When I'm (Commodore) 64

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

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

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

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?

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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