Archive for the ‘Xbox 360, Xbox One’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (10 August 2014)

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Last week’s scheduled post seemed to have work, and I shall have to employ this feature again for this week. It’s nice to be able to finish work on Saturday and get the Sunday off (even better if I didn’t have to work on Saturday!).

Let’s get started …

Copyright

Jailbreak iPhone

Phone unlocking becomes legal again. as common sense prevails

A victory for consumers this week, even if it may be a temporary one – phone unlocking is now legal again. Previously an exemption from current copyright laws, phone unlocking became illegal when the US Copyright Office allowed the exemption to expire in early 2013 due to industry pressure. This week, a new bill was signed into law by President Obama which adds back the exemption, and calls on the US Copyright Office to examine expanding the same exemption to other devices, such as tablets. The new law will make phone unlocking via third parties legal again, at least until when the Copyright Office re-examines the issue in early 2015.

The new law is a blow to wireless operators, who had put pressure on the Copyright Office to allow this exemption to expire. Instead, operators preferred an unlocking processes designed and operated by themselves, which often involved a slow and arduous process designed to make it more difficult for subscribers to change providers. The new changes will benefit consumers by providing them with more choices, and making the wireless marketplace more competitive in the process.

Now all we need is a new bill that makes DVD and Blu-ray ripping legal for personal use, and then we’re all set. Don’t hold your breath though.

Speaking of unwanted DRM, here’s another example of the problem with DRM, not just for consumers but for publishers that choose to implement them. Because Scholastic wants to switch to a different pricing model for its Storia range, those that had previously purchased the DRM’d Storia books will now lose access to their books. Users can extend access to their “purchases” by opening the eBook before October 15, otherwise they will have to contact Scholastic to obtain a refund. It’s nice and all for Scholastic to offer a full refund, and it’s definitely the right thing to do in this situation, but it’s by no means an obligation for them, in the legal sense. They could have simply gave an advanced notice of the end of access and washed their hands of it, and the user agreement consumers entered into probably would have allowed Scholastic to do exactly this without any ramifications. This is why DRM is dangerous and why it’s anti-consumer, even if Scholastic has done the absolute right thing this time around.

High Definition

Amazon seems to be acting quite the d**khead these days (in  my humble opinion … please don’t sue me). They’re so big and powerful these days, and have such a large say in sales of books (and DVDs and Blu-rays), so even if they have some valid points to make on the whole dispute with book publishers Hachette (here’s a rundown, if you’re not quite sure what’s going on), it’s hard to see it as not being a case of the big boys bullying the (relatively) smaller guys (the smaller guy in this case being Hachette, the corporation with “only” 7,000 employees).

Disney discs removed from pre-order as Amazon tries to force a favorable outcome (for themselves)

Disney discs removed from pre-order as Amazon tries to force a favorable outcome (for themselves)

You can’t really call Disney one of the smaller guys (nor Warner Bros.), but it seems Amazon isn’t afraid to pick on them either, not when they know that Disney needs Amazon more than Amazon needs Disney. So a dispute over a distribution deal means that almost all Disney DVDs and Blu-rays have been removed from pre-order, including ‘Muppets Most Wanted’, which actually comes out next week. They did the same with Warner Bros. back in June before, I assume, Warner relented and gave in to their demands. Disney will have to make similar compromises soon, I suspect.

Obviously Amazon has a right to determine what is and isn’t for sale, but it’s hard to not see this as case of a company abusing its market position to get what it wants.

Amazon has such a large presence that even a relatively limited blockade such as this one, or the one against Warner Bros., could have an effect on disc sales. Whether that’s reflected in the latest home entertainment sales report, it’s hard to say, but the report itself paints a rather familiar pictures. Blu-ray is up, DVD is down to bring total disc revenue down as well, but digital continues to grow (and oh, brick-and-mortar rental sales continues to plummet).

The latest figures from DEG shows that while Blu-ray is up 10% in the second quarter of 2014, combined disc sales (including both DVD and Blu-ray) was down 8.2% in the first half of 2014 compared to the same half in 2013. This is all while electronic sellthroughs (eg. iTunes) and SVOD (eg. Netflix) grew 37% and 26% respectively.

Overall, for the first half of 2014, disc sales revenue fell to $3.26 billion, while digital sales (including electronic sellthroughs, SVOD and a la carte VOD) grew to $3.6 billion. This may or may not be the first time that digital revenue exceeded that for discs, and things may turn around during the second half of the year (when disc sales traditionally do better than the first half), but the trend is clear to see.

On a related note, Netflix this week announced that they have just surpassed HBO’s subscriber revenue. Competition between Netflix and HBO has been growing, particularly with the former now in Emmy contention season after season. But as Netflix’s CEO points out, “They (HBO) still kick our ass in profits and Emmy’s, but we are making progress.”

Gaming

Is the Xbox One about to get another $50 price cut? Earlier in the week, the Spanish version of the Xbox.com seems to have indicated that the Xbox One would now be priced at €349.99, another discount of €50 on top of the recent price cut. A “#xboxgamescom” hashtag was present, indicating that Microsoft might have a surprise price cut announcement at Gamescom, happening next week. Hopes were soon dashed though, as Microsoft later confirmed that the listing was made “in error”. It’s a good thing that I was too lazy to post the original news story, and that by the time I finally got around to it, the “correction” had already been made. Hooray for laziness!

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And on that note (laziness), we come to the end of this WNR. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one, see you next time.

Weekly News Roundup (27 July 2014)

Sunday, July 27th, 2014

I’ve been catching up on my list of “to watch” movies, both on Blu-ray, and on my Netflix “My List”. I really wish there was a separate genre for disturbing or depressing films, instead of lumping them all together in the drama genre. It doesn’t feel right that movies as different as ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Enough Said’ both belong to the drama genre (at least according to the IMDb), or that a film as disturbing as ‘Blue Jasmine’ would also belong to the comedy genre. I watched ‘Blue Jasmine’ after back-to-back sessions of ‘City of God’ and ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’, and if I hadn’t watched ‘The Muppets’ in between, it would have seriously disturbed my mood (and even so …). Be very careful when choosing to watch a drama, that’s my tip for the week.

(‘Enough Said’ was pretty sweet though, so it was a real mood redeemer thanks to great performances by the late and great James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

And yes, I did have time to do (some) work in between epic movie sessions.

Copyright

Google DMCA Stats

Quantity over quality, may be the strategy behind some rightsholders choosing to use Google’s DMCA process over more effective systems

This week TorrentFreak investigates why rightsholders are choosing to use ineffective Google DMCA take-downs as opposed to more efficient take-down tools, specifically the British based BPI. On one hand, rightsholders are submitting millions of take-down requests for URLs that are almost instantly recreated, but are refusing to work with tools that not only take down actual content/files, not links, but also keep them down.

One of the targeted file hosts, 4shared, is using a tool that is now owned by Spotify, that allows rightsholders to request any specific piece of content to be taken down – the tool will then automatically remove all related links to this piece of content, and even prevent future links from being created on 4shared. So it’s curious as to why the BPI and other rightsholders aren’t using this tool. 4shared thinks that the decision comes down to a public relations one. Millions of take-downs make better headlines than say working with a file host that you’ve been publicly admonishing, using a tool that makes piracy take-downs seem almost trivial. Piracy is supposed to be this billion dollar a year headache that cannot be solved without basically giving rightsholders total control over everything, so there is a need to be able to show how big the problem really is, and millions of taken down links will do that. The fact that these take downs are part of an endless game of copyright whack-a-mole, doesn’t really matter, neither is the fact that this does nothing to win the war on piracy.

It’s hard to win when you actually don’t want to win.

High Definition

My recent Netflix binge has made me pine for a private viewing mode on Netflix, hoping that the eclectic collection of films I watch won’t end up confusing the Netflix recommendation system. My wish may come true soon, as it appears Netflix is testing a private watching mode. The current workaround is to have a dedicated profile that you create and delete all the time, which also helps to ensure all the softcore porn you’ve been watching on Netflix doesn’t end up on your My List.

Samsung 3D active shutter glasses

PS4 and Xbox One both getting Blu-ray 3D playback in the next few weeks

Meanwhile, Netflix this week announced that they’ve broken through the 50 million users barrier, with nearly 14 million outside of the US. Revenue was up 25% as well, compared to last year, as the company focuses less on securing expensive licensing rights to films and TV shows, and more on original content.

Back to physical media, Microsoft this week announced that Blu-ray 3D support will finally be added to the Xbox One console, and a couple of days later, Sony followed with a similar announcement for the PS4. The PS4’s Blu-ray 3D support will arrive a little earlier than the Xbox One’s – next week versus some time in August. The one-upmanship continues for these two console heavyweights, which I guess is a good thing for the consumer.

Thus far, the lack of Blu-ray 3D support has been a bit more embarrassing for Sony than for Microsoft, considering Sony’s close links to the Blu-ray format (ie. it’s their format). So the update, coming via firmware version 1.75 next week, is most welcomed.

And if Sony can bring back DLNA support to the PS4, then I can finally start thinking about upgrading my PS3.

Gaming

It’s that time of the month again, and the NPD report for June shows a marked improvement for the Xbox One, thanks to the Kinect-removing inspired price drop, while the PS4 was still the best selling console for the month (that’s 6 months in a row).

PS4 with controller and PS Eye

The PS4 is still beating the Xbox One, despite sales doubling in June for the latter

Xbox One sales doubled in June compared to May according to Microsoft, but they’ve not been as willing to release sales data ever since they stopped having the top selling console (funny that). And so without knowing the May results, it doesn’t really tell us much. The only thing we know is that it wasn’t enough to allow the Xbox One to beat the PS4, and Sony will be really pleased with that.

Nintendo are happy too because the Wii U sold 140,000 units, which is a 233% improvement compared to the same month last year. There seem to be a new air of optimism for the Wii U, following the release of the new Mario Kart game, but it will take some time to confirm whether the recent sales bump is a sustaining one.

So everyone with some good news to report in June!

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That’s all for this week. See you soon.

Weekly News Roundup (29 June 2014)

Sunday, June 29th, 2014

Brazil vs Germany. Netherlands vs Argentina. Barring no surprise, this is how the semi-finals of the World Cup would line-up, based on my predictions. And then, it could be anyone’s cup, depending on a piece of magic, luck and the ref. The team that has the most hunger for the trophy, and I don’t mean the “I’ll bite that Italian defender, he looks tasty” kind, will win it!

Starting in 3, 2, 1 …

Copyright

Aereo Antenna Array

Aereo loses Supreme Coury case – Aereo and their tiny antennas deemed too clever for its own good

We start with this week’s big copyright news, and legally speaking, it doesn’t get any bigger than a US Supreme Court decision which could have a ripple effect on just how copyright law is interpreted. Aereo has lost its case, brought to the Supreme Court’s attention by a conglomerate of TV broadcasters.

To sum up what Aereo is, basically, they’re a company that offered the online recording and streaming of TV broadcasts, for a monthly fee. The company tried to circumvent the need to license any content and pay re-broadcasting fees by reserving a tiny TV antenna for each subscriber, thus eliminating the “broad” in “broadcasting”. As users have the right to time and format shift TV broadcasts, Aereo used this to argue that they did not need a license for the streamed and stored content, as they were simply helping their customers exercise their rights by renting them tiny antennas.

If Aereo’s business model sounded too much like a gimmick, a loophole, then it appears you agree with the Supreme Court, who ruled this week 6-3 in favor of the TV broadcasters. Their opinion was basically that Aereo’s business model was similar to ones proposed by cable companies decades ago, in which they also tried to circumvent the need to pay licensing fees by using their own antenna systems. The court said that the Copyright Act of 1976 already refutes Aereo’s arguments.

The dissenting opinion did align itself with Aereo’s argument that, since each antenna was only used by a single subscriber, no re-broadcasting has actually occurred. Narrowcasting, maybe, but not broadcasting.

This probably means the end of Aereo, unless they can come to some agreement with the TV broadcasters – they’re not really in the best of positions to negotiate, you have to agree.

In another Supreme Court move, but this time in the Netherlands, anti-piracy agency BREIN has taken their Pirate Bay blocking case there to settle the matter once and for all. The lower courts have sided with ISPs and ruled that blocking The Pirate Bay is a big no-no, but BREIN, having spent a huge chunk of money already, wasn’t willing to just let it go. The Supreme Court will now have to decide whether the legal criteria applied by the lower courts was sufficient, or perhaps even order a new trial.

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The MPAA wants more “unbiased” research on the issues of piracy, research whose topics they will determine, whose methodologies and directions they will choose, and whose funding they will provide. Yep, totally unbiased. It’s just like when research showed that movie box office took a hit following the shutdown of Megaupload, due to the reduced word of mouth effect that is a positive effect of piracy. The MPAA quickly produced their own research which showed the exact opposite.

With companies like Google, Netflix and Spotify all funding their own research to support their positions on everything from piracy to revenue sharing, the war of research papers will set to continue between them and the likes of the RIAA and MPAA. The truth is that, without proper parameters, you can obtain research results that supports pretty much any position you want, and when you’re also paying the researchers, it’s hardly the formula to obtain independent and unbiased data. Instead, it’s nothing more than just another propaganda tool, designed to fool those that don’t want to hear different in the first place.

Australian iiNet calls content holders "control freaks"

Australian iiNet calls content holders “control freaks”

It’s this kind of head-in-sand attitude that, I think, makes rights holders so fervent and righteous in their copyright crusade. Making them feel that what they are doing, even if it is against the interests of their own customers, their own industry and their very own futures, absolutely right. They are also “content control freaks”, a term that has been coined this week by one of Australia’s largest ISPs iiNet in relation to efforts by rights holders to introduce harsher copyright laws here. Rights holder, so paranoid about the threat of piracy, so coddled and protected by the political elite and so disrespectful of their own customers (preferring to think of them as “potential pirates”), have done some really crazy things, when you think about it, in relation to controlling how their content is consumed. I mean, McDonald’s don’t tell you how to eat a Big Mac, and then penalize you for “doing it wrong”. But Sony and Fox, and EA and Activision, and Warner Music and EMI can. And will.

Never mind that domain blocking and three-strikes have not work anywhere in the world where they have been implemented (unless you believe the “unbiased” research, paid-for and designed by the RIAA/MPAA), and yet, that’s exactly what rights holders are pushing the pro big business government here to implement. ISPs, you have to say do have a conflicting interest in this in that they don’t want to be responsible for being the Internet police, but their arguments – which you would think governments would listen to more considering they are the experts after all – are sound and logical. You can’t put a pad-lock on the Internet, not against those that are already technically proficient at the whole piracy thing.

Worst of all, the same rights holders are pushing for geo-unblocking and VPNs to be outlawed too here, mainly because of the quarter million of households here that use something like this to access superior and good value services, like Netflix. Instead of asking themselves why people are spending money buying overseas services, usually at a greater cost than say people in the US accessing the same services (so not just a matter of freeloaders who don’t want to spend a single cent on content), all they see is “lost revenue”. The extra money that, they believe, people will pay for overpriced, lower quality, less convenient local services if the overseas options are blocked – all because there’s less competition here to force content holders to provide more competitive pricing. It’s an artificial constraint on trade, says iiNet, something that should not be allowed under the free trade agreement between Australia and the US.

In conclusion, iiNet opines “Years of ranting against piracy – while ignoring customer feedback – have got rights holders nowhere”. It seems to me that rights holders want to, and I mean really want to, continue going nowhere, because it feels safer than going to somewhere else, a place that’s new, innovative and where their customers are already heading.

Speaking of going nowhere, the RIAA this week surpassed the 50 millionth URL mark in their DMCA removal requests to Google. I don’t have any unbiased research to back up my claims, but I reckon far more than 50 million music piracy related URLs were created in the same time, most of it as a result of the removal of the old URL.

The MPAA also tried something this week too with their DMCA request, by trying to remove an entire subreddit from Google. The r/fulllengthfilms was one of the URLs that the MPAA asked Google to remove this week, something that Google has not yet taken action on. A new war on Reddit? This could be interesting.

Gaming

PS4 with controller and PS Eye

Sony almost had to do nothing to be the big winner so far, thanks to Microsoft’s missteps

Not much in terms of gaming this week, but this article caught my eye. When Sony heard about Microsoft’s big mis-step (number two), that the Xbox One was going to be $100 dearer than the PS4, everyone in the Sony camp was “dancing in the aisles and high-fiving”. I bet they were.

The mood must have been equally as good when they first heard Microsoft’s disastrous DRM plan, and then some more celebratory antics when the inevitable back-track occurred. All Sony had to do was to not make any big mistakes and they would have been head, but to their credit, they did release a console that did all the necessary things right (even if, perhaps, it wasn’t as revolutionary as it could have been).

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My mood is a bit less than celebratory. More sleepy and slightly annoyed. The World Cup, as hard as I tried to ignore it, has been hard to ignore and two live matches in the last week starting at 2 a.m. was just too much for me. In my younger days, I would easily be able to get up at 4 a.m., watch the match, and continue with the rest of the day, fatigued but still capable. The worrying thing is that these so called younger days were only two years ago!

See you next week.

Weekly News Roundup (22 June 2014)

Sunday, June 22nd, 2014

How are you then? Been keeping up with the World Cup? I must say as an avid football (or “soccer”) fan, I found it hard to give a crap at the start, but I’m starting to get the fever. Still not enough to get me to stay up at 2 a.m., or to get up in the early morning to catch a live game here in Australia, not even on the weekends.

A quick glance at this WNR and you might wonder where the “news that wasn’t” section has gone, where I cover the stories that weren’t really important enough, but are still worth a mention. They’re still here, but are now integrated into the main WNR below, which works best with the stories we have this week.

Time for kick-off …

Copyright

I’m not even sure if you can still call it news if it happens with such regularity and frequency, but in case you haven’t guessed, Game of Thrones broke yet another piracy record with the season 4 finale ‘The Children’. I’ll leave it to you to check the actual stats (hint: a lot of people downloaded it), but the reaction to this latest non-news was what interested me the most. Especially the reaction here in down-under-land.

Game of Thrones: Season 4

Does anyone still give a crap about how many times GoT is pirated?

So Australians were once again top when it came to downloading GoT, and our consistency in outperforming all other countries by once again lifting the World Cup trophy for piracy is, from a neutral point of view, quite impressive really. Unfortunately, it’s attracted the wrong kind of attention, from the kind of people our newly elected, right wing, pro big business government likes to take advice/orders from. So plans involving of thousand dollar fines and Internet suspensions have all been floated, to the opposition of Internet users, ISPs, consumer groups and pretty much everyone who is not in the entertainment industry or in government (so definitely will become law, then).

Our situation, compared to the rest of world, is also unique in that we have a virtual monopoly controlling exactly how Game of Thrones can be watched legally here. We only have one cable TV provider, Foxtel, and they’ve snapped up the exclusive broadcasting as well as online rights to the show. So no iTunes, no equivalent of HBO or HBO Go (where you can minimize your subscription to just basic cable and HBO – here, the cheapest pack that includes the HD version of the show will run you well into the $80+ per month territory) – just the overpriced bundles being advertised as part of a so called “freedom of choice” (the choice Foxtel or Foxtel). It’s as if we’re the world’s experiment in seeing if piracy is influenced by lack of choice, high prices and competition, and you have to say that results are pretty conclusive. An experiment and set of results that are completely ignored by those that have the power to reduce piracy by affecting positive changes (as opposed to changes that have already been tried in other countries with no success).

Oh well.

No DRM

Are game publishers starting to speak out against DRM?

It’s one thing to try and criminalize those that pirate stuff, but it’s quite another to treat everyone as criminals. Which, according to game publisher GOG, is exactly what DRM does. DRM assumes that the user is trying to do something untoward and then makes that user jump through hoops to prove that they’re actually trying to behave. Sometimes the hoops are so tricky that the user ends up not being able to use the product at all. So something that is only intended to prevent a very tiny minority of users that actually attempt to break DRM ends up affecting all paying customers. The proverbial trying to swat fly with a sledgehammer (if such a proverb actually does exist).

While GOG’s hatred of DRM is well documented, Ubisoft’s statement that DRM simply doesn’t work was, in my opinion, far more interesting. It’s the first time I think a major game publishers has so clearly outlined just how useless DRM is. Ubisoft’s VP of digital publishing Chris Early basically admitted that, given time, any DRM will be cracked (and after that happens, it becomes trivial for the layman to remove the DRM). What is more difficult to pirate, Ubisoft says, are the services that surround the game, mostly online services that enhance the gaming experience.

While it’s nice to see companies like Ubisoft give a red card to DRM, but as the recent Watch Dogs fiasco showed, these enhanced services must be well supported and resourced in order for them to become enhancements, and not just a fancy way of doing authentication and DRM.

But what if you want to deter pirates using something just as useless as DRM, but much easier to implement? How about a symbol for “no piracy” that you can display proudly on your products, whether it be a web page or on the box of the game? Now you can! The Unicode Consortium (had no idea that it actually existed) has released the latest version of Unicode, 7.0 (also had no idea that unicode had versions, and/or could be updated), which now features a “no piracy” symbol. There is no “yes piracy” symbol, but the classic skull and crossbones is in there, as is a extended middle finger that one can also use to thwart off the likes of the MPAA and RIAA. You can view the complete list of symbols here.

Gaming

The NPD stats for May have been released and the PS4 again was the best selling console in the US. No longer surprising really, but what was interesting was that Wii U sales were up 85% compared to last May, largely on the back of Mario Kart 8. The latest Mario Kart game was also the second best seller for the month, behind Watch Dogs, which is impressive given that it was only available one the one platform.

Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart 8 lifts Wii U sales

Microsoft were surprisingly quiet about the performance of either of their consoles, so it must not have been great news on these fronts. With the $399 Xbox Ones now available, to atone for the own goal of forcing Kinect 2.0 on everyone, Microsoft will hope for a better June than May. The advertising blitz, starring Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, should also be hitting screens in the US right now to let everyone know about the new price, although for existing owners, the ad itself seems to have a few side effects.

These latest PS4 results seems to suggest that it is the console to beat in this generation, and Sony say they know why. Sony says that according to Nielsen stats, 31% of PS4 owners didn’t own a PS3, but did in fact own a Xbox 360 or Wii. Hmm, interesting. 17% didn’t own any last-gen consoles (PS2 holdouts?).

These results probably surprised Sony as much as anyone. Which explains why demand still outstrips supply in many parts of the world, including Europe – so sales might be even higher if Sony could keep up with demand for the console.

There’s no doubt that Sony is winning over gamers that were far from convinced about the PS3, both from a value proposition and other important factors such as online capabilities and quality of multiplatform games (better framerate, resolution and things like that). Whereas the PS3 was a (relative) pain to develop for, with online features that were sub-optimal, the PS4 seems to have addressed all of these issues. With Microsoft busy shooting themselves in their feet and other appendages, even some of the PS4’s flaws (such as scaled back media capabilities, compared to the PS3) are easily overlooked. And that price, as they say, is right!

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Alright, enough trying to cram football related terms into this week’s WNR. See you next week.

Weekly News Roundup (15 June 2014)

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

Hello again. Hope you’ve had a pleasant week. I suppose I should mention the World Cup, but as I’m not a big fan of nationalistic, poorer-quality, FIFA mismanaged, money-spinning international football competitions (as opposed to club football), I don’t think I need to say too much about it. I’m sure you’ve been inundated with World Cup stuff from every media and online outlet, so you don’t need me to bang on about it as well.

As per usual (for the last few weeks, at least), let’s get through the stuff that wasn’t quite “newsy” enough. We start with MPAA suspending their lawsuit against Kim DotCom. While it sounds like good news for Mr DotCom et al, the MPAA are only suspending things pending the verdict in the criminal case against Megaupload and its operators, possibly awaiting a precedent to be set to make their jobs easier.

Netflix Verizon Error Message

Netflix shifts blame onto Verizon for poor streaming performance

In Netflix news, the streaming firm has ended their war of words (or error messages) against ISP Verizon over poor streaming speeds. Netflix blamed Verizon for poor connection speeds via error messages shown to subscribers, while Verizon blames Netflix and the way they’ve chosen to route traffic for the speed problems. Lawyers got involved, and Netflix backed down. But the little spat has caught the attention of the FCC, which is launching its own investigation into the matter.

In Gaming news, Microsoft’s Xbox One missteps could cost the company up to $1 billion in losses, according to analysts. Just goes to show that messing with DRM and forcing things on consumers can be very dangerous and costly. Microsoft and Nintendo’s woes of course benefits Sony, which has helped the company sell more consoles than Nintendo for the first time in 8 years. 8 years ago was when the original Wii was released, which then went on to become a big hit. The PS4 may not reach the same highs as the Wii (being not as much of a “casual gaming” console as the Wii), but it certainly looks to be the dominant force in this current generation of consoles (which includes the Xbox One and Wii U).

With these out of the way, let’s get started with the “real” news.

Copyright

Is Apple about to launch a copyright smack-down on apps that allow you to download music from streaming sites like YouTube and SoundCloud? That’s the theory according to MacRumors, and it may all be part of a big clean up of the App Store in time for the launch of iOS 8, later this year.

Apple App Store Icon

Apple cleaning up the App Store for iOS 8?

Other apps targeted are those that produce excessive notifications or annoyingly posts to social media, in order for self promotion. In other words, it’s about crushing Candy Crush. Another type of app in the firing line are those that provide in-game rewards for looking at ads and other slightly dishonest practices.

Those more cynical will point to the fact that Apple now actively promotes their own music listening apps, like iTunes Radio, when users search for “music download” on the App Store. Isn’t this the kind of thing that got Google in trouble? I’m not so sure these latest changes is evidence of this kind of slightly anti-competitive behavior, but it always struck me as a huge conflict of interest when a company is competing with its own customers in the same marketplace (that this company owns and operates). Whether it’s Google competing with other websites in the search results, or Apple’s stuff competing with other apps on the App Store.

Speaking of competition, Steam may be getting a new PC competitor in the form of GOG Galaxy. From GOG, the game publisher known for proudly carrying the DRM-free banner, GOG Galaxy will keep to the company’s DRM-free philosophies by producing a Steam-like platform, minus the DRM restrictions.

This means that the platform itself is entirely optional, unlike Steam, and that no online activation of authentication is required. Offline play, is of course, supported without restrictions. In exchange for opting for GOG Galaxy, gamers will have access to Steam like features, including automatic game updates, achievements, and online social features.

Gaming

Ubisoft Logo

Ubisoft looking out for numero uno by not releasing completed Wii U game

You know it’s bad for the Wii U when Ubisoft, one of the biggest backers of Nintendo’s console, is withholding releasing a fully completed game for the console because there’s just not enough people that own it.

While it seems a bit counter intuitive to spend all that money making a game and then not release it, Ubisoft says the cost of marketing a new game is an additional cost that cannot be justified right now due to the Wii U’s small install base.

But if things don’t improve, the unnamed game and several other titles in development may never see the light of day on the Wii U, and instead, may be ported to other platforms.

The problem is that without games, the Wii U will find it very difficult to take off. But without the Wii U being in enough people’s homes, third party developers like Ubisoft will find it very hard to justify the economics of it all. It’s the classic chicken or the egg situation (egg is the answer, by the way).

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I think that’s it. See you again next week.