Category Archives: Articles of Interest

Microsoft is expanding the Xbox 360 warranty to 3 years (for people suffering from “red ring” errors) and taking a ~$1.1B charge in FY07. Peter Moore was interviewed by N’Gai Croal on the subject. Rough news, no doubt about it… but hopefully customers will feel that Microsoft is taking proper care of them.

Sony is cutting the price of the PS3 by $100 (this is 99.9% certain, despite repeated denials by the company.) Sony also gets a dose of rough news: Beautiful Katamari was canceled for the PS3, and Madden 08 will run far more smoothly on the 360 than on the PS3. A $100 price cut is not going to fix these (and all the rest of Sony’s) problems.

But the honeymoon continues for Nintendo. Only announcement to catch my eye: EA is implementing something called “Family Play” exclusively for the Wii. Basically, EA Sports titles will enable experienced gamers to play with full (more complex) controls, while inexperienced gamers can use a simplified (wand-only) control system that levels the playfield (so to speak!) Great stuff. I expect to see features of this sort migrate to many games (and all consoles.) Hey — I wonder if a demographic advocate came up with this? Yeah… probably not. 🙂

And, as a break from console-centricity, here’s a nice article about Zork (one of ten games recently voted into the Digital Game Canon.)

Nintendo finally announced WiiWare, aka original downloadable games on the Wii — coming in 2008. I wonder if consumers will be confused by all the terminology (Virtual Console vs. WiiWare vs. Shop Channel), if they’ll appreciate the distinctions, or if they’ll even notice either way? (That’s an honest question, not a leading one.) Anyway, on a positive note, I’m really excited to see what indie developers will do with the Wiimote. On a negative note, I have a hard time believing Reggie’s statement that Nintendo won’t “screen ideas,” given Nintendo’s brand positioning, historical behavior, etc. I also wonder how a developer can “qualify” for getting onto the service if the quality of their proposal isn’t being taken into consideration. Size of the studio? Age? Previous relationship with Nintendo? None of those bode well for a very wide swath of independent developers. Given all that, I will assume the statement is an exaggeration.

The MacArthur Foundation is putting $1.1M into a new middle and high school in New York that will feature a curriculum “based on videogames”. That doesn’t appear to mean “kids will play educational games all day” (though I’m sure that will be part of the curriculum). Very little detail is offered, and what little there is would confuse the heck out of most normal people (i.e. anyone not in the serious games industry or academia.) Let’s hope to see better PR for this in the future.

Steve Wozniak, David Jaffe and Nolan Bushnell are guest starring in Code Monkeys, an “8-bit style” gaming and pop culture parody cartoon debuting July 11th on G4. The show follows the employees of “GameAvision” and is apparently rife with industry in-jokes. Looking forward to it! 🙂

BioWare is developing a Nintendo DS RPG based on Sonic the Hedgehog. If any company can pull this off (and that’s not a given), it will be Bioware. Kudos to SEGA for trying something different, and for having the sense to sign a world-class partner.

• Wizards of the Coast has launched Gleemax, a portal with a focus on self-expression (show off your D&D character, your Magic deck, etc) and community — both local and international. Wizards hopes that local gaming stores will sign up, promote themselves, and organize events through an online calendar that will automatically populate local players’ pages with upcoming events.
• MTVN has launched its fifth virtual world in a year, “Virtual Lower East Side,” a very detailed replica of the actual Lower East Side in NYC. It will apparently focus on music/bands.
• Gamasutra’s analysis of the latest NPD numbers for the game industry.
• Capcom will distribute games via Steam like several other major publishers. And speaking of Valve, they’ve joined forces with startup Tournament.com to offer wagering services to players of skill-based video games.
• EA is bringing some of its top titles to the Mac and sim-shipping Madden NFL 08 on Mac & consoles. Steve Jobs must be pleased about that.
• SCEA launched PlayStation.Blog, which features posts from an assortment of SCEA insiders (somewhat like Microsoft’s Gamerscore blog). Everyone is quick to call it “long overdue” but it won’t take long for the blog to gain readership.

• Some information about the size of the market for casual MMOs for children.
• I’m really excited about Fracture, a shooter being made by LucasArts. Your weapons dramatically deform the terrain around you, with tactical implications for all involved. LucasArts is also promising a “richer narrative”… let’s hope they deliver!
• The History Channel is accompanying each episode of the new show Dogfights with game episodes that mirror the content of the show. Watch a famous dogfight, then participate in it.
• Fun “crayon” game, done in under a week by the talented Petri Purho.
• EA announced the establishment of EA Casual Entertainment, a new division focused on casual games, headed by former Activision Publishing president Kathy Vrabeck.
• A report by Game Informer suggests that 90% of Nintendo’s sales and marketing staff will choose to leave the company rather than leave Redmond (as part of a previously-announced group relocation.) This includes three top executives. The whole thing’s a bit of a head-scratcher.
• 2K Games has developed HistoriCanada, a Civ3 mod that teaches Canadian history. It will be packaged with copies of Civilization III and donated to 100,000 Canadian high school students.
• Nice article about business simulations, including thoughts on the serious and not-so-serious. (For those who read it: I played the beer game during my Sloan orientation. Ah… memories.)

• The Sims is being made into a film by 20th Century Fox. Seems like they intend to work the “god game” angle for the film. Probably the only way to handle it, given the nature of The Sims. Even so, I’m dubious.
• Steam has 13M+ “active” accounts. I’d like to know the definition of “active.”
• According to Nintendo, female purchases of the DS have increased 42 percent. Purchases by people 30+ are up 127 percent. Some interest info about the Wii in there, too.
• Nintendo also recently unveiled a bunch of games; the one that caught my eye was Drawn to Life, which lets you draw your in-game character, weapons, create moving platforms to help you traverse pits, etc. I’m consistently more impressed with DS titles than Wii titles; hoping that changes soon.
• The NY Times is publishing ‘newsgames’ created by Ian Bogost’s Persuasive Games. The games appear in the op-ed page (for paying subscribers only.) First up: FDA-themed Food Import Folly.
• Director John Woo and Warren Spector team up to create a game and movie called Ninja Gold. Easy to get excited about those two working together! That said: is it just me, or does “Ninja Gold” sound like the name of a $2 scratch-off lottery ticket?
• Google Maps: now letting you navigate urban areas in 3d, photo-realistic splendor. Pretty cool! Watch out for the avalanche of effusive blog posts declaring the imminent advent of google maps 3d MMO gaming. 😉
• Microsoft just unveiled “Surface”, a tabletop display that’s extremely scratch-resistant, sensitive to touch, capable of “reading” printed information placed on it, and able to identify and interact with other digital products (like cameras). I’ve had the opportunity to play with Surface in the lab; it’s almost impossible to communicate how awesome it is in a few lines. This is going to be my new coffee table the instant a consumer model is available… and I almost never buy first generation tech products (Microsoft’s or otherwise!)

• Via C3, word that MSNBC has launched Newsbreaker — basically Breakout but with news headlines that appear when you destroy bricks. Initial gut reaction: seems like a gimmick of the less fruitful kind; comprehension of the news has too little to do with the gameplay to make a real impact on the player. But perhaps that’s unfair of me… Newsbreaker has some charm. I’d be curious to see usage stats (and clickthrough stats for the news.)
• Skype launches a casual gaming portal. I wouldn’t underestimate it (before seeing how well they execute.)
• Ubisoft increases its emphasis on casual games, and announces My Life Coach, a DS game that will offer “a personal coach that gives anybody concerned about their well-being the willpower they need to change their habits.”
• Starcraft 2 is coming. You’ve already heard, but I’m mentioning it anyway. Somehow, it would feel wrong not to.
• Via Raph, news that BarbieGirls.com registered half a million users in a few months. Yet another place to buy virtual furniture, clothes, and pets with winnings from simple games.
• Schools in Kyoto test DS English training software on students, with favorable results (i.e. a material improvement in vocabulary.)

• The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab is hiring postdocs and game development staff. Postdocs will be required to fulfill a combination of teaching, management, research and publishing roles. Applicants for staff positions should have at least three years of industry experience as a lead programmer, artist, or designer.
• Via Kim, Street Fighter meets Judeo-Christian biblical figures in Bible Fight on Adultswim.com.
• Jane McGonigal’s World Without Oil ARG launched last week. It is billed as an attempt to explore “what happens when a great economy built entirely on cheap oil begins to run short.”
• Two weeks ago, GameTap announced that it will offer free-to-play games supported by advertising revenue. All the free games I saw listed were non-casual; i.e. arcade retro and titles like Tomb Raider. I wonder if GameTap is doing this primarily in hopes of subsequently upselling the subscription service to free service users? Works for Pogo.
• Interesting survey of (mostly newer) Second Life users. What caught my eye: “Nearly a quarter play as another gender, and as another race, and as a different nationality, while 11% have an avatar of a different political orientation.”
• Via Ben, I’ve discovered SimExchange, a free prediction market that encourages visitors to come together and predict the sales of video games. You can also submit articles, images, and videos for listed games. I love it, but I should add that it’s unclear whether there’s sufficient motivation for users to make meaningful predictions (i.e. they aren’t betting their own real money, which is generally the best motivator.) SimExchange is instead encouraging a playfully-competitive atmosphere, which certainly could help. I suppose we’ll know soon enough!
• The Behemoth, developer of Alien Hominid HD, has a neat marketing idea; they’ve created some great-looking trophies that they’re awarding to leaderboard winners on Xbox Live Arcade! Wish I was good enough to actually earn one.
• One Laptop per Child has announced the first OLPC Game Jam on June 8-10. The three-day event will be hosted by Olin College in Needham, Mass. One hundred game developers, educators, authors, musicians, artists, and writers from across the United States will work round-the-clock to create open source games for education in the span of a weekend.

• Ken Kutaragi, CEO of SCEI and “Father of the Playstation,” has apparently been forced out.
• On a more positive note, Sony announced the new PlayStation Eye camera, along with a very cool-sounding card game (by Hasbro) which will take advantage of the Eye. Basically, physical cards are tracked by the camera and come to life on screen as animated monsters!
• According to Bloomberg, Nintendo has 79 games for the DS and 45 titles for the Wii in development. Those are remarkable numbers. Third party publishers (with an interest in these platforms) can’t be overly thrilled about so much competition from “the home team.”
• A coalition of architects and designers are seeking to “wikify” architecture through the use of Second Life. A great experiment, though I suspect that innovation centered around virtual objects (untied to land) is more likely to succeed… especially given that land has a price in SL.
• Microsoft has launched the Xbox Live Originals contest. Xbox users are invited to create a pilot TV episode. Standout finalists will be featured on Marketplace in July; the winner will receive a $100K deal with Xbox Live to create a six-episode series.

• I highly recommend that anyone interested in digital distribution (and/or the long tail) read this NYTimes article, “Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?” Quick summary: researchers at Columbia University have found that social influence systems (i.e. portals built around user rankings) tend to be highly unpredictable (as opposed to highly efficient at identifying the “best” content.) The researchers attribute this to the ultimately overwhelming impact of the few people who first encounter new content. In other words: social influence systems (like Digg.com) are not the stock market — you can’t count on an “objective and reasonable” valuation of all content, even over long periods of time. That said, it’s not clear this is a “problem”, though it is certainly relevant to the issues discussed in my recent long tail post.
• Some good (hardware-related) news for Xbox last week. Walmart is getting behind HD-DVD (to the tune of 2M units) and “incremental shoppers” (i.e. those not interested in a Core or Premium 360) seem to be showing interest in the 360 Elite.
• Nice post by Henry about what he calls “spreadable media” — basically, media designed to be circulated, sliced up, remixed, etc. Some good examples of do’s (i.e. Steven Colbert’s decision to make non-aired interview material available to fans online) and don’ts (Veronica Mars asks fans to make shorts promoting the show, but forbids them to use material from the show. Blech.) I really owe it to Henry for broadening my thinking about participatory culture; coincidentally, the subject of my last post.
• In the “ironic timing” category, just as everyone is rushing to blame video games for the Virginia Tech tradgedy, the British Board of Film Classification has unveiled research indicating that violent games are less influential than their film/TV counterparts.

• Virgin Radio (UK) is streaming music to PS3 and Wii consoles via a Flash applet that can be accessed via the console web browsers.
• The Chinese government has formalized rules around “anti-addiction” restrictions in MMOGs. Playtime of more than three hours a day must be discouraged with gameplay penalties, and players must register their real identities to play at all. Unrelatedly: EA may or may not have bought 19% of Chinese MMOG operator, The9.
• Interesting stats about Amp’d mobile subscribers. In particular: “original content accounts for only 5% of all Amp’d Live content offerings but 30% of the overall downloads.” Original content does well on XBLA, too. 🙂
• Wired.com’s Chris Kohler complains about control issues in Wii games. This is something that I’ve worried about since last year’s E3 (before I joined Microsoft, btw). I’m still willing to chalk this up to “expectable developer ramp-up issues.” In a year from now, if these complaints are still frequent, my outlook for Nintendo will be more gloomy. And such an outcome would be bad for everybody in the long-term (since it would be mis-interpreted as “proof” that a novel controller is a “short-term gimmick.”)
• Note to Intel, and all marketers: don’t waste money advertising in Second Life (or any virtual environment) if you don’t understand that environment’s limitations.
• A controversial report concludes that, of the most popular YouTube videos, less than 10% were pulled for copyright violation (accounting for just 6% of views.) Interestingly, “the bulk of views to removed videos consisted of music videos and short clips from comedy sketches and unique sporting events.”
• The first episode of the new season of South Park is available in HD in Marketplace — the first time major TV show content is available in this format via Xbox before it is available anywhere else.
• A huge federal study concludes that current educational software has no impact on student performance. IMO, it’s time to stop deploying uninspired “learning tools” and start focusing on novel edutainment experiences that inspire children to learn more, on their own time, after they stop playing the game.