OMAHA: a study in football

"Omaha."

The phrase has been uttered countless times by Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning over his record breaking season this year.  When asked what Omaha meant, he explained to the press that it could be anything depending on a number of variables about the game that was being played at the time.  After the embarrassing end of the first half of tonight's Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks, it occurred to me that it was a word conspicuously absent from the first thirty minutes of play.  So since we have the wonder that is the internet, I decided to look up some numbers and see what was what in the postseason. A coincidence? Or something more?

I dunno kids... I'm just sayin' though

Adult Swim @ NYCC: Venture Brothers, Robot Chicken, and... Emmett.

I had a great time at NYCC this year.  There was a bunch of stuff to see, some great cosplayers (which you can see in the IHOGeek Facebook galleries), and of course a good list of panels to check out.  On the latter I had the side-splitting pleasure of experiencing the Adult Swim treatment on Friday night, catching back to back panels from the Venture Brothers and Robot Chicken.  Two hours of Adult Swim personalities answering fan questions, cutting up and going nuts, and well, just hijinx in general.

… And you know how I feel about hijinx, kids.  Love 'em.

Starting with Queen’s “Princes of the Universe” hitting the speaker system, The Venture Brothers‘ Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick came out to the stage rocking black jumpsuits to a wall of pure sound from the audience.  After playing it up a little, they sat at the table and answered some fan questions.  It was a strange panel in the sense that there was no footage from the show like some of the other panels I attended, but it really wasn’t all that surprising.  Doc and Jackson let us know that they had just started working on the new season 6, and even though it was going to take a while that it is “going to be awesome” (don’t expect it until 2015).  SO i guess without any content to give you, I can at least give you some of the Q&A schtick that they put on -

On underwear: Jackson’s underwear costs $60 a pair.  Sixty.  and Doc rocks boxer briefs.  We’ll just have to take his word on that though – when chants to show the crowd came up he declared he couldn’t, because he has no ass.

On continuity: When asked whether continuity helps or hurts the show’s comedy.  Big surprise, it hurts.

On music: Doc doesn’t care who your favorite guitarist is – your favorite guitarist is Johnny Marr.

On giant robot cosplay: If you ask a question dressed as a giant robot, Doc Hammer will go into strike mode (as he appeared to do) and state his desire to jump across the table and knock you out.

Throughout the answers was of course the nutty behavior we expect from these two fancy lads, but it was their last act that got the biggest round of applause from the audience, myself included.  A young lady stepped up to the microphone and upon trying to speak, saw that she couldn’t find her words. “I’m too nervous to ask a question,” she said.  Without missing a step Doc Hammer comes back with “are you too nervous to DANCE with me?” and proceeded to dance with the young lady while the DJ played “Greased Lightning.”  And a grand time was had by all.  Check it out from Adult Swim here.

Next up was Robot Chicken. The whole crew was out in force – Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, Clare Grant, Breckin Meyer all clad in cat ears, including an unannounced appearance by Macauly Culkin, who is indeed, as it appeared to me, alive and well.  The crew made a couple of big announcements, the first being a sequel to the wildly popular DC Comics Special entitled DC Comics Special II: Villains in Paradise.  They showed some footage from the special, focusing on Batman’s embarrassment about being dragged around in Green Lantern’s green bubble.  A musical bromance ensues between the two, with Batman being floated along in a green sailboat construct.

Seth Green also talked about Übermansion – a joint project between the Robot Chicken crew and Bryan Cranston, who is fresh off the heels of the success of Breaking Bad.  Cranston voices Titanium Rex, an elderly superhero who fights the day to day perils of, you know, being old sharing the mansion with this super-team.  It’s stop motion like Robot Chicken, and from the trailer we were shown the humor is unrefined, juvenile, and let’s face it kids, right up your alley.

There wasn’t much commentary on future Robot Chicken seasons, but they did announce their Born Again Virgin Christmas Special, which will air this December.

… Oh right.  Then there was Emmett.

Early in the panel a young lad by the name of Emmett got up to the microphone to ask a questions.  The panel addressed him as “the young man in the brown hat.”  After snarkily replying “first off, it’s a Borderlands hat, so…” he went on imply that by Seth Green taking on his series Dads that it could take away from the writing of Robot Chicken.  After some more sass and Green’s “I’ma point at you and yell” antics Breckin Meyer jumped in to Green’s defense – “Hey Seth’s working REALLY HARD!”  After that Emmett became a running gag for the entire panel, cracking me up more than any of the other antics the panelists had, aside from meth jokes at the expense of Macauly Culkin.  Afterwards, in response to a simple “Hi how are you?” from a fan, Breckin’s answer was “Well I was having a great day until I met this douchebag named Emmett.”  And this went on and on for the entire panel.  Please, do yourself a favor and watch the panel here.  Warning though – the panel features a moment between Seth Green and Doc Hammer’s nipple, who made an impromptu cameo.

Stay tuned for my next installment where I talk about that time i met Neil DeGrasse Tyson!

User Agreements are Long and Boring, but Sometimes EULA Get Rewarded

You guys know I always try to have your back on the technical front.  Whether it's just some advice on new tech that's coming out, game previews, tech law or tips on keeping your digital life safeguarded, I like helping you out.  And today what I want to talk about a bit is a little thing you all know and love (ok maybe loathe) called the end user license agreement, or EULA for short.

Sometimes it comes titled as a basic user agreement or terms of use, but whatever it's called it usually follows the same format - a monstrosity of a document drafted in some strange melange of english and legalese filling anywhere between 3 and 30 screens for the user to scrutinize, read through and process in their impatient brainspaces.  You've all been there - for gamers there's a healthy sized EULA in a lot of games before you're allowed to play, especially in MMO's.  For the IT crowd there are all sorts of licensing agreements with operating systems and most off the shelf software, requiring you to agree before you can install them on your machine to use.

Of course you could always say you don't agree to the terms, but then that would hinder your gameplay or studious productivity.  But you don't say no, do you?  You've never said no.  You've never done anything but scroll alllll the way to the bottom, check "I agree" and hit OK to move on.  Trust me, you are not alone.  TONS of people go through the same motions.  The issue is that by doing so you miss all the rules and all the meat of the agreement between you and the publisher and probably don't even know what you agreed to.  It could be a rule you don't want to agree to but just did.  Or something that wouldn't normally strike you as obvious.  If you have certain Apple software they make you agree not to use their stuff for developing nuclear weapons.  A while back if you ran Safari for Windows, you may not be allowed to install it on Windows.  If you play Diablo III for example then what you agreed to was that you owed taxes to the IRS for any profits made on the real auction house.  OR - it'll make you feel like an idiot when you post ridiculous things to Facebook.  Yeah, seriously.  It's like signing a document without reading it.

I once didn't play World of Warcraft for a two days after install because of a EULA.  I read the whole thing roughly 4 times because I swore there was a clause in there that could be interpreted as not being allowed to play in a hotel room while I'm traveling. It worked out ok, but I still had to know.

So it made me super happy to see a little experiment that was being run on the forums over at Technical Illusions.  In case you're not aware about what TI is all about, they have an extremely cool device called the CastAR under development - a set of glasses that effectively and awesomely delivers an augmented reality environment to the wearer, complete with a wide array of controls and slick head tracking.  Their forums, much like many forums you can sign up for to use, includes a terms of use/EULA that all users have to agree to before they let you on and take part in forum discussions.  And to make it a little fun, they included the opportunity for reward if you actually had the patience to read all the way through.  The final text? Here it is:

"Any information you provide on these forums will not be disclosed to any third party without your complete consent, although the staff cannot be held liable for any hacking attempt in which your data is compromised. Congratulations you read this far, send the word Toby to jenesee at technical illusions dot com to be entered for a drawing By continuing with the sign up process you agree to the above rules by Technical Illusions"

I'll give you a second to read that last little section.  Even being at the very end of the agreement, how many people do you think would have sent "Toby" over to Jenesee out of the first 100 users?  Three.  That's right, three.  So as she mentions in her experiment data, the same percentage of users that caught the clause are the same as the percentage of people in America that still use dial-up.  Yikes.  In this case the consequences were a little more friendly - sometimes reading the EULA gave a user a chance for a fun reward rather than agreeing to something accidentally.  Congratulations to those three Technical Illusions forum users.

And I guess a kudos to the 3% of you that seemingly read your EULA's.

Back to School Stress for the Non-Student / Non-Parent [tf charts]

Ahhh fall.  A magical time where the temperatures drop, the leaves begin to turn those lovely shades of red and gold, and I along with others face a blinding white hot rage that consumes our being every morning on the way to work.

Anyone who lives in the Philly are and traverses I-95 southbound knows what I'm talking about.  Specifically around the bridge exits.  Summertime is a vacation for us too - from commuter students to local buses to the sheer additional traffic volume the fall brings.  Then there's the leftover construction from the jobs that started two summers ago, taking away lanes and closing exits - all things that cause me (and I'm sure you), to have to resort to increasingly awful acts of autobatics in response to others, all in all giving me pause and worry every morning that I am, in fact, becoming a worse and worse person every single day.

Thanks, PennDOT.

I know Philadelphia and I-95 aren't the only places - I feel your pain across the entire US of A, kids. Cities across the land where folks go to work already passing as part of the undead class before even clocking in, where seemingly no amount of caffeine can release us from the shackles.

ouch, my head...

PAX Prime Part 1: Intel and Square-Enix

Let me tell you, I was glad to get to Seattle a night early before the festivities of PAX 2013 started Friday morning.  After the flight from east coast to west it was weird (yes, weird) to see the Pacific Ocean on the weather map on the local news instead of the Atlantic hazing on the time difference but hey, I was there for PAX so it was cool.  The Penny Arcade Expo spanned the total volume of the Washington State Convention Center with exhibits, vendors and meeting rooms scattered not only throughout the place, but the nearby Sheraton for panels and another building across the street for BYOC gaming (yeah, that’s “bring your own computer”) and press.

Intel

The day picked up early – instead of taking advantage of media getting an hour early access to the floor, I opted to go across the street and check out Intel’s press event showing off some gaming laptops and mobile devices from partners that were packing Intel parts.  The Razer Blade we’ve already seen, but this was the first time I got to get my hands on its rival from MSI, the GS70.  The GS70 has all the bells and whistles of a gaming machine at 17″ – nVidia graphics, the latest i7 inside, 16GB memory and huge storage space – but weighs less than 6 pounds with its ultralight aluminum chassis.  Before i got to play with it i picked it up and kind of moved it around in the air (under the watchful eye of the Intel folks) and can tell you the weight’s no joke.  And they had it running Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which looked all sorts of candy-like delicious.  The chips inside ran with Intel’s Iris graphics built in, which are reported to support 4K Ultra HD (on up to three screens) and much quicker video editing and processing than the 3rd generation i-core chips that came before.  I can’t really vouch for how well my eyes can tell that precisely, but they can tell that the screens looked pretty damn good.

They were also showing off their Next Unit of Computing (NUC) devices – tiny little boxes (as you can see from the image) that pack some power and seemed to have grown since I saw them at PAX East earlier this year.  Instead of Ivy Bridges, the guts of these units were running i3 and i5 Haswell core chips (with turbo) and Intel HD graphics 5000, which isn’t bad for starting at $400.  The outside featured network, USB 3.0, HDMI and DisplayPorts.  So what did they do after showing us the specs on these units?  We got to game on them.  There were a few stations there that were driven by a NUC stuck to the back of the monitor, that still provided a high-grade gaming experience that I would expect from a desktop build.  They mentioned that they were going to release a Pro edition, which we’ll keep an eye out for.  To be honest I’d consider using these in the enterprise too in pro mode. On a personal note, what was probably the nicest part of the Intel show had nothing to do with going over specs or gaming on their ultrabooks – it was the business card raffle from which I won an i7 4770K processor.  So guess what kids? It’s build time.

Square-Enix

S-E had a decent amount of stuff lined up for PAX goers – I didn’t check out all of them because there were a couple reruns from PAX East but there were still some things worth seeing.  First and foremost we know they’re big on remakes and remasters, so there’s no surprise thatKingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix, Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remaster and Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut all made appearances at their booth.  KH 1.5 and Deus Ex were reruns from PAX East, so I started by taking a look at the remasters of Final Fantasy X/X-2.  The gameplay graphics are definitely sharper and a cut above how they looked on the PS2, when back then they were amazing.  The CG cutscenes also looked pretty good, but not as much of an improvement from S-E’s PS2 edition of the game.  Otherwise, I heard mumblings of rumors that the remaster would be delayed from this year to next.  While it makes sense, I’m not going to say it’s true since I didn’t hear it straight from Square-Enix.

The other game I was glad to finally get my hands on was Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns.  Having played the first and second one through, the series kind of grew on me, and Lighting became one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters of all time.  I knew the gameplay on this one was going to be a little bit different than the previous games in the XIIIuniverse, and did like what I saw.  Lightning is a solo player (at least in the demo) and the overworld work that has to be done is more than just walking around and only being able to jump where there’s a flashy spot on the ground.  The demo featured a slice of the game where you have to chase Snow down, of course learning the mechanics of the game on the way.  Similar to paradigm shifts Lightning can switch between classes on the fly to unleash a broad range of attacks.  These classes each have a different orientation – in the case of this demo it was defense/life, attack power and magic.  It almost reminded me of the dress spheres in Final Fantasy X-2, just done a lot better in the combat style of the XIII universe.  Staggering your opponents changes a little bit, but the core concept is similar.  I for one enjoyed it, and as I am a glutton for completion, will definitely be picking it up to close out the trilogy.

They also showed some trailers for Thief, Final Fantasy XV and the Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5 HD Remixes in the theater section they had set up.  I’m going to link you the one for Final Fantasy XV.  It’s a rerun from E3, but boy is it delicious.

As for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, S-E seemed have a good (maybe?) problem, actually suffering downtime because they weren’t expecting as many western players as they have.  Director Naoki Yoshida admitted this freely, that he thought players would let others giveFFXIV:ARR  a try first before jumping in.  The server loads were supposedly spread out properly as of today, and more importantly to some, the restriction on YouTube playthroughs and videos has been lifted.  Other than that, new updates will bring more Primal fights, the Gold Saucer in-game (once they get three mini games to kick it off, woot!), and maybe some new jobs and classes.  On that as far as class mounts go for the hopeful, not much more information has been revealed  - but if you want a unicorn, roll a conjurer.

Stay tuned for the next segment tomorrow featuring my faves from the Indie Megabooth and a gameplay review of Dying Light.  Also later in this series will be the 2K roundup featuring X-COM and Borderlands 2, as well as my pick of the litter for the best of PAX 2013.

Xbox One Kinect Requirement Dropped

Seriously, I’m surprised Microsoft didn’t call their new console the Xbox 180, because that’s what they’ve been doing since their next console’s big reveal.  Which is both good and bad really.  Good in the sense that they’re actually listening to their customers when it comes to what makes a deal breaker for them.  Bad in the sense that this is where Microsoft’s game plan is always going to go on the gaming front, until outside forces (i.e. angry customers threatening sales) stop them and force a course correction.

First came the always-on DRM which outraged consumers – including America’s fighting men and women – causing Microsoft to turn an about face, dropping the always-on and check in once a day requirements.  And now yesterday in their latest policy change, the Kinect sensor no longer has to be plugged in for the console to function.

The news came from Chief Xbox One Platform Architect Marc Whitten in an ongoing “Ask Microsoft Anything” segment on IGN, where he addressed users’ Kinect questions yesterday.  When asked how “off” the sensor would be when plugged in, Whitten responded that it can be set to “totally” off in the console settings.  He went on to state that the Kinect sensor will be optional in games where supplemental content calls for it, but naturally would be required for games that focus on Kinect functionality as the primary mode of gameplay:

"You have the ability to completely turn the sensor off in your settings. When in this mode, the sensor is not collecting any information. Any functionality that relies on voice, video, gesture or more won’t work. We still support using it for IR blasting in this mode. You can turn the sensor back on at any time through settings, and if you enter into a required Kinect experience (like Kinect Sports Rivals for instance), you’ll get a message asking if you want to turn the sensor back on in order to continue."

Right – if the word “Kinect” is in the title of the game, you’re going to still need it to play.  And this information is all thanks to a user that asked about the always plugged in requirement and what would happen if their sensor broke. Thanks, random user.

According to Whitten and the others who have spoken on Microsoft’s behalf in the past, the Xbox One is still designed to work with the Kinect, not only for gameplay of certain games but for SmartGlass, search, and UI navigation in general. So if you were planning on buying an Xbox One as your new “one” all-serving console, there’s still that stuff you can use it for.

So who knows what’s going on?  Maybe they’re feeling threatened by the PS4 and are dropping restrictions to pull in those on the fence outside of the Microsoft die-hards.  Maybe they’ve survived a crisis of conscience.  Maybe their PR doesn’t want any perception issues after all the recent news and events about digital spying.  Either way, this is another 180 from their former draconian policies that console gamers should be able to get behind.  That’s not changing their sales strategy though.  Even though we now know that the Kinect won’t be required to fire up a game on Xbox One, Microsoft still has no plans of selling the console without it at their $500 price point because of that UI design integration they described.  Personally I think selling a non-Kinect version at maybe $400 would get them more sales, because I don’t care how much money you’ve got – $100 is $100.  But that’s just me.

I said before publicly that I wouldn’t buy an Xbox One and would go the Sony PS4 route if those old policies from Microsoft remained in place.  Now that they’re gone, it’s something I might actually consider.

You know, if I buy a new console at all.

Projects, Tech PM's Sanity and Cthulhu [tf charts]

Everyone living as a technology project manager or in any job description where "technology project manager" falls into knows that there are both good projects and bad.  They also know that most of them, regardless of a "good" or "bad" designation, are only done at the cost of their sanity - and precisely how much sanity is dictated by the conditions outside of their control.

The type that's nearest and dearest to my head recently (but nowhere near dearest to my heart) is the type that starts with a tremendous delay.  Paperwork's done. equipment's in. Everything's good to go.  But due to other unseen forces, the start date is pushed a ridiculous degree back.  But then due to other unseen forces, the finish date actually moves forward.

Then the fun begins.  What am I saying here?  Listen to your tech PM and his or her army of project nerds.  Because one thing that isn't unseen is that something rushed like that is its own Cthulhu.

(click the chart for full-size)

Philadelphia Celebrates the City's Geek Elite

There's many reasons why I love the City of Brotherly Love. The place is filled with things to do and places to go from end to end, from museums and nightlife to education and history. The same city that houses the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall plays host to the Eagles, the Phillies, the Flyers and Sixers, not to mention a WizardWorld Comic Con every year.  You'll find the fiercest sports fans here, not to mention some of the fiercest geeks.

In the spirit of the man himself, Ben Franklin, over the last few years the Philadelphia geek scene has really started to grow.  Since 2011 we've seen events like Philly Tech Week and the Philadelphia Science Festival take over springtime in the city as proof of that, highlighting the best that Philadelphia has to offer in science, technology, entrepreneurship and art. And with all of the projects going on the city year round, not just during these celebrations, it's no wonder that someone somewhere thought that the best of Philly geekery should be honored.  So the fine folks at Geekadelphia and the Academy of Natural Sciences put together the Philly Geek Awards, taking place this year on August 17th.

The Philly Geek Awards are a spectacular, annual, one-night event celebrating Philadelphia's vibrant community of geeks. From the artists and the innovators, the programmers and the scientists, the authors and the do-gooders - this ceremony honors the outstanding accomplishments of Philly’s best and brightest.  The Geek Awards have been presented now for the past three years at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

It's an awards show just like the huge ones you see on TV - black tie, red carpet (with a cocktail hour, of course) that will have the city's premier geeks in their finest trappings featuring notable and local presenters and nominees.  The only difference between this and the televised shows is that it's smaller, more fun, and features subject matter that's far more interesting whether you're a geek, a Philly person, or both.  Not to mention getting to hang out at the Academy of Natural Sciences with your fellow geek ilk with some owls and a T-Rex skeleton is a pretty fun time before the show.  But the best way to get a feel for what the event is really to watch last year's recap video.

So now that you're itching to go, tickets go on sale Monday, July 29th at 10AM for $25.  This will get you entry to the show and the cocktail hour at the Academy.  You better watch your clock and act fast when they go up, because the show has completely sold out two years in a row to a live audience of over 400.  And being featured on FOX News, Philadelphia Daily News (front cover, 8/20/11), CBS Philly, Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia CityPaper, The Philly Post (PhillyMag.com), Newsworks, Philadelphia Metro and more, it's an event you don't want to miss.

In the mean time, check out the Philly Geek Awards site for more info.  And take a look at Geekadelphia to get Philly geek cultured and the cool things happening at the Academy of Natural Sciences while you're at it.

Xbox Doesn't Just Want Your Living Room, It Wants Your Office

OK so Microsoft’s been through some interesting times since E3 to now regarding the Xbox One.  Seriously, I’m almost tired of typing the name of that console out anymore.  First there was the DRM.  Then there was the public outcry and backlash.  Then they rolled it all back.  Then some restructuring.  Oh right, and the petitions (most likely of trollish origin) trying to bring back the DRM that Microsoft promised as “the future of gaming.”

Yeah.

So suffice it to say there’s still a lot of people whose living rooms haven’t been won over by the Microsoft show this summer (including me).  If I do end up getting one of these next-gen consoles it’s going to be a PlayStation 4 and there’s a lot of people who agree with me.  Microsoft knows this though, and they’ve decided to try a different angle – So maybe they can’t have your living room. That’s cool.  How abut your office?

Recently on their Small Business support blog, The folks at Redmond are now marketing the Xbox One as the perfect unit for your small to mid-sized business.  They threw up sot me decent points in their defense on a number of things that small and mid-size business can sometimes have some issues with.  The first is videoconferencing.  There’s not a lot of small businesses that can really swing expensive videoconferencing equipment, and the built in Skype allowing for multi-user chatting could make it attractive for communication.  The addition of office web apps as well as plugging into SkyDrive for cloud storage has its draws too.  It means documents and media (especially those powerpoint presentations we all love to give) can be pulled up and delivered using gestures instead of clickers or pointers.  Given this, $499 isn’t a bad price point for a office machine.

This move and pitch makes sense if we go back to that Microsoft shuffle up for a second.  The house the Gates built used to have very separate and very distinct rooms, each covering a product offering  - Windows, Office, Mobile, services, etc.  As an excerpt from Steve Ballmer’s restructuring memo:

“We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company — not a collection of divisional strategies.”

And that all kind of goes back to the whole “ecosystem” idea that they were pitching a few years ago – becoming a hotel as opposed to houses as it were, if you’ll allow me to make a board game analogue.

Hmm, an interesting thought after all… maybe I can buy an Xbox One and write it off as a work expense?  Maybe multiplayer can count as team building…

Microsoft Backpedals on Xbox One DRM Policies

Backpedal (verb): to retreat or move backward.

Last night the internet saw Microsoft go into full backpedal mode on their DRM practices for the upcoming Xbox One in a post on their site titled“Your Feedback Matters – Update on Xbox One.”  The post was courtesy Don Mattrick, the President of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business unit, and seemed to address a score of concerns gamers had following the product launch event and E3.  Citing that his people had heard directly from many fans (read:  pages upon pages of ASCII middle fingers on their Facebook page), he announced that DRM practices for the Xbox One would be somewhat rolled back to how they are for the Xbox 360.  Here were the main hits:

An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360

Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.

This means that if I want to lend my friend a game I just need to give them the disc.  Things will mostly roll on like it currently does for the Xbox 360 generation.  It’s a good thing that Mattrick and his crew rolled these back if for no one’s sake than their own too, because things were starting to look pretty grim for team Microsoft on the gaming front.  Their licensing model was convoluted and strange for borrowing discs and game rentals.  Military personnel were calling it “a sin against all service members.”  And then there was Sony, their main competition for the last couple generations of gaming consoles, absolutely drilling them on their policies with not only their own business practices but veiled commercials targeting Microsoft to the delight of all watching.  I mean we all remember this video on sharing games from PlayStation’s YouTube channel, right?

Did anyone else get a very thumbs up / thumbs down Gladiator vibe from that whole thing?  I sure did, and it was hilarity that won in the arena.

Sony had the pole position in the console press conferences, showing off the PS4 hours after Microsoft was shilling the One.  After the disappointment of many after the Xbox One show, Sony had the opportunity to say “Hey guys, don’t worry!  We’re still here to save you!”  And it worked.  Like gangbusters, kids.  Sony offered a unit that cost less, had better hardware specs, nixed the DRM, had no requirement for an always on, always listening camera, and didn’t charge $60 a year for online services.  How can you lose with that kind of show?

So was it Sony putting pressure on Microsoft by just being themselves or was it truly the Xbox team listening to their fans.  “We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds,” Mattrick said on the Xbox Wire.  Maybe it should have read “Pleas guys, don’t leave us for Sony.”  It was probably a combination of both.  And that’s what’s awesome about the whole thing.  What this showed was that the gaming industry can still be affected by competition and vox populi – even though companies run on margin and greed, that they can shift gears when they previously said they can’t when their dollars are threatened.  It’s the beauty of the system – a company can shift gears once they realize that consumers aren’t going for what they’ve got.  And to the conspiracy theorists, no, I don’t think this was a planned stunt from the get go to come off harsh then pick up the image of “listening to the fans.”  That strategy would have only worked if they had a PS4-killer level function in the Xbox One, which they didn’t.  In all I’m glad they rolled back the DRM, but I think the damage is still done.

And that’s my opinion regardless of the borderline insane ramblings of Cliffy B, who claims that it was Sony alone, and not the “whiny internet” that forced Microsoft’s hand.

Sony still has a lot of those advantages listed above going for them.  The price of the PS4 is still about $100 less than the One, and that also comes with no yearly payments for online services.  And money is always a factor.  It was part of the reason for the success of Nintendo’s first Wii console after all.  But the other disadvantage they still maintain is the Kinect requirement.  The Kinect still has to be plugged in and powered on for the console to function, keeping my privacy concerns right where they are.  Enough to make the fact that they rolled back the DRM, while fundamentally good, also completely moot.  I still need more than “I promise Nene, I’m not listening” to make it happen for me.

Final verdict: Sony still has the upper hand.

US Military Ready to Court Martial the Xbox One

Remember a while back when former Xbox director Adam Orth put his foot in his digital mouth, tweeting to us all that if there is an always on connection (of course before they confirmed it) that we can all #dealwithit?  As you know, I had some fundamental problems with the sentiment.  Orth went on to be completely dismissive about folks that didn’t have a constant and reliable internet connection.  That covers a lot of folks – gamers that live in the rural United States without broadband or have to rely on spotty satellite service as well as members of our armed services that are deployed abroad.  I spoke to some of my friends in uniform when that information came out, and they were unanimously unpleased.  Gaming is how some of them blow off steam while deployed in remote areas or at sea, and a requirement for online check ins with the inability to play offline without one puts that to an end.

Those statements seem to be resonating with American military personnel.  For example US Navy Lieutenant Scott Metcalf, according to reports from The Navy Times, has gone from eagerly awaiting his console’s arrival to not even being sure that he’ll be buying one from Microsoft.  The always on policy as well as other aspects of the Xbox are what he calls “showstoppers.”  Here’s what a Microsoft spokesperson told the Military Times about Xbox functionality:

“With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection”

The Times outline the other problems that Lt. Metcalf and others have with the new device.  For starters, the Xbox One is only supported in 21 countries – meaning it’s unavailable to any personnel deployed outside of those zones.  If somehow the lucky military gamer in question is in one of those 21 countries, games are region locked, so guess what?  No buying games locally or firing up a disc from home – because if your XBox Live account is linked to a different region, you’re looking at no joy.

More so than the always on component of the console and the inability to play games offline – or even really at all in some cases, is the security issues.  This is a huge issue in the past couple weeks, especially considering Germany’s consideration to ban sales of the console considering it a surveillance device.  It’s absolutely no surprise to me that the US military feels the same way.  In your living room, an always on (and always listening) Kinect unit might pick up a conversation between you and your friends, or where you want to order takeout from.  Now imagine that you living room is actually a military unit, where a Commander has a lot more to worry about being picked up than a food order.

Metcalf isn’t the only one with issues.  Naval aviator Jay Johnson is outspoken about the topic as well.  Johnson, who served tours on three Nimitz-class carriers, describes gaming as “my sanctuary. It is where I went to calm down after a long day of flying.”  In a piece he wrote for Gamasutra, he describes it simply as “the single greatest sin Microsoft has committed against all service members.”  And he’s right.

What makes this whole thing even worse is Microsoft’s attitude about the whole thing.  While our military personnel are losing a way to escape their sometimes harsh realities, Don Mattrick keeps on with a “sucks to be you” demeanor, stating that if they don’t want a console that has an always on component, that they can always buy an Xbox 360, which allows full-time offline play.

His words in an interview at E3 reflect that:

“When I read the blogs and thought about who’s really the most impacted, there was a person who said, ‘Hey, I’m on a nuclear sub.’ I don’t even know what it means to be on a nuclear sub, but I’ve got to imagine that it’s not easy to get an Internet connection. Hey, I can empathize. If I was on a sub, I’d be disappointed.”

Great, they empathize.  Too bad they’re not going to do anything about it.  There haven’t been any plans or even words on their part to address the issue.  But hey, they’ve got a 360 for you.  It’s absolutely shameful that in a room where these things are discussed at Xbox HQ, there was absolutely no foresight to what their policies could mean for our fighting men and women having a little piece of home when they’re deployed abroad.  Said best by Johnson -

“No longer will the sounds of Master Chief saving the human race echo through the hallowed halls of the USS Abraham Lincoln, or any other USS ship, when we have a few hours respite. No longer will you see Marcus and Dom sawing through the Locust Horde at the bases in Afghanistan after the Marines have returned from patrol and want to escape their reality for a bit. Those days are now firmly behind us.”