We haven’t weighed in on Microsoft’s Kinect (formerly “Project Natal”) because we haven’t seen anything exciting about it yet. Maybe it’s better than Sony’s Move, and advancing what the Wii provided from a technological perspective. But let’s step back for a moment and look at where this all began, with Nintendo’s current console offering.

We picked up a Wii on release. We waited in line overnight, for crying out loud. And we did thoroughly enjoy the initial titles we played, but let’s be clear: they weren’t groundbreaking titles. Good titles with motion control, yes, but not groundbreaking titles in and of themselves. Maybe motion control is what made the Wii unique, and sold casual gaming to the masses, and maybe even pushed consoles into family entertainment centers where parents were previously skeptical of consoles as family-friendly entertainment. But as far as titles go, there’s no single Nintendo Wii game that’s more fun to play than any great title on any other console lacking motion control. (For example, the original Mario Kart was no less fun than the current Mario Kart is today.)

Yes, we’ll make a small exception for workout titles; EA Sports is a fantastic at-home workout for those without a gym who want to get into better cardiovascular shape, and traditional control schemes obviously wouldn’t work in this regard. But EA Sports, and games of this ilk, are not exactly fun gaming titles in the traditional sense.

So now with Kinect set to release late this year, we have another motion control scheme, albeit without a physical controller necessary. And this may work well for casual games, and probably pretty good for workout titles also (there will, after all, be an EA Sports title for Kinect). But for other gaming? If anything, Microsoft is looking to grab more Wii users and capitalize on the fact that a good chunk of gamers own both a Wii, and an XBox/PS3. Capturing the “casual” gaming crowd is an expected move for Microsoft, who has already moved in that direction during the XBox dashboard re-do (avatars, et al).

We’re highly skeptical that Kinect will bring anything worthwhile to the table if one already has a Wii sitting next to their XBox; Kinect is the Wii peripheral for the XBox. It’s a cool idea, but nothing more than a novelty, which conveniently comes out mid-way through the XBox 360 lifecycle. If anything, it combats Nintendo’s move of potentially releasing an HD Wii, forcing Nintendo to up their ante and delay a new product release more in line with Microsoft and Sony’s next generation, else simply throw in the towel like Sega did after the Dreamcast.

Either way, the Kinect alone won’t win Microsoft the battle here; the Kinect is a reactive move by Microsoft. Not in the way that the Move is Sony’s reaction to the Wii (which is playing catch-up more than anything else), but in the sense of allowing the XBox to be a competitor to the Wii on all angles – not just meeting the Wii’s capabilities, but arguably exceeding them without adding cumbersome, physical controllers. This move will likely pay off in keeping the 360 situated as the premiere US console, but probably won’t force Nintendo out of the console business entirely, unless Microsoft is able to capture some choice IP for Kinect-based games.

We just don’t see the Kinect doing much to sway the console wars one way or the other at this point. The Wii has already been widely adopted, and so the potential installation-base in Wii-less households appears very small. Unless there are some killer titles out there that make having Kinect outrageously desireable (and we haven’t seen any yet), why drop the money on Kinect? Similar Posts:

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And we love it because it just makes people sound ignorant, or flat-out trollish. That’s not to say that the iPad wasn’t over-hyped by much of the media and the Apple faithful: in our hands-on with the iPad on release day, it lived up to our expectations but didn’t surpass them. It was definitely cool, we look forward to our 3G version arriving later this month, and getting a chance to play with iPad-specific software (the upscaled iPhone apps we tried didn’t look great). But the device was heavy – heavier than we thought it would, which doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that we wouldn’t hold it out in front of us for long periods of time, but we didn’t really expect to do that anyway.

But we still think the device is a potential game-changer. HP just announced their pricing and specs for their Slate, and if you think that’s a coincidence in light of the iPad’s release on Saturday, then you’re high. The Slate, after all, was announced before the iPad, and the Slate has everything to gain after critics’ lukewarm reception of the iPad on Saturday, versus a preemptive announcement that would have been drowned out by the iPad fanfare. But here’s the thing: the Slate is a Windows 7-based machine, and who the fuck wants that? And yes, we’re ignoring from the Slate-drooling-set the people who think they’ll be able to run modern Windows-based games and those who want to get their old-school emulation game on, because the iPad has already been hacked, and we’d sooner trust a jailbroken iPad than a buggy Microsoft/HP product any day.

But back to the iPad hate, Gruber already refutes Dave Winer on the position that the iPad may fail because its users can’t develop applications for the iPad on the iPad: gaming consoles have shown success for decades despite the fact that none have offered reasonable application development suites on the consoles themselves.

But Winer has other arguments that need addressing, because they’re plain wrong. Especially when this one follows with Winer’s iPad-on-iPad-development argument:

It’s definitely not a writing tool. Out of the question. This concerns Jeff Jarvis, rightly so. This is something my mother observed when I demoed it to her on Saturday. Howard Weaver writes that not everyone is a writer. True enough, and not everyone is a voter, but we have an interest in making it easy for people to vote. And not everyone does jury duty, but easy or not, we require it. Writing is important, you never know where creative lightning will strike.

The problem with Winer’s argument(s) isn’t just his stream-of-consciousness blathering, but the missing evidence as to the iPad’s writing prowess (or lack thereof). Is he basing his argument on the fact that Pages is an extra $10 purchase? Or that a slew of high-quality writing apps isn’t already available on the AppStore? At what point does the iPad fail at writing where other mobile devices (e.g. netbooks) succeed? And don’t start with the multitasking argument, please, because if multitasking isn’t indeed a feature of iPhone OS 4.0, then state-saving between apps is still a work-around, especially if load-times between apps is negligible.

Winer goes on to condemn the iPad for not supporting his bookmark synchronization tool of choice: Xmarks. And a sillier argument he couldn’t make, because to judge an Apple product for not supporting a third-party product is as nonsensical as us condemning every Android and Windows-based device because we can’t run Ulysses on them.

Three days into the iPad’s public availability, we haven’t seen one single, comprehensive review of the iPad where the final verdict isn’t positive. Those like Winer who paint a poor picture of the device either flatly refuse to adapt to the iPad’s new way of doing things, else simply don’t get it.

But here’s who did get it: when working with a computer illiterate family member this weekend, jumping back and forth between her iPhone and MacBook, she touched an icon on the MacBook’s screen, and later an entry field, because it’s a natural thing to do. And that’s the first time when we realized just how intuitive a touch interface is, because it’s finally a better input mechanism than a mouse. And when explaining how apps didn’t need to be installed by disc, and could be downloaded wirelessly, and how the chances of breaking an app, losing windows, overburdening a CPU, et al, we next to nil on the upcoming iPad, our family member wondered why it wasn’t so easy to begin with. Well, now it is, and she and thousands of others will pick an iPad up because it makes more sense than a traditional computer, and she and those thousands of people won’t be concerned with whether or not a random third-party app exists (because they’ll find one on the AppStore to do what they want to do), and won’t worry about developing iPad applications (ever). And that great force will undoubtedly trickle down to the unbelievers who want a lightweight computer, because the reality is, they too can do 99% of what they need a computer for, on the iPad.

And in the meantime, all the winers [sic] will realize that the iPad is as capable a writing machine as most any other.Similar Posts:

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Some dude, Michael Pachter, a gaming analyst, claims that the Apple TV will soon be hooked up to the AppStore and magically transform into a gaming machine, albeit one that does more than simply play games. This isn’t a particularly original thought, but neither are most thoughts from these so-called analysts, who seem to be more regularly incorrect than anything else. So too may Pachter find himself, as transitioning the Apple TV into a gaming machine is easier said than done, since the AppStore is backed by the venerable iPhone version of OS X. It’s not a stretch to think that Apple TV may adopt this OS in some form, in lieu of its current interface, but let’s be clear: Apple TV won’t sport multitouch, and that means any gaming initiative that Apple might fathom with the Apple TV will be outside today’s AppStore.

Apple already has a gaming platform, and that platform simply doesn’t work with the Apple TV. To invest time and money into something that’s not bound to the mobile space, or more accurately, not bound to the new rules of the mobile space (read: multitouch) would be wasteful of resources. That’s not to say that Apple couldn’t somehow wrangle a multitouch interface into the Apple TV by way of a new remote/controller, but the effort would seem forced, especially when gaming comes so natural to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Artificially pushing gaming into a product that its target market isn’t after is almost ludicrous, particularly when Apple’s primary focus is on the mobile marketplace.Similar Posts:

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We love this quote by Ed Finkler, which we spied over at Daring Fireball:

When folks need an elevator, we should give them an elevator, not an airplane. We’ve been giving them airplanes for 30 years, and then laughing at them for being too stupid to fly them right.

Finkler pretty much identifies what’s so great about the iPad. Not necessarily for power users, but for the non-computer nerds out there (i.e. 99% of the populace). An interesting thing we noticed is that most people (Apple fans and otherwise) weren’t particularly enthralled by the iPad when it was officially announced last month, but many have warmed to the idea since, despite the fact that Apple hasn’t revealed anything further on the device.

The iPad is already being called a “task-oriented” device, rather than what most computers are today: complex, prone to user-induced slow-down, and a great method to run multiple tasks at once. The benefit to this latter factor, however, remains questionable, and it’s certainly not a stipulation that 99% of the population needs.

The “old way” of thinking, insofar as computer development goes, is to build upon what’s already been done. Look at Microsoft: how many iterations of DOS were there before Windows, and how long did it take before Windows 95 stood on its own with DOS as a secondary consideration? And even though a windowing system made more sense to the average computer user, it wasn’t necessarily less complicated, because the underlying system was still exposed to a degree. Even OS X, which we consider the most usable desktop OS for the non-nerd isn’t entirely sensible out-of-box. For instance, we haven’t met a new OS X user yet who understands without our mention that closing a window in OS X doesn’t close the program. It’s not just as case of “Fuck, multitasking is hard,” nor one of simply staying attuned to visual indicators on the dock that a given applications, even sans windows, is still resident in memory. It’s an issue of multitasking (that is, at the user level) being mostly unnecessary in the first place. So why burden the user with cleaning up finite memory space, when all they want to do is write a letter while listening to some music in the background?

Why’d consoles become the gaming platform of choice when PC gaming offered better gaming opportunities well before, say, first person shooters (FPS) ever grabbed the public’s attention? How many now-legendary FPS traveled through gamers’ hard drives before Goldeneye became a flashing success on the Nintendo 64? PC gaming didn’t catch on because it was difficult, not in the gameplay sense, but in the setup sense. Under DOS, it wasn’t just a matter of installing a game, it was a matter of wrangling enough free memory to play it. For those of who who can’t remember tweaking the shit out of config.sys and autoexec.bat, you have no idea what lengths gamers will go through just to play the awesomest title ever. Messing with those two files became an art, one that’s now lost to time.

The point is, when it comes to consoles, you pop a disc or cartridge into the console, and can start gaming only moments later. When it comes to mundane computer tasks like laying out some pictures to send as a homemade Christmas card, users shouldn’t have to jump through a half-dozen screens just to install a new program after coming home from the computer store. Nor should they have to worry that once they’re done, they’ve left something running that will slow their computer to a crawl days later, because it ends up being one of ten things they didn’t realize stayed running in the background.

The iPad is simple. All apps come from one place, and that place doesn’t require any physical travel. There’s no messing with a file system hierarchy, and when you leave a program, it’s closed down or simply doesn’t affect other tasks in the background. It’s not only simple, but straightforward.

A machine for everyone.

We’ve said before that the iPad should serve most computer users admirably, without the need for another computer. Truth is, it’s not just grandma and grandpa who could benefit from the iPad. If you think about it, most college students can do everything they need to with an iPad also. The only stipulation are those who study computers and need more oomph, like Computer Science majors who need a platform they can develop on. For everyone else, the only potential obstacle is specialized software, but with the power behind the A4, we’d argue that most specialized applications could probably be ported to the iPad without issue. How long before CAD programs, analytical software, etc makes it onto the AppStore? Sure, there will always be a small segment of the computer-using populace that will have to rely on an incredibly specific software package that the respective developer refuses to port, but with accessibility the AppStore offers, and the support Apple provides for an external iPad keyboard, the sky is ultimately the limit for most programs.

While some applications will still shine brighter if they can be run on systems with larger screen sizes, this too isn’t necessarily an issue: an A/V cable may provide video-out for just these types of applications. For everyone else, including those who currently rely on 13″ screens for daily work, the iPad is already capable of serving as a lightweight workhorse. And for those that do need more powerful machines, there’s always the local school lab, office computer, etc.

If the iPad proves itself successful (and we think it will), it’s only a matter of time before the iPhone/iPad platform is expanded to devices with larger screens. For all we know, the iPhone heralded the birth of a new computer interface altogether, and it may not be more than a couple years before Apple’s primary computer lineup looks more like the iPad, and less like a Macbook.Similar Posts:

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Reviewing the news coming out of E3 this week has shown itself to be a dreary affair. One, because we had a chance to attend the expo before other priorities revealed themselves (and thus didn’t), and two, because as the hoarse voice in our head mocks, “Perhaps you’re just not a gamer anymore.” And maybe we’re not – we’re certainly not console aficionados anymore, having shed the weight of the console wars many years ago. It was by chance that we again took up the console call with Microsoft’s enormous black boxen, and later again with the innovative Wii. But let’s be clear: our gaming time is a mere sliver compared to when we vapidly devoured every PC title worth playing, and the prospect of playing competitively as we did in Counterstrike years before is simply not realistic anymore. Indeed, we may even argue that our three-round battle with World of Warcraft was the end of our earnest gaming days, but perhaps this is an overstatement: time is simply one variable that affects our level of excitement for games these days, and in short, most new titles simply do little for us. One, because we’re now more interested in titles that don’t require massive time investments per session, and two, because the vast majority of titles remaining either aren’t particularly good or simply don’t titillate us.

Sure, there’s the occasional game of note that grabs our attention, like Fallout 3 or its DLC. There’s even a couple titles from E3 that peak our interest, be it Borderlands or Grindhouse. But most titles simply bore us, and we happen to attribute much of that boredom to the simple fact that we dislike, nay, loathe the typical console control scheme. Look, we’re PC gamers at heart (it’s why we took years to come back to consoles), and quite simply, there’s nothing better than a keyboard and mouse to control most games. Especially FPS titles. In fact, much as we loved Fallout 3, we purchased it for the 360, and the reliance on crappy console controls was our biggest complaint.

This hatred of typical console controls is why we had such high hopes for the Nintendo Revolution Wii. Yet sadly, as innovative as it was, the Wii proved to be little more than a novelty. Indeed, most games we’ve played on the Wii are either novelty titles (like Wii Sports) which wouldn’t occupy our long-term interest anyway, else titles that really didn’t benefit much from the Wii remotes in the first place. But rather than poo-poo all over the Wii yet again, let’s admit that Nintendo’s effort was good, even if the result (prior to Motion Plus, maybe) was marginal.

For those who love casual games, particularly the mini-games Nintendo titles are known for, the Wii certainly stands out from the 360 and PS3. And that’s why Nintendo has managed to survive this round of the console wars, and why it was inevitable that Microsoft and Sony would want a piece of the motion-control pie. So set out both companies did, and both revealed their Wii-killing accessories at E3. The PS3 did so with little fanfare, while Microsoft just made Natal a gamer household name.

For those asleep while E3 was going on, Natal isn’t a controller, it’s the lack of a controller. Natal’s hardware component is a camera that captures physical movements, such that 360 gamers don’t need to hold a controller to swing a sword, or punch, or jump, or do whatever. Natal, capable of facial recognition, will not only act as an interface to the 360, but to a whole slew of new games that will track user movement as an input mechanism. In theory (and from what E3 videos show us), Natal is just as sophisticated as the Wii in terms of motion control, and will likely compete well against Motion Plus equipped Wiis too. The question Microsoft and Sony have been asking is this: “If we can duplicate Wii functionality on a more powerful system, won’t we lure gamers away from the Wii?” And that’s a good question to ask, if it weren’t for the lead Nintendo already has in the motion control arena. While Sony is still vested in the original question, however, Microsoft made steps not just to duplicate Wii functionality, but to move well beyond it, making their original question moot.

It’s like this: every peripheral that intends to use Wii functionality will likely be built to interface with the Wii remote. If not, then the Wii remote still needs to be used in conjunction with the peripheral. For example, why does EA Sports Active use a resistance band instead of a dumbbell? Never mind the acute advantages of a resistance band for casual athletes over a heavier exercise device: a dumbbell would simply never work alongside the Wii remote and nunchuk. Only a resistance band will work since EA Sports Active is ultimately tied to the Wii’s controllers to function.

The same game on the 360 (which is indeed coming, BTW), with Natal as an input device, is far more flexible. (It will likely be cheaper, too, since the game won’t require a nunchuk pouch to be part of the package.) Indeed, EA Sports Active, with Natal, requires the user to hold no device at all, so they could just as easily use a resistance band as they could a dumbbell. In other words, the flexibility a workout game can have with Natal is hugely significant, as a Natal-equipped 360 with EA Sports Active could easily be used with a resistance band, dumbbells, a kettlebells, et al.

About the only disadvantage to Natal versus the Wii is what the camera can’t see, as would be the case if the Wii remote is used behind the player. And that’s a relatively unlikely scenario. There’s also the Wii’s added advantage of having buttons present on the Wii remote while the swinging happens, but Natal can still be used in conjunction with a controller, remote, or other peripheral, so it’s not like Natal’s making gamers give up button presses entirely. If anything, it solves more problems than it creates, and ultimately trumps both Nintendo’s and Sony’s motion control offerings. The trick for Microsoft will be in pricing Natal competitively, and that means cheaply, in order to keep a Natal-equipped 360 close in price to the Wii, and there’s obviously some difficulty in that. If Microsoft can work this formula out, however, there’s no reason they can’t succeed in luring the Wii faithful away from Nintendo’s current-gen icon.

For gamers like us, Natal presents an interesting new landscape. We can likely expect not only casual games that Wii gamers know and love, but since we’re talking the 360, more mature titles that use Natal as well. And that presents some nice possibilities, as we can easily visualize Natal control schemes for fighting games, FPS, etc, as long as there’s some basic method to control avatar movement. For melee-oriented games, Natal is a no-brainer in this regard, as a nunchuk-like accessory would be enough to compliment the Wii. Even FPS could work incredibly well with a nunchuk with trigger component. The next question is, without that component (and there’s no indication that one will exist at Natal launch), will Natal games be limited to too casual games? Right now, Natal offers a rather incredible control scheme with the potential to add motion control to games that the Wii simply can’t handle, effectively becoming what the Wii should have been at launch. But Microsoft could just as easily fail on this front, by either focusing too strongly on party games, or not pushing the possibilities for Natal-enabled mature titles to third-party developers. In other words, Microsoft needs to push the idea that Natal is core to the 360 experience, else it will become just another accessory soon to be forgotten by the general 360 user (think Power Pad, the PS2 camera, etc).

That hoarse voice in our head, it’s chiding us. And if Natal proves to be little more than another hardware console novelty, then maybe it’s right. But we’re pretty certain that Natal can recapture our love for console gaming by making motion control both fun and efficient as an input medium. If not, we’re taking our gaming hat and heading back to PC territory. Even if it’s only for a few minutes a week.Similar Posts:

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A recent Gizmodo post caught our eye, in which Adam Frucci attempts to draw comparisons between the current generation consoles by price. Asserts Frucci, “the prices of all three consoles are incredibly close, and you can obviously fiddle with these configurations to change them.” And fiddle with Fucci’s ridiculous numbers we can, and should, because Frucci’s evaluation of the Wii is sadly mismanaged, because not only does he include an extra $80 for four Motion Plus add-ons that do nothing for the console right now because they’re not even available yet, but he, in turn, leaves the $90 cost of the XBox 360′s wi-fi adapter out of his baseline console pricing scheme. Is there any consistency to his madness?

Frucci may as well inflate the price of the Wii by another $80 because he left out the Wii Balance Board. Oh, and the price of component cables (even though they’re only 50 cents at Amazon). Come on, Frucci, pull your head out of your ass and realize that the cost of a console doesn’t include accessories that are currently unavailable, and, in fact, don’t have any games out which support them. That’s not to say that the Motion Plus won’t take off, but if they do, they may very well simply be incorporated into the Wii remote at a future date anyway. Why emphasize them in a console price comparison as though they are required for Wii gaming today? Should we also add to the XBox 360′s price because of the rumoured Wii-like remote that may ship for the 360 later this year?

If Frucci’s not a Wii-hater (and a 360 fan-boy to boot), we don’t know why he’d opt for the more expensive Wii controller charging station, instead of the $33 one also available at Amazon. And why does Frucci incorporate the price of a quad charging station for the PS3 and Wii, but only a dual charging station for the 360? By our estimates, Frucci’s Wii price should sit squarely at $457, while the prices for the PS3 and 360 are $557 and $604, respectively (wi-fi included). We even threw the PS3 and 360 a bone here by removing the price of two games, since Wii titles are not only $10 cheaper per title by Frucci’s estimates, but the Wii comes with a game, which, via Frucci’s numbers, means that the Wii is another $50 cheaper.

In other words, games aside, a Wii is approximately $100 cheaper than a PS3 and about $150 cheaper than a 360 assuming one needs four controllers and a charging station. And that doesn’t even consider the annual costs of XBox Live!, which accrues at least $40/year just for online multiplayer. So even with Frucci’s silly notion of including Motion Plus in this comparison, that’s only two years of multiplayer gaming on the 360, which we gather, most 360 owners have already paid for (aww, shucks).

Sadly, Frucci and Gizmodo haven’t done anything but add flames to the latest console war. It’s one thing to dispute the value of money spent on each console, but that’s subjective depending on who the user is. From a pure price stand-point, however, the Wii clearly wins, and even though we’re fond of the 360 as a heavyweight gaming machine, the truth is that it’s the most expensive system available, even compared to Sony’s monstrosity. That’s true even if we don’t include the 360′s wireless adapter, because Live! is disproportionately expensive considering that Sony and Nintendo offer their online services for free.

Why all the hullabaloo? Because in a highly subjective argument regarding the console wars, there’s still a capacity for objectivity, and price is one of those. One can expound upon the merits of any console to argue for its purchase, but that doesn’t resolve the ugly reality of real costs. A solo gamer looking to play online can pick up a Wii and get gaming for just over $250. Fact. That same gamer can’t get down and dirty with a PS3 or 360 without dropping about $100 more. Fact. Buying three additional controllers doesn’t make the Wii any less desirable from a pure price standpoint over its competition.

Let’s not argue value by obfuscating costs to try making a point, and stick with the truth, shall we? We’re looking at you, Frucci.

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It’s foolish to deny that the cloud will dominate PC use in the future; dumb terminals made sense when raw computing power was unnecessary, and we’ll come full-circle as soon as broadband is ubiquitous. For nearly all applications, all an end-user needs is a browser with an internet connection; there’s an easy case to be made that a majority of computer users could boot straight to a browser, relying entirely on Google applications to fulfill their computing needs. This minimization of digital clutter is intensely attractive to us, because realistically, most of our own computer use is bounded to the internet, which is a proven medium for presenting information.

And that’s why OnLive is so fascinating. It’s a gaming service that will likely leverage core web technologies to present a list of demos and full-on games for consumer consumption. And these games will not be typical Flash-based titles, but high-end games that are typically played on current-gen consoles or state-of-the-art gaming PCs. And it all works on a low-end system because the games will actually be played remotely, on an OnLive server. Rather than a monitor connected to this server, however, the visual output is streamed to the end-user over the internet through a browser plugin, so it’s like playing a console game where the console’s hardware is many miles away, but the TV is right in one’s own living room. The idea is so simple, we wonder why no one’s come up with it before.

Technically speaking, OnLive’s video streaming should be cake – high-resolution streaming isn’t new, and judging from typical HD streams available from Hulu and the major networks, there shouldn’t be any serious doubt as to OnLive’s success in this area. Unfortunately, this is only half the puzzle, because unlike typical streaming video offerings, OnLive is all about an exchange of data. That is to say, a user doesn’t just click “play” and sit back, but rather inputs data through a controller over the course of the streaming. When these inputs are received by the OnLive server, they’re processed, and the resulting video is now sent back to the user. In other words, lag is less of an issue as latency, because the video sent to the user needs to match up with what the user just pressed on his controller. The further from an OnLive server the user is, the greater concern latency becomes.

Admittedly, we don’t know much about OnLive’s server distribution yet. If OnLive takes the route of legacy dial-up companies like AOL and Prodigy, we can expect OnLive to piggyback the infrastructure at the local ISP level, and in this manner, slowly build a network of servers based on the demand for OnLive’s service. The clear advantage here is that servers will be distributed nationally, so as to alleviate latency concerns in the best way possible.

But let’s say that the latency issue is overcome with reasonable ease, and that graphics will down-sample when lag comes into play. We’re still not convinced that consumers will tolerate the hiccups that video streaming occasionally produces, but even with that sorted out, we’re now left with balancing OnLive’s subscription costs with the initial expenses of a typical console purchase. In short, end-users will have to grapple with the idea that they can shell out $300 or so dollars plus game costs, else some small amount for OnLive hardware plus a recurring monthly expense. At what point does the average user go with the monthly subscription to stay cost-effective? For a fresh XBox 360 purchase, plus a year of XBox Live!, and a game purchase once a month for the life of that Live! subscription, we’re looking at a rough cost of $950. Assuming a hardware cost of $100 and a reasonable $20/month subscription, that $950 gives us unlimited game time for about 3.5 years using OnLive. Best part is that the XBox will ultimately be replaced by the next big thing (requiring another hardware purchase), while OnLive’s hardware upgrades should be transparent to the user. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it sounds great initially, but that’s before the realization that a $240 annual investment by the end-user ($340 for the first year, assuming the $100 hardware cost) arguably won’t cover the hardware costs and maintenance fees for the OnLive service. An XBox 360 is designed to run one copy of a game, and while one could argue that an OnLive server’s configuration will be able to serve up quite a few more people, we’re still likely talking one dedicated graphics card per customer, and those don’t come cheap. This isn’t even taking into account the licenses per game that OnLive will be running, and with this comes another initial obstacle for OnLive: the success of a console at launch is all about the game library. If OnLive ships with a small library that doesn’t expand steadily, then OnLive won’t attract a large enough audience to build up the needed momentum.

And with game libraries, we’re talking clear limitations on what OnLive can offer on account of their setup. Many folks are enamored with the idea that OnLive will be a stand-in for PC gaming, because OnLive’s servers will be upgraded automagically over time. That’s a faux pas, however, because PC gaming’s strengths are in add-ons, conversions, and other customizations. OnLive severely limits PC gaming because all software, including any add-ons, are controlled entirely by OnLive. This means no playing MMORPGs with custom UI enhancements, limited flexibility in controller options, no beta conversions/mods, et al. That’s why OnLive, for all intents and purposes, is a more likely console replacement than a gaming PC replacement. It simply happens that OnLive works with PCs and Macs, but this is just a cheap way to get out of using a TV, not at cheaply proving a PC gaming experience.

OnLive’s gaming library pretty much acknowledges the notion that the service is aimed to compete against consoles and not PCs. Burnout, Tomb Raider, World of Goo, Crysis, LEGO Batman… we’ve seen these before. Where’s the die-hard PC games that don’t have great console ports, like RTS games, MMORPGs, etc? We’re looking at rehashed console games here, which OnLive wants to use as a springboard before developers start looking at OnLive as a serious competitor. That means that OnLive users shouldn’t expect any worthwhile exclusives for some time. And a second question begs our attention: since these titles are all available already in the console battlescape, why not just get them for the consoles we already own?

The math we mused over before changes some when we’re looking at the current state of console gaming. Assuming a gamer even buys 12 titles in a year, they spent about $600. An OnLive subscriber, on the other hand, will spend $240 that same year. But at only six titles per year, the numbers are already looking more similar, which means that casual gamers will see less benefits from OnLive, especially since their purchases are more likely to be blockbuster titles that OnLive won’t even see for at least a year. When all is said and done, OnLive looks to sport a formula that would be great for hardcore gamers, if only OnLive was mature enough to offer a larger gaming library of blockbuster titles. Asking a gamer to invest in OnLive’s offerings at release, however, is about as bad as proposing someone buy the Wii but stay away from first-party titles.

What it comes down to is this: early adapter aren’t going to get anything from OnLive that they can’t already get on current-gen consoles, but it’s these early adapters that will be necessary to grow OnLive’s offerings to a point where the average gamer will be attracted to the service. For PC gamers, OnLive is a complete bust, because the closest thing to playing PC games on the cheap that we’ll see anytime soon is in something like NVidia’s ION, not OnLive. If OnLive actually manages to survive such that it’s around when the next console refresh happens, then it may be a worthwhile investment for gamers so as to avoid expensive hardware costs.

That all said, OnLive could have a couple tricks up its sleeve, like licensing copies of popular MMORPGs, and figuring out a secure way to let customers upload, or activate via OnLive’s web interface, popular add-ons. Realistically, though, we’re not holding our breathe.
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Reggie Fils-Aime is not the man we want to see heading Nintendo’s North American chapter. That’s not to say that he’s totally off-base with his opinions and statements, but as VentureBeat’s recent interview of Films-Aimes illustrates, the man comes across as far too defensive of Nintendo, even for a President. Maybe that’s because Nintendo should be defensive given the onslaught of Microsoft and Sony, for despite the Wii’s propensity for flying off shelves, the library of “must-have” Wii titles is fairly low compared to what’s offered by Nintendo’s competitors. Really, how long can the Wii endure with only a couple novelty titles? Isn’t it true that the average 360 or PS3 owner buys more titles than the average Wii owner?

We’ve long said that Nintendo needs a leader who’s not only willing to cater to a new generation of young gamers, but also to the original Nintendo generation, who is now grown up and wants more mature, engrossing titles. But Nintendo neglects this latter segment in much the same way George Lucas turned away from the original Star Wars geeks, giving fans a watered-down set of prequels with little weight and too much CGI. Fils-Aime, similarly, doesn’t quite grasp the desires of the old-school fanbase, but perhaps that’s to be expected from a man who marks the SNES days as the origin for his love of Zelda. It’s not as though the man was wearing diapers when the first two Zelda titles were released on the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), so what gives?

The disconnect at Nintendo doesn’t end in its North American headquarters, however. Rather, its infected the very roots of Nintendo’s core, which is why the Wii is such a paradox: for a company that stressed so many times that it’s in the business of making games, not media centers, it’s definitely odd that the Wii sets itself apart from the 360 by offering a free-to-download web browser. There are even third-party keyboard peripherals available at mainstream game shops. Where’s the gaming nexus here? It would be one thing if Nintendo wanted to firmly leverage Flash for developing small, casual games played through their Opera-powered browser, but that’s not what Nintendo’s done. Nor have they extended the ability of third-party keyboard peripherals to be used as game controllers, so as to mimic the experience PC gamers have in many titles.

And while Nintendo can access YouTube and other video sites, they missed the ball on NetFlix integration. Because they’re a stout gaming company and not willing to promote non-gaming activities? Then explain the weather, picture, and voting channels on the Wii, which clearly promulgate non-gaming activities. Nintendo’s actions are clearly going one way, while their “100%-gaming” philosophy says something else entirely. But that’s okay in one sense, because we’re no longer fighting against the PC stereotype that Microsoft so ardently opposed when they first pushed the XBox into consumer’s hands. Nowadays, we expect our consoles to do more than play off-the-shelf video game titles. What Nintendo, and to a degree, Microsoft and Sony need to firmly embrace, however, is this “totality” philosophy, instead of half-assing their media center initiatives. After all, what the Wii lacks in computational power, it can make up elsewhere, and offering channels that leverage more than just games is exactly what Nintendo needs to do.

As with the iPhone, maybe a number of features weren’t available upon initial release. What was important, however, is that the framework was intact, such that the platform could evolve over time. The Wii already has a polished, simple interface, which is far more user-friendly than the interfaces of the 360 or PS3. And the channel system, if innovated upon properly, can easily seed Wii owners with online video streaming, magazines, and music – all areas that Nintendo’s competitors have not fully explored. The difference is that if every console manufacturer suddenly invested in these areas, the Wii’s simplicity, and price, would immediately gives it a market boost, for the same reasons that it couldn’t stay on shelves for the first year it was available.

Back to Fils-Aime and his silliness:

We don’t believe used games are in the best interest of the consumer. We have products that consumers want to hold onto. They want to play all of the levels of a Zelda game and unlock all of the levels. A game like Personal Trainer Cooking has a long life. We believe used games aren’t in the consumer’s best interest.

The topic of used games is relevant to the recession, and arguably anyone with frugality in mind. Fact is, replayability is not a huge feature in most games, and its natural for people to exchange their gaming assets in the same way they shuffle other forms of media. The Zelda titles, for instance, don’t offer much to a gamer once every level has been played and unlocked – like most every other game on the market. Even games with more replayability, like, say, Fallout 3, will ultimately be consumed of its content by an eager gamer. Rather than complain about the second-hand gaming market, what Nintendo should be doing is developing games with non-liner gameplay, and perhaps focusing on a digital distribution model that would make buying games easier for customers, with the added bonus of combating physical game exchanges. The reality is that despite Fils-Aime’s ridiculous opinion, used games are absolutely in the consumer’s best interest, because in most cases, they get the same experience as buying a game new, but at a cheaper financial cost. Fils-Aime’s quasi-defense?

Describe another form of entertainment that has a vibrant used goods market. Used books have never taken off. You don’t see businesses selling used music CDs or used DVDs. Why? The consumer likes having a brand-new experience and reliving it over and over again. If you create the right type of experience, that also happens in video games.

Perhaps in Nintendo’s white towers, there is unlimited money to throw around, and bags-of-holding that make storage inconsequential, but in the real world, people really do buy used goods. Come on, Reggie, Powells isn’t that far from Seattle (you have a Nintendo-plane, don’tcha?), and there are undoubtedly many a used-book shops in downtown Seattle, too. San Francisco’s Amoeba Music is an obvious testament to the popularity of used music/movies, and again, there are plenty of lesser known stores that cater to similar crowds. And most importantly, the user’s experience is not diminished by these supply chains, because when they get home and pop their media into the appropriate player, the experience is still new to them.

In other words, Fils-Aime is plain wrong. Combating the used games market is not only ignoring revenue streams that are as-yet untapped by the console industry, but it’s also ignoring (and thus under-utilizing) the strengths of the Wii. And that’s rather unfortunate, because on one hand, Nintendo’s a great innovator of products, which is why we bought the Wii the first place. On the other hand, Nintendo is being short-sighted with the Wii, and that’s resulted in a poor game library that’s made us not want to hold onto our Wii. In fact, if it weren’t for the Wii’s homebrew scene, we wouldn’t have hooked it back up to our television after a recent move, and that’s something Nintendo, and others, needs to take note of – if homebrew is keeping buyer’s attentions, then what does the company need to do to incorporate the offerings of homebrew developers into the product?

Right now, the Wii’s growth, even its entire legacy, is wrapped up in how it will leverage its software. Gimmicks like the Wii Fit will only go so far, because they’re expressly limited by their accompanying software programs. If Nintendo wakes up and starts asking the NES faithful what they want in a system, and not just the kids of the NES faithful, then Nintendo’s stake in the console wars will be well-earned. Cooking Mama in the living room, a cooking application in the kitchen, and ubiquity that future generations will grow up with. It’s the dream Microsoft has been shooting for for years, but it’s within reach of Nintendo right now.
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We didn’t like Fable 2, and as far as RPGs are concerned, we totally thought Fallout 3 trumped Fable 2 in every possible way.

While our tastes are understandably subjective, we acknowledge that some people may actually like playing a game where the Sims meets fantasy, and where hack’n slash combat is practically mandatory to succeed. Still, we’re happy that the overall theme in the gaming blogosphere is that Fable 2 is not worthy of top honours, and is consistently pushed behind Bethesda’s Fallout 3 by reviewers. Whether this brings us delight because Molyneux needs to be put in his place now and again, or because we immaturely like to grin and say, “We told you so,” is not the point: despite stronger Fable 2 sales, Fallout 3 is a better regarded title by hardcore gamers.

We still haven’t played Gears of War 2 yet, but Fallout 3 definitely gets our top honours for 2008′s top XBox 360 games. Castle Crashers deserves a mention, and Rock Band 2 does too for greatly improving the franchise. Even GTAIV was excellent, though primarily for character design and multiplayer options, and not for the similarly-frustrating rapport-building that Fable 2 makes players participate in. Hopefully 2009 will drop the emote-emphasis in future titles, and focus on action and puzzle gameplay instead of emulating a glorified chat-room. Hear that Sony? Home is destined for failure. Maybe you and Molyneux can pitch in and get a new drawing board.

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The preposterously long-named Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix broke sales records, though apparently for being the crappiest visual remake of any title in history. Don’t get us wrong – we appreciate new sprites, particularly ones updated to look like sexy comics. But that’s not what the latest Street Fighter II title is, unless a flip-book-like comic experience is what you’re after. That’s because despite the graphical “upgrade”, the number of transitional sprites doesn’t appear to have changed, which means that character animations still look as choppy and unsmooth as the first Street Fighter II game we played as kids.

We’re all for bringing back great oldschool titles, but this is a real shame. In fact, we would have much preferred a 2D gameplay approach based on 3D cel-shaded character models, such that we could have some real ragdoll physics associated with our street fighting.

So maybe if you’re too lazy to boot an older Street Fighter II ROM on an emulator, Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will float you’re boat, but if that’s the case, we’re just sorry that you’re stuck in that kind of a dinghy in the first place.

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