Today I bring you the sad, nay, the devastating news that Thoughts on [tech and gaming] News is no more. Read more…
Thoughts on News
YouView, the new IPTV box that is coming to the UK, has announced that the payment methods will not be handled by YouView themselves. CEO, Richard Halton, stated that, as YouView are not providing the content, it is not appropriate that they handle the payment methods, despite the overwhelming consumer preference for a single point of payment.
This could go one of two ways, I feel, it could either be really good for the consumer, or really bad for YouView. Internet content providers – the providers that have built a business on the Internet, not the providers that are trying to port their TV business over to the Internet – have been forced to work with the way the Internet works. This has led, in some cases, to better ads, alternative business models and, most importantly, content that you don’t have to pay for to get.
The successful content providers have managed to make their business work without charging subscription fees, and hopefully this will translate over to IPTV services. Otherwise, IPTV boxes may just fail to take off. Then again, as TV companies move to the net and refuse to change their business model, leaving consumers with no other options if they want to see their favourite shows.
In a slight break of format, this story is not a linked news story, but an observation brought on by the release of PlayStation Move. As I recently wrote about, Sony have announced 3D Blu-ray support will be coming to the PlayStation 3. They have also hyped up the forthcoming 3D games that will be available for that very console. A potentially interesting line of development, however, is a combination of 3D gaming and motion controlled gaming.
Now, I don’t think that the PlayStation Move (or the Wiimote) will offer the best 3D/motion controlled experience, although it can offer a good one. Think about it; the 3D technology (glasses, for now) projects the game world around you (as long as you’re looking at your TV), and through some clever cooperation between the 3D projection and the motion controlling, it appears to you that you are moving objects by touch, rather than controlling something that moves the objects for you.
I don’t like to tout the wonders of Xbox too often, for fear of being labelled a fanboy, but the idea behind Kinect would be perfect for this. Kinect is still to come out and be tested by the market, so its yet to be seen whether it would work well enough for this, and I’m not even sure Xbox is technologically capable of 3D games, but a hands free motion control system married together with 3D could be the next big immersive experience.
Rumours are surfacing that Facebook are planning to create their own smartphone. I don’t claim to be a legitimate news outlet (more a new pundit) so if you want to know more about the rumours, or how valid they are, click the link below. I want to focus on the ‘if they do’ side of this story.
Firstly, the idea of a Facebook made smartphone seems laughable. The main reason being that Facebook is a service that can be encapsulated into one app! iPhone, Android, and a host of other smartphones can all fit the entirety of Facebook into a single application that sits alongside a host of other applications. Basing a phone around one of these applications seems like a backward step.
The bigger point, however, is the fact that Facebook have failed, on a number of occasions, to respect users privacy. They constantly bring out new features that allow you share more and more information with the world, which is fine, but then they opt you into those features without asking, which is not. Whenever a successful company moves into a market that they have no experience in, there is nearly always teething problems to do with the fact that the company can’t adapt to the new market, and wants to do things the familiar way.
In short; I wouldn’t trust a Facebook phone, and I think there has been sufficient bad press over this issues recently that I wouldn’t be alone.
Some other stuff
Softpedia has a posted a list of websites that, they say, let IE9 show off its abilities. The newest iteration of Internet Explorer (beta release) has been made available for download, and seems to be getting a quite positive response. Microsoft do seem to have made it very Chrome-like, and it does seem to be faster, but I’m not sure I’m ready to move over. Anyway, the idea behind the post is simple; website are (if they are well designed) made to be compatible with older browsers. There are ways to make beautiful websites that still work well in older browsers, and, for accessibility reasons, a lot of sites opt to make their site compatible rather than stunning. The sites on this list show off what a website can look like.
Diaspora, the open-source Facebook alternative, has been released in alpha (very early version), and is already being slated for security issues. Diaspora already has a huge mountain to climb, if it intends to take users away from Facebook. That said, security holes in an alpha release of an open source project is hardly reason to believe that they have no hope of ever succeeding.
A teaser for the new Minox camera, the PX3D, claims that it can take 3D images that can be viewed without glasses. I don’t expect this camera to be amazing, and you’re going to need special digital photo frames/displays to view the images in 3D anywhere else beside the camera’s display, but this is just another example of glasses-less 3D creeping into the market. We have a gaming solution in the Nintendo 3DS, a TV solution from Toshiba, coming out later this year, and now a camera. It is only a matter of time before the technology starts to get really cool!
That was your somewhat groggy first Thoughts on [tech and gaming] News for the week. I hope you had a good weekend, and don’t buy a Facebook phone! Check back tomorrow for Tuesdays news round-up.
The Links
Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Internet (OK, not really, but HTML is pretty important!), has declared that he believes everybody should be given free Internet. He’s not talking about broadband, however, but a free ‘low-bandwidth’ connection to the web.
It is a completely relevant point in today’s world, where more and more services, critical and not so critical, are getting a presence on the web. This kind of thinking is showing up more and more, lately, as the Internet becomes integral with society. Whether or not the Internet should be considered a basic need, like water or electricity, is a question that needs answering, but I worry that governments will try and answer it too soon.
Right now, we don’t need the Internet. We can [barely] get everything we need to do without the net. But soon, the Internet will be so integral to day-to-day activities, that it will need to be thought of as a necessity, rather than a luxury. At the very least, it should be considered as important as a telephone line, and as the most sensible way forward would be for the telephone and television programming to move over to the web (in the form of VOIP and IPTV), that will make the Internet even more critical.
Linked, rather tenuously, to that story, is the story that the new Internet connected set-top box, backed by a host of UK broadcast companies, will be out early next year, and it will be called YouView. The YouView box will offer all the services you would expect from a Freeview box, with added bonus that it is connected to the web, and can receive IPTV. Some other features include the ability to see programs that have been on, not just what is to come, and an ‘Apple-esque app store.’
I consider this a good thing because it shows old school broadcast companies getting behind an [partially] IPTV device, and survival of those companies depends on their ability to move to away from the old business models, or at least modify them to suit the Internet.
Rather than the music and movie industry’s approach, of modifying the Internet, the law and consumer behaviour to suit their business model.
Scientist at Imperial College, London have come up with a new type of portable clothing. It’s so portable because it comes in an aerosol can, and you spray it on your body. There is a link in the links section below to a video of this stuff in action… I did. It uses a mix of plastic, solvent, and cotton fibres which are then sprayed on the wearers skin. The solvent then dissolves, leaving a ready made garment.
It doesn’t stick to the wearers skin, it can be re-used, and even washed. But the bit that really makes me think this is cool, is the fact that the top can be dissolved, and the material re-sprayed to make new clothes. The material looks a little thin, though I assume you could just spray more to thicken it up, and it won’t win any fashion competitions but it shows great potential for things like bandages.
Actually, considering some of the things I’ve seen on the news walking down catwalks a fashion shows, a spray on out could win an award.
Some other stuff
ColourLovers has posted an interesting infographic showing 100 brands and the colours they use in their logo. It’s not really a news story, but it is an interesting graphic. I find it interesting that most of the brands seem to have opted for various shades of blue, with red taking up a lot of this image as well. Also, not many brands have a multi-coloured logo, ala Google.
A bug in Firefox, which caused the browser to crash on launch, has been fixed in the latest versions; 3.6.10 and 3.5.15. The bug was fixed very quickly, which was a smart move by Mozilla because, as I mentioned, the it caused the browser to crash at launch, meaning that users could not use the browser. I know Firefox isn’t exclusively used by tech savvy clever people, but it is probably safe to assume that anyone knowledgeable enough to be using Firefox, uses the Internet regularly, and while they can’t open Firefox, they will be opening something else.
Personally, I switched to Chrome shortly after its launch, and never went back.
CNET have a few screenshots up of some Windows Phone 7 apps. There’s nothing particularly ground-breaking, and there wasn’t expected to be, but the screenshots give a nice idea of how things will look under the new Windows mobile platform. The verdict? Looks pretty nice. Possible as a backlash to Apple’s rounded corners, Microsoft have fully embraced the points of a true square in the design of the UI, and it looks good. The tester, however, will be how smooth it runs.
Your last story for the day, and the week, is courtesy of Halo: Reach, again. Microsoft have announced that Halo: Reach took in $200 million on its first day. While this doesn’t top Modern Warfare 2, the current record holder with $401.6 million, or the record holder before that; Grand Theft Auto 4 with $310 million, it did beat the first day sales of its true predecessor, Halo 3 with $170 million, which broke this record on its first day. Got that? Good.
That was my Thoughts on [the tech and gaming] News for the day, and the week. I apologise for the lateness, and the shortness of yesterdays ToN; it was a hectic day. Check back here (or in your RSS reader of choice).
The Links
HTC have announced two new Android handsets; Desire HD and Desire Z. Putting the names aside, for now, the new phones are a an evolutionary step up from the popular Desire original, and runs an improved version of the Sense UI; HTC’s flavour of Android.
The HD can shoot, wait for it, HD video, 720p to be precise, as well as have HD content uploaded to it. Both phones tout better loading times (12 seconds!) and a number of improvements in media and social networking. HTC have also launched a website that will allow users to manage information on their phone from their computer… not exactly new.
All in all, these are some pretty sweet looking handsets, and as I will be looking for a new phone in early 2011, the more pretty sweet phones that come out between now and then, the better. However, HTC are also gearing up to release a Windows Phone 7 handset, and I am really interested to see how that goes; if Windows Phone 7 is as good as it looks, and the hardware is as good as the Desire HD, I may just be tempted to go Microsoft with my next phone.
Sales figures have shown that the new, slimmer Xbox 360 is selling like hot cakes… whatever that means. Sales figures are up 34 percent year-to-date, and as the Xbox is in its fifth year of life, that’s impressive. Annalists are confident that this is not from consumers buying up older model Xbox’s that have had their prices slashed for clearance.
For a large portion of the Xbox 360′s life, it was thought that there would be an Xbox 720, or whatever they’d call it, coming out after about four or five years. Partly because that is how long the original Xbox ran for, and partly because it was felt that the superior hardware of the PS3 would eventually outsell Xbox. I think consumers (myself included) have only just recently began to accept that we may be stuck with the current generation for some time now, and existing Xbox owners, like myself, are finding it justifiable to buy the newer, slimmer, quieter model, as we reach the stage in the consoles life where developers have gotten all they can get from the hardware, and have to start being really creative.
Some other stuff
Sony have announced that the 3.50 update for the PlayStation 3 will bring 3D Blu-ray support… in Japan. There’s nothing particularly amazing about this story, Sony have been pushing 3D (and the hardware that plays it… their hardware) since it became a viable technology. I’m surprised it is not a world wide update; perhaps Japan consume more 3D movie’s than the rest of us.
Barely out of the plastic wrapping, Halo: Reach has broken the record for most concurrent unique Xbox Live users online. This shattered the previous record, set by Modern Warfare 2 last year. It’s not that much of a surprise; Microsoft have really been pushing this game, and there are more Xbox Live users now than when the previous record holders were released. It should be interesting to see what happens when the next Call of Duty game comes out, though.
For some time now, despite the unfettered success of the Wii and Nintendo’s love of making money, the web has been full of rumours of a ‘Wii HD.’ Basically, an evolutionary upgrade of the Wii; better graphics, improved controls, etc. Well, Take-Two CEO, Ben Feder, thinks that the new Sony Move is just that. There are arguments against this line of thought, but, personally, I think he has something. Move isn’t a Wii HD replacement, but in terms of innovation and new ideas, it is just a more powerful, more accurate Wii.
The Links
Nokia have had a lot of negative press recently when it comes to their performance. While the Finnish phone giants hold the largest market share in the world, they have recently failed to release any handsets that have managed to capture the consumers imagination (and money) the way that the iPhone and Android phones have been doing. In fact, if you were to use advertising and hype as your gauge for the current mobile phone players, you could be forgiven for thinking that Nokia are dying out.
Not true, say Nokia.
Nokia have announced that they sell over a quarter of a million (260,000, to be exact) smartphones every day. In the linked article, comparisons are made to iPhone (80,000 a day) and Android (200,000 a day). This news doesn’t entirely surprise me. Nokia have a strong customer base and, in my experience, people don’t associate Nokia with smartphones. My father, for example, owns a Nokia N95, but the only smartphone feature he uses is email.
That isn’t to say that Nokia aren’t in danger of falling behind, as they sometimes appear to be already. They need to start bringing out some sexy handsets, and soon.
This story is a little late, but I missed it last week and it is something I wanted to type about; NPD figures for August show that video games sales are down from last years, by about 10% for consoles, and 14% for software. It would be all too easy to declare the impending doom of the gaming industry, but I think it is worth noting that, last year, there wasn’t a slew of new hardware due out later in the year.
The impending release of Kinect and Move means new games that use the hardware. I’m not an expert in (most things) video game sales trends, but I suspect that a good number of consumers will be holding onto their cash until the new toys come out and, with them, the new games. Microsoft and Sony will be hoping that’s the case.
The University of Rochester, New York, has recently completed a study on non-gamers, which has been published Current Biology. The study took a group of people who have not played games regularly, and made them play games. Half the group were given fast paced shooters; Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament, while the other half were given the slow-paced strategy game; The Sims 2.
After playing the game, the subjects were given a task and a time limit, and the boffins found that the shooter group were able to complete their tasks much quicker. Further to this, there was no loss of accuracy.
It wouldn’t have surprised me to find that gamers who play fast-paced, reflex dependant shooting games would be quicker off the mark with certain tasks, what surprises me is that this was the case for people who weren’t gamers. Effectively, playing the game ‘prepared’ their brain for the tasks that they were given. So, now you know, if you are going to undertake a task against the clock, a game show, perhaps, you should play some Halo before you go!
Twitter are rolling out a new look twitter.com. The new design promises to be ‘faster and richer,’ and among its new features is a side pane that will pull in relevant information, as well as adding things like showing a list of people who have retweeted the post you are looking at, which, I feel, makes the retweet a heck of a lot like the Facebook ‘like.’ I’m typing about this story through CNET’s article as, right now, the new design hasn’t been rolled out to everyone, and I’m not one of those lucky people to get the new look Twitter.
Populate site redesigns usually make the news due to the overwhelmingly negative response from their users – who don’t like change – but as twitter.com has mostly stayed as the very basic core service that Twitter provides, this new design can be likened to a completely new service. Indeed, it may be bad news for the host of other services that have popped up around Twitter. I myself am a Brizzly user, mainly for the community-based trending topic descriptions, but the fact that Brizzly automatically embeds images from places like TwitPic, and videos from YouTube, and now Twitter do that also.
What will happen to these other services, now that Twitter is implementing their bullet point features? It is Twitter’s service, and they are fully within their right to put these other sites out of business by offering a better service.
Some other stuff
Boxee, the makers of the great Internet TV software, uh, Boxee, will be releasing their Boxee Box this November. The Boxee Box is a set top box aimed at bringing the Boxee experience to the living room in a way that the general consumer can easily enjoy. Boxee will also bring more competition into what seems to be an increasingly crowding market for set top boxes, with Apple recently putting out their latest version, and Google soon to release theirs. Boxee is notable because, unlike the current options on the market, Boxee aims to get everything (in terms of content) on their platform. Boxee will cost £199.
Boxee Boxee Boxee!
Finally, Bloomberg have reported that Steve Jobs, the über control freak known for black turtle necks and iPhones, was stopped from boarding his private jet because he was found to be carrying ninja stars. Ninja stars! Words cannot describe the randomness of this story.
That was John Bullock’s Thoughts on [tech and gaming] News for Wednesday, September 15, 2010. Check back tomorrow for some more.
Sorry about all the ‘Boxee’s.’
The Links
In a recent ToN, I typed about the Toshiba 3D TV that didn’t need special glasses to see the 3D part, and the fact that, while it might not be an amazing experience now, its emergence on the market signals the coming of some amazing tech. Well, for a truly amazing 3D experience, in your living room and without the silly glasses, you will need a big, high quality, low power display. Mitsubishi’s latest product is, well it’s not that, but it is a step down that road, just as Toshiba’s TV is for 3D.
Mitsubishi have announced (and more importantly, shown) their new Diamond Vision OLED display. It is made up of smaller bezel-less screens, that fit together seemingly… uh, seamlessly. I did say that Mitsubishi isn’t quite there. The reason for this is that the screen only displays 69dpi, so don’t expect that crystal clear cinematic experience in your home just yet.
Two different groups of boffins, at the University of California, Berkeley and at Stanford University, have developed robot skin!
OK, it is not actually robot skin, but what have created is a thin, flexible material that can detect tiny changes in pressure, comparable to that of human skin. The material consists of a criss-cross of nanometre scale wires topped by a thin rubber sheet; the more pressure applied to an area of the sheet, the more electrical current is allowed to pass through, giving the ability to ‘touch.’
Projected uses include a ‘skin’ for robots, that would allow them to handle fragile objects, and, potentially, to be wrapped around prosthetic limb. I’m not quite clear how this would be relayed to the owner of the prosthetic limb, but it is a cool technology nonetheless.
This technology may yet save humanity; when Skynet becomes self-aware, it may be a little less inclined to destroy humanity if the terminators keep complaining about bone splinters in their hands.
Stephen Fry, one of my favourite intellectual types, today launched his memoirs, and insisted that the physical book is not dead, despite being a well known fan of new technology, and releasing his book in a number of enhanced formats. He makes the point that new media, as good as it is, does not replace old media.
I like this story because, as I have said, I don’t think physical media will die. Its market share will be severely cut by the convenience factor for the consumer, the cost effectiveness of not having to produce the physical side of physical media, and the green aspect also. But paper books, as well as Blu-ray’s, disc games, etc, will always have a home in the collectors/special edition market.
Some other stuff
Yesterday, a certain little Italian plumber celebrated his 25th birthday. Personally, I was more of a Sonic the Hedgehog person. Obviously I played Mario in the early days, but when the battle between the little red plumber and the fast blue hedgehog really broke out, I was in Sonic’s camp. That said, I can’t deny the impact Mario has had on the world of gaming, having practically defined platform gaming as we know it. So, happy belated birthday, Mario.
Halo Reach, the latest instalment in Xbox’s hugely successful FPS franchise, will be launched at midnight around the world. Halo 3, the last (real) part of the Halo series, was one of the biggest selling games of all time, so Reach has a tall task ahead of it to top its predecessor, but expect hundreds of eager gamers to be queueing into the night to get their hands on it. I’m totally useless at first person shooters, so I won’t be one of them, but it will be interesting to see what Bungie do with this one.
The new Xbox 360 dashboard has been leaked to the net. A little was already known thanks to the Kinect beta program, but now, a number of screen shots and videos have emerged, showing what the new dashboard will look like. The main difference seems to be that the overall look is squarer. I may be way off base here, but I get the impression that Windows Phone 7 may have played a small part in the decision to go that way; Phone 7 also has a square tile based layout, and Microsoft will be looking to integrate their services as much as possible.
That was your ToN for Tuesday. Check back tomorrow for more of the same… but with different news.
The Links
Sony have launched an advertising campaign aimed directly at Microsoft and, more specifically, their new Kinect device, which allows gamers to control their Xbox without the need for any physical controller. The associated site, yaybuttons.com, brings up a picture of their new PlayStation Move controller – Sony’s competitor to Kinect, and urges you to click on any of the buttons on the controller.
Every time you click a button, a new message pops up, and ad goes through a seemingly endless diatribe about how buttons are essential to gaming, and that some people want to remove. How crazy is that?
I think this was a good idea by Sony, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The monologue seems more bitter and petty than the fun voice I’m sure it is supposed to be, and, as I alluded to in the first paragraph; it goes on for too long! I have no idea what the ad says towards the end, because I had gotten so bored of clicking the damn buttons that I just closed the page!
The result of this ad? I got sick of pressing buttons. Good work Sony.
Some other stuff
Michael Jackson The Experience has been delayed, and will not be coming to Xbox 360 or PS3 until 2011. This was news to me because, honestly, I had no idea they were making a Michael Jackson game. I played Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on the Sega Megadrive quite a bit when I was still young, but I can’t see what they could possibly base a game on this time round. There are a number of insensitive answers to that question, but I’ll just guess at a dance game!
Google are reported have bought the 3D tour company, Quicksee. Quicksee make those panoramic 3D tours of locations that companies can then put on their website. I last saw one of these around 2003, and wasn’t aware there was a big market for them. Anyway, Techcrunch have their suspicions that this could lead to users being able to upload their own panoramic images to Google Streetview, to supplement the existing service. If Google do buy Quicksee, I can’t think of any other use they might have for the technology, but if they were going to do that, something like Microsoft’s PhotoSynth would be better.
A British army commander will be updating Twitter from the front line soon. This may come as a surprise after news stories of army personnel getting into trouble for their use of social media, and some even facing legal action. It is, however, little more than a publicity stunt.
The commander in question, Colonel Dougie Graham, hopes that the Twitter account will help people connect with the troops out their in Afghanistan, which is a good enough cause, but he is apparently in extensive talks with superiors over what he can and can’t post. I can’t see any twitter updates letting the British public know how woefully under-equipped they are getting through, can you?
With the higher-ups ultimately in control of what Graham can post, this seems of little use to the British public.
Google are entering the location war, but from a different side to the existing services. Rather than do what Facebook has done, which is to do almost exactly what Foursquare and Gowalla were already doing, but with more people, Google have decided to lock down the business side of location based services while no one else is bothering.
Google’s Local Business Center has been renamed Google Places, which isn’t particularly original. It focuses on local search, and offers businesses a number of tools that will help them get business through Google’s local search feature. These services even include a printable bar code that can be scanned using a mobile phone to bring up the businesses Place’s page.
Given Google’s track record with social (Orkut, Buzz?) it seems like a wise move for them not to try and take on the aforementioned social location based services, but even if they weren’t so bad social; their core business (search) and their Google Earth/Streetview services make business orientated location services a no brainer.
That’s all the news that interested me over the weekend. Check back tomorrow for more Thoughts on (the tech and gaming) News.
The Links
As I typed about yesterday, iOS 4.1 is out and it makes some important fixes/feature additions to iOS devices. Predictably, then, news of the 4.1 jailbreak has surfaced.
This jailbreak is a little different, however, as it exploits the boot ROM to break into the phone. This means that the operating system (iOS) is left out of the equation, which, in turn, means that an upgrade to the firmware won’t ‘fix’ the jailbreak. It has not been released for the general populace yet, but it’s something to look forward to.
Continuing the Apple news, they have announced that they will publish the guidelines that are used to judge whether an app is allowed into the App Store. This is great news for developers, because Apple have refused and removed seemingly random apps at times, and no one could be certain why. This could be particularly annoying if you are a small developer who has put a lot of valuable time into making an app, only to find out that it breaks some invisible rules that Apple won’t publish.
This is wise by Apple, because with the ever increasing market share of Android, Apple may soon find themselves a less attractive proposition to developers, and treated their developers like crap won’t help.
An interesting blog by Oliver Chiang for forbes.com talks about the fact that Sony, fifteen years on are pretty much back where they started.
I don’t want to go too deep with this story, because the aforementioned blog post is a good read, and I fully encourage you to read it in full (link in the links section below) but the main point that interests me is that observation that 15 years ago, when Sony first stepping into the gaming arena, they were massive underdogs, despite having superior hardware to their rivals; Nintendo and Sega.
Skip forward a decade and a half, and Sony are, once again, the underdogs to two other big players, despite having superior hardware to Microsofts Xbox and Nintendo’s Wii. Predictably, Sony feel that they will emerge victors in this particular console war.
As ToN is my thoughts on the news, and not a news site, I will share my opinion with you on this; Sony are delusional. I don’t think Sony will vanish from the gaming scene; they are too established and have too much experience in this market to just fall out of it, but to think that they, of all the competitors, will emerge on top is ludicrous. Sony are well known for trying to force their proprietary mediums on people, but it seems fairly certain that digital download will be the majorities preference in the near future, and while I think Sony will eventually come around to idea, they may be dragged there.
Some other stuff
Google Instant, the new real time search results that have been in the news for the last 72 hours solid, seems to be getting touted by a number of tech news outlets as a great thing for mobile search. This makes sense to me as the few seconds Google claim this service will save me on my laptop or desktop don’t concern me too much; I’m a fast typist, but I am yet to use an input device (T9 keypad, iPhone keyboard, etc) that allows me to enter text anywhere near as quickly. Google Instant may just be the answer. At least until we get a better input device… telepathy, maybe.
Apple have made a rare u-turn on the previous edict that barred developers from using any tools, other than Apple’s anointed tools; C, C++ or Objective C. There are good reasons for wanting developers to only use certain tools, but really the restriction was a dig at Adobe, who make Flash, which has a lot of developers. Having to write the same code twice for two different platforms is a bit of a turn off to a large number of developers, so this is a good move by Apple because , as I mentioned above, Android is fast becoming the platform to be if you want exposure, and if developers are forced to choose between them, iOS may lose out.
That’s my thoughts on the news for this Friday, brief as it may be. Check back here (or in your RSS reader… remember those?) on Monday for another dose of opinionated news punditry.
The Links
Today’s ToN is very game-centric – this is the news that interests me – so for the people who are more interested in the tech side of ToN; I’ll type about that first.
Apple have released iOS 4,1 for the iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G and iPod Touch 2G and later. The update brings a number of new features to the aforementioned devices, as well as some security patches. 4.1 brings the recently announced Game Centre to iOS devices, and thus marks the beginning of Apple’s foray into the gaming industry.
On a more personal note, the update will supposedly improve performance on iPhone 3G’s running iOS 4. As an owner of a 3G running iOS 4, which has had its battery life reduced to less than 12 hours and is about as smooth an experience as pulling my earlobe across a rusty saw, I welcome the chance to return my expensive piece of hardware back into something that I can use.
Yesterday, I typed about Google’s logo, and how the web was abuzz with predictions that this was to do with their instant search results. Well, it turns out the web was correct. Google have made live their instant search. Now, when you type a search string on the main Google page, the search box will jump to the top of the page at your first keystroke and search results will instantly show up based on what you have typed.
The search box also shows greyed out letters to complete your search query to what Google thinks you are typing. There’s not really much to say that wasn’t said in yesterdays ToN, although it is worth mentioning that Google have estimated that this feature will save 11 hours of human time per second, when you combine all searches at any given time. This just shows you the kind of time Google have on their hands.
Now, the gaming news! The first signs of a new gaming console have emerged as the man behind the Metroid series, Yoshio Sakamoto, has stated that Nintendo’s next home console will ‘blow your mind.’ He didn’t really say anything about the console in terms of features or specs, but his words lead me (and most of the web, seemingly) to the conclusion that Nintendo are at least working on a new console.
This news isn’t exactly shocking; the Wii is by far the weakest of the current line up of home consoles, and with both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 both bringing out motion controllers, the novelty of the Wii’s control system will do little to move more units. Add to that, the lack of any real storage space for downloadable contact, the lack of HD and the graphics that are easily rivalled (and surpassed) by a number of mobile phones these days, and you can see why Nintendo might want to get something new out of the gates.
As to whether it will have the same success that the Wii has enjoyed, it seems unlikely. Simply bringing out a ‘Wii HD’ will do little to win over Xbox or PlayStation gamers, nor convince Wii owners that the ‘upgrade’ will be worth it. That said, if Yoshio really believes that the new console will blow our minds there may be something ground breaking in the works.
Microsoft have announced that an Xbox 360/Kinect bundle (the new Xbox, of course) will be out in the US this November for $400. The bundle will include Kinect Adventures, and works out at around $50 cheaper than if you were to buy them separately.
I had intended, from the day of the announcement, to buy a new Xbox 360, but held off once it was released because I knew that I would also be buying Kinect at some point, and as my Elite is working just fine right now, there was no rush and I could wait for a good Xbox/Kinect bundle. I have to say, this doesn’t look like it. I may be being naive, but $100 seems like a fairer discount.
It may be a moot point, however, as this is a US bundle, and I live in the UK. American companies tend to forget about currency exchange when selling their devices over here, and even at times when the pound is worth 2 dollars, a $1899 device is sold here for £1499. I can do maths, you know!
Some other stuff
One of my games of all time is Mass Effect 2. I’m a little behind on the DLC, so I have gotten around to playing the latest addition, Lair of the Shadow Broker, but IGN have posted a review, and the DLC sounds awesome! It’s approximately 3 hours, has some stunning environments and some great story (according to IGN). I recently started playing through Mass Effect 2 again, to get some of those achievements I missed, and see some of the other story options. So this DLC will definitely be sucked onto my Xbox before long.
Microsoft have announced that Final Fantasy XIII will be released on the Japanese Xbox. This is only really worth mentioning because, while it was originally a multi-platform game, it was only released on the PlayStation 3 in Japan. I think this about-face may be a sign that Xbox is doing better than expected in Japan; a very Sony loyal country.
Update: Since I began writing this story, news has come out that Xbox/Kinect bundle, mentioned above, will be coming to UK 6 days later than the US (November 10), and will be £299. This is about £30 cheaper than buying a new Xbox 360 and Kinect separately, so it works out about the same discount as in the US.
That’s all the news and opinion for today. Check back tomorrow for more rambling, if I’ve managed to put Mass Effect 2 down for long enough to type it.
The Links
Stuff worth typing about
Microsoft’s director of game platform strategy has announced on his blog that he will be leaving Microsoft for the sunny shores of Amazon. Andre Vrignaud stated in his blog post that, while he is excited about where Microsoft is going, he is intrigued by what Amazon is looking to do.
It is ‘what Amazon is looking to do’ that has most people talking, however. People, from developers to CEO’s, move from company to company fairly frequently; companies look to bring in established talent or fresh blood to keep their business alive, and employees like to keep things interesting for themselves also. As someone in my sixth year at my current day job, I can understand the appeal of moving jobs to keep yourself sane.
So there is nothing unusual about the move itself, the bigger question is what it means. What is Amazon looking to do? Andre pretty much summed it up in his post with the line;
Can’t really talk about details at this point, but it’ll become pretty evident soon enough… and you all know where my passions lie.
It seems at the moment that every major tech company is making a move in the every tech market. Amazon have their video streaming service, their music store and their eBooks, and seem to be making a move on the gaming market. Apple have iTunes, Apple TV, and are making more of a push on the gaming and eReader front. Microsoft has Zune(kind of) and Xbox, which is incorporating more and more video. Google are into everything, but that is not unusual.
If things continue, we should expect to see a Microsoft eReader, an Amazon phone and an Apple gaming console (iBox?) before the end of 2011!
Researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz have successfully created a tiny optical device and integrated it into a silicon chip that, basically, allows optical signals to be received directly, rather than being converted to an electronic signal first.
There are implications for quantum computing in this story, but what I am most excited about is what this could mean for power. The fact that the signal no longer has to be converted to (or from, for that matter) an electronic signal means lower power consumption, and that is good. Computing power has progressed rapidly, holding with Moore’s Law, and these days, a huge number of us carry a small computer in our pockets (I’m talking about your phone!) all the time.
It would not be inconceivable in the near future for our phones to replace our desktop computers and laptops, and instead of buying a laptop, you buy a laptop-like enclosure with a screen, keyboard, media drive, etc, and your phone just slots into. What’s the one thing that is hampering our progress to this glorious future? Battery power.
The reason for this is simple; computing power may progress according to Moore’s Law, but batteries are chemical, an entirely different field of science, and relatively little improvement on the battery front, when compared to improvements in processing power. It would seem that the the most effective way around this, until some major advancement in small scale power storage is made, would be to lower the power requirements of the hardware, and things like this optical device (just to bring you back to the story) and OLED screens are doing just that.
It shouldn’t be too long before we have mobile devices that can run for longer than their predecessors on the same amount of power, despite being ridiculously more powerful.
My final story for today is the new Google logo. I like the fact that Google put the effort into creating these logos; it makes me feel better about Google when some of the more worrying stories emerge, but they do it often so I don’t like to talk about it unless it’s really cool, because it feels like cheating, or scraping the barrel for news.
Todays logo, however, has significance in the wider Google picture. At the moment, when you go to the Google homepage, the logo is greyed out. As you type your search query, the Google logo colours up, one letter at a time, in sync with your keystrokes. If you delete your query, the letters are greyed out again. The general consensus (mine included) is that this is to do with the ‘live results’ search that they have been testing.
The live results are, well, just what they sound like. Instead of you typing a search query and pressing enter to get your results, the results update as you type. So if you were searching for ‘John Bullock,’ as you typed, you would be shown search results for ‘J,’ then ‘Jo,’ then ‘Joh,’ and so on. This is a nice feature, and it is no surprise that Google are paying close attention to their search engine as (I believe) it is their main source of income.
Google currently have the lions share of the search market, and competitors, like Bing, have tried eat into that share with big marketing campaigns and pretty homepages. While I wouldn’t class myself as a ‘fanboy’ of anything, I am a fan of Google, and it is good to see them rolling out features like this. That said, I hope they give you the option to turn it off; I imagine the constantly changing search results as you type could become annoying if you spend as much time on Google as I do.
Some other stuff
2K have announced TopSpin 4; the next instalment in their Tennis sim series. While no real detail has been given, 2K promise an ‘uncanny level of realism.’ I was a big fan of TopSpin 3, and I’ll be happy if they just improve the movement of my player so he doesn’t run like he’s soiled himself!
Samsung have announced that they will be releasing a dual-core processor for mobile platforms, codenamed ‘Orion.’ This isn’t a massive story, as a number of companies already have dual-core mobile processors out, but I felt it tied in nicely with the above story about our phones getting more and more powerful.
Finally, in news that makes me cry, a story on Cnet by Chris Matyszczyk, about a Twitter post from Dustin Curtis (@dcurtis) saying that, allegedly, 3% of Twitter’s infrastructure is taken up by Justin Bieber. Given the size of Twitter’s operation, this translates to racks of server space. Depressing.
That’s all the news that interested me today. Check back tomorrow for more of the same… but with different stories. Hopefully.