This past weekend saw two very different launch strategies for two very different game consoles. These two launch strategies, in my opinion, displayed just what each company thinks of its customers. Sony, who seems to think that all should bow down to them and be in awe of their greatness, sent out an infintesimal number of PS3s to stores for the official launch on November 17. Many people camped out for days just to have a chance of being allowed to spend $600 on Sony's latest game console. Sony officials have been quoted as stating that consumers are "getting a bargain" at this price point. Because there are so few PS3s available, many (if not most) of the ones purchased at the launch will be sold (and resold) on auction websites, such as eBay, for several times the purchase price. This point probably says more about fools and their money than it does about Sony. The PS3's Blu-Ray issues are also well documented and led, in part, to the severe cut in the number of consoles available for the U.S. launch. These issues are sure to come back and bite the eventual owners of these first PS3s, as they did the first PS2s when they came out a few years ago. In fact, it seems that severe shortages are part of Sony's launch strategy and they see the discussion of these shortages as a part of the publicity campaign for the new console. Nintendo used a different strategy. First, they made sure their new console worked. Then, they made sure they had a significant number, 100 or more was not uncommon, of consoles available at stores for the launch on November 19. Yes, some of these will also end up on eBay, but the desperation factor in the bidding will be significantly lower than it is for the PS3. While not everyone that wanted one got one, a significantly larger number of consumers went away from a Wii launch with a console than did those seeking a PS3. Add to this the fact that the significantly larger number of Wii consoles also sold out and it's easy to see which launch was more successful from a consumer's point of view.

Microsoft has caved on their change to Vista's licensing and will now allow unlimited transfers, rather than the one they had originally published in the Vista EULA. This change doesn't change my mind about sticking with XP for as long as possible, but it does show that Microsoft actually pays attention to the PC enthusiast community, at least when that community complains loud enough. Microsoft has also decided to allow security software makers access to Vista's kernel, which ought to keep Microsoft out of court until next February or so. That's just a guess on my part, nothing more.

Just to be on the safe side, I'm working on finding a Linux platform that will allow me to play my Windows games without turning them into slide shows. Cedega, which requires a $5/month subscription to get the latest updates, looks promising as the Windows emulation layer and Kubuntu was suggested as the Linux distro I go with in my quest to game Windows-free. I haven't gotten much further than that just yet, but I will. If I can make games like F.E.A.R. and Oblivion playable under Linux, I just might see about moving everything else over.

Electronic Arts was once one of the best game creators and publishers in the world. Back in the 80's, they released some of best video games you could find on any platform. Every time I saw the cube, cone and sphere as a game was loading, I knew I was in store for another stellar session of gaming goodness. Ah, the good old days. Today, there is a different company behind the changed logo. Gone are the cube, cone and sphere. In their place stand two simple letters, EA. Gone, too, is the company that once dominated gamers' hearts and minds. In its place is a company that cares for one thing and one thing only, making money at any cost. The latest depth EA has sunk to is in-game advertising. Now, in-game advertising is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Heck, if used properly, it can add tons of realism and immersion to the gaming experience. If this were all that is happening, I wouldn't be writing this. Of course, this isn't all that is happening. EA's latest revenue generating idea for their Battlefield franchise was to add in-game advertising to the recently released Battlefield 2142. While I have my doubts that any product on the market today will be on the market in 136 years, I can see how this would appeal to EA's CEO and board of directors. It appears EA has taken this a step further, however, by making the in-game advertising require an Internet connection to get its content. Again, we really haven't crossed the line of outrage here, although EA may be doing a sideline tap dance right next to it. As Ron Popeil would say, "But wait, there's more!" The latest patch for Battlefield 2142 may cause the game to crash on some people's PCs. "Which people's PCs?", you may ask. The people who have installed Windows security update KB917422, which patches a kernel-level vulnerability that can allow remote code execution. Why would EA need that security update removed? That is the current $64 million question. For the fans of the Battlefield series of games, I hope it isn't because EA is using that exploit for less-than-forthright reasons.

This kind of crap is making me very seriously consider never installing Vista and finding some other way to play my Windows games, once they won't run on XP. Or, I'll just play console games and keep the Windows XP-capable games around to enjoy until my either my hardware dies or I do. I'm thinking I'll go before my PC does. The title of this blog entry comes from a Computerworld article, which is linked at the bottom of this post. I suggest every gamer planning on using Vista read the article and understand what it means to them and any future hardware plans they may have going forward. I've been using Microsoft OSes for a long time, longer than some of the visitors to these forums have been alive ( I took my first programming class in 1981 on a TRS-80 using MS-DOS). I've put up with a lot (no comments from the Linux gallery, please. Just keep the 'stones and glass houses' in mind before you decide to comment ;) ) and I've watched as Windows grew from an OS you needed to know very well to install and use at all (as Linux had been until very recently and Unix will always be) to an OS that can figure out what hardware you have and provide, at the very least, rudimentary functionality for it until the proper drivers are installed. (Mac users don't have to worry about that because they don't have any hardware to install that Steve Jobs hasn't already approved. And you thought Microsoft was a monopoly... ) However, I am willing to venture into, for me, uncharted waters if I must in order to use my PC the way I want to. The last thing I need, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, is Microsoft trying to wrench yet another Vista purchase from me simply because I had the audacity to upgrade my PC's hardware! That is an arrogance that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison couldn't match on their best days, although Steve has managed to charge the Mac faithful for what are basically service packs for going on a decade now and convince them that it's a great deal, but that's another story. At least he doesn't make them pony up again for replacing a motherboard or CPU. I sincerely hope Microsoft rethinks this licensing move before the consumer versions of Vista are released next year. Read the Computerworld article Added 10/20/2006: I was quoted in a followup article on Computerworld! Here's the article link. I'm Don Smutny, the second person quoted in the article.

You can tell when it is an election year in the USA by the number of really pointless pieces of 'feel good' legislation that the politicians fighting to keep their offices try to ram through Congress in an attempt to look like they're earning the money they're being paid. It is unfortunate that most politicians do not put forth this type of effort for more worthwhile issues, such as the skyrocketing cost of health care, particularly prescription medications, in this country. No, our elected 'representatives' seem to be more concerned with remaining elected than the actual governing they were elected to perform. The latest target of 'concern' happens to be video games. In particular, 'violent' video games have been made the scapegoat of all society's current ills. Just before Congress took a month-long break to hit the campaign trail, legislation was introduced that would give the FCC the power to impose financial penalties on publishers and/or developers that try to 'hide' content in a game in order to get a lower rating. This would be in addition to anything the ESRB does. Now, on the surface, this doesn't seem so terrible. However, if you look a bit deeper, you can see where this is heading. Once the Feds get their claws into the game industry, it will only be a matter of time until they decide that they can do a better job of rating games than the ESRB. Once that happens, the next step will be to not provide ratings for games with content the y find objectionable. This will be followed by legislation that mandates that all games sold must have a rating. That's how I see the government's plan to introduce censorship to the gaming industry. It won't happen overnight, but, if this first piece of legislation is passed and signed into law (and you know that will happen if the current legislators return to office), it will only be a matter of time until the government controls the games you play.

I was a PC-only gamer for well over a decade. That changed last February when I bought an Xbox 360. It was a combination of factors that led me to make this purchase. One was to see what all the fuss was about. Another was to have something to hook up to my new LCD HDTV and play from my couch. My third motivational factor was to see if I could find something my wife, a committed non-gamer, and I could play together. My wife is not a computer whiz (by any stretch of the imagination), so a console would be the only way to even have a chance of getting her to try gaming at all. While getting my wife to try gaming has yet to happen, something else did. I remembered why I played games in the first place. I had delved so far into the framerate, image quality and hardware aspects of PC gaming for the last few years, mostly because of reviewing that I do for LAN Addict ( http://www.lanaddict.com ), that I had all but killed the fun of gaming. Gaming on the Xbox 360 reminded me of all the things that drew me to gaming over two decades ago. I have grown to enjoy console gaming so much that I have purchased an Xbox to play the titles that Microsoft does not seem inclined to make backward compatible on the Xbox 360. I have also rediscovered racing games, which I hadn't played since Atari's Night Driver arcade game could be found in almost every arcade in the country. I've found racing games to be so much fun that I have purchased a steering wheel controller for each platform I own! Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up PC gaming by any stretch of the imagination! There are some games that I just have to play on the PC to really enjoy, such as Oblivion. I have both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Oblivion. The PC version's graphics are just light years better than the Xbox 360 version's, at least on my PC. For the record, my PC consists of an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ CPU on an ASUS A8N32-SLI motherboard with 2GB of Patriot 2-3-2-6 DDR, a pair of XFX 7900GT Extreme Edition video cards and a Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS sound card connected to an Altec Lansing 5131 5.1 surround set of speakers. I also have 745GB of storage space over four hard drives, so I don't have to uninstall any games or demos unless I want to. ;-) I have all of my gaming hardware connected to my 24" Dell widescreen LCD monitor. Both of my consoles are connected to a Pelican HD Selector, which is connected to my monitor via component video, and run at 1080i. My PC is connected to the same monitor via DVI. All of my gaming has 5.1 surround sound, so I don't miss a thing from that angle. I'm having more fun gaming now than I have in a very long time and I wouldn't give up my consoles or my PC. There is room in my gaming life for both.

I started playing role playing games in 1976. That summer, I spent $10 on a boxed set of the original Dungeons & Dragons rules. I also started buying miniature figures to use while playing D&D. I had read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the second time and I was overjoyed to learn that there was a way to create the same kinds of stories, but without knowing what the outcome of the events would be ahead of time. My friends and I spent many many hours playing D&D and AD&D over the next 15 or so years. I mention my D&D days to show where I am coming from when I define what I feel makes an RPG video game . My criteria may be much narrower in scope than other folks', but this is my opinion, after all. So, let's get down to cases, shall we? My first and main requirement for an RPG is character creation. It isn't enough that you can assign skill points (or whatever they're called in any particular game) later on in the game. If you do not have any say in how the character is formed before you start playing the game, the game is not an RPG. Yes, this includes Diablo and all its clones. It also includes Dungeon Siege. My second requirement is some sort of leveling system in which the player gets to decide what skills or attributes get improved. There can be automatic increases, too, but there has to be some player interaction in the character improvement process. If the only thing that happens when your level increases is a hit point boost (and maybe some automatic skill increases), its not an RPG. That's it, just the two requirements. That's all I require of a video game that claims to be a role playing game. I realize that this makes most action/RPGs just action games, but that really is all they are if they don't meet my two requirements. There are also some features that I prefer to have included in an RPG game, such as turn-based combat and the ability to save multiple times whenever I feel the need to save, but they aren't required for a video game to be an RPG in my book.

I've been playing games on computers and/or computing devices since 1979. no, I don't mean the original Atari console, which didn't have a number after the name when it first came out, Colecovision, Intellivision or Pong. The first computing device I ever gamed on was the Timex/Sinclair computer. 'Gamed' might be a bit strong, as I had to type in the code for whatever I wanted to play before I could play it. It wasn't the greatest entertainment in the world, but it was a lot of fun. It also gave me a sense of accomplishment every time I finished typing in the code for a game and was then able to play it. I didn't write the code from scratch, I had a book to type from. Still, this is what led me into a career in I.T. and a life-long love of gaming.

I've seen a lot of changes in games over the years. Most of them good, some not so good. The changes in graphics have been amazing, particularly in the last 10 years. The changes in sound quality have also been pretty spectacular, especially to someone who grew up with games that sounded a lot like R2D2! Let's face it, the technology that powers games today was completely unimaginable when I got out of high school in 1982.

One of the things I find myself wishing for from the 'old days' of gaming is the gameplay itself. I mean, since the graphics weren't all that great and there was only the PC speaker to make sounds with, there had to be a reason people played computer games back then, right? Well, there was; it was the way the games played and the stories behind the games that sucked you in and drove you to keep playing until you finally saw how everything turned out in the end. I can't count the number of 15-hour+ sessions of the old SSI D&D Gold Box games I played during the 80s.

Today's games, on the other hand, seem to be all about the graphics, the physics, or who wrote the score of the game, anything other than the real guts of the game itself! Why is it that HDR lighting gets more press than a control scheme that won't cause you to have carpal tunnel syndrome in a single weekend's play? Why do body counts seem to be all the rage while a game with a great plot goes straight to the bargain bin and the developer ends up closing down?

I don't have the answers to any of those questions. They're just things I wonder sometimes while I'm reloading a previous save to see if I can grab that last clip of ammo to dust the baddies before I get dusted yet again. That's when I'll be able to take a break and take some aspirin for the pain in my mouse hand.