Monthly Archives: January 2009

Nintendo is working with The National Association for Music Education to put Wii Music into schools in 51 US cities. The goal: to help children with rhythm, song structure, etc.

Good, if brief, list of common mechanics that tend to spoil the gameplay experience.

Some very interesting news out of Apple over the past couple weeks. First, it announced that anticopying restrictions would be removed from all music in iTunes, and that record companies would no longer be limited to selling songs for $0.99. (Great move, IMO.) Second, just one week after announcing that he was suffering from a simple “hormone imbalance,” Steve Jobs reversed course and said he was taking a six-month leave of absence due to more serious health issues — triggering an SEC investigation. Finally, Apple’s quarterly profits blew past analyst estimates due to strong sales of iPods, iPhones, and laptops; an impressive feat given the state of the economy.

Microsoft announced that Doritos: Dash of Destruction had been the most downloaded game in the second half of December, with almost 1m downloads. (Not bad for an advergame…)

Via Warren Spector, a delightful reprinting of clever New York Magazine language competitions. One of my favorites: “Prequels” — which elicted submissions such as “Two Dalmations”, “Prince Kong”, “Malcolm IX”, and “We’re Running Low on Mohicans.”

There’s more to life than games:

God bless the new President of the United States of America, Barack Obama! And for all our sakes, good luck to him…

MSMR shares a pricing study with two interesting conclusions: 1) The negative effects of unethical corporate behavior have a substantially greater impact on consumer willingness to pay than the positive effects of ethical behavior, and, 2) No difference in consumer willingness to pay was found between products that were 25%, 50% and 100% ethically-produced.

EA will begin distributing via Steam, despite having its own digital game delivery platform (EA Store).

The RIAA has abandoned its policy of suing individual users for sharing copyrighted songs and instead will “work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings.” Overdue but welcome.

NYTimes examines Tap Tap, which is becoming the Guitar Hero and Rock Band of the iPhone. Not because Tap Tap is particularly imaginative or even particularly good, but because the developer of this music game platform has quickly and effectively leveraged its first mover advantage on the iPhone. Can Tap Tap still be displaced? Sure. The quickest method: find a way to let me download the tracks from my existing Rock Band games onto an iPhone version of Rock Band and I’ll switch in a heartbeat and never look back. Obviously, I’ll have to pay something for the privilege (flat fees? ongoing subs? something else?)

Towards the end of the holiday period, Activision discounted its’ blockbuster, Call of Duty: World at War to $49. A symbol of both the effects of the recession and too much competition… it will be interesting to see what happens with prices over the next three months.

Via Raph, news that in the third quarter of ‘08 laptop shipments exceeded that of desktops for the first time ever. And he asks a good question: what does a true AAA game designed for a netbook look like?

Also via Raph, one of the most clever games I’ve ever played. It only takes a couple minutes — check it out.

Seth Godin writes, “Organizations staffed with sports fans or true believers worry me, because they often use their passion as an excuse for poor performance.” We’re certainly an industry populated by true believers… so how about it? Have you seen evidence of this inside or outside your organization? I believe that I have.

Useful reminder: the Wii may be the best-selling next gen console, but which console accounts for the greatest share of gaming minutes? The PS2, at 30%. The Xbox 360 is next, at 18%. The Wii clocks in at 13.5%. Not an indictment of the Wii, but yet another reminder that if you’re a third party, other platforms may represent better investments. And that the PS2 is still a force to be reckoned with.

There’s more to life than games:

Yet another great XKCD comic. I don’t know about you, but the personal time I spent messing with computers had a far greater impact on my career than anything I learned in high school…

And yet another funny post by Scott Adams’ (more funny if you’re a dog lover.)

I’m probably one of the only people on earth who can claim their sister is a professional puppeteer (and a darn good one at that.) She recently made a new website with photos of her work.