Windows 7 pricing

I was watching Leo Laporte’s live stream this past weekend, and he mentioned something that is very important when it comes to the release of Microsoft’s new Windows 7.  Pricing and bundling.  There was a lot of hubbub made about Windows Vista’s many different skews, whether Home Basic, Premium, Business, or Ultimate (am I missing any?).  It caused mass confusion for consumers.  Compared to Apple’s approach of one single version of the OS it was just way too onvoluted.  Another obvious comparison to Apple would be OS pricing.  How much was OS X Leopard at launch?  $129.  Vista?  It’s currently $199.95 for the Basic, near-worthless edition and all the way up to $319.95 for Ultimate.

This is my plea to Microsoft – please take a page out of Apple’s book and make Windows 7 relatively inexpensive, and do your best to release as few editions as you can.  I think that an $80 upgrade fee from Vista to Windows 7 would be perfect.  A cheaper cost, especially considering Vista’s tarnished name and the general eagerness of users to move on to the next version of Windows, would do quite well (and that’s not even mentioning the economic incentives for not charging an arm and a leg).  But that’s not all.

It has been said that Windows 7 is basically just what Windows Vista should have been originally.  Having used 7 I agree.  That doesn’t mean that Windows 7 isn’t better than Vista, but it’s immediately evident to anyone who has used both that they’re cut from the same cloth.  Microsoft would do well to acquiesce to their customers by admitting that Windows 7 is more or less a fix, upgrade, or patch, and to do so would only require modest pricing.  Now if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you’ll know that I have nothing against Vista, but 7 is Vista done right.  Let me say that again: Windows 7 is Vista done right.  Don’t spurn your customers (especially those who have already adopted Vista) by giving Windows 7 the typically expensive Microsoft operating system price tag.

It’s time for Microsoft to rebuild their tarnished reputation, whether that reputation is legitimate or not.  I can think of no better way to start such a project than by giving us a good deal.  A cheap entry price will get Windows 7 into the hands of the users that want it most as quickly as possible, and Microsoft can begin to cultivate brand loyalty in the operating system market again.  That’s what they need more than anything right now.  Market share is one thing, brand loyalty is completely different – just look at Apple.  So then, what do I think is a good pricing model for Windows 7?  I already mentioned around $80 for an upgrade.  So with an $80 upgrade I’d have to say about $150 for a full retail copy of the operating system would make sense.

Please Micorsoft, it’s not time to be greedy.  Make your customers happy and you’ll be grateful that you did so in the end.

Xbox 360 – the new SNES?

Not too long ago I was reflecting back on this generation of consoles.  Of course to an outsider it’s clearly evident that the “winner” in terms of console hardware sales would have to be the Nintendo Wii, and I don’t question that for a second.  Still, there’s a lot to be said of the Wii’s lack of software – i.e. games worth playing.  When it comes to strictly software I’d have to say that the Xbox 360 wins hands down.  In fact it might just be the most complete lineup of any console I’ve ever owned.

So that brought a very important question to my mind…is the Xbox 360 this generation’s SNES?  If you’ve been involved in the gaming community for any length of time and are roughly my age (or better yet, a bit older) you’ll know that most gamers consider the SNES to be the epitome of game consoles.  It had a ton of great games, ranging from established first party franchise titles to lesser-known newcomers in the form of 3rd party titles.  The SNES was on the cusp of the gaming revolution in the United States, coming just before developers and publishers started pandering to wider audiences in order to cash in and just after the technological advances necessary to take the gaming experience to another level.

The Xbox 360 is also in such a period.  With the 360 we’ve seen the standardization of online gaming services.  Xbox Live on the original Xbox was just a nice addition to the gaming experience, but the 360 (as well as the other consoles, though none have achieved to such a high degree as the 360) has made online services, including multiplayer and community features, a necessity.  I cannot imagine playing games without being able to join up with my friends, play cooperatively online, or download arcade games and add-on content for the games I already own.  This has become the rule rather than the exception.

Of course as I mentioned, it’s all about the games.  On the 360, including first and third party titles, we’ve had a steady flow of quality games since the launch.  Sure there have been dry periods but on the whole I can say I’ve always had a game to look forward to no matter what time of year it was.  Right now for instance I’m looking forward to the GTA4 expansion, FEAR 2, and Resident Evil 5.  That’s a total of three huge releases in the typically slow late winter period.  In the busiest time of the year, the holiday rush, we’ve been buried consistently in great games and each year has been proclaimed the “best year in gaming.”  There are almost too many games to play, and even if there’s nothing worth playing that came out recently you can always visit the back catalog of games you probably missed.  That’s far more than I can say of the PS3 (which I own), a system that seems to get a couple quality exclusive titles a year.  Those games are great but they’re too few and far between…hopefully that’ll change this year.

So what do you think?  Ten years from now will gamers be looking back at 2005 – 20?? and  proclaiming it as the best era in gaming because of the 360?  It’s possible.  It’s also possible that the whole “greatest console” or “greatest era” thing is just generational.  Since I played SNES as a kid that’s my favorite era, but since kids growing up today are playing the Xbox 360 (or Wii, PS3) this will be their favorite era.  With all that having been said, nostalagia be damned: this is one hell of a time to be a gamer.

CES 2009

Today I’m going to continue our trip through early-2009 conventions by talking about some of the announcements from CES that I thought were interesting.

Let’s start with the keynote.  This was the first year that Bill Gates wasn’t the headliner, but I think Steve Ballmer did a good job as far as Microsoft keynotes go.  They didn’t really announce much, and a lot of the cool stuff was just review of what we’ve known for a while.  It seemed like a sort of “State of the Union” Microsoft style, where-in the crew informed the crowd about all of the great things the company has been up to for the past year.  The highlight was definitely the demo of Windows 7, as well as the (predictable) announcement that the Windows 7 public beta would be out soon.  It’s out now and I’ve had an opportunity to play with it a bit, but that’s for another day.  To see the demo, you can check it out here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/events/ces/default.aspx

The other major announcement that’s caught a lot of people by surprise was the “rebirth” of Palm in the form of the Palm Pre.  I have to say I met this bit of news with a great deal of anticipation, but then I watched the presentation and I was stunned.  The Palm Pre (running Palm’s new Web OS) is, in my opinion, the first true competitor to the iPhone.  Of course this is all speculation right now because a device looking cool in a demonstration and actually being cool in your hand are two different things, but Palm seems to be the first company since Apple to use the “Apple approach” in creating a touchscreen smartphone.  The OS looks great, featuring an easy-to-manipulate interface and some features that might even have iPhone users drooling.  I’ll save the details for a later post so I can dedicate enough words to the device to do it justice.  Just know I was impressed.  You can view the Palm presentation here:

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/palm-pre-ces.html

Other than that most of the announcements were hardware and gadget-based.  It’s impossible to do a complete rundown of all of the devices that were announced, so instead I’ll just mention a couple of the things that caught my eye.  Firstly, the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is worth mentioning because it has a freakin’ slide-out screen!  Pretty cool.  Also pretty expensive.  This new laptop is meant to be a desktop replacement, and finally solves the conundrum of enhancing a laptop’s monitor size without sacrificing portability.  It’s obvious you can hook most laptops up to an external display, but as I mentioned, you lose the ability to roam because your computer is tethered to that display.  The W700ds solves this problem by having a 10″ slide-out display, giving the user a whole lot of LCD goodness.  It’s a little niche, but apparently the W700ds has been targeted towards artists since it has built-in Wacom functionality.  Not to mention a $3,663 starting price tag.  Ouch.

Camera and display technology was also a big hit this year at CES, but I’m going to stay with notebook computers.  The Dell Adamo looks quite stunning.  It’s a very thin machine sporting an almost Macbook Air-like quality to it.  The Adamo has been branded a “luxury laptop.”  It’s extremely thin and has some industrial design that’s only rivaled by Apple’s line of notebooks.  Dell was kind of sketchy on the details but it seemed to me that the notebook wouldn’t be the only computer or device in the line, perhaps they’re looking to debut some multimedia devices with it as well?  At any rate this is a product to keep your eyes on, if only because it looks so cool.

Now Playing:
Flogging Molly – Laura
Prince of Persia

Apple’s Keynote at Macworld ‘09

This year’s Apple keynote had a lot riding on it – firstly because Apple announced that it would be their last at a Macworld event, and secondly because Steve Jobs bowed out from doing the presentation which left Phil Schiller holding the bag.  As always there have been a ton of rumors leading up to the event (including seemingly outlandish claims of an iPhone Nano, or a tablet computer of some sort), but I don’t really want to spend much time on the speculation.  I wrote a post a few weeks ago stating what I thought would go down and I have to say I’m pretty happy with my predictions.

The first thing Schiller announced was a new version of iLife.  iLife ‘09 looks to be a solid follow-up to the famous Mac suite even though only a few applications were demonstrated.  He started with iPhoto, which now lets you sort and categorize your images in a few new ways.  The first is called Faces, and what it does is scan your iPhoto library for, believe it or not, people’s faces.  This is all done with face recognition software, and it lets you group photos by the people in them.  For example if I had a bunch of images of my niece Lilly I could have a Lilly section of my iPhoto library.  The second new categorization feature is called Places.  Places lets you use geo-tagged images (or images tagged manually) to group photos by the place from which they were taken.  If you recently took a trip to Dublin, Ireland for example, all of those images would be grouped in the Dublin section under Places.  They also announced that you can now easily upload your photos to Facebook or Flickr, and your Facebook friends can even tag your images with the people that are in them, and that information will be synced back to your iPhoto library.

Next up was iMovie.  iMovie now incorporates a lot of the features that many people were upset about it missing from iMovie ‘06.  It uses the same interface, but it incorporates a timeline and lets you do some cool new things as well.  First off, you can now drag and drop clips together without having to split each clip individually.  For example, if I have one clip that I want to play in the middle of another, previously I’d have to split the second clip and put the first in between the two parts of the second.  Now I can just drop the first right into the second without splitting anything, and iMovie does the work for me.  It also lets you use just the audio from your clips, letting you mix bits and pieces of audio from your entire recording.  Add to that my favorite feature, image stabilization (it will come in very handy with the Flip Mino HD) and iMovie ‘09 seems to be a very solid upgrade.

Garageband ‘09 was also shown, but I don’t really use that application too much so I figure I’ll just stick to what interested me for the sake of brevity.

Next up came iWork ‘09, and iWork.com.  iWork.com is an online sharing service that lets you share your iWork projects with your friends or co-workers, and is platform independent.  The interface looks just like the iWork app itself, and it enables discussions to be held on the status of the project, or comments to be added if there are changes to be made.  As far as I know however, you can’t actually edit the documents from iWork.com, just view them.  Right now the service is in beta and is therefore free, but Apple is planning on charging for it down the road.  I don’t think that’s a very smart decision because it seems to be the sort of feature which, if bundled with the purchase of iWork ‘09, could be the factor that persuades unsure users to go ahead and purchase a copy of the suite.  As a separate charge it might end up being unsuccessful in the long term.

Obviously iWork.com is just the beginning.  Each of the apps in the iWork suite (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) will see significant updates for the ‘09 release.  Pages is getting a feature similar to WriteRoom’s which lets you have full-screen text editing, as well as a new outline mode and more templates.  Keynote has new transitions, and even does automatic animations with a feature called “Magic Move.”  With Magic Move you can have an object on one slide, and then the same (or more) object(s) on the next, and Keynote will automatically animate these images from slide to slide.  Apple has also added a new app to the iPhone app store called Keynote Remote.  This application lets you use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a remote for your keynote presentation, letting you switch between slides from the device as well as view presentation notes.  It’s odd to think that my favorite feature from the iWork ‘09 suite would be an iPhone app, but this is it.  Finally, Numbers is getting more formulas, advance charts, and of course additional themes.

Next up came the 17″ Macbook Pro unibody.  This announcement came as a surprise to no one.  Much like the other Macbook updates, the Macbook Pro 17″ will finally get that nice aluminum and black bezel design.  It also comes with either a glossy or matte screen, and it packs a whopping 8 hours of battery life.  The only downside is that the battery can’t be removed, a major gotcha for a lot of folks out there.  There isn’t much else to be said about the 17″ Macbook Pro, except that it’s $3,000 so I’ll never be able to afford one. =)

Lastly and, in my opinion anyways, most importantly, was the announcement that iTunes is finally going DRM-free.  As of the keynote there were 8 million songs switched to DRM-free, with the promise that the entire iTunes library would also be by the end of the year.  The only problem is that Apple seems to have buckled to the record labels in order to get this deal done as now their music will have variable pricing.  Some tracks will cost as much as $1.29, while others will be as cheap as $0.69.  Phil Schiller assured the crowd that there would be many more 69 cent songs than dollar 29 ones, but only time will tell if he was being truthful.  In the meantime I’m going to scope out some of the albums I’ve been meaning to purchase to see if I an get a DRM-free deal on them!

Midnight Club Los Angeles – a great concept lacking execution

Heading into the holiday rush of games I decided to add Midnight Club Los Angeles to the top of my Gamefly queue.  It came with great recommendations, and I was yearning to play a racing game.  I’m a huge fan of the Project Gotham Racing series, but it’s been about a year since the latest PGR game came out so I haven’t touched a racing game since that time.  Needless to say I started playing Midnight Club at the perfect time.

As you may have discerned from the title of this post, the idea behind Midnight Club is excellent.  It’s basically an open-world racing game, similar to a Grand Theft Auto title except you never get out of your car and the gameplay focuses entirely on street racing.  This kills a lot of the linearity associated with other racing titles because you’re given free reign to ride around an accurate representation of Los Angeles, taking part in pick-up races wherever you go.  The world also factors into the races themselves, because you’re never stuck to one beaten path in a race.  Every inch of Midnight Club LA is filled with shortcuts, side streets, and hidden paths for you to take advantage of and get a leg-up on the competition.  During a race you can go literally anywhere, which can be a help and a hindrance at times.  More on this in a bit.

The cars control great, and the racing element is very fun.  You’ll earn money from races to upgrade and purchase vehicles, and there’s a solid progression from low end “junk” cars to high end super cars as you play.  You can also get vehicles by winning tournaments, or racing opponents for pink slips.  One of my favorite parts about this game was the vehicle collection and upgrade aspect.  There’s something very satisfying about beating an opponent who is driving a much nicer car than yours, and then adding that car to your collection for your own personal use down the road.  It’s very addicting.

As I mentioned the races are free-roaming just like the rest of the game, so you can pick your way through a race however you like, as long as you hit the checkpoints.  This can be fun when you’re hitting all of the correct paths and torching the opposition, or extremely frustrating when you take one wrong turn and are screwed into last place because you can’t get turned around in time.  It’s especially annoying on higher difficulty levels because the checkpoints for races become more and more spread out.  This gives you a higher freedom of choice to pick your way through the map, but also gives you many more opportunities to make mistakes which lead to a blown race.

The game also has some glitchiness to it.  The most annoying bug I ran into was the presence of phantom vehicles.  There’s nothing better than flying down a city street and then *WHAM* – you run into an invisible wall.  A second or two later after you’ve blown your lead and dropped into last place as a result of the crash, a car will pop in right in front of you that you couldn’t see before.  Pretty annoying.  It didn’t happen all too often but it seemed to occur more and more as the game wore on, and always when I needed it the least.

My least favorite aspect of the game was the “adaptive” AI however.  I mentioned that on harder difficulties you’re put under more pressure to take all of the correct paths without much guidance from the game, or you could take a wrong turn and end up in last place.  That would be all well and good if your opponent’s AI didn’t already know the perfect path to take every time, forcing you to have a flawless race in order to win.  Not only that but because Midnight Club Los Angeles is an open-world game, there’s plenty of traffic just waiting to trip you up.

The last straw came when I was trying to win a tournament in order to add a new car to my collection.  There are several DUB tournaments in the game, each having a unique car prize for winning first place.  The tournament I was playing took place in the valley section of the game, an area filled with twists and turns that a normal car can’t handle very well.  Unfortunately you have to race against a motorcycle which, of course, eats through the turns in the valley like they were nothing.  I tried and retried this tournament plenty of times without winning, and so finally I decided to just purchase a motorcycle and get the thing done with.  Like any logical person I chose to buy the best motorcycle in the game, so I could save money by not purchasing more vehicles down the road.  Big mistake.

The cars are ranked in letter classes (A being the best, B, C, D, etc.) and my new bike was an A class.  All of my previous cars were B’s at best though.  So, even though I breezed through the DUB tournament I was stuck on, all of the races after that were much more difficult because the “adaptive” AI switched to all A class vehicles as well.  Now all of my old cars were completely obsolete and worthless, and I was stuck riding a bike that I pretty much hated using.  Bikes are fast, sure, but they also take more damage and are much easier to crash in…a feature that’s important when you’re racing down the traffic-filled streets of LA.

Not long after the bike debacle went down I decided to return the game to Gamefly, incomplete.  Despite having a lot of fun with the game occasionally, there was just too much frustration involved a lot of the time.  The fact that I was forced to use only one of my 10+ vehicles just because it was a different class was pretty weak, I must admit.  I may end up returning to this game down the road (restarting completely of course, so as to avoid this problem) but at this point I can’t really recommend it over a game from the Project Gotham series.

Now Playing:
The Pogues – South Australia
Prince of Persia, Castle Crashers

The future of music games

If you know anything about the gaming industry, you know that music games have been extremely successful lately.  Whether Rock Band or Guitar Hero, this new peripheral-based spin on gameplay has garnered a ton of fans over the past year or two.  Me personally, I’ve started to get over the “fad.”  I don’t necessarily think these games are just a fad, but the appeal has worn off on me after playing 3 successive generations of Guitar Hero, and 2 of Rock Band.  I’m not sure how many more times I’ll be asked to purchase new plastic instruments to keep up with the games as they evolve, but I’m sort of ready to hang up my guitar and retire at this point.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially because a lot of my friends still play Rock Band or Guitar Hero, and I’m wondering what could keep people like myself interested moving forward.  First off I think they need to standardize instruments.  Perhaps each console maker could cut a deal with the developers to create first party peripherals, and give a cut of whatever money they make back.  All I know is that I can’t be bothered to buy a new set of instruments every few months…I’m already running out of room to store all of my plastic instruments in.  It seems like a bit of a scam, doesn’t it?  First we had wired guitars, those were fine.  Then wireless, that’s a desirable upgrade.  Then Rock Band came out with the drum kit, microphone and a new guitar with solo buttons.  Now Guitar Hero has a full kit as well (thought it should be noted that you can use these cross-platform) including a guitar with a slide on it.  It seems like almost every time there’s a new game released we get new, slightly improved instruments which have some new janky feature.  I’m the kind of person who wants to buy this new revision because I feel like if I don’t have solo buttons or a guitar slide I won’t be getting the most out of the game.  But no more!

The most important part about music games is, of course, the music.  The only problem is that the music is getting more and more obscure as the well-known artists become tapped.  The first few Guitar Hero games plus the first Rock Band game already have a lot of the songs that I’d want to play in a music game.  I was playing Rock Band 2 a while ago and I thought to myself “man, these songs are okay to play but I don’t know who half of these artists are.”  Not only that but there’s a lot of overlap between the two franchises – you’ll find songs in Guitar Hero that were already in Rock Band, and vice versa.  How can Harmonix and Neversoft keep things fresh as more and more games are made, especially with the requirement of downloadable songs not included on the initial disc?  One way might be to lock up artist-specific versions of the game.  The Guitar Hero franchise is already headed in this direction with Guitar Hero: Metallica slated for early this year.

Rock Band on the other hand has a huge library of songs ready for download.  It seems they’re more prepared to supplement their current games with downloadable content moving forward.  This is more appealing to me.  I’d rather buy one disc every 2, 3 or 4 years and then just buy the songs I want as DLC in the time between major releases.  I’d also like to see the DLC bundled in with future releases, something they didn’t do with Rock Band 2.  If, with Rock Band 3, I could pay an addition fee and get all of the DLC released between RB2 and RB3 I’d jump on that in an instant.

Ultimately though I’d just like to be able to choose which songs I want from the get-go.  Rather than having Harmonix or Neversoft choose what songs will be included with their game, why not just let me ask for what I want to play?  I know, it sounds ridiculous.  What, they’re going to make a custom version of the game just for me?  With all of the legalities involved it’s an impossible task.  Still, a little personalization wouldn’t hurt.  That way I wouldn’t be stuck playing Mighty Mighty Bosstones tracks (no offense if you’re a fan), asking myself all the while why there hasn’t been a Deftones song available yet.

What I really want is a version of Rock Band or Guitar Hero with all Irish folk songs though…Folk Hero?  Folk Band?  Get to work on that. =)

Now Playing:
Silversun Pickups – Future Foe Scenarios
Prince of Persia, Left 4 Dead (PC)

Flip Mino HD review

Here’s my more formal review of the Flip Mino HD, in video form of course.  Check out my previous post by clicking here if you’d like to see the video quality.

Flip Mino HD Review Part 1

Flip Mino HD Review Part 2

Flip Mino HD – Down By The Bay

Happy new year!  I  know we agreed not to get each other any gifts this year, but I just couldn’t help picking up this beautiful HD video for you, my dearest reader.  Remember to click the HD button on the right after you start the video to see it in true high definition.  Enjoy!

Flip Mino HD – Down By The Bay from David Kemick on Vimeo.

I wish you all the best in the new year!