Another fun mini-game, The Amazing Flying Brothers, from Petri Purho. (He posted this a few weeks ago but I only just had the chance to play it.) My top score: 22,800.

Ian Bogost points out the similarities between the Wii Fit board and Amiga’s “joyboard”.

Here in Seattle, Nintendo is piloting new software that enables Nintendo DS owners at a Mariners game to order food at their seats, watch replays, enjoy multiplayer baseball minigames, etc. $5 a session, $30 for ten sessions. Bit pricey, IMO, but otherwise a very neat idea!

Every so often, I hear someone say that the demise of the video game console is inevitable (and likely not far off). Their reasons vary: “closed platforms can’t survive”, “consoles are becoming too specialized”, etc. Having thought about it, I just can’t come to the same conclusion. Consoles aren’t going anywhere in the next ten+ years or so (beyond which I can’t claim to understand what the market will look like. There’s too much cultural and technological uncertainty.)

To be clear: I’m defining “console” as “a closed or semi-closed hardware platform dedicated primarily to interactive entertainment.” Does that necessarily mean “software and hardware designed, produced, and distributed by a single company?” No. There could be alliances on the software or hardware side of things, and those alliances could result in independent product variants that share a base level of compatibility. What matters is the presence of very stable standards that lead to a reliable, accessible, and affordable gaming experience. In other words, a guiding hand still matters.

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I’m not even going to try distilling the E3 news; check out Next-Gen, Joystiq, etc for coverage. I’ll just point out two of my favorite videos: Super Mario Galaxy (I love how a 2nd player can help the primary player in simple but significant ways) and LittleBigPlanet (which continues to look awesome!)

Ever since I wrote about reverse product placement I’ve been getting pinged by people interested in the concept — the latest from Ad Age, which quoted me in an article about the current 7-Eleven/Simpsons promo taking place. (A bunch of 7-Eleven’s are being converted into Quik-E-Marts and selling goods from the Simpsons universe… like Squishees!) Really, really interesting! (Too bad that Duff Beer didn’t make the leap; I’d personally love to drink one.) ….and speaking of the Simpsons, the upcoming game from EA is sounding pretty cool. :-)

LA Times has posted an article about the difficulties that companies are experiencing with their Second Life islands. Not much new in there aside from admissions by companies that are disenchanted and pulling out. Wagner James Au (author of the fantastic blog New World Notes) fires back with some statistics, most of which are compelling, but two of which are simply misleading. First: “Each of the top five [commercial] sites garnered a .8 to 2% visit rate. Typical click through for a traditional banner ad on the Web is generally estimated at .5 to 1%.” Well, yeah, but what’s the cost of acquiring that .8 to 2% visit rate relative to banner advertising? Pretty darn high from what I hear. Next: “Just 18% of the world has been designated to have ‘Mature’ content.” Fine, but how much visitor time is spent in that 18% of the world? More than 18%, I’ll bet.

Second Life is pretty cool, but its defenders need to think of new ways to talk about it. (Btw, I’m not advocating that companies ignore SL — but as I’ve said before, they do need to completely rethink their relationship to it.)

Microsoft is expanding the Xbox 360 warranty to 3 years (for people suffering from “red ring” errors) and taking a ~$1.1B charge in FY07. Peter Moore was interviewed by N’Gai Croal on the subject. Rough news, no doubt about it… but hopefully customers will feel that Microsoft is taking proper care of them.

Sony is cutting the price of the PS3 by $100 (this is 99.9% certain, despite repeated denials by the company.) Sony also gets a dose of rough news: Beautiful Katamari was canceled for the PS3, and Madden 08 will run far more smoothly on the 360 than on the PS3. A $100 price cut is not going to fix these (and all the rest of Sony’s) problems.

But the honeymoon continues for Nintendo. Only announcement to catch my eye: EA is implementing something called “Family Play” exclusively for the Wii. Basically, EA Sports titles will enable experienced gamers to play with full (more complex) controls, while inexperienced gamers can use a simplified (wand-only) control system that levels the playfield (so to speak!) Great stuff. I expect to see features of this sort migrate to many games (and all consoles.) Hey — I wonder if a demographic advocate came up with this? Yeah… probably not. :-)

And, as a break from console-centricity, here’s a nice article about Zork (one of ten games recently voted into the Digital Game Canon.)

Those of you who played text-input adventure games back in the day (King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc) will recall how fun it could be to test the limits of the game designer’s imagination by experimenting with language commands. It was thrilling when you tried something “unusual” or “outrageous” (in your mind) and yet the game responded appropriately. Of course, it was also frustrating when you tried to accomplish something serious and the game didn’t understand you. (For an exercise in said frustration, give the much-hyped Facade a try if you haven’t already. It’s a glimpse into what made these games fun, and everything that made them less-than-fun.)

At any rate, most of that “joy of experimentation” disappeared when adventure games migrated to mouse-only. Perhaps not coincidentally, adventures games themselves began to disappear soon afterwards. But text-input has returned in the form of viral marketing gimmicks like the Subservient Chicken campaign, and in IM bots like Spleak, which capture the imagination in part by encouraging users to test the limits of the designer’s vision and resources via text input. Both the Subservient Chicken campaign and Spleak have proven quite successful within a limited but significant audience.

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