Value for money Xbox 360 gaming

One of the benefits of console gaming has always been that unlike a gaming PC, once you invest in the hardware, you shouldn't need to upgrade for the life of the console (anywhere from ten to five years). Unfortunately this can be offset by horribly expensive games thanks to reasons including the console manufacturers subsidizing their loss-making hardware with a royalty on each game, distributors having to physically import the games instead of being able to burn them locally, and unfavorable exchange rates.
For this reason it's worth spending a bit of time considering which games will get you the most bang for your buck, and I thought I'd list a couple that I've found to be particularly good value for money. This is by no means a comprehensive list, for the most part I've avoided listing games I have not played.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
This can't help but be top of the list. Oblivion is an RPG set in a huge fantasy world populated with (quite literally) hundreds of locations including 8 cities, loads of little hamlets and tons of dungeons, ruins, mines, Oblivion gates and more. The character and item systems are rich and complex, providing for many different ways to play the game. Besides the main quest (which is lengthy enough on it's own) there are many side quests of varying length, guaranteeing (again, literally) hundreds of gameplay hours for anyone who wants to spend the time exploring every corner of the Oblivion world.
Oblivion was a '360 launch title and still holds on to the number 5 spot on Metacritic's list of all-time high scoring Xbox 360 titles (with a score of 94). It is now a bargain bin game that you should be able to pick up for R300 or less.
A more recent alternative to Oblivion by the same developers is Fallout 3 (which I've yet to play). Set in a post-nuclear wasteland, Fallout 3 should boast a wealth of gameplay similar to that of Oblivion. Fallout 3 scored 93 on Metacritic and is at number 10 in their All Time High Scores list.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Another RPG, but this time downloadable and with more casual-inspired core gamplay, Puzzle Quest takes the match-3 mechanic popularized by the likes of Bejewelled and adds a more "hardcore" element to it. All actual battles and other tasks in the game are carried out by playing match-3 sessions, but are spiced up with spells and abilities the player's character earns as they work their way through the story. Mounts, magical items and party members all contribute to the strategy.
Besides following the main storyline, many side quests are available to the player. Cities may be besieged and dungeons raided for loot, all contributing to character level and skills. This is another game with many, many hours of deep single player gameplay, but it has the added benefit of a multiplayer component which also works very well.
While not a 90+ scorer on Metacritic, Puzzle Quest eans a very respectable 87 and is cheap at the price of 1200 MS points (about R120).
The recent pseudo-sequel, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix offers similar value for money, but is much less accessible than the original, using a more complex core gameplay mechanic. It scored a 76 on Metacritic.

Guitar Hero / Rock Band
Value for money doesn't necessarily mean cheap. Even with the extra cost of hardware needed for the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series of games, they will provide more than enough solo and multiplayer gameplay to justify the initial outlay. It will cost around R1500 to buy one of these titles and two guitar peripherals (necessary to get maximum enjoyment and value).
The value in these games comes from the many hours of playing through each of the songs again and again to earn better scores and improve your skills, as well as from the many more hours you will spend playing the game with family and friends. The instantly accessible concept of playing along with a band, and the easy-to-grasp mechanic of hitting buttons on the controller as gems pass the time-line make these games easy for almost anyone to start playing. The initial embarrassment of standing up in front of everyone holding a plastic guitar is soon replaced by the thrill of feeling like you're actually making this awesome music.
Just about everyone that has played Guitar Hero when visiting us has ended up buying the game for themselves (many of these are not normally gamers), and when friends come over it's a given that we'll be playing into the wee hours of the morning.
The highest rated GH and RB games on MetaCritic are Guitar Hero II and Rock Band I,  each scoring 92, but any of the games will do. Your best bet is to pick a title based on the track list you'll most enjoy.

Halo 3
Despite the hype by Microsoft, Halo 3 really didn't offer anything significant in terms of new gameplay. It's basically a prettier sequel that plays almost identically to it's predecessors. What the hype did help to deliver though, was an enormous community of online players. While communities come and go for most games, Halo 3 is one title in which you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to go online and find a game to join-and thanks to some really good net' code, even though most of those games will be international, you should have a good online experience. Halo 3's Metacritic rating of 94 is probably way higher than it deserves, but it is a fun shooter, with great multiplayer options that should keep you busy for quite some time if you're willing to replay it on the tougher difficulty levels. It's also a game that you can pick up for a song at most retailers.

There are obviously many other games that offer great value by mixing in multiplayer, long campaigns and replay incentives, but I've found the ones listed here to be particularly good value in my case, feel free to mention alternatives that are similarly worth more than their asking price.

Posted via email from Matt's posterous

Listen to this!

If you're bored of your looping MP3 playlist (those are all legal, right?), here's some interesting listening material for you.

Lay off the stuff

I've posted about The Story of Stuff before, and also about Colin Bevin aka NoImpactMan. Well recently Rebecca Clark, a Methodist preacher from the states gave a great sermon preaching the same lose-the-stuff concept and emphasised the advantages. She also mentioned Colin's project and challenged her congregation to try abstaining from some of their stuff for a couple of days. Whether you're a Christian or not, this is a great sermon to listen to, and if you are a Christian you'll find it interesting to hear the Bible does indeed back up the 'less stuff' mantra. The sermon page can be found here, or stream the MP3 below.

Gamasutra Podcast is back!

After the GDC Radio Gamasutra Podcast had to be put on hold for a while for personal reasons, Tom Kim is back in the saddle at last. For this edition he's interviewing Gamecity director Ian Simons, and I have to say it sounds like an awesome event and I wish I could attend it! Ian also has some interesting views about the industry and how we continually compare ourselves to cinema. Check it out on GDCRadio or stream it below.

Blu:yes Back:no

I'm certainly in no position to buy another console right now, and if I did it would probably be the Wii, but let's imagine for a moment I was deciding whether to drop a couple of grand on a PS3. Two developments this week would have a serious effect on my decision-making.

Bye-Bye backcompat
One thing Sony definitely can't claim over Microsoft on their new gen (no, it's not next gen anymore, the machines are all at least a year old!) console is a larger game library. One would think they would jump on anything that would at least make the game selection on the PS3 seem larger. Backwards compatibility is one such opportunity, yet Sony is apparently giving up on it completely. Sony have announced they they will be dropping the 20GB and 60GB (backwards compatible) PS3 models in favour of the 40GB (non backwards compatible) model in Japan. I very much doubt they will be following different paths in other regions, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before an equivalent decision is made for the US and Europe. Some argue that backcompat is no big deal, and I'm sure for a lot of people it isn't.. I'm not one of those people. There is nothing game wise that I particularly want to play in the PS3 library, absolutely nothing at all. My main interest in the system is for it's media capabilities and it's ability to play all the great PS2 games I missed out on. I very much doubt I'm the only one for whom this would be a deciding factor.

But at least it does Blu
In the PS3's favour, Warner Brothers this week announced that it will be dropping Toshiba's HD-DVD format and instead focus on Blu-Ray as it's high definition disk of choice. This just ads to the growing list of Blu-Ray only studios and is quite possibly the final nail in HD-DVD's coffin. As far as console sales go, this can only be good for the PS3, though with MS having stated previously that they would support Blu-ray on the '360 if it turns out to have a clear lead, the possibility of a blu-ray addon drive for the Xbox 360 or even a 360 SKU with an integrated Blu-ray drive is not too remote.

I had to laugh..

When I checked my RSS feeds and saw the latest comment on my Xbox's blog:

Flint ZA's Xbox - 12/9/2007
It really feels like forever since I have felt the sweet surge of power running through my belly. Is there a nationwide power outage that Flint ZA isn't telling me about? Email me if there is a blackout... oh... wait...

Actually, as luck would have it Eskom is playing silly buggers with us at the moment. We have had two 'load shedding' sessions of two hours each at home this week, and traffic in some parts of Gauteng has been even more congested than usual thanks to the incredibly smart people at Eskom's planning department designating key areas like Sandton and the center of Pretoria for load shedding in rush hour. To all of you wonderful foreign tourists planning on visiting in 2010 to cheer your teams on-bring a torch and lots of batteries :P

Justin kicked me in the ass..

Well, not physically, but he did remind me I need to start blogging a bit. I actually have a bunch to write about but I'll try not to go totally overboard.

Life, the universe and a veggie patch
In general, everyday life stuff I've been massively busy with our new house. I did post a couple of pics to Flickr when we moved in, and I have loads more I want to put up but that will have to wait until Telkom get their ass into gear and install our line. We've put up a palisade, tiled the kitchen and dining room and tidied up the front garden. My composter is coming along nicely and the veggie patch is turned and will be worked with compost soon. I have also dug a little herb garden for Natz next to the kitchen. This week we're having the carpets in the bedrooms pulled up so we can sand and polish the wood underneath, and then the major stuff is done for a good long while. I've got a seed feeder and fruit up for the birds, and just put up a temporary plastic bath, and so far we've been treated to visits by Robins, Myners, Muisvoels, Loeries, Bulbuls, Barbetts, Bishops and of course the obligatory Sparrows and Doves. We seem to have a couple of Bulbul nests in our trees, and it looks like the Loeries are scouting for a nesting spot too-not bad for our first month :)

Gamerrrr
Games wise, I've been playing Assasin's Creed, and it's a gorgeous game with an intriguing story. I can see where the criticism has come in with regards to it being monotonous though, the developers seemed to have a couple of really cool ideas, and then tried to stretch them too far. Surely it can't have been that difficult to think of more than a handful of things to do in ancient Jerusalem? The combat is also way to samey and gets old quickly. Despite these issues, I'm still enjoying it immensely. Hopefully I'll get my hands on Dancing Universe this week, I've been looking forward to this since the US DDR release last year, and it's about bloody time we get a PAL version.

Sneaky, sneaky Nokia
Nokia finally released a firmware update for the 'classic' N95 last week. This has tech heads (me included) excited to check out the new features, of which there are loads such as integrated search (so, sooo awesome), better camera software, better speed and memory use, to name a few. There have been zillions of posts about these features in the last week though, so I'm going to skip on these and focus on a particular 'upgrade' that left me with a VERY sour taste in my mouth this weekend.
One of my favorite features on the N95 is the integrated GPS. I would never have bought a standalone GPS, but now that I have one in my phone, I really can't believe how useful it is. I don't use it enough to justify shelling out for the voice prompted navigation service though, and instead always just used the option to plot a route between two points and then track my movement. This allowed me to see the route and keep a visual track on where I am on screen when I need to keep an eye out for a particularly tricky street. Nokia, in all their misplaced wisdom have removed this option from the new software, essentially rendering the GPS component as nothing more than a digital map archive unless you buy the voice prompts. I am very pissed about this and find it to be a really sneaky move on Nokia's part. Nice, another reason to get a Sony Ericsson instead next time I upgrade.

So much stuff..

What's up?
Once again I've had a post drought, and of course the reason is.. wait for it.. WORK! The difference is, it's  the new job and I'm loving every minute of it. I haven't felt I've needed some kind of break (be it blogging or whatever). After a discussion on the matter,  I confirmed that I can say  I'm working for Mi Digital, we're doing Xbox 360 development, and I'm the  tech lead on the project. Any more than that and the MiB's might take me away ;) The mix of work so far is great, even though the team so far is just the design and project lead (my old boss Dan from I-Imagine) the art lead (Dave, also of I-I fame) and I, so there's no team management in it for now. The other project management responsibilities are all there-selecting technology, setting standards and of course setting up a development framework and other key technical aspects of the project. In short, it's awesome. I am so chuffed to be back in game dev, out of wall-to-wall coding and on the Xbox dev platform. Obviously NDA limits what we can say, but I have always been vocal about how I feel the platform has the perfect blend of console and PC advantages, and the same holds for the 360.

Home at last
The one downside of the job (there had to be one) is the commute from Pretoria into Joburg, which takes about an hour. Thankfully that is a hole that will soon be plugged, because we really lucked out and found a great house reasonably close to work. I should say Natz found it, she did an awesome job of house-hunting, and her mom was a great help too (she actually saw the ad). We'll be moving in at the end of October, so I only have a few more weeks of nasty commuting left :) I'll post photos when I have them but for now I'll just say it's a great 3 bed 2 bath house with a big garden in a nice area. It's even really close to a lake so I'll be able to take up windsurfing again!

Game on!
Finally, on the game (playing) side, I got through Tomb Raider which turned out to be a pretty good game. It's nothing earth shattering, and lends heavily from many franchises but does so in a way that the title as a whole seems really polished and plays really well and at a good pace. It's like a really well produced action flick that you'll love for it's short duration but won't steal a second thought once it's over. The use of Lara's history in the story was really enjoyable and revisiting some of the core events that shaped her life really helped shape the character.
Last week I started on Bioshock, and while I was generally suspicious of all the hype surrounding the game I am thoroughly enjoying it. The visuals are really amazing in every technical regard, and the interesting choice of period (late 1950's with art and architectural influences reaching back a decade or so) along with strong and focused art direction have resulted in one of the best looking titles ever. The gameplay doesn't feel quite as revolutionary as the game's spiritual predecessor System Shock, but it is solid and feeds well off a level of atmosphere which far surpasses anything I have played to date. The incredible use of sound and dramatic timing lead to a brilliantly nerve wrecking experience that is more thriller than horror. So far the story is compelling as well, and the progressive introduction to the horrific deterioration of idyllic Rapture is completely engrossing, and helped along by top notch voice acting.
Yesterday was the local launch of Halo as well, and of course I had to give that a go. I had planned to dive into the campaign cooperatively online with a group of 5DT players, but when I got online I discovered they had been at it for a couple of hours already having taken time off work. Yes I was more than a bit peeved. Anyway Natz and I got started on it playing splitscreen, and she wasn't really bowled over. She jumped out about halfway into the first level and I found I had to restart the level in the solo campaign. Not cool. Graphically Halo is pretty, but certainly not up to the standards set by Gears of War or Bioshock. The difference of course is that Halo is handling huge open areas rather than the tight environments of those two titles, and has far more characters in battle at any given time. The character models I have seen so far are a bit disappointing, even taking the numbers into account. I have not progressed far enough into the campaign to comment on the story, but it seems to be typical Halo fare. The gameplay too is pure Halo, which is to be expected but perhaps disappointingly simple compared to the rich experiences offered in recent games. I can't comment on Live multiplayer yet, but we did play a LAN deathmatch session at work and that was great fun. Microsoft's hype machine has obviously outdone itself, even in the local market, because of the 30 or so of my friends list that were online last night, there were seldom more than 5 doing something other than Halo 3. The game also shattered all launch day records. With a stateside launch revenue of $170 million, it has stolen the top entertainment launch spot from the likes of Spider-Man 3 and Harry Potter.

And finally..
Jack Thompson is at it again. This time the fool has submitted gay porn as evidence to the judge who will ultimately decide whether he should be allowed to continue practicing law in the state of Florida. Not smart. Read it and laugh.

Friday vid-Stop motion PSP

This is an incredibly well conceived and produced video showing off the many abilities of the PSP. I really don't know if it's an official Sony production or something a really dedicated fan put together, but it's awesome!

PSP "Come To Life" Animation - video powered by Metacafe

Technorati Tags: psp, video

Branded like cattle

 I was quite excited last week when my newly subscribed N95 related RSS feeds heralded the release of a new firmware version for the phone. Coolest amongst the implemented changes was "Assisted GPS", which if the little reading I did on the subject is correct, allows the phone to first utilize the cellular network to triangulate an approximate location, and then use that to get a satellite lock more quickly than it would have otherwise. What it also means is that if no satellite is available (say, when you are indoors), the cell-network-only location can be used for geotagging! As it turns out, there was an update in April as well, and this included better camera quality and performance. Needless to say, I quickly downloaded the software I would need for the update and hooked up my phone.

And that's where Vodafone came into the picture and screwed things up. Apparently, when a manufacturer releases a new (generic) firmware version, it is sent off to all the networks that have their own branded versions of the device, and they re-brand it and send it back to be made available on the manufacturer's download service. Not only has Vodaphone/Vodacom not managed to get the new version (12) out yet -which would be understandable considering how new it is- they have not even managed to get the previous version (11) out! Again, this was released in April!

It is possible for an N95 owner to fiddle the system, basically they have to hack the product version of their phone to a generic one, and then the Nokia software will make the new firmware available. Of course this voids the warrantee-which is not something you want to do on a ten grand phone!

Technorati Tags: phone, n95, nokia, vodafone, vodacom, firmware

Super Mario Brothers Theme played on Tesla Coils

This video is just too cool to not blog it!
You know you have way too much time on your hands (and the government is paying you far too much in your research grant) when you can develop musical tesla coils and get them to play the classic Mario Brothers theme!

Number crunching prince

Console Calculator
A couple of months back I went looking for a good lightweight calendar to add to my PortableApps 'toolkit'. After trying a handful of freeware apps, I was grabbed by Console Calculator, aka CCalc because of it's ease of use and intuitive operation (intuitive for a programmer, anyway :) ). I have been using it regularly since then, having bound it to the calculator key on my keyboard. I had no idea though how powerful it actually is.

I noticed today while working something out that it has a "Vars" menu, containing pi and ans (the previous calculation result). I decided to spend a couple of minutes checking through the help docs, and to put it plainly, this is an awesome piece of software. In addition to having a large library of common (and not so common) functions and being able to easily declare and assign custom variables, it supports similar declaration of simple mathematical functions. This functionality is all supported in decimal, binary and hex as well, making it an incredibly useful tool for debugging. If, like me, you hate the clunkiness and inconsistency of the default windows calculator then check it out. Just to support the author's ideal (he doesn't even make a way to donate available) type in "gospel" when you start it too :)

Prince of Persia Classic
The Xbox 360 calendar has been a bit slow of late, and that includes the Live Arcade release list (Pac Man CE, woo frigging hoo), so the release of a new game on the arcade was more than welcome. Having that release be one of the best (and quite possibly the best) arcade release to date was nothing to complain about either! Gameloft (the developers behind many excellent mobile versions of other Ubi franchises) has developed an incredible remake of the original Prince of Persia that wowed PC gamers all those years ago. The basic gameplay and even the level layout remains faithful to the original, but the pink and blue backdrops and raster animated prince are replaced by gorgeous 3D renditions that bring Jafar's dungeons and palace to life like never before. The likes of Namco and Midway would do well to learn a lesson from this title about bringing a well loved classic to modern gamers.

This is an absolute gem of a game, and well worth the 800 point asking price, even if masters of the classic might just breeze through it on their first attempt (which by the sheer nature of the game will take under an hour).

Assassin's Creed - Ubidays 07 Trailer

YouTube - Assassin's Creed - Ubidays 07 Trailer
Ok, so some people won't bother clicking the links in my last post. Here's the video embedded for your pleasure :)



You are using Google reader as your RSS aggregator right? Because if you aren't you're missing out on embedded streaming of the video ;)

In command, but not in control

Last week was another deployment week at work. That basically means I got to go down to Cape Town and not spend so much as two seconds enjoying the sights.. Ok in all fairness the view of the mountain from my apartment was quit pretty-especially by the time we got home after working overtime at the client :p
Four of the five us that went down were sick with whatever strain of winter bug infested our offices, and the cold snap that hit didn't help much. I don't remember being so cold since last year in Plitvice, and that's saying something. Anyway, the deployment was relatively successful, which is great, and now we're buckling down for what should be the final two or three month push. Yay, more overtime, maybe I'll finally be able to afford to service my car.

Tiberium's back
Anyway, enough bitching and onto something more interesting. I've been playing a lot of Command and Conquer 3 on the PC over the past week (I had my laptop with me in cape town, so I got far less sleep than I probably should have). I even managed to get some multi player sessions in over the weekend. Wasting an hour fiddling with emulated LANs (the EA registration gave one of the guys issues) and getting teamspeak to work reminded me exactly why Xbox Live is so damned awesome. The game really is great fun, and feels like a healthy mishmash of some of the greatest RTSs. Obviously there's a lot of classic C&C in there (complete with cheezy FMV cut scenes) and a Generals influence that extends well beyond the engine that Westwood (oops, sorry.. EA) has built upon for this game. Some of the micromanagement reminds me more of Warcraft 3 and the unit grouping from Battle For Middle Earth has made it in here as well.
The single player game is far more satisfying than that of Generals, with an actual plot (as standard fare as it may be) and three full interrelated campaigns. Multiplayer is quick and enjoyable, and I can see that games between two players that know their units well could conceivably be wrapped up in under 20 minutes. The relatively scarce resources on the tight two player maps don't encourage long games. The balancing definitely still needs some work though, as surviving long enough to pump out a big batallion of Mammoth Tanks is still a guaranteed way to decimate the opposition-especially coupled with a battle base or two.
I just got the Xbox 360 version of the game, and of course the big question here is the control scheme. Predictably, the developers mostly stuck to the BFME2 control system, and tweaked it slightly for easier use. It works pretty well, considering, but the lack of precision compared to using a mouse is still painfully obvious. I'd love to say more, but since my 360 copy is for a GEAR review you'll just have to read next month's issue ;)

Whats the big deal
After resisting for a while I have finally given into the persistent badgering by certain people to sign on to face book. I must say I'm quite disappointed, after all the hype I really expected more. I would have expected a painfully obvious way to link to my flickr account so I don't have to upload my photos yes again. I would have expected decent support for rss feeds, instead of something that just provides a link to my feeds. This is definitely one of the let downs of 'Web 2.0' for me. Yawn.

But his IS a big deal
Assassins Creed. This is going to be the next game on 360 that will blow people's minds away, trust me. You don't? Fine then, watch this trailer video and be educated. Still not convinced? Well watch this gameplay video then. Just have a sponge handy, your brain might just melt and leak out your ears.

Xbox Soundtracks local initiative and Xbox Live petition update

Calling all musos
Microsoft is calling on local music talent to get themselves noticed by submitting their work as an Xbox Soundtrack. Some big SA names have already taken part and it would be nice to see both some local unknowns get some exposure, and the Xbox brand getting a push locally because of this. Good luck guys-you rock! (But I bet you still can't beat "Woman" on expert in Guitar Hero 2 :p )

Fighting the good fight
The petition for South African Xbox Live support is doing reasonably well, with a predictable rush of initial signatures pushing the count up to about 600 supporters, and then a drop to a steady couple of signatures a day keeping the numbers rising. The day the petition was created MS responded directly to the team that set it up, and a press response was issued the following day. Both responses can be viewed from the petition site.

Petition for official Xbox Live support in SA

It was only a matter of time before this happened. The frustration of South African Xbox 360 owners that have had to jump through hoops and resort to what essentially amounts to credit card fraud to enjoy the benefits of Xbox Live has finally led to the creation of an open letter/petition to Microsoft to provide official Xbox 360 Live support in South Africa. PS3 owners get official support, so why not us? Sign it here:
http://www.sayyoursay.com/

And Digg it here:
http://digg.com/gaming_news/South_African_petition_for_local_Xbox_Live_support
and here:
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Xbox_Live_South_Africa_Petition

Xbox IPTV and... Telkom?

Xbox IPTV and... Telkom?, originally uploaded by FlintZA.

I managed to miss yet another week! Big surprise, except this time I have a
really, really good excuse, even better than the stupid Siemens UI. I spent
the weekend (including Friday afternoon and Monday morning) drinking saline
through a straw in hospital, thanks to the dodgy water down in the Natal
midlands where we went for a wedding. Actually to be entirely accurate it
was the food prepared with that water-we avoided the water itself (which was
a yellowy brown colour) after we first saw it oozing out of the taps. Natz
also got quite sick (as did some of the other guests) but fortunately not
sick enough to end up in hospital.

The main event

Anyway, it's a pity I missed last Friday of all days, because I was really
looking forward to writing the post. Last week was CES (the Consumer
Electronics Expo) which is an event that dwarfs even the now defunct E3 in
just about every respect. Of course all the major international players that
have anything to do with cool gadgets and software were there, and it was a
platform for some pretty huge announcements, including Apples long rumored
iPhone, which will be released later this year in most territories. Still no
news of an SA release though, I don't think Apple realize that while SA is
small potatoes when it comes to media players, it is a major market in the
cellular industry thanks to our phenomenally high penetration rate. Of
course I'm not that interested in the iPhone, not least of all because it
will be a closed development platform, and the big stuff as far as my
interest is concerned came from Microsoft.

After the unexpected success of the Video Marketplace on Xbox Live last
year, Microsoft happily punted a new use for the '360- that of an IPTV
set-top box. Now this on it's own is no big surprise, I have been predicting
a move like this for the Xbox brand for some time. In fact it's been pretty
obvious since the 360 came out and it's media capabilities became evident
that the whole Xbox 'project' has been an elaborate (and very successful)
way to get hard core gamers, the fanatic zealots of the consumer electronics
world, to do their marketing for them. After the dismal failure of
Microsoft's Web TV devices, some smart suit in Redmond realized by giving
gamers a console with kickass capabilities and a robust online service, they
would sell any additional functionality to other consumers in their homes.
That's my theory anyway, and every move Microsoft has made in recent months
(Zune, a unified micropayment system, XBLA, Video Marketplace) seems to
validate it.

Anyway, as I said, no big surprise. What was interesting, was a partners
slide from the presentation that started doing the rounds on the web.
Together with the expected logos some of the large American and European
telcos, who's logo should appear but our own much maligned fixed-line
monopoly, Telkom. It is widely known that Telkom has been testing IPTV
technology in preparation to begin offering media services, possibly within
the next couple of months. Telkom themselves admitted to such technology
testing in partnership with Microsoft. So the big question now is: will Xbox
360 be the delivery mechanism Telkom chooses for IPTV? There have been all
sorts of questions along the lines of how this will affect capping and so
on, but they are for all intents and purposes irrelevant. There is no reason
why Telkom couldn't exclude certain ports in cap calculations or use some
similar mechanism to get around their infamous data caps. Line speed
capability has also been questioned, but again I think this is a minor
issue, Telkom may not offer customers any speeds higher than 4Mbps, but that
does not mean that is the physical limit of their infrastructure. They are
simply offering customers a service just fast enough to outpace their
competition and still maintain control over their dismally low cap
allocations (to prevent competition with their own business data products
that are priced at much higher points and earn them even more of a profit).

Any IPTV offering that Telkom invests in would need a number of things.
Obviously some kind of TV 'decoder' would be a must, and the Xbox 360 is a
proven multimedia device that is already accepted by many as a primary means
of viewing and listening to content. Services would also be required, the
ability to browse available content, parental controls, guides, storage,
DRM, etc. All of this is offered 'out the box' by Microsoft's Live service,
and the backend technology behind that system is tried and tested and in
place all over the world. Content is of course another issue, and once again
Microsoft is already ahead of the curve on this, with agreements with major
networks and studios already wrapped up (of course localized agreements will
need to be established, but this is nothing new).

Finally, one of the biggest technical arguments is international bandwidth.
Well that too, is a non-issue. Microsoft's Live service is not a centralized
one, it already makes use of regional caching, with nodes in critical areas
to increase performance. Both MS and Telkom are more than capable of
providing such a data center locally. So perhaps it's time to start
considering whether renewing that DSTV subscription is such a great idea..
Maybe Telkom and Microsoft will be the ones to save South Africans from the
pay-TV monopoly that MNet spawned.. won't that be ironic.

Gears etc.

Well it looks like I’m making a habit of only getting posts in on Mondays.. bad me, BAD! ;) My excuse this week is that I went to the Gears of War ‘Emergence Day’ launch on Friday afternoon. It meant taking time off work (which I worked in this weekend), but it was well worth it. Besides the launch itself, which was great fun (we went to a shooting range to fire off a few shots on a 9mm and a shotgun), we got collectors edition copies of the game, as well as copies of Flight Simulator X. There were a couple of nice ‘freebies’ in our ‘welcome packs’ as well, which was great.

You’re just a COG in the machine!

The game itself is pretty good. I’m not convinced it deserves the 95-100% ratings everyone has been giving it, but it is undeniably impressive. The very gritty look of post-apocalyptic Serra does a good job of showing off the Unreal 3 engine, but the way-too-familiar story and gameplay are a bit of a let down. Epic promised great things of this game, and while it does what it does extremely well, there’s nothing revolutionary here.

And then there were three

The ‘next generation’ is now officially here in full force. The last two weeks saw Nintendo and Sony release their new systems, and as is to be expected they both sold out in no time. The PS3 has managed to garner mainstream press attention thanks to the ridiculously inflated price it is commanding on eBay, and because of a series of violent incidents surrounding first-day sales. Analysts have also been making worried noises about the incredibly low attach rate of the PS3-apparently less than one game per console. For a system that loses Sony almost $300 every time a customer buys one, slow game sales is scary stuff and I would hate to be a Sony exec right now-or a shareholder for that matter. The Wii on the other hand does not seem to have stolen headlines quite as effectively, but it has certainly stolen sales. Nintendo managed to deliver a huge number of consoles to retail, and they practially walked off shelves-and unlike Sony and Microsoft, the big N is actually making a profit on each console.

Now that everyone is in the ring, it will be interesting to see which way things go. Of course this Christmas will not really be much of an indicator, as Sony is still struggling with manufacturing issues, and the early adopters are never the deciding factor anyway.

Now if only Ms would get their asses into Gear and get Viva Pinata out in SA dammit!

Smashing!

One has to wonder about the mental stability of someone that is willing to wait hours in a queue to buy potentially buggy hardware on launch day for %600. Even more worrying is someone that will spend that time waiting, only to take this $600 paperweight and smash it to pieces in front of all the other eager customers. Check out the hilarious video at http://www.smashmyps3.com/.

Rumble..

[There was a hiccup in the mail system, so I had to resend this.. It was actually written on Friday, I promise!]

From a gaming perspective, this week has been something of a calm before the storm. Microsoft’s holiday flagship title, Gears of War, launched and is in stores and gamers’ hands, but as popular as it has proven with critics and gamers, it’s not really succeeding at the obvious attempt to detract attention from the impending Wii and PS3 launches.

After years of speculation, and almost a year of Microsoft’s next-gen monopoly period, Sony and Nintendo’s new hopes are on the verge of being unleashed on the world. Of course, how much this will affect the South African scene in the short term is debatable. Nintendo products have a history of lackluster distribution in this country, and I doubt the Wii will be very different. South Africans also seem to have a terminal fear of doing anything that may seem even slightly wacky (other than the friggin ‘Leeu Loop’) so I am not convinced the Wii’s unique approach will be appreciated by most.

Sony on the other hand has had a stranglehold on the local market for two generations now, and even the PSP is doing really well compared to the DS, especially if considered in the context of Nintendo’s worldwide handheld dominance. Of course we will not see any PS3s at retail here until March next year (and I’m doubtful about even that date), and while the console may seem expensive to Americans and Europeans, thanks to our brutal exchange rate it will most likely be downright impossibly priced when it does launch here. Our sole local PlayStation hardware distributor, Ster Kinekor, has a history of overpricing gaming prices and this persists today, with the PS2 still selling for around US$160 here in most stores. US$600 is an insane amount of money for even middle income South Africans, and I doubt very much we will see it released at that price here-more than likely Ster Kinekor will throw in another $50-$100 for (their) good measure.

I am by no means saying that the Xbox 360 will be a runaway success just yet in South Africa. I expect the vast majority of gamers in this country to carry on playing their PS2’s for a good while still, however when they do look to upgrade, the huge price tag difference may see the Xbox 360 stealing a lot of the PS3’s overpriced thunder.

Of course this is all speculation and only time will tell. For now I’ll stick to trying to finish all the guild quests in Oblivion, and waiting impatiently for the release of Viva Piñata. Gears who?

360 update and WinAmp sync

Wow. This week has really flown by, but I don't really have any interesting news-what can I say, my life's a bore :p I have (unfortunately) been spending time playing Import Tuner Challenge from Ubisoft, and the only good thing I can say about it is I'm really looking forward to writing the review-because I'll be able to get really creative in describing it. Check out a future edition of GEAR for the review on this unbelievably bad game!

Dashy update

The Xbox 360 received a new dashboard update this week. The update added support for native 1080p output, as well as support for some new peripherals like the wireless steering wheel and Live headset. A number of enhancements to things like media connectivity and support were added too. Unfortunately it seems that a tiny percentage of users experienced issues with this update-to the point where there machines were rendered unusable, so MS quickly put out a fixed update.

Media madness

No, not the journalist kind, the multi-kind. Microsoft released Windows Media Player 11 this week, and used in conjunction with the new 360 dashboard update this lets Windows XP users stream music, images and movies to the '360. Sadly there is still no support for popular non-Microsoft codecs like DivX, so it's usefulness is a bit limited.

Media Player 11 itself is really, really pretty. I tried it in the hope that it might support the features it previously lacked and that I consider essential - podcasts and decent device synchronization. Unfortunately it still has zero support for RSS streams with embedded media, and the device support is actually worse than that in version 10-it does not even pick up my PSP as a media player!

Since I was trying new things I thought I would give WinAmp another chance. It does include RSS support, but it's pretty unpleasant to use so I'm stuck with iTunes for that (I tried some other aggregators, but they all pretty much suck). Synchronization wise though, WinAmp has some amazing features! It picks up the PSP with no problems, and not only allows you to synchronize it from selected playlists but also has an 'auto fill' feature that you can use to fill the player up to a certain percentage of full capacity. Both features can be controlled with a really powerful query 'language' and it allows you to specify target directories and so on. It's actually amazing how many synch tools don't support that simple feature! There are two small issues that have been overlooked, but they can sort of be worked around. The first is that you can't specify playlists as a source for the autofill-it always uses the entire library (filtered by the query). The other is that you can't set it to ignore certain files or folders already on the device. This sucks a bit because the autofill always deletes my audio podcasts, so I can only use it when I've listened to everything and am about to download new episodes. Overall though, it looks like WinAmp has won me over again-iTunes is now just my podcatcher.

Spore creature editor at rAge

Spore creature editor, originally uploaded by FlintZA.

I just wanted to quickly post this pic of the Spore creature editor for those that might find it interesting. EA had a demo of it running at rAge behind closed doors in their press room, and they were nice enough to give us a demo (not hands on). The editor does have a simple test mode that opens up a small world and lets you move the creature around in it and see how it behaves, but it's not anything complex with other models or anything.
The editor itself appears to be extremely straightforward and intuitive, and the EA employe demoing for us seemed to be having great fun with it and claimed to find it as enjoyable as the editors in The Sims -which she is apparently a great fan of.
I convinced her to progress the creature past the obvious configuration presented here, and it handled some really wierd limb combinations surprisingly well.
I can't wait to get my hands of the final version of this-I only hope it's coming to the 360!

Booth babes

Booth babes, originally uploaded by FlintZA.

What would a launch be without them :)