The New Going Out

You know I'm no good...

2009-10-31T14:12:00.014Z

It’s been a while, apologies for that but I’ve been buying a flat which really is as tedious as everyone says, well that and I’ve become utterly addicted to Civilization Revolution on the iPod Touch that has very much eaten into my commuter blogging opportunities.

After a long break from Xbox Live I was tempted back by the promise of the Sky Player, dutifully I paid out my Xbox Live tax to Microsoft and ventured back online and lo and behold the Sky Player didn’t work and still doesn’t nearly a week on. However, I suppose I’ll get back to that if the issue ever does get resolved before my Gold subscription runs (three months to go!)

Since my last post I’ve completed the (now award winning) Fallout 3 and have been trying to play through Killzone 2 on the PS3; Killzone is undoubtedly a technical triumph and despite its sci-fi setting it recreates a far more visceral and (as I’d imagine it) realistic vision of warfare than anything else I’ve played. That’s to say it’s loud, confusing and thoroughly terrifying – most of the time I haven’t got a clue what’s going on and the rest of the time I’m dead, which is why I’m not in the armed forces. All in all it’s more ordeal than fun in the traditional sense.

I know I could change the difficulty settings but this is a point of pride for me, once upon a time I used to regard myself as being quite good at video games and hence I always aim to play them through on hard. These days I have less time to spend joy-pad in hand and I may seriously have to reconsider changing my difficulty policy since all the evidence would suggest I am now quite rubbish.

Having paid out for Xbox Live I thought I should probably get my money’s worth and loaded up Call Of Duty 4, it’s the one game you can be sure your mates own that doesn’t involve football . I got in touch with some of my Xbox friends and of course they assured me they’re no good either, they even have their Live profile set to “recreation”, it’ll be fine...

I then spent an evening being shot in the face, knifed in the back, blown up by mines... It was like Killzone all over again and I started seriously thinking I should invest in Animal Crossing instead. When someone claims to be bad, I expect them to be equally useless as me – wandering down the middle of sniper’s alley, leaving myself exposed by admiring the in-game propaganda posters rather than looking out for psychotic commandos... However I don’t suppose it would be that much fun playing against a team that spends the whole time cowering behind walls and occasionally shooting at trees?

If you claim to be bad, do try to live up to that and embrace it – if anyone out there is genuinely poor at video games get in touch and we can aim to put together the most inept gaming night the Xbox has yet seen?! Otherwise I may just have to take up a hobby that’s more befitting of my advancing years, perhaps oil painting or writing my memoirs...? In October I hit 33, apparently the average age of a gamer so I don't feel so bad - but the question is where do they get the time to practice and why are they so much better than me??

Who says you can't improve on perfection?

2009-08-13T22:59:00.014+01:00

This week rumours have been flying around the internet that Stephen Spielberg is set to resurrect the mothballed Halo movie. This comes hot on the heels of the news that Sam Raimi of Spiderman and Evil Dead fame is bringing a big budget WOW film to our screens, exciting stuff for games fans but don’t forget that most game to film adaptations are rubbish. However the very fact that such critically acclaimed filmmakers are looking to the game franchises for inspiration is an indication of the converging nature of digital entertainment. The balance of power between the two parallel industries seems to be shifting, film to game conversions have long been a staple of the sales charts but rarely have such big budgets moved the other way.

Games developers have been knocking out uninspired and often lazy film conversions for years (and vice versa as anyone who’s experienced a Uwe Boll opus will testify).

The ET: The Extra Terrestrial videogame demonstrated just how badly these titles could be done way back in 1982. Things haven’t improved significantly and terrible film adaptations keep selling nearly thirty years on. Typically these games are generic action titles, little differs in terms of gameplay and structure other than the avatar, hence they can be knocked out quickly and (relatively) cheaply once the license has been acquired.

The most recent of these cash-in tie-in games is GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra, ironically one of the criticisms of the film itself is that It is like watching a computer game – great fun if you’re in control but perhaps less so as a passive experience! It was inevitable of course that a game would emerge to allow Hasbro aficionados to enjoy the adventure on the small screen…Going by the typical standards of the film-to-game adaptation GI Joe is unlikely to be particularly good but will undoubtedly do good business over the summer holidays.

Surely there is IP other than films to plunder and potentially ruin, thankfully EA has come to the rescue with a God of War called Dante’s Inferno based upon epic Medieval poem The Divine Comedy?! In the spirit of the Summer silly season here’s some more classic literature that could be “improved” by shoe-horning it into a generic games structure:

War and Peace – The video game of Tolstoy’s classic tome dispenses the boring bits (the peace) to emphasise the war elements, this period FPS set during the Napoleonic wars would surely be a hit on the scale of the Call of Duty games. Particularly if we were to remove any references to Tolstoy...

1984 – A classic styled text-based adventure in the mould of the Zork games to fit the ‘eighties premise, game play is somewhat hampered by the adherence to the novel’s “newspeak”. This reductionist language is propagated by the Big Brother state and is designed to limit the vocabulary and hence prevent the population from being able to express their grievances. Innit. Therefore overstep the mark in your textual interactions with the world and you’ll be convicted of thoughtcrime and spend the rest of the game in Room 101 wearing a hat made of rats...

A Christmas Carol – Dickens’ festive favourite has it all – mist-shrouded London streets and a protagonist terrorised by creatures from the beyond to give us gaming’s first Christmas-themed survival horror.

The Castle – In Kafka’s critique on the nature of bureaucracy the protagonist’s attempts to gain access to the administrator known as Klamm within the titular Castle become a nightmare of red-tape and repetitive process. The term Kafkaesque is a perfect label for the maddeningly difficult platformers of the 8-bit era so this Manic Miner clone is infuriating and utterly unrewarding - particulalry since once the player completes the one and only screen he or she finds themselves transported right back to the start. Ad infinitum.

GTA Bateman – Rock Star North is back with the latest post- post-(and possibly post again) modern instalment of the Grand Theft Auto series. This time it brings amoral Yuppie Patrick Bateman (from Brett Easton Ellis’ notorious American Psycho) to a stylised version of New York City, where the sex, drugs and violence are played out to ironic ‘eighties soundtrack... Thinking about it haven’t they already made that one?

I’m a Jez

2009-08-05T20:49:00.009+01:00

I’ve never been an Apple person, but don’t get me wrong I love its products. The iBook is a multimedia dream machine, the staff at its shiny outlets are knowledgeable and helpful – the fact they’re in retail is a bit weird really - and the iPhone is clearly the best smartphone on the market by some margin. So let’s get that out of the way before the Mac fan-boys (and I suspect girls to a lesser extent) declare a digital jihad on me.

With all this praise I suppose the it would be a fair question to ask why won’t I take a bite of the Apple? In short, other than the prices I don’t really know, it’s all a bit culty though isn’t it… and Apple devotees are often just a little too smug - need proof just look this ad:

Since this campaign aired Microsoft has felt compelled to respond with its own series of (ever so cool) “I’m a PC” ads featuring a host of international celebs. It needn’t have bothered since the “Mac” character in Apple’s own efforts is a phenomenal piece of miscasting by its ad agency. Clearly they wanted to riff off UK audiences’ familiarity with the odd couple pairing of Mitchell and Webb in “Peep Show”, however what they failed to notice was just what a dim and wholly self-satisfied loser Robert Webb plays in the show. Now when I hear “I’m a Mac” what this translates itself into is “I’m a Jez”.

However, following on from my recent post on casual gaming I felt it the time was right to dip my toe into iTunes, so armed with an iPod Touch I decided to take the plunge. Will the iPod live up to its billing as the top hand-held on the market?

The iPod Touch certainly does have lots going for it as a gaming device, the 3D graphics are impressive although I’m not convinced by the claims that it outperforms the Nintendo Wii. However the pricing on the App store is far more competitive than I’d ever expect from our Japanese friends – I’ve never seem games priced at 59p before and with the likes of FlightControl on offer it’s worth considering as a games machine.

However, the killer app for me has to be the video, and here’s a top tip – download the Real SP beta from Realplayer, it allows you to simply download videos straight from the web… Perhaps a legal grey area but lets wash over that for the time being... Once you’ve got the file you can convert it to play on the iPhone/iTouch with a minimum of fuss – and it’s free, so can’t say fairer than that!

However in terms of usability for gaming when it comes to anything more complex than Sudoku the controls really do let the iPod Touch down. May be it’s my problem but I really need a control stick or a d-pad because a) I feel really daft on the train tilting the handset left and right like a boss-eyed drunk trying to read a pamphlet and b) smudging… The touch screen interface really annoys me, the IPod Touch has a great screen upon which I enjoy watching videos but even after a short gaming session the screen is invariably covered in finger prints and greasy smudges. So until Apple releases some sort of DS-type stylus the only solution I can see is to grow Nosferatu-style talons.

One of my most dreaded home entertainment scenarios is the combination of buttery-fingered toddlers and the flat screen TV that they seem to be attracted to like moths to a flame. It’s a lose/lose situation, in the worst case scenario the child ends up flattened by a falling LCD, the second option is smeary screen, this is obviously less bad but still aggravating. Honestly, I can’t blame the kid but parents – come on, it really isn’t that endearing that your child wants to be one with the pretty shapes?!

Clearly the tech industry seems to think we all want to be in Star Trek since touch screen is threatening to become a valid interface on anything that has a screen. When OLED screens become a standard will we really want to befoul them with our finger grease - perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate the merits the humble projector?

Home cinema – a tall order

2009-07-31T14:04:00.013+01:00

Perhaps I shouldn’t say this given the focus of this blog but last night I went out to watch “Harry Potter and the Half an Hour Too Long Prince”. I’m a big advocate of home cinema, not necessarily because I’m a big geek who likes mucking about with wires, that’s only half of it. Rather the key word of the previous sentence should be “big”, I’m about six foot five and for the record it’s not cold up here and yes, my parents did make me stand in a bucket of shit throughout my childhood – so thanks for asking...Whilst being of the tall persuasion does have many advantages it does make a visit to the cinema a mite uncomfortable.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened but I blame Kevin Costner, film studios seem to have unanimously decided that they needed to give us cinema-goers value for money. Generally speaking I’m all for that but not at the expense of deep vein thrombosis!

In the world of the six foot plus the perfect film is around about an hour and a half long, at least if viewed at the multiplex - I’m quite happy to go through the three hour director’s cut extended edition on the comfort of my own sofa. The average UK cinema seat just doesn’t seem to have been designed with the modern man in mind, even the deluxe seats give you about as much leg room as you’d expect to get flying economy on a budget airline. As a nation the Brits are getting larger and we’re not just growing outwards, as an ex-(film) teacher I can testify that year on year my pupils were getting taller. Hopefully by 2020 I’ll be able to go to a gig and stand at the front without feeling guilty...

Of course the cinema chains understandably want to pack in as many people as possible, this seems to be working since UK cinema admissions have been steady since they hit a high of 176 million in 2002. As a film buff I’m quite happy to experience extended editions and bloated director’s cuts, however I don’t wish to endure the experience of a crowded, stuffy, deafening and physically uncomfortable environment of many auditoria. Not when I’ve got a comfortable sofa and HD TV at home.

That said, I’ve shuffled and squirmed through all of Peter Jackson’s most recent work, the odd Michael Mann film, “Watchmen”... Say what you like for HD technology but for a proper film buff there really is no comparison to watching the big films on the biggest screens possible – preferably IMAX. While I’m not really convinced we can really call most home cinema “cinema” or that we ever can since Cinema has a kind of alchemy, the shared experience that you can never really replicate in the domestic sphere... However, home cinema is at least at home and most of the time that’s good enough for me!

Online gaming – very much like making love to a beautiful woman

2009-07-16T22:59:00.022+01:00

First dial her up, pop it in the slot, frantically press some buttons and hopefully you’re a winner.

Ironically since I started writing this blog I seem to spend more time writing about video games than actually playing them. My partner has never been a Playstation widow though, we have an agreement that we won’t spend the free time we have together doing separate activities. Unless I’ve really pissed her off of course.

Due to this arrangement I spend far less time playing time heavy online games, such as Halo or COD4, than I did when I was single. Instead I’ve spent far longer playing turn-based strategy games you can dip in and out of such as Advance Wars or the sublime Civilization Revolution, which probably makes me old – I’ll be on the flight sims before you know it!

However, I’ve rediscovered my online mojo with Dice’s Battlefield 1943, this isn’t a reviews site so I’ll spare you the details suffice to say it’s a stripped down squad based shooter available on PS3 and Xbox and it’s very, very addictive. It’s also download only, there is no single player component and it offers just four levels, its graphics are pretty enough but cannot really compete with its disk-based peers, such as Far Cry 2.

So what’s the appeal? Firstly it’s cheap at around £10, which makes it worth a punt – even to the cash strapped/risk averse. It’s simple and it’s fun and I can honestly say for someone for whom there aren’t enough hours in the day four levels is just about the perfect number. All too often the casual player can be overwhelmed when he/she plays these types of game which tend to be populated by a the much maligned breed known as the hardcore gamer. Typically when I dare to put myself through this I’ll drop in to one of many maps I don’t know or have only have a vague memory of and get picked off by opponents that know the maps like the back of their hand and call me things like “f**kin’ noob”... Or may be I’m just rubbish at video games but I find multiplayer shooters are generally a little intimidating.

Well does that make Battlefield 1943 a casual game...? Let’s think of games like relationships, you have to invest time and effort into them and in the gaming world I’m a serial monogamist. I’ve been going steady with Far Cry 2 for a couple of months now, it looks beautiful and I want to get to know it better but honestly, I’m just finding it a bit dull… Fallout 2 is a potential suitor that’s been waiting in the wings (or at least hiding in my cupboard – the pervert) since Christmas, I really think we’d get on but after Fable 2 I just don’t think I’m ready for that sort of heavy relationship again just yet… And that’s why I’ve got a bit on the side, Battlefield 1943 doesn’t want commitment, it just wants a bit of fun before we both move on, but it’ll never really go away, perhaps we’ll need each other again sometime. And that’s why I keep all my exes in a black plastic box under the telly.

Disturbing analogies aside Battlefield 1943 is cheap, short and relatively easy to master but does that really make it a casual game? Probably not, it’s multiplayer, it’s a shooter – neither of which give it the pick up and play appeal of titles like Tetris or Peggle that attract even non-gamers. Dice was never really a small developer and still continues to work on big budget titles even though this release suggests its owner EA has seen the potential in download only titles.

Casual games have been a driving force behind the unprecedented success of Apple’s app store and Sony is aiming to get a slice of that action through the download only PSP Go. Cheaper and shorter development times have opened up the market to independent studios that no longer have to sign up with a big publisher to secure marketing and distribution budgets. This is a step away from the AAA blockbuster titles that can make or break a developer, so all power to indies... Or is it? Oz-based blog Screen Play recently suggested that Microsoft is looking to limit the number of independent titles released each year on Xbox Live, whereas there seem to be no such limits on larger publishers re-releasing or remaking retro games on the service or ploughing significant development and marketing spend into “budget” titles such as Battlefield 1943.

A Portrait of the Blogger as an Egomaniac

2009-07-09T13:30:00.025+01:00

I recently got back from my two weeks in the sun and since my return I've baked several times in the daily London transport commuter cattle run and Victoria station has been closed during rush hour due to flash flooding... All in all I'm pleased to say I'm firmly back on British Summer Time.

The summer hols coincided with my annual ban from all things internet, this electronic exile actually does me a world of good since I spend almost all of my working life plugged in to a computer. After a while you can lose sight of who and what really matters; a minor software update often isn't that important in the scheme of things and despite the branding on the front of a piece of shiny kit it's (generally) not going to be radically different from another piece of shiny kit with a different name... Did I mention that this is a personal blog and not representative of my employer or its views?!

In my day to day business I sometimes come across people who would describe themselves as being very important on the internet. Some of them would even classify themselves as gurus of one kind or another, but “guru” is a small word with a larger meaning. To be perfectly honestly only once in my (fairly short) career have I worked with anyone who could be described as a web guru. It should be noted that he didn't attach that moniker to himself, that label is down to the New York Times... But hey since it's there! Now perhaps I could be accused of self-aggrandisement so to clarify I spent much of my brief time with Mr. Big making tea and small talk.

Almost all web gurus are self appointed and very few would meet the dictionary definition – it's like people that describe themselves as “a bit mad”, relatively few have had psychotic episodes and ss for web gurus it's hard to reach enlightenment in 140 characters or less. Bloggers have an ego, it's only natural you don't want to think you're wasting your time and if occasionally someone says they they've enjoyed a post or like your photography or home dungeon (or whatever) then that makes it worthwhile. However, dealing with “professional” bloggers on a business level can reveal that some of them are egomaniac tosspots!

While I was my holidays I found the perfect remedy for self importance... All my life I've held a healthy respect/fear of the sea, it's an alien environment where you are the intruder and it's full of things with teeth/spines/poison etc. However, I was persuaded that exploring the underwater world is fun, safe and natural, against my better judgement I was talked into scuba diving. There was no training, we were just taken a mile off shore and chucked in the sea, apparently this is perfectly legal as long as you don't go any deeper than five metres. I'm sure it was very safe, I was escorted by a professional, I could see the surface above me and that barracuda looked quite a long way away in retrospect, however I was of course petrified.

I had time to reflect on this as I waited for my friend to catch up as I hung from an underwater podium where I was supposed to feed the big-looking fish, however I'd previously flung the fish food away in a moment of sheer panic. I was left there with my thoughts staring out into the blue as my instructor briefly left me to my own devices - in my mind out of disgust at my abject cowardice. Rather than thinking about the sea's majesty I spent my time running through the ways I might die, I was surprised that drowning sat at the top of my list rather than being eaten alive by a rogue shark. I've now reached the conclusion that a diver must have come up with the phrase “big fish in a small pond” because I felt very insignificant, just one person in a world of billions whose life could be snuffed out in an instant (or at least in a nightmarish drawn out drowning.)

You'd be right to ask “so what does this have to do with home entertainment...?” Well after contemplating my own cosmic insignificance I began to recognise the psychological appeal offered by the digital world: I may not be a Booker prize winning novelist but I can still (hopefully) entertain a few friends and peers with the musings/rants on this blog, I don't have the wit of Stephen Fry but I might occasionally offer up the occasional amusing tidbit to at least draws an LOL from all my new BFFEs on Twitter. I'm certainly not going to compete at Wimbledon but the Wii offers as close an experience as I'm going to get, I've never been a samba-fixated cartoon monkey... I could go on.

Sadly there have been a few instances of disturbed individuals who have been unable to fully separate their digital world from the real one, perhaps these isolated incidents will increase as technology improves and digital simulacra become ever more “real”? For the time being video games are arguably a safe outlet for our fantasies of world domination, social networks offer a semblance of community in an increasingly isolated and sedentary Western world. Therefore the positive aspects of digital entertainment largely outweigh the negatives and as for me I'm a blogger which makes me one of the most important people in the world... Now where did I put that spacesuit?

When I'm (Commodore) 64

2009-06-20T17:10:00.018+01:00

Rock Band Beatles was announced by Harmonix at the recent E3 event; in a moment of play.com madness I bought the original Rock Band game which came complete with a full range of plastic instruments. I really enjoyed it, however I rarely touch it now and the peripherals lie dismantled behind the sofa. It's primarily a multiplayer game, so living room solos are nowhere near a much fun as combining it with friends and booze. Unfortunately that means having to persuade a trainee super-group to come all the way out to the 'burbs, put the drum kit together, find working batteries and so on... Inevitably it becomes a shambles and I doubt very much my neighbours enjoy the game as much as I do.

Regardless of the success or otherwise of these infrequent jam sessions, one thing that's clear is that these type of games largely work for even non-gamers because the control scheme is fairly intuitive. I can give anyone an imitation guitar and they know how to hold it because it looks and feels like a cheap plastic guitar. I wouldn't give a non-gamer an Xbox controller and expect them to play Halo 3... I've grown up playing games since my godfather introduced me to Pong on the Atari 2600 and my gaming memories are defined by the transition from keyboards to joysticks to game pads and now the wii-mote (and its upcoming imitators.) Controls still play a big part in my gaming decisions, I prefer Xbox over PS3 because the controller fits more comfortably in my hands and it just makes sense to have the triggers underneath, especially if I'm playing a first person shooter.

The Wii has of course brought a degree of parity to the gaming world and unfortunately revealed that I'm as bad at bowling on screen as I am in the real world. Inclusivity is the new name of the game and Microsoft's Project Natal looks to take this a major step further than Nintendo by getting rid of the physical controller altogether.

Last year I worked on a project with a company called WildTangent that runs an online games portal. WT's outspoken former CEO Alex St. John (pronounced “Sinjin” I discovered later but everyone was too gracious to correct me at the time) widely and loudly proclaimed that this would be the last generation of standalone consoles. He argued that the games industry would surely embrace digital distribution as a means to cut out the retail middle man and thus take the fullest slice of profit whilst saving money on logistics. It would of course also negate the thorny issues of piracy and the resale market.

It's widely known that most current gen games consoles are loss leaders, hence Microsoft and Sony make little to no money from hardware and recoup this outlay via software sales. However, should the games companies choose to cut out the middle man it's unlikely High Street vendors would be unlikely to waste valuable shelf space on games consoles unless they could shore up their own margins with games. St. John argued that the current retail business model for video games is unsustainable in the long term, hence likely to go the way of the dodo.

It isn't surprising that his forthright views have proved controversial within the wider gaming community, not least because he was looking to plug Wildtangent's downloadable “virtual console”, Orb. However the success of digital download services from the likes of PSN, Xbox Live and Steam would suggest that he may be onto something... Both Nintendo and Sony have updated their hand-helds this year to focus more on digital distribution and thanks to improving broadband speeds and cheaper storage it would seem little by little consumers are coming round to the idea of downloading games, especially if we consider the massive success of Apple's app store.

St. John's other contention was that if we were to look at the rise and fall of the coin-op game business, the rise in ever more outlandish plastic-y peripherals as a means of interaction offers a harbinger of doom to the current games companies. I was recently in Bognor, at Butlins truth be told, a group of us escaped from the compound for an hour or so and made our way down the front to the pier. One of my guilty pleasures is to waste a few quid in arcades whenever I get the chance. After negotiating our way round identikit racing and light-gun games we found a Guitar Hero cabinet. Seizing any opportunity for two grown men to rock out in front of the (clearly impressed) teenage denizens of the arcade, a mate and I duly paid our one pound and got one song for our money... One song. The graphics were no better than the home versions and the guitars weren't as sophisticated, but to be fair the amps were at least of a quality you might expect from sound system in the boot of a Max Power fan. I've been through Asda car park on a Saturday night and I can testify those bad boys have got some bass.

I have got a lot of unused gimmicy peripherals cluttering up the flat so Project Natal will be a welcome space saver. Even if we see games taking up less space on shop shelves due to digital distribution, this is unlikely to diminish gaming's appeal. As an entertainment medium gaming is now well and truly established, and, as the logical extension of the Wii, Project Natal will likely bring more people to the hobby in the longer term. Therefore I don't think Rock Band and its ilk spell the end for video game consoles just yet, but I do think Project Natal may prove the death of game controllers. However, if I were Game or one of the other High Street retailers I'd seriously consider diversifying or investing more in online...

One device to rule them all

2009-06-16T14:18:00.012+01:00

I considered posting a picture of the back of my TV but on reflection decided against it in case the flat gets condemned as a fire hazard. However, from memory there are two scarts, 3 hdmis, a composite, a component, a SVHS lead and two coaxial leads – all in all it’s a bit of a rats nest and we’re probably being exposed to similar levels of radiation as people living in outlying towns in the desirable Chernobyl area.

The current generation of consoles were always touted as convergence devices to a greater or lesser extent – multimedia Trojan Horses that steal their way under your TV and evict all the other hardware as surplus to requirements. I first bought an Xbox 360 thinking goodbye DVD player, goodbye CD player and so on, of course it didn’t quite work out like that. As is often been pointed out by the console's critics the under/over performing (I just don’t know) fan does make it sound like an early jetliner - not ideal when you’re trying to watch a film or listen to delicate Icelandic folk music. It also doesn’t play region-free DVD, which is important if you’re a nerd of my magnitude, but now I'm just being niggly.

Then came the Wii, I bought in to the hype and convinced myself it was an investment, a little white freedom fighter rescuing me from the burden of expensive gym membership. In reality the problem with Wii Fit is that it’s hard to take being chastised for my sloth by a passive aggressive cartoon balance board. I also find it quite boring - so now I just don’t go to the gym... Or do Wii Fit. Bear with me because this might sound unkind but I think you’ll take my meaning, if the Wii were a person it would likely be at the less alluring end of the attractiveness scale. It would likely make up for this by donning fashionably vintage attire and wandering around Camden or Brighton being studiedly kooky – no I don’t buy into standard notions of control, I’m a free spirit. Bad analogies aside the browser is a really quite intuitive and works well, it could be a real selling point from a convergence perspective so why oh why Mr. Nintendo do you a) hide it away in the Wii Shop and b) make people pay for it?

When I finally got an HD-ready TV it didn’t do the Wii any favours so that’s now gathering dust. In a previous post I discussed the barriers to getting much in the way of HD programming if you can’t sign up to Sky in the UK, I really wanted to (at least) be able to rent HD films from Blockbuster and had previously bet on the wrong horse in HD-DVD. I’d recently got my Christmas bonus so I took the plunge and got the PS3, I don’t use it much for gaming, since the current titles don’t really improve upon their Xbox counterparts, I also sold it in to my girlfriend as a multimedia player and I think she’s still pretty dubious about that claim! However as a convergence machine the PS3 is streets ahead of the competition.

It connects to the internet wirelessly and you aren’t walled in from the wider internet as you are by Xbox Live, it plays Blu-ray and works well as an up-scaling DVD player, and you can even buy a handy add on that turns it into a PVR thanks to its decent sized hard drive.

So will I be chucking out all the other entertainment devices cluttering up the living room? Well no, apart from my obvious fetish for exotic wires, games consoles positively hoover up electricity, which isn’t great from an environmental or bills perspective. Hardware that only has one function may seem rather quaint in the consumer tech world but at least you’re only paying for it to do one thing at a time.

I want my, I want my, I want my web TV

2009-06-13T14:17:00.004+01:00

I installed Vidzone, the new video jukebox service for PS3 this week and was suitably impressed by the breadth and usability it offered. Entertainment services, such as Vidzone, are designed to extend the appeal of consoles to the whole family and bring the console out of teens’ bedrooms and into the living room. My own family remains firmly unmoved by electronic entertainment of any type, my dad regards time spent watching a film as time that could be better spent playing with wood... So it’s no wonder I’m wracked by guilt when I spend an entire day on the sofa.

However, safely away from the shires my extended family has a slightly less Luddite attitude to technology, my girlfriend’s dad likes Blu-ray, her mum enjoys nothing better than mangling Kung-fu fighting on Singstar and her little sister, Analcheese, is eighteen so spends her entire less plugged into some device or the other. The measure of success lies in Nan, we replaced her antique video player with DVD at Christmas, I don’t think she’s quite forgiven us for chucking out her Stephen Segal VHS collection (she’s not a typical 85 year old) at the same time and none of the replacement disks have been taken out of their packaging. She’s always been fairly indifferent to technology, but I suppose when you’ve lived through the eight and half decades of change over two centuries it’s hard to keep up? I don’t think we’re ever going to make her a silver surfer but there was a small breakthrough with the Wii, she won’t go anywhere near the games (which I understand I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed with the control system but more on that in a post to come I’m sure), we managed to win her over with Gene Kelly...

More specifically with a clip of Singing in the Rain on YouTube, we explained that through the Wii we had access to a whole library of film clips available through the TV, rather than having to use one of those funny computer thingies and finally we got a reaction other than the normal “that’s nice dear”. Of course it furthers the ambition of the big three consoles companies to develop the perception of their brands as lifestyle products as opposed to mere games machines and internet and IPTV services are central to this strategy. This is made clear by Sky’s deal with Xbox and the availability of YouTube and BBC’s iPlayer on PS3 and the Wii. From a consumer perspective the roll out of new entertainment services is to be applauded, the only barrier to the success of these services in the UK comes from the ISPs.

Despite the fact the BBC claims the iPlayer and similar services only need a broadband connection of 2MB to function, I’ve still experienced service problems and I have an (up to) 8MB connection from Virgin. BT has recently been accused of bandwidth throttling of internet TV during peak time, BT has retaliated by protesting (fairly I think) that web TV providers cannot expect to get a “free ride” any longer. It points out video services take up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth compared to other web traffic and this puts an extra strain on their infrastructure. It now wants to charge video content owners a premium to share the extra costs incurred, unfortunately Google, the owner of YouTube, has previously made it clear this is not an option it is willing to consider. Of course it’s likely that some of the added costs will be passed on to consumers.

Against this unhappy stand-off 4OD, Channel 4’s online video hub, has announced its decision to follow in the footsteps of Film Four and drop its pay to view business model and move to an ad funded one. I’m glad 4OD has made its back catalogue free to view, it’s a great move to get me engaged with the portal again. It’s just a shame that it’s currently only available over a PC internet connection. I’d like to see the service available on my TV, admittedly Ethernet enabled TVs are already on the market from the likes of Sony’s Applicast range, the eventual fusing of TV and computer is inevitable but the current generation of web-ready sets are expensive and arguably haven’t yet cracked it. A recent survey of 1,500 UK consumers by Entertainment Media Research revealed that 75% (unsurprisingly) wanted to access web content through the TV set. 4OD has some great programming and it would be great to be able to access it in the best format possible, IPTV service Project Canvas is moving on apace and 4OD is very likely to play a part in that, but how about an interim option – Sky and iPlayer have taken the plunge onto consoles – come on Channel 4, it’s clear the demand is there – just ask BT!

The Sky's a limit

2009-06-10T14:44:00.005+01:00

The football season (that’s “soccer” to American readers for reasons I’ve never really fathomed) has ended once again, leaving a couple of lean months as we wait for August to come around again. Not perhaps for the reasons you might imagine. In, what is I’m assured at length by football fans, a bizarre role reversal my girlfriend is a season ticket holder at Stamford Bridge, whereas I’m not that bothered by or watch sport as a general rule. What the summer does mean however, is that I don’t get every other Saturday afternoon off to play video games.

Anyway, as our overpaid Premiership stars migrate south for the summer, we’re making our preparations for the new season. What that means from my perspective is making sure that we can watch the away games in HD…Which of course would entail other channels in high definition as part of the package (so altruistic…). We bought a 1080p flat screen last Christmas but so far have had to make do without HD content other than Blu-ray. Can’t really complain too much of course, but it’s all very well being HD-ready, however we got a better SD picture on our old CRT.

Of course the options for getting HD football in the UK are somewhat limited due to the hold Murdoch’s Sky has over the Premiership. The Irish pay TV company Setanta broke Sky’s monopoly of the Premier League but has been unable to turn a profit since it won the rights to broadcast 42 games per season in 2007. If it is unable to stump up £30 million to the Premier League by the end of the week it’s going to be shown the red card.

All in all it seems the chances of Setanta rolling out an HD channel next season are slim to say the least and it seems even more unlikely that the Freesat broadcasters, BBC and ITV will be picking up the reigns… This is something of a moot point anyway since we live in one of the leafier suburbs of South West London, our street is a conservation area and we live in a small rented flat so the chances of being able to install an unsightly satellite dish are pretty minimal.

So what are the other options? Sky is planning to stream its services over Xbox Live on a pay per view basis later in the year, good news but it’s not going to be in HD. You pay a premium for Sky Sports through other cable and IPTV providers, such as Virgin’s V+ box and BT Vision. Until we find out whether there will be any pay per view HD services on the next gen Freeview services or Project Canvas further down the line. For the time being I suppose it’s back down the pub next season and no, I’m not allowed to take my DS, apparently it’s distracting… . At least this story has a (semi) happy ending

Can Project Natal wii-ly beat Nintendo at its own game?

2009-06-09T13:27:00.012+01:00

In the wake of E3 the press has been trumpeting the game-changing (sorry) properties Microsoft’s Project Natal brings to the games industry. It promises to open up gaming to new audiences, including some of whom who may previously have been excluded, such as the elderly or physically disabled. All great outcomes, however there remains the niggling doubt that, despite its massive resources, Microsoft may not be the best company to bring this ground breaking technology to the mass market.

Fairly or otherwise there are some that claim that MS has a record of overpromising, Windows Vista of course springs to mind, and that Natal is quite simply too good to be true. So far, Microsoft has offered no release date and appears to have no significant competition. From this perspective there’s no impetus, other than the commercial concerns, to rush to market so there’s ample time to fine tune Natal and get it right first time. However, one potential fly in the ointment is the Xbox brand itself.

Nintendo has largely sewn up the casual market with the Wii and the DS, Sony’s Playstation 3 remains a sought after premium lifestyle product, and was recently voted the UK’s most desirable brand by teens in the Global Habbo Youth Survey Brand Update 2009. On the other hand the Xbox 360 was rushed to market and suffered for it, Microsoft sought to own the home entertainment space before its rivals got to market, it was a loss leader from the outset and aggressive price cutting and the damaging red ring of death debacle have ensured that the Xbox brand has only broken even in 2008, seven years after its 2001 launch! From a technology perspective the Xbox 360 is less future-proofed than the PS3 for its mooted ten year lifespan. It has been unable to compete in the UK as a media hub, offers no web browser or wireless connectivity out of the box. Tie-ups with Sky, Zune and various social networking sites may go some way to remedying critcisms as of Q4 ’09 but it’s the Natal project that could offer Microsoft the longevity to make Xbox a hugely profitable brand.

However, positioned as the console of choice for the hardcore hobbyist Xbox sits between two lucrative mainstream audiences. The titles offered on Xbox Arcade are not enough to bring in casual gamers in sufficient numbers to make the console a serious competitor to the Nintendo Wii. Despite the movies on demand service offered by the Xbox the failure of Microsoft’s HD-DVD gamble means the console is unlikely to become the natural choice for the home cinema fan due to its lack of a Blu-ray drive.

Of course by ushering a brand new interface Microsoft hopes to change its perception in the market extending the life cycle of its ageing console. It’s an audacious move and one that will undoubtedly pay dividends if project Natal lives up to its very clear promise, however will this be as successful under the Xbox brand as it would be under release by one of Micosoft’s competitors.

From the outset Microsoft marketed the Xbox as a powerful machine catering for serious gamers, its bulky looks, focus on aggressive genres and the often forbidding online environment of Xbox Live ensured it would find it difficult to breakout of its masculine ghetto. On a personal note I’ve largely given up on my forays into XBL since I become convinced that it’s almost entirely inhabited by emotionally stunted Morlocks... Rather like the set-up of Wells’ great novel it’s best not to venture onto Live after dark, you just need to replace his subterranean sub-humans with over stimulated American teens.

Despite efforts to soften this image through party games and its Mii-like avatars it’s possibly too little too late and women and families are unlikely to embrace the Xbox with open arms. Before the current generation of consoles the typical gamer was male in his late twenties to mid thirties and grew up playing video games, however Nintendo and now Apple are challenging this stereotype. However, ask yourself as a parent would you rather your family spend time in the bright, blocky and (largely) off-line environs of the Nintendo Wii, or that of the technically superior and online-enabled world of the Xbox 360? On paper Xbox would seem preferable once you get beyond the Nintendo’s current interface advantage. However, in real world terms would you prefer your child spend time in Disneyland or at the biker’s bar on the way (disclaimer: I once worked in a pub on the biker’s circuit on the South Coast and it was absolutely fine -at least compared to the rest of Hastings...)

So Project Natal...

Is it ground-breaking? Yes.

Will its influence change the way we interact with technology in the wider world? Very likely.

Will it make Microsoft bags of money? Yes.

Will the other console players copy Natal? Definitely.

Will Xbox emerge as the dominate force in the console market?... Let’s wait and see.
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