Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (July 8, 2018)

Sunday, July 8th, 2018

So Digital Digest celebrated its 19th birthday last week, on July 4, which seems like a familiar date for some reason here in Australia. Who am I kidding? I deliberately launched Digital Digest 19 years and a few days ago on America’s birthday mainly because I know how bad my memory is and the only way I would remember the anniversary would be to piggy back it to another, more easily remembered one.

As for the reasons behind launching Digital Digest (then known as DVDigest)? It was mainly because I had become bored of answering the same questions on several message boards that I had been visiting and decided to put all the available information in one place so I can just link to it in my responses. Plus I could also host a few downloads for people to use on the GeoCities hosted site (sites, actually, since one account usually wasn’t enough to handle all the bandwidth required).

Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the site, and so I suppose I should celebrate it somehow being that it’s such a nice and rounded number and all. The arbitrariness of it all …

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Netflix

Netflix is testing new pricing tiers that could mean price rises for many

The arbitrariness of Netflix’s subscription tiers comes to the fore this week as it was revealed the streaming giant was testing a new, top subscription tier that sounds a lot like the current, top tier, except at a higher price. Netflix’s proposed “Ultra” tier would cost $3.50 more than the current “Premium” tier and would offer exactly the same 4 simultaneous screen plan with 4K and HDR support. What would be different is that the “Premium” plan would drop support for HDR streaming (while still maintaining 4K streaming support), and may even drop the number of simultaneous screens to 2, while the “Standard” plan may end up only supporting 1 screen. In other words, it’s a $3.50 price rise for those that want to watch shows in HDR, and price rises for everyone who needs simultaneous streaming.

This somewhat cynical move might not happen, as I doubt Netflix can get away with something like this if they don’t call it a price rise. But Netflix does need to raise prices because licensing and producing content is expensive business and may get more expensive now that Disney is all about to acquire Fox and will definitely launch their own streaming product – without Disney and Fox’s content, Netflix will have to pay more for other studio’s content or pay even more to produce their own.

There is possibly the argument that content costs too much to license these days because Hollywood is making for losses in DVD and Blu-ray sales with profits from streaming despite not every title making it to a streaming platform. Most of the other streaming platforms, like Amazon, are not even anywhere near profitable due largely to excessive licensing costs, and I’m just not sure this is a wise long term strategy for Hollywood. What is happening is that the high cost of licensing, and particularly the headaches involved with global licensing, means that it’s often more economical for the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon to make their own original content – this, eventually, could put Hollywood in a weaker position both in terms of direct revenue (more competition for eyeballs) as well as when it comes to negotiating future deals, much like how music labels are now at the whim of the likes of Apple and Spotify. In other words, short term greed may end up equaling long term pain.

Still, the idea of subscribing to one or maybe just two platforms that offers pretty much all the content I will ever want to watch, seems like a distant and impossible dream right now.

Gaming

Android Game TV Controller

Google may be getting into gaming in a big way

Google may be dreaming of something too: their own gaming platform. And as with the direction of all things these days, the new platform, codenamed ‘Yeti’, will be streaming, cloud based.

Game streaming, or cloud gaming if you prefer that term instead, isn’t something that’s widely used yet, but all the major players want a piece of it, as it definitely has some major advantages over how games are traditionally distributed. For one, there’s no need to go to a store to buy a retail disc package (which, for a popular game, may be sold out), install it and then install updates to play. Digitally purchased games removes the need to go outside, but it still means a lengthy download, followed by more updates. Both methods also require local storage space, which if you have a lot of games, will always be a problem.

And that’s all assuming you can afford the hardware to play it on – a latest generation console or a souped up gaming PC – both of which will be outdated by the time most of the good games that can take advantage of the hardware actually comes out.

So streaming removes these hurdles, as you can start playing a game in just a few minutes time, with no need to pre-download GBs of data. Plus, with the rendering done on the server level, your local piece of hardware won’t need constant upgrading or to be powerful at all in the first place. Google’s plan is that eventually, you should be able to start a new Chrome tab on any device you own and it will be able to stream-play any game at the highest quality level.

Of course, the major hurdle for this would be bandwidth, because even games these days are 4K and unlike movies and TV which can be pre-compressed to have low bitrate requirements, games are live and have to be encoded live, and so won’t be as efficient when it comes to compression (and games tend to have more motion than movies of TV shows, which further affects their ability to get compressed well). So when everyone has 100 Mbps connections, game streaming might become as normal as Netflix, but until then, it’s still not for everyone. But the major players all want to be in a position to be able to take advantage of this when the bandwidth does eventually catch up, and so this is why Google has Yeti, Nvidia has GeForce Now, Sony has PlayStation Now, Microsoft has that so far unnamed one that they just announced, and also the dozens of other lesser known platforms. Watch this space.

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Well, that’s it for the week. I just realised that it’s nearly 11 years since I started doing this weekly news roundup. The very first roundup started with these words: “This might become a regular feature on the blog (hopefully) if, unlike most of my other projects, I actually manage to keep it up for more than a few weeks”. Looks like I did manage to keep it going for “more than a few weeks”. Here’s to a few weeks more …

Weekly News Roundup (July 1, 2018)

Sunday, July 1st, 2018

Welcome to the second half of 2018. My oh my, didn’t it go by fast? Actually, I completely understand that for some, maybe even many, it hasn’t seemed that quick, or even not quickly enough. Which just goes to show that time really is relative, and that we are heavily influenced by our perceptions, even when our perceptions are wrong at times.

What isn’t wrong is that we do have a few stories to cover, and so there’s definitely no time to waste (regardless of how quickly or slowly it passes for you).

Copyright

Roku FBI Warning

Roku’s anti-piracy measures have worked according to the company

We have a trio of copyright related stories in regards, to apps, streaming and gaming, three of the largest arenas when it comes to the digital world. Starting in no particular order, Roku has announced that they’ve succeeded in taming the beast that is piracy on their platform.

Roku has had a piracy problem so bad that it got banned in Mexico, of all places, and they’ve removed more than 400 organisations that have links to piracy on their platform, and who knows how many channels that were run by these organisations. Of course, some of these actions have led to unfortunately collateral damage (like when the Netflix and YouTube channels were removed accidentally), but there is no doubt that Roku is now a much more legal platform than when it started (although my feeling is that people who are using their Roku for piracy are using it wrong, or rather, there are better ways to get pirated content than from a Roku!).

The positive PR message is much needed from Roku, what with the streaming device industry now firmly in Hollywood’s sights. These days, preemptive action is the perfect prophylaxis when it comes to avoiding the unwanted attentions of the copyright industry.

Nintendo Switch

Piracy on the Switch is possible, but dangerous

Nintendo is also taking preemptive action against what the company thinks might be a flood of piracy occurring on their Switch console, following the jailbreaking of the console earlier this year. The Switch now apparently has code that could ban an entire console from being able to connect to online services, if it detects that pirated games are being run on it.

It’s not the only thing that Switch pirates have to worry about, as apparently the custom firmware they’re using the run pirate games has its own copy protection mechanism that could brick their consoles. Apparently, even pirates are worried about piracy, in this case of their custom firmware that they’re selling (as opposed to being given away, like most of these types of things). As with most things piracy related, use at your own risk!

There’s also a risk that when you look at everything through the prism of copyright, that sometimes, you see more than what’s actually happening. This may have been the case with the story involving Google’s addition of metadata on Android apps that, some say, could be used as a form of anti-piracy DRM.

Never mind the fact that Android apps can already use a Google provided server based authentication DRM for paid apps, and that Google was pretty clear what the metadata is for. Of course, the cynic would say that Google would never say that their DRM was a DRM, because that would be met with a huge public backlash. But what Google says is also true and also an important point, is that by adding metadata support, it will allow offline distribution of Google Play store compatible apps. Previously, offline distributed apps would count as a separate entity to Play store downloaded apps, in terms of updates, licensing and tying into Google accounts.

So there’s definitely the possibility that metadata can be used by app publishers as a form of DRM, to restrict the sharing of “unauthorised” apps, but there are already means to do this, so perhaps the Google Play store aspect is the more important story here (as it would open the way for third party app stores to exist, that would be able to sell apps for developers and have those apps work in exactly the same way as an app downloaded from the Play store).

Perception matters.

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So that’s all we have for the week. All related, but all different as well. See you next week.

Weekly News Roundup (March 25, 2018)

Sunday, March 25th, 2018

Sorry again for the lack of an update last week – in my defence, it was my birthday week and it was also a quiet week. It was also a quiet week this week though, there’s barely anything worth talking about, barely, but still something, so here we are.

Copyright

Serious Sam's Bogus Detour

Pirates and developers working together – weird but true!

It’s often said that piracy can help game sales, via the discovery and promotional effects of piracy. But to see game developers actively work together, side by side, with pirates to promote a game, is another thing. This other thing happened recently when the game developers behind the game ‘Serious Sam’s Bogus Detour’ decided to accept help from an unlikely place – from game cracker Voksi!

If that name sounds familiar it’s because just a few weeks ago, I mentioned Voksi right here, when he released a YouTube tutorial on how to crack Denuvo of all things. Voksi is also a big fan of the ‘Serious Sam’ series (and most game pirates are also game fans, it has to be said), and when he saw that ‘Bogus Detour’ was struggling, despite getting great reviews on Steam, he decided to reach out to the game’s developers.

Apart from not targeting the game of cracking, Voksi also suggested that the developers release an “official” pirated version of the game that includes a message at the bottom of the screen to ask gamers to buy the game if they like it. Voksi also put up his own money to provide a giveaway related to the release of the “pirated version”. What is perhaps most surprising was that the developers, ‘Crackershell’ (no pun intended), took Voksi’s suggestion and formed one of the rarest relationships in the game industry.

If there ever was proof that piracy can be a promotional tool, this is it. It’s also worth noting that this kind of story leads to people like me writing news articles, which can also help to promote the game further. At the very least, something like this won’t have done the developers any harm, since the game was struggling sales wise in any case. Let’s hope more fruitful partnership of this sort will exist in the future.

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi 4K Ultra HD Cover

The Last Jedi will be the first Star Wars film available in 4K

I know that ‘The Last Jedi’ was a divisive film among Star Wars fans, but I personally loved it because it at least tried to tell a different and unexpected story. What wasn’t divisive was the soundtrack, which has been critically acclaimed and was nominated for an Oscar (which, unfortunately, it did not win). Now, for those in the US at least, you can buy the digital “music only” version of the film. It’s what is commonly referred to as an “isolated soundtrack”, where you can hear the soundtrack matched to picture in all its glory. Isolated soundtracks used to be quite common once upon a time, but they’re quite rare now, so it’s good to see something like this, even if it is only via a digital purchase and not included with the Blu-ray edition.

It’a also worth noting that ‘The Last Jedi’ will be the first Star Wars film to be released in 4K format. It will be interesting to see just how well it does on 4K as a benchmark of how the format is doing, since Star Wars film generally sell fantastically on disc and it might even be the best selling disc for 2018, just like the last movie.

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I know it’s short, but it’s also sweet, no? Well, it’s all I could do this week, see you again soon!

Weekly News Roundup (March 11, 2018)

Sunday, March 11th, 2018

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. Sorry for the lack of an edition last week, again, nothing much was happening. So this is the first WNR of March, and long time readers will know it is my favourite month because it’s when my birthday happens. I know, self absorbed much? But still, March is a nice month generally regardless of where you are (spring in the Northern hemisphere, and a nice autumn here in the south), and how can you not love a month that sees a Star Wars film being released on Blu-ray. I know, nerd much?

A few things to go through, so let’s not waste too much time on the intro …

Copyright

Final Fantasy XV

Square Enix really messed up the release of Final Fantasy XV

If you want a checklist of things not to do when it’s time to release a game, just take a look at what Square Enix did do with the release of Final Fantasy XV on Windows. First of all, Square Enix’s decision to use Denuvo was always going to be a bad one, when it comes to building relationship with your customers and fans – they weren’t happy! But if you’re going to use Denuvo, there are a few things you need to ensure. First, don’t release pre-load files on Origin in unencrypted form that allowed cracking groups from all over the download the full game files, ready for distribution once the game is cracked. Second, and this is a big one, don’t release a demo that included a game launch executable that could somehow be used with the full game to bypass copy protection. That’s right, Square Enix managed to release a crack for their own game via the demo version, and all signs point to the full game (minus the DLC content) being playable.

Square Enix’s SNAFU does present an unique opportunity to benchmark the performance of Denuvo, and whether or not it affects gaming performance. Some benchmarks have already come in, but most of these test the demo version against the full version for the first few levels (which both the demo and full version include). Most of these say that there are no performance losses associated with Denuvo. While this does test a Denuvo-free version of the game against the Denuvo version, there’s is no information that suggest that the demo is at exactly the same optimization stage as the full release version – the full version may have included additional performance optimizations that the demo version does not. A better test would be the pirated version (with the demo exe, and the full game files) versus the full official version. Hopefully, a benchmark of this type will be made soon (and the benchmark hopefully will take into account the need to ensure there are no GPU bottlenecks fudging up the results – it’s stressing the CPU, preferably on a minimum requirement spec system, that will ultimately show up any performance differences, if there are any).

MXQ Player

The US government will help the MPAA take on Kodi box makers

It’s not going to be easy to segue into the other stories this week since there’s not much in common with any of them, so I’m not even going to try. And so the next story is one that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone – the U.S. government is now actively helping the MPAA fight Kodi boxes.

Do a congressional testimony thing, or a discussion panel in this week’s case, let the MPAA and others provide a one sided argument about the dangers and perils of the latest piracy craze, and then the government, as expected, take “swift” action using taxpayer’s money to defend Hollywood corporations from, in most cases, an exaggerated threat. And sometimes, even the President get in on the act, something that Trump’s handlers was able to get him to do this week too.

We now have Netflix, Amazon, Hulu for streaming plus iTunes, Google and Amazon again for downloads, there’s also DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray, not to mention cinemas, early digital releases and cable. If after all this, people are still relying on piracy, then it either means piracy is still somehow better/easier to use than the myriad of legal options, or that people simply can’t afford to pay the prices that Hollywood demands (not if they want access to all the content they like). You can’t stop piracy – people will find a way – but you can minimize it if you give people a better service at a price they deem is affordable/good value. And even then, you’ll probably still have people who prefer piracy.

Innovate, not legislate (or litigate), out of this problem.

uTorrent Logo

uTorrent was once owned by Spotify

Speaking of innovation (hey, I guess there was a way to segue, after all), with Spotify about to get listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and being valued at $20 billion, you might be surprised to find that Spotify’s origins had many links to piracy. In fact, you might be even more surprised to find that Spotify once owned a piece of software called uTorrent – yes, the same uTorrent that people who don’t use Spotify use to “obtain” music.

But the link isn’t so strange when you consider that one of the early developers of Spotify, Ludvig “Ludde” Strigeus, just happened to have invented uTorrent. Spotify bought his software and his technology, and then only a few months later, sold the software to BitTorrent Inc, the current owners. Spotify not only gained technology that they integrated into their own software in the transaction, but they also made a bit of money in the sale to BitTorrent Inc, money that they put to good use to grow the company into the $20 billion behemoth it is now. And not only that, it has virtually wiped out music piracy as a thing of concern even to the likes of the music industry, who failed to innovate out of the problem, but instead, let someone else, Spotify, to benefit from the innovation.

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That’s all I have for you this week. Given that it’s my birthday next week, I might not find the time to do too much work (hehe). But if I do find the time, then see you next week.

Weekly News Roundup (February 25, 2018)

Sunday, February 25th, 2018

Welcome to another edition of the WNR, one that, unlike in recent times, is actually full of stuff to talk about. Yeah well, I don’t know what happened either. Maybe it was the post Valentine’s Day euphoria that got the news juices flowing, but I think it’s just lucky timing.

Alright, let’s not waste any time …

Copyright

Redbox Kiosk

Redbox scores a win in its lawsuit with Disney

I didn’t really expect this to happen, but Disney’s lawsuit against Redbox isn’t going to be as easy as they thought it would be, with a judge having denied Disney’s request for a preliminary injunction. Lawyers usually don’t ask for preliminary injunctions (or even file the lawsuit in the first place) if they didn’t have a reasonable expectation of success. But sometimes all it takes is a good argument, and a judge willing to consider it, for the tables to turn, and turn they have.

U.S. District Court Judge Dean Pregerson ruled that Disney was engaged in “copyright misuse”, by attempting to bundle too many conditions to the redemption and use of the digital copy that comes with Disney combo packs. Specifically, Disney tried to “tie” the ownership of the digital copy to the ownership of the discs in the combo packs, and this meant that users had to give up their right to resell the discs if they wanted to redeem the digital copy, and that, the judge said, was beyond what Disney’s copyright allowed them to do.

It wasn’t a complete slam dunk for Redbox though, as they failed to get the judge to recognise that the “first sale doctrine” applied to the redeemable digital copy, as in the judge’s opinion, the digital copy doesn’t actually exist at the time of sale (it only exists after the buyer redeems the code). Without being able to rely on the “first sale doctrine”, which limits the ability for the rights-holder to control the product after the first sale has occurred (and is the basis that allows us to resale our legally purchased goods), Redbox’s assertions that they had a right to sell the digital codes might not be an easy argument to make.

Interestingly, the judge found issue with the wording of the “Codes are not for sale or transfer” condition on Disney’s combo packaging, which does not make it clear that opening the package is considered acceptance of the conditions. Expect changes to the packaging to happen sooner rather than later.

Speaking of changes, those that have used Google Image search in the last week would have noticed a rather big, and annoying, change. Google has removed the “View Image” and “Search by Image” links in its image search results, meaning that it’s now much harder to download the original, unedited versions of any image. And that’s the whole point really, because Google has come under pressure copyright wise (via a Getty Images lawsuit) to stop making it so easy to download images via its image search function.

As expected, users have not reacted positively to these changes, and who could blame them. Also as expected, website owners have welcomed these changes, many of whom have long accused Google of “stealing” their images by directly linking to them (allowing users to download them without the need to visit the publishing website). The same problem exists with snippets (you know, live sports scores, weather, and things of that nature), but at least with snippets, some websites are actively providing the content to Google. Not so with images, and many webmasters have even gone as far as install scripts on their site to prevent direct linking.

While one fire has been potentially put out, expect the conflict between publishers and Google to intensify with Google’s other features.

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Denuvo

Is Denuvo a performance killer?

Does Denuvo affect gaming performance? There’s evidence to suggest that it does, and there’s also evidence to suggest it doesn’t. But I think what is clear is that Devnuo has the *potential* to affect performance, and if the cat and mouse game between Denuvo and crackers continue and Denuvo start to use more and more complicated means to protect games, then yes, performance will eventually become a big issue. Anything that potentially makes hundreds if not thousands of calls per second will take something away from the gaming performance, even if these calls are super efficient.

Denuvo isn’t the only anti-tampering game in town though. Arxan is another company that’s promoting their anti-tampering tech, and it has already been used in some games. It has been used in games for Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform, which allows game publishers to use a single API set to publish games for a wide variety of Microsoft devices. UWP features not one but 5 layers of DRM to protect its games, and was previously though to be impenetrable. Try telling that to a hacker though! This week, a UWP game and its 5 layers of DRM (MSStore, UWP, EAppX, XBLive, and Arxan) were all cracked by group CODEX, allowing the game ‘Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection’ to be pirated. It’s hardly a game that pirates have been waiting for, but as a proof of concept that UWP can be cracked, it is just as effective as a AAA game.

High Definition

Disney’s upcoming streaming service won’t compete with Netflix (says Disney at least)

Not content with having control over all of the most profitable franchises (and making a zillion movies for each franchise), Disney is in the process of buying another major studio Fox. This, along with their plans to pull new content from Netflix starting in 2019, all bodes well for the studio’s upcoming streaming platform. It has already been discussed as a potential “Netflix killer”, but Disney says that’s not what it is at all.

Instead, Disney’s streaming offering will be a more streamlined affair, offering 500 movies compared to Netflix’s 4000+ at launch. The price for the service, according to Disney, will also be lower than Netflix’s.

So the new service may not be a Netflix killer, but it might injure it some, considering how many good movies Disney (and Fox) has at their disposal.

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I think that’s all we have this week, hope you found it all interesting. See you next week!