Fun times with technology. If you sent an email to my personal address (or via this blog) from 2am to 9am (PST) today, I may not have received it. Spammers the world over will despair at this news, I’m sure.

• Ken Kutaragi, CEO of SCEI and “Father of the Playstation,” has apparently been forced out.
• On a more positive note, Sony announced the new PlayStation Eye camera, along with a very cool-sounding card game (by Hasbro) which will take advantage of the Eye. Basically, physical cards are tracked by the camera and come to life on screen as animated monsters!
• According to Bloomberg, Nintendo has 79 games for the DS and 45 titles for the Wii in development. Those are remarkable numbers. Third party publishers (with an interest in these platforms) can’t be overly thrilled about so much competition from “the home team.”
• A coalition of architects and designers are seeking to “wikify” architecture through the use of Second Life. A great experiment, though I suspect that innovation centered around virtual objects (untied to land) is more likely to succeed… especially given that land has a price in SL.
• Microsoft has launched the Xbox Live Originals contest. Xbox users are invited to create a pilot TV episode. Standout finalists will be featured on Marketplace in July; the winner will receive a $100K deal with Xbox Live to create a six-episode series.

• I highly recommend that anyone interested in digital distribution (and/or the long tail) read this NYTimes article, “Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?” Quick summary: researchers at Columbia University have found that social influence systems (i.e. portals built around user rankings) tend to be highly unpredictable (as opposed to highly efficient at identifying the “best” content.) The researchers attribute this to the ultimately overwhelming impact of the few people who first encounter new content. In other words: social influence systems (like Digg.com) are not the stock market — you can’t count on an “objective and reasonable” valuation of all content, even over long periods of time. That said, it’s not clear this is a “problem”, though it is certainly relevant to the issues discussed in my recent long tail post.
• Some good (hardware-related) news for Xbox last week. Walmart is getting behind HD-DVD (to the tune of 2M units) and “incremental shoppers” (i.e. those not interested in a Core or Premium 360) seem to be showing interest in the 360 Elite.
• Nice post by Henry about what he calls “spreadable media” — basically, media designed to be circulated, sliced up, remixed, etc. Some good examples of do’s (i.e. Steven Colbert’s decision to make non-aired interview material available to fans online) and don’ts (Veronica Mars asks fans to make shorts promoting the show, but forbids them to use material from the show. Blech.) I really owe it to Henry for broadening my thinking about participatory culture; coincidentally, the subject of my last post.
• In the “ironic timing” category, just as everyone is rushing to blame video games for the Virginia Tech tradgedy, the British Board of Film Classification has unveiled research indicating that violent games are less influential than their film/TV counterparts.

I stumbled onto an interesting mashup of Halo and Metroid (plus a little Matrix) via Penny Arcade. But the mashup itself, while impressive, didn’t inspire me to write this post. What caught my eye was the commentary on the mashup by its creator, Monty. Let me quote the relevant portion:

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• Virgin Radio (UK) is streaming music to PS3 and Wii consoles via a Flash applet that can be accessed via the console web browsers.
• The Chinese government has formalized rules around “anti-addiction” restrictions in MMOGs. Playtime of more than three hours a day must be discouraged with gameplay penalties, and players must register their real identities to play at all. Unrelatedly: EA may or may not have bought 19% of Chinese MMOG operator, The9.
• Interesting stats about Amp’d mobile subscribers. In particular: “original content accounts for only 5% of all Amp’d Live content offerings but 30% of the overall downloads.” Original content does well on XBLA, too. :-)
• Wired.com’s Chris Kohler complains about control issues in Wii games. This is something that I’ve worried about since last year’s E3 (before I joined Microsoft, btw). I’m still willing to chalk this up to “expectable developer ramp-up issues.” In a year from now, if these complaints are still frequent, my outlook for Nintendo will be more gloomy. And such an outcome would be bad for everybody in the long-term (since it would be mis-interpreted as “proof” that a novel controller is a “short-term gimmick.”)
• Note to Intel, and all marketers: don’t waste money advertising in Second Life (or any virtual environment) if you don’t understand that environment’s limitations.
• A controversial report concludes that, of the most popular YouTube videos, less than 10% were pulled for copyright violation (accounting for just 6% of views.) Interestingly, “the bulk of views to removed videos consisted of music videos and short clips from comedy sketches and unique sporting events.”
• The first episode of the new season of South Park is available in HD in Marketplace — the first time major TV show content is available in this format via Xbox before it is available anywhere else.
• A huge federal study concludes that current educational software has no impact on student performance. IMO, it’s time to stop deploying uninspired “learning tools” and start focusing on novel edutainment experiences that inspire children to learn more, on their own time, after they stop playing the game.

Digital distribution and eCommerce are at the heart of what I do for a living. And nowhere is the Long Tail more at home than at the junction point of digital distribution and eCommerce. Someday, when greater volumes of content are featured on XBLA, it should turn into a perfect Long Tail paradise, right?

Well, that’s what I’m hoping for. But there are a few potential issues that muddy the waters. Some of them are issues facing all community-centric online systems. Some of them are specific to video game services. I’ll give you a couple of examples, and hopefully you can give me some ideas in return!

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• EMI Group will soon sell all its music (minus the Beatles catalog) through iTunes with no DRM whatsoever.
• Nice article by Damion Schubert about “casual” vs. “hardcore” gamers. A useful read for both designers and marketers. I agree with much of it.
• Norwegian Cruise Line is putting Wii consoles on all its ships. My congratulations to Nintendo. This kind of thing helps our entire industry.
• Mario and Sonic will appear together for the first time in a Wii game based on the 2008 Olympics. Honest question: doesn’t Sonic win all the racing events by default?  :-)
• Family Guy. Bill Clinton. DDR. Video goodness.
• Harmonix brings us Rock Band, successor to Guitar Hero. Sounds awesome, though I wonder how many owners of Guitar Hero 2 will be willing to transition over.

A hot topic among game designers today is: should designers aspire to celebrity (of the kind possessed by famous movie directors and producers) and if so, how? Raph Koster frequently talks about this, and I believe his rationale is fairly solid. But Raph, who does a good job of reaching out to the community (via his book, press interviews, conferences, and blog), is still completely unknown to the vast majority of human beings who regularly play video games (much less humanity in general.) For that matter, even our most beloved industry icons (like Miyamoto) are basically unknown outside the enthusiast market.

Since I singled out Raph, I should note that he doesn’t always talk about individual celebrity. His use of the term seems to extend to corporate brands (i.e. what Rockstar aspires to in every regard, from their name to their products.) But it’s hard to turn a corporate brand into anything even remotely resembling a mega-celebrity brand (i.e. Steven Spielberg). Across all entertainment industries, there are few examples to aspire to.

So if a celebrity-level corporate brand is generally out of reach, and some of our most outspoken and engaged/engaging game designers are still unknown outside hardcore circles, what can be done to harness the celebrity power that designers and companies crave?

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