Archive for the ‘NPD Analysis’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (January 28, 2018)

Sunday, January 28th, 2018

Sorry about the lack of an update last week. Apart from a personal engagement that took a lot of time out of my schedule, the fact of the matter was that it was a very very quiet week and there was nothing to update on. Not so much this week though, as there’s plenty to talk. Like London buses.

Copyright

Blockchain

Can Blockchain make digital resales a possibility?

The first bus to arrive has to do with the new technology that everyone’s talking about lately: Blockchain. A new start-up wants to use the technology behind Bitcoin to allow people to resell their digital purchases, specifically movies. The people behind the digital store Robot Cache plan on using Blockchain to ensure that each unique copy of the movie/license could only be used/activated by one owner at a time. And this would facilitate the resale of digital content without the need for some kind of heavy handed DRM.

Assuming the technology actually works, which may be a big assumption at this stage, there’s no way rightsholder would allow this plan to come to fruition. A digital resale market would violate the terms of service, no doubt. And the way Robot Cache may do it might cut rightsholders from getting a share of any revenue coming from such an enterprise, which the rightsholders also wouldn’t like. And finally, allowing resales could hurt direct sales, which again is something rightsholders would be up in arms about. So to sum up, rightsholders not happy!

But let’s forget about them for a second, is something like this a good thing for the consumer? You bet it is! We have the right to resell almost everything else we buy, so if the technical problems associated with reselling digital copies can be solved, why shouldn’t we have the right? Sometimes I feel, as consumers, we’ve been robbed of our rights when it comes to digital content. Just because it was new and different when it first came out, and that piracy was an issue, we lost the right to refunds, exchanges and resale. We’ve got some of it back, for example the ability to get a refund on Steam, but it’s been slow and hard work to claw back what was ours to begin with. So if something like Blockchain can help us get our rights back, then I’m all for it!

Denuvo

Denuvo in the headlines again

Another thing I’m all for is to see if the latest version of Denuvo can be cracked and removed. I’m not advocating this from a piracy point of view, but just as a curiosity given the claims of performance issues that some gamers have raised about this version of Denuvo – by removing Denuvo and then doing a side-by-side comparison, it will finally prove or disprove the theories surrounding Denuvo’s performance drain.

My wish was almost granted, but in the end, not really, as a workaround of sorts have been found for this latest version (version 4.8). But instead of cracking and removing Denuvo, the workaround simply disables most of Denuvo’s anti-tampering functions, and makes piracy possible for the game ‘Sonic Forces’. So while Denuvo is no longer doing what it’s supposed to do for ‘Sonic Forces’, it still does run in the background taking up resources, and so there’s still  no definitive answer to Denuvo’s potential performance issues, at least not yet.

In other Denuvo news, the company behind it has been acquired by global anti-piracy outfit Irdeto. This change is unlikely to affect Denuvo’s day to day operations though.

Gaming

Nintendo Switch

The Switch won Christmas!

In gaming news, the eagerly anticipated (well, at least from me) December video games sales data has been released by the NPD, and in the US, it was Nintendo’s Switch that was clearly on top. This marks a great start for Nintendo’s latest console, and sets a new record as well for being the fastest selling console in US history.

When the Switch was first announced, I thought then that either this would be a brilliant gamble by Nintendo, or one of the biggest fails ever. Either people wanted a home based console that they can also take on the road, or it ends up being people’s idea of an under-powered portable console that’s been jerry-rigged to hook up to your TV. I think in the end, most people ended up in the former group.

In the same NPD report, the Xbox One did manage to beat the PS4 to second spot. The Xbox One always seems to have a good Christmas, but it hasn’t stopped the PS4 selling twice as many units so far.

======

If my calculations are correct, we’ve come to the end of another WNR. Hope you enjoyed reading this issue. See you next week!

Weekly News Roundup (October 22, 2017)

Sunday, October 22nd, 2017

Sorry again for the hiatus last weekend, a combination of not much happening, and too much happening in my personal life, meant that writing a WNR was just not going to work out.

Luckily, there’s more news and less other stuff this week, and so here’s we are again.

Copyright

There’s more Denuvo news, and you guessed it, it’s not good news for the anti-tampering/piracy system. Two more games have been cracked this week, and both were cracked in about 24 hours. I think it’s safe to say that the current version of Denuvo is no longer viable, and unless Denuvo the company can bring out a major new revision that changes things enough to make whatever the current method of cracking obsolete, then things are not looking good for the protection system that was once hailed as unbreakable.

So in terms of PC game piracy, it seems we’re back to the drawing board. With mobile gaming moving away from the pay-to-play to a free-to-play model, which has made piracy redundant (although hacking/cheating to get in-game premium currency remains a thing), perhaps it’s something PC game makers need to consider. Or at the very least, ditch the use of bad user experience, processor intensive, and hardly working protection systems.

======

MXQ Player

Kodi boxes are in the spotlight again

The MPAA has finally decided to go after Kodi box makers, that’s not surprising. What was surprising was that Netflix and Amazon decided to tag along too. Or perhaps this isn’t surprising either, because both streaming giants are now very much in the content production game, and they want to protect their content too.

This lawsuit is by no means a certain victory for the content creators though, if the Kodi box maker in question, TickBox, decide to fight this thing in court. TickBox can argue all they’ve done is install a bunch of freely downloadable software into an Android box. The software may do things that are illegal, but TickBox has nothing to do with that. Against TickBox is the fact that their website seems to promote the device as something that can replace paid for content, so they cannot argue that they aren’t aware of the piracy nature of the apps they package with the device.

It’s worth keeping an eye on this, but I suspect the makers of TickBox will be keen to make a deal, as opposed to taking this thing further.

High Definition

iTunes 10

Could a new way to distribute video undercut Apple’s profits?

Here’s something that could possibly challenge the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google, and to a lesser extent, Netflix and Hulu. White Rabbit is a new video distribution system that aims to connect consumers directly to content creators, bypassing the “middlemen”. White Rabbit uses the same Blockchain technology that helps to drive Bitcoins, and instead applies the transparent transaction principle to buying movies and TV shows. White Rabbit aims to separate the distribution to the financial transaction, so they a company like Apple and Google won’t have as much power to dictate pricing and revenue sharing, just because they happen to run a download/streaming service.

Instead, content holders get the majority share of revenue, directly from consumers, and multiple outlets can provide the download/streaming ecosystem, bringing more competition, and less monopolisation, to the marketplace. It’s easy to see that this paradigm shift can apply to not just video, but practically any kind of digital delivery.

Not sure how this could apply to subscription streaming though, but the idea behind Blockchain is solid and can apply to any kind of transaction system if you want transparency, and fraud prevention.

Gaming

Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch was on top again in September

The Nintendo Switch was on top yet again in September, after winning August and July, This makes it 5 out of 7, the number of months it has won since it’s release. This news doesn’t actually come from the NPD, which usually releases these things, but directly from Nintendo themselves, due to a “data issue” that delayed NPD’s September report.

Regardless, it’s a very impressive set of results for Nintendo. The release of the Xbox One X in November won’t really change things, I suspect, due to the console’s high cost and niche factor. The holidays tend to favour the big two, but the momentum is with the Switch and it could become the “must-have” video game hardware for the season, just like the Wii was back when.

Time will tell …

======

That’s it for the week, a nice collection of stories that I hope was interesting enough for you. See you next week!

Weekly News Roundup (September 24, 2017)

Sunday, September 24th, 2017

Despite almost being a month in, we finally had a taste of the real spring in the last two days. Unfortunately, winter is back for today, which means it’s back to layers and layers of clothes while my hands freeze typing up this roundup.

We have a few things to go through today, not too much, so let’s get started.

Copyright

Die Young

A better way to fight piracy than releasing the hounds

It must be a real bittersweet moment as a game developer when your new game, the one that you’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears into, gets uploaded to a piracy site. On on the one hand, it’s a recognition that your work is worth someone’s time to crack and upload (and to download), that you may be on the right track with producing something that everyone will like. On the other hand, you know, piracy.

But for “early access” games such as ‘Die Young’, there’s an added problem with early access piracy – you get gamers playing unfinished versions of your game (often without knowledge that it’s unfinished) and perhaps getting a bad impression of the quality of the game, and as a developer, you don’t get valuable feedback in regards to bugs, missing features and other things that’s the whole point of “early access”.

So when the makers of ‘Die Young’ found their game pirated online, they did the only thing that made sense to them – release a free version of their game! So now, if you want to play Die Young, you have three options – to pay for it via Steam Early Access (where you’ll always get the latest released version), get the completely free and DRM-free version directly from the official site, or get an old version of the game from piracy sites. This means the last option, the piracy option, is now the worst of the available options. And that, I think, is the way it’s supposed to be.

Gaming

Nintendo Switch

The Switch is selling well for Nintendo

The Nintendo Switch is selling very well at the moment. It was the best selling game console for August, after winning July too, and winning four out of the last six months. By “winning”, of course I mean beating the PS4, and it’s quite a turnaround for Nintendo, having had so few this types of victories for the Wii U.

The PS4 is still the best selling console in 2017, and it will probably finish 2017 this way. We’ll see when the holidays come around whether Nintendo can fix their supply issues and have a fantastic holidays sales period and endanger the PS4’s status as the best selling console for 2017. Also, can the Xbox One have a say with its Xbox One X? Dubbed the most powerful console ever made, will this be enough to get the hardcore gamers on board, or is it already too late for this generation? Will its “Xbox One X Enhanced” game list be good enough to convince gamers to upgrade?

All in all, it’s going to be an interesting end of the year for this console generation. May the best console win!

======

No more typing. Finger frozen. Must. Get. Warmer.

Weekly News Roundup (July 23, 2017)

Sunday, July 23rd, 2017

Back again after another small break last week. I actually flew to Sydney to watch my beloved Arsenal play, and it was a great trip. Luckily, not too much happened in terms of news, so we can just continue on this week as if nothing has happened (and nothing did happen, I promise).

Copyright

Game of Thrones Pirates

The only real pirate *in* Game of Thrones, but lots of pirates *for* the show in real life

Winter has truly come here in Australia, and it has also come to Westeros. While a little bit later than usual due to the shortened season, the season premier of Game of Thrones has once again caused a piracy frenzy. While lots of people are still illegally downloading to find out what Arya, Jon, Daenerys, Cersei et al. have been up to, not as many people are doing it via torrents, it seems.

Just like with legal viewing options, streaming seems to be taking over. And it’s not hard to see why. Streaming is more convenient, works better on mobile devices, does not require extra time to download, and most importantly, is less likely to cause the viewer legal problems.

So for all the effort rightsholders have put into going after torrenters (and HBO have already started to crack down on them for the season 7 premier), the only net effect it seems is to drive them to find alternative ways to pirate, ways that can’t be monitored. If anything, this has helped to create piracy solutions that are actually much more convenient that before, and possibly more convenient than the legal streaming options. And this is not a good thing.

The piracy surge was also made worse by HBO’s servers meltdown. In Australia, our only legal source for the new episode had its own technical difficulties with many unable to stream the show during prime time viewing hours. Making piracy look like the better option (irregardless of the price), again, not a good thing.

High Definition

Okja Poster

Christopher Nolan not a fan of how Netflix chooses to release original productions like Okja

Also not a good thing, according to legendary director Christopher Nolan, is Netflix. Or more specifically, the way Netflix likes to release its original theatrical productions in theaters and also online at the same time. The director behind big blockbusters such as ‘Interstellar’, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and the more recent ‘Dunkirk’ thinks it’s a rather pointless exercise to do simultaneous releasing, at a time when all the major studios are trying to find ways to bring forward digital releases.

Instead, Nolan says that Amazon’s approach of having a 90 day exclusive window for releases before it becomes a free-for-all on their own streaming platform is the way to go.

While I do agree with Nolan that the theatrical experience is unique (and you have to say, Nolan’s films deserve to be seen on the biggest screen you can find), giving movie lovers another option via streaming is ultimately good for the consumer and a great way to fight piracy. But Nolan touches on a great point in that the “straight-to-Netflix” release isn’t too far from a “straight-to-video” release, and it devalues the film in question. It makes me feel like the movie must not be a very good one if it’s already straight to Netflix, even though in many cases, it’s probably a pretty good one if it doesn’t star Adam Sandler (I kid, I kid, but also not really?).

Still, there hasn’t been a Netflix original movie that’s on the scale of something like ‘Dunkirk’, and there may never be, simply because not even Netflix would want to risk releasing such a high budget movie direct to streaming, for fear it may anger the cinema chains as well as the previously mentioned “cheapening” effect.

Gaming

PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro

PS4 back on top after a few months of Switch fever

The Nintendo Switch’s honeymoon period is well and truly over, with the PS4 getting back on top not just in May, but also for June’s NPD report. It was, according to the NPD, the best June ever for the PS4. Sony will be hoping the momentum will carry them through and past the release of the (potentially too expensive) Xbox One X towards the end of the year. Otherwise, the introduction of a “real” 4K game console could reverse fortunes for Microsoft, who have never really recovered from their “all our games are digital, and you can’t trade them – plus our console is clearly not as powerful as the PS4” SNAFU from before the Xbox One launch.

======

That’s all I have for you this week. Much better than the nothing from last week, I hope. See you next week.

Weekly News Roundup (May 21, 2017)

Sunday, May 21st, 2017

Sorry for the brief hiatus – stuff got into the way (more dental stuff as well) and I just couldn’t rush out a WNR last week. But it’s all good now, and we have lots to go through this week, so let’s get started.

Copyright

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Poster

Is Star Wars: The Last Jedi the film that hackers have stolen from Disney?

The new trend in piracy appears to have shifted to one of hacking, theft and blackmail. Following the theft of Netflix’s ‘Orange is the New Black’, a story I covered a few weeks ago, it appears Disney has become the latest victim of this trend. Disney boss Bob Iger revealed that hackers claims to have stolen one of the studio’s unreleased films and have threatened to release it publicly if a ransom demand, in BitCoins, is not met.

Iger did not reveal the name of the film, but did categorically ruled out meeting the hacker’s demands, which means the hackers might soon release the film online and we’ll all know then what film it was. It’s also unclear whether this is related to the Netflix theft, although based on the Twitter account of the Netflix hacker, it’s probably not the same guy (he did not mention anything about having hold of Disney content).

Many are speculating as to which movie was stolen, but with Disney’s line-up for 2017 including the likes of ‘Cars 3’, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ and ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, Disney better hope it’s not one of these mega blockbusters that ends on being leaked on torrent sites.

Speaking of being leaked on, Netflix’s new Android app, or rather Google’s Play store, is preventing those with rooted phones from downloading the latest update. Those with rooted phones are being met with a message stating their phone is not compatible, and this is most likely due to the new DRM requirement of the updated Netflix app.

The issue isn’t that bad though, since users can always sideload the Netflix app and it will run perfectly on rooted phones (so it’s really just the Play store being a d*ck, and not letting rooted phones from updating) – assuming you can find a secure place to download the Netflix app.

As for what’s actually new in the app, there’s a huge new feature for users of LG’s G6 phone. It is one of the first phones to support Dolby Vision HDR, and the new Netflix app will be able to take full advantage of the phone’s gorgeous screen. Samsung Galaxy S8 owners like myself got prematurely excited when the HDR logo started showing up on our phone too (which also supports HDR, but not Dolby Vision), but it turns out it was just a mistake and that the streams weren’t happening in HDR.

The HDR update for the S8 and S8+ will be coming soon, most likely, and I can’t wait!

High Definition

LG G6 Dolby Vision Comparison

Dolby Vision promises better, more colors, and more vivid pictures than even HDR10

Speaking of Dolby Vision, the first Dolby Vision enabled Ultra HD Blu-ray movies will be coming in June, first from Universal and then from Lionsgate. Universal will release ‘Despicable Me’ and ‘Despicable Me 2’ while Lionsgate has chosen ‘Power Rangers’ to showcase just how awesome Dolby Vision will be (assuming you have a good TV to show it off).

I haven’t covered HDR as much as I should here, so I copy/paste a section from the above news article to explain the difference between Dolby Vision and the HDR used by most currently available UHD Blu-ray movies, HDR10.

Dolby Vision offers several improvements over the open HDR10 standard, including greater color depth (12-bit vs HDR10’s 10-bit), support for a brighter picture (1,000-4,000 nits vs always 4,000 nits) and Dolby Vision enabled TVs feature a special chip that knows the TV’s own capabilities and helps these displays produce the best possible reproduction of the film compared to the original masters.

In other words, while HDR10 is a more open standard that’s easier to implement, Dolby Vision should offer a better picture quality with all things being equal. And don’t discount the extra 2 bits in color depth – this turns out to be an increase of 67 billion colors being represented! The brightness support also means that DV requires everything to be mastered at 4,000 nits, whereas HDR10 content can make do with only 1,000 nits (of course, whether your TV can support such a high nit count is another question).

DV also has better tone mapping (thanks to that special chip), and support for dynamic metadata that allows for scene by scene optimization of the picture.

But for now, HDR10 has the better hardware support, greater quantity of content, and for most people, it’s already awesome enough.

Gaming

Nintendo Switch

The Switch is a top seller!

Speaking of being awesome enough, the Nintendo Switch has outsold both the PS4 and Xbox One again in April, despite there being stock shortages. And despite only being released two days before the end of the April NPD reporting period, Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the top game seller for the entire month as well.

It’s quite a turnaround for Nintendo, which hasn’t been top of any chart for a very long time. Whether it will last, is anybody’s guess, but whatever you say about the Switch, it’s definitely something different compared to the offerings from Sony and Microsoft.

======

That’s all I have for this week. Have a great one!