Tag Archives: PS3

Who is making a list, checking it twice

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Sony PS3 Playstation network TV spotI know, right? Why won’t her boyfriend take his new Playstation online, where obviously all the fun is? “What’s wrong with him?!” The Sony PS3 spokesman commiserates, but he’s an interested party. So what’s up? Well, we have a clue this week with the Xbox.

By the way, I find Sony’s choice of spokesperson discordantly subversive. I’m guessing marketers of the PS3 have found their target audience watches the Mac vs. PC commercials and identifies with PC.

In a sudden move that has exasperated Xbox users, Microsoft decided that all its game consoles which have been modified to play software obtained through alternative delivery systems (piracy) will now automatically be blocked from their online system.

It make sense, but is it appropriate? If you’ve modded your car, for example to run on another fuel in addition to gasoline, would gas stations have the grounds to shut you out? And it’s not like you put a sticker on it advertising the modification. How would they know?

I think Microsoft’s violation lies more in a Terms of Use contract which permits them to query your machine for your personalizations. What right have they to tell you what you can or cannot do with your equipment, regardless whether you bought it from them? You didn’t rent it. Next are they going to dictate with which peripherals you are allowed to connect it, or atop which pedestal you must behold it?

You may not feel the video gamer’s pain, but look who’s doing the smack-down. What would happen if Microsoft decided to apply the same policy to copies of its operating systems, or office software?

Could it be coming? Google is criticized for knowing too much about internet users as they search the web. The companies who make browsers, including Microsoft, of course know where you go online. Imagine what Microsoft knows about what you do offline. And they are now asserting jurisdiction over your hardware. What if you wanted to turn off your computer, instead of putting it to sleep where it might still be answering queries about you? Maybe Microsoft will decide its Terms of Use won’t let you.

Microsoft hasn’t been above integrating spyware into its applications, creating stealth logs whose existence its programmers deny, even as users wonder why the files regenerate themselves after they’re deleted. Microsoft Windows’ unceasing security vulnerabilities are due entirely to the software exploits it leaves so that its programs are inter-compatible.

If that’s not enough, Microsoft counterinsurgent teams load malware into community open source projects, to give Windows company looking crummy.

Apple too is guilty of overreaching its intellectual rights authority. It recently stopped Psystar from adapting the OS X to work on PCs. And it disabled an element of its Snow Leopard 10.6 release to thwart a Hackintosh adaptation of Mac’s OS for netbook users.

Is the Wii not a technological marvel?

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Social gamingI have to admit I love the Nintendo Wii. Christmas chatter around kids this year was all about the Wii. Parents are thrilled that it reintroduces aerobics to the couch potato genre, but I’m not convinced that Nintendo won’t have to develop a Wii game that simulates Wii play reduced again to minute finger motions, the original purpose of remotes. It will remain to be seen how long already fat players will endure having to stand and power through games that used to be [sedentary] child’s play.

Is the Wii innovative or simply primitive technology revisited? It’s got retro-rougher graphics, they say because it was rushed to market, but obviously it also suits the cheaper hardware. The next generation of games promised for this summer (to match the graphics standards of the 360 or PS3) will require a processor/bus/memory retrofit or my name’s not idiot savant. The Wii has got a gyro remote that requires swinging the thing around to get it to work, the way we used to do to aim the early infra-red remotes, usually while cussing and tapping on the buttons angrily.

Paired with the inferior graphic resolution, the gyro motions themselves are primitive. The player’s gyrations have to be stilted to match the limited options of the video motion. Put the kid outside with a real tennis racket and watch if he doesn’t twitch everything into the net. Unless it’s a whiffle ball perhaps.

Really I was thrilled to see the precision required by the Wii of the bowler’s address and delivery. It reminded me of learning to bowl myself. I remember I got the aiming down, I got the geometry, I got the concentration and the follow through, willing the ball away from the gutter. As I struggled with the haphazard quality of my play, I chanced to glance aside at some real grown up bowlers, unlike the hobbyist parents doing the teaching. These people had muscular arms and hurled the heavy black ball toward the poor immobile bowling pins. Bowling became a whole other ball game.

Is the Wii innovation or gimmick? Both I say. And I’ll not even raise the question with the kids because they love it. I love the Wii vs PS3 commercial, a spoof of the Mac vs PC ad. In effect I think the Wii is that all-American commercial innovation, a reinvention of the better mousetrap.

At least the Wii was cheap, if you discount the likelihood that everybody probably already had consoles and games to match. Now they need Wii games too. But what’s the value of getting the kids out of their bean bags?