Click to see the comic on its original page.
Trust me, kids: learn to play a musical instrument reasonably well before college.
As for accordion playing, the “coolness graph” looks like this:
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Tag: Games
Categories
XBox 360’s New Controllers
It Just Feels Right
I’ve had my XBox 360 for nearly a year now (having won one in a trivia game at last October’s Ajax Experience conference), and it’s been the best experience I’ve ever had with any Microsoft product…because it doesn’t feel like a Microsoft product. Where most Microsoft “consumer” products make you feel as if they were designed by the “B-team” — the ones who didn’t make the cut for the stuff aimed at corporate customers — the XBox 360 feels right. I don’t, as Danny O’Brien puts it, “feel like I’m eating out of the trash bins outside a cubicle farm”.
(According to Scoble, one of the reasons the XBox is a good gaming console is that their headquarters were purposely located miles away from the Microsoft campus.)
The XBox 360 now occupies a nice middle ground between the inexpensive casual/party-game oriented Wii and the overly expensive grind-away-for-hours PlayStation 3, and the two new controllers suggest that the XBox folks know this and are pressing this advantage.
For the Hardcore: The Chatpad
The Chatpad marries the standard XBox 360 controller to a QWERTY thumb keyboard, which I assume will be used for in-game communications and IMing among the more hardcore XBox Live set. They’ve been talking about this for some time, and there’s been demand for this sort of thing, so this isn’t a surprise.
What I find more interesting is the other controller…
The “Big Button” Controller
The upcoming Scene It? game will be bundled with four of these controllers, which have the standard A/B/X/Y buttons and a different-coloured giant button for each one so you can tell them apart. Unlike the standard or Chatpad XBox controllers, whose design seems to be for the more serious gamer playing alone or as a twosome, these controllers’ design suggest that they’re for ther casual gamer in a more social setting. It’s apparent that the XBox team is learning lessons from the Wii.
When I first saw these controllers, I thought of two things:
- First, I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to resurrect the game You Don’t Know Jack, one of the most fun computer games I’ve ever played. The game is simple enough for them to turn it into something you could download from XBox Live, and I think it would be a hit. I’m not the only one; check out the comments to this Engadget story on the Big Button controller.
- I was also reminded of Microsoft’s trackball for kids, the Easyball:
The Japanese publishing company Enterbrain reports that the Nintendo Wii is outselling other consoles by a wide margin in Japan. Here are the June 2007 sales figures:
| Console | Units sold in Japan, June 2007 |
|---|---|
| Nintendo Wii | 270,974 |
| Sony PlayStation 3 | 41,628 |
| Microsoft XBox 360 | 17,616 |
And if you think the Wii is cleaning up, wait until you see the figures for the DS Lite, which in Japan outsold all the other game console systems combined in the last week of June:
| Console | Units sold in Japan, week ending June 24, 2007 |
|---|---|
| Nintendo DS Lite | 163,888 |
| Nintendo Wii | 65,582 |
| Sony PSP | 32,984 |
| Sony PS2 | 11,962 |
| Sony PS3 | 9,581 |
| Microsoft XBox 360 | 3,369 |
| Nintendo Game Boy Micro | 284 |
| Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP | 130 |
That’s right, the PS2, which was first released in Japan on March 4, 2000, is outselling the PS3. This notable fact, in combination with the sales of the DS Lite and Wii lead me to these (admittedly obvious) conclusions:
- Price matters.
- Game selection matters (they’re still cranking out new games for the PS2).
- User interface matters.
- Microsoft doesn’t matter (not in the Japanese console market, anyway).
I expect that someone from Sony will release a statement that says something like “the Japanese market is quite unlike the American one” that points to things like the lower PC penetration in Japan, the fact that the XBox 360 is a non-entity there while it’s hot stuff over here, and that the Japanese idea of fun is different from ours, if their game shows are any indication.
MMORPGs Build Business Skills?
A study released by IBM and collaboration software maker Seriosity found significant parallels between business leaders and MMPORG gamers.
MMPORG games, which include World of Warcraft, Eve Online and EverQuest, can include millions of players who come together in various groups to accomplish a specific mission or task.
Gamers learn collaboration, self-organization, risk taking, openness, influence and how to earn incentives when involved in a MMPORG, according to a study of 200 members of IBM’s internal gaming community.
“Smart organizations are recognizing valued employees who play online games and apply their skills and experiences as virtual leaders to their ‘real world’ jobs,” says Jim Spohrer, IBM Research Center’s director of services research.
Half of survey participants said playing MMPORGs improved their “real world” leadership skills, while 4 out of 10 surveyed indicated they have applied such game leadership techniques to the workplace.
The survey found that leadership roles are far more fleeting among MMPORG players than in the real world. Leadership is viewed as a role an individual plays to accomplish a specific task, rather than one that remains for an indefinite duration.
I personally know a couple of big-shots who spend a fair bit of time playing World of Warcraft, even when they’re on the road: Joi Ito and my boss’ boss’ boss, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss. Perhaps I should buttonhole fearless leader and see if I can’t get him to do a podcast interview about his adventures on World of Warcraft.
The Dangers of World of Warcraft
I can’t resist including the comic below, The Dangers of World of Warcraft in this article. It’s an old “Dangers of Alcoholism” comic re-jigged to poke fun at people hooked on this very addictive game. Click it to see the full-sized version.
Click the comic to see it at full size.
Comic courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
The new trailer for Rockstar’s upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV came out today. I really want this sucker for my birthday!
Click the picture to see the trailer.
I rather like the music for the trailer, but am no longer hip enough to identify it. Can anyone tell me what it is?
I was 12 when the 80’s began and 22 when they ended, so the music of that decade is pretty much seared into my consciousness. Hence my jumping for joy when I found out that a new Guitar Hero game featuring 80s rock is due on July 17th. Here are the tracks known to be included with the game:
- Asia – Heat of the Moment
- Billy Squier – Lonely Is the Night
- Bow Wow Wow – I Want Candy
- Dio – Holy Diver
- Eddie Money – Shakin’
- Extreme – Play With Me
- Faster Pussycat – Bathroom Wall
- Flock of Seagulls – I Ran (So Far Away)
- Poison – Nothin’ But A Good Time
- Police – Synchronicity II
- Quiet Riot – Bang Your Head (Metal Health)
- Ratt – Round & Round
- Skid Row – 18 And Life
- Twisted Sister – I Wanna Rock
As far as I can tell, it’s a PlayStation 2 exclusive. Since I am the owner of a PS2 (a Christmas present from my lovely and very understanding wife), I am left with one complaint: Where the Hell is the AC/DC?!
Party at my house on July 17th!
Categories
Microsoft’s Midnight Surprise
One minute after midnight tonight, Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division — the folks behind the XBox and Zune — will announce “something totally new…and it’s going to change the way people interact with technology.”
Here’s what Gizmodo has to say:
The timing is good, since tomorrow is when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get to point fingers at each other under the grandfatherly gaze of Grand Vizier Walt Mossberg, and in these heady iPhone days, Gates needs all the ammo he can get. But what the heck is it? We’re convinced Zune 2.0 is still a ways off, but then again, what else would this division be up to? Stay tuned, and we’ll get back to you with the details right around midnight.
PC World takes Gizmodo’s point and runs with it a little farther:
…while the two will likely talk about the last three decades of computing, when it comes to current tech Jobs is walking in armed with major-league cool. I’m sure Gates is hoping this new techno-thingie will let him talk about new Microsoft developments without audience members snickering.
Whatever it is, it’s not likely to be worth staying up for, but I’ll be up at midnight anyway, so I’ll report on what it is they’re unveiling.