Trivergence: The Internet of Everything

I've been talking about "digital divergence" lately (the counter-revolution to the debunked digital convergence that never happened; see here for more). Turns out that I was too little and too late, because Andy Zimmerman of Accenture proclaimed the TRIvergence 4 years ago.

Trivergence is the connected world of devices everywhere, some of which have no direct user interface. It's a smart TV, controlled by an iPhone, streaming video from Netflix. It's a fleet of GPS embedded vehicles, monitored from a PC (or, again, an iPhone), streaming route data to a server somewhere. Trivergence is the separation of 1) network of processing power/storage, 2) user interface/control, and 3) disparate devices.

As "trivergent" applications and devices continue to propagate into everything you see/touch, the question is who will control them? Is it Google, aggregating control into a web portal, maybe built around something like their App Engine? Is it Apple with a proprietary suite of devices and software? Is it Verizon, who already controls the network that brings you voice, video, internet, and wireless?

Or maybe what's more interesting is who doesn't control have control: Intel and Microsoft. Trivergence completely removes dependence on Windows and x86.

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"Minimum Viable Product" & Community Game Funding

Minimum Viable Product = the version of a product with just enough features to get money and feedback from early adopters. It could be nothing but Google ad or a landing page asking for signups. The gist is that if you can get customers to take the first step, then you've established you've got at least a semblance of product/market fit, and you refine from there. This is a methodology I got put on to by Eric Ries (via Harlan Beverly) and is one of those little nuggets of wisdom that can dramatically change the way you think about going to market. Love it.

In the games industry, things are done 100% the opposite way. Years before launch, the project leads decide on features, framework, story, etc. They get their $50M check and they build the whole thing out. Then, launch day rolls around and all of a sudden you've got Crysis on your hands, and everyone is wondering what the heck happened along the way.

Maybe the Minimum Viable Product in the games industry is asking gamers to fund development up front. I think gamers know what they want. If you told me right now you were making a PC game which was going to focus on a quality 100-player team multiplayer experience with no lag and lots of space filled with huge things to blow up, I would definitely pony up to make it happen. You wouldn't need screenshots, fancy trailers, or a Call of Duty logo to hook me, either.

Gabe Newell said this a few months ago:

What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'

So move financing from something that occurs between a publisher and a developer… Instead have it be something where funding is coming out of community for games and game concepts they really like.

Not only does this method prove the viability of a concept and reduce risk for the developer (potentially lowering the end cost as well?), but you might even solve a slew of problems that are plaguing the industry, including piracy/DRM and the fear of investing in new IP's. Plus, all of those early adopters become your built in marketing team. There's even a service that already supports setting this type of model up. How can this not work?

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Smaller Business Doesn't Automatically Equal More Agile Business

Lou Gerstner, Chairmain/CEO of IBM from 1993-2002, brought the company back from a dying has-been to a relevant, powerful force which helped to usher in the internet age.

In his memoir "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" (2002), Gerstner writes:

"For much of my business career, it has been dogma that small is beautiful and big is bad. The prevailing wisdom has been that small companies are fast, entrepreneurial, responsive, and effective. Large companies are slow, bureaucratic, unresponsive, and ineffective.

This is pure nonsense. I have never seen a small company that did not want to become a big company. I have never seen a small company that didn't look with envy on the research and marketing budgets of larger competitors or on the size and reach of their sales forces...

Big matters. Size can be leveraged. Breadth and depth allow for greater investment, greater risk taking, and longer patience for future payoff.

It isn't a question of whether elephants can prevail over ants. It's a question of whether a particular elephant can dance. If it can, the ants must leave the floor."

The turn-around that IBM experienced was nothing short of extreme, both in it's scope and the amount of time in which it was achieved. It took just 4 years for IBM to come back from the brink of bankruptcy in 1993 to surpassing its previous highest stock price. Since then, the company has grown to many times its previous size, and is now the world's largest and profitable IT company with revenue exceeding $100B, the majority of which is comprised of new lines of business.

Business agility is a skill, not a given because you are small.

That being said, the David v. Goliath story that gets spun a thousand times over in this industry (I've definitely done this myself) is a load of crap. Whether it's the new wave of web 2.0 companies, independent game developers, or boutique PC shops, you have got to be a true innovator with lots of smart people and a little bit of luck to succeed. The market is not forgiving because you are battling bigger companies. Customers do not make purchasing decisions based on your size (and if they do, they'll go with the bigger company not the smaller). And while smaller companies have the potential ability to do very specific things better or more fully service very niche groups, don't kid yourself that someone with $$ couldn't commoditize what you do (if they aren't already!).

The only way to keep from having to leave that dance floor is to stay ahead of that elephant's feet!

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NVIDIA, Run, Don't Walk, From x86

Even though NVIDIA has been trumpeting for a year now that the era of the GPU is upon us, the fact of the matter is that everything you'd ever call a computer or a computer-like device needs a CPU. And they don't have one while both of their competitors do.

Problem? NVIDIA says no, of course. But it is. It's a big problem, and that's played out pretty hugely over the past year.

No matter what NVIDIA does while they are dependent on someone's CPU platform, they're at a disadvantage. They don't have the muscle, financial or otherwise, to grow the GPU market faster or bigger than the CPU market, and in the mean time they are going to have to continue to deal with 1) legal woes over even being able to compete at all (as in chipsets), or 2) with alleged "anti-competitive" practices stunting their ability to sell product that is legal (as in ION).

Further, the high-end gaming market that used to be NVIDIA's bread and butter is all but gone. Gone are the days of the $1500 worth of GPU's in system, a victim of the console-centrism of the games industry, the depressed economy, and AMD's onslaught in mid-range of the market. In fact, the discrete GPU business as a whole isn't what it used to be for NVIDIA, so, regardless of what NVIDIA has to say about GPU vs. CPU, the fact is that they they don't own the GPU market anyway.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel here, so I say an exit to more promising markets is in order. If NVIDIA isn't going to get into bed with AMD, they need to get to dive in headfirst-bet-the-company-style with ARM. x86, although a massive market, is not the only game in town, and the only way to truly fight Intel is to get out from under their shadow completely. Fight x86 from the bottom up!

I've been talking about the "digital divergence" for a while. In a nutshell, it means that computers will be freaking everywhere, and you'll probably use those "other" computers more than your main PC. They are in your TV, in your printer, your phone, your Zune, and probably will be wired into your eyeball before long. The market is already huge and is continuing to grow at breakneck spead now that smartphones/MID's/netbooks are taking over and Windows is irrelevant. And ARM is the driver for this stuff because it's so tiny and cheap and power efficient. It's a completely different animal from x86, and NVIDIA is the type of company that can make ARM a real contender with some real graphics technology. That's the opportunity, the door is open.

There is this fantastic book that, if you haven't read, you should: "Good to Great", by Jim Collins. Two of the chapters are focused around "Disciplined Thought" in the mind of the people in the driver seat of companies that aspire to be "great". It's defined as "confronting the brutal facts" about your business' position or situation, and having the ability to find a focus that is based around the simple, targeted thing that you can become the best in the world at.

For NVIDIA, that thing does not include x86.

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The Inevitable Bleak Future of PhysX

When Ageia hit the scene in 2002, they were a hardware company, plain and simple. The gem of their IP was absolutely their physics engine, which must have been written from the beginning to specifically shine when offloaded onto parallel processors. Their product was a physics engine, but their business model was that of an independent hardware vendor (reminds me of Bigfoot Networks a little). The rest is history, a vicious catch 22 that was insurmountable by such a little fish: Game developers didn't adopt PhysX because there was no install base, and Ageia couldn't sell their hardware because no games actually used it.

So, when NVIDIA stepped in last year, that seemed like a real good answer to the problem. But what actually happened was PhysX went from being proprietary technology with a miniscule market (that is, PC enthusiasts willing to shell out the cash for a PhysX card), to being a proprietary technology with a much bigger market -- but still too small to achieve critical mass and become a standard. That's right, 100 million CUDA-ready GPU's isn't enough, and that's because physics tech is now tied up in GPGPU and parallel computing trends, and all of that is industry-transforming stuff. Parallel computing and GPGPU is an emerging platform, and NVIDIA isn't a company in the position to control it. Ageia was too small to own the hardware-accelerated-physics market, and NVIDIA is too small to own the parallel computing platform.

Newton couldn't control physics -- neither can NVIDIA.
Platform technologies in the PC industry typically can't be proprietary when we're talking about interconnects. And really, they shouldn't be, because these types of technologies are what enable different segments of the industry to work with each other. Take PCI and USB, for example, the development of which was largely done by Intel (with industry support), and then made available royalty-free. That was the plan from day 1, because with standards in place, the entire industry was able to focus on creating products (cameras, printers, sound cards, etc etc) that consumers everywhere could easily use, instead of being focused on if consumers are going to be able to use them at all. The goal wasn't to control the interconnect, it was to give it away so the entire market would benefit and grow.

And that's really what we're talking about here with PhysX running exclusively on NVIDIA's CUDA. For a software developer that's building any product, including games, based on GPU acceleration through CUDA, they are automatically limiting their potential market. Even if NVIDIA gives all of the tools and tech to them to create their product, the whole deal is soured by their dependence on NVIDIA. Who wants their market to be smaller than it potentially should be? Why cut out ATI and Intel customers as potential buyers? What if NVIDIA loses market share? Software developers would absolutely rather be programming products for use in all parallel processing environments, be they NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel, and GPUs or multi-core CPUs.

OpenCL will swallow up CUDA software
The market has been pretty clear on what it's looking for, if you look at adoption rates. NVIDIA has generated plenty of press around its tech, but if you look at what's actually out there, there's only one title that really passes for a decent gaming title: Mirror's Edge. Anand Lal Shimpi just recently wrote a pretty comprehensive review of available CUDA/PhysX software, and the verdict was a big "meh".

But even if there was better stuff available, OpenCL (or possibly DX11 Compute) is the elephant in the corner. OpenCL is what software developers want, that's a fact, because it's hardware agnostic. C for CUDA holds no benefits over OpenCL, and since OpenCL can plug right into CUDA, isn't it pretty irrelevant then?* When OpenCL materializes, developers are going to be porting their CUDA software to it as fast as they can.

Where does that leave PhysX?
PhysX is like collatoral damage in this whole drama. NVIDIA is using PhysX as a pawn in their war with AMD by trying to use it to grow their own market share only through keeping it an exclusive technology. I think that's stunting the enormous future potential of the product itself, though, considering the market forces at work. NVIDIA should instead be pushing OpenCL like crazy, which will inevitably become a standard anyway, and grow the entire market (with their piece of the pie along with it). They'll never control the "parallel computing platform", so why waste PhysX trying?

NVIDIA should have taken a look at Intel's playbook on this one. Intel bought up Havok back in 2007, but left it to function as a viable business. It runs on all hardware, and was even spotted running on AMD GPU's via OpenCL. Havok is well-paid by developers for their engine and they undoubtedly have an exciting future ahead of them continuing to innovate in their space.

PhysX, on the other hand, is still free. NVIDIA gives it away, just like Ageia did, with the expectation that it will create demand for its products and generate profit that way. But what happens down the line when that strategy continues to fail? Will NVIDIA start asking developers for payment then? How do you think that bait and switch is going to go down?

NVIDIA should have turned PhysX into the de facto physics engine for the parallel computing revolution that's fully underway -- but as an autonomous, profitable, and viable business. I think physics is going to be a huge market force in the near future, and coupled with NVIDIA's expertise and interest in GPGPU and their relationships in the industry, PhysX could have been a cornerstone technology and key part of a massive industry paradigm shift. Instead, it's going end up a footnote, right next to CUDA.

* I think it's fair to say, though, that CUDA is irrelevant when OpenCL matures. NVIDIA has had some very cool design wins with CUDA, and there are early adopters in the developer community who were waiting for this technology and are absolutely embracing it now that it's here. So, looking at this from NVIDIA's perspective, CUDA can be seen as their way of pioneering the GPGPU space while OpenCL is being worked out. After all, they are part of the OpenCL consortium and are working in some capacity to bring that tech to the market. So, in the mean time and since they are so far ahead of anyone else in this space, why not put CUDA out on the market and use it as a competitive advantage while they can?

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No Place for Windows in the Living Room Anymore

Digital convergence is a myth, not gonna happen (correct me if I'm wrong that this isn't even being debated anymore). The error in the first place was in the interpretation of Moore's Law: As engineers were able to pack more and more power/functionality onto a piece of silicon, the sea change didn't happen at the high-end where one super-chip would have the capability to do everything. Instead, it happened at the low-end, where even ARM-based processors can now do incredible things. So it's almost like we've got the complete opposite, a digital divergence, where devices everywhere can do what only our PC's could in the past. That mentality is being translated directly into consumer electronics that exist in the living room.

That's got big implications for the Home Theatre PC as we know it. Ever since video cards shipped with composite outputs, and ATI's incredibly forward thinking All-In-Wonder line allowed TV control, capture, and time-shift on the desktop, the vision of that all-powerful PC at the TV has captured the hearts of enthusiasts everywhere. But the functions of what the traditional HTPC was doing isn't the possession of Windows anymore. In fact, anything that can run a browser at this point can fulfill the functions of a HTPC, and what people want are consumer electronic appliance-type devices that work like the rest of the stuff that plugs into their TV, not a PC. They always did. Except, now, these CE devices can actually do what we always wanted them to.

Who even watches "TV" anymore?
I haven't had cable since I was in college, and I honestly don't miss it. Much of my generation has chosen to substitute video games for entertainment instead of TV, but when we do want to watch prime-time programming, there are "other ways" to go about it. Those ways that are legal include major network websites, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, Netflix on-demand, and iTunes -- and this is not a comprehensive list by any means. Between all of this, renting movies, and playing games, I have more than enough to keep myself occupied without spending $50-$100+ a month for cable.

So the question is really just how to get this stuff onto your TV, and honestly that's the easy part. Like I said, anything that runs a browser (which is everything) can access the content, and the vast majority of modern computers (desktops, laptops, netbooks, Macs, whatever) have HDTV support out of the box. But the devices that people actually want are super simple to use and cheap*. You can get Netflix and Amazon Video on the X-Box, integrated into some Blu-Ray players, and even on this neat little $99 box. You can get all that, plus Blockbuster and Youtube on TIVO's newest boxes. And how about AppleTV? Everything on iTunes. God help Microsoft when Apple opens up the appstore to AppleTV and people are playing games using their iPhones as controllers.

Sharing Media
One of the main things the Windows "Media Center" was supposed to accomplish was giving you a way to organize, find, and view your local content. But who is really doing that at their TV? Sharing pictures and videos is one of the main features of social networking sites, because people want to use the internet to share their content with family and friends instantly, where ever they are. You send content right into their hand on their smartphone, you don't make them come and sit next to you on your couch. And music? Having a 300GB collection of pirated MP3's is so 2001. Last.fm, iTunes, and the Zune are the obvious future. $15 / month for unlimited access to Microsoft's Zune Marketplace? Yes plz -- no dedicated NAS required.

Gaming on a Windows PC? Not if Microsoft can help it.
The HTPC was also supposed to be a way to play your PC games on the big screen. If you can get past the obvious problems with this, like the fact that the keyboard/mouse interface doesn't work unless you're sitting at a desk, you're going to come up against the fact that gaming in the living room is what consoles are for. The games were made for that environment and the prices are more in line with a CE product (after all, how many relatively expensive gaming PC's do you want to maintain in your house?). Microsoft, ironically, doesn't really care for you to game on Windows at all, let alone in your living room.

And we're just getting started with all of this. Windows as a whole, as an ecosystem, is under fierce attack, and I'm not sure Microsoft is really focused on trying to fight that battle in the living room. One thing is clear: if the traditional HTPC is going to have any place in the future outside of enthusiast circles, Microsoft would need to be making some huge moves right this minute. I don't see it.

* This is the same conversation we have around console vs. PC gaming. Consoles make sense for the mass market because those are gamers that don't give a lick about hardware and just want to play games. The console is to the gaming PC as CE devices at the TV are to the HTPC.

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Future Games Will Battle Over Physics, not Graphics

The development of game engines that aim to achieve higher and higher graphical fidelity has largely reached a plateau.  People are still gawking at the Crysis and COD4 engines, released back in 2007, because there is still nothing that has been released that looks better.  It's actually kind of hard to figure out how that would be possible, anyway, when it's basically impossible to distinguish between the game and a photograph.  And maybe that's the rub for the developers, that if they spend however many millions of dollars to try and make a better looking engine than Crysis, is that really going to sell more games and give them a tangible ROI when there's already an engine sitting there that looks so good?  Probably not.

But that doesn't mean that the quest for higher realism in games is over -- far from it.  The battleground, however, is shifting toward a focus on physics and AI as developers learn to turn picture perfect virtual environments into something that acts like the real world.  Take, for example, COD:WAW's addition of flamethrowers by Treyarch into the COD4 engine.  Or Far Cry 2, which I recently blogged about being at the absolute cutting edge of this trend: interactive flora and fauna, environmental destructibility, realistic environmental fire behavior, integration of real time and weather.   This is the future of high-end software.

There's a raging war, though, around this technology that will define the future of the market, and it's aggressively fed by the dealings of Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA.  These guys all use game developers like pieces on a chess board, and big design-in wins are expensively bought and widely celebrated in the media. They've all got their angle -- NVIDIA has PhysX running on their GPU, Intel has Havok running on their CPU, and AMD is porting whatever they can to their own hardware.

But this segmentation won't last long and the trend is very rapidly driving toward universal compatibility on the hardware side.  The gaming industry as a whole favors as much standardization as possible so that developers can concentrate on making great games, not playing with proprietary hardware or technologies.  Therefore, it's in the best interest of everyone involved to just get their physics engines out to the market and in use as widely as possible. Standards like OpenCL, fueled by the GPGPU revolution, are unifying the market and accomplishing just that.

But why is this so important to these hardware behemoths?  Because their technology is so far ahead of the software that game developers are putting out at this point, that no one needs high-end hardware to play games! Over the past year, NVIDIA and AMD have had to start seriously looking elsewhere for their paycheck, eyeing mobile and embedded markets hungrily for what has become a very lucrative and growing source of revenue.  They've been putting significant resources into growing those markets, but the high-end is where the margins are, and they don't want to lose that.  Physics technology has the potential to create new demand for high-end hardware when consumers start really looking for hardware acceleration for those functions in games.  When that happens, high-end hardware might actually become relevant for the mainstream again -- and everyone in the business would love to see that happen.

But the onus right now is on the game developers.  Barely over a year ago, before NVIDIA bought Ageia and its PhysX engine, no one was really paying attention to physics functionality.  But now, the technology is there, it's maturing fast, and it's being increasingly adopted by the industry, which means that those who are smart and creative enough to leverage it will have an edge.  When you've got massive budgets and many years of development time to produce a product, you've got to do everything you can to differentiate yourself.

So, when a company like Ubisoft integrates these advanced features into Far Cry 2 in a way that really changes the way you play the game, everyone loves it.  When you can get even a casual family game, like Boom Blox, to integrate physics into its core mechanics and also create a great experience, it's going to end up being one of the best third party Wii games out there.  When you tell me that Red Faction: Guerilla is going to allow destructibility of nearly every part of the environment, I'm going to be buying your game at launch (and it better deliver).

Graphics are old news, Crysis and the Wii have shown us.  Physics is the new graphics.

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A Chassis Ahead of its Time: GTR Tech GT3

The GT3 by GTR Tech. I heard about this product at the beginning of 2008, I have loved it from the first second I saw it, and I've been using it as my main tower for 6 months now. Basically, it's a chassis that is volumetrically smaller than the vast majority of MicroATX enclosures out there, yet it can take a full ATX board and a full-sized double-slot video card. Just let that wash over you for a second. This is tech art. Feast.

GT3 is the brainchild of Sean Hall, the owner of GTR Tech. He's got a deep background as an engineer, and if you get him on the phone, he will talk to you about the GT3 all day long and still be just as excited about it as he undoubtedly was over 4 years ago when he first started his company. We were talking a few days ago, and he said that he is renewing his push to widen the market for this product, he's working on some updates and changes to the design, and he's even got some new products potentially in the works. Pay attention to this guy!

I'll leave it to real hardware websites to handle legitimate reviews of stuff like this, but I want to highlight the significance here. Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle reviewed the HP Firebird this week: "What’s interesting about these specs is that, on paper, some of them aren’t that good. The hard drives, for example, are the slower, 5,400-RPM models you’d find in a notebook. Most performance-based desktops use 7,200-RPM drives; some even use 10,000 RPM drives. The memory is also not state-of-the-art, since it’s DDR2 instead of the newer, zippier DDR3. But put the whole package together, and it works well."

Works "well"? Not good "on paper"? Firebird is essentially MXM on the desktop done wrong. I've talked before about this, nothing new. But this little Chron snippet really jumped out at me because the messaging is sounding eerily familiar to Apple vs. PC. Apple's messaging is: "It's not about 'specs', it's about 'experience.'" HP Firebird is: "It's not about specs, it's about the fact that games will play on it and it's so small."

Anyone else think "good enough" isn't the type of thing you want to pay a premium for? I mean, I'm all about leveraging the fact that hardware tech right now is significantly more advanced than what games can utilize, so you can play with lower end hardware and be happy. But why pay more for laptop components to do it? GT3 is smaller, or at least the same size as, the Firebird, and it does NOT have an external power brick, you can upgrade it yourself, and it's more powerful for less money. Where's the Firebird's advantage again?

Microsoft's new commercials have been speaking to this point exactly (one Apple-drone's parody was hilarious). Microsoft thinks the fact that you can get a great machine that does the same thing as a MAC for a lot less is an important message right now. But at least Apple can point to a different OS to fight back and argue the point. Firebird has no fall-back.

GT3 is for everyone. It's priced at $189 and uses industry standard components, so it can be the platform for some incredible $1K range systems that can run with the big boys. I've got an e8600/4GB/ATI 4850 in mine. Sean says he's got 4870's running in his lab, and he's done higher-end builds for customers, too. Like I said, keep an eye on him, and I hope he makes a killing because it's about time this thing got out there.

Here's to one guy taking HP's $3B R&D budget to school! Almost like a "perfect storm of innovation", huh?

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AMD Case Study: How Social Media SHOULD Be Used

A bunch of people thought I was a big jerk for my last post about AMD's social media strategy, saying I was portraying AMD "impecabbly one-sided" and flat-out "falsely". I think the biggest thing I learned from this was that the perception of what social media is and does can vary profoundly from person to person. For me, I continue to believe that a for-profit, public company like AMD, who has Intel's foot on their neck, better darn well have a comprehensive strategy that can't be mis-interpreted and will stand up to intense scrutiny. This is what AMD should be doing.

It's not about people.
When you are part of a company, especially a big company, the company comes before the "people" (unless you are Steve Jobs). Nigel Dessau, AMD's CMO tweets, "Hello new followers. Pleasure to meet you but not sure why you follow me. Would love to know."

This blew my mind when I read this. It probably seems obvious to everyone else as well, but I'll articulate just in case: They are following you because you are AMD's CMO, Nigel!!! I have no idea who you are beyond the fact that you are the CMO. Social media has done the wonderful thing of allowing us to communicate, but really the gist of the thing is that me and everyone else only care to listen to you because you are a top-dog at AMD, and that's interesting. But that's all!

Social media is like the ultimate in "permission marketing", isn't it? People are voluntarily signing up to receive messages from AMD, through Nigel Dessau and other individual employees. It's a captive audience, and they want to hear cool stuff about AMD.

Focus on winning customers.
I say any interaction a company has with the "market" is "marketing" and that makes social media just another cog in the wheel. Marketing is a part of the sales process, of which the purpose is to induce the overwhelming need to buy your products. Everything AMD does in social media should be pointed toward that goal.

On that note, I think AMD has some serious reflecting to do in their sales organization. As I said in my last post, I think somewhere along the way they got caught up in thinking that snarky pot-shots at Intel are going to win hearts and minds. It's not. They can't break Intel by attacking them in social media, that's for sure. Not when Intel does have an incredible sales organization. I said this to NVIDIA last year and I posted it on an AMD blog that was complaining about what sales reps in retail were saying about their product. If they want to beat Intel, then they need to outsell them.

Well, social media is a great medium to accomplish just that! AMD obviously thinks they have a better product than Intel, but that's just the first step. Next is to make sure their messaging is fantastic. If messaging is fantastic, then make sure the sales team is even more fantastic. THEN, come and start engaging in social media -- and bring your savviest, rainmaker-eagle-superstar sales guy. Social media gives an incredible opportunity for individual people to "broadcast" themselves, so let's make sure it's someone who you are really going to benefit from broadcasting!

Focus on having the right conversations.
Cliff Forster mentioned in my last post that "AMD has lost its buzz", and maybe AMD's cavalier strategy to date is just what they need, and any conversation that is being had with/about them is a good thing. I say we can shoot a bit higher than that.

A large part of their involvement in social media should be aggressively trying to start great conversations. #Batterylife was a great conversation, but how come all we're talking about is MobileMark and how Intel does better in that benchmark but maybe shouldn't? Not the right conversation. People should be focused on AMD's absolutely amazing technology that allows their products to allegedly perform better. After all, AMD was the one that started that conversation!

The other side are those conversations that are started by others, which might be negative about AMD. Social media should be about you putting your stuff out there and getting picked apart. Well, luckily if messaging is flawless and there's a stellar sales guy prowling the 'sphere, you've got just what you need! Send him in! Now there's a way to capitalize on even those "bad" conversations because that guy will go in and clean up shop, with the focus on AMD and not the competitor. And everyone will love that he showed up and that AMD is paying attention.

Have you ever read "Positioning" by Al Ries? It's a great crash-course on the concept of defining your brand "relative" to other companies, products, whatever. Here's an example: AMD is the cheaper Intel. Years and years of the "value" sell by AMD has made that their inadvertant position. I'm hoping the "right" conversations in social media can change that. For the record, I'm not advocating introducing more BS, PR, and corporate crapola into social media. I'm saying that if AMD is going to choose to engage this new medium, then they better come to teach, not come to learn.

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AMD Case Study: How NOT to use Social Media

By looks of AMD's massive spike in activity in blogs and Twitter lately, they've made the calculated decision to "join the conversation". It's really something to behold... that is, if you're intrigued by multi-billion dollar companies end-running their PR departments willy-nilly. This kind of stuff makes Apple's no-blog policy look like true wisdom.

Rule #1: Don't assume people care to talk to you.
AMD is up in arms over battery life metrics produced by MobileMark 2007, claiming that the benchmark is skewed toward Intel. AMD illustrated their position via a blog post, which got coverage from the WSJ. An Intel spokeperson is quoted as responding with: "There are many ways to measure battery life... We believe the best way to determine how to measure battery life is by making proposals and debating it in industry consortiums and not [blogs]."

Fair enough. Intel doesn't want to discuss this issue via social media. One of the tenants of social media is that you can't control the conversation and that's because it's nothing but a new medium of communication; you can't force people to communicate with you your way.

Pat Moorhead, on the other hand, disagrees, and insisted on attempting to goad Intel on via Twitter in the hopes of having them show up at SXSW (srsly?), which was in progress at the time (wtf!), to talk about the issue with him. When that didn't work, he purportedly called Intel's refusal to deal with issues like battery life on blogs and Twitter, "offensive and derogatory to consumers".*

Rule #2: Don't be a jerk.**
"Neither irony or sarcasm is argument" -Samuel Butler. Being snarky should be reserved for us little people, not legitimate businesses who are paying people to communicate their messaging. It's just not a good, clear way to make a point. The tech industry in particular lends itself better to clear, direct facts: the end of this article, and with actual points instead of questions, would be an example, and this bogus mockery of an interview would not be.

Rule #3: Have a strategy.
AMD is a publically held company, after all. If I had some financial interest in AMD, "fast fail" just wouldn't cut it for me. VP Pat Moorehead says, "There are no experts here. Get in, have a simple strategy, hurry up and make mistakes". When you've got a strategy like that, it makes execution pretty easy, doesn't it? I'd say AMD's position in the market right now isn't one that would lend itself to not strategizing.

Ian McNaughton asks, "AMD does not have official Social Media Strategists, are we wrong in that?"

Yes.

My advice to AMD would be: Leave the publicity stunts to Jen-Hsun. Focus on using social media to communicate great things about your company to the market, not taking pot shots at Intel.

* Pat, you didn't think that one through, because you only had two potential outcomes there: 1) Intel ignores or simply doesn't see your tweeting, nothing happens, and your voice is lost in the noise, or 2) Intel actually shows up and wipes the floor with you (after all, would you show up to an "optional" debate if you thought you were going to lose?).

** Unless, of course, you are a jerk and can admit that.

As a followup to this post: "AMD Case Study: How Social Media SHOULD Be Used"

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All Your PC Boutiques Are Belong to China

Well, it's finally happened. Alienware has gone the way of the Sood, and is integrating operations into Dell, "putting two teams together into one unbeatable team."  A lot of people will get really worked up about this and pontificate that Alienware is doomed and is losing their soul (or their "DNA", for the very savvy), etc etc. But the fact is that this is the industry now, and there's no stopping it.  If Alienware had a soul, it was gone a long time ago.  Area 51 was a hoax!

Yet the funny thing is, it doesn't even matter.  No one cares who builds their computers, as long as they get the product they expected to get.  PC's, even gaming PC's, are commodity products, and no PC company of any size is doing the actual system assembly.  Not HP, not Apple, and not even Dell.  It wasn't always this way, but it is now.  So, Alienware builds aren't even going to end up in a Dell factory, because Dell is selling all of their factories!

The real scandal here, though, is that both Nelson Gonzales and Rahul Sood told everyone at the time of their acquisition that they'd stay the same sexy boutique companies, except with all of the benefits of the big OEM.  Gonzales said "this acquisition [will] only succeed if Alienware is structured as a separate division," and that "you're not going to see a lot of changes after this announcement."  Rahul Sood said "This is a deal about innovating our product line, not our supply chain" and "Voodoo will remain in Calgary" and other funny stuff about products never going into retail.  The few customers who did think there was alien technology and voodoo magic inside those boxes must be really upset.

But you know what, the reality is that the Alienware business model, copied many times over, is a freakin dinosaur.  That's the elephant in the corner for everyone who is still trying to make money spinning retail components under a slick-looking brand.  This just doesn't fly anymore, because branding itself is largely impotent in today's markets unless your company is a force of nature.  The boutique market that was started when hardware enthusiasts were competing against bland Dell boxes is over, and every piece of the puzzle of building the high-end boxes has been commodized into off-the-shelf sku's.  Alienware and Voodoo are nothing more than stamps in the mold.

For that reason, I'm going to make the prediction that the top execs from both Alienware and Voodoo don't last very much longer at their respective big-box companies.  Whether it's the restless entrepreneur inside of them, or the fact that they just can't consistently create products that are actually viable for $100B companies, these guys will move on at the first sign of greener pastures.

However, there's still a market, albeit small, for companies that are service-focused in the boutique segment.  As long as people have to deal with screwups like Acer's Predator catching on fire, there will be people wandering the internet looking for the businesses that will hopefully provide them with a higher-touch, more personal experience.  If the remaining niche boutiques can concentrate their efforts on service versus trying to build a brand or pimping the hardware, they will be fine.

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Bigfoot Networks' New KillerNIC, sans Compelling New FeatureSET

The announcement yesterday was that the guys over at Bigfoot have launched their 2nd gen KillerNIC, the Xeno. This is exciting because these are the guys that made a network card hardcore. A freaking network card, OK?! You normally plug your cable into a NIC and never think about it again, but these guys slapped on a big honkin knife-shaped heatsink and have spent the past 3 years trying to convince everyone that they are waging a war against online gaming lag. It's about time that there's finally something new to talk about with them!

Except there's not, really. I am still running the original KillerNIC that I reviewed last year, and it serves me well; that is, it still works, and I am still pretty sure that it's doing something in there, because the lights are most certainly blinking. But the new card, the Xeno, does the same exact thing, albeit in a smaller package and with a PCI-Express interface (both great, necessary changes). All the cards still minimize game lag and run fnApps, one of which is a voice app that is being touted as a feature on the new card. But, the new cards don't minimize lag better or run different or better fnApps.

So, where is this whole thing going? It seems like when Bigfoot launched their original product, they showed their entire hand right off the bat. Now, they're in a spot where a brand new product launch isn't going to result in a surge of sales because they've got nothing to sell to their existing customer base. It's like they made the decision to market their product into the quagmire of the hardware industry (Palit's leaving the US market, the entire industry is consolidating, and remember that MSI guy who said one of the big IHV's is going under soon?), but they forgot to include the part that keeps companies in this industry afloat with volume: the ability to sell new/upgraded products to their existing customer base. Add to that the fact that they are selling an expensive product into a niche market. Yikes!

It's worth mentioning that the past year has brought Bigfoot a new CEO, $13M in venture funding, a third-party deal with EVGA, and references to the potential for non-gaming application of their tech in the future. This certainly alludes to a grander vision than what the KillerNIC has been for the past 3 years, and I really hope that pans out, because I love the spirit behind what the KillerNIC is. But maybe the KillerNIC never should have been a $250 piece of network gear. Maybe it should have been a $50-$75 computer-on-a-card that customers could BUY custom software for. That would have gotten the volume way up, broadened the customer base, and given an impetus to write innovative, super-high-quality fnApps that people would want to pay for in droves. Heck, maybe you open up the ability for third parties to write software, too. Then, you're not a hardware company, you're a platform company, and maybe, just maybe, we'd have seen KillerNIC's integrated on high-end motherboards by now.

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Far Cry 2:The Next Step in Ultra-Realistic Gaming

Far Cry 2 had me enthralled for quite a while, and I love that the conversation about this game is continuing across the community so long after its release.  I wrote about my exploits in the jungles of Africa, and about how the incredible engine and open-world environment were like nothing I've ever seen.  And that's really the clincher for me, plain and simple.  Far Cry 2's storyline is mediocre at best, and I agree with everyone that didn't give a lick about the characters, moral choices, or general narrative -- but I still think this is one of the best FPS games I've ever played.  

I called COD4 the perfect FPS last year, so what's really interesting is that the game was built fundamentally different than Far Cry -- it's based on scripted action and cinematic storytelling.  Far Cry 2 has almost none of this, and what parts of it are scripted (the intro sequence, and the areas where you accept missions) seem clunky and poorly done, completely disconnected from the rest of the game.  

Which is better?

If I had to pick either one of those titles right now, I'd pick COD4 as a clear winner for a landmark gaming experience that was culturally relevant and emotionally gripping.  Infinity Ward knows how to create that type of game, over and over again, and is going to continue raking in the dough doing it.  But, moving forward, I want more games like Far Cry 2!  Far Cry 2 has the start of an engine that is strong enough to take the gameplay experience that comes from scripted action and replace it completely with open-world, native functionality.  COD4 is the way of the past - Far Cry 2 is the future.

The Ubisoft guys are onto something. I think they've got the makings of what will be the foundations of the ultra-realistic, virtual reality games of the future, right here in Far Cry 2.  The elements are all there: complete freedom of movement around the world, photo-realistic graphics, interactive flora and fauna, destructibility (including realistic fire), integration of time and weather, and the polished feeling of a "body" that you inhabit (your character "heals" by bandaging himself, he extends his arm and you see the full motion of opening doors, he bends down and his arm picks up weapons, he becomes feint if you push him to sprint too long in one stretch, you watch as NPC's pat you down to check for hidden weapons).  I've never seen all of this done so well in one game before.  For all of Far Cry's screwups, there is alot of innovation!  When the day comes that the first truly virtual reality engine is released, it's going to be developed by these guys on a derivative of this engine.

Just a few weeks ago, I blogged about what I've seen as the recession of "graphical achievement" in games.  Certainly Far Cry 2 is one of the exceptions, and that's one of the reasons I love it so much, but it's also a great illustration as to what the future of hardware for games is going to concentrate on.  Some of the commentors on that post said that current graphics are good enough for them, and that they didn't know how it could get any better.  I say look at Far Cry 2, and let's talk about the horsepower that can be leveraged to scale this engine, not just for pure graphics, but for a more visceral environment (AI, physics).

I see the next big step forward as a closer integration of the "story" within the gameworld.  That's really where a lot of the problems are stemming from that people are complaining about (making choices, interacting with NPC's, endless respawning guards).  Make The Jackal a persistent "person" in that actually exists at all times that you have to "find", instead of just a piece of the narrative.  Make the neverending respawning guards be reinforcements that are dispatched from an actual location in the game world and have to drive to their posts.  In the scheme of things, these aren't big problems, and I bet with more development time available to them, the Ubisoft team would have had it done in FC2.  They've been very open about their process in many interviews in the media, and those guys knew where they were cutting corners to hit deadlines.

I just want to throw out there, too, that over a year ago there was a great conversation that was being had around if we can tell effective stories or have meaningful game experiences with guns.  I look at Far Cry 2 and Mirror's Edge, and see that we're watching the evolution of the FPS genre right now to a form of gameplay that doesn't necessarily require the "shooter", and places more of the emphasis on "first person".  That excites me.

And that's why Far Cry 2 was my game of the year for 2008.  These guys are my heroes right now, and I'll definitely be watching closely for the next iteration.

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Dead Space Sets The Bar For Sci-Fi Horror

If you've seen Aliens, Pitch Black, or Event Horizon, then you've basically know everything there is to know about Dead Space.  But if you love sci-fi horror, then you've never experienced it like this -- and you are going to want to.  Trust me, this is not Doom 3.  Because you and I both hated Doom 3 and told ourselves we'd never play through a cheesified space horror bomb like that again.  This game does it right.

Dead Space (86 Metacritic, 9.6 TestFreaks) sucks you right in, pinning the third-person camera right on top of your character, Issac, almost like you're peering over his shoulder.  Much like Gears, that makes all the action happen right up in your face, and it's accompanied by one of the best uses of audio I've ever heard in a game.  So, as you wander the halls of the derelict "Space Cracker" space station, Isaac's panicky wheezing will be loud in your ears if air is running out, you'll hear his angst as he swings and stomps at his enemies, and his gorey entrails will be splashed all over you if he gets torn apart.  

And torn apart he will be.

The ship is infested will all kinds of gross mutants who want to chew your head off, and I found it invigorating that the whole game isn't about just blowing them away.  Because we've done that to death, haven't we?  No, it's about shooting off their limbs then blowing them away.  Innovation! There's actually strategy here around dismemberment, and I'm wierded out to say that I am really taken with it.  You need to be able to shoot off the correct body parts, depending on what kind of baddy you are facing, to do the most damage the fastest.  I thought this was so cool that I used the weapon you start the game with the whole time -- a small, fast, and accurate "plasma cutter" .  I don't even know what the other guns look like.  Didn't care!  This thing cuts off arms like a pro!

I guess that means Dead Space isn't much of a "shooter", huh?  And I love that!  For me, it took its cues from Bioshock, and concentrated on a detailed and interesting environment, an intense sci-fi experience, and an eery, gripping "atmosphere".  It made me re-think what a traditional shooter has to feel like, and I absolutely embraced the HUD-less, sniper-rifle-less action game that wasn't the usual SHMUP on steroids.

But it also borrowed some of the stuff that I hated Bioshock for, like running around the ship chasing pieces of things that I need to open doors that have no reason to be locked, or assembling things that have no reason to be assembled.  I ended up not even paying attention to what I was doing, just following the "breadcrumbs" aid feature (really liked not having to pull up a map even once) and just brainlessly followed it whereever it wanted me to go the entire game. This makes me think that EA's idea to port Dead Space to the Wii as an on-rails light-gun game really isn't all that far off from the way I played it anyway.  

And of course there's the mad scientist guy that thinks the mutants are a gift from god and that everyone should just submit and give up.  "You don't know what you're doing!  They aren't sick and disgusting and horrible, they are beautiful!"  You know that guy.  And there's even weird "magic"-ish powers that you have, like telekinesis and the slowing of time.  I mean... srsly?  Why not just take one step further and make this stuff more plausible?  Then I wouldn't feel so much like I'm playing a video game or something.  Dead Space is grown-up entertainment, for goodness sake!

Being a console port, I have to say that the graphics aren't half bad.  While they do some pretty nifty stuff with lighting, nothing jumped out as particularly ground-breaking, but that was OK for me here.  What really bugged me was the control.  When play Dead Space after I've played something with native PC control, like Left4Dead, it's just a world of difference.  Night and day.  In fact, before I found out the secret graphics settings that no one would ever figure out on their own, there was actually almost a full second of lag in the mouse.  I actually had to tell myself that it was part of the experience, that the reason it was so bad was because I was floating around on a space station and it's just hard to move in a space suit.  It wasn't so bad after the fix, but it never got all that good.  And that just hurts my feelings.  When will devs figure out that this kind of thing is super-important to the PC crowd?

I loved:

- Huge, epic settings and boss battles

- Just enough horror to put me on the edge of my seat.  Not overdone.

- Just enough "puzzles" to change things up.  Again, not overdone.

I hated:

- Playing scavengar hunt the entire game

- Crappy, ported console control

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Mega-Irony: Microsoft Digs Up Apple's 25 Year Old Mistakes

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it."

The X360 is a cancer.  No, not because it has had a negative effect on PC gaming and I'm a PC fanboy, although all of that is true.  It's because it's a product and a business that leeches revenue, mindshare, and resources away from Microsoft's core businesses.  The XBox was supposed to be Microsoft's key into the living room -- a way for them to capitalize on the "digital convergence" that would occur there.  But it ends up that XBox business unit is really just a fortress in the living room that even the greater Microsoft will never be able to add further value to, and digital convergence may never actually occur... So it's a big ole rotten egg that has stolen from Windows its only remaining "killer app": GAMING.

In the end, the X-Box is going to kill Windows (or drive it to go open source?!) for that very reason.

Bill let this wolf into his flock against his better judgement, if Dean Takahashi's book "Opening the X-Box" is to believed.  According to it, the team who developed the product pulled a bait-and-switch on him when they got him excited about a lower-end version of a PC that could play games, but slowly morphed it into an appliance that wasn't Windows-compatible at all.  At that point, it seemed like a complicated situation that he decided to defer to his lieutenants. 

But I know Bill is kicking himself now, because he wrote the book on how to build an industry around the PC.  In fact, he spelled it out in detail to his friends over at Apple all the way back in June 1985.  John Sculley was at that point firmly at the helm of the company, and Bill, as the biggest developer of software for Apple at that time, wrote him a memo outlining what he thought should be Apple's go-forward plan: licensing the Mac's technology.

Apple's stated position in personal computers is innovative technology leader. This position implies that Apple must create a standard on new, advanced technology.

Apple must make Macintosh a standard. But no personal computer company, not even IBM, can create a standard without independent support. Even though Apple realized this, they have not been able to gain the independent support required to be perceived as a standard.

The significant investment (especially independent support) in a "standard personal computer" results in an incredible momentum for its architecture. Specifically, the IBM PC architecture continues to receive huge investment and gains additional momentum. (Though clearly the independent investment in the Apple II, and the resulting momentum, is another great example.) The investment in the IBM architecture includes development of differentiated compatibles, software and peripherals; user and sales channel education; and most importantly, attitudes and perceptions that are not easily changed.

Any deficiencies in the IBM architecture are quickly eliminated by independent support. Hardware deficiencies are remedied in two ways: expansion cards made possible because of access to the bus (e.g. the high resolution Hercules graphics card for monochrome monitors), [and the] manufacture of differentiated compatibles (e.g. the Compaq portable, or the faster DeskPro).

The closed architecture prevents similar independent investment in the Macintosh. The IBM architecture, when compared to the Macintosh, probably has more than 100 times the engineering resources applied to it when investment of compatible manufacturers is included. The ratio becomes even greater when the manufacturers of expansion cards are included.

The companies that license Mac technology would add credibility to the Macintosh architecture.  These companies would broaden the available product offerings through their "Mac-compatible" product lines. 

They would each innovate and add features to the basic system (various memory configurations, video display and keyboard alternatives, etc.) Apple would leverage the key partners' abilities to produce a wide variety of peripherals, much faster than Apple could develop the peripherals themselves. 

Customers would see competition and would have real price/performance choices. Apple will benefit from the distribution channels of these companies.

The perception of a significantly increased potential installed base will bring the independent hardware, software, and marketing support that the Macintosh needs.

Apple will gain significant, additional marketing support. Everytime a Mac compatible manufacturer advertises, it is an advertisement for the Apple architecture.

Can you fathom this?  It's the business plan for what the XBox should have been!  Licensing, a rich ecosystem of hardware, partners, partners, and more partners!  All the rationale for not building a closed platform is right there.  He wrote this to a company (Apple) that thought that having a lock on the most advanced and best designed product was all one needed to succeed. But we know better, judging from Apple's history into the late 90's as a story of innovation and invention with botched execution over and over again.  And Bill knew better, too.

Ideas, products are nothing without the right execution. Microsoft should never have strayed from their Windows-centric business model.

Doh!

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Call of Duty World at War: Cashing in on the Herd

When COD4 hit the scene at the end of 2007, I think everyone finally knew that Infinity Ward had achieved that "phenomenal" status, like Blizzard, where everything they do is going to be this run-away success.  And they deserve it, because their games are that good; COD4 was one of the absolute best FPS's I've ever played, and I loved all of their previous games, too.

And then there's Treyarch, the red-headed stepchild dev that has to fight the perception that they are just Activision's patsy for milking the Call of Duty franchise.  Everyone hated Call of Duty 3, and I think the whole community was holding it's breath to see if World at War would be a repeat.  So I have to admit that I wasn't surprised that all I could think to myself while I was playing was, "This doesn't hold a candle to any one of Infinity Ward's games."  But am I just projecting my expectations onto this game? I don't know, but all I see is horrible AI, very obvious and hacky scripting, and a total repeat of everything I've seen before in this franchise... except not as good.  I can't even finish the single player.  I've got better things to do.  I mess around with the multiplayer every once in a while because I'm actually a fan of these realism mods that are floating around (I'm a sucker for team-based tactical FPS).  But that's not going to hold me for long, because it's still not as good as Day of Defeat.  

So what's the deal here?  I don't think I saw anyone say that this game was a must-have, so why the heck did it do so well?  Versions for all 3 platforms were in the top 20 last month, and WaW sold almost as many copies through this past holiday season that COD4 did the year before.  The franchise is so strong that Activision's marketing team can slam-dunk this obviously inferior game into the market, in a recession, based solely on the fact that it's Call of Duty.  Cha-ching!

Part of this has got to be the multiplayer community.  I've done this, too, with games like Battlefield, where you follow the sequels as they come out because you are "following" where the players are going, even when the games aren't as good.  You want to be where the action is.  You are part of the herd, and if everyone is going to be playing WaW, which is basically the same game as COD4 when you play it online, you are just going to buy it so you can continue to participate in the phenomenon.  One of Infinity Ward's recent blog posts might back me up here where they cite that only 46.5% of over 10M people who are playing online on the 360 have actually beaten the game.  So these players are obviously there almost exclusively for the online action.  That's mind-blowing...

And what's scary is that I'm sure I'll buy all future Call of Duty games, myself, as well.  Because... what if I miss something?!

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NVIDIA: Shift In Relevance Away From Games

I'm playing in beautiful 1920x1200 res on a 24" LCD, full detail on Dead Space and Far Cry 2, on roughly $800 worth of hardware (e8600, GF260, 4GB).  I don't need to spend any more than $250 each on CPU or GPU, which means I certainly don't need SLI/Crossfire or anything like that.  And the problem is that that's not going to change anytime soon.  After all, there will never be another Crysis (thank goodness) or Doom 3, where these brilliant technical developers are pushing the bar on gaming technology.  These guys don't care anymore about that stuff, because no one pays them for it.  They end up building crappy games with the tech that they develop and no one buys it, so they go make console games.  It's sick how many times that happens.

That's what the market-at-large wants, though, right?  The vast majority of consumers don't want to spend a lot of money on their PC, even to run these "technically" beautiful games (I've got people on twitter asking me if ION is a good gaming platform, for goodness sake), so game developers are just listening to their customers and writing software that their customers want, because they want to make money just like everyone else.  Who's going to fault them for that?

But that means that at least 30%+ of NVIDIA's business, the hardcore PC gamer, has no reason to spend any money, and NVIDIA (and anyone else that makes high-end PC products, like Intel and AMD) is in big trouble.    The current hardware survey on Steam shows only 1% of gamers have more than one GPU, and the most popular GPU by a landslide is still 8800 series.  We need games that will take advantage of as much power as is available in hardware, so we can have some reason to sell high-end GPU's.  Recession or not, the games are the problem -- our "killer app" is gone! 

No wonder Jen-Hsun is up there with Charlie Rose waving ION around! He goes, "This is the Atom processor.  It's my favorite processor in the world."  lol! NVIDIA is running full speed away from the gaming market and into the arms of GPGPU and IGP's! And as Jen-Hsun talks about what the paradigm shift of relevance for his company is, every god-fearing, self-respecting PC-head looks into the dim, brooding future and sees the dark age of PC gaming looming over him, with cackling, half-naked imps holding XBOX controllers dancing around him.

There's a lot of people who do want to pay for this stuff, but there is just no reason to right now. So, maybe NVIDIA needs to buy some developers and start making some games (I promise I'll buy them, even if they suck), because no one else in the gaming world gives a crap whether they live or die right now.  They've all got their own problems... and NVIDIA knows it.

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Hands On Battlefield 1943 at NYCC

Let me explain to you what the original Battlefield 1942 means to me.  When I first played it in 2002, it was clear that the Team Multiplayer FPS genre had been pushed forward with this title.  All of a sudden, I was thrust into this veritable army of players (64 player games had never been done like this before), battling on huge maps, and driving every type of war vehicle I could want to, from battleships to 10 different kinds of planes to tanks and armored cars.  And everything was to scale!  Aircraft carriers were huge, and while someone might be driving that massive ship to bring it closer to the enemy held island, other people would be handling its mounted AA guns firing at torpedo bombers that enemy players were flying.  Those planes would be dogfighting with fighter planes taking off from the aircraft carriers, while enemy fighters might be strafing landing craft in the water, full of soldiers that were heading to take control of the island.  Enemy soldiers might even be parachuting out of planes to fight with small arms on the decks of the aircraft carrier.

NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER BEEN DONE SINCE!  None of the games even in the Battlefield series have topped it, yet.

So, when DICE comes out and announces a Battlefield 1943, that communicates what I perceive to be a pretty clear message: "Here is the next game in the spirit of 1942."  That's a message that gets me excited, and on a beeline to Comic-Con to see it.  And when I got there, played the game for a few minutes, and picked the brain of one of the producers that was there, I walked away knowing that the state of the industry right now has made it so that the real Battlefield 1943 won't be happening anytime soon.  "1943" is just EA milking a franchise while destroying my hopes and dreams.

This game was made for console players.  That means the controls were developed with a hand-held controller in mind, and the scale of the game won't be anywhere even close to 1942.  There will be a maximum of 24 players, no boats at all, and only 2 types of planes to fly.  They will re-tool just 3 of the old 1942 maps for launch, including Wake Island, which looked to me almost exactly like the original (I was told they knew that messing with something as perfect as the original Wake would be silly).  Of course, there will be achievements that are being re-spun as "postcards" or some jazz.  Having just three classes, all of which can take down tanks, have auto-health, and unlimited ammo, was explained to me as a good thing...

This game is targeted at the casual Call of Duty players that are getting bored of COD4 and never bothered with World at War.  They'll be wowed by the better gameplay around vehicles, but only because those games didn't have any vehicles (except for World at War, but tanks were a weak afterthought).  And you know what?  They'll probably succeed at grabbing some of those players.  In my opinion, it's a better multiplayer game than Call of Duty, but I don't think Infinity Ward has to worry very much.  Their next title will be a sequel to Modern Warfare, the setting and feel will be completely different from 1943, and the incredible single player campaign experience that they are known for differentiates their games from anyone else out there.

Other than that, the graphics look good (for a console), and much of the environment is destructible, which is an awesome addition to DICE's engine.  They've made some cool innovations around the bomber that has you controlling three planes at once to "carpet bomb" your target.  I thought that was cool. What's also interesting is that this title doesn't have plans to hit retail as a boxed product with a disc in it.  This will be exclusively for XBLA, PSN, and through digital distribution on the PC (released a month or more later of course) as a 350MB download for $15-$20.  Now that's true progress.

But overall, this is a big let-down.  The platform wars are raging furiously, and the PC is at a severe disadvantage because of Microsoft's lunacy.  Even DICE, a very strong PC developer in the past, has had to succumb to the realities of the market: it's hard to do big things without selling cross-platform.  And since they are owned by EA, they've got to do big things if they want to put food on the table.  So that means consoles are the lowest denominator, and the real successor to 1942 will be when console technology can beat what we had back in 2002 on the PC.

I really hope I don't have to wait that long.

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Blockbuster + Gamestop ?

Netflix has always had an eye toward the day when they'd be able to deliver their products digitally.  That was a key piece of their strategy that was incredibly forward thinking (considering they started doing business by mailing DVD's around) and just plain smart.  Blockbuster, on the other hand, was completely reactionary when they started their own DVD-by-mail service to compete with Netflix a few years ago.  They saw the obvious threat from Netflix, and realized that their existing business and relationships could potentially give them an edge.  Brick and mortar stores could act as depots for customers to swap movies faster, and an exclusive deal with studios, like the Weinstein Company, could secure an advantage.

But I think that Netflix steamroller is just relentless, and as they continue to execute on their digital distribution strategy, Blockbuster is just going to continue spiraling downward.  What will Blockbuster look like in 10 years?

But I'd probably say the same thing about Gamestop, being the type of consumer that has recently trashed every piece of physical media he owns...  And I'd be wrong, because Gamestop is still a powerful force in the industry, like it or not.  They've adapted their business with a mix of smart retail business management and their infamous used game and movie sales.  Gamestop's still got quite a bit of life left in them, but I wonder if the future may be more disruptive for them than can be seen right now.  So, might their their obvious cross-over with much of Blockbuster's ailing business make for a match for some type of mutually life-saving partnership/ acquisition/ merger?

Gamestop mini-stores inside of Blockbuster locations?  Gamestop game rentals by mail via Blockbuster's distribution infrastructure?  If nothing else, it gives both of them access to each other's inventory.  

I'd think this would have to happen soon, before Blockbuster is just a husk of a company.  That steamroller is only picking up speed.

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PC vs. Console "Matchmaking" : Left4Dead

In my last post, "What the X-Box Should Have Been", I took a blatant shot at console "matchmaking" vs. PC networking capabilities in games. I also said that console gamers have no idea what they're missing, so I figured I'd illustrate with Left4Dead since it's got such following on both platforms, and it's networking/matchmaking capabilities were obviously nerfed for whatever reason.

On every other game Valve has made, you are able to browse every server that is running, anywhere, and get all kinds of useful information on each and every server to pick where you want to play, including:

• What mods are running


• Your ping to the server


• Every other player's ping to the server


• How many players are playing


• How many players are allowed in total


• WHO is playing


• What map is being played


• What each player's current score is

Contrast that with Left4Dead, where you get what I call the "Hope" button. Choose an Act and a difficulty (unless you are playing versus, and you don't even get to choose the difficulty) and "hope" you get onto a good server. Forget about everything else. You can't even tell what level of the Act you are going to end up in, or if you are going to lag like crazy.

Srsly?

This is stuff we've been doing for 10 years on the PC, so what's the deal? Console tech can't accomplish this? Someone thinks console gamers either don't want this or can't handle it, or what?

And as far as Valve is concerned, SHAME! You people are one of the pillars of the PC gaming industry, you should know every PC gamer would HATE this.

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Microsoft's Blunder of the Decade : What X-Box Should Have Been

In 2007, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs appeared for the first time together in a live joint interview at the All Things Digital conference, answering pointed questions about the history behind their companies and thoughts on the current state of the industry. At one point, the conversation turns to hardware vs. software business models, and goes like this:

Steve Jobs: Alan Kay had a great quote back in the ’70s, I think. He said, "People that love software want to build their own hardware."

Walt Mossberg: Well, Bill loves software.

Bill Gates: Oh, I can resist that. --everyone laughs--

Microsoft is a software company.

You get a real glimpse into Bill's mind in that conversation, and it's obvious his business was, and always has been, software. That is what Bill is passionate about and that's what is at the core of Microsoft's DNA.  Not hardware.  Hardware is simply not their business, and they became the behemoth that they are because they had the right approach for tapping into the latent talent across the industry : create a standard, based around their software, for all the other PC hardware manufacturers in the industry.  This model works and works well.  

Steve Jobs makes this comment later on in the same interview:

You know, because Woz and I started the company based on doing the whole banana, we weren’t so good at partnering with people... where Bill and Microsoft were really good at it because they didn’t make the whole thing in the early days and they learned how to partner with people really well.

That's why the model works so well.  Microsoft is great at working with partners and that's another key element that is infused into their core.  But all of that is the old Microsoft. The new Microsoft chases the around the iPods and the Playstations of the world, playing the game with their competitors' rulebooks. And that thinking is what has led them down the path of one of the biggest mistakes in the life of the company: The X-Box.

Microsoft vs. Microsoft

The Microsoft Gaming business unit lost a piece of the company's spirit when they made the decision to make an X-Box at all. The fact is this: Gaming PC's come in every range of price, shape, and ridiculousness -- but there is one, and only one, constant in all of them: Microsoft software. And Microsoft decided that instead of fostering that huge, massive customer base that they already have in place (basically every PC in the world that runs Windows) in the proven way that they've been successful for 30 years, they'd instead be a competitor... to themselves.

That is the blunder that has cost Microsoft not only billions in losses, but billions in lost revenue they could have had if they would have embarked on a completely different business trajectory. Microsoft never had to develop their own hardware -- after all, they downright suck at it. They could have spent that time and money working with partners to accomplish the same end (provide a gaming platform), with none of the risk, and all of the reward.

Instead, Microsoft has chosen to make their support of gaming on the PC a joke. After Microsoft's announcement of their poor numbers for last quarter, they started making cuts. And the first to go? The head of the Games for Windows business unit, and Aces, the developer behind the 25+ year old Flight Simulator franchise, a cornerstone of the culture and history of PC gaming. In fact, Aces, and Ensemble (Age of Empires developer) before them, are the last in a string of game developer cuts since 2006 that leaves Microsoft with no developers left for the PC at all.  Fathom that.

As a result, Microsoft now faces real threats from companies who plan to make Windows irrelevant. Whether it's Linux on netbooks, Google in the cloud, or OSX on the Mac, Microsoft is losing Windows mindshare with the masses -- those same people who are buying X-Box's, which Microsoft makes no money on (instead of the 22 million copies of Windows they could have sold). Now, when those people are looking for a replacement for their current Windows PC, Windows won't be on their list of requirements when they buy. After all, they game on their X-Box, now they just need something to run a browser on. Earnings last quarter on client sales revenue: down 8%. X-Box and PC games revenue: down 22%.

If you want an easy way out, blame it on the economy -- but please disregard Apple's amazing last quarter growth, the 5 bajillion netbooks that sold last year, and the fact that gaming industry revenue continues on an explosive trajectory.  

WHYWHYWHYWHY

Someone at Microsoft talked someone else at Microsoft into the console business model that says: 1) Need cheap hardware to grab massive and widespread market penetration, 2) To get it cheap enough, have to take a loss on the hardware, 3) We'll make it all back on the software.

That guy probably doesn't have a job anymore.

But a new guy in his place is thinking the multi-billion dollar mistakes have all been made, so it's time to start making money. That remains to be seen.

The problem is that Microsoft didn't think that third-parties would fit into this. For this to work, someone has to make some serious concessions on making money on hardware to get the price of entry down.  I suppose Microsoft thought they would be the only one interested in doing such a thing (or it was just plain, stupid greed, which is more probable).  No!! Partners!!  Please don't tell me that someone can't come up with a revenue sharing model where even games sold in retail could be tracked (digitally distributed software is obviously much easier).  With all those $billions$ they'd have to spare from not wasting it all on the X-Box hardware, Microsoft could certainly crack that nut.  $Billions$ could certainly have worked wonders on the piracy problem.  $Billions$ applied to the right problem goes a long way.

Partners!! 

What the X-Box should have been

It didn't have to be this way, though. The X-Box should have been every Windows PC on the planet.  It should have been a digital distribution platform to rival Steam. It should have been a Windows Gaming OS sku that looks exactly like what you see when you turn on an X-Box. It should have been been Microsoft leveraging the long-tail of indie PC development and bringing that talent into the mainstream, along with their big AAA exclusives like Halo and Gears.  It should have been hardware manufacturers competing over console system designs -- I should be able to buy an HP or Dell "X-Box" right now, and I should be able to leverage the fact that those manufacturers will give me options for Blu-Ray or Wifi and whatever else they would need to do to compete with each other and Sony.  The consumer wins.  Microsoft wins.  Partners win.

Everyone lost

Microsoft opened their own can of worms on this one, and frankly, they can have it.  But, every partner who stood to benefit from Microsoft not screwing everything up should be pissed.  Instead of building a rich ecosystem like we've got on the PC, we've got a console vs. PC war that nobody benefits from except for the forum fanboys who thrive on drama.  Now, I can't play Halo or Fable, and Blizzard can't sell WOW to 22 million X-Box gamers.  Now, X-Box gamers get crappy networking  and "matchmaking" for multiplayer (console gamers don't even know what they're missing), and I get the joke that is Games for Windows Live.  Now, X-Box gamers can't even use a browser or access the huge libraries of classic games from GOG.com or Steam, and I can't play XBLA games.

Actually, everyone didn't lose.  Nintendo is pretty happy.

Related article: "Mega Irony: Microsoft Digs Up Apple's 25 Year Old Mistakes"

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World of Goo : Physics for Freaks

If Tim Burton decided one day he was going to make a video game based around quircky physics puzzles, it would look exactly like World of Goo. I mean, look at this thing -- it's got freakyweird written all over it, and Helena Bonhom Carter makes several appearances (Johnny Depp must be in the later levels I haven't seen yet). And if anyone was still arguing against "games-as-art", I would point them to this. Is it any good though?

YES! - and I'm not normally into puzzle games. Most levels in this game are of reasonable difficulty, and the very logical and "scientific" way of solving them appeals to my personality, I think. You'll start the game with a very simple premise: connect these little goo-balls together to build a structure that can achieve some goal, perhaps to reach a certain height or span a chasm -- Engineers and physicists by trade will love this stuff. Later, other elements are introduced, like balloon goo-balls that can provide strategic support to long spans, or sticky goo-balls that can attach to surfaces. Some levels will have wind to contend with or machines and mazes you'll have to navigate your goo-balls through.

There's a story in here somewhere, and I'm sure it's supposed to be making profound statements and references that I'm completely missing, but that's OK. The soundtrack is really fun (you can listen to and download the whole thing for free), and the game design is so good that it's apparently good enough to be the subject of a lesson on how to make better games. I've had this since it launched, which has been a few months now, and I play it a level or two at a time when I get the urge. I haven't finished it yet, but this isn't a game I'm bent on powering through. Each level needs time to just absorb and experience.

For $10, 70MB download, available on Steam, it's must-try, even if just to support good indie work.

UPDATE: World of Goo is $20 right now, not $10. I'd still give it my recommendation at that price, because there is certainly $20 worth of gameplay here, but it's not a STEAL anymore. Here's a free demo to try, though.

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LEAK: NEW HP/VOODOO ENVY 002 SPOTTED

This leaked photograph from a confidential source close to HP shows what seems to be one of the lead engineers from the VoodooPC team doing a live test of the top-secret Envy 002 portable computer. It arrived in my inbox accompanied with a draft of the marketing statement:

Continuing our policy of innovating the crap out of everything we touch, because innovation is in our DNA and being innovative is what we do, the new Envy 002 is poised to change the industry and turn the whole freakin thing on it's head - AGAIN. You see, this isn't the first time we've done this. We've recently released the Voodoo Firebird, which is innovative because no one else has ever taken high-end, expensive laptop components and put them into a desktop chassis before to create what is effectively a laptop without any of the benefits of a laptop. We don't think the reason for that is because those components are expensive, relatively underpowered, and built for being mobile which would effectively price them out of a desktop environment; we think it's because no one is as innovative as us. So, our new Envy 002 will continue along the same vein, innovatively creating the next step in laptop technology using desktop components, without harnessing the benefits of either one. Yeah! Seriously! This stuff just comes to us! We innovate, people, and you will respect that.

Folks, there's no arguing with genius and money. Or even just money.

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Left4Dead: I Can Only Kill So Many Zombies...

Valve successfully whipped the gaming industry into a frenzy over the past half a year or so leading up to Left4Dead's launch.  The $10M ad campaign, game-of-the-year awards all over the place, lots of coverage in the press and at trade shows, and a launch event that included an exclusive demo period for pre-orders -- quite the affair.  I love everything Valve does and I love online multiplayer FPS's, so I was right on top of this, pre-ordered before launch, champing at the bit just like everyone else.  

And man, when it hit, what an experience.  Charming characters, incredible level design, and wicked, gorey, disgusting zombie mayhem.  I remember the first time I heard the "witch" crying in the shadows.  "What IS that?"  "Oh man, you haven't seen her yet?  Turn off your light!"  And the first time you see one of your teammates dangling from a roof by a smoker's tongue...  Good times, good times.

It's all of that that makes me disappointed to say that it all turned out to be really shallow for me.  When you boil the gameplay down, it's extremely simple and repetitive.  That witch was really cool the first time, but not the 10th time, and definitely not the 50th time.  This is masked somewhat by the AI Director varying the way the levels play out each time you go through them, but you'll learn the ins and outs of this game in just a few hours.  Then, it just becomes a matter of how many times you are able to play the same levels without getting sick of them, and for me, it's not long.

The lifespan of Left4Dead goes something like this:

1. Play through all 4 campaigns in online coop mode, marvel at the beautiful level design and intense gameplay.  (About 4 hours)
   
2. Play through both Versus enabled campaigns again, probably several times, absolutely gripped by how fun it is to play the zombies with other human teammates. (About 6 hours)
   
3. Play through the 2 campaigns that are not versus-enabled, again, but this time in a higher difficulty. (About 2 hours)
   
4. Only thing left to do is play versus more, but now you've now seen these versus levels far too many times.  Getting bored...

That being said, the coop play is top-shelf for this time of game.  If you get a great bunch of people together that know how to communicate and generally don't suck, it's a blast.  On the other hand, you'll also get teammates like this whiney 8 year old, but there's been talk across the blogosphere that the range of skill and personality that you'll get in your random teammates could be considered part of the experience.  I say, that sounds interesting, but in practice it's just frustrating.  It doesn't help that Valve dumbed down the standard PC multiplayer interface of searching for specific servers, ping, etc and forced us to use the same rather poor matchmaking system as the 360.

So I guess it's just a question of value, and this just doesn't feel like a $50 game, it feels like a glorified mod.  Why is this more expensive than Portal?  Same engine, same amount of content, same buy-the-dev deal behind it.  I guess that $10M ad campaign has to get recouped somewhere...

My recommendation, if you haven't picked this up yet, would be to wait until it's down to like $20, then make a night out of it with some of your buddies. For me, I'm done with it until some of the promised DLC comes out, at which time I might get a few more hours out of it.

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The Most Hypocritical Smoke-Blowing of 2008

Rahul Sood of HP/VoodooPC occupies a pretty central roll in our industry as one of the most vocal and well-known voices from the boutique community.  His is a compelling story, from entrepeneur to big business, and that resonates with a lot of people.  But, man, has that gone to his head.  Be it self-indulgent soapboxing about the automotive industry or a diary of his exploits with extreme RC helicopters and monster trucks, Rahul has perfected the art of highfalutin.  I can look past all of that, but the recent hypocritical grandstanding about innovation in the gaming PC market just hits too close to home to ignore.

Rahul's recent blog post cites the changing economic landscape and decrees that "adapting" to current market conditions is the only way to survive.   Always insightful, obviously HP/Voodoo is following this course, so Rahul goes on to allude to what this means by talking about the death of the high-end, value for your dollar, etc yada etc.  If you cut through all of this Jobs-esque smoke and mirrors, what you get to is that is HP is releasing a new mainstream/value gaming system at CES and Rahul wants you to be really excited about that.  Heck, I'm very interested to see that product, and I agree whole-heartedly with the model (after all, this is not a new topic for anyone in the PC industry, including myself).  But, wow, how does Rahul write a puffed up post like this, completely ignoring the realities of his business as it currently stands:

Rahul: "The gaming PC as we know it is doomed... There was a time when a gamer would slap down his credit card and buy a maxed-out configuration just to eke out a few more frames per second."

Reality: It's only been a few months since Voodoo put out the $10K-$13K Omen, which is probably the most expensive consumer PC in the world.  I recently called it one of the most irrelevant systems in the industry today, and apparently Rahul now agrees with me.

Rahul: "There was a time when selling high-end hardware was easy, because we believed in it. Now we’re retooling and retasking our configurations so they make sense; let’s face it, high-end hardware has delivered diminishing returns in terms of value... The PC with four GPUs, a 2-kilowatt power supply, 16 gigabytes of memory, and a stack of hard drives is all but distant memory, at least for the PC gamer."

Reality: HP/Voodoo is right this moment selling machines with four GPU's, a 1300watt PSU, 8GB of memory, and 5 hard drives.  

Rahul: "Yes, some cataclysmic changes are coming in this industry.  For those of you wondering what will happen to the boutique space, I would suggest that unless the boutiques see the light, there won’t be much of a space left."

Reality: Voodoo is no longer a boutique, so Rahul's going to call the whole boutique segment lost.  Nevermind that many boutiques have been selling into the mainstream, with thoughtful configurations, for quite a while now.  Please don't decide that you're going to change your tune, Rahul, then call it innovation. 

The doublespeak is unbearable.  This isn't the first time, and I'm not the only one who's had enough of this stuff (Nate from NordicPC wrote this scathing piece earlier this year about Voodoo's "integration" into the larger HP).  But, hey, at least Rahul knows that he can always get a job at Apple.

Update:

Details for the afformentioned market-changing product have been "leaked" to Engadget.  The gist is this : It's small and it's got dual MXM graphics cards.  A decent config in a good looking, small package.  I love the size, but... MXM graphics cards are expensive, MXM-on-desktop boards are non-standard (expensive), and it's watercooled.  This is all says to me that this isn't going to be a real solid price/performance product, it's more of a relatively-powerful-in-a-small-package-but-not-cheap product.  In other words, a laptop without all the benefits of a laptop?  The way Rahul writes, this is the only product in the HP/Voodoo portfolio that actually matters in this market... good luck!

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Console Gamers, Take Off Your Blinders

This past year has been a wake-up call for the PC gaming industry. Ever since the NPD released their infamous 2007 revenue reports that seemed to really feed the fire, the industry as a whole has really had to take a long, hard look at the perceptions that are out there and why those perceptions exist. Be it the formation of an industry-spanning consortium like the PC Gaming Alliance or just having the conversation, our dirty laundry is getting cleaned up.  We're making progress.

But what about the console side? If the PC industry, which is actually an open platform, has to stand up and recognize the fact that some things need to change to better the industry, shouldn't Microsoft and Sony, who maintain closed platforms and hence are solely responsible for their user experience, have to recognize their suckage? Instead, both companies weave a web of propaganda around their products that infer the "plug and play, problem-free" gaming experience is actually reality.  Well, it's not, and the whole thing is an expertly crafted marketing lie on par with the exploits of Apple vs. PC.  

"I never have to worry about upgrading hardware..."

It's funny that the big thing this holiday season for XBox360 users is to try to track down the code-name "Jasper" versions of the console.  The update gives users an extra boost to internal memory, a new motherboard, and a new lower-power CPU.  Wow, sounds like a pretty significant upgrade ... except the problem is that you've got to dump your old console off on someone first.  Microsoft says "We are constantly updating the consoles’ more than 1700 internal components."  Is it not frustrating that Microsoft is continually improving the product right under your nose, but you can't take advantage of it?

And how about Sony? When the PS3 was launched in late 2006, it came with the "Emotion Engine" embedded in the hardware.  It was pretty significant that with this chip, users would have 100% backward compatibility with their old PS2 library -- good value for a system that is so expensive.  A year later, Sony stripped out the EE hardware completely to cut costs, and instead moved PS2 support onto a software emulator, which wasn't compatible with all games.  And now, after another year, new PS3's don't have any PS2 compatibility at all.  Next year maybe they'll strip out PS3 game compatibility and you'll just have to be happy with your sexy BluRay... until the next year, that is.

"I don't have to deal with hardware or software problems!"

Ugh, there's no space to re-hash the history of the RROD issue here, but the fact is that millions and millions of XBOX360's have failed since launch, scores of people have had to deal with 3, 4, 5 bad systems in a row, and the whole thing has so far cost Microsoft over $1B.  Field failure rates soared over 16.5% earlier this year.  Further, Wikipedia has a whole page dedicated to XBOX360 technical issues.  It's blanketed with things like disc tray defects that ruin games, software patches that outright kill systems, optical drives that can't read discs, and overheating.  How do ignore something like this?

"Consoles are waaaaaaay cheaper."

The console guys have got the slippery pricing thing down to a "T".  They show you these really nicely priced base SKU's, but try to go buy a 360 or a PS3 right now (nevermind the price inflation for the holidays), outfit that thing like it needs to be with all the cables, WIFI, hard drives and stuff, and you're going to be out $400-$500.  Then start buying $50 controllers and chargers and headsets, and all the A/V stuff you're going to get to set it all up (I won't include your HDTV, but it's fair to say if you're a gamer, you're probably getting a sweet new set to go with your new system).  Let's just call it $700.  Yes, that's cheaper than a PC, but you're buying an appliance with fixed functionality -- So, is it really that much cheaper?  I'd say heck no, and for a few hundred $ more, you could have a sweet system that comes with all the strengths of the open platform PC and Windows.

"Don't have to deal with piracy."

I think we're still getting down to the bottom of the piracy problem, and that's a subject that has to be taken separately, but let's not lose sight of the fact that piracy is an industry-wide issue.  I can go onto any tracker search site right now and look at the thousands and thousands of people downloading cracked console games, and that includes the handhelds, too.  Fallout 3, which will probably end up being game of the year, was available on torrent sites three weeks before it was released -- cracked for the 360.  The big scandal is that we don't have any firm numbers for any of this stuff, PC or consoles.  

I'd make the firm concession that all of these issues are worse, to a degree, on the PC -- but that's not the point.  Let's please take a blinders off and realize that the consoles are largely dealing with the same issues and anyone who insinuates otherwise is marketing a sugar-coated version of reality. It's redirection, folks, plain and simple.

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Data Recovery Hacks, Kiss My NAS

You might remember over six months ago that I blogged about a software malfunction that screwed up my Intel SS-4000E NAS that houses all of my personal data.  The whole thing was an absolute mess, and the last you heard was that I had decided that I was going to take a dive into the data recovery industry to try to save myself from a very angry, bitter, and potentially violent wife whose data I had failed miserably to keep safe.  I'm going to get right to the point here, because I need to move on with my life and never speak of this again:  The whole thing went down the toilet.   I'm documenting my screwups for the sole purpose of hopefully keeping someone from doing the same thing.

The short version is this:  I sent my drives to a bunch of hacks.  The data recovery industry is filled with them, apparently.  One of them broke what has to be the number one rule of an industry that deals with extremely sensitive personal property: do no further harm.  They made what was a bad, but fixable, situation into a complete nightmare.  Four data recovery companies and many months later, I'm completely wiped out.  Nothing.  Zip.  All gone.

Here was my mistake: I jumped in too fast.  After being told by every company I spoke to that my situation was a normal type of case and that they foresaw no problems, I opted to go with the cheapest quote from a company that seemed responsive.  I later learned that there are a lot of backroom data recovery specialists out there.  The majority of them probably have no more qualification than I would with a reasonable little hardware lab.  It's maddening -- these people are taking chances with other peoples' data to turn a quick buck.  They are never liable for risk (you'll always have to agree to that), they make no promises (you don't have to pay unless they recover the data), and you can always snag some poor sap off of Google Adwords (Me).

Here is who I dealt with:

Aero Data Recovery -- Quoted price / turn-around: $2500 in 2-3 days (24 hour, around the clock service for RAID repair).  Communication during recovery was non-existent, and engineers were never available to speak to.  Whenever I called, they just stalled me for more time, with no information to back it up.  Result: 10 days later they sent this short and frustrating communication: "We have examined your hard drive and have found that it exhibits symptoms of file system corruption. Unfortunately our capabilities are not extensive enough to safely perform a recovery attempt in this situation."  Conclusion: STAY AWAY.

ESS Data Recovery -- Quoted price / turn-around: $3100 in 10 days.  I found some seemingly positive info about this company online, including a tidbit about the fact that they spent $1.7M on their "datarecovery.com" domain purchase this year.  I figured a company with that type of dough was serious.  Well, communication during the recovery process, which stretched to 33 freaking days, was, again, non-existent.  I was stalled and put off at every turn, and I could not once get an engineer on the phone to explain anything to me.  At this point, my stress level was over the top, and I was starting to get the feeling that it wasn't going to end well.  They eventually, and rather abruptly, let me know that they couldn't fix it.  33 days.  33.

WeRecoverData.com -- At this point, I was pretty short on positive outlook.  I picked these guys because they were local to me in Manhattan (I have an office in the city), and I could go to their facility if necessary.  It wasn't. They were absolutely top-notch with their service, I was always able to speak to the same rep who knew my case, and I was always able to get a knowledgeable engineer on the phone.  It was only a day or two before they explained to me that irreparable damage had been done to my array and that there was nothing they could do.  At this point, it was basically hopeless.

Dick Correa, DTI Data -- You know you've run into one of those hidden gems when, after all I'd been through with the other companies, I can refer to Dick by name.  He is a consummate professional, and I dealt only with him throughout the whole process with DTI.  I'd guess that there are very few, if any, people in the recovery industry that know what they are talking about more than Dick, as I had him direct with my contacts at Intel and Falconstor and he was always one step ahead of them.  It came with a price tag, though, as a successful recovery would have run $6K-$8K.  It never got that far, though.  My data was long gone.

It was Dick, however, that explained to me that there was no way that any malfunction or mistake with the NAS would have put my drives into the state they were when he got them.  He said it would have taken at least half a day of constant activity on the drives to mess them up so bad.  Someone screwed up, and the fact that he was the fourth one to get his hands on them in a 2+ month time frame meant that I probably was never going to figure out what exactly happened.

Seem like I'm taking this well?  You have no idea.  This has been 6+ months hanging over my head.

Lesson learned #1:  Arrays that introduce potential "logical" issues are dangerous.  For example, my RAID 5 wasn't the best idea for long-term storage, because if anything would have ever gone wrong with the NAS (controller or otherwise), I would have been in a similar situation.  The best bet for a permanent solution is a mirror.  It's fool-proof and doesn't depend on any particular device to keep it running.  It's simply an automatic, real-time copy.

Lesson learned #2:  Keep a backup, moron.

Lesson learned #3:  When approaching something new like this, when you don't know anything about it, look for some industry credibility.  A great resource that I eventually found was a list of "Data Recovery Partners" that Western Digital publishes.   Guaranteed solution?  No.  ESS is on that list, and I definitely wouldn't recommend them, but it's a place to start.

Lesson learned #4:  Most important -- I am lucky man if my wife is still here after I lost all of her pictures (thank god some are printed in albums), including archives of our son, and journals and video from college and before.

That is, I assume I'm lucky, but she might still just be waiting for the right time when the motive isn't so obvious...

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Three Most Irrelevant System Designs In The PC Industry Today

Every lusts after/praises/gets excited about innovation and creativity in probably every industry. It's the embodiment of progress and the sign of a healthy market. It's no different in the SI biz -- the stakes are high and the competition is intense. That's why when I see a whole lotta hoopla over products that are pointless, unmarketable, or maybe a bit subversive, I have to take a moment to say... "WHAT?!"

1) Omen : vaporware. My semi-constant haranguing of HP/Voodoo could be construed as a serious inferiority complex. I'll work on that. In the mean time, can we please get real and not encourage the development of products that exist solely as PR fluff. It's just confusing for the general public what's going on here... that the Omen is a ridiculously expensive, glorified prototype that can't be brought to market correctly. The proof is in the pudding: "It’s only being made available in limited numbers and for a short time, so don’t miss out!" I liken this to the modding scene -- I've seen some amazingly beautiful custom PC's made by some very talented closet engineers... but they don't get consumer electronics awards because they aren't viable products. Neither is the Omen. But, yes, it is very pretty and has an LCD on the front.

2) Much Ado About Oil... A newcomer to the scene is Hardcore Computer, and they've been getting some serious press lately. Their product: An oil-filled, overclocked system built around a custom motherboard that will run anywhere from $4K to well over $10K. Hmm, yes, oil submersion cooling for the "masses", clever... Somebody gave these guys $2 AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS to develop this product, and they've got 30 employees working on it. They claim $10 MILLION MORE is on the way. To the investor who made that mistake: You will not see a dime of that money back, let alone turn a profit. (Call me, I've got this gadget I need a few mill for that shaves hard to reach places, it's going to be big, let's talk) How you ever thought there was that big of a market for such a thing, I have no idea, but I'd looooove to see the business plan that talked you into creating a system that has to be removed from a sealed enclosure filled with mineral oil to service and is run by proprietary components with long development cycles and high engineering and production costs. Even worse, an article in MaximumPC covering the story cites multiple problems with their review unit, including problems getting the thing to run stable at just 4Ghz, which is something that can be pretty easily done with air cooling... Ouch.

Click here to have your frugal sensibilities preyed upon... The very exciting news raging across the wire is that Alienware is now selling a system that offers "SLI for everyone". I've already been harping on the fact that SLI isn't for everyone, but this system just screams identity crisis. Are you a mainstream-on-a-budget guy or a pedal-to-the-metal-extreme guy? No problemo, Alienware says! "Budget guys, just grab two 9800GT's and hardcore guys just grab two GTX 280's or two 4870 X2's...We've got you aaaallll covered." Except, CRAP, two 9800GT's give you the same performance as one GTX 260 (so why force the inherent problems with multiple video cards on that person?), and, CRAP, who wants to plug $1K+ worth of GTX 280's into a board that only has 26 PCIe lanes, and, CRAP, who wants to plug $1K+ worth of ATI video cards in Crossfire into an NVIDIA chipset? AAAAHHHH!!!!

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It's a Great Time To Be Gaming on the PC

Even though most people who talk about the platform wars have probably come around and admitted that the NPD numbers from the beginning of this year were embarrassingly incorrect, the "PC Gaming is Dead/Dying" theme is still strong across the blogosphere/forums/media. It's times like this, though -- when I've got so many new AAA games to play that I have no chance of getting to them all, and PC tech is so good that I can do it all on a machine under a grand -- that I wonder what kind of bubble these people exist in. It's a great time to be gaming on the PC!

There are so many huge titles right now that I really feel bad for the gaming media who has to try to cover it all. There's no way to get through all this stuff, even if you did nothing but play. I've been absolutely enamored with Far Cry 2 for a few weeks now, and because of that I still haven't finished Crysis: Warhead and Spore (because I hate them both, but that's not to say you will too). I haven't even touched Fallout 3, Brothers in Arms, Red Alert 3, or Dead Space. Call of Duty: World at War is out, Wrath of the Lich King is out, Left4Dead is out in less than a week. Next year, we'll get our hands on Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 (hopefully), and a new Company of Heroes! These aren't console leftovers, either -- all of this stuff is launching concurrently with their console versions, if they aren't PC exclusives completely. Further, all of them, RTS's especially, will play and look the best on the PC. So sweet.

For the naysayers who complain about PC hardware requirements, the hardware side is so strong right now that these games are cake for sub $1K PC's. The amount of muscle you get for around $200 for a graphics card right now is crazy, and even if you're pushing into higher res LCD's and need a beefier card, you don't need two. Not only is one card cheaper and easier to manage than two, the boards and chipsets to support single GPU's are way cheaper. Processors are the same story -- under $200 from Intel or AMD will get you a great a CPU. And anybody that claims to be having problems with Vista anymore has effectively sold their brain to Apple.

We're there, people. Live it up.

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Far Cry 2: The Most Immersive, Addicting, Beautiful, Liberating FPS EVAR!!1!

From the first few minutes of playing Far Cry 2, I knew it was going to be one of my top games of this year.  Great games grab you right from the beginning, and you just can't stop (COD4, Portal, Mass Effect).  In fact, I'm struggling with the fact that I'm writing this post right now instead of playing.  

One of the great things I love about Far Cry 2 is that it's an open world that I'm able to pop into, take a job blowing something up, and be satisfied that I can walk away with something accomplished.  Along the way I'll have wandered through an amazing virtual landscape having felt like I had actually been transported to the savannah, I'll have blasted my way through some intense firefights, and I'll undoubted have set fire to several acres of dense jungle foliage.  It's 45 minutes you can feel good about.

That's where I am tonight.  I pop in while my wife is giving my son a bath, I've taken the dog out, I know I've got a few minutes to myself.  Lights off, 7.1 headphones on.  I'm in the middle of Pala, the main town almost exactly in the middle of the 20 square mile stretch of Africa that acts as the setting for the game.  I'm a gun for hire, and I've just accepted a mission from one of the local warlords to assassinate his rival, who is hiding in a secret location up in the mountains pretty far to the north.  He pays in diamonds... what can I say?

With my targets noted on my in-game GPS and map, I'm able to plan any number of routes and strategies through this huge play area to complete my objectives, trying to make best use of terrain while avoiding concentrations of hostiles.  That's the real crux of this game in a nutshell -- the idea of a "self-constructing narrative" that is so rarely done well (if ever).  For me, I think it's freakin awesome, and it's got me hooked.

For this mission, my target is holed up on top of a mountain and I'll take a boat up a winding river, through multiple enemy checkpoints en route.  I know it's going to be like riding through a shooting gallery on a dingy driven by a lawnmower engine, so after I've stocked up on ammunition and medicine, I make my way to a safehouse nearby.  Here is where FC2 also makes really fun use of night/day cycles and dynamic weather conditions:  I have my character sleep through the rest of the day so I can try my run up the river under the cover of dark.  At night, the guards will be much less attentive.

I wake up to find a massive MONSOON has blown in.  I don't know if this really happens in Africa, but in the few hours I spent sleeping to pass the daylight, it went from beautiful sunny day to violent wind and torrential rain... and the FC2 engine does weather like nothing I've ever seen before -- the trees are bent over, leaves are flying, rain is pouring, mist and humidity in the air makes a fog that kills visibility.  

As far as my mission is concerned, this isn't so good for me.  While I've got increased cover for making my way up the river, I can't really see.  That means increased chances of bumping right into hostiles at close range, something that I can't combat very well with a silenced pistol and sniper rifle. Re-arming would be difficult at this point, so I decide to give it a try as is.

As I commandeer a small boat and start up the engine, I love the fact that I can barely hear it running through the overwhelming volume of the storm.  And as I make my way into the canyon that will lead me to my target, I find myself more protected from the storm. That means the fog has collected heavily, making it ever more difficult to see.  I think to myself whether the engine could actually be that good, or if my imagination is just running wild in such an immersive game-world.  

After just a few minutes of jetting my dingy upriver, I come upon an enemy checkpoint that I don't see until it's too late. The 3 or 4 men posted there unload with shotguns and machine guns at close range, and I'm caught.  I'm literally startled, and end up just bailing out of the boat, swimming underwater to a point a few yards back where I can get on land.  

I'm a sitting duck here with no good weapons for a frontal assault, severely injured, and it'll be seconds before the hostiles figure out where I've gone to.  Here in the canyon, I can only go forward, so I improvise a "diversion"... with my bazooka.  I take aim at a vehicle near the center of their post, and let it fly.  As the jeep explodes in a brilliant blast, I get a glimpse of FC2's cutting-edge physics engine.  A small hut next to the jeep splinters in all directions, at least one unfortunately soul standing close by gets catapulted in a perfect arc into the river, and several others are knocked out.  It all looks just so good, and while I stand there gawking at the fact that the fire is spreading over the rooftops of other adjacent huts, I realize that I'm being burned from a fire behind me that was started from the flashout from the rear of the bazooka... Yeah. Far Cry 2 does fire pretty freaking good.

I take advantage of my very effective distraction to take a moment to perform some impromptu surgery, which is Far Cry 2's way of "healing". I see my character pull out a pair of pliers and yank a bullet from his leg, then inject himself with painkillers. This is just one of those details that adds up to make a great experience. Depending on the situation, I may have seen him patting a fire out on his leg, removing shards of wood or metal from his body, or applying bandages to his tattooed arm.

With nowhere to go but forward, I make my way to a nearby docked boat.  I dispatch the few hostiles that are left at close range with my machete, just for style points, and get moving.  The fire will die down fast because of the rain, and more baddies are on their way.

Back on a strangely similar dingy, I continue my journey upriver.  As I near the mountain hideout where my target is holed up, I come upon a brilliant waterfall that marks the end of the navigable part of the river.  There's a dock near a small path off to side, and I take out the few posted hostiles with some sneaky pistol-work through tall grass.  As I wind my way up the cliffside and out of the canyon, the fog lifts.  I'm able to spot a group of huts clustered on the other side of a gorge, accessible only by a long rope bridge.

Chokepoint, you say?  Suicide?  Trap?

Nope, bazooka/sniper = done.  See, now that visibility has cleared, I open up the festivities by setting their houses on fire.  That flushes out a small army which has one way to get to me -- across a single file bridge.  They are the sitting ducks now, and I spend a few minutes running from one covered position to the next, keeping mobile while I take out anyone that tries to come across.  When I'm satisfied their ranks have been thinned sufficiently, I charge across the bridge, grab an automatic weapon from one of my unlucky victims, and do a room-to-room search for my target.  When I meet him, there's no drama.  I crack a Molotov over his head (again, for style) and make a run for it, because the baddies are still after me and I still have to make it out alive. At close range indoors, I can easily get wasted if I make one mistake.

Back across the bridge, I run into some hostiles that have been drawn to the commotion from outside the complex.  As long as I stay moving, I'll be fine -- they'll chase after me, but they're cautious.  The will to live and fear of death is built into the AI.  I use that to my advantage when I'm making an escape.  

Back on the river, I'm able to safely make it through the enemy checkpoints now that I know where they are and the storm has calmed down.  Pretty soon, I'm back in town, replenished and re-stocked, ready for my next job as a Contract Terrorist in Africa.  Good times.

What's so great about this, is that nobody else that has played Far Cry 2 will have had the same exact experience as me, even at this exact same point in the game.  None of this stuff is scripted.  Someone else may have taken different weapons or a different route, or one hostile may have been at a different point in his patrol rounds and could have screwed everything up by being in the wrong place for me.  Someone else might like to use mounted guns on vehicles more than me, or might decide to fly in on a handglider instead of walking.  Heck, maybe someone can get lucky from 2 miles away with a mortar and take that guy out without even being anywhere close.

I'm not a big "sandbox" guy, either.  What I mean is, I don't get a real big kick out of just "existing" in a game world.  Buying real estate and playing darts in GTA4 isn't up my alley, but the fact that Far Cry 2 gives me this overarcing, purposeful mission - kill the Jackal -- breaks through my anti-sandboxism.  It's sooooo sweet -- did I say that yet?

I'm really happy for Ubisoft Montreal and what they've done here.  I absolutely hated Assassin's Creed from these guys, but I can see where they've taken some of the concepts from that game, and improved on them exponentially.  They've been able to do something with the Far Cry franchise that Crytek (original Far Cry dev) hasn't been able to hold a candle to with Crysis.  It's not perfect -- I've seen quite a bit of AI screwups and geometry/texture pop-in which takes away from the immersiveness, but when a game does everything else right, stuff like that is easily forgiven.  Game first, graphics are sugar.

And, oh yeah, it runs great on my 8800GT, detail way up, AA on.  More than one GPU need not apply.

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How Many Video Cards Do You REALLY Need?

I remember how hardcore I thought it was when SLI and Crossfire were just coming out. The thought, back then, that PC's were going to be able to push the bar that much more from a hardware point of view seemed like a total breakthrough. I'm a PC hardware nut, and I can totally relate to the mentality that loves adding more and more crap into a system just for the heck of it. LOOK HOW FREAKING BIG THOSE THINGS ARE, and there are THREE of them!!11!!1! Do you fathom how much POWER I need to run this thing?!

I love Skulltrail, I love ridiculous add-on cards, I love hotrod chassis...  But that's one class of people. And as far as PC users go, even in the gaming niche, they are a minority.  It's not a secret, anyone can go right to Valve's website and look at what millions of gamers are running on right this second.

I recently read a piece that puts this very well:

The days of needing multiple graphics cards in your PC are officially over. While game engines have become more complex, and Crysis still confounds most people’s PCs, the fact is that we have reached a pixel density plateau when it comes to monitor sizes and the GPU battle grounds are being fought at 1680×1050 resolutions or lower. And the simple fact of the matter is that at that resolution nearly every game on the planet can be enjoyed by the mainstream gamer utilizing a single graphics card. The hardware side of the gaming industry has gotten that good.

This isn't about NVIDIA or AMD, or consumer demand for the latest and greatest, or whatever. It's about reality.  This has huge relevance for the platform wars and the perception that the PC is battling against day in and day out.  People need to understand that you don't need to deal with the finicky hardware issues, less-than-perfect driver support, and high price tags that come along with running multiple graphics cards.  If you're the average gamer (95% of PC gamers are not hardware enthusiasts, this is not a secret), you can run the vast majority of GREAT games out there at settings that are going to look better than what you're seeing on any console, and you can do it not only with a single graphics card, but with a graphics card that you can afford.

Seriously.  This is a good thing. 

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Max Payne: Double Uzi's, Bullet-Time... Good Enough For Me

Max Payne was way ahead of its time in regards to the "cinematic" gaming experience. In 2001, developers were just starting to mature the medium to the point where the line between gameplay and storyline advancement was blurring, and Max Payne was a game that busted that wide open. It was an action-packed shooter, but whole sections of the game were devoted to experiencing the main character's nightmarish, delusional, mind-trips, all within the confines of their engine (an example of truly gifted level designers and artists). The developers were actually able to create a situation where the player experiences the process of going completely insane -- that's an accomplishment. A pretty disturbing accomplishment, though... and I guess that's the point.

Max Payne is the embodiment of film noir. It's the heartbeat thumping loud in your ears, a warm glow under a door where you know a grim scene awaits, extreme contrastsof light and sound straining your senses, dark urban settings spoiled by graffiti and vandalism, and horrific acts that are uncomfortable to contemplate. This is the stuff that horror cinema was made for, and games can take even further -- Max Payne proved that. But how do you translate that back, from games to cinema. It's tricky, as many preceeding attempts have proved.

The movie version of Max Payne was not well received, and I honestly walked into the theatre expecting a total flop. I mean, even the producer of the original series didn't like it. That's pretty rough! But I ended up loving every minute of it, even with the poorly cast Mark Wahlberg, who I personally think is a stooge, playing Max. Why?

Even though I consider myself a bit of a film buff with some developed taste, the movie adaption of Max Payne wasn't hard for me to like. My needs, being a big fan of the games, were pretty simple: pay homage to the original's strong style and story, while playing to the strengths of the new medium. I honestly think that was accomplished. The style was carried over flawlessly and even though the story may have been hard to follow for people who haven't played through the game, it wasn't that bad. Everything I loved about Max Payne the game was here in Max Payne the movie -- Max is going crazy, they freak you out while it happens, he wants revenge, he will stop at nothing, he's got hardcore guns (double Uzi's, check), throw in some bullet-time.

This is Max Payne... WTF do you people want?!

Could it have been better? Yeah, probably, and maybe that's a good lesson to take away for the sequel that they've got to make (there were two Max Payne games, and at the end of the movie Max's slain wife calls to him from the other side: "You're not done yet, Max"). They've got the style down perfect, all they need is to figure out how to play to the strengths of film more. It was done, just need to do it more. Action sequences are great, but games do them just as well, plus they are more fun when you're the one shooting. Film should be able to give us a new perspective, something different.

And last thing: Get Bruce or Brad Pitt or someone with some stones, man. Wahlberg lol.

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Darwinia: You've Never Played Anything Like This

If it's ever been possible to live inside of a computer, it looked like this game. The Introversion team successfully captured the eery feeling of existence inside a Tron-esque "virtual" world, except here, artificial life is being assaulted by artificial evil.  It's a real trip, and it's all done with a graphical style that will blow your mind that exists in a miniscule 60MB package that takes about 30 seconds to download on Steam.  And it plays great on any computer. 

The premise is that you've stumbled into a corner of cyberspace inhabited by the "Darwinians", a created race of AI lifeforms that are being overwhelmed by a rampaging virus.  Your objective, with the help of the Darwinians' mad scientist creator, is to rid their world of the virus menace. It's simple good vs. evil stuff with a little bit of metaphysics thrown in, but the fact that it's the first RTS that I've played in a long, long time that can claim to have creatively deviated from standard gameplay makes it easily one of the best games I've played this year.

It's actually puzzle game... Each level introduces something new you've got to do to win, with new enemies to stop you, and new "units" at your disposal to get it all done.  There are no resources to make units, like a standard RTS.  Instead, you're able to continuously create as many as you want, but can only have up to 5 in play at one time.  That means you've got to figure out how to exploit the expendability of individual units while overcoming the obstacle of not being able to have very many of them together.  It makes for an interesting dynamic.

with a lot of RTS...  You've got top-down, point-to-move/attack control over your individual units, like any RTS, but the twist is that you don't have direct control over the Darwinians, who hold the key to game's objectives.  The Darwinians are only able to be indirectly influenced, so they need to be led, protected, and sometimes used as cannon fodder.

and a little bit of shmup... While your controllable units in Darwinia have the basic ability to target and shoot at enemies on their own, they are extremely ineffective left to themselves.  If you want to get anything done, you'll opt to directly control your squads of fighters, and you'll be manually blasting away with lasers and grenades and placing airstrikes.  

Here's the best part: This is an indie project. It costs $20.  This is the type of product that I want to keep on the shelves: innovative, thoughtful, creative-driven ... and affordable.  Introversion has recently released the multiplayer version of the series, Multiwinia, which I can't wait to get some time to dive into, but the problem is that, as an indie, getting their games in front of the masses to turn their sweat into an income isn't easy.  Give these games a shot (try the demos!!), and keep an eye on this dev -- I think the first smash-hit RTS game for the consoles (because of the mix of simple control and accessible gameplay) could come out of their brains, if it isn't sitting right in front of us already.

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CliffyB: "You're All Pirates, No Gears 2 For You"

CliffyB, a guy who doesn't have the strongest track record of thinking things through before he talks, recently had some new things to say about the PC as a gaming platform and EA's plans for Gears of War 2 on the PC.  For Cliff, the "PC is different now than it was back in the day", and he doesn't want to deal with problems that arise around designing games for various hardware configurations and sub-par integrated graphics.  And those gamers who are savvy enough to maintain machines that are able to play his games?  Well, those people are simply pirates, of course.  As far as Cliff is concerned, if you can upgrade a video card, you can hop on BitTorrent and steal his games!

To anyone with some sense and some perspective, this is flat-out nonsense.  The problem is that CliffyB's lunacy is obviously contagious within Epic, and therefore Gears of War 2 will not be coming to the PC.  At first thought, that doesn't sit all that well, considering what a great game Gears of War is and how psyched I am for the sequel... but then I remember how crappy the PC port was and it doesn't bother me all that much anymore.  I have no doubt Gears 2 would be similarly poor on the PC, so, yeah, why bother?

The point here, though, is that Cliff has got it wrong, his strategy is flawed, and therefore he's not maximizing the value of his game.  Brad Wardell of Stardock wrote an article a few months ago that shows how a real businessman in this industry should be thinking about this problem.  After outlining how two of his games, without any DRM at all, outsold many big budget, widely marketed titles, he says,

"Our games sell well for three reasons.  First, they're good games which is a pre-requisite. But there's lots of great games that don't sell well.  The other two reasons are [that] our games work on a very wide variety of hardware configurations [and they] target genres with the largest customer bases per cost to produce for."

He's talking about people like CliffyB here.  Cliff has got a good game, but he's lost the ability to attract the PC side of the market.  Maybe Epic just doesn't know that "gamers" aren't one big pool anymore and that the market has grown to a point that they actually have to engage the PC side in a different and purposeful way.   If you want to make money off of PC gamers, you've got  to solve the compatibility problems, tailor the graphics and controls to the strengths of the PC, and give exclusive content or features that creates a great experience that is unique to the platform.  I mean, it's almost a standard formula you can just follow and implement.  Just do it!

Roy Taylor from NVIDIA did an interview a while back where he said that games are trending toward starting their life on the console, then being improved for the PC.  I agree that's the way it should be, and Mass Effect was a great example of this.  Widely acclaimed as far better than the X-BOX original, Mass Effect was given a significant overhaul by a third-party, Demiurge Studios, during the port's development.  I mean, these guys should get a medal for proving that it's possible to take a game that was made for consoles and create a product that PC users will want to spend money on. They added native, intuitive control for the keyboard and mouse,  completely overhauled all the menus, and added free additional content, and because the game runs so much better on more capable PC hardware, the port was a hit.

And here's the clincher, Mass Effect uses the same Unreal Engine that Gears of War does. 

So here's the lesson for CliffyB:  You can't hate on your customers.  No self-respecting PC gamer can stand him and his consistent negativity toward everything PC.  You'd think that single-handedly creating a massive wall between yourself and millions of potential $buyers$ would be grounds enough for someone to tell the guy to get a clue already...

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Turning Screws Is So Tedious: Neo-System-Integration

Buzz buzz buzz "HP Shutting Down Voodoo!" was the headline burning across the net this week (power supplies being returned are apparently indicative of armageddon these days). As the whole story got shaken down, it turns out all the noise was most likely instigated as employees started getting layed off from Voodoo's Calgary facility, which is probably the forerunner of that location getting severely downsized or even shut down completely. What does it all mean? Phil McKinney, HP's CTO, explained that it's the start of Voodoo's "integration into the larger HP".

One could argue that when HP, a company that sells more PC's than anyone in the world and yet outsources the assembly of over half of those systems, buys an SI that builds 100 systems per month, they probably aren't looking at the manufacturing infrastructure as something that's a very valuable piece of the puzzle. HP bought a brand to compete with Dell's acquisition of Alienware -- I'm frankly surprised it's taking them so long to "integrate". I mean, after two certainly transforming years under HP, how much of that "VoodooDNA" belongs to Calgary? Moreover, how much of HP Gaming belongs to VoodooDNA? Moreover, who came up with something as ridiculous as VoodooDNA?

Many people have been pretty critical of the way that Dell handled the Alienware acquisition, basically leaving them alone to compete with their own XPS line. I think those same people might see Voodoo being relegated to the status of brand monicker as cause for thinking maybe Alienware did something right after all. I know the Alienware employees that still have jobs are seeing it that way at least.

However, Alienware's future isn't so sure, either. Earlier this month everyone was talking about the fact that Dell wants to sell all of their factories. It seems that their supply chain just isn't so unique in the last few years, and with $3B that needs to get cut out of the budget ASAP, Dell is has apparently bigger things to worry about than pesky annoyances like building computers. If Alienware gets caught up in that, maybe they won't look so different from Voodoo after all...

All of this asks the questions: How much of the boutique's spirit is in the huddling over a bench turning screws? Maybe a better question is, How much of that is what customers care about?

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Logitech G5 : Look No Further For a Gaming Mouse

After my horrible experience with a slew of Razor peripherals a few months ago, I was unsurprisingly relieved when my cat knocked over a full glass of water onto my Lachesis mouse. It, of course, was dead as a doornail immediately, and I wasn't going to buy another one for sure. So after a bit of research, I grabbed the Logitech G5 and am happy to report that it's all I need and more in a gaming mouse: cheap, classy, comfortable, adjustable, and decent performance.

Cheap: At half the price of the Lachesis, I'm going to feel a lot better the next time there's an accident with a $40 price tag instead of $80. This is a great price point.

Classy: Gamers take just a bit more pride in their hardware than the average Joe, and the braided cable, textured grip, and subdued design of the G5 does that a lot better than the Lachesis' blinking blue snake-light.

Comfortable: My main complaint of the Lachesis was that it caused me physical pain. While anything probably feels like a step up in the ergonomics department, I can say that the G5 feels great -- but only for righties! (Who cares about the lefties, we vastly outnumber them, and that makes them freaks by definition.  Why does everyone need to suffer for their benefit?! mwaahahaha)

Adjustable: The G5 has three levels of sensitivity to the Lachesis' four, however, the G5 also has an adjustable weight system which is definitely cool.  Who wins?...

Decent Performance:  The Lachesis had more modifiable buttons that I never used, and a higher resolution that I never used.  I'm learning that features that I don't use aren't actually features.  Fancy that!  With a 2000dpi laser and buttons in the only places I've ever used them, it just makes sense.

I hate to stink all over the little guy in favor of the big corporate machine, but it is what it is.  For 99.9% of gamers out there, the G5 is perfect and Logitech has a clear winner here.  I'm not ashamed to admit I'm not special enough for the Lachesis, and for those people who really want the extra spec, Logitech has higher-end mice for more $$.  I'd take a long, hard look at their line if you're in the market.

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The Future of Gaming is Multi-Core

Whenever we're talking about price/performance configurations for gaming, it's generally well-known that an all-around good way to handle that is to go for higher clocked dual cores over lower clocked quad cores (which would both usually be comparable in price). We do that because more games do not take advantage of multiple cores than do, so we're putting the customer's funds where they'll be used most optimally. (That's actually the premise of nVidia's "Optimized PC" campaign -- except NVIDIA wants to load up on GPU power specifically, but that's another conversation.)

All of this is changing, though. As the raw number of cores in multi-core processors continues to scale higher and higher, software developers are compelled to optimize their products to utilize the technology. Just like NVIDIA has a dedicated team of people who manage developer relations and are tasked with making sure that devs are building support for the latest GPU tech into their games, Intel has a team that is undoubtedly doing the same thing. Multi-core gaming is here now.

I started getting very interested in multi-core gaming around the launch of Skulltrail. Yes, that platform was largely a flop for the gaming space, but it was the first time that I had heard at all about games that were being optimized for up to 8 cores!  At that time I got my hands on a short list from Intel on specific titles that were able to take advantage of many cores, and on that list was Far Cry 2, a particularly exciting title that's getting very close to release.  This game is going to be in every system reviewer's benchmark suite after it comes out, and it looks like it's going to be Intel's gaming poster child: dynamic weather system with air patterns that affect foliage and clouds, super-advanced AI in enemies and animals that reacts ultra-realistically to environmental and player actions, and the Havok physics engine -- all running as separate processes on their own cores.

That's not all.  Tim Sweeney from Epic recently talked about how the Unreal Engine scales "very well from dual-core to quad-core, and actually you can see a significant performance increase" when using quad-cores.  The Unreal Engine is probably the most-licensed engine in the industry, and that means that a massive amount of current and future games are going to be seeing the same performance gains from multi-core. 

I'll continue keeping my eyes open for more info around all of this as time goes on, but the real point here is that we're getting real close to the point where general hardware spec recommendations are going to start favoring more cores for gaming.  In the mean time, paying attention to the nuances of the specific software you'll be running is the best bet -- you might already be running titles that are multi-core-friendly.

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Spore's Creature Creator is Both Finest Feature and Fatal Failure

I was just as excited about Spore as everyone else.  In concept, this game is awesome: "SimEverything" : Create your own lifeform and put it into a game world where you can experience how it will stand up to the rigors of natural selection as it strives to survive, and ultimately surpass, the creations of everyone else online in the Spore galaxy.  I mean, that is darn cool!

It appeals to the creative side certainly, and it got my mind churning as I waited in anticipation during the download as to what kind of species I'd want to make.  Could I create some type of swarming, stinging animal, that used poison and speed combined with greater numbers to overwhelm bigger creatures while keeping my distance?  Or could I choose to forego aggressiveness for something which could develop faster, sort of a "tech" strategy?

What I found out is that none of that is what Spore is at all.  For all of the lauded praise that Spore has received for technical innovation, I can describe the creation engine very simply: a malleable, "clay" form that you can add Mr. Potato Head parts to.  I'll put ears here, a spike here, arms here.  Sure, it's entertaining, and the way the engine allows such massively varied forms to be created in the same editor is really quite amazing.  However, it turns out to be a mirage.  While it's fun to see how the engine will figure out how to make this crazy thing I made walk, dance, and fight, that same engine doesn't give any credence to the fact that the crazy thing shouldn't be able to do any of that.  If I make a 500 lb. gorilla with little butterfly wings... should it still be able to flutter around?

You see, whatever I make in the creator, whether its a dragon, a snake in a pot, or Mario, all that matters in the game itself is what attributes the "parts" I put onto it give the creature.  So, if I put ram horns on my shark-snake-hybrid-thing's butt, well, that means it now has the ability to "Charge Level 3" when I want to attack something.  If I give it legs with a certain type of foot, it will be fast, but if I give it 10 sets of those legs, it will be no faster or slower. If I change the shark mouth for a beak, now I can "Sing Level 5"... and that's even if the beak is mounted on its knee, upside-down -- pretty snazzy!

So if the physical form that I make doesn't really matter, and the placement, amount, or size of the parts I add to it doesn't matter beyond stats, is Spore really just a glorified RPG?  Instead of getting XP and adding it to your "health" stat, in Spore you walk around until you stumble upon a pile of bones, which contains the part you can now add to the creature's body to increase health.  Furthermore, that selection of parts to increase those stats really isn't all that big.  A raw count of everything in the game would show a pretty high number, but if I'm creating a carnivorous attack-focused animal, I'm really only accessing a small subset of those parts. I find myself just upgrading through a row of parts in the same "category", because that's what makes the most sense for the progression of the game.  Once I start down a certain path, I know I'm going to end up shooting for the best part in that specific path.  What really stinks is when that part doesn't really match the creature's "style" very well (maybe I want the stats of the lobster claw, but don't want to put them on a doglike creature)... 

I've probably made my point, but I want to acknowledge the fact that even with all its limitations, the creature-creating aspect of the game is pretty fun.  If you play the game from the beginning cell stage (which looks really darn pretty, by the way -- which I guess is why all of the marketing materials use screenshots from that stage), you'll most certainly get attached to your little animal.  That's what makes the repetitive shallowness in the actual game even more agitating.  Now, the view that Spore is essentially a smattering of mini-games from different genres, none of which are done particularly well, is pretty widely held in the media.  I've only played through the first three stages of the game so far (albeit several times, trying different strategies to try to uncover if I was possibly missing anything), but it is obvious to me that I wouldn't play them again.  A year from now, if Spore is still a factor in the industry, and I think it will be, it'll be because people are continuing to create and share content... not because of the gameplay.

And to that point, the question has to be asked:  Why no multiplayer?  Just because they couldn't figure out how to do it with the Sims, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done.  That illustrates the recurring them for me with Spore: The game doesn't accurately simulate life. Life is multiplayer!! (And on that note, my Spore ID is "edborden")

Spore is:  Different.  Innovative.  A creative work.  Entertaining. Accessible.  Appealing to a wide range of people.  Worth playing.  An awesome social experience.

Spore is not: The Best Sim Ever.  [Insert extreme adverb here]-ly great.  Deep.  A statement on religion. Intensely exciting.  Everything I thought it would be.

A note on the the EA Downloader and digital distribution:  EA decided they were only going to publish this game in retail or through their own digital distribution platform -- not on Steam or Impulse or anything else.  I understand this: they want to retain as much profit as possible.  However, games purchased through EA Downloader are only accessible for download for 6 months!  It's pathetic, and so far below the service-level of Steam where games are available forever, that it makes me physically agitated.  Yet another strike against EA's abysmal record on the side of consumers.

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Day of Defeat Source > COD4 + CounterStrike?! Yeah, I Went There.

The original Day of Defeat, a classic Half-Life mod from the days of the original Counterstrike boom, never really took off. Superseded by games like Call of Duty in a time when WW2 games were a dime a dozen (things haven't changed that much in that regard), it never achieved the wide play status that vault FPS games to universal eSport status, and seemed to be brushed off and forgotten at the time. I remember thinking the concept of the game was sound, but that it was unpolished and that there weren't enough people playing for it to make sense. That was then.

Fast forward 8 years, and I've recently discovered the joy of Day of Defeat: Source, the current version of the classic, a full 3 years after it was released into retail... and I like the multiplayer action in this title better than both COD4 and Counterstrike, BY FAR.  This game is POLISHED, and as far as MP Team FPS goes right now, I think this is the best out there.

Why I like it better than Counterstrike: The "no-respawn" aspect of CS is a unique thrill, for sure. It's hardcore tactical gameplay and highly rewards focused, competitive teamwork. But have you tried pubbing CS lately? Good luck. If you can get past the cheaters, you won't beat the guy who can take on your whole team with his sick AWP skillzzz. DOD:Source, on the other hand, gives that tactical flavor, but with guns that feel more realistic. Plus, there is re-spawning, so you aren't waiting 10 minutes in between rounds. I still love CS, but DOD:Source is more fun for the casual, no-clan pubber like mwah.

Why I like it better than COD4: COD4 is CS with re-spawning.  Add in a rich variety of play modes, a wider level of customizability, and some other extras (like the helicopters and airstrikes), and I'd actually say COD4 is more fun (horrors!).  DOD is still better, though!  Against COD4, DOD's advantage is all about the control. The feel of the WW2 weapons in DOD are more balanced and complementary to one another. It emphasizes teamwork far more. The way DOD:Source feels is a completely different, and far more interesting, experience.

Day of Defeat level design is a work of art.  Seriously, I would love to shake the hands of the people who created the maps in this game, because they are a huge part of what makes it great. The level designers understood exactly how to make MP maps that are complicated, detailed, and expansive, yet intuitive, balanced, and exciting.  And beautiful.  

Day of Defeat is $10!  Valve, you rock my world.

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Microsoft on the Attack: The PC is Cool Too

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." - Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor. (Actually the quote is probably fabricated, but who's going to argue with Ben Affleck's dreamy smile?)

Microsoft is on the move lately -- Bill is pissed.  Do you think Steve Jobs is scared? Does Steve Jobs get scared?

I jest, but the truth is that the strength of the PC industry as a whole has a lot to do with the image that Microsoft creates. When Apple is out there for years with their smear campaign, that negative consumer perception trickles down into every niche that uses Microsoft software as a component. If our customers think Windows is unsafe, slow, incompatible, or any other flavor of unpleasantry, then no matter how great our product or service is, we're at a disadvantage. That's why I think Microsoft's new surge of energy to get out there any win hearts and minds is a great development... and it's all Apple's fault.

First off is the most obvious Seinfeld commercial that we've been hearing about for months.  It made me laugh, but that's because I'm a tech nerd... I'm not sure the general public got anything from it.  The message just wasn't as clear as "I'm a Mac.", "I'm a PC.", "PC, you're fat and you suck.", "Yes, I know."  But, it's a step up from nothing at all, and I'm assuming the next few commercials will actually have a point.

Next thing is Microsoft making a "fashion statement".  That's right, Microsoft at PROJECT Las Vegas, a global tradeshow for the fashion industry.  What does it mean?  It means that Microsoft is not only aware, but is trying to push, the fact that PC's don't have to be the second-rate alternative to great Apple design.  Microsoft doesn't sell hardware, but they are investing time and money to shape the perception of the physical appearance of the PC.  This is cool.  Love it.

Another thing Microsoft is trying to do to control the perception of its product is to put Microsoft "gurus" into retail, a la Apple "Genius Bars" (as if that isn't the most egotistical thing I've ever heard of -- how do you even go near that thing without feeling wierd?).  This is a direct, high-touch way to get face-to-face with Microsoft's end-users, something the market hasn't had before.  General consumers, who have only seen Microsoft as the "tax" they've had to pay on every PC purchase they've ever made, can now be woo'ed by product experts that hopefully can not only ease their fears into making the jump to Vista, but show them WHY they'd want to do that, and maybe even answer technical questions post-sale.

Next on the list, Microsoft-branded casinos and men's clubs.  You know Ballmer's all over that.

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