Xbox 360

• Xbox Live: Does anything really need to be said about this? Cross-game chat, invites, picture/text/video messaging, unified friends list, single sign-on account, etc. It is the pinnacle of a complete online gaming experience that is easy to use.
• Xbox Live Arcade and XNA: Microsoft have really created an awesome solution for bringing down the barriers to game development. I love the classics like Street Fighter II and the new originals like Geometry Wars.
• HD Out Of The Box: It is great how the Xbox 360 (with the exception of the arcade model) comes with cables to play HD right out of the box. No dealing with some Best Buy employee trying to sell you on the $2000 Monster HDMI cable for “better digital frequency response modulation support implementation colors”.
• Fast Disc Drive: Every good PS3 game requires an install now, but the 360’s drive is plenty fast to just drop in and play. I don’t prefer having to switch discs (which hasn’t happened on the 360 for me yet) for a game, but I don’t know how that is any worse than having to wait through an install before every act on Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3.
• Wireless Controllers: It is easy to take this for granted now that every system has them, but it is really nice not to have to deal with a bunch of wires. Especially when you have four people playing on a console at once.
• Choice: Probably my favorite aspect of Microsoft’s approach to gaming is having options. I could buy an Arcade model and latter add HD cables or a hard drive and have the Pro level experience. I can rent/buy content from various online sources (Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, and soon Netflix) other than Xbox Live. I can install games if I want too (soon) or I can just drop in the disc and play.
• Multimedia: You can play and control your music (even from an attached iPod) even while you are in a game. It supports a lot of formats (H.264, DivX, Windows Media, MPEG-2, MP3, and AAC). Xbox Live has HD movie and TV content. The Media Center Extender functionality is awesome. I can be watching a TV show and accept an invite to play Halo 3 and it will switch right to the game (Halo 3 is usually in my drive :). It has a built-in IR “eye” for my Harmony too.

Playstation 3

• Quiet: There is no doubt about it, the PS3 is the quietest “next-gen” console out. It is probably quieter than my first PS2 actually. Sony really hit one home on not being a audible nuisance.
• Downloadable games: Sony is really leading the way with full-size game downloads being simultaneously released on disc and online; only Steam does it better. Not only is it convenient to just download a game, but then you don’t need to switch discs to play a different one.
• Multimedia / Blu-ray: Like the 360 it has broad media format support and downloadable movie and TV content, but it also supports Blu-ray HD movies. In fact, it is still really the only Blu-ray player worth buying. Without the PS3 it is likely that Blu-ray would have lost the format war.
• Built-in wired AND wireless networking: It is nice to have both options. The wireless-G is great for most people, but I can still use a wireless-N bridge if I need too (I do on my 360 for HD streaming).
• Uses standard hard drives: It is really nice that you can purchase any 2.5” SATA hard drive to expand the storage of the PS3. Sony realizes that it should make money selling content (games, movies, TV, etc) not proprietary storage to hold it.
• Web Browser: This is something that I found a lot more useful than I was expecting. It is really a pretty good browser that even supports most Flash content and the controller is utilized really well for navigation.
• Wireless Controllers: Now that rumble is back in the form of the Dualshock 3 controller the PS3 has a proper wireless controller. The only thing I’d fix would be to include a bit longer recharging cable, but at least it uses standard USB connectors so I could always buy one.

Wii

• Different Kind Of Controller: While I personally don’t like how the Wii’s controllers work, it obviously appeals to a lot of other people, especially “non-gamers”. I know the Wii is the first console my sister ever wanted. Hopefully this will help break game design out of the repetitive use of the same control schemes we’ve seen for some time.
• Low Launch Price: You can’t under-estimate how much price has played into the success of the Wii. It definitely reaffirmed where the volume is in the market and I’m sure that will play into Microsoft’s and Sony’s future console plans; that is good for gamers.
• Included Game: The Wii is a major throwback to an era where a game was included with every system, and that game was a major driver for sales of the console. Wii Sports is still one of the best games for highlighting the Wii’s strengths while effectively managing its weaknesses. How many launch titles can usually pull that off?
• Wireless Controllers: It had to be mentioned for the Wii too right? Due to the use of Bluetooth for the Wii-mote, it has actually become quite useful for some really cool homebrew hacking of motion sensing software too.
• Mii’s: What a great way to personalize your gaming experience. they aren’t just an icon for your profile but are actually playable in your games. The Mii concept is so great that Microsoft is even copying it now with their avatars.
• Backwards Compatibility: The Wii is the only system that still completely supports the last-gen games. It even supports the old Gamecube controllers.
• Web Browser: The Wii-mote makes a great control device for using the web on a TV. Built-in Flash support is really great too. Although it isn’t included with the console, $5 is a very reasonable price.

Update: I posted a follow-up The Seven Ways Each “Next-Gen” Console Succeeds

Xbox 360

• HD-DVD: It should have come built-in. It would have allowed more room for games, disc-based HD movies, and the format may have actually survived if one of its two biggest backers actually got behind it.
• Better storage options: It should come with a much larger hard drive (especially at launch) and the ability to swap in standard 2.5” SATA drives. It would be really nice if it had the ability to use any standard USB key or SD card for a memory card too. The day of proprietary memory cards really should have ended already.
• Headset: Why aren’t the audio controls built into the controller so that any headset would work? I should be able to mute my wireless headset without taking my hands off the controller.
• Quieter: I know the DVD drive spins fast so that load times are shorter but some sound insulation would be nice. Maybe installing onto the hard drive will help this, but see bullet #2.
• Web Browser: I could understand not having a browser when the console launched, but the time is far overdue for the 360 to get the web. The PS3 and Wii each have it, and it is more useful than I would have guessed.
• D-Pad: For a console with so much classic and arcade content it is ridiculous how bad the D-pad is. I really think that they’d sell more XBLA games if it didn’t feel so wrong to play classics like Street Fighter II with that D-pad. It looks like they may actually fix this soon.

Playstation 3

• Better UI than the XMB: Sony, would it kill you to use some icons with color? After all, it is one of the key ways for people to quickly identify items (see #6). The XMB is about as intuitive a way to tie together hierarchal lists of functions and data as any OS’s file system. Playing music should not use the exact same UI as your friends list.
• Built-in IR “eye”: It may seem petty, but it drives me nuts that every AV device I own is controlled by my slick Harmony universal remote except for the PS3. If it really wants to be the center of my entertainment it needs to work with my existing stuff.
• More memory for textures: The low quality textures so often seen on the PS3 are really the only thing keeping it from surpassing the Xbox 360’s graphics. Low quality textures were the only thing that marred the otherwise amazing graphics of Metal Gear Solid 4 for me.
• Cables: Sony, get with the program and start including component HD and/or HDMI cables in the box. It is so nickel-and-dime to sell a $500 console based on its ability to play HD games without the cables to do it.
• Memory Card Readers: Drop ‘em, they probably cost more than an HDMI cable but almost nobody uses them.
• Real motion sensing: It is either all or nothing for me on this one, so Sony really shouldn’t have even bothered because Sixaxis is thoroughly mediocre. Even PS3 exclusive developers are saying that it is “useless”. It’d probably save Sony some money on making controllers too.

Wii

• Lackluster motion control: FYI, I really don’t enjoy playing the Wii. It isn’t that the concept is bad, I think the concept is great. The motion control is just so terrible though. For proof look no further than the existence of a first-party add-on to fix the motion control.
• Weak GPU and CPU: The graphics and CPU power should have been at least 50% greater than the original Xbox, and it should be able to output video in 720p. I’m not saying it should compete with the PS3/Xbox 360, it just needs to be better than all of the last-gen stuff. Low quality 480p looks pretty bad on those fancy flat-panel TVs. :)
• Friend Codes: Here is a tip Nintendo, look at what Microsoft is doing with Xbox Live and copy it.
• Media support: It is really ridiculous that the Wii doesn’t have legitimate support for playing your pictures, music, and videos. You can do some of it, but it can’t do it over your network so I hope you have a lot of big SD cards. I’m sure that would be a popular feature for their target market.
• Better storage options: It is clear now that the built-in storage on the Wii is lacking and that Nintendo still doesn’t have a fix lined up yet. Why not increase the built-in storage and/or allow memory cards to (actually) expand the console’s usable space.
• Wired Networking: Sometimes you just want the reliability of a wire. The lame duck Wii WiFi also requires a “long preamble” (usually only required for old wireless-B devices) which kills your wireless-G and N performance.

Overall I find the concept, and to a large extent the execution, of VMC to be awesome. Here are some the strengths of VMC:

• No DVR fees to the cable company (or Tivo)
• Comes built into Vista
• Easily share the DVR through extenders (of which there is already a huge base of Xbox 360s)
• Top notch user interface (most of the time)
• Portable recordings

I especially like that the recordings are just files that I can play on my laptop or stream over the Internet (via Orb) when I travel. You can also easily sync and automatically transcode recordings to WMP-compatible media players, Zunes, and even Windows Mobile devices. I do wish they’d develop/release a softsled (software-based extender) though.

Vista Media Center TV Pack

Microsoft are set to announce the “Vista Media Center TV Pack” formerly codenamed Fiji at next month’s CEDIA Expo. It will bring welcomed features such as proper native QAM support and heterogeneous tuner support; both of which I’ve been waiting for. While many were expecting features such as support for H.264 and DirecTV, and the ability to have widescreen thumbnails, no such features are showing up in tester’s hands. Honestly, overall it is a complete disappointment. Not just because of the software, it is the delivery too.

Epic Fail

It gets ugly when you start to look at how you can get some TV Pack goodness for yourself. First problem, you can’t upgrade to it. Apparently a fresh install is required; just what I want to do with a system that is setup how I like it. Second, it is only available through OEMs! But wait it gets worse. Third, all the OEMs have said they are only planning on supplying the TV Pack with new computers.

Let me get this straight, so because I bought and installed Vista myself, a very common scenario for most current media center users, I don’t get access to a key update to an included component of the OS? And Even if I had bought my HTPC through an OEM, they aren’t going to support the product further? Who is making these decisions and how do they sound right to them? As if I didn’t feel like my copy of Vista Ultimate wasn’t completely lacking anything Ultimate about it already.

It must be awful to be one of the developers working on Media Center at Microsoft. So much work into a great product only to have it destroyed in the marketplace due to bad business decisions. The many VMC users out there are pretty loyal but we will only take so much. It is like we are continually waiting for the next installment to really make it all right (satellite support, good digital cable support, broad codec support, softsled, built-in place shifting, etc). Microsoft is lucky my DVR options are so bad to begin with, but that won’t last forever.

Money Isn’t The Root Of All Evil, It Pays My Mortgage

I don’t know exactly how this all started, but the very thought of paying for any service online is almost unthinkable for most people. Microsoft made a bold, but I think smart, choice when it decided to make the Xbox Live Community Games a marketplace of buyers and sellers; a place where creators can be rewarded for their work and aren’t pressured to work for free. After all what is really so bad about paying someone for something they do?

With the Xbox 360 (or any other console) you have people paying $300-$400 for a console, buying multiple $60 games, extra $40 controllers, and then they are going to balk at paying $45 for 13 months of service? That is only $3.46 per month. Pretty reasonable considering most MMOs cost about three times as much. Do people think that it just goes straight into Steve Balmer’s personal bank account or something?

The money really goes to pay people (regular ones, just like you and I) that work to create the hands-down easiest, most seamless, integrated, and arguably best online gaming experience available. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the only online gaming service you pay for was found to be the best, even amongst PS3 and Wii users, in a recent poll. Obviously this would be a different discussion if the Playstation Network was overwhelming seen as the top platform, but it isn’t.

You Don’t Get What You Don’t Pay For

There is an old adage that says “You get what you pay for.” I use the converse of that statement mostly though, “You don’t get what you don’t pay for.” I’m sorry if this sounds like Econ 101, but in a market driven economy paying is a crucial method of voting (signaling) for what you want so that people will build it. There is essential information inherent in a paying transaction that you approve of what someone did, and that they created value beyond what you are paying them.

If you have a situation like is common on the Internet today, the people who pay are actually the advertisers. So many sites and services are slaves to their advertisers because their users won’t pay a dime. I have asked many people I know who live and die by Facebook how much they would pay for it, and they all said zero. They all spend at least an hour a day on it, but it is apparently worthless to them, and much of what they want is never conveyed in any meaningful transaction.

So Facebook becomes a slave to advertising and pimping out their users’ information for every cent they can get. It isn’t unrealistic to think that if people paid for more services that their personal information wouldn’t be shared quite so freely. The sites don’t work for you though, they work for the advertisers. I’m not saying all online services or sites should shun advertising, but it is ridiculous how much the solution to every Web 2.0 business model is advertising.

In many ways the Internet has been one of the greatest economic tools of all time. Viable marketplaces will have to be developed as more and more things are done online though. Almost everyone shops online for tangible products, but something really needs to be done to make intangibles not a solely advertiser sponsored economy.

The State Of Updates

Right now almost every program on my computer has its own update mechanism of some sort. They primarily fall into three categories.

• Notify me of an available update
  • Pidgin
  • WinSCP
  • VMware Server
• Udate themselves from within the program
  • Firefox
  • Thunderbird
  • Quicken
  • Opera
  • Photoshop
• Special updating program that runs at startup and constantly uses memory
  • Java
  • Quicktime/iTunes
  • Google Pack (Picasa, Desktop Search, etc)
  • Thinkpad utilities

With every program doing its own thing, keeping your software up-to-date is a bit of a hassle and certainly not something the “average” user does.

Windows/Microsoft Update

Microsoft has their own updating software of course: Windows Update. It can already be extended to update other Microsoft products through Microsoft Update. They also serve up drivers for various WHQL’d hardware through it.

Why not open this up for any program on your system? This could be another feature to help differentiate Windows Vista or Windows 7 from the competition (OS X or Windows XP). This would also address one of the pain-points to “boxed” software that web applications don’t have.

Updates ala YUM, APT, or Xbox Live

I’m not saying that Microsoft should host files and provide bandwidth for every Windows application on the planet. They could create a secure way for third-party applications to be updated from the developer’s site through Windows Update.

YUM or APT on Linux is similar to this concept but it only works reliably if you only install software from repositories. Xbox Live also manages updates for every piece of software that runs on an Xbox 360 and it rectifies one of the main reasons for why I don’t PC game: it is such a pain to keep games up-to-date.

Ultimately Microsoft is a platform company, and this would make the Windows platform more attractive to users and developers. Having a unified method and interface would greatly simplify keeping software up-to-date, particularly for less savvy users. It could also have the effect of improving system security by making it easier for people to have the latest version of programs (Quicktime, Reader, Flash) that have been recently targeted through web browsers by hackers as well.

I would think that developers would appreciate not having to maintain software just to help…maintain software too. It really is kind of silly that everyone has to reinvent-the-wheel each time for updating their applications. Certainly there are some details for Microsoft to work out on how to implement this, but that is their problem. I’m just the idea man. :)

*Before anyone sends me an e-mail about this, yes I do know that there are programs such as RadarSync that claim to keep all of your applications up-to-date. I have yet to try one that is easy to use and actually works however.

The Benefits

There are three major potential benefits to installing games onto the hard drive. As it stands now the Xbox will realize two of them: speed and noise reduction. Microsoft has said that their own internal testing showed approximately a 30% improvement in loading times. This does come at the cost of having to install the game at some point. Although Microsoft told reporters than it only takes ten minutes to install Devil May Cry 4, which is half as long as the PS3 version’s install takes. In my book, a 30% improvement in loading times is easily worth a ten minute install.

The noise will be greatly reduced because of the DVD drive. Most users don’t realize this, but most of the noise of the Xbox 360 is caused by the very fast DVD drive, not the fans. With the game on the hard drive, the DVD won’t need to spin. No spinning, no noise.

The Third Benefit

There is a hitch to all this though, and this is where Microsoft misses perfection. The third potential benefit is not needing the disc to switch games, and the Xbox 360 will still require your game to be in the drive. This is of course an anti-piracy measure, and would be understandable for all games that have already been produced.

I’m suggesting that Microsoft should change how their games are sold. Every game should come with a code that, when entered during an install, would allow gamers to play without inserting the disc. These would be one-time use codes similar to the codes you can already buy at brick-and-mortar stores for Xbox Live subscriptions and Xbox Live Arcade games.

To make this user friendly the game would have to still be playable in the drive without ever using the code. Of course that would open up the opportunity to buy the game, install it, and give it to a friend or sell it used.  To combat that they could make it ask for the disc on some regular interval, say somewhere between one to three months, to verify ownership.

This would really make for a seamless experience of getting an invite to join another session in a game you aren’t playing and/or don’t have in the drive. It may be a small thing, but I hate it when I get an invite to Halo 3 only to realize that Guitar Hero 3 is in the drive. :)

Digital Distribution

All of this is of course baby steps toward digital distribution. There really shouldn’t be anything stopping Microsoft from selling me my games via Xbox Live especially with the new 60GB Xbox 360 on the horizon. They already do it for classic Xbox games, and a lot of free demos are well over one gigabyte. Microsoft will also let you re-download anything you have already purchased if you are worried that you may need to delete the game for space too.

What do you think Microsoft? You still have time to include this in the “new Xbox experience”. Using discs was so Xbox 360 1.0.

Microsoft

Microsoft really came out of the gate with some big news that surprised me. The major announcement was that the Xbox 360 is going to receive a completely new dashboard and guide. Honestly, I was surprised that the Xbox guys realized and accepted the fact that the dashboard needed some kind of complete overhaul/replacement like this.
Part of the new dashboard is that there will be avatars (read: Xbox version of Miis) tied to your gamertag as well. Sure, Microsoft totally copied the concept from Nintendo, but it could still be pretty cool. Overall, I thought the concept of the original dashboard blades was good, but the new dash looks like it will be a lot better. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until fall to see if it actually is.

The next major announcement was that Microsoft and Netflix have partnered up to deliver Netflix’s Instant Viewing to the Xbox 360. Apparently I should have waited a week before I decided to harp on Microsoft and Netflix for not being more aggressive on this. The one thing that kind of surprised me was that the Netflix streaming will require an Xbox Live Gold Membership.

In some ways this is good for Gold members because it actually makes it seem like you get more than just online gaming and the occasional early-release demo for your paid membership. Generally I think it is probably a bad idea however. It definitely adds to an already complicated Xbox offering. I doubt it will make sense to “average” consumers why they need a paid Xbox Live membership and a Netflix membership.

The only other notable announcement for Microsoft was that they landed one Final Fantasy XIII for Xbox 360 in the U.S. and Europe. This is a huge blow for Sony to loose a long time exclusive franchise like this. Oddly enough, I really think that this would have helped Microsoft the most in Japan; the only place where FFXIII will be a PS3 exclusive.

The rest is semi-typical E3 fodder: upcoming games, Lips karaoke, the Pro model will get a 60GB hard drive, and some other stuff that may or may not be worth your time.

Nintendo

I don’t know why I was so surprised, this is after all par for Nintendo’s course lately, but I was dumbfounded when they announced another Wii accessory! The new is this really the best name they could come up with? Wii MotionPlus. (Personally I’m more of a fan of the Wii Motion++)

FYI, I am not the first to feel like this is something the Wii really should have done correctly from the start. I don’t know if I have ever made this clear on here, but my issue with the Wii isn’t the concept, I think the concept is great. My issue is with the implementation, I have always thought the motion sensing was terrible; only good enough to fool my 8-year-old niece.

Instead of creating an add-on, Nintendo should have really looked at what Microsoft did after they released the original Xbox controller. Realize you screwed it up, and release a new one. Seriously, all new Wiimotes should have this tech built-in with the add-on only for existing units. Without it as default technology in the Wii platform the WMP just looks like it will fragment the user base.

Unfortunately, from what I have read only WMP specific games will use the new add-on. It will not improve motion detection in current titles. Too bad Nintendo didn’t tell developers about it any earlier than they told you and I. So it may be some time before anyone but Nintendo uses the WMP.

As it is powered by the Wiimote, it will probably shorten battery life as well. It will also be another thing to remove from the Wiimote when you pop it into a plastic guitar to play some Guitar Hero.

For those of you keeping score at home that pushes the current controller add-on list for the Wii up to half-a-dozen: the nunchuck, Wii MotionPlus, WiiFit, the zapper, the steering wheel, and the classic controller. A basic setup of just a Wiimote ($40), nunchuck ($20), and Wii MotionPlus (probably at least $20) will cost you at least $80.

The cheapest “next-gen” system: $250, bowling at home: complementary, making a mint selling accessories: priceless.

Sony

Last on the list is the big dog from the last-generation: Sony. They have really had some good momentum lately and they needed to have a big E3 to keep it going. Unfortunately for them, I don’t think they did.

They didn’t have any information on when their will it come out before Duke Nukem Forever virtual world software, Playstation Home. They basically showed off some games, and announced that they have gone down to one PS3 SKU (for now) but really nothing worth writing home about.

While I’m on Sony and their SKUs I just have to say it really blows my mind how often Sony changes their product mix.

• First there were two SKUs, 60GB and 20GB (both with hardware backward compatibility
• Then the 20GB got dropped so it was back to one
• They went back to two SKUs when they added an 80GB model (with software backward compatibility) and reduced the price of the 60GB one
• It was really just a firesale on the 60GB model though so it went back to one SKU
• Then the 40GB came out (lacking any backwards compatibility at all)
• It is back to one again though because the 40GB model is apparently history.

This is only the North American SKUs too! Don’t forget that they also switched over to a Dualshock 3 from a SIXAXIS controller somewhere in there and their prices bounced around between $400 and $600 during that time too. It is bad enough that there is an entire Wikipedia article just on the “Timeline of PlayStation 3 SKUs”. We’ll see if they go back to two (I’m betting on it).

After watching Nintendo’s success as of late I came to a realization; Nintendo is becoming the new Apple. Ten reasons why I think so after the jump.

1. Both companies biggest competitor is Microsoft
2. Each of them had been a much bigger player and innovator in their space only to languish into insignificance, and are now stronger then ever
3. They have a reputation for must-have gadgets that are as much coveted for their tech chic as their technology (iPhone/iPod and the Nintendo DS Lite)

   

4. Both companies focus on a lot on first-party accessories for their products
5. They each have a history of developing a platform where only first-party products do very well
6. They will launch competing products to major partners products (Apeture/Final Cut Pro/Shake vs Adobe, iWork vs MS Office, Wii Music vs Guitar Hero/Rock Band)
7. Both will keep partners in the dark on upcoming changes to key products until the general public finds out (Wii Motion Plus, No Carbon for Adobe #4)
8. Both stocks are trading at stratospheric levels (>300% increase over 3-years)
9. Both will sell you a product (iPhone 1.0, Wii, DS) and then sell you another product that rectifies the glaring shortcomings of the first one and act like it is innovation (iPhone 3G, Wii MotionPlus, DS Lite)
10. And the most important aspect of all, both CEOs like turtle necks (apparently)
    

World of Warcraft

An article I caught yesterday about three statistics that lie got me thinking about the PC gaming business. It seems pretty popular these days to argue over whether PC gaming is dead/dying or not, and invariably someone on the pro-PC side makes some comment to the effect of “PC gaming is still doing great, look at World of Warcraft!”

I won’t say that PC gaming is dead (it isn’t doing very well relative to the rest of the video game industry IMO though), but using WoW as an example is a joke. It is the very definition of a statistical outlier. How many PC games make even 5% as much money as WoW? Very, very, few. It is just as foolish as saying that high gas prices aren’t hurting car companies because Honda had a good quarter, even though Ford, GM, Chrysler, and even Toyota are doing bad.

Netflix and Microsoft

Next up is Netflix streaming to Media Center and/or the Xbox 360. I just don’t get why Netflix and Microsoft aren’t being very aggressive in this arena. It is a win-win for both companies, and not that difficult technically. After all, homebrew hackers have made software that can do it.

Think about it, on the technical side Netflix is already using Microsoft’s DRM and codecs which VMC (Vista Media Center) and the 360 already support. On the marketing side of things it would allow Netflix to really push their way onto peoples’ TVs over the Internet, and would give them something that their main rival Blockbuster could not match.

From Microsoft’s side, they would have the only console that can do Netflix. I’m sure some Microsofties would worry that the Xbox Live Video Store would be hurt by this, but I’d bet that wouldn’t generally be the case. First of all, most of the fair on Netflix’s Watch Now is older less popular films/shows, and Xbox Live has mostly new releases and current shows. Second, it could actually increase people’s use of their 360 as a TV/movie device. As people start using their Xbox for TV/movies (via Netflix) more often, I’m sure they’ll think about renting/buying that new movie in HD from Xbox Live.

Even without Microsoft’s approval I’m pretty sure Netflix could do it via some proxy software that would serve up UPnP streams. Videos from Vongo, CinemaNow, and Amazon Unbox all play over UPnP on an Xbox 360 because they use Microsoft’s DRM/codecs. There is no reason it shouldn’t work.

The Fastest Mac Evar!

I don’t know, maybe it is just me getting AMF (Apple Marketing Fatigue), but they need to stop with the “Fastest/Best/Super-est Mac/iPhone/OS X/Single-Button-Mouse Ever” crap. Who really cares? Isn’t it a given that the new model of Apple’s fastest computer would be faster than the old one? What would people say if Dell said “The fastest Inspiron ever”?

It just seems so juvenile (along with their ads). Honestly I hear more imaginative declarations of superiority from the dregs of the Xbox Live community.

First award winner goes to DRM (digital restrictions rights management) for “How not to create a sustainable business model.” I don’t know how many of you consumers out there saw this, but Microsoft has decided to turn off the DRM services for the MSN Music Store. This means that anyone who bought leased music from MSN is effectively screwed. The music will still play on the machines they have authorized already, but when the computer stops, so will the music. And just like musical chairs, anyone who paid for that music will be left without a chair.

Now you may be saying to yourself, “Well who bought music from MSN? I want to know who these two people are.” But this has already happened with Google Video, Major League Baseball, MTV URGE, AOL Music Now, and Virgin Music Club. Somehow the mainstream technology media isn’t quite catching on to the realities of DRM. I don’t think that there is a sustainable business model for music ownership that includes DRM. Music subscription services are an exception because they don’t ever act like you own anything. Maybe that’s why I get my digital music elsewhere.

If DRM was the winner of the anti-business model, so-called 3G wireless service is the runner up. ComputerWorld recently reported on 3G data networks and while most of the review is generally positive there was one thing that stood out to me. AT&T and Verizon both cap their services at 5GB of data received per month, and word is Sprint will be following suit (they are actually capping it at 300MB if you are roaming!). At first 5GB might seem like a lot of data, but when you break it down that is not the case.

If a business user were to use the 3G service for 8 hours a day only on weekdays, they could average only 29MB per hour of data without going over. Considering that the TechCrunch homepage is 1.8MB by itself or about 1/16 of the hourly quota for a business user. Or put another way, your connection can only average 8KB/sec or you’ll go over. That is for only 20 days a month, for only 8 hours of the day. Heaven forbid someone used it everyday because then that is only 169MB for the whole day!

Last but not least is Playstation Home, which is soon to join Duke Nukem Forever as the world’s most famous vaporware (yes, I’ve heard some people have actually seen it, supposedly). For those not familiar with Playstation Home (also referred to as just Home), it is Sony’s total copy interpretation of Second Life The Sims Online a virtual world. It was originally announced in March 2007 and scheduled to come out in open beta in August 2007 and public release in October 2007.

Now I’m not really good at math yes I am but August is only five months after March, and we are now about fifteen months past that date, and there still hasn’t been a public beta. Later they promised a “Spring 2008″ delivery, only to announce in Spring 2008 that it would be coming out in Fall 2008. I don’t know if there is a solution to this problem for Sony other than to ship Home sooner rather than later, but you have to wonder what they were thinking when they made the announcement(s) about Home’s development timeframe. Any takers on it actually coming out in Fall 2008? Much less whether it will have been worth the wait?

The really amazing thing is, through all of the troubles the PS3 has gone through (and it really couldn’t be much worse) it is still a system people will consider buying. Talk about a powerful brand.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard PC gaming advocates denounce Intel’s graphics chipsets. Truth be told, they are probably just about the worst chips for 3D games out there. But does that really mean there is no place in the PC market place for adequate 2D graphics chips?

This is asinine on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start, but I will anyway. First, it is ridiculous to think that even 10% of all PCs would get used for somewhat demanding 3D games if they had capable hardware. According to Gartner, by the end of this year the worldwide install base for PCs will 1.1 billion units. That would mean that at least one billion discreet graphics cards would have been sold to people/companies/organizations that they would never use.

If you account for the fact that a decent gaming graphics card costs at least $150 (probably $200 or more really) then that would be $150,000,000,000 (or more) that would have been wasted. To put that in perspective, that is $25 billion more than Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, nVidia, Intel, AMD, and Comcast combined made in the last six years! Or said another way, we could fuel 61 million cars in the U.S. for an entire year. Saying every computer should have a capable 3D gaming video card in it is as ridiculous as saying every TV needs to have an Xbox 360/PS3/Wii built-in; it is just rhetoric.

Here is the other major problem, a $150 video card won’t be able to play any current games in three years. How many people keep their computers for three years or longer (outside of our techie circle obviously)? My parents have had the same computer for four years, and they have no plans on getting a new one any time soon. My not-even-three-years-old computer and GPU are much nicer than anything my parents, or my brother, or any of my in-laws, etc, would ever buy and even my machine chokes on any game released in the last year.

What about the power consumption on discreet graphics chips? With laptops outselling desktops, and everyone becoming so concerned with being “green” these days, does it make sense to put a power hog GPU in every computer? I like having as much battery life as possible. I also like having a quiet computer (I bought a special passively cooled graphics card in fact). Having a dedicated GPU works against both of these factors.

If you really want to fix PC gaming it needs to become more approachable. Here are my tips.

• PC gaming needs a unified platform; think Games for Windows Live and Steam together on steroids, in an “open” and extensible way. It should manage patches for every game you have installed, know what the recommended drivers are, and even update all of them for you. It should have a unified messaging/communication system. It should have all of the copy-protection mechanisms built into it.Basically it should be kind of like what Xbox Live is for the Xbox plus additional hardware management functions. It should make the PC less of a moving target platform-wise.
• Developers should put more time into optimizing the performance of their games. It is ridiculous how developers constantly put the onus on the player to upgrade (to hardware that doesn’t even exist yet, yes I’m looking at you Crytek).Think of how much more raw power you need in a gaming PC versus an Xbox 360 to get comparable performance. On consoles the developers are forced to do more with less. They can do better on PCs than they have been doing.
• There needs to be more games to fill the gap between 3D games like Crysis/CoD4/UT3 and Freecell or flash games. Current Intel 3D hardware could probably keep pace this segment of games. The XNA Game Creators Club may be able to do the trick. After playing the demo of The Dishwasher: Dead Samuri, I’d bet a lot of “casual” gamers would be enticed to buy it for $10-$15; I’d probably pay $30 or more even. It is that fun/cool/fresh.

• Get OEMs to position PC gaming machines in a much less hardcore way. Right now you have XPS, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, etc, all trying to position themselves as the fastest things out there, like a Ferrari maybe. How many Ferrari’s do you see around town? Yeah, not many.

  If people could get a $500 computer that couldn’t play games, or you could get it slightly upgraded in a simple easy-to-understand gaming package for $150-$200 more, I think you’d see more people upgrade. Every “gaming” PC package should include an Xbox/Games for Windows controller as well. Outside of first-person-shooters, most people like a dedicated gaming controller more; especially in the less hardcore segments.

Gran Turismo is arguably the most popular/prolific console racing series ever, and certainly one of the Playstation 3′s key exclusive titles (second only to Metal Gear IMO). Apparently, even Sony can’t get their key exclusive games out the door in any sort of timely fashion for the PS3. By the time the “real” GT5 comes out, the PS3 will have already been out for two and a half years! That means that there will have been a four year span between the release of GT4 and GT5.

To put that in perspective against another big console exclusive, look at Halo. Each version only had three years or less after the preceding one, and Halo 1 was even a launch title. Although, how well would have a Halo 3 Lite have done? Probably really well, unfortunately. This could lead to more developers with deadline problems releasing partial versions of their game and then the full version only a year later, as they’ll just cash in for a total of $100 instead of $60 without hardly any extra work.

This isn’t the first time the Gran Turismo series has seen a gimped Prologue version however; the fourth installment had one too, and it came about four years after GT3. So I don’t know how much can really be attributed to the much talked about development difficulties on the PS3. Perhaps Polyphony Digital (the developer) just can’t get their product out the door in general.

All I know is that this can’t be a welcomed trend for gamers. Let’s hope that the GT5 Prologue owners don’t get stuck paying full price for what will essentially be a car and track pack.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you rather have only the complete fully polished game less frequently, or would you prefer getting games in installments (ala GT5 or even Half-Life 2 style)?

For all the Vista users out there, I recently stumbled across an awesome program for the Vista Sidebar. It is called Amnesty Generator, and basically it will take the code for any web widget (think Google Gadgets, ESPN, etc) and turn it into a Vista Sidebar compatible gadget. It is a simple program, but works great; I use it to display the NBA.com live sports scores on my desktop. Check it out. There is also a Mac OS X version, but I have not used it.

Next up on the block is Nintendo’s forthcoming Mario Kart release for the Wii. Forget Zelda or Metroid, Mario Kart may be the most important franchise Nintendo has made in the last decade or two. All three people Everyone who had a N64 or Gamecube had Mario Kart; it is probably the only game I really played on Gamecube. It single handedly kept Nintendo in the console business, IMHO.

The formula is simple, easy and fun racing antics for you and your friends. Really it is about playing with others and yelling at them when they use a power-up on you. “Damn you Carl! That was the luckiest turtle shell ever!” The problem is that Mario Kart for Wii will not have voice support for online play (of course you can still taunt in person :)).

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t get it. Why doesn’t Nintendo come out with a headset for the Wii (it uses Bluetooth after all)? They made a steering wheel for Mario Kart, and I would think that another accessory to buy would fit perfect with Nintendo’s current accessory fetish strategy.

Mario Kart online won’t be half of the fun it could be with voice support. I understand that they may be concerned about the unwanted jagged words you often hear on Xbox Live, but limiting voice chat to friends-only by default would take care of that. When I read posts like this of people using Xbox 360s to do voice chat while they play Wii games, you know something is wrong.

Lastly, and certainly not least, why do people care what Kevin Rose says or does? (This is a real question, feel free to comment). I know he runs a website that is almost as popular as TechConsumer (ha!), but really, why do people care? It was the Kevin Rose 3G iPhone rumors post about back-to-back webcams that really pushed me over the edge. It got coverage on AppleInsider, Gizmodo, Techmeme, and of course Digg.

Kevin Rose has had one good idea in his life so far (which appears to be easy to copy and make better), and that’s it. Digg initially thrived under the so-called “wisdom of crowds” but it is now languishing under “mob rule.” Interestingly enough, the mob has a fancy for Paris Hilton, all products from Apple, and stupid ugly cats (and squirrels). More people on Digg read what Kevin Rose says than what Ben Bernanke says (even with this “recession”). Rose’s predictions were way off on the iPhone 1.0, so why would I listen to him now? He doesn’t work with or for Apple (actually his business relationship is closer with Microsoft).

So again I ask, why does anyone listen to Kevin Rose? If you can actually give me a good reason why, I’ll be surprised.

The Scenarios
I decided to look at three different gaming configurations, an Xbox 360, a “typical” gaming PC, and the gaming PC setup as a home theater PC (HTPC). The main difference between the gaming PC and the HTPC is the display and sound. The gaming PC has a 22″ widescreen monitor with computer surround sound speakers. The HTPC has a 46″ 1080P LCD display, and a component 5.1 home theater speaker setup. The Xbox 360 setup has the same 46″ LCD display and speakers as the HTPC.

The Assumptions

1. The gaming PC must be replaced every three years (just the PC not the display or sound)
2. The gaming PC gets $250 of misc. upgrades by year two
3. The gaming PC is being purchased instead of a basic computer that would have been purchased anyway
4. The console PC requires a larger/better television than what would have been purchased anyway
5. The console life cycle is six years
6. For all scenarios four full-priced games, and one discount game (50%) were purchased each year
7. The console gamer purchases three additional controllers
8. The console gamer goes through four dozen batteries per year
9. The console gamer pays for an Xbox Live Gold membership
10. 23% (mean of Dell’s consumer financing rates 15-30%) discount rate used to calculate the NPV

The Method
I am using a finance technique known as net present value (NPV). It is a method for accounting for the time value of money. Basically a dollar today is worth more than a dollar three years from now (or any other later date). It should be noted that using NPV favors the PC rig because it discounts the future costs of upgrading/replacing the system which you don’t have to do with the Xbox 360.

The Verdict
In the scenarios I have laid out, the basic PC gaming setup is more expensive. It is somewhat close though; only 12% higher. Think about that though, a 46″ 1080P LCD TV, full home-theater setup, an Xbox 360, 6 years of Xbox Live, four controllers, and the two included games costs less than a good (but not amazing) gaming PC on a relatively paltry 22″ display.

If you compare the 360 to the HTPC it gets bad real quick: 38% more. If you assume that you already have the TV/monitor and sound that you’ll be using for your gaming, the PC solutions are a whopping 71% more. Here’s the breakdown in dollar figures:

Total NPV
Xbox 360: $3,152
Gaming PC: $3,523
HTPC: $4,349

NPV without display and sound
Xbox 360: $1,837
Gaming PC: $3,149
HTPC: $3,149

The Point?
The only point of this is to show the PC gaming is in fact more expensive. If you enjoy PC gaming, so be it. Just know that it costs more. For the record, I was actually surprised how well PC gaming did in this comparison. For my dollar, I’ll take the integrated approach of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live though, not to mention that I don’t have to install my games and troubleshoot them to make them work (if you can make them work).

*If you would like to check out my spreadsheet for this, here’s the link. It has all of the specs for the PC, and links to every product and component used.

*Update* Bob has a response to my analysis. Check it out.

What the hell is up with Apple and their fetish for making products that don’t have user-replaceable batteries? It was bad enough with the iPod, (even if it isn’t quite the only MP3 player in that category) but then they added the iPhone to the list, and now the MacBook Air (my vote for the worst product name since Microsoft Bob). I really can’t understand how it is acceptable to have to send in your cell phone or laptop every year or two (according to Apple) just to have a battery replaced. Did I mention that they’ll rent an iPhone to you while yours is in the shop?

How many iPods have been thrown away and replaced by new models because the battery died and it wasn’t worth the $66 investment in an old iPod. That’s great for the environment. And can someone tell me why it costs $20 more for an iPhone battery replacement than an iPod? It should be telling that Apple has FAQs just on battery replacement!

Next up on the chopping block? Sony. This whole Blu-ray and PS3 business just annoys me. It is like they can’t make up their mind on what their products are going to do before they launch them. The Blu-ray spec was so not-ready-for-primetime that the Playstation 3 has been the only safe-bet for a future-proof Blu-ray movie player. This helpful guide to what features each Blu-ray player does and doesn’t support should be proof enough that Blu-ray still isn’t really ready for the average movie buying consumer (let’s ignore the price that is 3x higher than HD-DVD too).

The Playstation 3 has been all over the product map as well. In the little more than a year that the PS3 has been out, they have had five different versions of the console and they are about to add a sixth, yet they have never sold more than two SKUs at a time. Let’s see, will this new one play PS2 games? If it does, will it be all games via hardware, or some games via software? Does it have WiFi? What about SACD support? Oh you haven’t heard of that? It is just another failed media format by Sony that some PS3s support.

And while Sony has made it obvious that they are using the PS3 as a Trojan horse for Blu-ray (or is it the other way around now?) could someone tell them that many people like to use universal remote controls when they watch a movie? Just try to explain to my wife why she can control everything in my living room with our Harmony remote (which we absolutely love), except for the PS3. Surely out of the five or six variants of the PS3 they could have made one that had a remote “eye” like the Xbox 360 does.

Speaking of the Xbox 360, even though they have three SKUs, all of the differences in features are accessories, so even a $280 Arcade model could be accessorized out to be like an Elite (minus the black paint job) if you wanted. The PS3 SKUs differences can’t be fixed/change after the fact.

Oh, and lastly, would it be too much for the PS3 to actually come with the HD cables (component or HDMI) to actually hook up their “true HD” game console to my HDTV (you know, like the Xbox 360 does)? I’m sure it makes sense to people that they are getting a free “Blu-ray HD” movie, but not the HD cables to watch it with. Actually wait, don’t do it Sony, I love to watch people at BestBuy get suckered talked into buying an $86 Monster HDMI cable (one of the few remaining joys of brick-and-mortal shopping). You know if they didn’t waste all that money on an HDMI cable they might have some money for an extra game or controller…but you wouldn’t want that sale, would you Sony?

Something has surprised me more than the twists and turns of the plot though, and that is Bungie’s Halo 3 website. It is a whole new level of game and interweb integration. Dare I say it, it is almost a social network.

The Old

Halo 2 already had quite a bit of interesting integration into the web. You could check your all-time stats, look at where each of your deaths took place, and even check out where the person was standing who killed you. But that was pretty much where it stopped.

The New

Stats: Halo 3 ups the ante on the stats, offering far more comprehensive stats. I especially like that they have added emphasis to the kill to death ratio for those players who make you lose the game by 3 kills when they get 25 kills, 35 deaths, and still feel they had a good game. You can look at your stats for each map, for each game type, and for each weapon you use even. So far my weapon of choice (in one multiplayer game) is the Heavy Machine Gun (turret).

Forge: There are two new modes in Halo 3 that are quite unique: Forge and Theater. The Forge allows you to customize all of the multi-player maps. Weapons, spawn points, vehicles, teleports, and more can all be altered. It will be incredibly interesting to see what the Halo community comes up with in the Forge.

Theater: The Theater lets you watch recent games from anywhere in the game, Forge, Multiplayer, or even Campaign; and when I say recent, that is a relative term. The Theater will keep the most recent “25 films, or about 400MB worth, whichever comes first.” My 360 still has every minute of my entire campaign. You can also save films to your library if you don’t want them deleted. Obviously you probably wouldn’t want to relive an entire campaign (unless that is your thing) so the Theater is about more than just replaying games. You can make brief clips or take screenshots (the picture above is actually one of mine, click on it for full screen) of any of your video.

Sharing is Caring: What good would all these custom maps and screenshots of major pwnage be without a way to share them with the world? That’s where the Halo 3 file sharing comes into play. It isn’t the illegal P2P type of file sharing most people associate with that name. It is the place you can put up any content, maps, videos, screenshots, gametypes, etc, you create in Halo 3 for anyone to download. Friends can find content through the game, but you can even download stuff via your web browser onto your Xbox 360. Just find the content you want on the site, click download, and next time you play the game… Violá, it downloads it.

The Social Network: As you may have noticed above, I was initially going to say it was almost a social network, but looking into it further I realized it is really a full-blown social network…for a game. Think about it, you have your profile, a message center, a friends list, a people finder (to find other friends on Halo 3), a forum, and even groups (formerly Clans). That sounded like a social network to me, but it was when I saw what clans had become that it pushed me over the top.

Groups: Clans (now called groups) have moved far beyond just a bunch of people to game with. Each group now has its own homepage (see below), forum, articles and FAQ sections, news, announcements, links, and of course an RSS feed. This is going to build a whole new level of community in many groups, particularly competitive ones. It will be really interesting to see if Bungie expands the feature list to allow group file share. I can envision groups just for machinima with episodes on their homepage.

Finding new groups has been expanded too. It used to be that if you played with someone on Xbox Live and had a good time, you might ask them for an invite into their clan, or maybe you had some friends at school that had a clan. Now you can search for groups based on location, the founder, or even just the name of the clan. I have already found one in my zip code and one dedicated to my university.

The Finale: So needless to say, I’m feeling pretty good about the return on my gaming dollar for Halo 3. I think Bungie has created something that will be mimicked by a lot of other studios, and that it has the potential to revolutionize the community aspect of gaming. If you have an Xbox, you owe it to yourself to get this game. With the solid campaign and multi-player, along with innovative features like the Forge and Theater, I’m giving this game a 10/10. Ask anyone who knows me, I don’t give out tens easily; I can nitpick with the best of ‘em.

In addition to the comments below, if you are on Xbox Live, drop me a message or game invite. My gamertag is peskyNOSPAMpescado. Just take the nospam out. Don’t ask about the name, it is a long story.

More Screenshots (courtesy of me, click for full screen):

*Those are real in-game graphics.

Sam’s Club, Costco, and Family Video all have the standard version for $50. Family Video even has a $5 off coupon code (NEWPGMEM) and $.99 shipping. The rest of the versions are between $10-$15 off the normal price.

BTW, if you really have to have a life-sized Master Chief helmet the Legendary version, it looks like you should order your copy ASAP.

Fact 1: There are 50% more Xbox 360s than Wiis in North America

Fact 2: If you add the Playstation 3 and Wii install bases together you’d still be about 300,000 units short of the Xbox 360.

I know some people care about the Japanese gaming market, like oh, the Japanese, and there are some people (a seemingly vocal minority) who enjoy Japanese games, but really how much does that matter most consumers outside of Asia? Obviously Microsoft would like to gain some ground in Japan, but I don’t see any games in my collection that I would consider to be Japanese titles.

If video games are actually breaking out as the next major mainstream media format, why is it so important to get Japan? Have you ever heard of a movie getting canceled because the producers thought nobody would watch it in Japan? How about a book, or a CD? Me neither. I guess my point is, there is some room in our global economy for some regional preferences.

Part One: the CinemaNow Service

So I looked at my Netflix Queue and picked out “Man of the Year” (which was better than I was expecting BTW) for the low low discount price of $2 from CinemaNow’s “Last Chance” section. Soon as I found the movie on CinemaNow’s site I noticed that they only support using their site with Internet Explorer.

CinemaNow with Firefox

CinemaNow with Internet Explorer

What makes this annoying is that their service requires installing the “CinemaNow Movie Manager.” It is the application that actually downloads the movies. I don’t know why they don’t make the software just register its own URI like cinemanow:// in Windows that would make it work in more than one browser. I’d rather not have to install any additional software though; the files use Windows Media DRM, and could be played in Windows Media Player. Basically, it seemed like the movie manager software was worthless and unnecessary.

After I went into Internet Explorer to purchase the rental, the movie manager software launched and the movie started downloading. In the hour it took to download the 1.2GB file I could have gone to Blockbuster to pick up a movie. You can’t start playing a video while it is still downloading either; which you can do on XLM. After completing the download, I tried to play the movie and was informed that I was not authorized to play this file on “this device.” I looked into the support on their site, and ended up having to e-mail them.

They did respond within about half an hour, but I was already done messing with this for the night, and was not at my computer. They gave me a coupon code to purchase the movie again, which would issue a new license to view the file. It worked without requiring downloading the file again.

The first thing I noticed as I played the file is that the resolution is terrible. After looking at the properties I saw that the resolution is only 512×222! That is only one-third the resolution of standard definition television or DVDs at 720×480, or even most P2P video files. Needless to say, it looked even worse scaled up to 57″ on my HDTV. In addition there was a lot of intermittent stuttering in the video (in Windows Vista and XP and on my Xbox 360, all from local storage or over a wired LAN).

The file properties show that they are encoding their “1500k” files at about 1600kbit/sec actually—much higher than you normally see on P2P files. Of that 1600kbit/sec, only 96kbits are dedicated to a stereo (no surround sound) audio stream. The stereo sound is okay at 96kbit/sec as they use Windows Media Audio and not MP3, but it is a far cry from the 5.1 surround sound I’m used to enjoying on DVDs and video from the XLM.

In short, the video quality was sub-par, and the audio was only passable. Both shortcomings would be much less noticeable on a standard definition television using the built-in speakers, however.

Part 2: Xbox 360 Playback

Now for the part that enticed me to try out this service in the first place, the Xbox 360 playback. As soon as I turned on my 360 the CinemaNow Movie Manager software alerted me to the fact that I had an Xbox 360 on the network. (Duh!) When I clicked on the notification it opened a web page with instructions on how to setup your computer to stream the file to the Xbox 360. Basically, if you follow the instructions exactly it will work, but it isn’t even close to being easy enough for my Dad to do. Frankly, I don’t know why the media manager software doesn’t just take care of the dozen or so steps to setup your computer for streaming; that is how it should be.

I later discovered that you do not have to stream the file to the Xbox 360 via Windows Media Player Sharing. Any UPnP software that can stream video to the Xbox 360 should work; I used Orb and it worked great, and I bet TVersity would work fine too. Just make sure the UPnP software is sharing the folder that CinemaNow saves your movies in and that you can play the file on the computer you downloaded it to.

*Side note for Windows Vista users: as TVersity doesn’t seem to work on Windows Vista yet (at least not for me and I’ve tried) check out Orb. It can transcode any format of video or audio to what your UPnP device can handle (Ogg Vorbis into WAV for my 360), works perfect in Windows Vista, and can do a lot of other cool things, such as online radio DVR, Slingbox, etc.

The Bottom Line

CinemaNow’s service is not as good as the Xbox Live Marketplace. Video quality is below standard definition, the audio isn’t in surround sound, you can’t play the file on the 360 while it finishes downloading on your computer, it takes a lot more effort, and it doesn’t work in Firefox. Honestly, I don’t think I will ever use CinemaNow again. The one area where I would maybe recommend doing so is to grab a few movies to watch on a laptop on a plane for those who don’t know about DVD rippers. It is unacceptable for watching on the TV though.

In the post, I said that Nintendo is doing very well with what I call their strategy of selling “checkers instead of chess”. Although it was not intended to be insulting, apparently it came off that way. For me, I don’t care if you enjoy checkers or chess, there’s no qualitative difference, they are both just games. Some people like to read books for leisure, while I don’t usually find anything about reading books to be leisurely. People have different tastes. It is great that Nintendo wants to push to create games for people who don’t want to literally invest time in a game.

This brings me to my point, I am sick and tired of other people judging my (or anyone else’s for that matter) use of leisure time. Why is it that some people view someone like me (late-20s grad student) as being lazy because I will play a video game for an hour. Yet these same people will watch a couple of hours of The Apprentice, Grey’s Anatomy, and then end it off with the local news. I spent 60 minutes on leisure, they spent 150. Can you smell the hypocrisy?

“But think of how much more productive you could have spent your time.”

My response? Why do I have to be productive all of the time? When I get home from a day of work, frankly I need to unwind, and TV doesn’t do it for me. Games actively distract me; TV is too passive. A synonym in the dictionary for entertainment is diversion; and that is precisely what I need. Fortunately, after a few years of marriage, my wife started to get it. She used to hate it if I played an hour of Halo, but I could watch 6 hours of TV and not get a single comment. She realized, like I hope more will, that entertainment is inherently not actively productive. I believe strongly that you can be more productive by taking adequate breaks, than you can by working until your eyes cross.

Hopefully, one of these days video games will actually be recognized as a legitimate and acceptable form of entertainment. Too often it seems that gaming is judged by its lowest common denominator (Manhunt 2?), and not by its more cinematic masterpieces (Metal Gear 2). If movies were regarded in this way, people would look at moviegoers with disdain because the latest “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was too violent and tasteless.

Bottom line, it is my time, and I will do with it as I please. As long as the average American is still watching 2.6 hours of television a day, I won’t feel bad spending an hour on Halo. Just get off my back.