Archive for the ‘Xbox 360, Xbox One’ Category

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Are you a fanboi?

Friday, October 19th, 2007

I mentioned in the last news roundup that Capcom had set up a countdown clock to reveal something. “Prepare Yourself” was the only clue as to what was set to be announced. PS3 owners, who were in quite a state after Capcom had dropped PS3 support for Monster Hunter 3, were eagerly awaiting this announcement to be a PS3 related surprise/apology from Capcom. Well, the countdown has reached zero, and the big surprise is Street Fighter IV, but no platform release information as yet (most likely cross platform). Around the same time, it was also announced that Lost Planet would make its way to the PS3, but this was met with a collective “meh” from the PS3 crowd – a year old Xbox 360 game is not what they were waiting for. You can read all the posts from PS3 fans on the Capcom forum on this apparent betrayal (the thread titles “I am _so_ done with you Capcom…”, “So disappointed at you Capcom…” and “Why Lost Planet?” sums things up). Then rumour circulated that there was to be a further annoucement on Friday – whether this is genuine or just some confusion in regards to the date of the countdown, we’ll find out soon enough (tomorrow).

Fanboi PostAnyway, what I wanted to talk about wasn’t Capcom or PS3, but rather, this culture of fanboism (or the political correct version, fanpersonism). This Capcom “saga” is just one example, and it goes beyond simply gaming, to everything from Mac or PC to Blu-ray or HD DVD. I can sort of understand people supporting Star Wars over Star Trek, but to support and, dare I say it, *love* a corporate produced royalty generating brand name like Blu-ray or HD DVD? Have people gone mad?

I guess some feel the need to actively support something simply because they’ve paid good money and want some reassurance that their choice was the right one. But for a true fanboi, this is not enough. They must actively oppose the competitor with such enthusiasm that borders on fanaticism. People feel personally insulted if the product they purchased has been rubbished in any way, even when secretly they know the criticism is probably justified. Have we become such slaves to consumer culture that we must submit our loyalty towards brand names in the same way we devote ourselves to our religion, or heavens forbid, our sports teams?

Now before I go any further, I must admit that I too have been caught up in fanboism. As an owner of a Xbox 360 and HD DVD supporter, I can easily choose a corner to stand in, since the “enemy” for both the Xbox 360 and HD DVD is Sony. And I must admit, I have often posted here and in the forum a very clear bias towards the PS3 and Blu-ray, not that I don’t have good reason to do so (and also personal reasons that I cannot go into further). But sometimes even I am amazed at my emotional state when important news breaks, such as Paramount’s decision to go HD DVD exclusive, and news of Blu-ray’s further dominance of the HD market. I too, feel joy and anger as if my personal honor has just been lauded or insulted. Even with the Capcom story, I felt a degree of (I don’t know how to put it in more formal language) “wanting-to-rub-it-in-to-the-face-of-PS3-fans-ness”, even though the news means nothing to me on a personal level.

Corporate BrandingIt is not enough that a new game is announced for the PS3 – it *has* to be an exclusive to make the news give you joy. It’s not good enough that PS3 owners get to enjoy Street Fighter IV, the first Street Fighter game in a decade, on the console of their choice. But the feeling that the same game will end up on the Xbox 360, well, feels more like a slap in the face than anything else.

Luckily, I have not fallen that far yet. I can still enjoy the fact that I will be able to play GTA IV on my Xbox 360 without the knowledge that it’s also available on the PS3 getting me down. Exclusive GTA IV content on the Xbox 360? Well, that’s just icing on an already delicious cake, nothing more and nothing to gloat about.

Okay, maybe just a little gloating …

Posted in High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (14 October 2007)

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Once again, I’ll go through all the news items that have gone through the Digital Digest website and forum for the week (I’ve kept this up for a month, a new record for me in terms of keeping up with anything).

Starting with copyright related news as usual, slashdot has slashdotted an article about a website (which I will not link for legal and personal objections, but search for “tvboxset” on Google) that is selling DVDs for TV episodes. Not so strange, except that these aren’t original DVDs, rather DVD-Rs containing shows probably recorded off TV or downloaded. Now, why isn’t the MPAA going after sites like this and instead, going after regular viewers and even websites like Digital Digest? In fact, professional piracy outfits are making enormous profits using professional DVD replicators to mass produce pirated DVDs to sell for profit (usually to fund further illegal activities), yet it’s only Torrentspy that’s getting the MPAA’s attention. You’ve got to wonder sometimes. And speaking of targeting regular users rather than professional pirates, Ian Roger of Yahoo Music says that companies shouldn’t waste any more time and effort on DRM, which has obviously failed to stop music sharing and at the same time, piss off regular consumers. Damn right.

Now in gaming news, and as covered in my last blog entry, Greg Zeschuk of Bioware says that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are pretty much the same in terms of performance, and that Blu-ray storage won’t necessarily win the day for PS3. While I agree, having more time to think about it, there are certainly situations where more space is good. Things like if you want to package multiple language versions of the same game onto a single disc. Of course, this limitation can be overcome by distributing different language versions separately, and it’s not an issue of gameplay. There’s always the possibility of multi-DVD releases, and don’t rule out Xbox 360 one day using HD DVD as a gaming format if/when it becomes necessary. The Wii has a new firmware out that allows USB keyboards to be used. I would really like the Xbox 360 to support a keyboard/mouse combination for gaming, although it would give certain users an unfair advantage in online gaming. Meanwhile, Capcom has dropped PS3 support for its upcoming game Monster Hunter 3, and possibly other games too, due to “high development cost” on the PS3. Capcom seems to have a surprise though, with a countdown clock that is set to reach zero in two days time and the mysterious phrase “Prepare Yourself”. PS3 fans are thinking it will be a PS3 related surprise to make up for dropping Monster Hunter 3. The relatively poor PS3 sales is probably a contributing factor to developers switching their focus to the Xbox 360/PC/Wii platforms – the maths is simply, the more consoles out there, the more profitable a game will be. In an effort to boost PS3 sales before the important holiday season, Sony is set to release its 40 GB “PS3 Lite”, featuring less hardware feature (no emulation, less USB ports, no memory card ports and comes in a different color). I like this move, although I’m disturbed by news that the “full” version will be discontinued when stock sells out (in an effort to drive sales to the “full” version, I suppose). Sony should release 3 different PS3 packages, the PS3 Lite ($399), a PS3 Standard ($499) that adds PS2 software emulation and a 60 GB HDD to the PS3 Lite and a PS3 Pro ($599) with 80 GB HDD, full hardware emulation and all hardware features and. Simple!

And finally, to HD news. Toshiba says HD DVD player sales are back on top, but only if you do not include the PS3 (to be fair, the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive is not included either). But the sale numbers are so small, both for hardware and movies, that the release of Transformers on HD DVD might turn the whole sales numbers upside down (currently number 6 on the Amazon DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray bestseller list, was as high as number 3). A quite different type of HD DVD promotion, to celebrate the release of Star Trek TOS on HD DVD, nearly 300 theatres in the US will screen the HD version of the episode “The Menagerie”. LG is set to release its second generation dual-format player, this time with full interactivity (minus BD-Live for Blu-ray) for both HD formats. If they can release it at $500 to $600, it will sell quite well I think (one/two hundred dollars more than a single format player is cheap insurance against not being able to play that movie you want because it was released in the “wrong” format). But it will probably sell for $999, which explains why dual-format players only have a 2% market in HD standalones at the moment. Shame. In the same article, the HD DVD people are already talking about private networked presentations. Don’t really know how it works, but at least they are talking about it while Blu-ray has yet to even announce a BD-Live network capable player (there’s no reason why the PS3 can’t be made to support it now, except for the lack of any software to take advantage of it due to no other BD-Live capable players being available, even from Sony). If HD DVD really wants to win the HD war, all they need to do is to perfect HD DVD/DVD combos (no more playback errors, and preferably do one of those single sided multi-layer combos where both the HD and DVD versions are on the same side), then for the studio (most likely HD DVD die-hard Universal) to release a single combo version for all their hit movies still at the same price as DVD releases. And at the same time, don’t release a DVD only version of the same movie to force even DVD users to buy the combo version (the “budget” DVD only version to come in a few months time). If HD DVD is really not that much more expensive than DVD to manufacture, then it costs the studio very little, and will boost HD DVD in a huge way (albeit artificially). It would make for a smooth transition from DVD to HD DVD as long as the pricing remains the same. And Blu-ray can’t even compete if they wanted to.  

That’s all for this week. Join me, the same time, same blog, next week for more WEEKLY ROUNDUP ADVENTURES!!

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Plasma TVs killing the planet? Excellent customer service. Xbox 360 vs PS3.

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Panasonic TH103PF9 - World’s Largest Plasma TV (103″)A few days ago, I posted a link to a news story which said that Australia plans to ban the sale of plasma TVs because of their power usage requirements. As an owner of a plasma screen, this seemed a bit excessive to me and sounded more like what a supporter of LCD displays would list as one of the “crimes” of plasma. It is true that a 50″ plasma screen uses an enormous amount of energy, some 350+ W. More and more people have large screen plasma TVs in their homes, and this obviously causes problems in terms of energy conservation. However, I was sceptical that it was only plasma TVs causing the end of the world as we know it. I had a feeling that that similar sized LCDs aren’t much more energy efficient than plasmas.

Doing some research, I went to the Sony website to check our their Bravia range of LCDs. The Bravias are often used as an example of the demise of plasma TVs, about how great they look and how Sony pulled out of making plasma TVs because they were doomed (even though that had more to do with the fact that they were sourcing their panels from other manufacturers, and so, could not stay price competitive in the long run) . The Bravias do look good, and the price is reasonable for their 1080p panels. But looking at the power consumption, I found that their top of the line 52″ model is rated at a massive 320W, only 50W less than a plasma of equivalent size (the Pioneer 508 50″ is rated at 369W). Not much difference when the fate of the world is at stake.

Then I looked at some other forms of display technologies such as front and rear projection. To my surprise, a 1080p projector is rated at 300W, although it will project a much larger image than plasma. A 50″ rear projection TV is slightly less power consuming at around 250W, but that’s still quite a lot of power.

An interesting website I found while searching for power usage data is sust-it.net, where you can search for the power requirements and energy cost of consumer electronics in the hope to find a model that is more energy efficient (the 103″ plasma at 1500W costing £413.28, $US 840,  in energy costs per year is interesting).

Anyway, it does look like energy consumption will be an issue no matter which type of large screen TV you use – the only solution is to not use large screen TVs at all. But as with all technology, they evolve and the next generation of OLED TVs promises to use much less power to deliver an even better picture.

Nintendo: Excellent Customer Service

Wii Remote JacketNot content with having the most wanted and innovative console on the market, Nintendo is also doing the right thing when it comes to customer service. In a story I posted last week, Nintendo is set to offer up to four free Wiimote jackets to existing Wii owners to solve the sweat induced Wiimote slippage issue. To be honest, I’ve never had much of a problem with Wiimote slippage, mainly because I don’t play with my Wii in a very aggressive manner (this whole sentence sounds very dirty). But to prevent problems for those in the household that do suffer from slippage, I phoned up Nintendo customer service and ordered my two free jackets. The entire process was totally painless, I did not have to wait on hold at all, and it was all over within minutes. The lady on the phone was friendly, and I’m almost certain it was a local call center, not one in India or somewhere else. And best of all, it’s was all free (apart from the cost of a 20 cent local phone call), even the delivery. I don’t know when I will get my jackets, not that I’m in any hurry. I think it’s worthwhile to point out good customer service when you experience it, as most people only say anything about customer service when they’ve had a bad experience. To offer a free solution (not so free for Nintendo though, it will cost them over 20 million dollars) for a problem that really isn’t much of a problem anyway, and to not make you jump through hoops to take advantage of it … that’s excellent customer service.

Xbox 360 vs PS3

Xbox 360 vs PS3I know, not another one of these comparisons. Apple vs PC. Intel vs AMD. Star Wars vs Star Trek. All pointless comparisons. But I found an interesting (but somewhat dated) thread about the performance of the Xbox 360 vs the PS3, from a programmer’s point of view, and I thought it was interesting that the conclusion was that the differences are negligible. It seems common knowledge that the PS3 is much more powerful than the Xbox 360, how else would you explain the PS3’s one year release delay when compared to the Xbox 360 (just don’t mention “Blu-ray”) and the fact that it has more games in 1080p than the Xbox 360 (just don’t mention poorer framerates and visual quality of 1080p vs 720p games).

BioWare’s President, Greg Zeschuk, also says there’s not much difference between the two consoles in any case:

If everyone’s waiting for this huge gap, it’s just not going to happen. By the end of this generation both PS3 and Xbox 360 will look awesome. Maybe 1 per cent of the population might be able to tell the difference between the two.

The big difference is storage, in that the PS3 has Blu-ray, while the Xbox 360 is stuck with DVD (for now). But Greg Zeschuk mentions that the best game of the year, Bioshock, is a DVD only affair, as is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and as is the soon to be released Mass Effect (which looks great). These are all huge games with huge worlds and they don’t need to be on Blu-ray. And with hardware performance between the two not light-years apart (both only have 512 MB of memory anyway), it’s unlikely extra storage will make games look or play better (not without excessive loading times – trying to fit 25 GB of data into 512 MB of RAM is not going to be a smooth experience). What Blu-ray can do is to incorporate HD full motion video into games, but we’ve already seen that tried and failed when CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs first came out … FMV is nice, but it doesn’t determine whether the game is good or not, and with graphics improving monthly, FMV seems out of place as compared to integrated 3D cut-scenes.

Posted in Electronics, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 3 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (7 October 2007)

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

Once again, I’ll go through all the news items that have gone through the Digital Digest website and forum for the week.

Starting with copyright related news, Sony is once again in the headlines with Sony’s chief lawyer person saying that copying songs that you have already purchased, such as from the CD to your computer, is considered stealing. This betrays the intention of content owners such as Sony, who want you to buy a copy of the movie for every single device that you want to use it on. So if you have a PS3, a PSP, a Walkman video player and a Sony Vaio laptop, then you’re screwed. And just in case you are wondering what could happen to you if content owners find you guilty of copyright infringement, a woman found guilty of sharing 24 songs has been ordered to pay $US 220,000 to the RIAA. Although I’m still not sure whether it’s a copy protection related problem or not, but Fox’s new Blu-ray movies featuring BD+ copy protection has been found to cause problems in certain players, and requiring firmware updates to fix the problem (and if you’re lucky, the required firmware might just be available). Later reports suggested that it was the BD-J usage in these discs causing the problem, rather than BD+, since a disc without BD+ from Fox also suffers from similar problems. I don’t know what’s worse, playback failure due to BD+ or playback failure due to a basic standard feature like BD-J when all the DRM layers appear to be working. It seem the priority of the Blu-ray engineers might have been to get the DRM working first, and then worry about the other small features like playback.

Onto gaming news. The Halo 3 version of the Xbox 360 hardware appear to be using a new 65 nm CPU, which is probably Microsoft’s solution to the overheating problem the console suffers, which is indicated by red rings showing up on the 360’s power switch indicator. While Microsoft has been generous in extending the warranty from the initial 90 days, to a year and now 3 years, perhaps they can learn something from Nintendo when it comes to dealing with design faults. The Wiimote strap was notorious for breaking and usually smashing into people (if you’re lucky) or expensive electronics (not so lucky). A better strap was introduced, and Nintendo offered to replace all older straps with the new ones without cost, and this seem to solve most problems. Now, Nintendo has gone a step further by giving all existing Wii owners up to four non-slip jackets for Wiimotes free of charge – all you need to do is to give them a call with your details, and they will send them out to you. All new Wiimotes will ship with the jacket from now on. Now this is what I call commitment to service. They admitted the problem, found a solution and offered to fix everything for free even though it will cost them more than 17 million dollars – if only all companies were like this (but I guess the 360’s problem was more serious, and they have already committed a billion dollars to fix the problem). The big PS3 news of the week has been the announcement of a €400 40 GB PS3 for the EU market, set to sell for €400. The catch is that it has no backwards compatibility with PS2 titles at all, limited to only 2 USB ports and no Compact Flash/Memory Stick and SD slots. I think the console will have a matte finish too, as opposed to the glossy finish of the other versions. The bad news is that once the fully featured models sell out, this cut down version will be the only one available in Europe (and I assume, in Australia too). This is the 5th version of the console to have been released as Sony tries to make the package more attractive price wise.

In HD news, Acer is to launch what it claims to be the first PC with a combo drive, capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. As a supporter for format neutrality, I hope it turns out to be the first of many. Back to the Fox Blu-ray playback problems mentioned earlier – it turns out that the problem was related to the BD-Java usage of these discs, rather than a BD+ issue, at least with the “Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer” disc. This once again highlights how Blu-ray is playing the catch up game when it comes to interactivity, with HD DVD’s equivalent HDi being used from day one to great effect (albeit not without it’s own compatibility problems at the start). When HD DVD are already starting to toy around with interactive online shopping via HD DVD movies, Blu-ray is still struggling with basic interactive content like Picture-in-Picture. And when Blu-ray profile 1.1, 2.0 are rolled out, expect more problems as discs requiring 1.1 or 2.0 players might simply fail on 1.0 players (most of which lack the secondary video/audio decode and persistent storage required to upgrade to 1.1). But the good news for Blu-ray is that the new layer of DRM, BD+, appears to be working. Meanwhile, a Japanese HD DVD presentation appear to show several Spielberg directed or produced films that will be released on HD DVD, at least in Japan. Films like Jaws, E.T, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park were shown. Spielberg has been quoted to be a Blu-ray supporter (I suspect he has been fed some non truths by Blu-ray supporter friends of his, such as how Blu-ray has better quality or how HD DVD is doomed). His movies were left out of Paramount’s HD DVD exclusive deal, for example, so it suggests that at the very least, he doesn’t want HD DVD exclusivity for his movies. The only one of his films scheduled to be released on HD has been Close Encounters on Blu-ray. But with many of his films “belonging” to HD DVD friendly studios, namely Paramount and Universal, it all depends on who has control over the release of his movies. Spielberg has always been slow to get on the next-gen video train, if you can recall how long it took his movies to come out on DVD.

See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, General, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (7 October 2007)

Weekly News Roundup (30 September 2007)

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Once again, I’ll go through all the news items that have gone through the Digital Digest website and forum for this week.

Starting with copyright related news again, some DRM advocates are worried that there might be a consumer backlash towards DRM (you don’t say!). I mean it’s not like there was a DRM related revolt on Digg earlier this year or anything, and I’m sure Apple/EMI and Amazon launching DRM-free music was just a coincidence, and in no way related to a consumer backlash. Torrent site Demonoid has been shut down by the Canadian RIA. Torrent sites usually only link to torrent files, and not the actual copyrighted content, but in the greater scheme of things, providing any assistance to copyright infringement is going to be risky, whether they host the actual file or not. I would like to see some separation between torrent sites and legitimate sites like Google Video, who are under renewed pressure this week over users uploaded pirated content – the main aim of torrent sites is to offer pirated content, whereas Google Video and other video sharing sites have pirated content because they cannot control their numerous users. Then again, there are video sharing sites that advertise free movies and encourage users to upload them, so they again should be treated differently. And then there is “Movie Night” on school campuses. Showing movies in common rooms or public areas is technically “broadcasting” and is against the terms of the copyright agreement, but how much does that really hurt the movie studios, so much so that lawsuits need to be launched? What’s next, not being showing to watch movies with people other than your immediate family?

Onto gaming news. Sony says that it can catch up to the Xbox 360 by March next year. I would say that if they don’t at least achieve this, then the PS3 is in serious trouble. The PS3 is the cheapest Blu-ray player around, and actually represents good value if you want next-gen gaming + HD movie playback, but it still hasn’t been able to beat the Xbox 360 + HD DVD add-on drive in sales since launch. Add to that the Xbox 360’s better range of games and exclusives, it’s not looking great for the PS3 compared to how well the PS2 did at this stage of its release. Can Sony claim a huge market share like it did with the PS2? I don’t think so and not being able to hold on to the market the PS2 created means a defeat for Sony no matter which way you look at it. Sony will hope that’s it’s new slim PSP bundle will at least claim a bigger market share in the handheld gaming market, a market dominated by Nintendo for some time now. But the big news of the week has been the launch of Halo 3. Even the news of scratched discs didn’t slow down sales, with Halo 3 breaking all gaming and even movie box office records on the first day. When video games start making more money than big Hollywood blockbusters like Spider-Man 3, something has changed in the way entertainment is delivered. It’s no wonder then that there has been more and more games to movie conversion, rather than the reverse, lately (Hitman the movie is that one I’m waiting for).

In HD news, it seems site like us are either not doing our jobs, or people are not visiting our sites (the most likely explanation, and I’m sure that the 10 people that read this blog will agree with me here). Consumers just don’t seem to understand HD with only 11% feeling they understand HD completely, and even HDTV owners don’t seem to understand. The situation is not just limited to the US either, with Australian consumers faring even worse. It’s a shame, because HD really is quite wonderful … people who have enjoyed proper HD will never want to go back to standard definition. And if you’ve already jumped on the HD movie bandwagon (in particularly, the HD DVD one), then you can enjoy state of the art interactive features from future titles such as Shrek the Third, in addition to the superb video and audio quality. But speaking of interactive features, Blu-ray is still playing a game of catch-up, and consumers will be the victim once again (no wonder they are confused about HD). As I’ve blogged previously, Blu-ray has really screwed the pooch on the issue of hardware standards, and now Blu-ray owners may need to replace their less than a year old Blu-ray player because it doesn’t have all the required features for future Blu-ray movies. Us HD DVD owners are feeling pretty smug about it all because the HD DVD standard has been finalized from day one and includes all the advanced interactive features that Blu-ray owners might not be seeing until next year. And did I mention that HD DVD is region-free? I know I shouldn’t go on and on about region-free, but it really is wonderful to have it. There’s not a lot of HD DVD movies on sale in Australia (and the ones on sale are too expensive), but because of the region-free status, I can import movies from the US or UK, usually at a lower price and faster release date. Unlike DVDs, with the NTSC/PAL difference, HD DVDs don’t have this difference so the US version is either likely to be identical, or in most cases, superior to the local release. Studios and local distributors may not like it, but it’s partly their fault isn’t it for not releasing identical versions in a timely manner. My US import to my local purchase ratio is at 3:1 at the moment.

And that’s all folks for this week. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, Gaming, General, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (30 September 2007)

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