Gaming

95% of Mobile Users Won’t Download Games
Mobile gaming big boys I-Play have released the results of a study which revealed that only 5% of mobile users have ever downloaded a game
The independent survey examined the (cough) “behaviour barriers” and motives of 2,500 mobile users across the US, UK, Italy, Spain and Germany.
The study discovered that mobile phone newbies were pretty clueless about what their phones could do, with 33% of respondents unsure whether their handset could even play games.
A further 17.5% were uncertain how to download a game while the rest said that the downloading process itself was tedious.
Of all those polled, only a mere 5% of mobile users had ever downloaded and used a mobile game.
David Gosen, COO of I-play was ready with the positive spin, “The mobile games market is essentially only five percent penetrated. The good news is that we now know what’s limiting market growth – the industry must improve accessibility to mobile games and more importantly, educate consumers on how and where to obtain mobile games”.
Curiously, the survey revealed national differences, with 80% of smart Spaniards aware of the capabilities of their handsets compared with to just 60% of Germans.
Pricing was seen as a discouraging factor by 51% of the respondents, with 48 percent in favour of free trail versions and 30% saying that that they would go for a game if a friend recommended it.
Despite the aggressive advertising campaigns run to promote mobile gaming, the industry is still clearly in its infancy, although the potential for growth is seen as enormous, especially with the interest shown in emerging markets like India and China.
Gosen went on to explain that, “virgin downloaders” need more education about the process and more information about the game before they feel comfortable making that first purchase and this is critical. We know we have to de-risk that first download for the end user.
De-risk. Now there’s a good word for buzzword bingo.
iPlay
2 August, 2005
Mobile Gambling: $7.6Bn by 2010 – Informa
Forget mobile gaming – the big money’s in mobile gambling, according a report by Informa Telecoms & Media
The ‘Mobile Gambling’ report predicts that the market for mobile gambling content is going to soar from US$1.2bn (~£0.67bn. ~€0.98bn) of annual revenues in 2005 to US$7.6bn (~£4.30bn, ~€6.21bn) by 2010, with more than 200 million consumers gambling the odds using mobile devices.
There is a joker in the pack however, with the report warning that the growth of the mobile gambling market is dependent upon mobile gambling operators being able to sidefoot legislative, technological and cultural hurdles.
“Mobile gambling is already generating significant revenues, but there is room for sharp growth in the years ahead,” says Stuart Dredge, the report’s author.
“Operators recognise that there is a strong demand for mobile gambling services, and there is no shortage of companies looking to provide them. However, the industry must keep in mind its responsibilities to tackle underage and problem gambling.”
The report looked at the three key types of mobile gambling – sports betting, lotteries and casino-gaming – and predicted that lotteries are going to be the number one form of mobile gambling in the next five years, spurred on by widespread handset support.
With casinos continuing to migrate their games to mobile, the report predicts growing popularity, although sports betting is expected to be a niche sector by comparison, despite bookmakers being keen to launch mobile applications for their customers to bet on the move.
The report sees Europe remaining the largest market for mobile gambling, generating a hefty US$3.2bn of annual revenues by 2010.
Hot on its heels will be the Asia-Pacific market, forecasted to generate US$2.7bn (~£1.52bn, ~€2.20bn) by 2010.
North America emerges as the dark horse, as the size of the market there will be dependant on mobile gambling being legalised in the US and the impact of any restrictions placed upon it.
Even with these caveats, the report still predicts US$979 million (~£553m, ~€800m) of annual revenues for the region by 2010.
Mobile Gambling
1 August, 2005
White PSP: Microsoft Patent Emoticons: Google Rule – News Catch-Up
Microsoft Wants To Own Emoticons
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office to safeguard its rights on “methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, emoticons are representations of faces made up by keyboard characters and originally all looked like this :) and :-/.
Nowadays, many mobile phones and computers automatically replace the text characters with an appropriate custom image when it spots emoticons in text messages and emails.
It’s far from clear what makes Microsoft think they should own Emoticons – there again, it’s never held them back before.
Microsoft’s patent application
Microsoft emoticons
Sony Whips Out A White PSP
Sony has confirmed that it will be launching a groovy white version of its PSP, but – surprise, surprise – only in Japan.
Sony has a long history of serving up different coloured units in different territories, with the PS2 being released in Aqua, White, Yellow and Silver in the past.
The company has also announced a firmware update (in Japan, natch) so that users can surf the Internet directly from the console.
Some techie users have already been enjoying Web access on their PSPs after a hack was discovered that took advantage of a hole in the operating system used by certain games.
There’s no date set for a US and European patch, although Japanese firmware updates traditionally precede roll-outs in other markets. Sony White PSP
Google Grabs 47% Of All Searches Online
Nielsen//NetRatings “MegaView Search” report has ranked Google as the Big Cheese of search engines, registering 47% of all searches conducted online.
Lagging some way behind was Yahoo! at 22%, with MSN limping into third place at 12% and AOL Search only managing a comparatively feeble 5% of all searches.
Image searching grew hugely in popularity across all the search engines, with MSN seeing the largest increase in its image searches with a massive 90% surge. AOL’s image search zipped up 74%, Yahoo!’s soared 55%, and Google’s jumped by a rather modest 12%. Nielsen//NetRatings
25 July, 2005
China Opens Clinic For Internet Addicts
China has opened its first officially licensed clinic for Internet addiction as State media reports growing cases of obsessed Internet gamers whose addiction has caused them to quit school, commit suicide or even murder fellow gamers.
Dr. Tao Ran, the clinic’s director reports that his patients suffer from a series of maladies including depression, nervousness, fear, panic, agitation and an unwillingness to interact with others (to be honest, that sounds like a lot of normal teenagers we know).
Their Internet addiction also manifests itself in sleep disorders, the shakes and numbness in their hands from a surfeit of fragging, clicking and scrolling.
The government-owned clinic opened for business in March this year, and is situated within the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital, with the patients – mainly aged between 14 to 24 – looked after by a team of a dozen nurses and 11 doctors.
Most report losing sleep, weight and friends after spending countless grimly hours glued to their PCs, with one 12-year-old reported to have spent four days in an Internet cafe, barely eating or sleeping.
The Web addicts claim that their online obsession helped them to escape everyday stress, with many older kids becoming fixated by online chats with the opposite sex.
Tao estimates that up to 2.5 million Chinese suffer from Internet addiction, although Kuang Wenbo, a professor of mass media at Beijing’s Renmin University, thinks the problem is being overstated:
“As the number of the Netizens grows, the number of the addicted people will grow as well, but we should not worry about the issue too much. The young men at the age of growing up have their own problems. Even if there was no Internet they will get addicted to other things.”
Patients diagnosed as Internet-addicted by Tao’s diagnostic test are presented with a combination of therapy sessions, medication, acupuncture and sports exercise, with the courses lasting around 10 to 15 days.
Treatment is not cheap, with the daily US$48 (~£27 ~€40) charge working out at more than double the average city dweller’s weekly income in China.
Some of Tao’s treatment sounds a bit medieval with one session involving a machine that stimulates nerve impulses by delivering 30-volt charges to pressure points.
Another treatment is reported to involve a clear fluid delivered via an intravenous drip to “adjust the unbalanced status of brain secretions.” Eek!
Although Tao claims that the long-term effects of treatment are generally successful, not all patients are available to resist the temptation to log on.
Internet addicts treated at clinic in Beijing [AP]
4 July, 2005
HowTo: Play Films on PSP
Sony’s PlayStation Portable is a media hub, but unfortunately, apart from games there isn’t really any content available for it (not forgetting unlucky UK citizens who can’t even officially buy one until September).
It’s possible to put MP3’s on to your memory stick (Duo Pro) and listen to them through your PSP, but an iPod is probably a better system for just audio.
What makes the PSP special is its screen, very bright, lots of colours and wide. When Sony release movies on UMD they’ll sell thousands and you’ll get the public transport commuter zombies staring at their PSPs, earphones stuffed in their ears watching the latest blockbuster trying their hardest to escape from the real world.
Become a Zombie now
Though it’s not possible to get UMD movies yet, the PSP will play MPEG4 movies off the memory stick. A 1GB memory stick costs about £100 (~US$177, ~€148) which will hold about 2 full length movies (more, if quality is compromised).
Making movies used to be complicated, but luckily there are programs out there that considerably simplify the process and make it easy.
Using an Apple Mac has many advantages and ripping DVDs is one of them. Look for an application MacTheRipper, it does exactly what is says on the tin, and takes the MPEG2 information from a DVD while removing region coding, macrovision and other DVD annoyances and stores the resulting files on the hard disk.
In order to make it PSP friendly, just extract the main title.
Now find a nice utility PSPWARE, which links the Mac with the PSP. It backs-up saved programs from the PSP, but from the Mac to PSP it does a whole lot more, like syncing photo albums, playlists from iTunes but more importantly movies.
PSPWARE just takes the movie directory (produced from MacTheRipper) and magically out pops some MPEG4 files. They take a while to convert, but when the PSP is plugged in, they zap across and just work.
They really do look good and are very watchable.
Windows users don’t despair
PSPWARE has just been released for Windows with the same functionality as the Mac version. Unfortunately though there are DVD rippers out there they can be difficult to use.
DVDdecrypter was one of the best (very similar to MacTheRipper) and it’s still available from various sites, but the author has stopped supporting it as he was “put under pressure” from a major corporation.
PSPWARE is available from NullRiver it costs about £8 (~US$14~€11) for a perpetual license (free upgrades).
MacTheRipper is availble from RipDifferent and is freeware.
Windows users will have to do a bit of digging for DVDdecrypter – but it’s out there and free.
NOTE: Incredible as it may seem, making digital copies of films may be illegal in your country, even if for personal use.
1 July, 2005
A Teenage Take On Digital-Lifestyles
We all sit around postulating about what changes the digitisation of media will bring and how that will affect us. We thought it would be a good idea to ask the generation that have grown up with digital media (CD’s) what their view of the news was.
15 year old Lawrence Dudley has a strong knowledge of technology and digital media, so he’s well placed to reflect on the weeks news.
Games:
So, it’s come to that time again: The whole “my console’s better than yours” and subsequent scramble for market share between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Although I personally really dislike Microsoft, I have to admit that their console is looking the most tempting so far: It’s the only one that has properly been launched and its feature set is looking more than promising.
This leaves Sony and Nintendo: Personally, I tend to dismiss most of Nintendo’s offerings out of hand, as I don’t believe that their gear really appeals to me. It’s all so… gimmicky and childish. I mean, who would you rather have? That hot-looking chick from Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball, or The Mario Bros.? Answers itself really…
I don’t currently own an Xbox, but I have been quite a fan of Sony’s Playstation for a while: I had two of the original Playstations, PS1 and PS2 for various reasons. You might’ve thought that I would’ve been looking forward to the The Worst Foods To Eat Over A Keyboard
This article brought a big smile to my face: There’s nothing better than watching various Linux zealots argue over which food they ate over their keyboards. Nothing too serious, but you know … gotta have something to do while you’re, erm, doing your homework or something like that =) So which do you think it would be? Pizza? Coke?
That’s it from me, enjoy!
19 May, 2005
Nintendo Revolution Console Details Revealed: E3
After the high profile launches of Microsoft’s next generation consoles, Nintendo disappointed razzamatazz-seeking visitors at the E3 show by serving up a rather understated presentation.
Beginning with a talk about their plans for their other consoles, Nintendo revealed their upcoming Game Boy Micro and the “Nintendo WiFi Connection”, a free worldwide gaming service for the DS.
Of course, what the assembled hacks really wanted to know about was the new Revolution console, but Saturo Iwata, Nintendo’s main man, was coy on specific details, offering a black prototype box with a blue front-loading disc drive.
This, Iwata explained, was still only a prototype and the small size – about the same as three DVD cases stacked on top of each other – may become even smaller by the time the Revolution hits the shops.
A few facts did emerge: the Revolution will come with 512MB of internal RAM, an IBM CPU, ATi GPU, an SD slot, built-in WiFi, wireless controllers and a selection of USB2 ports.
The expected whizz bang, jaw-dropping demo videos were not in attendance, although Itawa assured the audience that the Revolution’s graphics will “wow” gamers when they finally get an eyeful of them.
Not everyone is convinced about these claims, with some industry pundits predicting that the Revolution’s processing power will be but a mere squeak compared to the mighty powerhouses lurking inside the PS3 and X360 consoles.
But Nintendo’s success has been built on gameplay not sheer grunt, a fact highlighted by Itawa, “It is the game experience that will most separate Revolution from its competitors.”
Nintendo’s new machine will be their first console capable of playing standard storage DVDs, but they haven’t forgotten their old-school fans, with the Revolution able to accept Ye Olde Gamecube discs.
Impressively, the company has ensured that backward compatibility goes all the way back to the dawn of time, offering support for every single game that has ever been released for a Nintendo home system – including N64, SNES and NES consoles.
Nintendo teased the crowd with talk of a new online content delivery service, although actual details were thin on the ground.
Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo were unable to roll out an all-star glittering cast of big name game partners, although Itawa was able to confirm several games under development for the Revolution including Metroid Prime 3, The Legend of Zelda, Mario and Donkey Kong.
The Final Fantasy series is also expected to appear onto the Revolution as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle.
Rumours persist that Nintendo may have a surprise up their sleeve for the end of the expo, but so far reaction to their presentation seems a little muted.
The Revolution faces fearsome competition from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 as manufacturers move to create digital entertainment hubs rather than simple video games consoles.
“They are all pursing strategies that really play to their own strengths,” said P.J. McNealy, a senior analyst at American Technology Research. “At this point it is primarily marketing and position, that’s the main goal here.”
Nintendo
18 May, 2005
Llamasoft Visualiser Built Into XBox 360
Wooargh! The lights! The shapes…the colours….all that swirling…and moving…have I gone back in time to a chemically assisted squat rave?
Sadly not: instead, I’m being mesmerised by Jeff Minter’s Llamasoft graphics, a cutting edge music visualisation system designed for Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Based on Neon, Llamasoft’s proprietary graphics technology, the Llamasoft Visualiser comes pre-installed on Xbox360s and it’s “capable of generating anything from soothing ambient swirls to strobing multicolour explosions.”
The mind-melding visual feasts are driven by beat detection or joypad control, letting users take interactive control of the camera, patterns and effect generators, to create their own psychedelic wig-outs.
The results are pretty damn amazing, with the silky smooth, rock-solid rendering engine creating a brain-troubling swathe of swirling, abstract, multi-layered psychotropic imagery.
The effect is so convincing, that all you’d need is some 2,000 watt techno blasting out, a floor covered in spent beer cans, a few ‘funny’ cigarettes and you could recreate the perfect rave in your bedroom.
We’ve liked Jeff Minter’s stuff ever since the days when an Amiga 1200 (RIP) with 4meg of RAM was considered positively ostentatious. Even then his Llamatron was streets ahead of the competition, so it’s great it see the spliff-consuming, loveable hippy still producing such great work.
“Without giving any secrets away and getting myself into trouble with Microsoft,” enthused Minter, “I can tell you that the Xbox 360 can bring to bear an absolutely staggering amount of computational power on each and every pixel, and never drop below 60 frames a second.”
And he’s still got his principles too, writing on his bulletin board: “And we haven’t sold our souls, or our IP, to Microsoft either. We’ve created for them an interactive visualiser for the Xbox360, and we’ll not do a visualiser for the rival consoles for this coming generation. But if someone were to ring me up tomorrow and say “Blimey Yak mate, that Neon’s a bit tasty, any chance of a bit of that for the next “not_a_console_visualiser_app” I could quite legitimately say “abso-smegging-lutely!” and we could be delivering working code in a few weeks. We can use it in games on *any* platform. The engine is small, efficient and portable.”
Bless him.
Llamasoft
Jeff Minter’s forum
18 May, 2005
Game Boy Micro Launched by Nintendo
Although Nintendo’s Revolution launch yesterday was a bit thin on detail, the company have now released full details of their itsy-bitsy addition to the Game Boy family, Game Boy Micro.
Sizing up at a diminutive four inches wide, two inches tall, and 0.7 inches thick, Nintendo are billing the Game Boy Micro as the “smallest and sleekest Game Boy product” they’ve created, claiming that it will fit comfortably into the pocket of your “tightest jeans.”
We’re not quite sure that they’ll find space in the straining waistband of Billy “20 Pints” McQuaffer, but it is a wee thing with dimensions only slightly larger than an iPod Mini and weighing just 2.8 ounces (“the same weight as 80 paper clips” as Nintendo bizarrely informed us).
The Game Boy Micro offers the same processing power as the Game Boy Advance SP models and plays all the same titles while, apparently, lending you an air of “industrial-hip cool.”
“We’re making the gorgeous Game Boy Micro for image-conscious folks who love video games, the ones who want the look of their system to be as cool as the games they play on it,” waffled George Harrison, who has one of the longest job descriptions we’ve seen for a while: Nintendo Of America’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing And Corporate Communications.
But Harrison (NOASVPOMACC) wasn’t quite finished with the ludicrous marketing tosh: “Because of its diminutive size and industrial-hip look, Game Boy Micro immediately identifies the person playing it as a trendsetter with discriminating style.”
So there you have it: any hopeless buffoon walking around with a Micro will automatically be transformed into a style icon….
Back in the real world, Nintendo are well chuffed with their new two-inch backlit screen – “the best Game Boy screen ever” – which lets users adjust the brightness of the screen to adapt to indoor lights or outdoor sunshine.
Wrapping up the feature list, the Game Boy Micro comes with a built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, supports standard headphones and comes with a removable face plate for that all-important customisation thang.
Game Boy Micro is expected to be released this autumn.
Nintendo
18 May, 2005
PS3 Launching Spring 2006: Sony At E3
Sony has unveiled prototypes of their new Playstation 3 console at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Not so much a games console as a mo’fo’ media machine, the PS3 contains a veritable beast in the box, with the Cell processor – jointly developed by IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba – capable of producing two teraflops of computing power. That’s twice that of the Xbox 360.
Like the XBox, home entertainment convergence is the big story here, with the PlayStation3 offering high quality TV output and the ability to play digital music, Blu-ray high-definition DVD, as well as show off home movies and digital pictures.
The powerful new microprocessor allows many of the functions to be carried out at the same time, allowing gamers to record TV shows or listen to music while playing a game.
Sony’s curvy silver unit comes with more connections than the StereoMCs, serving up six USB sockets; Ethernet and Wi-Fi wireless technology; BlueTooth support for up to seven wireless controllers and a removable hard drive.
The new BD-ROM (Blu-ray Disc ROM) offers a thumping great 54 GB (dual layer) storage capacity providing ample space for storing full high-definition (HD) quality movies with two HDMI high-definition sockets allowing games to be played on one screen and video conferencing on a second.
With an almighty 2 teraflops of computing power on call, the box should be capable of rendering landscapes and virtual worlds in real-time with super-smooth characters and object motion.
Sony are currently collaborating with the world’s leading tools and middleware companies, to provide developers with extensive tools and libraries to make the best of the Cell processor and enable efficient software development.
As is now the custom, every new product has to represent a ‘new era’ in something or another. Last week, Microsoft was describing their XBox launch as “a dawn of a new era in entertainment.”
Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc was ready to go a little bit further: “Empowered by the Cell processor with super computer like performance, a new age of PLAYSTATION 3 is about to begin. Together with content creators from all over the world, SCEI will accelerate the arrival of a new era in computer entertainment.”
Sony’s announcement came with a long, long list of partners enthusiastically effervescing about the new Playstation. We can sum up their opinions thus: “We think it’s great!”
Consumers will be able to find out for themselves when the PS3 launches “in the spring of 2006,” although old-school gamers will be pleased to learn that PS3 will offer backward compatibility for the 13,000-title strong PS and PS2 back catalogue.
With the two big guns XBox and PS3 showing their hands, all eyes are on Nintendo’s next-generation machine, code-named ‘Revolution,’ which will be revealed at E3 later today. We’ll be filing a report shortly.
Watch the amazing PS3 technical demos: 1UP
Sony Playstation
17 May, 2005