over the next week.  Will people be outraged, or will they simply forget it about it in a day or two?  We shall see!  Thanks again to Leo Laporte at TWiT Live for providing the coverage I used to write this post.

Now Playing:
The Pogues – Bottle of Smoke
Metal Gear Solid 4 (trying to make my way through again, this time without any kills or alerts)

2.41 – Welcoming the PS3 to 2005

As much fun as I’ve had lately with my PS3 and Metal Gear Solid 4, there was one area that I always found extremely aggravating.  Because (as I mentioned in my review) MGS4 was a megaton release I’ve found that a lot more of my friends have been using their PS3’s lately.  That’s all well and good, except for when you’re "stuck" playing your game and you can’t interact with them in any way.  For example, until this week if I was going through the paces as Old Snake and one of my friends logged in I would be notified.  "So and so has logged in," my screen would say.  Going a step further sometimes that user would send me a message, "New message from so and so."  The only problem was in order to hook up with this person in a game, or read my messages, or send a reply back I would have to quit the game and go back to the PS3’s home screen.

That’s why for a long time an in-game Cross Media Bar (also referred to as the XMB – the PS3’s user interface) has been at the top of the list of requested features for most PS3 users.  A little over a week ago it seemed as if our prayers had finally been answered, with firmware version 2.4 not only did we finally get access to the XMB from inside of games simply by pushing the PS button on the controller, but trophies (read achievements for my Xbox Live buddies out there) were finally unlocked.  I was pretty excited for that obviously, so sometime last Wednesday afternoon I turned my PS3 on to grab the update but was saddened to see that there was no update.  I checked the news sites to confirm that 2.4 was supposed to be out that day, and was doubly saddened to see that the update had to be pulled because it was bricking a select few user’s consoles.

Let’s not dwell on the negative part of this story though!  This past Tuesday the update was re-released as version 2.41, completely brick-free, and I have to say I’m already wondering how I was able to get around without it.  As I said the most important change is that you can finally interact with your friends list from inside of a game, which includes viewing your friends list and reading/replying to messages.  There’s also support for in-game soundtracks in select games which is cool, plus you can change all of your settings.  That doesn’t sound too important but if you’ve ever been trying to get into a multiplayer game and your bluetooth headset wasn’t activated you’ll appreciate it.

There’s still some neglected features.  For example if you try to view photos or videos in-game (some people would ask why?) you’ll be asked to exit the game first.  The same is true for features like the Playstation Store and the PS3’s web browser.  Being able to pop into a game and then pull up the browser to hit a fan site or something would be cool, not to mention being able to download expansion packs for whatever game you’re playing if the inspiration strikes.  On a related note you can also manage your Playstation Store downloads from the in-game XMB.

So really, as the title of this post denotes, there’s nothing revolutionary about this update.  It brings the PS3 almost up to speed with where the Xbox 360 was at launch in 2005.  This functionality should have been introduced much earlier I think, but at least it’s finally here.  My favorite part is that I get to interact with the PS3’s dashboard UI a little more frequently.  The more I use it the more I realize that it’s both easier to use and prettier than the Xbox 360’s guide.  That’s true of the Playstation Store as well…for a free service PSN has really stepped it up on the aesthetic front.

Now Playing:
The Tossers – Good Mornin’ Da
Day of Defeat: Source

How Valve gets it right

Last week I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that, even though they had just updated Team Fortress 2, Valve had put out an update for Day of Defeat: Source which added a new map plus 53 achievements.  Day of Defeat is a pretty classic multiplayer game – it’s been around for ages, first using the original Half-Life engine (a modification of the Quake engine known as GoldSrc) and then later when Day of Defeat: Source was released.  Day of Defeat: Source, as you might expect, is a remake of the original using Valve’s very popular Source engine that has been used for their most recent flagship titles (Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and so on).

When Day of Defeat: Source was announced I was pumped because I played the original to get away from Counter-Strike back in the day.  I remember hearing that it was pretty weak, but honestly I became enamored with its play style.  The game works like a lot of multiplayer games do these days, basically two teams (Allies and Axis) trying to control a certain number of points on the map.  The major difference is that once one team controls all points they win.  This becomes increasingly difficult as you work your way towards the enemy’s base because they spawn close to their point and are readily available to defend it.  There are different classes you can choose to play who use different weapons and perform differently strategically as a result, and basically you need to work as a team to win the round.

With that being said this post wasn’t really supposed to be a Day of Defeat review.  Instead I simply wanted to comment on the fact that Valve was able to breathe new life into the game by adding these achievements.  Because Day of Defeat: Source came out long before achievements started being incorporated into Steam, I never thought it’d be eligible for achievements.  That’s why I was surprised by the announcement I guess.  This is one area where PC gaming still has an edge over console gaming, I think.  Not only can these older games be refreshed with updates like this, but the updates are usually free and I don’t have to worry about the conversion rate for MS points to real money when acquiring the goods.

Before this announcement I had absolutely no drive to play Day of Defeat: Source again.  Like I said, it’s one of my favorites, but with all of the new games coming out it was hard to justify going back to it.  With that being said, since the update it has consumed the bulk of my game time.  Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, recently spoke about the state of the PC gaming industry and how it still has the most potential out of any of the gaming platforms.  During his discussion one of the things he mentioned was that Valve’s ability to continually market to PC gamers via their Steam client was very powerful.  He also mentioned that Blizzard is making enough cash on World of Warcraft to create a new blockbuster film every month, but that’s beside the point.  Valve ran a promotion this past weekend which let people play Day of Defeat for free.  They’ve done this in the past and it’s a very powerful form of marketing.

First they release the update which everyone on the gaming news sites talks about and it generates buzz, then they make the game free for a few days so people who haven’t played it can try it out.  Obviously the chance of some folks wanting to play more when their 3 day trial expires is pretty good, so it boosts the sales of Day of Defeat: Source not just from Steam (Valve’s digital distribution and PC gaming community platform) but in traditional stores as well.  It’s so much different than your normal console release which gets a ton of advertising leading up to its release, but then all but dies off once the game is out.  So really Valve is able to keep their games relevant to newcomers and fun for early adopters.  Nothing wrong with that.

I still need to jump into Team Fortress 2 to try and earn some of the Pyro weapon unlocks, but Day of Defeat has distracted me from that.  It’s also making me wonder which other classic Valve franchises will see achievements in the future…maybe Counter-Strike: Source?  Could be interesting.  If you haven’t tried Steam I suggest you go check it out.  When it came out the service was pretty bland and basically just gave you access to your games without needing to insert the media.  All you needed was your CD-key to install them from the disc.  That’s still the case for older games (the original Half-Life for example) but since then it’s become more convenient to just download their new releases instead of purchasing them from a store.  I believe Half-Life 2 was the last Valve game I bought from a store, everything since then I’ve downloaded through Steam.  There’s also friend support like Xbox Live has, which is nice.

Now Playing:
The Pogues – The Body of an American
Day of Defeat: Source