Games & Mobile Forum is 1-day executive forum focused on business and technology developments impacting games and mobile entertainment. In 2003, leading executives from entertainment and technology companies including, Yahoo! Games, AOL Games, Atari, Acclaim, Warner Bros. Online, AtomShockwave, CNET, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), The Endeavor Agency, Mythic Entertainment and Digital Bridges participated in a series of panels on topics, including “Mobile Games: The Coming Wireless Revolution”, “Developing Games Based on Film, Television & Music Properties and Visa-Versa””, and “Advergames: Recent Developments & Opportunities”. New York City http://www.gamesandmobile.com
Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009
N-GAGE 1.5: Back for a Beating
Nokia has announced the next iteration of their mobile gaming platform in the form of the N-GAGE QD. It’s backwardly compatible with the existing N-GAGE games, but there have been a few refinements and changes, all based on what Nokia have been learned since the first model was released.
Nokia’s Senior Vice President of Games (now there’s a crrrrrrazy job title), Ilkka Raiskinen said “After six months on the market with the N-Gage platform, we wanted to expand our device portfolio based on the feedback we’ve received. With improved gaming ergonomics, gamers can now start to play games at the push of a button and enjoy the increased responsiveness of the game keys. We also added support for hot-swap MMC and extended the battery life.”
N-GAGE Arena is pushed to the fore this time, and it’s a smart move too, as it was the multiplayer functions that made the console stand out from other hand-held gaming platforms out there. The QD now has a Arena Launcher allowing gamers to communicate, view score rankings and download content via a GPRS connection.
The N-GAGE QD has also incorporated some of the features that the (admittedly few) purchasers of the first system requested – particularly the improvements to gaming controls. As Nokia insisted that the first N-GAGE was a gaming platform first, phone second many saw the awkward placement and size of the controls as a bit of a howler.
Another welcome change is the positioning of the microphone and speaker – Raiskinen added: “For phone calls, we reoriented the speaker and microphone to support ‘classic talking’.” Previously, if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to hold the handset at a right angle sticking out from your head. At the very least, this would make you look somewhat foolish. However, we can’t imagine anyone getting mugged for an N-GAGE.
With greater emphasis on multiplayer gaming and improved ergonomics, it could be that they’ve got it right this time, especially since Nintendo and Sony’s next hand-held gaming platforms will almost certainly not support GPRS gaming.
Microsoft Still Kissing, Still Making Up
Microsoft have settled an long-running dispute with InterTrust over patents relating to content protection – namely, setting permissions on content for buying, copying and downloading digital content. InterTrust sued MS in 2001 after talks to license their technology failed.
MS have agreed to pay $440 million (€369 million) to put this one to rest.
An anonymous source at the BBC said to Digital Lifestyles: “Interesting … particularly where a MS spokesperson says that ‘patent issues were the responsibility of MS not their customers’ …that one will come back to haunt them.”
It appears that Microsoft are tying up loose ends so they can concentrate on new business – also, Digital Lifestyles see an interesting synergy with the Linux/SCO case.
We believe Microsoft will contrast their recent intellectual property settlements against the currently unresolved SCO source code dispute. Demonstrating that Windows is litigation-free compared to the potentially dangerous disputes surrounding Linux and potential additional licensing fees might entice businesses away from the open source operating system towards a (law-wise at least) “safer” Windows.
You heard it here first.
Nokia Picks Visual Radio Partner
Remember we reported on Visual Radio? Nokia have just chosen Hewlett-Packard as a technology partner to help get the service into the market. They intend to develop Visual Radio further, with the aim of making it available to other handset manufacturers through HP.
Felice Swapp, director of strategic initiatives for HP said “As you drive to this ‘digital lifestyle’ where it’s fundamentally mobile and digital and virtual, and content becomes much more meaningful, how do you have business models in that world?”
Their answer is to employ HP to sell Visual Radio to phone makers and radio stations, providing installation and support.
Research from Nokia indicates that phone owners with FM receivers in their handsets only listen to radio once a week – but the company is hoping that their new service will encourage users to take more interest in radio and use Visual Radio to buy ringtones and other music-related content.
TellTale Weekly: A Project Gutenberg for Audio Books
Telltale Weekly are building an audio library – on a cheap now, free later model. They are looking to add at least fifty titles to their library every year, releasing them under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
The professionally recorded, DRM-free, texts are available as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio files and can be transferred and listened to however the user wishes, for personal use. The site currently has 23 titles, but are looking to expand as quickly as they can acquire content, and they’re looking for contributions from authors, performers and producers.
TellTale Weekly hope that by charging a small sum for new titles now, they will be able to offer them free later, after five years or 100,000 downloads. “Paying to hear the text now (and for the next five years),” they say, “helps to cover the costs for the production, recording, and bandwidth of the performance you purchase, and supports future releases so that we’ll still be producing new audiobooks by the time our first one hits the public domain.”
Apple’s Faster, Cheaper eMacs
Apple has revised its eMac computer line with two new models. At US$799 and US$999 the two additions are faster, a bit cheaper and have a lot more features than previous versions.
Both of the new models have 1.25GHz G4 processors and 128mb of memory, and incorporate beautiful 17” displays. The more expensive of the two models has an 80gb hard drive (the cheaper only has 40gb) and has Apple’s SuperDrive built in. Both computers have Radeon 9200 graphics with 32mb of its own video memory. It might be because I’m sitting here with a 256mb 9800 that 32mb seems a bit mean, graphics memory wise. But then, I’m sure my card doesn’t even need to wake up to render my typing in OpenOffice.
The new Macs come with iLife ’04, Apple’s digital lifestyle application – see our previous write up on features like GarageBand.
Apple is heavily promoting their AirPort extreme technology for wireless networking with the new eMacs, though it is not included as standard.
ACCU Annual Conference
This year, the conference includes an in-depth 2-day forum devoted to Open Source development and the issues it raises – specifically Software Patents and IP issues. The open source forum will be focused on issues of interest to decision makers considering adoption of open-source, and to people in the software industry. The event, drawing key figures such as Eric S Raymond, David Ascher and Paul Everitt, will include case studies, panels, and talks.
The ACCU (Association of C and C++ Users) spring conference will be taking place at the Randolph Hotel in central Oxford, April 14-17 2004. Major sponsors include Microsoft, O’Reilly, Blackwells, ReportLab, Perforce and QBS.
This year, in addition to the impressive technical programme, the event aims to examine the big issues and latest trends in the software industry today and will feature a two-day Open Source Forum with experts instrumental in the Open Source revolution. Read more at:
http://www.accu.org/conference/opensource.html
The “Decision Makers’ Day” on Wednesday 14th April covers
– the rate of adoption of key open source technologies
– what kind of support major players are providing
– open source software in eGovernment and Financial Services
– numerous case studies on best practicesThe “Software Industry Day” on Thursday 15th covers
– after the dot com crash, which business models are actually working for companies which give their software away?
– who is funding all those developers anyway?
– the debate over software patents, arguably the key issue in the industry this yearThe keynote speaker is Eric Raymond, whose paper “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” popularized and explained the Open Source phenomenon. Other speakers include Paul Everitt, co-founder of Zope Corp, whose open source content management system is in massive use in the public sector; David Ascher of ActiveState (Vancouver), recently acquired by Sophos; Aljosa Pasic of Schlumberger-Sema; James Heald, a leading campaigner in the Software Patents debate.
The ACCU conference is a ten year old event which has grown into one of the leading technical events for software developers worldwide, and regularly features the authors of C++ and Python as well as many other luminaries.
The Open Source Forum does not presume any technical knowledge or prior background and will be an ideal opportunity to learn about the key issues affecting the software industry today.
Randolph Hotel, central Oxford, UK http://www.accu.org/conference/US CD Sales Up 10%
With sales of CDs up 10.6% for far in 2004, figures in a new report from Neilsen represent the best year the American music industry has seen for some time.
All music sales (including legal downloads, music on DVDs and CDs) were up 9.2% in the first quarter of 2004.
The data for the survey was collected by Nielsen’s Soundscan system which collects data from 14,000 point of sale registers across the US and Canada.
Record companies, fresh from a three year slump, were claiming an ongoing decline blamed on piracy. Some industry observers still blame the slump on the labels and artists themselves, with a dearth of quality product in the market to drive sales.
Record labels are still cautious about the upswing, and are taking nothing for granted, and is citing surveys that indicate piracy has decreased since the RIAA started taking people to court.
Major Labels: US$0.99 is Too Cheap!
Even though many listeners think that the current average price for a downloaded music track is a tad on the high side, the five major labels have got together to discuss putting the price up – by quite a bit, too.
At US$0.99 (€0.83), music is doing OK, if not exactly flying off the servers – yet a hike to US$1.25 or even US$2.99 per song is being talked about. Online music stores are expensive to run, say the industry, and most of them lose money. Apple does very well out of iTunes, and sells a lot of iPods because of it, but the labels don’t see much out of it.
The legal download business is only just starting to flourish – a price rise on this scale will surely kill it off completely.