Category: Software

Software

PSX Spec Downgraded but Still Sells Out

Following the recent launch of Sony’s PSX, which combines the functions of a PlayStation 2, PVR and DVD burner (full details), there have been a number of dissenting voices over the reduced specification of the released product. Despite this, the first shipment to shops is reported to have nearly sold out on launch day, with long queues on the day of its release. The size of the initial shipment has not been disclosed. A spokesperson for Sony added that they plan to ship one million PSX systems by the end of 2004.

Quite a number of what would appear to be vital functions and features of the PSX have been downgraded or removed, which Sony say is to time pressures in hitting an xmas released date. The most surprising omission is of a functioning Ethernet port, clearly vital for accessing online content and sharing content between rooms in a household.

A number of formats will not initially be supported. MP3 playback will be missing, but Sony’s copy-protected ATRAC will be and TIFF and GIF graphics formats, although JPEG will continue to be supported. Two disk formats, CD-R and DVD+RW have also been dropped. The speed of the DVD recording has been halved from x24 to x12 which should have too much of an impact.

Financial analysts have been damning in their views of the changes with Kazumasa Kubota of Okasan Securities has described the PSX as a “publicity stunt”, while Kazuya Yamamoto of UFJ Tsubasa has claimed that “lowering the specifications of the PSX hurt Sony’s image”.

We feel the removals have been more about anti-piracy than a need to “rush” the release and are probably victims of the long-running struggle between Sony’s content and CE division.

Sony PSX site

First Reviews of Nintendo IQue Player Arrive

Back in September this year, Nintendo announced they would be creating a home games console that would sell exclusively in Chinese market. Initially to be sold in Shanghai, Guanzhou and Chengdu, this will be the first games console to be sold in China.

As details emerged of the IQue Player (rough translation, God’s Playing Machine), we realised that its form would be a handheld games controller that plugged directly in to the TV, doing away with the box under the TV. Based on N64, which at its original launch in 1996 was one of the most powerful consoles available, Nintendo clearly plan to leverage its large amount of licensed game content to run on it – very clever when you consider it is currently just sitting earning nothing. It also has hardware-emulation of Nintendo’s pre-N64 console, the Super Nintendo, enabling it to play the enormous library of games that were available for it. The games will be converted to Chinese language and, to minimise piracy often perceived as a problem in China, games will be loaded on to the 64Mb Flash-based memory cartridges at local retailers and will be, at least to Western standards, very cheap.

Time and thinking has moved on a long way from the N64 and the IQue Player benefits from a number of innovative features. It will be launched with one full game and four other demonstration versions of titles will be preloaded on to the cartridge, that will last for between one and ten hours of playing before removing themselves. As touched on above, the new software will be distributes electronically to shops located around China and will be loaded on to Flash memory cartridges at the shops. The operating system, dubbed UOS, is automatically updatable when new games are bought and installed, this may well be to ensure they stay ahead of hackers attempts to copy games.

The IQue Player has now been released in China priced at 598 Yuan (~$72, ~€59, ~£41) slightly above the originally expected 498 Yuan. The games sell for a very competitive, at least to Western eyes, 48 Yuan (~$6, ~€5, ~£3.50).

Two site have now published the first European reviews of the IQue Player, one in English and another slightly more technical one in German.

The video games and content worlds will be watching the progress of this platform in China, not just to get a grasp of the level of enthusiasm for gaming in China, but also for the success of the anti-piracy measures and to see if they are prepared to pay for reasonably priced content.

Microsoft to Charge for FAT Filing

Microsoft have announced that they will be introducing a licensing fee for the use of their patented portions of the File Allocation Table (FAT).

The FAT contains the list the filenames, their size and location of files that are held on computer media – essentially the index of the files are stored and is used to retrieve them. The structure was originally developed under Microsoft’s original Disk Operating System (DOS) and then under in Windows, later to be replaced by NT Filing System (NTFS). It has become the dominant standard and as such enables the simple interchange of files between different digital devices, such as transferring digital photos held on a camera using a removable Smart Media or via USB lead to a PC.

Microsoft propose two licensing models; one for removable media, covering the preformatting of the media and media preloaded with content, which could, for example be USB drive keyrings, memory cartridges, etc; the other for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics (CE) devices, which they define as follows

“portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions”.

Charges are planned at US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.

They are effectively saying, if your consumers want to easily exchange information with computers that run Windows, you need to pay us some money to enable that. This could be because they now acknowledge that not every consumer electronics devices will run Windows and want to ensure that they gain some income from them.

It will be interesting to see how the CE companies respond. Will they grit their teeth and pay Microsoft, or will they collectively decide to use an open source filing system. It is a potentially risky move by Microsoft, and could have the affect of pushing people away from their platform.

Microsoft terms

Xbox Games Respond to Spoken Commands

Two new Xbox games have been released that allow players to control some of the gameplay simply by speaking instructions.

Xbox Live players have been able to talk to each other during game play since the service was launched 18 months ago, but this is the first time Xbox players have been able to control the games functions.

Rainbow Six 3 and SWAT: Global Strike Team are by different games developers but both make use of the voice recognition features that are built into the Xbox developers kit (XDK), making these features available to any games developer. Voice recognition specialist, Fonix, is the supplier of the technology behind it.

Reviews of the games have spoken about how it initially feels strange giving commands to your TV, but when they get past this short-lived barrier found the game play significantly enhanced. It just feel like an natural extension and is particularly useful in games needing control of remote squad of people.

While it is not the first time voice recognitions has been used in video game play, the verdict is generally that this is the best implementation seen to date.

Recently there has been an expansion in the ways to interact with computer consoles. Sony EyeToy, which has been available in the UK for a number of months but that has just been released in the US, being the most notable by introduces players to new ways of interfacing to a game. By placing a camera on top of the TV and plugging it into the PlayStation, the player is able to move their arms, head and other parts of their body, controlling the computer-generated objects in the EyeToy games on the screen. EyeToy is a current favourite at the Digital Lifestyles office and we can see significant expansion in the use of this specific device, in areas such as keep fit training.

Both the voice recognition and the EyeToy are just steps away from the long-standard console interface, the games controller. We feel it is inevitable that additional ways of getting your computer or console to understand what you want or need will become normal, particularly within the home where keyboards and mice are both restrictive and clumsy object to have sitting around waiting to be used.

Fonix

Sony EyeToy

Buy Sony EyeToy – Amazon US|UK

Buy Xbox Rainbow Six 3 – Amazon US|UK

Buy Xbox SWAT: Global Strike Team – Amazon US|UK

Nokia N-Gage Games Possibly Cracked

The world of introducing convergent devices is a tricky one. Following on the heals of their combined music player/mobile phone, Nokia launched their mobile phone/music player/games machine, the N-Gage, in October and its has been a shaky start. Before its launch, lots of people were less than positive, and following it, the reviews have not been great.

Despite Nokia claiming to have shipped 400,000 units to retailers, the number of customer sales is thought to be low. This has lead to some discounting, to the point where it was available for 1 pence in the UK, if you took a particular service contract out with it.

Nokia will be following the business model for other games platforms, sell the box for a minimum margin (or try to minimise your losses), then make your money in the medium to long term on licensing games for the platform. The same theory as razors and razor blades. Clearly this model only works if you sell the games as well.

Nokia will not like the latest news. A Swedish hacking group claim that they have got around the protection system that ensures that N-Gage games only play on the N-Gage. They have showed photos of the some N-Gage games running on a Siemens SX1, it’s not clear if these are mock-ups or real.

If true, the impact is far reaching. Games written for the N-Gage will run on any phone running the Symbian operating system and according to Symbian, over 2.68 million handsets were shipped with their OS in the first half of 2003.

The damage does not stop with them only losing sales of the N-Gage hardware, but that once the games have been extracted from the N-Gage and are stored digitally unprotected, people will be able to download them – not have to buy them for between $35-$40 each.

SX1 playing N-Gage games – Screen shots

Preview: BBC FightBox – Let the Fighting Commence

By Heidi Jacoby-Ackland

Program your Tivo now. Fightbox, the BBC’s new cross-platform interactive programme, is coming to a TV near you.  Robot Wars meets The Sims-on-performance-enhancing-drugs, the BBC publicity machine is very keen to emphasise that Fightbox is a TV first.  What, exactly, is Fightbox though?  Is it the logical future of entertainment?  In development for nearly four years at a reported cost of £3-4 million, Fightbox was conceived from start to finish to cross from the net to television and then into the PC/PlayStation 2/Game Boy Advanced game environments.  Early indications for Fightbox are fairly positive and the promotional trails look fantastic. 

Initially launched online a few months ago, gamers were drawn in their thousands to the Fightbox downloadable kit for creating their own warriors from a variety of different parts: arms, legs, weaponry, hair colour and even tattoos.  Contestants “trained” their self-created warriors on their own PC’s before downloading a set of qualifying battles to practice controlling their creation and gaining a score – the higher the score the stronger the warrior.  Then the best scoring virtual warriors (and their real creators) were invited to take part in the production of a television programme.  According to the BBC, approximately 200,000 people registered their warriors and uploaded scores in the six-week qualifying period.  As a demonstration of the interest in the game, apparently clans have emerged in the online community although they can’t play each other. Yet.  It’s all gone a bit D&D. 

The nay-sayers complain that the PC controls are, well, hard to control.  There’s a rumour that the television production had to be put back a week because the software still had some glitches.  And, although the BBC claims that twenty percent of the gamers were women, there’s a rumour that the Fightbox producers were so desperate to attract women that an online appeal was made especially to female gamers.  Nonetheless, there’s a low hum of anticipation in the gaming community.  Those gamers whose warriors made it to the television round report that the controls are better and the virtual studio experience was wicked.  They claim that, as with all the best computer games, practice was key to their success.  In the 30-minute television programmes, filmed as-live in front of a studio-audience, the virtual warriors have been transformed by the magic of computer graphics and a new type of filming into, um, virtual warriors in a real arena with real hosts (Trevor Nelson and Lisa Snowdon).  The contestant warriors fight the Sentients (the virtual equivalent of the House Robots in Robot Wars) then, finally, go on to fight each other to find a winner.  It’s a knock-out competition until just one of the audience-created warriors is left.  And for those who participated the ultimate prize was on offer.  No, not a million quid record contract for singing out-of-tune but the chance to have their warrior return as a Sentient in the next (yet-to-be-commissioned) series.  The final champion may not get rich from Fightbox but he (or she) will get the satisfaction of directly creating a part of the game’s future.

When we asked, the BBC spokeswoman refused either to anticipate viewing figures for Fightbox or even to elaborate on what would constitute a successful outcome to this cross-platform interactive experiment.  But it is not inconceivable that the programme could bomb as a television show while, at the same time, creating an enormous buzz for the game itself, either online or at the shop.  Then what???  Having already spent the equivalent of some countries’ GDPs on development, it would be imprudent for the BBC to completely bale on the TV programme after just one series even if the ratings are poor.  After all, the most costly and time-consuming bit of creating Fightbox, the development, is already done and dusted.  Aside from the new Sentient, most of the future content will come from the audience who, in true interactive style, are not voting for a winner but creating the characters and altering the outcomes.  The online kit is still available for download at the FightBox site.  Although it is too late to qualify for Series One, now would be a good time to start practicing for Series Two.

BBC FightBox

Amazon – Buy the FightBox game on PC, PS2 or GBA

Fightbox Ltd is a joint-venture between Bomb Productions and Ricochet Digital.  Fightbox, the TV programme, airs on BBC3 at 19.30 from 13-17 October and continues in that slot for three weeks thereafter.  [Episodes will be repeated on BBC3 the following morning at 3.30 and are due to run on BBC2 in November.]  Fightbox, the PC/PS2/GMA games, are due for release on 7 November.

Sony’s PSX – Full Details and Pricing Revealed

After a number of months of speculation, Sony have released the full details the PSX. Combining the ability to play PlayStation games with a television tuner, PVR, ATRAC3/MP3 playback and a DVD player/recorder, the box will also be equipped with a 100Mb Ethernet port – opening the door to the delivery of digital media.

The visually arresting box (312x88x323mm, weighing 5.6kg) will be launching in two guises; the DESR-5000 with a 160GB hard drive (79,800 yen, ~$730, ~£440) and the DESR-7000 with 250GB (~$900); arriving in Japan by the end of year and in Europe and then US in 2004.

Labelled as PlayStation 2.5 by some, it has already received very positive press reaction, mostly for its styling and features, as they have not had extended use of it. In addition of an Ethernet port, interfaces include USB1.1, Memory Stick slot, digital S/PDIF, PlayStation 2 peripheral connectors, composite AV-in/out.

Nearly all reaction to the price has been surprise at how expensive it is, but we feel this is a misguided as they are viewing it in the context of the currently low cost games console – which is just part of it. Just adding up the constituent parts; PS2 (~£100), TiVo (second hand eBay UK price ~£200); DVD burner (~£150) – it appears about right – especially as the PSX is one sleek box rather that three bulky boxes the separate approach would give you.

We feel the Trojan horse feature of the PSX is the combination of a device that connects to the family TV, the Ethernet port and Sony’s significant music and film empires. This would give them total vertical integration enabling the sale of media content direct to the public.

Arcade Game ROMs Finally Available for Legal Download

Arcade game ROMs have long been a popular download from the internet, due to the popularity of arcade cabinet emulators like MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator). The files are basically software images of the games, which used to be stored on hardware chips before files became bigger and other storage mediums (such as optical drives) became popular in arcade cabinets. Many arcade games have not been ported to home consoles, so players have no legal way to acquire games that they may have nostalgic feelings towards, or have kudos for acquiring. These factors, coupled with the fact that some publishers no longer exist, or the games are seen as old and therefore (erroneously) in the public domain, mean that ROM sites spring up all over the internet. Many downloaders don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by downloading these files, but they are still in copyright.

So, just like the music industry promoting legal downloads, StarROMs Inc has released 60 licensed ROM images, from as little as $2 each – and we bet that people will be downloading these classics, just like iTunes. If the StarROMs initiative takes off, gamers will be able to download many more of their old favourites legally.

Sixty titles isn’t much to begin with – but StarROMs has titles ranging from 1978 to 1992: titles like Asteroids, Millipede and – oh my goodness!!! – Crystal Castles and Marble Madness!

Will other publishers follow? We hope so – there are many, many gaps in the collection. Since the ROMs are images of the original software, they are essentially platform independent – but they rely instead on an emulator to provide all of the functions that the arcade cabinet once supplied. Emulators have been developed and ported to many platforms – so you’ll be able to play perfect arcade classics on a wide variety of platforms: PC, Palm, phone and perhaps even set-top box. Given that many set-top boxes and TiVo devices run a modern Linux kernel, and MAME has long been available on Linux, it’s not too far fetched.

StarROMs

Mame

New lawsuits against DVD backup/copying software companies

Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox have filed in a New York court against Tritton Technologies, QOJ, World Reach and Proto Ventures. They are asking the court to halt sales of their software, and are seeking unspecified monetary damages. The software is sold both in US retail stores or online.

Tritton distribute CopyWare, a DVD backup/copying application created by UK software company Redxpress that we’ve covered previously.

The Motion Picture Association of America is currently in legal actions against 321 Studio and their DVD X Copy software both in the US and the UK. In a interview with Digital-Lifestyles.info, Rob Semaan, CEO of 321 Studios told us that they intend to vigorously defend both cases which he felt were attacking the consumers Fair Rights usage. The film industry views the software as tools for piracy.