Category: Software

Software

Microsoft Scraps Major Online Game Before Launch

The hugely anticipated MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) True Fantasy Online, seen as a competitor to Final Fantasy X and tool for winning over Japanese gamers has been scrapped after more than three years in development.

The title had already been delayed three times – it was originally intended to go live in Spring. Role-playing games are enormously popular with Japanese players, and indeed the country is the source of all the best RPG franchises: Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Vagrant Story, to name just a few. Japan also is home to a phenomena known as “Final Fantasy Flu” where there is a sudden peak in staff calling in sick on major RPG launch days.

Level 5, developers of the game have an incredible track record when it comes to games – they’re already responsible for the best-selling Dragon Quarter and Dark Cloud series.

Peter Moore, of Microsoft’s games unit, and formerly of Sega, said: “It was very, very clear to us that there was no way for the quality level we needed that it was going to make winter. We wish that we could just through sheer force of will bring this game to market. It just isn’t happening. We started to be concerned with timetables and milestones in recent months. The developer, who we have the greatest regard for … agreed with us.”

Since launch, Microsoft have sold just 500,000 consoles in Japan – reasons given revolve around the sheer size of the console (it originally launched with a special controller that was smaller than the standard US/UK issue – now available worldwide) and lack of games designed to appeal to Japanese gamers. By comparison, Sony has sold 15 million Playstation2 consoles, Nintendo has sold 3.2 million GameCubes.

The MMORPG market worldwide is acknowledged as being difficult to crack – despite being relatively new, there are already well-established games in operation and players are loath to switch between them. Everquest is undoubtedly the most popular with more than 420,000 subscribers paying $12.95 per month to punch rats in the face and steal their whiskers for one experience point.

Level 5

Nintendo Will D

Nintendo will be début their successor to the GameCube at next May’s E3. To be in a position to demo the console, referred to as the N5, in less than a year mean that they must have been developing it for a while.

An E3 showcase could mean a December launch for Japan, March 2006 for the US and a summer 2006 launch for the UK. Now that I’ve just typed that, it doesn’t seem so imminent after all. The timing is crucial, however – it will give Nintendo a lead on Sony and Microsoft when they launch their PS3 Xbox Next consoles. We’d just like to point out that this strategy did nothing to save Sega when they launched the Dreamcast ahead of the PS2.

The new console will almost certainly have advanced link up capabilities with the new DS handheld which will have been out on the market for a year by the time the N5 hits Akihabara. Of course, all of this is speculation as no details about the box have been released.

Nintendo didn’t have much luck with the GameCube, despite it looking great on paper: a technically advanced console, small and portable, quality games and characters, with a price (eventually) less than it’s competitors – Sony and Microsoft wiped the floor with it nonetheless, and many developers are cancelling scheduled games for it as sales continue to drop.

Sorry, was I talking about the GameCube there or the Dreamcast again?

Nintendo

PlanetDreamcast

Windows Media 10 beta Announced Wednesday

Microsoft will be rolling out the beta programme for their Windows Media Player 10 application today, with the emphasis on portability and DRM.

One of WM10’s new features will be easy synchronisation of media libraries with portable devices – something that iPod users have enjoyed since iTunes was released. WM10 needs to be able to see portable devices as a disk drive in order to perform synchronisation, but many modern players behave like this when connected to a Windows machine.

For devices that run Windows Media Centre Portable OS, such as the Creative Lab’s offering detailed yesterday, Microsoft have developed the Media Transfer Protocol to automatically synchronise files between the two.

Synchronisation is not straightforward for Microsoft as many different manufacturers provide a range of disparate hardware – something that Apple, with two basic iPods, does not have to worry about.

WM10 will also feature the new Janus DRM technology, allowing subscription music sites like Napster to employ seamless licensing across devices.

Many of the new features of WM10 will of course be dormant until portable devices supporting them start to appear later in 2004.

Windows Media

Media Center Xbox 2 On the Cards?

Microsoft has been investigating options for a new variant in its Xbox games console line, and it might be bringing out a version that’s a PVR/PC hybrid.

Working with the B/R/S Group, a California-based marketing research company, Microsoft have been conducting focus groups and research on what they’re calling the Xbox Next PC. The proposed unit has a hard disk and CD burner and is a proper PC running Windows.

Microsoft were keen to emphasise that the Xbox was not a PC when it first appeared, but are perhaps happier to blur this distinction now that multifunction home media centres such as Sony’s PSX are gaining coverage. Microsoft’s XNA software solution, enabling easier porting of software between DirectX platforms may make this goal even easier to achieve.

It may be that when XBox Next finally appears, there will be two variants: the next generation Xbox console, and its PC/PVR/console cousin. However, poor sales of the PSX in Japan and lack of US/European launch dates for the console may show the concept to be a bit of a lemon.

For some reason the Xbox Next PC reminds me a bit of those Amstrad PCs you could buy with a MegaDrive built in. Hmmmm – eBay.

B/R/S groups – making life complicated for URLs

The Amstrad MegaDrive Computer

Microsoft’s Crack at Federated Identity

Microsoft will be showing off their new federated identity software shortly – a service that will allow users to log in and then carry their identity from site to site, securely allowing businesses to extend applications and intranets to external clients. The technology won’t be available until Q3 2005 with the release of Windows Server 2003 R2.

Michael Stephenson, lead program manager for Windows Server 2003 said “Federated identity lets companies securely extend their applications to suppliers and external users… We are showing how a user at one site might log on to a portal and then they can enter a purchase order at another location without having to sign on again. Today it is very expensive to provide this type of functionality.”

MS’s previous attempt at federated identity, Passport, never quite realised its potential, and so it’s back to the drawing board.

There’s already a W3C standard for federated identity, but Microsoft, along with IBM, want to push the WS-Security specifications put forward by OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

Microsoft’s system will also be up against the Liberty Alliance set of open standards, led by their best pals Sun.

Federated identity is of importance to everyone – not only do you need to know what information is being held about you in your “ID passport” and what site and application owners do with that information, but that your personal details are secure and cannot be compromised.

Liberty Alliance

Microsoft and IBM’s original white paper

BT and Microsoft Team Up to Offer Broadband in Scotland

BT and Microsoft are trialling a new service in Scotland that offering software and broadband to small and medium-sized businesses. Connected And Complete is a package consisting of broadband installation, Microsoft Office Small Business Edition, twice yearly health checks, a help desk and tools for making a website.

Jerry Thompson, BT’s head of business broadband, said: “There are well developed IT and financial services sectors in Scotland and we think they will be early adopters.”

If successful, the service will be offered to businesses throughout the UK.

BT are doing quite well out of broadband at the moment – year end results show a 30% jump in turnover for their new services, bringing in UK£3.4 billion (€5 billion) in revenue.

Nice to see something nice being tried out in Scotland for a change, since other trial runs in the past have included nuclear waste, intercontinental ballistic missiles, the poll tax and Malcolm Rifkin.

Microsoft on Connected And Complete

New Office for Macintosh

Things have come a long way since the disaster that was Word for Macintosh 6.0 (hey, Mac users have long memories, what can I say?), and now Microsoft’s new iteration of its Office suite boasts plenty of features and optimisations for OS X .

New features include a Project Centre for keeping track of documents, contacts, notes and emails relating to individual projects and a rather useful Compatibility Report feature for checking if your document is going to appear anything like you intended on a colleagues PC.

Handy features like these are collected together in the new Toolbox, allowing users to access them from inside any Office application.

The version of Internet Explorer is still the somewhat elderly 5.0, but then it’s highly unlikely that MS would ever be able compete with Apple’s own legendary Safari browser.

Office 2004 for Macintosh costs US$399 (€331).

Microsoft Office for Macintosh

Or there’s always OpenOffice for Mac – it’s free

Sega and Sammy Merge

Sammy, the Japanese game publisher and pachinko machine manufacturer is set to merge with Sega, by acquiring the remaining 78% of Sega’s stock that it doesn’t already own.

A merger was proposed last year, but went sour when Sega rejected it.

Hajime Satomi, president of Sammy had announced some months that there were a number of options on what the two companies’ relationship would be, but it looks like a holding company will buy up all shares in both organisations.

Sega has had a good year so far, doubling its income in the first quarter of the year to 8.8 billion Yen (€64.5 million). Sega’s arcade and software businesses have been doing well, and the company has thrived since its decision to get out of the console market.

Sammy is possibly best known round these parts for the Guilty Gear series of 2D beat-em-ups and the Atmoiswave range of arcade cabinets.

Sammy Atomiswave

Apple Takes iTunes to China

Apple have announced a deal with Founder PC – one the largest PC manufacturers in China. From the start of June, all Founder PCs will have iTunes preinstalled giving access to iTunes features, but without the music store. So, a bit like being an iPod owner in Europe then. Apple have not announced plans to take the iTunes Music Store to China yet.

“Digital music is becoming very important in the Chinese PC market, and Apple’s iTunes is the runaway market leader,” said Wei Xin, chairman of Founder Group and Founder Technology. “As the first Chinese company to bundle this innovative software with our PCs, we are excited to provide our customers with the world’s best digital music experience.”

“Around the world, iTunes has revolutionised the way people manage and listen to their digital music,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing. “We are teaming up with Founder to deliver an easy-to-use, seamless music experience to millions of Chinese customers.”

This isn’t Founder’s first licensing deal with western software/hardware manufacturers – they licensed Palm’s OS late last year with the aim of bringing Palm-powered devices to the Chinese market in the future.

Foundertech (Chinese language)

Apple Releases iTunes SDK for Windows

Apple have released the iTunes software development kit (SDK) for Windows, opening up iTunes functionality to Windows programmers though the Windows Component Object Model (COM) interface.

The SDK includes header files, documentation and sample Jscripts on how to use the iTunes interface.

The release of the SDK means that programmers will now be able to integrate iTunes features into third party programs, including of course, Windows Media Player. This means that it is theoretically possible to build iTunes Music Store support into Window Media Player – but it’s unlikely that Microsoft will be sending users over to Apple’s online shop any time soon.

One thing is almost certain – the SDK mean that Fairplay AAC (Advanced Audio enCoding) support will become much more prevalent as people use the interface in their programs. AAC has received a lot of praise since it has become more popular though the iPod and iTunes store, as it demonstrates great compression ratios and audio quality.

We look forward to seeing what widespread adoption of AAC as a DRM and encoding solution will mean for Windows Media.

Get the iTunes SDK here

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