December 2007 Archives
This Christmas, my mom helped me get a Nintendo Wii for my wife. So now my wife has a Wii to help relieve some stress from her frantic days in law school. But what was a surprise to me was what my mom also go us...Guitar Hero III! Boy, oh, boy! Is this ever a fun game! Even my wife, who I did not thing would enjoy it as much as me, has taken to it. In fact, I think she stayed up an extra hour or so last night and played it.
Being a musician myself, it's no wonder that I would want to play this game. So when I read a review on The Register entitled How to be a failure at Guitar Hero III, I was really taken back by the stupidity of what I read.
"No one who plays guitar can transfer their skills to Guitar Hero III or Rock Band."
Umm...yes and no. The physics can't be transferred, that's for sure. It's a plastic thing in the shape of a guitar with five buttons and a lever. It's obvious that guitar skills don't apply to a device like this. However, a sense of rhythm and groove does apply. Some of the solos in the songs require you to adjust your timing and thus you can't hit the buttons on a perfect upbeat or downbeat. So, in that sense, guitarists and other musicians can apply that to this game.
"A recent article in the New York Times on the guitar games wheeled out some egghead to claim that: "There is an aspirational element to Guitar Hero... [it satisfies] the desire to interact physically with music."
No, not even close. In Guitar Hero III, I noticed, the guitar sound is essentially always the same, no matter what one does. The key to tone in an actual guitar is the direct physical interaction between the player and the instrument. This is expressed in the guitarist adage that everyone's tone comes from their hands."
Umm...I don't think that's what the so-called egghead meant. The whole notion that Guitar Hero some how gives others a way to feel what it's like to play a real guitar is crap. But that's not the point of the game. The point is to get into the groove of the song and hit the buttons in the correct order. The end result is that you have people who get really into it and do all kinds of crazy shit. Those who just sit on the couch playing the game aren't having as much fun. The ones who are having all the fun are the ones who get up and jump around, bob their heads, and really get into the music while playing the game. That's what the New York Times writer meant by the desire to interact physically with music. When you're in the groove then you play better and get a better score.
No one really thinks their going to learn how to play the guitar by playing Guitar Hero. If they do then their naive. The only thing you'll learn from Guitar Hero is hand and eye coordination and a sense of rhythm, timing, and groove which is critical to learning how to play guitar. You have to admit that you can't learn to play music without these basic skills. Same applies to dancing. Can't dance well if you don't have any sense of rhythm, right?
Playing a real guitar is about expressing yourself through music. You mean to tell me we have a bunch of people playing Guitar Hero that think they're expressing themselves in a meaningful way, that somehow your ability to kick ass in Guitar Hero makes you a better guitarist? I don't think so. Hell, even South Park showed just how ridiculous it is on an episode called Guitar Queer-O.
The whole point, the only point to Guitar Hero is to have fun. If you think Guitar Hero is pointless and don't want to play it then just don't play it. But to criticize a game like this on the basis that it supposedly makes people think they're playing a real guitar is bogus.
Last week at my company's Christmas party, I was having a conversation with a few of my co-workers and their wives. The topic of conversation shifted to the iPod and one of my co-worker's wives brought up a good question: Is there a good alternative to the iPod? My response to her was that the latest generation of the Microsoft Zune has received good reviews. I read a lot of different news feeds and blog posts and the general consensus is that the second generation of Zunes are pretty darn good and actually top the iPod in some ways.
Paul Thorrott has an excellent review of the latest batch of Zunes from Microsoft. His review is very much on the level and he doesn't seem to show any bias in his review. He states right up front that he didn't give the first Zune a good review. Yeah, that first Zune Microsoft put out was indeed an abysmal combination of hardware and software. Not very many people liked it at all. He says that the new Zunes are not without their problems but are far and away a better product than the first Zunes.
"Is this a revolution in the making? Not quite, not yet: Apple will still sell untold iPods this holiday season. But the Zune is no longer a laughing stock and some of the changes Microsoft has made, both in the hardware and in the software, will have Apple racing to catch up. I like what I see here."
There's no doubt in my mind that the Zune deserves a place as the #2 media player on the market but I'm not so sure about it topping the iPod anytime soon. The primary problem with it is this: No Mac compatibility! Now, you could say that this only affects about 5% of Microsoft's potential customer base. Then again that 5% is just as important as the rest. It's the same argument I have with web designers and developers creating sites that only work with Internet Explorer. To dismiss a percentage of your clientèle like this is no different than designing a building that does not accommodate for the blind and/or disabled. Simply put, it's not a good business decision. As such, I still recommend the iPod over the Zune for this very reason.
NBC is continuing its efforts to distance themselves from iTunes even further with its anything-but-Apple strategy. Latest news says that NBC is teaming up with SanDisk. "SanDisk?", you say. Yes, SanDisk!
The stategy is to sell the SanDisk Sansa TakeTV and let customers use the Fanfare video service to download content. In theory, this idea seems really cool since it means watching content on your TV. However, there is some really big downsides to this:
The TakeTV is Windows only and there is no indication from SanDisk that it'll ever be Mac compatible.
The TakeTV is for video only. No features for listening to just audio, music, podcasts or showing your photos like the Apple TV can.
You'll have to shell out another $99 to $150 for yet another device to hook up to your TV.
Still doesn't solve the problem of not being able to take your media on the go.
This may be a fine solution for some folks out there...but not when it's the only solution for playing NBC content on your TV. Like others have said, it's basically NBC telling you how they want you to use their content. And, yes, the TakeTV is going to have DRM out the ass cause that's exactly how NBC wants it.
Others have talked about how Apple needs NBC:
“Don’t let the Macgeeks posting angry blogs against NBC fool you...The loser here is Apple, which relies on NBC Universal to deliver 30 percent of video download sales. Any supposed backlash against NBC will not materialize because NBC has made its content available, for free, on NBC.com and six other major portals sites, via NBC Direct download, as well as over cable VOD.�
It may seem like that now, especially when NBC is doing everything they can to make NBC look like the bad guy. However, just because NBC is making its content available for free doesn't mean that it's a good thing. There are a lot of people out there that simply want readily available content that they can use as they please whether it's playing it on an iPod/iPhone, on their computer, TV, or any other way they want. NBC wants everyone to pay a fee for every device they want to play the content on whereas most consumers would rather pay for it once and play it anywhere.
So all the stuff NBC is doing...who is it really good for? Definitely not Apple...but not the consumer either. Although it's easy to say that Apple is the real loser here and that Macgeeks are just blowing hot air, in the end NBC will likely end up being the real loser. It's bad enough that they killed all their content from iTunes...but it's even worse then their so-called solution doesn't even compensate Mac users. Who are they kidding? "Anything but Apple" indeed! Shitheads!
Now, before I begin, I'll just say that I'm not going to knock Tom Krazit on his CNet blog post called Problems with the Mac promised land. He made some very valid and interesting points. However, there are a few areas that I feel might be misconstrued. For instance:
"It's never clear in the early going exactly how many people as a whole run into problems with Macs, since things get quickly blown out of proportion under the intense scrutiny paid to Apple. But the basic complaint seems to be: this ain't what we thought it would be. Buggy upgrades? Security issues? This is why we switched to the Mac in the first place, right?"
Was Leopard really that buggy? Did it really have security issues galore? Sort of but not really. Compared to a Vista upgrade though, Leopard is probably one of the smoothest upgrades I've ever seen. No software product is going to be perfect right out of the starting gate. And, you're right, how quickly a company can react to problems is very important. However, it's human nature for people to blow the whistle much harder when they have problems versus when they don't.
A lot of the issues with Leopard are overblown just as much as Macs are hyped. Many issues were fixed fairly quickly with the first set of patches and fixes. Many others were due to changes Apple made to the security of the OS. For instance, I had a problem sharing a folder out to a Windows machine on my network. The folder simply didn't show up. It wasn't until I disabled the default Guest account and set my account to allow for sharing via SMB till it worked. Shared folders is but one thing Apple changed pretty dramatically and thus the way it works is different. As such many people would consider this a bug. It's not though; it just works a bit different that before.
You're right about the TV commercials. Are people really that naive that they believe everything they see in a commercial? I mean, think about the truck and Hummer commercials. Do people really think they're gonna go off-road and travel over a mountain and a bed of rocks? I mean, really?
As reported by Ars Technica, DVD sales are in a bit of a slump. Yes, part of the blame is due to the availability of movies via video-on-demand, pay-per-view, Netflix and other rental places. All of these are just byproducts to the primary reason why DVD sales have gone down a bit, that DVDs are just too expensive and people just aren't buying as many as they used to.
The average DVD movie costs anywhere from $19.99 to $39.99 and up. Retailers push to get people to buy movies when they first come out by pricing them as low as $14.99 for a newly released movie. Even at that price, people just aren't flocking out to buy them. Is it the quality of the movies coming out that keeps people from buying them? Or is it that people just don't want to spend a whole lot of money on movies anymore?
And, of course, it doesn't help that there are two other competing formats, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, vying for people's attention but doing nothing more than cause further confusion to the average consumer. Plus, the fact that these formats cost anywhere from $10 to $15 dollars more compared to the DVD keeps people from buying them as well.
I've bought only three movies in the past three months: Spider-man 3, Ratatouille, and Transformers. All three together cost me around $65. That's pretty much the most I can afford with my current financial status. Add to that the amount I've spend on comic books, CDs, iTunes downloads, and a bunch of other media related stuff and you have a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff.
For the most part, the average buyer is just like me; I only want to spend a limited amount for the media that I buy. Studios are doing a heck of a job trying to cram this stuff down our throats. But what they aren't doing is lowering the prices for all this stuff. Heck, if I could buy most movies for $10 to $12 dollars on DVD I'd probably buy more often. But as it stands, no, I can't buy everything that I'd like. So, until the price goes down, I'll stick with the few movies that I get on sale. For everything else, there's Netflix!
Update (December 5, 2007):
Whether it's music, audio books, e-books, movies, TV shows, or the like, media is media any way you slice it. Piracy is just a fact of life and something every media company must face. Punishing the consumer for a few bad eggs though is not good. Continuing to tell consumer what they can and cannot do with the media they buy is simply a bad business decision. Consumers want choices and the studios aren't budging. So what I recommend is this:
Lower the price of DVDs - People will buy more if the cost is right. If the average price was around $10 then DVDs would fly off the shelves. And if you really want HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray to be succesful, why not price the media for around the same price DVDs are now?
Go DRM-less - As it stands, consumers have to break DMCA laws just to convert their DVDs into something playable on a media player. Removing the encryption and DRM from all media (including downloadable content) would give consumers a lot more choices as to when and where they can play the media they purchase.
Offer downloadable, burnable content - DVD is but one method of content delivery. Give consumers the freedom to choose how they buy their media. If they want to buy it as a downloadable copy via iTunes or another media store then offer it. Also, the sale of downloadable, burnable DVDs would be a very good thing. I'd be willing to buy a downloadable DVD for about $10 just for the sheer convenience of not having to go to the store.
It's official! Wanna watch the latest Heroes episode on your Apple TV? How about 30 Rock on your iPod or Zune? "Sorry!", says Mr. Zucker, "No can do! You're SOL for now!" No 30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman, Heroes, The Office, Scrubs, or The Tonight Show. And that pretty much sums it up for any content from Bravo, mun2, NBC, NBC News, CNBC, NBC Sports, Sci Fi, Sleuth, Telemundo or USA Network. Wanna watch this stuff at a later time? Better keep those DVR set to record then! Thanks, Mr. Zucker, I appreciate it!
But, on the bright side, you can watch a lot of this content on the network websites! Err...provided you're on Windows! Yep, NBC's new fangled video download service has been getting a lot of flack lately. It requires that you use Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player to view and use the site and the videos are laden with DRM (the files expire 7 days after downloading!). You can't play them on a portable player either...you're forced to play them only on your computer. And if you're on a Mac then you're screwed. But they do say they'll have Mac support in the first part of 2008. Great...so what do we do till then? Oh yeah! That's right! We use Pirate Bay!
NBC also has a private beta of another video serviced called Hulu. A lot of early reviews have already been posted about Hulu (here, here, here, and here). But, just like NBC's own video download site, there are restrictions on what you can and cannot do with the video downloads. It's a streaming only service and thus you can't download the video to your hard drive to watch later. Also, many new TV episodes will expire after 5 weeks so there likely won't be a way to watch any back catalog of episodes online. And, of course, you can't watch any content on a portable media player.
I've already talked about my disdain for CEO Jeff Zucker in a previous post. NBC's new video download service is a travesty! No way am I going to sit there and watch a f#$king episode on their site. It's quirky, the video is too damn small, and it skips. I honestly would prefer just to buy the damn episode for two dollars and watch it on my big screen...but NBC absolutely refuses to allow me to do so. Instead, they come up with some goofy scheme to make wads of cash off of services online like Hulu and their own video download service. Never mind what the customer wants because it's clear that NBC doesn't care. It's about maintaining total control over their content and squeezing every last nickel from the consumer. Corporate bullshit at its finest!
You wanna impress me, Mr. Zucker? Why don't you follow Amazon's suit and offer up a way for me to download your content and burn it to a DVD at a fair and decent price? That, my friend, would impress the shit out of me!
People download from sites like the Pirate Bay simply because they are tired of DRM and their tired of people telling them what they can and cannot do with the content they are trying to legitimately purchase. DRM is a dead end, NBC! Get used to it!
