Making a DVD menu is made simpler by Womble EasyDVD

As expected, following last week’s news blitz, this week has been relatively quiet. Which is a good thing because I managed to fill the gap with a new DVD authoring guide for Womble EasyDVD. Having played with the software for a week, I can say that it’s very easy to use and mostly intuitive. There are a couple of missing features such as subtitle support and multiple audio support, which I hope Womble can fix in future releases (this being their first effort after all, so you can’t have everything), but it’s mostly what you would expect, and the menu creation offers a bit more flexibility than your average authoring suite, without ever going into the semi-pro territory (complete with the much steeper learning curve) of tools like DVD-lab Pro. The other thing that was available this week was the October NPD US video game sales stats, I wrote the analysis for it yesterday here. The PS3 didn’t manage to sell over the Wii as it had in September, but it’s the Xbox 360 that’s the loser in terms of the recent price wars it seems, although it’s doing fantastically in software (for now, thanks to its larger install base). The coming months should give us an even clearer picture of what’s in store for 2010, and Microsoft will be hoping to see similar scenes as last year this time as people enthusiastically grab their cheaper holiday bundles. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, onto this week’s news.

In copyright related news, the BBC’s proposal for adding DRM to their HD broadcasts has been denied by the British Office of Communications. But the idea isn’t entirely dead and the proposed DRM scheme may appear later on, with existing hardware likely to support such a DRM scheme if it is ever introduced.

The MPAA are still of course campaigning vigorously in the US to try and get the FCC to allow them to introduce  Selectable Output Control. The old “pro consumer” argument was brought out, to argue for SOC’s use in bringing new release movies faster to the home if the studios were more confident of its resistance to piracy. Many studios are already doing this without the fake security blanket that is SOC. But SOC is just a trojan horse for the MPAA, because once you can control one aspect of how someone watches TV, you can then control all aspects of it eventually. If the MPAA and their cohorts can get away with banning all  TV recordings, then does anyone really doubt that this is exactly what they would do? Pro consumer indeed.

Further prove that movie studios really don’t give a crap about the people that are supposedly their customers – a free community Wi-Fi service that brings tremendous benefits to a huge number of people has been shut down all because of a single piracy complaint, from Sony (who else?). It’s a case of the studios exploiting people’s fear over lawsuits, and an innovation that helps the local economy, local law enforcement, small businesses and visitors is attacked and destroyed. Obviously the people who decided to shut down the network, as the cost of adding anti-piracy filters is excessive, must shoulder some of the blame for this over reaction, but the MPAA’s reaction to the story shows the depth of their arrogance. Instead of calling for a reasoned approach and balanced response, that a single movie download does not constitute a widespread piracy operation, they used the occasion to further spread their anti-piracy propaganda. But that’s what they are. They are an industry lobby group and they’re paid to say and do these things. What is really wrong is politicians and others in power taking their word as gospel, and acting without taking into consideration the serious consequences  for issues like privacy, and the economic damage that would occur if the MPAA’s wishes were turned into reality.

iiNet's freezone: damned if you do, damned if you don't

It’s week 4 of the Australian AFACT vs iiNet trial, and it was closing statements time.  Once again, you can check out a summary of the week’s events here, but the arguments from both side remain the same. The AFACT thinks iiNet is basically a piracy provider, even suggesting that  the ISP’s use of phrases such as “happy downloading” was in fact an encouragement for people to download the latest Harry Potter movie. And even iiNet’s attempt at promoting legal content, through their freezone service, was attacked. You would think the movie studios should be delighted that ISPs are providing quota-less downloads for legal content as a way to to provide further incentives to go the legal route, but you would be wrong. The argument is that because quota is not used, it leaves more free quota for downloading pirated movies. The same argument was made for iiNet increasing download quotas for their customers, as the AFACT assumes anyone who needs a large download quota must be a movie pirate. This “sky is falling” and “you’re a pirate until proven otherwise” attitude that these lobby groups have adopted is working wonders in their political lobbying activities and have proved useful in the legal arena as well in the past. Our only hope is the judge can see through these exaggerated truth to balance the need for anti-piracy and the need to protect consumer rights, and the rights of ISPs to operate without being burdened by the responsibility to prevent piracy. Surely the industry that profits, often in record amounts, from the movies and TV shows that are being pirated should be the ones responsible, at least financially, for the anti-piracy operations, not the ISP or its subscribers. Either put up, or shut up.

Most independent game developers say that piracy is not a significant problem, at least for now, according to the latest survey. While most fear that it can become a big problem in the future, only 10% felt that it was a serious problem at the moment. One thing to note about  piracy, including games and movies, is that people who do have the ability to pay for content will usually do so. It is only those that never had any intention to pay for anything, some because they don’t have the capability, that are the more dedicated when it comes to sourcing pirated content online, and these people were never likely to provide any sort of income for the content owners, now or in the future. So the key is to at the very least increase the number of people who have the capability to pay for content, and that can only be achieved through pricing changes. Digital distribution allows this to occur without the cost being a huge issue (certainly compared to physical media and the associated costs like packaging, shipping  …), and even more reasonable pricing can open up previously untapped markets, such as developing countries where piracy rates are even higher. Or the alternative is to fight against logic and try to stop all piracy through technology that has proved inconvenient at best, and completely unworkable at worst, or through ever harsher legislation that completely disregard some of society’s basic principles in relation to justice and human rights.

Microsoft banning 1 million Xbox 360 accounts over suspected system modding (which allows for piracy) may seem excessive, but console piracy is actually not a huge problem and that’s worth examining. The anti-piracy success is largely to do with technology, all games consoles carry some form of DRM for games and being closed systems, they are easier to enforce (unless somebody decides to mod their Xbox 360, that is). The DRM systems used are also fairly straight forward, usually just a DVD check, and with digital downloads being available, even the DVD check won’t be necessary anymore. There are still many aspects of the DRM system that are inconvenient, such as when one needs to move from one console to another, but there are at least solutions and workarounds. And I guess more reasonable pricing comes into it. Games are expensive, but given the number of hours of entertainment they provide, it’s still better value compared to your typical movie or MP3. Consoles are also now very good at providing demos for new games, thus eliminating the need for people to “play before they pay” (which I admit is often used as an excuse for piracy, and play doesn’t always lead to pay). They certainly aren’t going out there lobbying the government to throw people off the Internet for downloading games, or getting ISPs to work as their spies, or suing individuals for using pirated games.

HD news now. Not much on Blu-ray to report, but the holiday season is upon us and there will be a steady stream of big releases to give the format a big boost. But HD is more than just Blu-ray, and the future of HD may be SD.

Blockbuster tries SD digital rental

Not SD, as in standard definition, but SD as in the memory storage format. Blockbuster is trialling a new way to rent movies by allowing customers to download them to their SD memory cards. These movies expire after 30 days if unwatched, or 48 hours after the first viewing. Obviously DRM is involved, but further details are a bit sketchy. If compatibility with hardware players, then the DRM used may be the SD card’s own internal DRM system, CPRM. This would then allow the actual video file to be unencrypted, and playable in a wide variety of players, probably. The lack of DRM on your common USB stick may be why they didn’t go with the more common format.

The other path for HD is digital distribution. The main stumbling block has always been bandwidth, and also processing power (many of the Netbooks you see today will struggle with 1080p content). But YouTube is not waiting around for things to catch up, and will roll out 1080p playback support next week. The link to the left has a couple of further links to test videos that you can already use to see if your system is fast enough for 1080p. On my Intel C2D E8500, I recorded 40 to 50% CPU usage, which is reasonable, but you can see why some Netbooks will struggle. With GPU assisted decoding (unfortunately Flash does not yet support ATI based solutions), the CPU usage can be greatly reduced. This was proven when I downloaded the YouTube 1080p video (about 100 MB for 4 minutes worth) and used PowerDVD 9 to play it back (as it supports GPU assisted decoding). CPU usage dropped to below 10%, and my ATI Radeon HD 4850 was hardly worked (about 5% usage) despite the CPU savings. So it seems for 1080p video delivered through YouTube, most modern computers should be able to handle it, some better than others depending on whether GPU assist is available or not now or in the future. The bandwidth usage is reasonable, roughly the same as downloading a DVD movie (so the 1080p quality isn’t as good as say Blu-ray, not really close yet), but it will still use a large chunk of people’s quotas.

And lastly in gaming, not much to link to, except for the NPD analysis, which I’ve already linked to above. I think we finally have a proper console war on now, where there’s not much between the three top consoles, the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. The Wii has the superior hardware numbers, but is weak on games, especially third party ones and ones that appeal to hardcore gamers. The PS3 has only started to do well to suggest it may take top spot eventually, but there’s still some catching up to do both in hardware and software. The Xbox 360 is enjoying software sales, at least in the US, for now, but it won’t last forever if it the last two months becomes a trend and they continue to sell less consoles than the PS3. But they have a great multi-player community and that counts for more and more these days. And of course, Natal, which may be beaten to the punch, innovative software wise, by PS3 Eye Pet (a new category of games, using the buzz word  ”augmented reality”) . But if Eye Pet is a success, then that may actually bode well for Natal, since it plans to offer similar things but in a more mainstream, and technologically advanced fashion. The only problem is the late release date, now semi confirmed as November 2010, which may be too late to help if things stay the way they are.

See you next week.

The figures for US sales in October 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (October 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Wii: 506,900 (Total: 22.1 million; October 2008: 803,000 – down 37%)
• DS: 457,600 (Total: 34.4 million; October 2008: 491,000 – down 7%)
• PS3: 320,600 (Total: 9.1 million; October 2008: 190,000 – up 69%)
• Xbox 360: 249,700 (Total: 16.5 million; October 2008: 371,000 – down 33%)
• PSP: 174,600 (Total: 15.9 million; October 2008: 193,000 – down 10%)
• PS2: 117,800 (Total: 44.7 million; October 2008: 136,000 – down 13%)

NPD October 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of October 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

It’s time to make a prediction of October 2009’s results. For my money, I’ll say that the order of the hardware sales will remain the same, although the Wii numbers will be closer to the PS3 numbers. The PSP Go debuts, but based on an Australian report about the poor sales figures (a couple of hundred sales per week in an entire country, is not the best), the impact of the PSP Go may be muted. Sony will continue to have good month, but this time backed up in software sales as well with Uncharted 2. It might not sell enough to top the number one title, which might be Wii Sports Resort. Wii Fit Plus might take a place in the top half of the charts as well. I expect FIFA 10 to show up in one of more flavors in the top 10. Borderlands might make a showing too.

Some right, some wrong. The biggest surprise, if you can call it that, was that the Wii price cut managed to do enough to unseat the PS3 from the top spot. Part of this was also due to the price cut, Slim induced sales bump not lasting as long as one would expect. This is true of the Xbox 360 price cut as well, and if November wasn’t such a bumper month for sales, it might also be true for the Wii as well next month. My predictions about PSP Go sales being relatively subdued was also correct, with combined PSP sales of both the old and new models actually dropping compared to last month (but dropping less than it would have been had the PSP Go not been released). For my software predictions, I was right about Uncharted 2 doing well for Sony, but wrong about it not taking the number one spot. It did, and quite comfortably. Wii Sports Resort failed to keep its sales up, and was beaten in the end by Wii Fit Plus. FIFA 10 did show up, albeit in last place, but Borderlands did well on the Xbox 360 at least.

So let’s take a look at the PS3 numbers first. After a great month in which it took top spot amongst the home consoles for the first time since I’ve started analyzing the figures, it quickly felled back down again, but at least it managed to beat the Xbox 360. We’ll still need a couple of months to see if the price cut has any long term effects, but one thing is for certain, that last month’s bump for the PS3 had parts of it which were very temporary in nature. I would expect a price cut to be more long term, and the introduction of a new model to be more short term (due to the number of people who upgrade, which only occurs once), and so one can conclude that what made the PS3 the number one selling home based console in September was down to a fairly even combination of both events (price cut and new model), but that the temporary has started wearing off for October. Certainly those that expected the PS3 to be selling over the Wii from last month onwards were a bit too optimistic in their predictions, perhaps. In any case, Sony can still be extremely happy with the results, as the PS3 recorded what was the only year-on-year sales increase of all the consoles (more on that later).

The Wii’s sales bump is welcome news for Nintendo in what has been a fairly miserable year, especially in the last quarter. The price cut, while occurring in the last month, seems to have had the full effect in October as the Wii was the only console to record growth compared to September. But the overall picture is still not a happy one for Nintendo, as the year-on-year sale of the Wii saw a huge 37% drop, the largest of any console. Part of this was due to how incredibly the Wii was selling this time last year, way above any expectations. The other part is the slow decline in Wii sales that has occurred over 2009. At least the DS is still doing relatively well, keeping a firm grip on the number one spot and only recording a small year-on-year drop.

The Xbox 360 figures are again not looking great for Microsoft. A huge year-on-year drop breaks the trend for 2009, in which the Xbox 360 was pretty much the only console to record year-on-year growth (or negligible losses in a couple of months). This suggest the PS3 price cut has really hurt the Xbox 360 where it counts, and the fortunes have been reversed for the two consoles post the PS3 price cut, as the PS3 was the one recording large year-on-year sales drops up until the price cut. With Project Natal not coming until this time next year, later than PS3’s motion controller, which might be able to steal the Natal thunder if it’s properly integrated with the PS3 Eye and with useful software, time is running out for Microsoft to do something. To be fair, it was always a difficult struggle for the Xbox 360 to beat the PS3, and it has outperformed everyone’s expectations up until this point. Price cuts had allowed the Xbox 360 to outperform the PS3, but price cuts are not something that can go on forever, and given similar prices, the PS3 with its Blu-ray functionality and more advanced design will always win. So it may not be a case of the Xbox 360 losing to the PS3, but rather, both consoles finding their rightful place now that the PS3 ridiculous pricing has been removed as a factor. For Microsoft, Natal is a step in the right direction, but the November 2010 release date may just be too late to change things. The only thing that Microsoft has in its arsenal is the larger install base of the Xbox 360 over the PS3 in the US, which should at least mean that it will take some time before the PS3 finds parity, and will still allow them to sell software in good numbers until then. And the better multiplayer platform in Xbox Live over the PlayStation Network, and add to that the larger install base, does still give the Xbox 360 some momentum (the “if my friends are already on the 360, I have to be on it too” principle). Making Xbox Live Gold free is probably the only other weapon left for Microsoft to use.

Looking at sales as a whole, October performed badly compared to September and certainly compared to the same time last year. There might be a recession related thing going on at the moment, or just the lack of really big titles, but the stimulus given by the price drops, or new models being released, seems to be the only things keeping the figures from sliding further down. Things will be on the up in November for sure, but the numbers will be extremely interesting to see if there is a year-on-year growth or decline, and whether how well the PS3 numbers do compared to the Wii (and to a lesser extent, the Xbox 360), both to see if temporary factors were responsible for the Wii’s sales increase this month, and again to confirm the longevity of the PS3 price cut boost.

Moving on to software, things are slightly better, although a year-on-year decline was still the order of the day. The top title was a PS3 title for only the second time since I’ve started keeping track (the previous one was Metal Gear Solid 4 in June 2008). Uncharted 2 was the top selling title in question, and being an exclusive, that’s exactly where it should be. But compared to last month’s number one, which was also a follow-up game in a series and also a platform exclusive (Halo 3: ODST), the sales are still somewhat disappointing (Halo 3: ODST outsold Uncharted 2 by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1). Getting more out of platform exclusives, especially high profile ones such as the Uncharted series, whether that’s through more extensive marketing or other tactics, is something Sony can work on to better its software sales. There was only one other PS3 title in the top 10, NBA 2K10, a multi-platform release. There were only two Wii titles in the top 10, Wii Fit Plus as predicted and Wii Sports Resort, which saw sales drop compared to last month. The rest, apart from one DS title, was all Microsoft. 5 titles in the top 10, and even though the highest placed was only third, it still managed to grab 44.3% of total sales, the third best set of results in 2009. Wii games accounted 25.1% of the top 10, and the PS3 was third once more with 25% of sales.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, Sony) – 537,000
2. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) – 441,000
3. Borderlands (Xbox 360, Take-Two) – 418,000
4. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 314,000
5. NBA 2K10 (Xbox 360, 2K Sports) – 311,000
6. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 271,000
7. NBA 2K10 (PS3, 2K Sports) – 213,000
8. Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 175,000
9. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS, Square Enix) – 169,000
10. FIFA 10 (Xbox 360, EA Sports) – 156,000

Prediction time. This is a hard one. Sales will go up considerably compared to October, that’s for sure. The DS will be top, the number two spot will be closely fought between the PS3 and Wii, although I’m leaning towards the Wii winning that battle right now. The Xbox 360 is 4th, followed by the other two PlayStation consoles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the number one selling game, and the controversial game will be a record seller if the hype is anything to go by. The Xbox 360 version of this multi-platform game should be the one occupying the top spot. Other titles that will do well for the Xbox 360 include Assassin’s Creed II and the console platform exclusive Left 4 Dead 2. For the Wii, a new Super Mario Bros game will always be a hit, and it could give CoD: MW2 some competition (although mainly for the PS3 version, one suspect). Dragon Age: Origins, from the same people that gave us Mass Effect, could make the top 10 as well, since I’ve been hearing a lot about this game recently.

See you next month.

The figures for US sales in September 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (September 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD September 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

So for a concrete prediction, I would say the PS3 to outsell the Xbox 360 and the Wii, and the number three being contested between the Xbox 360 and the Wii (too close to call, at this point). The PSP Go is coming in October, so we won’t see the numbers until November. Halo 3: ODST should top the charts next month, followed by Wii Sports Resort. The Beatles game should sell well too, although the Wii SKU may outsell the PS3/Xbox 360 ones.  At least one SKU of Batman: AA should still chart, although whether it’s the Xbox 360 or the PS3 version is too close to call at the moment as well (Xbox 360 users will be fully occupied by Halo 3: ODST to think about buying other games, I feel).

Mostly right, a couple of minor mistakes. As predicted and expected, the PS3 managed to beat the Wii to second place, but it wasn’t enough to unseat the DS as the number one selling game console. I predicted that the Wii and Xbox 360 would be neck and neck, which wasn’t the case, but when I made the prediction, Nintendo had not yet announced the Wii price cut which helped it to at least hold on to third place. The software predictions are mostly correct, even down to the uncertainty as to which platform for Batman: AA was going to win (it was the PS3, beating the Xbox 360 version that finished just outside of the top 10). The Wii version of The Beatles: Rock Band did not outsell the Xbox 360 version though.

So the big news of course are the PS3 numbers, which are simply put, head and shoulders, and a couple of body length, above last month pre-price cut/Slim numbers. There is a seasonal bump from August to September – one can work out just how much by looking at the PSP/PS2 numbers, which weren’t affected by new models or price cuts – this seasonal bump turns out to be around 35%.  Now taking this into account, the PS3 numbers are still about a 100% improvement compared to last month, and this is the amount that the Slim and price cut contributed. Now, how much of it was Slim based, and how much of it was price cut based, is impossible to tell with the numbers I have. The PS3 numbers are also a 112% improvement upon last year’s numbers, which is quite amazing. However, the jump in sales may only be a temporary spike, and it will be useful  to see next month’s numbers before coming to any conclusions. There won’t be a sales drop next month compared to this one, as the holiday season heats up and increases sale naturally, but the question would be how close Wii and Xbox 360 sales are to the PS3, whether the PS3 can hold on to second place or even get first. What is clear though is that the combination of a price cut and a new PS3 model has revived the flagging fortunes of the PS3, although whether this kicks of a period where the PS3 starts to dominate, or whether the Wii and Xbox’s market saturation will prevent this dominance, is a question that can only be answered in a few month’s time.

The biggest loser, and why total hardware sales are still down compared to the same time last year (despite the positive PS3 numbers), is the Wii. Another month in which the Wii managed to sell less than the same time last year, this time by 33%, is just not good enough for Nintendo. The price cut came a bit late to make a huge difference, so Nintendo will hope that its full effects will be felt next month. But what has driven Wii sales, the novelty factor, is starting to wear off. And it will only get worse as Sony and Microsoft debut their own motion systems, especially Microsoft’s Natal which seems a lot more “next-gen” than either the Wii or the PS3 motion controller.

Microsoft, now the least popular of the home consoles, may seem like the biggest loser, but if you look closely at this month’s numbers, they still have something to be happy with. While I don’t think the Xbox 360 Elite is priced competitively enough to combat the PS3, and I don’t think the Arcade can battle with the Wii, it’s clear that by having these two price points, Microsoft want to take on both Sony and Nintendo. It’s not working too well. What would have made more sense was to drop the Pro bundle to Arcade prices, get rid of the HDD-less Arcade model, and price the Elite at much less than the PS3 Slim. But you do get the feeling that any price cut is only a temporary measure until Microsoft unveil Natal, which should push it ahead of the PS3 and the Wii in terms of the novelty factor at least. But as I mentioned above, the other numbers, which is basically the software numbers, are quite encouraging actually, obviously helped by the platform exclusive Halo 3: ODST. In fact, 32% of the total video gaming revenue belonged to Microsoft products (hardware, software and accessories) this month, the single most contribution of any console. For the top 10 software, Microsoft dominated with 64.7% of the revenue, the most dominant performance since I started collecting data, even beating the month when Wii Fit was released in which Nintendo dominated with 61% of the top 10. So it’s not all bad news, and the lead they’ve built up over the PS3 over the last few years should allow them to keep their lead for at least another couple of years, and that’s assuming the PS3 performs as well as this month from now on.

So let’s move onto the software stats. My prediction of Halo 3: ODST and Wii Sports Resort occupying the number 1 and 2 spots respectively was a pretty easy one to make, and it was correct. Halo 3: ODST’s numbers were amazing, making it the 6th best selling SKU launch of all time, very good for a title that was only available on one platform, and an add-on to boot. There was room for 4 more Xbox 360 titles in the top 10. The only slight point of concern was that the PS3 version of Batman: AA outsold the Xbox 360 version, something that rarely happens for multi-platform releases, but the PS3 version did have exclusive content, and as I said last month, the Xbox 360 gamers might have been too busy with ODST to think about Batman: AA. There were only two Wii games in the top 10, gone are the days when Wii Play, Wii Fit and Mario Kart would all make regular appearances. These games have had a good run, but if Wii software sales are to improve, then the platform needs a string of must-have third-party games. Forget about a string, there hasn’t been even a couple of third-party Wii games that can be called “must-have”, so that’s a worrying point for Nintendo. For the PS3, the hardware bump did not translate over to software, with only two titles in the top 10. Madden NFL 10 on the PS3 did well to bridge the gap between it and the Xbox 360 version, but even the Wii version of the Beatles Rock Band game outsold the PS3 version, and so it did not place in the top 10. And as mentioned before, Batman: AA was the other PS3 entry in the top 10, beating the Xbox 360 version which finished 11th (sales figures unknown, but probably just over 200,000, and maybe about 10,000 copies short of the PS3 version). Microsoft’s dominance meant a 64.7% share of the top 10, with the Wii  getting 16.8% (plus 6.7% for the single DS game in the list), and the PS3 on 11.8%.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 1,520,000
2. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 442,900
3. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360, EA) – 289,600
4. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS, Nintendo) – 258,100
5. The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox 360, EA) – 254,000
6. Madden NFL 10 (PS3, EA) – 246,500
7. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (Xbox 360, Activision) – 236,000
8. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Eidos) – 212,500
9. Guitar Hero 5 (Xbox 360, Activision) – 210,800
10. The Beatles: Rock Band (Wi, EA) – 208,600

It’s time to make a prediction of October 2009’s results. For my money, I’ll say that the order of the hardware sales will remain the same, although the Wii numbers will be closer to the PS3 numbers. The PSP Go debuts, but based on an Australian report about the poor sales figures (a couple of hundred sales per week in an entire country, is not the best), the impact of the PSP Go may be muted. Sony will continue to have good month, but this time backed up in software sales as well with Uncharted 2. It might not sell enough to top the number one title, which might be Wii Sports Resort. Wii Fit Plus might take a place in the top half of the charts as well. I expect FIFA 10 to show up in one of more flavors in the top 10. Borderlands might make a showing too.

See you next month.

Starting with copyright news, anti-piracy has become a real business, that’s not too surprising. But has the business of fighting piracy become more profitable than actually stopping piracy?

That’s what one anti-piracy firm thinks, and it even made a presentation showing just how more profitable it can be, for them and content owners alike, to allow piracy to continue and to make money off it by suing people, or threatening to sue them, for copyright infringement. They estimate that a quarter of all people they scare pay the penalty that they’ve arbitrarily set, and each successful claim is worth hundreds of legitimate downloads in terms of profit. This follows a rather candid interview that was given by a similar anti-piracy outfit not too long ago, where they revealed that they’ve put out content on P2P networks to lure people in, and they’ll only go after the people who they can make a good profit from. Stopping piracy, seems to be a distant second objective to making a bundle of cash by exploiting people’s fears about going to court, people’s lack of knowledge of the law, and the anti-piracy crusade that content owners are hell bent on pursuing. And your government is not only allowing it, but probably helping and profiting from it as well. Is this really acceptable?

Speaking of governments and unacceptable practices, have you heard about the proposed anti-counterfeiting/piracy treaty, that will be discussed in South Korea next month by several leading countries. The plans that could cause your iPod or laptop to be searched at the airport for suspect pirated content, or make file sharing illegal, or use legislation to turn ISPs into copyright cops? You haven’t heard of it? Well, that’s no surprising, because the US government is making sure nobody knows about the proposals until they’ve been passed, citing “national security” reasons. Only a handful of selected individuals were privy to what’s on the agenda, and even they had to sign non-disclosure agreements beforehand. Has counterfeiting and piracy, and not even the kind that takes place on the seas, become such a major issue that it’s being treated in the way as the war against terrorism or the war against drugs, and no public discussion is even allowed on the subject? Incidentally both of the wars I’ve mentioned just now seems to be the never ending types of which winning is all but a distant dream at the moment – a glimpse into the future of the war against downloads perhaps.

Ringtones are a public performance, just one of the many zany things that the ASCAP claims

But before the governments can agree on how long to lock people up in Gitmo for downloading the latest Miley Cyrus album or a screener of Zombieland, the RIAA and MPAA have to do things the hard way. One method they’ve tried before is to attack BitTorrent networks, using techniques such as “piece attack” and “connection attack”, both of which designed to frustrate the downloading experience for other users. However, a study has shown that despite the millions of dollars given to anti-piracy firms to implement these methods, they do not work, and at best, they are a minor annoyance to downloads for only a couple of minutes. More millions down the drain, millions that could have been used to give people what they want, which is cheap, accessible music and movies. Instead, they’re doing things like trying to get royalties from ringtones, or to charge people to listen to the 30 second previews on iTunes. This, and many other claims, are being rejected even by the copyright friendly courts, as the ASCAP found out this week. The content owners, and the people who have been profiting from royalties, are doing everything they can to hold on, even asking Congress to make it a law so that they never lose their cash cow. Instead of embracing change, they’re fighting it, and you wonder how long they can go on doing the same thing. The longer that legitimate and comparable alternatives to illegal downloads are not implemented, the more likely that illegal downloads will be accepted as acceptable practice by the general public.

And many things that have been adopted as common practice, such as recording TV shows to your VCR/DVR or ripping your CDs to MP3, are now considered legal. But they won’t be legal if the Canadian group Access Copyright have anything to do with it, and they propose that any of these acts should carry a fee that goes toward the content owners, or at least the people who profit from giving out licenses, such as Access Copyright. It seems that the copyright debate has gone all the way back to pre Universal vs Betamax times, and the content owners are still trying to fight innovation, even if that particular innovation (the ability to record stuff) is a couple of decades old already.

Nobody likes the MPAA, not even the studios that it represents

This anti innovation drive has a lot of people angry, and has given agencies such as the MPAA quite a bit of bad PR. So what do they do about it? Instead of calling it “anti-piracy”, anti-piracy is now called “content protection“. Protecting the content from those pesky and annoying people called customers, perhaps, and also protecting profits again innovation. The studios are also unhappy at the MPAA’s approach, calling it not aggressive enough. The shift in strategy will mean that the MPAA will now go after ISPs and network operators, to clamp down on the spread of information from a higher level. Yes, this should make them more popular. And this brings us quite nicely into the iiNet trial, the landmark “studio versus ISP” case that could determine the future of the Internet. It’s the second week of the trial, and you can read the summary in the linked post. Suffice to say, if ISPs are to become copyright cops with the power to kick people off the Internet, then you have to wonder, due to the ever increasing importance of the Internet to people’s way of life (and work), whether this infringes on people’s rights in a democratic society. Finland has just made 1 Mb broadband a basic legal right for anyone who lives in the country, and they will up the speed to 100 Mb by 2015. This seems to be the direction many countries are going towards, making Internet a basic utility just like power or water. But if the Internet is a basic utility, then how does the three-strikes system (or as in the iiNet case the “one-strike” system) affect this basic legal right. Can you be denied water or electricity because you’re a suspected criminal? Can the government deny anyone the ability to make a phone call, and even so, is it something they can enforce at all unless that person is in prison, or under house arrest. And in the end, will any of this actually protect the profits of billion dollar movie and music studios, or will kicking people off this brand new global distribution platform actually hurt profits in the long term. And why is the government doing anything to protect profits of private companies anyway, especially at the tax payer’s expense?

But let’s end this section on a slightly happier, and sane, note. Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later says that perhaps the best way to fight piracy is to cut movie prices, because the cinema still has something unique to offer in terms of the viewing experience, compared to a poor quality screener. It’s a crazy suggestion, so it might just work. Or we can just ban the cinema, so nobody can bring a camera into the cinema and record it. Problem solved!

In high definition news, the CEO of Netflix says that DVDs may be on the way out. But instead of Blu-ray replacing the format, it will actually be streaming. Of course, he’s referring to movie rental, not sale-through, and his director of corporate communications had to soften the statement by saying that growth is positive on all the formats.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings based his opinions on the fact that more and more people are opting for the cheapest DVD rental plan, while still keeping the most fully featured streaming option. I think the convenience of streaming, instant access, no need to wait for the disc in the mail and post it back, might be the reason for this shift. But until HD streaming becomes an affordable reality for everyone, which means bandwidth speed and allowance will have to increase, Blu-ray is still the only show in town if you want the best quality HD movies.

TDK's 100 GB Blu-ray Disc: May not work on current Blu-ray players

What may be not so good for Blu-ray, or actually Blu-ray owners, is the news that 50+ GB discs may not be compatible with current players. So if the movie studios ever decide to use 100 GB discs, say for TV series box sets, then Blu-ray owners will have to upgrade their Blu-ray players again. And I say again because many have already had to upgrade their profile 1.0 players to 1.1 or 2.0, to access features like PiP and Internet content. Chances are, this won’t ever happen, because it will just hurt the format too much if people are yet again forced to adopt new hardware with new disc drives, which further highlights just how out of date the idea of using discs is in the age of digital distribution. And I don’t think people mind having a bunch of discs in a box set, as I think it actually makes it look like more value.

China Blue HD, which is HD DVD for China, is being imported into Europe, along with cheap movies. Can’t see the studios being happy about it, since they licensed movies to CBHD for sale in China only, and the cheap player that comes with a dozen free movies may confuse buyers when they’re out there shopping for Blu-ray.

And for Trekkies or Trekkers, and those who don’t mind a bit of DRM, then this might be for you: A Starfleet badge shaped USB thumb drive with a copy of the latest Star Trek movie on it? How can one resist!

Not much going on in gaming, as everyone is waiting for the delayed NPD stats (due on Thursday, but has been delayed until Monday). It is expected that the Sony PS3 will jump to first place, from third, for the first time since its launch in 2006. Most expect the Wii to be second, with the Xbox 360 third. Microsoft has already came out with a pre-emptive attack on the numbers, calling it a temporary bump and saying that the 360 will still be the number one selling console for 2009.

2010 is looking like a decisive year for this generation. Sony has it’s Wii like motion system, but Natal may trump it as the must have casual gaming gadget. Nintendo has been quiet, which makes me suspect they’ve got something up their sleeves.

The NPD analysis for September 2009 should be posted sometime during the week, so until the next edition of the WNR, I hope you’ve had a good time reading this, have a good week and don’t forget to tip the waiter.

Otherwise, it was a fairly quiet week, with a few stories occupying the headlines to still make it a very interesting week, although most of it was yet again about the issue of copyright.

Let’s start with the copyright news. There was only really one news item that really caught the attention of people this week. And not even Sir Elton John could push the news out of the headlines, much of it thanks to the reactions to the story on the Internet.

A screencap of the Google cache of Lily Allen's anti-piracy blog, which has now been closed

Earlier in the week, musician Lily Allen decided to take a stand on the issue of online music piracy. But unlike many others who have come out against the proposed three-strike Internet banning policy, Ms Allen has come out for it, even launching a blog called “It’s Not Alright” to voice her views on piracy. Now there is nothing wrong with someone expressing their views, in fact, that’s what the Internet is for. However, if you do come out with some opinion, especially a controversial one, then make sure you are untouchable when it comes to arguing the facts. Unfortunately, Ms Allen made the mistake of not doing enough vetting into her personal history in regards to piracy, and in netspeak, she has been truly and thoroughly pwned. It turns out that, in publishing her anti-piracy views, that she might have pirated the article of high tech news and discussion website, Techdirt. And not only that, a few days later, it was revealed that Ms Allen was a distributor of pirated music herself, with some self-made mixtape MP3s that was available for download from her website, that featured songs that she (and her record company) did not have the distribution rights to. Oops.

Some dude said nearly 2000 years ago that “let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”. And if one is to take the moral stance that anyone who has downloaded or shared an illegal MP3 (and that’s a lot of people) is a thief and should be punished harshly, than he, or she, should at the very least ensure that they have not committed the same “crime”. Because the truth is that it’s very easy to commit this crime, it may be because you think you’re not doing anything wrong by not paying for something you never had the intention to pay for in the first place, or perhaps you think sharing songs is a great way to promote the song and the artist and it may lead to you, or the people you shared the song with, to become a fan and start buying. There are legitimate arguments for and against a heavy crackdown on piracy, but as the Lily Allen incident showed us, it’s far too easy to be labeled a pirate just because, earlier in your music career, your appreciation of other artists led you to make a mixtape that somehow ended up online. And as Ms Allen posted on her blog about the mixtapes, “I made those mixtapes 5 years ago, I didn’t have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry back then”. But Ms Allen, under the very legislation that you support, you would be punished for what you claim you did out of ignorance 5 years ago, and guess how many other people might get punished for similar acts if what you support becomes law? And the article you stole from Techdirt, well, that’s copyright protected as well, even if it were just some text on some website you’ve never seen before. So I’m glad Ms Allen spoke out, because she has successfully demonstrated the worst aspect of the three-strikes system, something nobody else could do until it was actually made into law. Ms Allen has since then decided to quit the music business, which could be to her genuine loss of hope in the future of the music business due to continuing losses to piracy, a publicity stunt, a bit of sulky sulk sulk over the whole affair,  or a bit of everything.

Oh, and Sir Elton John made similar statements but nobody really cared, not when the Lily Allen Show was so interesting.

UK ISP BT says that policing Internet usage could cost more than simply ignoring the problem

In all of this, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the whole point of the anti-piracy drive, and the three-strikes system, is all just about increasing profits for the music industry (and other industries). Not that there’s anything wrong with this of course, they have the right to take actions to increase their profits. But will the three-strikes actually stop piracy, and what about the cost to implement and maintain such a system. One of UK’s leading ISPs, BT, has came up with some estimates as to the cost of spying on Internet users, and they put the cost at £24 per person, or roughly £365 million per year in the UK. The UK music industry actually only claims £200 million in lost profits due to piracy per year, and as with their estimates, the actual loss is probably less than a quarter of this amount, if that much. The extra cost, the full amount of which will no doubt be passed onto the consumer, will hurt the Internet as access plans become less affordable and some are priced out of being able to connect altogether. This will in turn hurt legal online music sales and promotional efforts. I would be surprised if the music industry actually comes out ahead at all, but for them it’s of little risk since they scream so loudly about the seriousness of online piracy, yet are unwilling to fork out a single cent for a solution that they came up with. Probably the most effective way to actually kill off the three-strikes system is to actually force the music, movie (and other) industries to come up with the cash to implement such a system.

But the movie studios (or at least movie theaters) are spending on implementing systems that try and stop camcorder pirates. The latest such system uses infrared pulsing lights situated behind the screen that the human eye cannot see, but will be recorded onto camcorder images. This is supposed to deter pirates and purchasers of said pirated content, but they’ve obviously never bothered to download and examine a cam recording of a movie, what with part of the picture being blocked by somebody’s head, and the sound of popcorn chewing louder than the explosions in the movie. I don’t think quality is what people care about when it comes to cam recordings, and so feel free to spend millions upgrading cinemas with this technology, and in the end, some guy who works at the cinema for $10 an hour will still manage to get their hands on the original reel and hand it over to the right people to make a perfect rip.

So what would drive the copyright holders to spend so much fighting against online piracy, when by reasonable estimations, the loss to online piracy isn’t anywhere near as bad as the copyright holders make out, and that the benefits of the Internet will probably eventually outweigh any effect that piracy has. Many people can see that Internet and digital distribution provides a lot of new opportunities, but why does the industry treat it as a disease that must be eradicated? Well, William Patry, the senior copyright counsel at Google might have found the reason in his new book, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. He explains that this isn’t, nor will it be the last, time that copyright holders show mass panic in the face of a new distribution medium, to identify it as the enemy and do all in their powers to stop it, and then only to find out later on that it actually benefits them the most in the long run. It happened with the introduction of radio, television, VCRs, and now, it’s the Internet that’s public enemy number one where copyright is concerned. I guess it is understandable to a degree. To have something so valuable, you will want to protect it, against new things that you don’t fully understand and sometimes that means going too far. I keep on thinking back to the Susan Boyle episode, and wonder if her performance, and the show she performed on, would have been as popular if somebody hadn’t illegally uploaded the clip of the show onto YouTube. Had the copyright holders got to the video before the general public, how much of an adverse effect would that have had on the finances of said copyright holders, I wonder. Not to mention the financial fortunes of one Susan Boyle (although the publicity has had an adverse effect on her personal life, but that’s a whole other problem).

Onto high def news now. Still not much happening, and that’s true on the release front as well, as the last few weeks (after the Watchmen bump had subsided) has been fairly quiet ones. However, one thing is for certain, and that’s the price drops for Blu-ray happening all over the place, for both hardware and software.

Blu-ray prices have come down, for example, Crash on Blu-ray is now under $10 on Amazon

I’ve noticed this trend from analyzing the NPD stats, and NPD themselves have also been monitoring the situation and found that average prices have indeed dropped and are getting closer to the pricing of the DVD versions, even compared to just a few months ago. And from looking at the price history info on our own Amazon Blu-ray Price Index section, you can see the trend quite clearly. New releases, which used to be priced at just below $28 on Amazon, are now almost always under $24, with older releases previously hardly ever discounted, sometimes now falling to under $10. And whenever there has been a discount for older titles, it will usually shoot to the top of the charts. It’s good new for consumers and good news for the Blu-ray format, but probably not great news for the backers of the format, who have envisaged a premium format to combat ever lowering DVD prices. It hasn’t totally failed in this respect, as DVD prices are falling faster and so Blu-ray has at least slow downed the bleeding, but I think it’s time studios start to think about ways to sell more copies of the movies, rather than to make more money per copy.

Not much happening in gaming as it’s still a couple of weeks away from official sales figures for September, which should tell us how well the PS3 Slim is doing, and whether the discount to the Xbox 360 Elite has worked or not. The Wii price drop has been confirmed as well, but it comes too late in September to really have an effect on the month’s sales figures. But the fact that Nintendo is doing it may suggest they’ve had a look at the September sales figures and weren’t really happy with what they saw. And there is also news of a further $50 rebate offer for the Xbox 360 Elite, which suggests that Microsoft weren’t that happy with what they saw as well.

That’s it for now, have a great week, and see you in about 168 hours time.

In Copyright news, subtitle download sites are now under the spotlight in Israel, or rather, the people who upload subtitles to these sites are the ones being targeted. Three individuals have been sued for uploading subtitles to the site Qsubs, and have been ordered to pay $240,000 in damages each, and to further humiliate them, made to publicly apologise for uploading them.

Subtitle files are really just text files, but they are protected by copyright. But unlike things like film scripts (which a few places offer downloads for) which have legitimate use, subtitle files are mostly for use with pirated video files. For the files you make from your own DVDs, well, you can rip your own subtitles in most cases (technically breaking the DMCA or similar legislation), although legitimate use does exist when certain editions of the DVD do not have the subtitles you need, and since region control prohibits you from buying the other editions, using downloaded subtitles are the only way (although you may have to perform additional processing on said subtitle files because it all syncs up). Then there’s the issue that some US DVDs only have closed caption, which is not available in many other countries, and so if you have such a DVD, and you have convert it to XviD, you’ll need to source subtitle files for it from other editions. But these are pretty rare uses for downloaded subtitles, and in any case, copyright still exists for the ripped files. But suing individuals, while leaving the upload site alone, seems like a bit of a strange move.

Veoh wins their legal battle with Universal Music, which should make YouTube happy

And unexpected as it may be, there was a win in court for Veoh in their legal battle again Universal Music. Universal had sued Veoh for copyright abuse, due to music videos being uploaded by users of the video sharing website. YouTube came under a similar suit from Viacom. But the decision, which Universal will seek an appeal on, means that Veoh cannot be held fully responsible for the actions of its users, as long as it takes appropriate action in trying to combat copyright theft. Just like YouTube, Veoh has the ability for copyright holders to seek removal of content, and they have removed content deemed unauthorized on a regular basis, and this was enough for the judge to declare that Veoh has done enough not be to held responsible for those other uploads that it has failed to remove. After all, the responsibility of stopping copyright theft should be shared between copyright owners and websites like Veoh and YouTube, the copyright holders cannot simply demand that these websites, which deals with thousands of videos per day, to do all the work to protect their own content. And it certainly shouldn’t be considered “reasonable” for these websites to censor each and every piece of user generate content, as if this is true, then websites like Twitter and Facebook would have to be. As long as websites show they are making a genuine effort, I think, that should be enough. In any case, the legal boffins at YouTube should be delighted at the ruling, although Universal’s appeal may reverse the decision in due time.

Speaking of appeals, the service provider that was forced to disconnect The Pirate Bay via legal action initiated by the MPAA is appealing the decision. They had to disconnect TPB because the judge ruled that the service provider, which provided network services to the web host of The Pirate Bay, is liable for the content being made available using its services. This is a big ruling, and a very messy one, as these service providers may service an entire city or even country, and for them to be made liable for everything that is being hosted, essentially puts them out of business, and an end to the Internet. I keep on going back to this analogy, but again, this is like the phone company being made liable for the actions of criminals that are using their phone services. Except, this time, it’s not even the phone company we’re talking about, it’s the company that helped to lay the undersea cables that the phone company uses, being sued for someone using the phone to scam people. In real life, neither the phone company nor the cable layers would get sued (and if they do, they’ll win without question), but when it comes to the Internet, the largely clueless legal establishment are handing out rulings left and right that have huge repercussions that they are not close to being aware of. If the government should be taking any action on Internet piracy, it should be to establish clear guidelines as to jurisdiction, responsibility, and all those other legal definitions that make the legal system work, not to do the MPAA’s dirty work and denying it’s own citizens their right to communicate by kicking them off the Internet.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, friend of the RIAA/MPAA

And it’s a shame, because the French government has just successfully licked clean the bottom of the RIAA/MPAA’s shoes by passing their version of the three-strikes rule, although not exactly what the music and movie studios wanted (they didn’t want that pesky thing called due process), it is still a extremely harsh piece of legislation which hopefully will be appealed. The legislation will even fine or ban anyone who lets other use their connection to download pirated content, and jail time could even be handed out for serious offenders. So if you pirated 3 songs, worth a total of $2.97, you might have to spend a year or two in prison for daring to do something so nasty to those poor poor billionaires at the music and movie studios. Jean Valjean would be rolling in his grave if he were in fact a real person and not a fictionalized character, so Victor Hugo will have to be doing the rolling.

Across the Channel, a group is seeking to add DRM to DTV by adding a piece of encrypted data to broadcasts, which can only be unlocked if you pay them money to buy the license to the decoder. It’s all in the name of stopping piracy of course, and the millions they are set to make in licensing fees is just a nice side effect, honest! Using the piracy bogeyman to scare the bejesus out of the government to force them to put in measures which allows you (or your lawyers) to make a bundle, while inconveniencing legitimate users and not stopping piracy at all – yep, that sounds about right as the MPAA is doing exactly this with the FCC at the moment. If only the rest of the world behaved in the same way as the Japanese, then groups like the MPAA won’t even have to make this effort. They can just bring out the DRM in force and make people use it, which is why all new Japanese phones will now have DRM to prevent playback of anything that it may detect as illegal, including songs and movies you’ve ripped from your own collections. This would also mean that anytime you want to play a song, you’ll have to connect to the Internet to have it checked by the powers that be to ensure you are not in fact a dirty pirate. Japan must be like some kind of utopia for the likes of the RIAA/MPAA, if phone companies can get away with doing something like this without a huge public backlash or government interference.

In high def news, well, there wasn’t anything of real note to be honest. I could talk about Blu-ray sales numbers, but I’ve already covered them in this thread on a weekly basis. Or maybe talk about how all the studios are talking about bringing 3D movies to the home via Blu-ray, but I’ve talked about that before. Some websites are still talking about the Toshiba Blu-ray thing, which suggest there really isn’t that much happening right now. Things will certainly pick up as we get closer to the holiday period, and there are some big releases lined up for Blu-ray this season. So let’s skip high def news for this week and hope that there’s some news of substance soon.

And in gaming, as predicted, firmware 3.01 for the PS3 has been released as a hotfix for many of the issues introduced by the disappointing 3.00 firmware. Sony needs to reduce the number of firmware updates and make each update more substantial (and bug free), because things are getting more ridiculous with each new firmware release. And despite having released tons of firmware updates, none of them have been as substantial or welcomed (relatively) as the New Xbox Experience update from Microsoft last year, which proves that quality, not quantity, is what people want.

Proof of the $50 Wii price drop?

And as for the Wii price drop, you can pretty much notch it up as “fact”, following more leaked catalogues (this time from Best Buy) showing the $50 price drop to come in this month. Is it enough to combat the resurgent PS3, and the Xbox 360 price drop? Price, I don’t think, is the Wii’s major problem. I think the novelty factor is wearing off a bit, and it’s going to be even less unique when Sony and Microsoft introduce their own motion systems, especially Microsoft’s controller-free Natal. Time for the Wii to concentrate on it’s core gamers, so a new Zelda game, a new Mario game or some new devices like Wii Fit, might be what’s needed. Wii Sports Resort helped, but more is needed.

That’s all the news I bothered to “report” on this week. See you next week.

The figures for US sales in August 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (August 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD August 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of August 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

So prediction time. By this time next month, we should have a good idea whether the PS3 Slim is fact or fiction (if I had to put money on it, I would say ‘fact’), as well as what price cuts there might be. The PS3 Slim, according to rumours, won’t be here until September anyway, so it won’t be before October (when I post the September NPD analysis) before we can see what effects it may have on sales. In the short term though, this could spell a sales drought for the PS3, unless Sony does some pre-emptive price drop for the older SKUs to get rid of stock. August is traditionally also a slow month, so I expect sales to drop further, or at best, stay the same with July levels. The same ordering as this month, most likely. Madden NFL 10 should dominate, along with Wii Sports Resort, and there might be a late month surge in Batman: Arkham Asylum sales.

Well, the PS3 Slim was in fact a ‘fact’, but I didn’t put any money on it, and I doubt I would have made much if I had given the odds at that time. The price cut was also a ‘fact’. While the PS3 Slim’s official release date was the 1st of September, many had already managed to secure one through regular retail channels, and so with the price cut on existing models as well, the August numbers do reflect the PS3 Slim/price cut effect, although obviously not the full effect which we will see this time next month for the September figures. The price cut on existing models took place around the middle of the month, and so the sales drought did not occur (although it did in certain places, like Japan). The Xbox 360 price drop came at the very end of the month, so it should not have affected the stats all that much. August is traditionally slow, but with so many announcements and changes happening, I was wrong about a general drop in sales, as August was better than July, if only slightly. And on the software front, I was pretty much on the mark, even predicting the order of the three titles that dominates this month’s charts. In any case, it was nice to see some ‘green’ in the sales figures above, for the comparison with 2008.

So the big news of the month was the PS3 Slim and the associated price cut on all models. It happened around the middle of the month, and while we will only see the full effects of the PS3 Slim in the September figures (due out this time next month), we can already see the effect of the price cut that everyone, myself included, has been calling for. While the effect of the price cut wasn’t as dramatic as I, or many others, had imagined (most likely due to the PS3 Slim not being officially released until the next set of figures), there was an effect, albeit not enough to unseat the Xbox 360 as the third most popular console in the US. This should happen next month. And I would say even if the price cut had not occurred, a new model would have driven PS3 sales over sales of the Xbox 360, so with the price cut, the effect should be even more dramatic. But it’s worth noting that there is a surge of sales for any new model (like what the DSi experienced only a couple of months ago), as people upgrade to the new model along with people getting into it for the first time. The surge, unfortunately, is only temporary, and so it will be a couple of months before we see the long term effects of these changes. In any case, change was needed and Sony brought about it at just the right time. I may be in the minority when I say this, but I am not really sure that a new slim model was really needed, unless of course it is the new model that allowed  Sony to reduce costs and cut prices. Yes, in the short term a new model helps, but in the long term, keeping with the existing PS3, but with a price cut, would yield the same benefits. And then given time and technological improvements, bringing out a PS3 Slim that’s really much much smaller would have made more sense, since the current PS3 Slim doesn’t reduce the footprint of the console by much. With its non glossy surface, and greater depth, the PS3 Slim feels “cheaper” than the PS3 Fat. But that’s just my opinion, and perhaps because I rate the look of the original PS3 higher than many others. I like glossy stuff, you see. In any case, Sony finally breaks the duck of having poorer monthly in every month of 2009 compared to the same month in 2008 – rising a healthy 14% compared to August 2008. No such luck for the PSP and the PS2, but with the new PSP Go coming soon and the PS2 nearing end of line, you can pretty much ignore these figures.

There wasn’t much time for Microsoft to respond following Sony’s price cut announcement, with the Xbox 360 price cut only happening when the month was practically over. But even then, it managed to outsell the PS3 for yet another month, but perhaps as I mentioned above, it will be the last time it does this for some time. The effect of the full price cut comes in next month, with Microsoft positioning the Xbox 360 Elite at the same price point as the PS3, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft can keep the third spot they’ve held on to for all of 2009. But as I said before, I don’t think so, because the short term effects of a new model should not be underestimated. Even a new SKU, like the Xbox 360 Arcade, can produce rather dramatic effects on sales, despite the actual console looking much the same and with no incentive for existing users to upgrade. Both

The Wii is this month’s loser again, dropping a massive 39% compared to the same time last month. In terms of history, it is sill doing quite well compared to consoles like the PS2, but it is quickly losing freshness, and perhaps a saturation point has been reached. Without hardcore gamers jumping on board, it may be difficult to maintain both hardware and software sales, evident in the Wii version of Madden NFL 10 not charting in the top 10, and even beaten handsomely by the PS2 version. And with Natal coming out on the Xbox 360, the “cool” factor will be shifting away from it starting next year when Natal is released, and even those who prefer a wii-mote like controller to the Natal’s controller-less interface, the PS3 motion controller will be taking customers away from the Wii. A price cut should help, but I don’t think price is the Wii’s major problem at this time. More fresh and innovative games and add-ons, like Wii Fit, should help, but just how many add-ons will the typical Wii user be willing to buy, especially when compared to Natal, the extra devices just feels a bit like Nintendo is only making up for the short comings of a system that still relies controller input. And with the PS3/Xbox 360 price cuts, the Wii could very well lose the number two position, and may even slip to fourth.

So onto software. To toot my own horn again, as predicted by yours truly, Madden NFL 10 topped this month’s charts, followed by Wii Sports Resort and Batman: Arkham Asylum. To be completely honest though, this was easy to predict based on last year’s figures for Madden, and a casual glance at the Amazon sales charts. There was a lot of talk during the month about the PS3 version of Batman: AA outselling the Xbox 360 version on Amazon, but Amazon is only one retailer, and it is not indicative of the general market condition. Still, the PS3 version did manage to sell on level terms with the Xbox 360, a trend that’s been happening more often lately, suggesting that for completely new games, the PS3 version will sell nearly on equal terms with the Xbox 360 version. But for franchise games like Madden, where people already have older versions on one particular console, loyalty and convenience may lock people to the console they’ve purchased older versions on if both versions are similar in quality, and so we may still see the larger gap between Xbox 360 and PS3 versions from time to time. And what might turn out to be a trend from now on is the fairly close gap between market share enjoyed by the three competing consoles – this time, the Xbox 360 came out ahead with 34.5% of all sales in the top 10, with the Wii on 28.1% and the PS3 on 26.8% (its best figures for some time). Wii Sports Resort is keeping the Wii in it, but while it had 1 more title in the top 10 compared to both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the other two enjoyed much less sales than either Madden or Batman. In fact, as mentioned before, the Wii version of Madden was outsold by the PS2 version, in a time when it’s rare to see any PS2 titles in the top 10.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360, EA) – 928,000
2. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 754,000
3. Madden NFL 10 (PS3, EA) – 665,000
4. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360, Eidos) – 303,000
5. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Eidos) – 290,000
6. Madden NFL 10 (PS2, EA) – 160,000
7. Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP, Square Enix) – 130,000
8. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 128,000
9. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 120,000
10. Fossil Fighters (DS, Nintendo) – 92,000

Prediction time. I think I’ve made my prediction pretty clear throughout this article, with the PS3 hardware numbers receiving a noticeable boost. It could even be enough to unseat the Wii from the number two spot, although I think it unlikely (but not impossible) that it will outsell the DS. The Xbox 360 price cut should have some effect, and even it might outsell the Wii, however unlikely this scenario seemed just a few months ago. I haven’t really said much, have I? So for a concrete prediction, I would say the PS3 to outsell the Xbox 360 and the Wii, and the number three being contested between the Xbox 360 and the Wii (too close to call, at this point). The PSP Go is coming in October, so we won’t see the numbers until November. Halo 3: ODST should top the charts next month, followed by Wii Sports Resort. The Beatles game should sell well too, although the Wii SKU may outsell the PS3/Xbox 360 ones.  At least one SKU of Batman: AA should still chart, although whether it’s the Xbox 360 or the PS3 version is too close to call at the moment as well (Xbox 360 users will be fully occupied by Halo 3: ODST to think about buying other games, I feel).

See you next month.

Starting with the copyright news, the Canada government is currently in a consultation phase in regards to changes to copyright laws, holding a series of town hall meetings to allow for public input. But this might actually make the copyright lobby look bad, and might make the government think twice about giving away its own citizen’s rights to corporations, and so the all powerful copyright lobby had to take action.

The action includes hiring private security guards and arresting anyone with a different opinion, while changing the format of the town hall meeting as to stack it in their favor. When a Canadian member of parliament (MP), a member of the NDP party, joined students to protest the changes, by handing out flyers informing people of the possibly biased meeting, they were threatened by security guards at the event. And even after the incident, The American Federation of Musicians issued further threats towards the NDP MP, asking her party to penalize her for daring to take part in the democratic process. It also labeled the action of students and the MP, basically involving only handing out flyers, as “disgusting”. Yes, the democratic process can be a bit disgusting at times, especially if it leads to the “wrong” opinion.

DigiProtect: Candid interview gives an inside view on how the anti-piracy industry operates

But you wonder why so much time and effort is being spent fighting piracy, when the act of fighting piracy itself is quite profitable. Step forward Digiprotect, a company specializing in tracking down online pirates and suing them on behalf of copyright holders. Companies in the same business as Digiprotect has been accused of various unsavoury acts previously, such as hacking into servers and stealing information, but in an interview, Mr. Hein, the account manager of Digiprotect, revealed some very interesting tidbits on how the anti-piracy industry has matured and now employs a specific business model. Mr. Hein claims, and even I have a hard time believing this to be the case, that they actually lease copyright on certain content from copyright holders, release these content on P2P networks as honey pots to attract potential downloaders, and then catch them in the act. And then they will chose the countries that make suing easier and more profitable, and sue those users. There is even a formula to determine how much money to seek, but it’s not related to actual losses or damages – the amount is set so that it’s not too much to make the judge sympathetic to the defendant, but obviously large enough to make the whole process worthwhile. The whole interview is extremely candid and interesting, so it’s definitely worth a read, but the impression you get out of all this is that it is, in the end, all about profit for companies like Digiprotect. And if governments pass laws to allow for three strike based Internet bans, you can bet that companies like Digiprotect will set to profit, as someone will need to do doing all the hard work of tracking down who the copyright holders deem unsuitable to be connected online.

And ISPs will then have to be the one forking over the money to companies like Digiprotect, the cost of which will then be passed onto the consumer, even those who has never downloaded anything illegal. This is just one of the reasons why UK ISPs have joined forces to oppose the government’s Internet anti-piracy banning plans. In an open letter, the CEOs of some of UK’s largest ISPs have stated their joint opposition to such a plan, due to the cost issue and also due to the fact that they can see innocent customers being caught up in the system and being banned for no good reason. This is not to mention the burden to the tax payer of having a government agency to deal with the thousands upon thousands of Internet banning requests that will flood in. Per week. But the technophobic government, mostly due to their lack of understanding of the issues, will side with the lobby that has the most pull, and Hollywood and the music studios are where the money is. ISPs, and all Internet users, tax payers, will have to the ones to foot the bill so these billion dollar corporations can resist change for a few more years.

Selectable Output Control: MPAA wants it, so you should oppose it

And if you want further evidence of the fear of digital technology and the industry’s reluctance to move on, all you have to do is to look at the MPAA’s second attempt to add DRM to HDTV. They have asked the FCC again to look into the issue of selectable output for HDTV, to close the so called “analog hole”. The MPAA wants to prevent people recording 1080p TV broadcasts to VHS tape, which I wasn’t aware was such a big issue piracy wise. Do people still use VHS tape? But of course, it’s not just VHS tape, it’s the analog recording of digital content, whether it’s done so on a VCR, your computer’s analog video inputs or on your DVD recorder. But again you must ask, does analog recording from TV lead to a lot of piracy? So much that the MPAA must spend considerable resources to lobby the FCC for changes, especially after it has already failed in their previous attempt not too long ago due to opposition from, um, practically everyone including the former FCC chairman. And the proposed changes, which in essence means DRM for HDTVs, means that everyone will have to upgrade their HDTV equipment again so that they are DRM compatible. The MPAA argues that this is actually a pro-consumer move, because by adding DRM to everything, the content owners will stop being anti-consumer by holding back content for longer periods. Awesome!

And on  that note, we move effortlessly to HD news. Cnet has reviewed Oppo’s new Blu-ray player, the BDP-83, and declared it the best Blu-ray player they’ve seen so far. The superior picture quality was as expected, given Oppo’s experience with DVD upscaling and the price tag of the machine, which puts it in the  middle/upper end of the price range for Blu-ray players. The fact that the player supports pretty much every format under the sun (except for HD DVD – more on that later) also helped – DVD-Audio, SACD, and all Blu-ray profiles are supported, as well as DivX, AVCHD playback.

Toshiba's first Blu-ray player available in November

But it’s also the little things that Cnet noted, including a bundling of an HDMI cable that many players neglect. The player also comes in a soft cloth bag, which is a nice touch. Cons include the lack of Wi-Fi, no support for video streaming services and the high price. The problem for people who don’t live in Blu-ray region A is that the player is pretty useless, but there’s ongoing work on region-free firmware and it already works if you don’t mind using an older firmware. That there’s no official region B or region-free version is a big shame, and once again, blame goes towards the few selected greedy studios for forcing region coding upon us.

From one special Blu-ray player, to another, perhaps even more special one. That’s right, Toshiba’s first Blu-ray player, the BDX2000, will soon be available in stores for under $250. It is special of course because this is the first and only Blu-ray player Toshiba has produced so far, and it comes 18 months after the death of their HD DVD format, the failed competitor for Blu-ray. The player itself is nothing special from the information released so far, a pretty standard affair with the only notable feature being SD card support. There’s no NetFlix or Amazon streaming services as per the LG/Samsung/Panasonic players. There’s no mention of DVD upscaling or use of the Cell chip to enhance Blu-ray/DVD playback. And it doesn’t even play HD DVDs, which the press release specifically mentions. I guess that’s forgivable for a first attempt, and we may yet hear more about the video processing features as we get closer to the release date, but one can’t help being slightly underwhelmed. A special discount for HD DVD player owners would be welcomed as well.

And in gaming, the focus is still on the PS3 Slim. Users who have got their hands on one have benchmarked it against the PS3 Fat, and found it to be both slower and faster. It was faster in game loading, but slower in other areas such as booting and Blu-ray disc loading. Those using their fat PS3s for Blu-ray only will not need to upgrade, it seems.

To go with the PS3 Slim, firmware version 3.00 was released for the PS3 (all versions) as well, replacing the 2.80 firmware released in June. So far, as with most of the PS3’s firmware releases, the response to the new firmware has been extremely mixed. The usual report of bricked PS3s (or at least the Blu-ray drives), plus problem unique to this version including controller issues, as well as the fact that with such a major version number, almost nothing major was added feature wise, has some PS3 fans fuming. The use of the major version number, possibly more to denote the introduction of the PS3 Slim than anything else, is what I think confused many people, who were expecting a “New Xbox Experience” type update, but instead got version 2.85 instead.

More Xbox 360 rumours, this time for a new 250 GB Xbox 360 with two wireless controllers. But it’s supposed to retail $100 more than the PS3, and I just can’t see it happening.

So that’s another WNR out of the way. Not as much bile as I had imagined when I first started writing, but too much anger, and you become numb as a result. Or something. See you next week.

Let’s start with copyright news for this relatively news lite week. The Pirate Bay continues to be attacked by the MPAA, via the Swedish courts. This time, the MPAA has forced the Pirate Bay’s web host’s web host to shut off traffic to TPB, which managed to shut down the torrent listing site for an entire three hours. Millions of dollars spent in legal proceedings don’t give you much, do they?

And as a preview of what could happen if the TPB would go down forever, the temporary downtime of the TPB led to server spikes for the other torrent sites. So unless the MPAA/RIAA go and take down every single torrent website, then people will just move on to the next one. Eventually, someone will open a website in a country that won’t bow down to the MPAA, maybe Antigua or somewhere, and then the MPAA would have finally forced piracy to become fully resilient. Evidence shows this to be the trend, that the more the industry fights against piracy, the harder it becomes to prevent it. Evidence also shows that through more competitive pricing and less DRM, piracy can be reduced.

IsoHunt - the MPAA needs to prove direct infringement, Judge says

Going to another big trial going on at the moment, the judge in IsoHunt’s trial actually wants the MPAA to prove direct infringement, of which they have presented zero evidence of it so far. The MPAA are of course outraged, that they would actually have to prove direct piracy, because it might be a bit hard to prove that a text file, which is basically what a .torrent file is, can do any damage at all when it comes to piracy. The text file has to be fed to a software program, which interprets the data, connects to the right trackers, and then through the tracker, connect to users to initiate downloads and uploads. Not exactly direct, and nothing other than the original text file is hosted by torrent sites like IsoHunt – everything else is hosted or produced by someone else, and even at the end of this, you still cannot prove piracy unless a complete copy of a file has been uploaded or downloaded, not just chunks of it. A chunk of a file is just digital garbage, and is neither unique nor will it contain any artistic or commercial value, and hence, no copyright abuse. It would be almost as ridiculous as someone copying a couple of word from an AP news article, and then AP going after them for copyright abuse. Oh.

Going to yet another big trial, a Dutch court has ruled that Mininova must remove all infringing torrents within three month, as the Dutch MPAA, BREIN, has won a court case. It’s funny because Mininova was only set up after Suprnova was shutdown, and Mininova, despite the name, is not much larger and much easier to use than Suprnova. I’m looking forward to see what advances Micronova will have when Mininova goes down, if it goes down. And if you can’t stop torrent sites, then you can go after the people who download them. The UK government is planning to have their own three strikes system that will ban anyone suspected of downloading pirated material. All this will do is to put further pressure on the courts, which might need to handle a couple of thousand claims every week. Happening in the UK, this reminds me of what happened over there in the 19th century, where moral outrage ensure every other poor person were sentenced for trivial crimes, and sent to penal colonies all around the world. Just don’t send them to Australia this time please, because we’ve got enough of our own pirates already.

None of this will actually stop people pirating though. As mentioned above, people will just open new torrent sites that will become super popular instantly. And the people who download pirated material will simply switch to encryption technology, which won’t really slow down downloads that much, but will mean it would be next to impossible to monitor what files you are downloading. So the industry can spend millions on lawsuits, the government can spend millions on new legislation and put further pressure on the judicial system, ISPs can be forced to spend millions on monitoring (which will kill off the smaller ISPs), and further millions can be spent on DRM, but what will all this get you? Piracy that can’t be stopped. Well worth the money spent, if you ask me. For people pirating stuff, and people downloading pirated stuff, that is. Eventually, all of this will force piracy to be even more convenient and private, and then at that time, everyone will do it because they know they can’t get caught anymore. Good one, MPAA.

Let’s get to HD news. Blu-ray may be gaining popularity in the home theater, but hardly anybody is using it on computers, and the situation is likely to continue well into the 2010’s, according to analysts.

There are a lot of reasons why Blu-ray hasn’t taken off on PCs, the main reason may be because other than movies, there’s nothing else that uses Blu-ray. Games could come on Blu-ray instead of 2 or 3 DVDs, but that will only work if most people have Blu-ray drives, and because games can be installed to people’s huge HDDs, the convenience only comes in at installation time. So instead of swapping out the disc once or twice during the install, Blu-ray can save you the trouble, but after this, you will still only ever need to insert one disc into the drive to play the game, whether it is the first DVD, or the single Blu-ray. It’s not like the transition from CD to DVD, because at that time, some CD games came on as many as 5 discs, and because people’s HDDs were smaller, you had to swap discs during play which was really annoying. And even then, the gaming industry successfully resisted using DVD-ROM for gaming for many years.

BD-RE: Too big for some things, too small for others, and just not as convenient

So without BD-ROM applications, then it comes down to Blu-ray recordables (BD-Rs and BD-REs) to offer huge amounts of storage on a single disc. But do people really need these 25 and 50 GB discs? They aren’t big enough to store a full backup of your PC’s content, usually several hundred GBs in size. They may be too big to store the odd file or two, most people use USB drives for that now. So there is probably a use for them for archival purposes, to store content that you don’t want someone to erase, but then again, 25 GB is a lot to store on an easily lost and damaged disc. The fact is between DVDs, USB thumb drives with ever increasing capacity, external HDD redundant arrays, there may be no place for Blu-ray recordables other than for storing HD movies. Imagine if DVDs were only good for making your own DVD movies, would it have become as popular as it is today?

Plasma TVs are dying, and that’s sad thing, because they are still the best quality, and in some cases, the best value screens on today’s market. LCDs, even the newer LED based ones, cannot hold a candle to the quality plasmas can give you. Candle is an appropriate term to use here because it’s the contrast ratio that usually separates the plasma TV with LCD equivalents. And there aren’t any viewing angle issues either with plasmas. But because plasma panels are hard to scale down, they can’t be used as PC monitors or on even smaller devices, and so the LCDs are much more cost effective to produce. And this is why plasma is dying. OLED will come along one day and replace LCDs and plasmas, both in terms of cost and quality, but for now, it remains a rich man’s toy ($2000+ for a 11″ screen? No thanks).

And finally in gaming, the reaction to the PS3 Slim is still the focal point of this week’s news. All eyes are on Microsoft to see how they respond, with analysts calling for a Xbox 360 Slim, which Microsoft needs much more than Sony. But Microsoft’s response, or perhaps it was pre-planned all along, is to drop the Pro bundle and reduce the Elite to Pro prices. Something that you would have already heard about back in July, if you read the WNR.

Sales wise, the PS3 Slim should give Sony’s console a much needed boost, particularly in the short term. Remember it won’t be just people who are buying their first PS3, due to the price drop, but there will be many who will buy their second PS3, as another Blu-ray player perhaps. Expect Sony’s console to outsell the Xbox 360 quite handsomely over the next few months, which is good timing on Sony’s part as the holiday season is so close. You won’t get the same effect with the Xbox 360 Elite price reduction, although Natal should see the Xbox 360 remain strong in 2010.

Xbox 360 Slim: Are Microsoft too scared to put out another piece of hardware, after the RRoD fiasco?

And I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the PS3 Slim doesn’t look as good as one had hoped. Instead of calling it the PS3 Slim, it really should be the PS3 Flat, because it’s as if they’ve taken the old PS3 and basically flattened it, making it actually lengthier in size. And as Examiner.com article mentions, it may be because it’s far too early the product lifecyle to have a slim SKU, as least compared to what happened with the PS2. Sony couldn’t make the PS3 Slim any smaller without having to suffer cost issues again, and in the end, they didn’t make it as small as it should be. I don’t think this is a problem for the Xbox 360 Slim, as the Xbox 360 is a year older and the PS3, and the technology it uses was already a bit out of date at the time it came out, and while incremental improvements have occurred, there’s large scope for miniaturization, which could help to both decrease cost and improve reliability. But I guess Microsoft’s Xbox 360 hardware division are still suffering from PTSD due to the RRoD issue, and they won’t be too keen to put out another piece of hardware. But I won’t be surprised to if the Xbox 360 Slim makes its appearance right around the time Natal comes out.

Wordpress tells me I’ve nearly used up this week’s word limit, so I’ll have to stop now. Have a great week, and I’ll be back next week with the same mix of news, ranting, and outright lies.

Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet week, and not just because I proved my own point by spending large chunks of this week playing GTA IV (so yes, I finished the story missions on the PC version, and I’m only 5% away from a 100% completion score – but I did not let it affect work, honest!). Enough chit chat, let’s get started with the WNR.

In Copyright news, Australian ISP iiNet is still frantically fighting the AFACT over allegations that it isn’t taking enough action to combat piracy. ‘Enough’ being the important term in the previous sentence, as iiNet sets out to prove that there is not much more they can do, not when faced with existing laws.

iiNet’s two new lines of defence sees them first claim that the existing Communications Act prohibits them to spy on their customers in order to monitor piracy. The second sees them arguing that since the AFACT has not demanded other ISPs to take similar action, that it is unreasonable to expect iiNet to be the only ISP that needs to take action. I’ve mentioned quite a few times what the copyright holders want ISPs to do is often in breach of privacy laws, although governments around the world are bending over backwards (and sometimes just bending over) to accommodate groups like the MPAA’s efforts to curtail piracy by removing your right to privacy. It all comes down to politicians (and some judges) not really understanding the Internet and what it all means, but the simple fact is that the Internet is now an utility like your telephone service, and is just another form of communication where privacy should be expected. I mention utility because homeowners should now be guaranteed the right to have the Internet, that there should not be any laws in which people are somehow denied essential utilities just because the utility companies don’t like what you’re doing with their services. It would be like your electricity provider shutting down your power just because you might be using electricity do to something illegal – it’s not up the provider to decide whether you should have power or not, it’s up to the judicial system to determine that and to hand out penalties. But governments and judges often see the Internet and the digital revolution as this thing that threatens the very foundations of civilization, and they overreact. In the short term future, when the current digital generation has grown up and are occupying the positions of power, I think they’ll look back at the court cases of today and see just how ridiculous and self damaging the whole thing was – just like how we view McCarthyism today (well, most of us anyway).

iTunes now account for 25% of all music sales in the US

Just to prove how the digital revolution has caught the old guard, well, off guard, news broke that 25% of all music in the US are now sold through iTunes. While the majority of music are still sold in CD form through retail stores, 25% means that iTunes is the single biggest source of music sales in the US already. Now, had the music industry being brave enough to embrace digital, they would be the ones operating the big digital music stores, as opposed to making Apple rich. And had it not been the whole DRM debacle, digital music would have gained market share even faster. While it is unfortunate that I cannot say the industry in general has learned the lessons from misuse of DRM, in that most of them still believe DRM has a place, at least some are trying to address the biggest problem that DRM provides consumers – the inability to do what they want, legally, with these files. Marlin is a new DRM scheme that actually promotes sharing amongst family (and some friends), but it does so in a controlled manner where you (and the copyright holders) know exactly who is sharing your file at all times. But Marlin is still a DRM, and while you are now “allowed” within the scope of the DRM to do all the things you could have done with DRM-free files, the framework is still there to restrict your freedoms if and when the powers that be deem time to do so. To paraphrase Wendy Seltzer of the Berkman Center, DRM is like a maze, and while the old DRM was a maze with a single path that you had to follow, Marlin presents many paths, possibly all the paths you might be able to take legally: but it’s still a maze, and one that you have to hand over your rights as a consumer to enter.

Removing copyrighted videos from YouTube could be a thing of the past

Then there are those situations where nobody gets hurt, yet everyone suffers. One of which is YouTube video uploads. How many times has an enthusiastic user uploaded a video he or she has spent hours editing, finding the right background music and clips to include in the video, upload to YouTube and then had the video removed because it violated someone somewhere’s copyright. Or in the pursuit of the next meme or viral video, someone uploads a clip of something they captured from TV or a DVD – the positive effects of a video going viral are so great that companies now spend millions to professionally produce viral videos – but the home user produced video, which costs companies nothing, gets taken down and all that positive energy is lost. Some companies are only starting to get the fact that people using their material isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it used to be the case where only copyright abuse that actually hurt the copyright holders would get prosecuted, but the fear about digital now means any potential, possibly not even real, copyright abuse gets maximum attention, forcing websites like YouTube to take drastic action to filter out all sorts of content, many of which are perfectly legal (like the time when a TV network used a clip of this guy’s home video, and then when the guy uploaded the same video to YouTube, the video got removed due to a complaint from the very same TV network). But there is money to be made in online advertising, and YouTube is now starting to share revenue with content owners, if they decide to allow the “unauthorised” videos to remain online. YouTube gets a bit of the money because they’re hosting the promoting the videos, the uploader doesn’t get his or her ass sued and gets to keep the video online, and the copyright holders make the money. Doesn’t sound like a bad compromise to me, and who knows, maybe someday the copyright holders will start to appreciate all the free promotion they get from uploaders, and give them a free hat or something for their troubles.

Onto HD news now. Nothing much happening, expect more analysis and analysis of analysis on the Toshiba move into Blu-ray. I’m going to link to one such analyst that came up with pretty much the same conclusion I did when I first heard the news, that Toshiba is doing this merely to promote their own anti-Blu-ray strategy.

64 GB SD cards already exceed Blu-ray's capacity, at a tiny fraction of the size

Well, not so much anti-Blu-ray, as anything-but-Blu-ray, because you can see from the statements Toshiba has made, they still believe that Blu-ray isn’t going to be the one format the rules over all in the early part of this century, and that downloads, streaming and flash memory storage are the future. SD flash cards and USB drives are getting to a point where they equal small hard-drives from just a few years ago, and certainly will beat Blu-ray rewritables in terms of capcity, cost and simplicity. Digital video and still cameras all use SD, most do not use Blu-ray recordables. HDTV PVRs do not use Blu-ray. And even the Blu-ray people don’t want people to use Blu-ray, because it might lead to people making copies of Blu-ray movies through hacking their HDMI cable or something equally absurd. Flash storage is simply more convenient, and there needs to be someway for it to be used for movie distribution before insanely fast Internet connections become the normal to allow us to download a 50GB HD movie in a few minutes. There are many situations where you will still need optical storage, but for everyday use, it is already a bit outdated. Can you imagine using CDs and DVDs in place of your USB drive? No, neither can I.

And going back to what I mentioned above about digital music downloads taking over from CDs, the movement towards pure digital distribution is gaining momentum all the time.

And finally in gaming, the big news of the week is of course the PS3 Slim and the PS3 price cut. It shall be known as the week when the collective gaming community yelled out all at the same time the words “finally”, as it heard about the PS3 price cut, and for once, the rumours turned out to be true about the PS3 Slim.

The PS3 Slim is finally here

My first impressions? That the PS3 Slim didn’t look as good as I thought it would be. I think I got ruined by those fake pics of the silver PS3 Slims that have been around forever – the actual PS3 Slim is a big flat piece of black matte plastic, that looks a bit cheap, to be honest. And while it is definitely slimmer, only about half the height of the PS3 Fat, it’s actually deeper (longer in length) than the old PS3. At the very least, they should have used a glossy finish, and perhaps offer it in some new colours, like white (Wii, Apple) or a sexy red like a sports car. Who knows, maybe they will.

As for the price cut, that’s very much welcomed relief for the ailing PS3 sales, although at this point, sales will need to increase by 100% on current numbers in order to make Microsoft of Nintendo really nervous, much more than the predicted 40 to 60% sales increase.

And what of the response from the other gaming companies? Nintendo remains silent, but Microsoft is rumoured to drop the Xbox 360 Pro package and to price the Xbox 360 Elite at the same price point of $299 ($100 off). Will that work to negate the expected surge in PS3 sales? Probably not, but as someone who is looking to upgrade his Xbox 360 to a new one, it can’t hurt. I would still love to have  an Xbox 360 Slim, or at least an Xbox 360 Cool&Quiet – technology advances should allow Microsoft to do this without increasing costs (and possibly lower them as well), and if they are to stick true to their recently proclaimed 10 year strategy for the Xbox 360, then they need to this sooner rather than later to keep the nearly 4 year old platform alive and viable.

That’s all I have for you this week. More next week!