K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

I thought I'd point this out. I found out about this courtesy of Arstechnica and smiled at yet another example of coop-ertition; when companies both compete and cooperate with each other in various fields of business. Its interesting how often consumers and fans often try to polarize things, to turn things into either/or propositions, and yet the companies themselves don't.

Anyhow, hopefully more than a few Microsoft and Sony fanboys will have their heads explode over this and reduce the number of fanboy idiots polluting the internet ;)

I managed to peek my head in for a little bit.

Best mission accept flavor text ever - "I'll nerf their nefarious plans!"

Best enemy group ever - the Knights Who Say Nian.

Sadly, I crashed the game when going back and for to get FRAPS working. Whoops. I'll try it again a bit later on. Sadly, we had nothing to offer the great Celestial Rat (this is the Year of the Rat, by the way), which was a pity. But I did manage to rescue some dye from the Knights Who Say Nian. Oddly enough, while trying to find the traditional Chinese greeting/well-wishing for Chinese New Years, I came across the story of Nian on the Panda Express website of all places (went there for lunch, even).

Its a pity that this event coincided with the City of Heroes double XP weekend. Its like school when the teachers used to "coincidently" have all their tests on the same day, except both of these are a bit more fun than a test ;)

Gung hay fat choy!

I WANT ONE OF THESE AND THEY'RE NOT SELLING THEM IN THE US STORE!

Very maddening - the items are divvied up between the US and Europe, with cool stuff in both, but neither has everything. And while the US store has some super cool stuff (like art prints), Europe has a lot of really cool stuff (super > really). And of course, the iPod skin is for the 2nd generation Nano, but I've got a 3rd gen Nano @_@

*sighs*

Story here.

Anyone who's read my blogs for a while knows that I'm a huge of of digital distribution. Massive, even. They will also note that I tend to favor developers over publishers, publishers over platform holders. Well, today is one of those days; this is one of those blogs.

Once again the Recording Industry Association of America is showing how backward they are. Sadly, many digital music distributors (such as Apple, Amazon, Napster, iMeem, Live365, etc) are following suit right behind them. What is the issue this time? Cutting royalites to song-writers.

Makes total sense, I know.

Again, the artist is being shown to be viewed as being a replacable commodity who should be working at minimum wage; an artistic "McJob." Never mind the fact that writers are the very people the industry is dependent on to have a salable product. Some may be musicians themselves, some are not. But RIAA would like to simply butcher their royalties from what they are now; obviously (to them) management is worth more. From Ars (emphasis added):

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Here's how far apart the two groups are: when it comes to digital downloads, the NMPA wants 15¢ per track for the songwriters (often split 50/50 between the songwriter and the music publisher), but the RIAA only wants to pay 5¢ or 6¢ a track. DiMA suggests paying even less.

For streaming music, the NMPA suggests that 12.5 percent of total revenue would be a fair payment, while the RIAA thinks that 0.58 percent would be appropriate. DiMA has suggested that songwriters don't actually deserve any mechanical royalties at all for streaming music, comparing the practice of streaming to radio and arguing that radio's "performance royalty" should be used instead.

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I don't know about you, but more than anything else the RIAA seems hellbent out burning every bridge with artists they can while at the same time making themselves less and less relevant. One could argue that DiMA would like to see more indepentant artists come out so they can't have a collective bargaining weight a label has to offer, at the same time minimizing their costs. While there have been efforts to give artists a label-free option, I'm not sure how they've done.

The gaming industry needs to look at these bone-headed groups and consider the future. Digital distribution, while not mainstream, is a fact of life and will only get bigger. Publishers and developers need to consider rights and royalties for both retail and digitially sold games, plus what happens when one of the goes out of business. While we've moved past the Sierra vs Valve lawsuit, obviously, the fact remains that this is an important issue. Having a comtemporary or forward looking view on these subjects will help publishers attract developers (royalties and rights retention) as well as be a point for developers to attract new employees, fresh from college or industry veterans.

Seriously; do you think anyone who's worked on an 8- or 16-bit game is seeing much of anything from Live, PSN or the Virtual Console? The publisher (rights holder), however, is probably making a nice bit of money, though (royalties issue). Likewise, how many games will never be brought back because the rights to the game are up in the air or trapped in a quagmire of legalities?

I'd like to thank the RIAA for giving me a chance to not only show them as the buffoons they are. I do hope they lose this fight. At the same time I would like to point to this as a warning sign for the gaming industry. We might be riding high right now, but if that is to continue, then we must not make the same mistakes as other industries.

Full interview here; good stuff - you should read the whole thing.

Anyhow, here's just a snipped of the directly 360 related stuff.

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Are you any closer to resolving the problem of getting user-gen content into the Xbox 360 version?
Not yet but we're hopeful. Microsoft hasn't said "no" yet, but then they haven't said "yes" either. We need them to say "yes," and we need them to do it soon.

So it's technically possible?
Sure. I mean, you can go onto the console and copy your songs on to it and play movies off a memory card - the machine's capable of allowing you to transfer your content around, and even letting you play your music while playing many games.

So why wouldn't Microsoft say yes? Is there a fear of losing control of Xbox Live?
Well, yeah and we don't fault them for that. They've got a closed system where everything's checked, users know the quality of everything they download, and you know it won't crash your machine. User generated content - well, it can be dangerous, you could theoretically download a mod that uses too much memory and crashes your machine.

I think Sony are real pioneers in this - I think they deserve a lot of credit for letting us do this. They're really doing something different, and it hints at what they want to do with the PlayStation Network in the future. They're definitely on the right track!

If it doesn't work out with Xbox 360, depending on sales of the game on that platform, I imagine we'll find a few of the best mods and get them on Xbox Live Marketplace. I don't think 360 users are going to suffer drastically - they're just going to miss out on a lot of crazy, cool fun stuff and the ability to exchange it among themselves. They may also end up paying for content that is free on other systems because Microsoft now has to host it and certify it. But I'm confident Microsoft will look at what's happened with UT3 on the PS3 so far and think, 'Well, we'll take that baby step with you,' because what we've done so far really is just a baby step if you think about it. You've got to go online, you gotta download the mod, and you're responsible for putting it on your machine yourself. There are some exceptions - there are mutators, which modify how gameplay works, that are pretty small - and we let those auto download, but most of the other stuff you've got to go and say 'I'm going to install this on my machine.' We hope to change that in the future.

So it really is the user knowing what he's doing. He's not accidentally going to a server which has this really horrific mod on it... and if you do find a horrific mod we have a way to make sure that people can't serve that mod for other users. I think we're going to do much more with the PS3 version - maybe have an easier way to download mods, a way to auto download some that have been approved, ideas like that. We're looking at ways of taking the mod scene and making it better and broader.

The game is up and running on Xbox 360 - it has been for a long time, and its running wonderfully - it just doesn't have any Xbox Live written into it yet so that's the work that remains.

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No emphasis added. Its interesting to see the contrast here; both approaches are valid (Rein does defend the way Live is handled, although its clear he'd like more breathing room), but its freedom/risk versus boundries/safety. I'd like to see a middle-ground reached (and it seems like Epic is working towards that even with the PC and PS3), but for the time being its mostly extremes. I'm really hoping that Microsoft will ultimately allow mods but find a way to do so that protects users from bad ones.

On top of that, good to know that UT3 is running well on the 360 :D

Story here.

In-game advertising revenue has been predicted time and time again to be a major source of revenue for game companies. Its good to see its being scrutinized a bit rather than being looked upon as the "cure all" for online costs, rising development costs, athelete's foot, etc.

I guess now might be a good time to pimp an old editorial of mine.

Anyone who's worked in an ad-supported business (like me) will tell you - there's only so many dollars to go round, there's lots of competition for those dollars, and not all advertisers will be interested in your product. Whie Stringer and Kotick, heads of large companies, might not be convinced that ads will be all that great for them, smaller companies should be on the lookout for the risks involved for them, not the least of which being losing control of their independance due to financial dependance on advertisers.

UPDATE: The original story has been debunked. Thanks to bossjimbob!

Apparently, this statement was fabricated.

http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=24816

"ELSPA would certainly never presume to comment about America or anywhere else outside of the UK," added the spokesperson.

The report, said ELSPA, is a hatchet job consisting of facts from an article from Singapore, false quotes and a genuine conversation with Hillier on the availability of the R4 cartridge in the UK.

"The quotes from The Sunday Post were ascribed to his name from another article which originates from a website in Singapore. This, it appears, is where The Sunday Post first found out about the supposed R4 situation and for some reason unknown to John have quoted him on what this article said."

The spokesperson also stated that Nintendo views the reported facts in The Sunday Post article as completely false.

"As far as Nintendo are concerned, the facts are completely spurious."

--original blog being left of for posterity--

Original article here. (edit: link has now changed to a story on food labeling O_O)

Next-Gen's summary.

Nintendo's rebuttal.

Usually when an organization of content or software creators gets together and starts handing out number about how their industry is affected by piracy, they're normally not challenged by folks. People don't normally challenge how they arrive at their numbers (but it happens), and seldom call them on errors (to be charitable). Companies like to argue piracy (and some of them do consider Fair Use "piracy") is a rampaging epidemic and use it as an excuse to encourage the inclusion of DRM into anything possible, the more draconian and limiting, the better (arguably to protect profit-fat but antiquidated business and distribution models in industries full of middle-men). Most of us will look at their numbers and either ignore them or wonder how on earth anyone stays in business if things are really so bad.

Which is why Nintendo's statement is so interesting.

On Thursday this week the ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) claimed that the Nintendo DS was suffering from a piracy epidemic; 90% of DS owners were pirates! The picture painted by them was one of nearly every American DS owner having dozens and dozens of pirated games in their collection would chill anybody in government (who's receiving any tax money) to game developers and publishers (who depend on game sales for their livelihood).

And Nintendo's official statement today?

"While the R4 and other game copying devices are available and cause Nintendo concern, they have not reached the mass market as indicated," the rep said in an e-mail.

More interesting was the last sentence in that story:

"The ELSPA had yet to reply to Next-Gen's multiple requests for clarification of Hillier's statements."

While I can completely and total sympathize with companies doing their best to stem actual piracy (indeed, some beloved developers I know of went bankrupt as a result), I am getting very much tired of the various associations crying "Wolf" every chance they get. Nintendo's honesty in this matter is incredibly refreshing, and something that anti-piracy advocates need to use instead of gross hyperbole. The ELSPA got caught and reprimanded by a significant company in the industry they claim to be protecting.

This is not acceptable behavior (unless you work at FOX News).

Its hard to take piracy seriously when numbers are exaggerated, your industry rakes in record profits, and you go around suing people nearly at random for excessive damages. Hopefully the gaming industry will find a way to both address the real problems of piracy without going absolutely insane like the movie, music and even DRM industries. Consumer choices, needs and life**** have been changing; all content providers and platform holders need to adapt rather than force us to stay in last generation.

Long story short: I was involved in an accident, no one was hurt, my car is fine, and my car insurance will be going up about 25% per 6-months come my next renewal. As a result, I'm going to have to budget more money towards car insurance than I am currently. Blah. Sure, it's less than not horrible per month (provided I pay all six months at once), but it'll be on my insurance for the next 3 years on top of what I'm already paying (and that's not including the premium going up on its own). I'd give you the full (rough) estimate, but that's more than you need to know. Trust me - I just did the math and my eyes popped out.

Drive safely kids! Here's yet another example of how you can earn more money than you ever had in your life and still not have enough money to afford gaming.

Note: First accident. Ever. Freaky freaky freaky. Never had a ticket, either. Been driving for the past 16 years. First mark on my record and it bums me out a bit.

Story here.

Not the first time; Peter Moore said that they'd consider it before they released the external HD-DVD drive for the 360.

Could be interesting; a harddrive enabled 360 would qualify for the Blu-Ray Profile 2.0, something no Blu-Ray player except the PS3 can claim. And I don't think the Blu-Ray group would say "no" to MS supporting it, either.

Interesting. MS has flirted with then denied considering Blu-Ray support a few times here and there. Whether it would be a built-in player like the PS3 or another external drive (if at all)? No telling. But its interesting to watch. If they did release a built-in drive, I'd expect to see it on a high-end model and eventually see it trickle down as time went on (much like HDMI).

How would I feel about it? Meh. Not a big deal for me. I'll say going with the external route would be their best bet as they won't alienate current customers plus it would make a good external drive for use with a Windows PC (much like the HD-DVD drive they released).

Fun read, but here's just a part of it.

Emphasis added. Keep in mind Jaffe's past history with Sony (1st party developer), and consider "If this is the pressure he had to face in the lap of luxury, how much worse is it for someone who's not?"

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What do you think about the future of, you know, people being able to create high profile, high budget, $60 console games, and find success? Budgets are rising on games. That's obvious. You have to sell more copies of a game to be profitable. Does that worry you about package software, $60 packaged software for next generation consoles? Do you think we're going to reach a saturation point, where that might be a problem?

DJ: Just the cost of making games, you mean?

Yeah, I guess so. The cost of making games, basically.

DJ: You know, I don't know. I think it's definitely nerve wracking. I think we're starting to see less games. I think we're starting to -- well, here's the part that scares me the most. The part that scares me the most is that I look at these break-even spreadsheets, when we're working with Sony on our games. You know -- this is how many units you have to sell to break even, and this is what your current budget is.

Let's put it this way: it's really, you're at a whole new level, and it's not scary in the sense that I want to get out of it, and walk away from the problem, but it really is amazing to look back at, say, Twisted Metal 1, and go, "OK, we were selling that for 49 bucks, and that cost about $800,000 to make." And we sold 1,000,000 copies, and we were just like, "Hell, this is great!" And now you look at selling a million copies of a title that's going to cost 10, 15, 20 million (to develop), and you're like, "Man, I hope the low end is a million copies!" Because if it ain't, you're screwed!

It's really scary. Especially when you're publishing on a single platform, versus spreading your title out amongst all kinds of places. So, you know, it's definitely on our minds, we definitely worry about it. But we don't necessarily know how it's all going to pan out. I don't know if it's going to mean less games, or -- the knee-jerk is to say that it'll mean less artistic choices, but I think if you look at the amazing games that came out toward the end of 2007, that does not seem to be happening.

We are getting some amazing titles out there -- thematically, and technically, and gameplay wise -- like Call of Duty, and Orange Box, and BioShock, and Rock Band. So, you know, you'd think that would be a problem, but it doesn't seem to be.

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Note all those games are on at least two platforms. I've said once or twice before, and I'll say it again; for most developers/publishers, going exclusively to one platform is looking more and more like insanity. So we should see both the 360 and PS3 have very healthy cross-platform libraries. And I couldn't be happier. Buy a console according to the exclusives you want, not because one is the de-facto standard.