As you may have read, Sony is trumpeting the fact that PS3 game downloads will have a 500mb size restriction, ten times the current limit for XBLA games. This is effectively no different from Sony’s claims that blu-ray makes the PS3 superior to the Xbox 360 in general. More megabytes == higher quality.

Right.

Read the rest of this post >>>

• US comic publishers are reaching out to female readers now that manga has helped prove (shocker of shockers!) that males aren’t the only audience. But in game-industry-land, there are still execs and analysts who insist that women will only play simple puzzle games. Why, God, why?
• The “YouTube for PC games” category continues to explode. My buddy Jim Greer (formerly of Pogo) has alpha-launched Kongregate, a website that shares advertising, game sales, and microtransaction revenues with creators. More news here.
• The first post-launch article (I’ve seen) about the obvious weight-loss potential of the Wii. I predict approximately ten billion more articles on this topic. Such a PR layup for Nintendo…
• Henry has written a good article about the need for clearer language when discussing games and the “wisdom of crowds” | “collective intelligence” | “crowd-sourcing”. (Actually, he doesn’t mention “crowd-sourcing”, but I wish he had, because the term is often confused with WoC. Example of crowd-sourcing here.)
• Universal Music is suing MySpace over “user-appropriated content”.
• Neat little example of viral marketing on XBLA.  :-)

I’ve been waiting patiently for a whole year to re-use this pic. Seriously.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Thanks for reading along, sharing your thoughts, and suffering my various inanities.  :-)

Speaking of: if there’s a topic that you’ve been hoping I would write more about, but I just haven’t gotten ’round to it, by all means let me know. Some of my favorite articles were the result of friendly suggestions posted in comments on this blog or sent via email.

…sweet.

The last few days have been a sleep-deprived, continuous cycle that looks something like this: work, fix house, play Viva Pinata, work, play Gears of War, fix house, play Wii Sports, work…

Nintendo has actually managed to make virtual bowling fun. I mean laugh out loud, heckle and boast, drink-beer-with-your-friends-fun. There should be some sort of special award for not making yet another crappy bowling game.

Suffice to say, I’m enjoying my Wii, despite (or perhaps partially due to) the absolute hailstorm of bad puns I’m constantly subjected to while playing with it. I want to say that “I’ve heard them all”, but man, this gutter clearly stretches to infinity. Anyway, Super Monkey Ball is next on my list of Wii games. I’m looking forward to it.

IMO, from what I’ve seen, Xbox Live Arcade is still miles ahead of anything offered by Sony or Nintendo. Of course, they’ll both ramp up sooner or later, but I think it will be difficult for them to close the gap between the offerings. After all, we’re certainly not resting on our butts right now.

Lastly, and on a completely unrelated note: if you haven’t seen the latest Bond flick (Casino Royale), go see it. Right now. It was the best Bond experience since Connery. There were almost no gadgets (and no Q) but I didn’t even care because Bond is finally a charming-but-utterly-lethal badass once again. I could say more but really, you should just go see it!

• Lazard Capital predicts 6% growth for Gamestop, thanks to Wii and Xbox 360 sales that will more than compensate for a $50M PS3-related shortfall. Both Nintendo and Microsoft (Gears of War, Viva Piñata) are enjoying strong holiday buzz, unlike Sony.
• Stardock’s Brad Wardell talks about making an MMO with a queue to play business model — wait in line to join a busy game server, or pay and jump to the front of the line (ala FilePlanet). Interesting idea.
• Interesting article about designing and improving the “virtual sensation” of games — a favorite topic of mine given its relation to exergaming. This reads like a manual for Wii developers, i.e. “One pitfall in creating virtual sensation is relying on the infallibility of the platform on which it resides…”
• One thing I’ll say for Sony — it wisely keeps pushing user-generated content (though so far I’m sure it’s 99% vaporware). Since Sony has stated it wants the PS3 to be perceived as “more than a console”, it comes as no surprise that they are encouraging the use of a USB mouse and/or keyboard for UGC-on-console creation.
• Raph Koster writes a fun semi-rant about user perspectives on DRM when it’s their content that is being pirated. His article actually raises some great questions for the industry.

Tonight I spent about an hour helping my wife play Bejeweled 2 on XBLA. In what appears to have recently become a defining pattern in my life, I played the role of strategist; i.e. pointed out moves that were likely to result in big-scoring combos a few turns down the line, while Eve actually handled the controller. Funny how play imitates work sometimes.  :-)

But anyway, this got me thinking (once again) about how there aren’t enough cooperative games on the market. I really enjoyed helping Eve play Bejeweled, despite the fact that the game was never designed for such a dynamic. And I can’t count the number of people who have told me that they enjoy playing World of Warcraft with their wives in part because they can help each other on quests. In fact, when you really think about it, the ubiquitous Korean Internet cafe gaming+dating scene starts to make sense. Games really can be an ideal mechanism via which to express your affection for someone and via which to enjoy their company.

If we console makers want to attract more female consumers, we can’t just focus on new marketing efforts, or producing more casual games (in general), or hardware redesign. All of that definitely helps, but it just can’t beat twenty minutes of quality time enjoying a game with hubby, or with son, or with brother…

• Sony launch news: Lazard Capital Markets (analyst) predicts just 150K-200K PS3s for the US launch in a few days, and the software tie-ratio for the Japanese PS3 has thus far fallen short of one game per system (0.98). That’s rather low. Sony’s silver-lining: consumer anticipation appears to remain high.
• MTV gets some pretty serious props from Slashdot for Gamers’ Week. It is simply impossible to doubt MTVN’s committment to games at this point, what with the acquisitions of Harmonix, Atom, Neopets, etc…
• The Escapist has posted a perspective on game blogs. Not sure I’d agree with all of it; for example, I have more than a few relatively “casual” gamer friends who still read Joystiq. But it’s true that many companies still seem to be struggling with how to engage the blogging community (IMO: a bit more openness, a bit less hype, and regular communication goes a long way).

Tonight’s post has been temporarily put on hold because I literally just moved into my new house (finally) and I’m surrounded by an intimidating pile of boxes. I can almost see them glaring at me from the corner of my eye…!

PS. Moving stinks. And winter has arrived, so my backyard no longer resembles the lush landscape pictured to the right. Things are a bit more sinister now, in that “ummm… those trees seem alive” kind of way.

I’m always on the lookout for general business news and research that seems relevant to the video game industry, and there was some good stuff in the latest issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. In particular, let me draw your attention to Is Creativity a Foreign Concept?

To summarize: a team of researchers from INSEAD and Kellogg conducted a series of tests on graduate students who had and had not lived abroad for a significant period of time (at least six months). They found that having spent time abroad increased the chances of finding innovative solutions to tricky problems. An even bigger boost was demonstrated by students who had lived abroad for at least two or three years. From the article:

Read the rest of this post >>>

• Via Raph Koster, a new portal called Pjio lets users upload games, which can be played and rated by other users via web browser. Players can actually embed games they like in their own website, ala YouTube. Developers currently get all the (game sale) profit and share in the portal’s ad revenue. And apparently there’s an API for community features like leaderboards.
• Will Amazon.com be selling real goods in Second Life? And if so, how long will it be before they integrate into traditional games as well?
• GameSpot is offering a $700 Wii bundle. Talk about “capitalizing on consumer enthusiasm”…
• Gears of War is getting spectacularly good reviews. This is great for Microsoft on the eve of the PS3 launch. And, in other news that you’ve probably already heard, downloadable TV and film content now available via Xbox Live, including stuff like Nacho Libre, CSI, and NASCAR sports programming.