Kurt's Thoughts

I only go to 3 web sites for my news these days:

1. http://www.bruinblitz.com (aka http://ucla.rivals.com)
2. http://www.bruinreportonline.com (aka http://ucla.scout.com)
3. http://www.uclabruins.com (aka the Official Sports web site of UCLA)

The first 2 are pay for web sites.  They provide insider information on the Bruins that really can’t be gotten anywhere else.  And since it’s a pay for site, you know that only folks with some cash are going to be on the Premium forums, eliminating the morons that don’t have jobs and spend all day long posting babble.

But to expand my horizons, I decided to check a few others out.  It’s been several years since I’ve done that and, well, I must say there’s some real doozies out there… a few that I’ve even added to the ol’ Internet Explorer 7.0 Favorites list.

1. http://www.insomniacslounge.com/
   Who the hell is this guy?  I gotta say, he’s my kinda guy.  He’s a serious Bruin alum, that’s for certain and he’s really into Sportsbook betting… and he apparently loves photos of smokin’ hot women and isn’t afraid to post them.  In fact, the photos don’t seem to have ANYTHING TO DO with his actual blog posts.  He just… puts photos of smokin’ hot women into every post.  C’mon, you just gotta love that!
2. http://bruinsnation.com/
   If you ever want to get some perspective, this is the place to go.  This guy is the source of all hatred & loathing.  If you think you’re angry at the Bruins, you gotta check out this site.  Imagine a torrent of sheer, unadulterated anger eminating from one person:  That’s Bruinsnation. Suddenly, things won’t look so bad.
3. http://www.bruinzone.com/
   All this seems to be is a summary of links to UCLA-related articles written in major paper publications throughout Southern California, which in it of itself is somewhat useful, although I don’t give most publications – including the LA Times – much credibility.  When it comes to bias and unbalanced reporting, the Los Angeles Times is about as bad as they come.
4. http://ucla.mostvaluablenetwork.com/
   A.k.a. UCLA Hoop Scoop, this is a great blog that contains both factual and subjective content about the Basketball team.  Nice bit of content… surprised he hasn’t made it a pay-for site though.  I guess he has to bring up readership.  Back in the day, there was a site called "Bruin Hoop Report" that I used to love to read similar to this but alas its gone and dried up.

Imagine launching a product that everyone desperately wants.  In a perfect society, fair distribution through traditional supply & demand economics, moral treatment of fellow human beings, and a complete state of law & order would be in full force.

But we don’t live in a perfect society.  And in the case of the Playstation 3 just as with high-demand concert ticket sales, people are willing to go to extreme legnths to get a console – even so far as to wait overnight in the rain just to get one.  Even in Japan, a country known for it’s high employment rates, stricts guidelines of law & order, fair & orderly queuing, and ethical treatment of the indigent, when it comes to the hardcore economics of the PS3’s supply & demand, all walls fall to the mighty yen.

Now apparently, Japan’s launch was noted by an article in Kotaku has being "marred" by the hiring of Chinese Nationals many of which were apparently homeless, to wait in line to get a console and turn it for a profit though the cooperation of coordinating "auction bosses" who orchestrated the mass purchases through these people.

SONY’S FAULT?  I’M NOT SO SURE.
To be blunt, I’d be the last person to defend Sony.  They’re a competitor and I’m not gonna sit around pity the economic troubles they’ve gone through.  But in the same vein, I’m not going to piss all over them for the wrong reason.  I think it’s sad that people – any people, not just the homeless – have to wait in terrible conditions to obtain something as luxurious & unnecessary as a console. 

But the truth remains:  The mere fact that people are WILLING TO DO THIS is an indication of how high the demand is for these consoles.  And with high demand, comes extreme levels of effort.  Everyone knows this.  Sony’s just putting out a product.  And if people are willing to wait in line for days… willing to brave the cold & rain… willing to hire people to do the waiting for them… willing to push, shove, and otherwise fight for the product, then who’s fault is that really? 

These Chinese Nationals that they talk about that are "poor" and "homeless" are getting paid hard cash for waiting in line by supposedly "unscrupulous Japanese businessmen", to which I say hogwash.  Would those men have jobs otherwise?  Sony created an opportunity, the businessmen put up money for the investment and hired these Chinese Nationals to wait in line effectively sharing in the PS3 resale profit, and the Chinese folks spend their time making money for their efforts.

I see nothing wrong with this – the folks that cry about this need to get out a little more and see that the world is filled with opportunity if you choose to see it that way.  I don’t believe you’ll hear any of these Chinese whine about getting cash for their services. 

And besides – this happens all the time in the US.  In Hawaii, now housing projects start building up and there are "completion dates" upon which people can go up to the model house and purchase a house at the builder’s set rate.  What many people do is hire students, retirees, out-of-work individuals, to simply sit in line all day… all night… for weeks on end, just for the opportunity to buy one of these new houses, on the premise that once they buy the house at the set rate, they’ll be able to flip the house at market rate, which in Hawaii is usually double the original price.  Does this sound familar?

People that blame Sony for "building a compelling product", one so in-demand that it causes bizarre behavior, are for the most part simply fooling themselves.  The problem doesn’t lie primarily with the manufacturer:  The problem is mainly with the point-of-sale. 

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE POINT-OF-SALE?
If the stores themselves were smart, they’d go WAY out of their way to make the line-waiting experience palatable.  Free coffee.  Heaters.  Literature.  Coupons.  Discounts on food across the street at a local diner or better yet, a food vendor on site for the night.  Something to show that they give a damn.  If you’ve ever waited in line for tickets to a concert, or for seats to a highly anticipated basketball game, or for the opportunity to purchase a game console, you know that if a store were to show they understood our plight, well goddammit, they’ve have my heart and even if I didn’t get a console, at least I didn’t have as wretched an experience as the guys that waited in line at the Circuit City across town.

But your local electronics store is run by grown up versions of Beavis & Butthead.  No seriously – these guys and gals couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.  I’ve waited in line for Xbox360’s twice now (yes, employees have to go through the same ordeal as everyone else) and both times were excruiating experiences that rivaled my old days in college when I would camp outside of the basketball pavillion for good floor seats to the game against "Duke" or "North Carolina".  Cold, wet, windy, harsh, no bathrooms, a lot of posturing, and not a lot of guarantees.  

These stores had management that not only didn’t do anything to help folks out as they sat outside their business residence waiting for the opportunity to "be a customer", they basically perpetuated the problem by not immediately telling the people in the back of the line that "WE GUARANTEE THAT YOU WON’T GET A CONSOLE.  DON’T WAIT IN LINE."  Instead they would say, "We can’t guarantee that you’ll have the opportunity to get a console" instead of squashing the hopes of these individuals.

The fact is, if they undersell – THAT’S NOT A PROBLEM.  If they oversell – THAT’S A PROBLEM.  It’s very simple.  But they constantly choose to sell a FUZZY number of consoles, giving some people unqualified hope and that’s just not right.  Meanwhile, the store gets publicity through the line of people that wind around their parking lot, all freezing in the cold, all hoping desperately for just one console for themselves or their kid.

And by the way:  It’s also the store’s fault if things get out of hand.  Violence, crime, and law-breaking… of course these are all ridiculous outcomes of these highly coveted product releases.  But is that Sony’s fault?  Heck no.  It’s the store’s premises… the store’s sale… the store’s customers… it’s the store’s responsibility to ensure that sales are done in an orderly fashion and that customers don’t get mugged in their parking lots for their consoles.

SO REALLY?  SONY’S NOT AT FAULT?
Well, I didn’t say that exactly.  The problem is that people wait in line at the point of sale (Bic’s Cameras, for example… or Best Buy in the US) but that there’s artificial ceilings in play, enforced by the sellers & the manufacturers. 

Sony sets a mandatory price on consoles of $600 so stores have to sell them for $600 – no more, no less.  Consequently, one store can’t differentiate themselves from another in the same way that one car dealership can differentiate themselves through not just better service but better prices.  The the consumer, Best Buy looks just as good as Circuit City being that prices are the same everywhere for a PS3.

Some try to differentiate themselves in other ways.  Gamespot for example will sell consoles through bundles only, meaning that in order to get a console, you have to get it with 4 console games, and extra controller and some other gear at a price far higher than $600.  Some folks don’t want to buy this much product and that’s their choice – but it lowers demand to the level of supply that exists.

HOW DO WE FIX THIS?
This isn’t rocket science.  The concert ticket folks have dealt with this problem for years and there are tried and true methodologies for dealing with "scalpers".

1. PRICE VARIATION
   Allow store to vary the price of consoles.  Take eBay out of the picture.  If the price varies with the market, then no problem!  Supply & demand, right?  If Michael’s parents can’t afford the price – TOUGH.  That’s economics.  People don’t have a right to game consoles… just the equal opportunity to buy them at market rates.
2. ENFORCE BUNDLES
   Make bundling mandatory.  This is similar to price variation except, now the consumers get more for their buck… they just have to fork out more bucks at one time to get one.  Can’t afford it?  Well TOUGH.  Again, Econ101 – Supply & demand.
3. STAGGER RELEASES
   Wanna know how to stymie a ticket scalper?  Release them at random intervals.  No schedules, no known quantities.  Simply one day, a store might get 40 units… then two weeks later 5 units… then 3 days later 60 units.  If people believe there’s a possibility that stores might get one "any day now", then they’ll believe they have a choice instead of paying outrageous mark-ups that the scalper uses.
4. REGISTRATION
   You’d like to buy one?  Fine.  Drivers license or Passport required please.  That’s right.  Some form of unique ID.  Oh yes, and only one per customer… WORLDWIDE.  Is that fair?  Damn right it is.  Would it end scalping?  Not necessarily but it would sure as hell slow it down.  When 50% of all units are going to eBay resellers, selling consoles 1 per person is a darned good way to slow things down.

Here’s the full article:
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/top/foreigners-and-fights-ps3-jpn-launchs-dark-side-214130.php

Uh… this has thrown me for a loop.

Jim Allchin made a side comment that his son is currently running Windows Vista on his workstation at home without any Antivirus software.  The press immediately started interpretting this as meaning, "Microsoft says:  Don’t buy antivirus software for Windows Vista!" 

This has caused not just a ridiculous level of hysteria but also initiated a bunch of "conspiracy theories" like, "Microsoft is trying to stick it to McAfee & Symantec for their campaign to get APIs into the kernel to bypass PatchGuard".

ENTER MARY JO FOLEY
Wow.  Notorious mudslinger Mary Jo Foley seems to be the only voice of rationality on this topic.  She calls out the media for intentionally misinterpretting Jim Allchin’s comment as tacit approval to not use antivirus software in an attempt to create havok.

I’ve never reference a Mary Jo Foley article so I’m a little stunned by this… but that being said I have to applaud Mary Jo Foley for being the voice of rationality in a cesspool of panic-inducing media further enhancing the Culture of Fear they create around Corporate IT.

But that’s another topic entirely.  Here’s her blog entry.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=97

OMG – no seriously, this is too funny to be true. 

According to the article in Radar Online, Apple’s current "Mac Guy vs PC Guy" commercials make people think "Mac guys" are smarmy elitists while "PC guys" are sympathetic everymen.  So they fired Justin Long, the actor that plays the "Mac Guy".

Personally, I think they’re just plugging holes in a dam that needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Apple’s ads make fun of the very people they were trying to court because frankly, I think we all feel a lot more like the "PC Guy" than the "Mac Guy". Working a 8AM-to-7PM job, busting our humps trying to make a living while worrying about economic inflation, if we’re contributing enough to our 401k’s, and whether we should do 30 year fixed or 15 year interest-only ARMs. Working in Excel whether we like it or not, getting dressed in a suit-and-tie, talking about matters that frankly have nothing-to-do with our home life but everything-to-do with how we put food on the table for our families – these are the kinds of things that aren’t fun but pay the bills.

And others that have sort of recognized this have "taken to the airwaves" via the Internet.  Witness the number of Mac commercial parodies doing reversals on Apple’s advertising campaigns.  (See my blog entry called, Apple Advertisement Parodies Galore)  There are far more parodies out there supporting the "PC Guy" than there are actual Apple commercials featuring the "Mac Guy".  These ads make people with Macintoshes look like slacker trust-fund babies that edit movies and take digital photos all day instead of working for a living.

And speaking of "working for a living", "PC Guy" actor John Hodgman, still has a job.

———————-

Radar Exclusive:
Apple Ditches ‘Mac Guy’ In New Ads

[Picture:  SO LONG, STUD John Hodgman, movie star Justin Long]

Apple’s "I’m a Mac" campaign is almost perfect: It’s funny, memorable, and efficiently lays out the advantages of Macs over PCs. It’s only defect: Virtually everyone who watches it comes away liking the "PC guy" while wanting to push the "Mac guy" under a bus.

Small wonder, then, that as Apple prepares a new batch of commercials, "Mac guy"—aka Justin Long, of Dodgeball and Herbie: Fully Loaded semi-fame—is nowhere to be found. A rep for Long confirms that his days as an Apple pitchman are over: "Every ad you see Justin in is for that previous time period only," she tells Radar. "There’s no long-term deal with him." She adds (somewhat implausibly, perhaps), "Justin’s a movie star, not a commercial guy."

Meanwhile, the campaign’s other principals, director Phil Morrison and journo-humorist John Hodgman, are both returning for another round of spots, according to sources. Reps for Morrison and TBWA\Chiat\Day (Apple’s ad agency) all declined to comment, and Hodgman’s rep could only confirm that new ads were in the works.

Why was Long dropped, specifically? Perhaps for striking people as a "smug little twit," in the words of Seth Stevenson, ad critic for Slate. Long, he adds, is "just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we’ve always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast…. It’s like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it." Of the polymathic Hodgman, who has drawn acclaim for his work on The Daily Show and NPR’s This American Life as well as his book, The Areas of My Expertise, Stevenson writes, "Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident."

Shouldn’t a computer company have known that geeky is the new cool?

FULL ARTICLE HERE: 
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/11/apple-ditches-mac-guy-in-new-ads.php

I’ve been meaning to write about this topic for a while (video game comics) and I just always forgot.  This desktop background that Tim Absath of Ctrl-Alt-Del made sent me over the edge.  This is SO cool.

Ctrl-Alt-Del’s Gears of War Background

If you want different resolutions of the background, get them here:
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/news.php?i=1255

Now – on to the topic of gamer comics online.

As a gamer, I’ve seen a huge amount of press go to Penny Arcade, which in it of itself is a damned funny online comic – assuming you’re really into the gaming scene.  For years, I laughed my ass off at some of topics, not the least of which was comics like this one.. 

In fact, Tycho & Gabe created this image for Gears of War just like Tim did:

Penny Arcade’s Illustration of Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix 

But frankly, I’ve discovered that half the stuff in Penny Arcade is hard to get "other" people (my wife, coworkers, etc.) to relate to because it’s so "insider" and without people to "laugh with you" about a given comic, it’s just not as much fun.

WHY CTRL-ALT-DEL RULES
That’s why I ADORE Ctrl-Alt-Del Online.  It’s the illustrated version of my humor.  For example, this is Tim’s comic that essentially explains (according to my friend Ara) "why physics matters".
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20061025

On top of his weekly comics, Tim’s got his own animated comic going now and for $2.95 a month, you can get access to the episodes.  And it’s worth every penny, so if you like what you see at Ctrl-Alt-Online (take a look at the comic archives here) you might want to check out the cartoon at http://www.cad-premium.com/.

What’s the #1 sport in the world?  Hint:  It ain’t American football, Basketball, or even Baseball.  That’s right… it’s football, or as we Americans call it, "soccer". 

And Xbox 360 has an exclusive on it. 
Pro Evolution Soccer, the only next-gen FIFA-licensed soccer game is exclusively on Xbox 360.

For those of you who don’t quite understand the ramifications of this, let me spell this out for you in terms you might better comprehend.  Y’know how Electronic Arts has an exclusive lock on NFL Football with Madden 2007 meaning that only Electronic Arts can produce NFL football-based video games?  Now imagine that through some agreement, they only produced Madden NFL games for Xbox360 and Sony Playstation 3 would never get any NFL football games made for it.  EVER.

Gettin’ the picture now?

Now imagine that Madden NFL Football wasn’t just an American/US-only phenomenon.  What if the Madden NFL Football franchise were a WORLDWIDE phenomenon and, in fact the only sports video game that the world outside of America really cared about was Madden NFL Football… so much so that as a video game manufacturer, you coud exceed your Madden US game sales predications by just concentrating on countries outside of the US.

Is it becoming clearer how big this is?  

Now put the cherry on top:  Imagine that your primary competitor won’t even be releasing their console outside of Japan & the US until 3 months after the holiday season.

WHY DO YOU CARE?
Why should you care about this?  Isn’t this just sis-boom-bah rah-rah crap from Microsoft?  Not exactly. 

See, if you’re an Xbox360 console owner, the more Xbox360’s that get out there, the more lucrative it is for companies like Namco, Konami, Activision, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts to build great games for it.  Because there are more consoles out there, the larger the potential market is for their game.

"The Marketshare Difference"
From the perspective of an Xbox owner, this is what killed us in the last generation – Xbox Classic versus Playstation 2.  Microsoft did it’s absolute damnedest to provide huge, huge incentives for game manufacturers to develop for our console.  Seriously – that poor Xbox Marketing team sold their first-born children and whored themselves out in the name of Xbox owners to try to get game manufacturer’s to at least PORT games over for use XBox owners to buy. 

For example, here’s a list of things that I know were done… and remember, I’m not an insider on this stuff so there’s tons of other things that were done to incent game developers to build for our platform.

• Discounted Licensing:
  Microsoft’s game licensing for Xbox was rumored to be 60%-70% less than Sony’s for Playstation 2.  Every game manufacturer has to pay a licensing fee to Microsoft for each game they sell on the system.  In turn, they sell the game console itself at a heavy loss in anticipation of making it up in volume game sales.  This is the fundamental way a game system company makes money and this includes Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.  This is also known as the "razors for razorblades" model.
• Comarketing & Advertising:
  Microsoft paid or subsidized the media advertising for many big name 3rd party titles like Dead or Alive 3.  Much in the same way that Intel pays for Dell’s TV advertising for using Intel processors and sticking the "Intel inside" logo and sound in the ad, Xbox did the same thing in order to minimize the cost of marketing an Xbox title.
• Seed Funding:
  Microsoft helped fund game development.  From what I’ve heard, in order to ensure that the game had enough money upfront to get things moving, some 3rd party developers had their costs offset by Microsoft to ensure that the game was built with adequate quality but still in a timely fashion.
• Minimal SDK Costs:
  Microsoft’s game development tools & libraries had minimal entry costs to them, allowing even the most poor developer to get up and running with relatively little capital.  I think the tools were $25,000 in total, and if you think that’s a lot, you should know that "Shinobi", the tools for the Playstation 2, cost something like $250,000.
• Architectural & Business Changes:
  Microsoft often bent over backward to accommodate the demands of certain developers.  While there were others, the most famous of these was Electronic Arts and their lack of adoption of Xbox Live.  Electronic Arts refused to build in support for Xbox Live because they wanted complete ownership and control of the login & matchmaking process of their gamers.  In addition, they were irked by the fact that Microsoft built competing sports games that did support Xbox Live. So Microsoft rearchitected Xbox Live so that users could login to Electronic Art’s "servers" instead of Xbox Live’s to initiate online game play, and in addition, they ELIMINATED their entire Sports line of games – known then as the Xbox Sports Network.  (Football, Basketball, Golf, Baseball, Tennis, Hockey, etc.)  All of this just to get Madden on Xbox Live so you could play online with friends.
• Developer-focused Tools: 
  It’s well known that XBox’s development tools are a generation more productive and easier to use than Sony’s, which makes sense considering we know development & programming infinitely better than Sony.  After all, it is our business.  Most game developers will tell you that it’s a genuine pleasure to build software on Xbox’s Game Development tools because the tools are written to always make things easy and flexible for the developer.  Sony?  Not so much.  Developers usually have to conform their programming practices to that of the Sony SDK and this is even more so with the new Cell architecture of the PS3.
• Spendthrift Userbase:
  Xbox gamers spend more on games.  Xbox Classic was marketed and sold to a very different customer than Playstation 2.  The average Xbox owner was between the ages of 18-35 while the average Playstation owner was between the ages of 13-25.  Because the intended userbase for Xbox was older, more educated, and wealthier, it was natural to assume that more games would be bought per console than on Playstation 2 – and this turned out to be true.  Xbox’s "attach rate for games" as they call it, was close to 7 games-per-console-sold compared to Playstation 2’s 2.5 games-per-console-sold.  A single Xbox console resulted in nearly 2.5x as much "game revenue" than a single Playstation 2 console.

…but none of that held a candle to the the "marketshare difference".  This refers to the fact that, in the end, Playstation 2 had arguably 4x-5x the marketshare as Xbox 360.  Sony consistently reported worldwide sales numbers that drastically eclipsed Xbox Classic’s worldwide sales numbers by 300% or more.  And it showed – game sales for the different consoles were decidedly higher on PS2 than they were on Xbox.

So the bottom line was, because there were so much more PS2’s on the market than Xbox’s, a game developer could assume that they’d make substantially greater sales by developing for the PS2 instead of the Xbox.

The Tables are Turned
Oh, but not today.  Xbox360 has 6 million consoles sold worldwide and because Playstation 3 hasn’t shipped yet, there’s still ZERO marketshare for Sony.   Of course this will change once PS3 is launched in mid-November but Sony themselves have admitted that they only havve 500,000 consoles for the launch.  To put this into perspective, this is 150,000 units fewer than Xbox360 had at launch, and you know what that turned out like.  (In fact, it’s been reported in Japan that Sony is backing off even that number by at least 20,000 consoles)

Now Sony has estimated 2M units by the end of the calendar year.  While this would exceed Xbox360’s launch shipments, it remains to be seen whether or not this is realistic. 

It also remains to be seen if PS3 demand, with it’s $600 price tag , remains constant.  While the initial sales will obviously be fanatical gamers, it would be interesting to see if Playstation’s core market – the 13-25 set has $600 of disposable income to spend on a next-gen console, especially with the number of people having recently bought a PS2 at $99 price tags.

The bottom line is that coming into the Christmas/Holiday season, XBox360 has a 6 million unit sales lead on it’s competitors.  It is highly anticipated that it will pick up not just sales by individuals interested in buying the console on it’s own merits (estimated at ~3M units) but also sales from individuals that could not get a PS3 due to the shortage but wanted a rich & mature next-gen game library available to them this winter unlike Nintendo Wii.

I ran into someone yesterday that said:

"Sounds like Windows Vista’s finally releasing.  It took you guys long enough."

While I realize that this might sound a little defensive or overly sensitive, I don’t think many people can fully appreciate everything that goes into developing & supporting an Enterprise-ready desktop operating system.  I often hear "other" folks claim that their operating system is "better" because you can tweak this that or the other… or I heard that someone’s operating system is somehow "more intuitive".  The fact of the matter is, developing an operating system that meets consumer’s needs is one thing.  Developing an OS for developers is another. 

But developing one for corporate customers, as well as developers & consumers is QUITE ENTIRELY a different thing.  Do you think centralized USB-port lock down or volume-level encryption is a critical concern for consumers?  How about Kerberos authentication leveraging generic "industry standard" low cost smart card technology?  All while providing super-well documented APIs & IDE environments with rich services to make developers & architects more productive?  All while making sure that F.E.A.R. and Gears of War – two high performing 1st person games – run flawlessly on the new OS?

Here’s just an "off the cuff" list that I’ve typed up.  I’m missing literally hundreds of areas but this is just what I can think of off the top of my head in 30 seconds.

• First party books & references  (MS Press)
• Third-party books & references (Macmillan Publishing, SAMS Publishing, Wrox Publishing, Addinson Wesley, etc.)
• Distribution (Retail, System Builder, Volume License, Developer)
• Compatibility – Hardware, Software, Devices & Peripherals, past OS & Development libraries, APIs, 3rd party libraries, connectivity, etc.
• Release Management for Downloading software for millions of Enterprise Customers (and scaling for the task!)
• Product Support for consumers, developers, enterprise IT
• Logo testing for software & hardware
• ISV/IHV Development & Support
• Upgrade/Migration Support
• Localization (Translation into multiple langauges)
• Training courses & certification programs
• Whitepapers
• Case studies/Customer evidence
• Press tours – Wall Street Journal, Gartner Group, Paul Thurott’s Web site, Windows Magazine, CNet, G4TV, USA Today, etc.
• Launch plans – 40+ cities worldwide, hundreds of thousands of attendees
• Eval software & materials
• Partner/System Builder training & consulting
• Marketing collateral – Datasheets, Whitepapers, Powerpoints, Quick Reference, Pricing
• Advertising – Radio, Billboard, TV, Magazines, Newspapers, Online
• Application Testing
• OS Documentation – Developer docs, Consumer docs, Deployment/Management/Security docs & other Enterprise whitepapers or books
• Security evaluation (Government-required)
• Legal certification
• Software Development Kit
• Retail preparedness & training
• Web/Online presence & content
• Microsoft Update integration
• Worldwide field sales training
• …

And these are just the categories that I can think of off the top of my head in the last 30 seconds. 

Now imagine multiplying everything above by several dimensions.  For example, having tor accurately translate everything – books, whitepapers, the OS itself and it’s menus, online help, the web site, documentation, etc. – into many, many different languages. 

How many?  This is a list of the languages that we will be supporting with Windows Vista:

1. English (N)
2. German (N)
3. French (N)
4. Japanese
5. Spanish (N)
6. Italian (N)
7. Dutch (N)
8. Brazilian
9. Chinese Simplified
10. Korean (KN)
11. Russian (N)
12. Chinese Traditional (Taiwan)
13. Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong)
14. Swedish (N)
15. Danish (N)
16. Finnish (N)
17. Norwegian (N)
18. Arabic
19. Hebrew
20. Polish (N)
21. Portuguese (N)
22. Turkish
23. Greek (N)
24. Czech (N)
25. Hungarian (N)
26. Slovenian (N)
27. Slovak (N)
28. Thai
29. Croatian
30. Romanian (N)
31. Bulgarian (N)
32. Serbian Latin
33. Estonian
34. Ukrainian
35. Lithuanian (N)
36. Latvian (N)

Does it make your head spin?  It should.  I don’t believe any other OS comes even remotely close to the level of language support that Windows does, and we’re not even talking about covering consumers, developers, enterprise customers, etc.  My point is that this is truly a tremendous job and when an OS like Windows Vista gets released, there are far more than programmers involved.

It’s all these things that make Windows the leading operating system in the world.

There’s been a lot of hub bub over the past week about comments made by Epic Vice President Mark Rein saying that there’s basically no way that Sony’s Playstation 3 could handle Gears of War, primarily because the Playstation 3 only has 256MB of memory compared to Xbox360’s 512MB.  (http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=83050)

Y’know, leave it to Sony to tell a leading game designer & development house what their own software code & libraries could and could not accomplish.  Remember that Epic doesn’t just make Gears of War – it’s the creator of the #1 middleware product for this generation of video game development – Unreal Engine.  It powers among other games, the upcoming Stargate Worlds MMORPG, Too Human, Bioshock,  (THQ, Atari, Gearbox, HiRez, Vivendi, Buena Vista Entertainment, Midway, Namco, Silicon Knights, Sony Online … even Electronic Arts has purchased a license to use Epic’s technology which is unheard of considering they have their own engine in-house, having purchased Renderware)  And bear in mind that Epic has made Unreal Engine 3.0 available on both the Xbox360 & PS3 but specifcally declaring that their own engine doesn’t have the same power on Sony’s platform that it has on XBox360.

It’s pretty obvious that Epic’s basically hurting themselves by making this statement – but this dude’s not a marketing or PR guy.   He’s a developer by trade and facts are facts.  See, that’s what’s concerning Sony.  Game developers that have licensed the Unreal Engine, now have to seriously be concerned as to whether or not their game will perform adequately on the PS3 when they port their game code from Xbox360 to PS3.  Having multiple processor threads available for graphics computation is great and all – but just ask Nintendo:  Good game play is a lot more than multithreaded graphics.

So don’t let the FUD in the press cloud things.  In fact, if you want written proof about why Gears couldn’t be delivered on the PS3, it’s actually available.  The proof of the truthfulness of Mark Rein’s statements has to do with Epic’s active involvement & influence with the Xbox360’s original design & architecture.  They specifically made crucial recommendations around the amount of GDDR3 RAM/memory that a game developer would need.  This is documented in "Xbox Uncloaked" by Dean Takahashi, on page 280: 

[For those of you who haven’t picked this book up yet, shame on you!  I’ve put this section from Dean Takahashi’s eBook here to give you a glimpse of Epic’s role in the development of the Xbox360 – pick up the book at Amazon here for just $24.95.]

…

The Xbox team had convened to rethink another big decision: how much main memory to put into Xenon. The financial model and the current plan called for 256 megabytes of a special kind of fast graphics memory, dubbed graphics double data rate 3, or GDDR3. Over the years, that item alone was costing Microsoft an estimated $900 million based on its estimate of how many consoles it would sell over time.

At the time that Greg Williams and other engineers specified the amount in 2003, that seemed like a lot, Allard said. They maintained some flexibility, designing the box so that it could use anywhere from 128 megabytes to 1 gigabyte of memory. The 1-gigabyte number was clearly out of reach, but with prices coming down, 512 megabytes was reasonable.

“Competitive intelligence suggested that we needed to be flexible on the amount of memory,” said Greg Gibson.

The game developers wanted more. The average amount of main memory in a PC was rising. They argued that Microsoft had scrimped in other ways, making the hard disk drive optional and including a DVD drive instead of an HD DVD or Blu-ray drive. Tim Sweeney, the graphics wizard at Epic Games, lobbied hard. He created a series of screen shots for what Epic’s game, Gears of War, would look like with 256 megabytes of memory, and what it would look like with 512 megabytes. Clearly, the 512-megabyte solution looked far better. With it, Epic could implement “high dynamic range” images. These were images that improved the realistic feel of games because they could show both low-light and bright-light images in the same picture. The effect could create images such as the rays of the sun shining through some dark clouds.

Robbie Bach said that he wasn’t going to just make a decision based on the best guesses that the team punted upward to him. He wanted the team to provide its own answer. The team worked through its process and came back with the recommendation.

“There were enough zeroes on the cost of it that I ultimately had to decide,” Bach said. “We decided to go ahead.”

It was a $900 million decision. Microsoft would have to make arrangements with both Samsung and Infineon Technologies, two of the biggest memory-chip makers, to produce more GDDR3 chips. When the crew at Epic Games heard the decision, they hooted in celebration. But again, rather than spend more money over the life of the program, Microsoft decided to find cuts in other parts of the program. It scaled back some of its other plans in the spreadsheets, and then moved to make more decisions. Nobody knew it at the time, but by doubling the amount of memory, Microsoft had made one of the most fateful decisions on the entire Xbox 360 program.

…there’s a lot more about the other hardware decisions they made in the book so if you find this interesting, you should pick up a copy!

Yeah baby.  2 million units is what Wedbush is predicting for XBox360 sales to look like in December. (And actually more than that – see below)  Why is this exciting?   It’s exciting because these are the precise numbers that PS2 had in it’s second holiday season and it’s the reason PS2 had just a substantial jump on the original Xbox in marketshare.  That’s right – XBox360 turned around and stole a play right out of Sony’s playbook:  Get to market first with great technology and give game developers a reason to produce great games on your platform through sheer volume instead of your competitor’s.

Through September, NPD data shows that Xbox 360 hardware sales in the U.S. were 2.7 million units. Wedbush Morgan expects monthly sales of 250,000 units in October, 750,000 million units in November, and between 1.5 – 2 million units in December. Wedbush comments: "Sell through of Xbox 360 hardware could be higher if the supply situation for the PS3 falls well short of demand, with many holiday gift givers likely substituting purchases of the 360 in place of the PS3."
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11555

EVEN SMALLER PS3 SHIPMENTS THAN ANNOUNCED
In other news, it’s already been reported that PS3 may not make even the reduced shipment quantity that Sony announced for both the launch and the holiday season concluding on December 31st.

Reports emanating from Japanese newspaper Nikkei Keizai Shimbun suggest that Sony has been forced to cut its day one Japanese allocation for the PlayStation 3 by 20 percent to just 80,000.

When originally announced in September, the day one launch allocation for the PlayStation 3 was put at 400,000 for North America and “about” 100,000 for Japan. Sony Computer Entertainment America co-chairman Jack Tretton later described the figures as “more of a target”.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11491

This is too cool not to post.  As you know, I’m a huge follower of the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray war going on and for the first time in a while, I believe Microsoft has a serious cross-division winner with the Xbox360 HD-DVD drive.  Why?  Because the thing works with Windows Vista-based workstations as well – and not Windows XP.

This means that Windows Vista users will be able to buy this HD-DVD drive and watch HD-DVD quality movies in full fidelity on their Windows Vista desktops – or better yet, their LAPTOPS while on the road.  And when you’re done with it, and if you have an Xbox360, hook it up to your console and watch HD-DVD movies and content on your big screen at home.

The Xbox Team goes over the intracacies of developing the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox360.

Taken from the Official XBox Team Blog:

What takes 4.7 million lines of code, partner teams from all over Microsoft, and millions of dollars to create? The Xbox 360 system software? Nope. This is just the HD DVD player.

The Xbox platform team (us) is experiencing its own emergence day as of late; we’ve been hard at work for the past 8 months straight bringing the fall system update to fruition. I haven’t even posted since August. Daryl’s already gone over a lot of the features and changes that are in this release. I’ve personally been working on the Xbox 360 HD DVD player (which, by the way, reached the #1 best seller slot on Amazon.com’s video games category) and I thought I’d go over some of the technical difficulties it takes to bring HD DVD to market.

There’s a perception that HD DVD is just DVD with HD content, but once you look at things more closely, it’s clear that HD DVD is a different beast altogether. The Xbox platform team became serious about HD DVD last year, when Microsoft as a company threw its endorsement behind the standard.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, for the most part, is an entirely software based implementation. Other players on the market have specialized chips (called DSPs) that decode things like H.264, MPEG, VC1, DTS, Dolby Digital, and other codecs. Much like how backwards compatibility for Xbox 1 works on Xbox 360, the heavy parts of HD DVD are all done on Xbox 360’s triple-core CPU.

If DVD is an audio/video pipeline with some navigation data (go to the menu, start playing, etc.), HD DVD can be considered a runtime environment where audio/video playback is just one major feature. So let’s break down that 4.7 million lines of code. I don’t have the numbers for each component, but each of these is a very significant chunk:

• Video Codecs: H.264, MPEG-2, VC1
• Audio Codecs: Dolby Digital+, DTS, TrueHD, LPCM, MPEG
• iHD: The HD DVD runtime engine.
• GDI: Drawing stuff like menus
• AACS: Cryptography/DRM stuff
• MF: Audio/Video pipeline

That’s a lot of stuff. Some of the acronyms may not be recognizable. GDI is the Graphics Device Interface, which has been a mainstay of the Windows operating system for many years, providing facilities to draw stuff on screens. MF is Media Foundation – a framework for audio/video pipelines that was being built for Windows Vista. The Windows teams in charge of the above components all pitched in to make them work on Xbox 360 while continuing to work on other Windows projects (Vista, CE, etc.) – quite a task.

A lot of the codecs existed in code at Microsoft before the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player was being built. However, it was all code that was optimized for PC platforms (windows/x86) and not Xbox 360’s PPC core. This meant doing a lot of optimization. In this regard, the Xbox 360 implementation of H.264 can be considered a crowning achievement. For this computationally expensive codec, a hybrid approach was taken. Since GPUs are very good at parallelized workloads, stuff that could be parallelized is computed there, while the stuff that can’t is better suited to the CPU and is done there.

Unlike DVD, where typical players pass the audio data from the disc through to your receiver, HD DVD requires that players mix sounds from menus and such in with the audio being played for the movie. The 360 player software decodes all the above codecs in software, mixes anything that needs to go together, re-encodes it into Dolby Digital and then sends that to your receiver. So, don’t be alarmed when your receiver still says "Dolby Digital" even if you’ve selected DTS in the menus.

All 6 of Xbox 360’s hardware threads are hard at work while playing back an HD DVD. At the moment, the player software pushes Xbox 360 harder than any other (save, perhaps, Gears of War during some particularly busy parts of the game).

If I’d have known how much work it was going to be bringing the 360 HD DVD Player out this year, I may not have signed up last year, but now that I can watch HD movies, it’s hard to go back to crummy old DVD 🙂

Zune is Microsoft’s upcoming portable Media Player.  You can preorder at Amazon.

• Black:  http://www.amazon.com/Zune-Digital-Media-Player-Black/dp/B000EPLP3C/sr=8-1/qid=1162533044/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9210869-3403021?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

• White:  http://www.amazon.com/Zune-Digital-Media-Player-White/dp/B000FMZE7W/sr=8-3/qid=1162533081/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/103-9210869-3403021?ie=UTF8&s=electronics
• Brown:  http://www.amazon.com/Zune-Digital-Media-Player-Brown/dp/B000H0QDCC/sr=8-2/qid=1162533081/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-9210869-3403021?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

The Zune web site launched and is alive!
http://www.zune.net/en-US/

Also there’s a site dedicated to the Zune Marketplace where people can buy music for Zune.
http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/zunemarketplace.htm

And there’s a really cool description of Zune Pass – the all-you-can-eat online service for downloading music.  No more paying-per-song.  Now you can get anything and everything for a monthly subscription, and as long as you keep your subscription up, your music’s available!
http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/zunepass.htm

Why Mattel?  WHY?!? 

I’m rooting for you guys – I really am!  I was relieved that y’all didn’t pull a Hasbro (yet) and do something as inexorably asinine as "Star Wars Transformers".  The Hasbro product designers will hopefully burn in a special room in hell for not so much their sacrilege, but rather their horrific bad taste.  Witness the platypus:  God loves odd combinations.  Witness the dodo:  God damns stupidity.  And a "Millenium Falcon" that when threatened, splits in two and transforms in to a "Han Solo" robot and a "Chewbacca" robot is genuinely, unbearably, offensively stupid.

Says who?  SAYS THE 6 YEAR OLD & THE 8 YEAR OLD I KNOW, not to mention any Star Wars action figure buyer I know.

So y’all came out with TMX Elmo:  The laughing Elmo that’s taken the retail stores by storm.  Good for you guys!  Gettin’ back to the basics of kids entertainment.  What y’all are good at.  Fisher Price has got game.  Yay!

Then <insert THUD here>:  HyperScan.

YOU DON’T MIX IT UP WITH HIGH RISK ITEMS
I know what y’all are thinking… "Hey, we try different things.  We mix it up and some things hit, other things don’t" to which I say:

And the objective of product creation is to get MORE THINGS THAT HIT and FEWER THINGS THAT DON’T.  The overall objective of business is to make the most money possible in the long run while expending the least amount of money in product development & manufacturing.

And you’re gonna tell me that Hyperscan wasn’t expensive?  Hyperscan isn’t costing a mint to advertise on major networks like FOX Kids & G4TV?  Hyperscan, with it’s amazing set of 3 whopping games, is gonna "catch on like wild fire"?

IGNORANCE + LACK OF RESEARCH = 3DO
When a company doesn’t know their customer, and then fails to do the appropriate research to learn about their customer’s thought process, then fails to research the competition – or chooses to ignore their competition declaring them "in a different market", you get 3DO.

What’s 3DO?  3DO was a game system with incredible technology that was built before the PS2 and the XBox.  It’s a console of some lore because it had a small set of relatively high quality titles, a result of the system’s technical superiority – which was to be it’s market differentiator.  It sold for $800, primarily because of the electronics in the console.

But they didn’t know their customer.  The product was developed back in the early 90’s when $800 was absolutely unheard of to pay for a gaming system.  While today’s inflation makes $800 conceivable, back then it was ridiculous to consider an $800 system.  Combine that with the fact that game players were all adolescents, with virtually no adult market, and you have a customer base of ZERO.  No one that wanted the system could afford it and even those that could afford it, wouldn’t buy it because there were so few titles, and those individuals weren’t that hardcore about games.

But 3DO never did the market research.  They never bothered to get educated about their customers.  As a result, they went out of business and 3DO was viewed as a colossal failure.

BACK TO HYPERSCAN
So the makers of Hyperscan are trying to merge the "drive for collectible cards and card games" that kids like with the "attraction of electronics and video games".  Collect trading cards, and use them to play video games.  Console price is $80 – not including the games which appear to be $20.

Are you kidding me?

• Let’s ignore the fact that XBox Originals are going for $80 used, $120 new.  We have a library of over 800 games and most of them sell for $5 used, $10-$20 new.
• Let’s ignore the fact that PS2’s are going for $75 used, $99 new.  They have a game library of a 1000 games, most of which are going for $5 used or $20 new.
• Let’s ignore the fact that Gamecube’s are going for $80 NEW and their games are $5-$10 NEW.
• Let’s ignore the fact that Nintendo GameBoy Advance handhelds are $50 new with hundreds of games.  Nintendo DS’s are $150 new with as many games.

Let’s forget about all that.  Let’s just look at the Hyperscan independent of the market:

• LOAD TIMES:  To play a round of combat, you have to wait 45 seconds.  For some reason the load time of the game’s rounds takes anywhere between 30 seconds to a full MINUTE.  This is documented in various other blogs as well.  Classify this as a designer brainfart:  What were y’all thinking?
• CARD COST:  Why do I need to "buy cards" to play characters?  5 characters per $20 pack of RFID cards?  I can play all 30 XMen characters if I play XMen Unlimited or XMen Legends on Xbox or PS2 and that’s only $20 each. 
• CHARACTER ABILITIES:  The character abilities are a joke!  They have so few moves and they each only say one phrase thing during the whole game.  How repetitious can you get?
• GRAPHICS:  OMG this is awful.  Any of today’s consoles blow this thing away. 

If you a toy company really wanted to marry trading card gaming with electronic gaming, you’d think they would have developed RFID cards in tandem with a RFID peripheral for an existing console with marketshare – like the Xbox, Gamecube, or PS2.  And for greater margins as well.  Peripherals are always cheaper to manufacture than console hardware.

But the question is… why?  For the cost of a 5 Hyperscan card pack, an Xbox owner can buy a 64MB Xbox storage card – far more storage than the 5 card RFID pack.  So basically the cards have a pretty picture with stats and allows kids to "wave" the cards over RFID detector.  That’s the whole differentiating value.  That’s the whole "RFID trading card experience".

Sigh.

One of the reasons I hope I get another shot at life after this one is so that I can go to college again.

Seriously.  College was one of the absolute best times of my life.  Since then, in my professional & personal life, only Microsoft has come close in "replicating" the collegiate experience that made for so much hard work but still kept it so much fun. (And I’ve worked for numerous other companies including Visa International, Hewlett Packard, etc.)  I’m certain that that’s one of the reasons people (at least the non-jaded ones) work so damned hard around here.

And I’ve met so many folks that during their undergrad work, went to commuter schools or JC’s for the first two years of their higher education that just plain missed out.  My freshman year alone was filled with:

• "Hey guys!  Let’s go see New Jack City!"
• Nightclubbing in groups of 20
• Many, many sunrises
• Beach runs to Malibu
• BEER!
• Mudsliding in Nov/Dec
• Sourdough chili bowls
• Fighting someone 50lbs heavier than me
• Having the paramedics examine me after
• Co-ed bathrooms
• Group study
• 4-nights straight coding binges
• Jerry-rigging the washing machines
• Impersonating the kicker on the football team
• 104 degree fevers
• Roadtripping to Cal/Stanford
• Eating only flat foods & Diet Coke
• …

That’s why when I see these videos below, it makes me smile.  Our college interns – I believe they’re all from Bldg 33 which is Windows Dev – have been creating these music video parodies of sorts, one every year, at the end of their internships.  (Which by the way is a royal bitch to get into.  Our intern program reminds me of HP’s program, which is what I did annually when I was in college.  And I only got in because I’d gotten help from my next door neighbor when I started working part time as a senior in high school & proven my mettle as a STE over the next 4 years.)

I believe our interns stay at furnished apartments called the "Winterwood Apartments" or something like that.  It’s a great place to stay for a few months – full kitchen, family room, bedroom, the works.  While there they get to live the Microsoft campus life – something that I’ve never seen replicated anywhere.  People talk about the Apple Campus… the Cisco Campus… the Google Campus.  I’ve seen them all and none of them come close to replicating the collegiate experience. 

Why?  Because they’re all in Silicon Valley!  Redmond, WA is so isolated relative to Cupertino or Mountain View, that you really are immersed in the campus life.  You don’t have a choice.

Anyway, laugh all you want at the videos.  Each of these kids are proof that youthful energy, is still running strong in Redmond.  And it’s a good bet that they’ll all be making more than you & me in 10 years.

Microsoft’s College Intern Videos

• 2005:  Bye Bye Bye
  http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=cc6b47ca-6899-4cbb-a3ab-7e42d0ef53b6
• 2006:  Gonna be SP3
  http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=9679ff4a-4e64-4c47-a896-d196097aa2b0

Oh.  So wicked.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2006/1030-novemberupdate-completelist.htm

Check out these doozies:

1) Lightning-fast enumeration and listing of all Xbox Live® Arcade games on the console.
2) Stream music, pictures and video from a Zune device.
3) Improved UI performance in Media Center Extender

#2 is one of those things I’ve been DREAMING about.  Imagine walking into your home carrying your Zune.  Now imagine being able to play all the content on your Zune using your Home Entertainment system – the 60" Big Screen TV… the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound system…

…all without connecting a single wire.  Just walking into the same room, and kicking off your XBox360 is all you’ll need to play your videos in full screen… your music with BIG sounds… and share your photos with anyone in the room.

Oh.  So wicked.

Check this out:  This is a new feature of our video service, Soapbox.  It allows me to post all my posted videos in a blog entry.  I have over 180 videos currently posted right now… not all of them will be there once we release, but if you’re interested in seeing some of this stuff, check it out below:

My Online Videos

Additionally, this is another feature of Soapbox:  My Favorites.  All the videos that I consider to be "cool" and included on my video favorites list, are listed below:

My Favorite Videos

Today, I received my copy of "Stadium Stories – UCLA Bruins" on tape.  "Stadium Stories" a collage of great stories from the early radio days of UCLA Football from 1981 to 2005.  I’ve been listening to UCLA Football on the radio for close to 18 years now and as any fan knows, listening to a game through Chris Roberts broadcast on AM570 is so much more fun and memorable than watching it on Fox Sports Net.

<rant>
In fact, with the recent introduction of Petros Papadakis – former USC Running Back & annoying loudmouth extraordinaire – as the color commentator for UCLA football, it has provided even more incentive for people to "stop watching" UCLA Football on FSN West in deference to AM570 on the radio.  (It’s a common practice for Bruin fans to watch the game, mute the television, and turn up the radio and watch the game to Chris Roberts & Matt Stevens intelligent & thoughtful commentary instead of Barry Tompkins along side Petros Papadakis’ inane & idiotic ramblings)
</rant>

I distinctly remember tenuous moments in UCLA Football history where I sat with baited breath on Chris Roberts confirmation over the radio that a game winning field goal had successfully parted the uprights.  I think it was 1990 vs Oregon, where I sat in the car with my little brother listening to the words, "With 2 seconds on the clock…SNAP.  The kick is up and… it is………………. GOOD!  <insert obligatory background whooping and hollaring in the pressbox>

Anyway, I purchased the 5 Audio CD set a week ago from Chris Robert’s web site at http://www.chrisrobertsonline.net/stadiumstories.htm.  I was surprised to discover that Chris Roberts himself not only created the content of the Audio CD set, he published it on his own, and handmailed the set to me with a note & his autograph on the front cover.

Just listening the the introduction made my face light up with delight.  There’s something eerily comforting about listening to Chris Roberts talk about UCLA football on CD.  I can see this being a staple in my car from here on out.

If you go to his web site, he even has a commentary area that I never noticed.  This might be a new thing but he writes his perspective of the Notre Dame loss on the web site, which frankly seems quite positive considering the outcome.  He even has a video clip posted (using Windows Media!) on the site.

If you’re a UCLA Bruin Football fan, and you’ve ever listened to a UCLA Radio broadcast, I’d highly recommend this 5 CD box set – you won’t be disappointed.  It’s only $19 for hours of commentary about our 1954 National Championship season, the 2005 season of sensational comebacks, the infamous 8 game winning streak against USC… and you can buy it completely online.

Admittedly, I’m pissed about this myself.  And I work for the damned company.

What is it that I’m talking about?   A few days ago, "Lumines", a small Tetris-like game, was released for purchase on Xbox Live Marketplace – the convenient online portion of Xbox 360 that allows you to peruse, shop, and try out/demo games, purchase add-on packs for existing games, or download video clips.  It was priced at 1200 Microsoft points, which is essentially $15.

Okay.  No big deal right?  $15 for a small addictive game with great sound and graphics that you can play in 1080i on a next-gen system… that’s little "up there" but if it’s a quality well-developed game, which it is, it’s probably worth the price of 3 Starbucks Carmel Macchiatos.

Or is it?

Upon further inspection of your game, (which by the way I will remind everyone that you can download and try out FOR NO COST before you buy it) a gamer realizes that there are entire segments of the game that appear to be flat out missing.  For example, if you look at the interface, you see that there is:

• a "Mission mode"
• a "Puzzle mode"
• an "Advance mode"

And they’re all completely inaccessible… even when you PAY $15/1200 Microsoft points for it.

Lumines Live!… Q Entertainment’s recently buy-by-the-module Xbox Live Marketplace game

In order to get access to the "advanced mode" a more complex version of the basic play mode, you need to pay an addtional $10.  And in an obvious attempt to compel people to buy the "advanced" pack by sticking an untouchable selection in the middle of the game screen that reads "advanced mode", they’ve essentially baited the game to get people to buy these "microtransaction"-based add-ons.

It gets worse.  It turns out that even though you can’t see them, there are even more packs that you "get the opportunity to buy" to add to Lumines:

• "Artist" Pack – For more music to play in the background
• "Vs CPU Mode" Pack – For more computer players

Note to Q Entertainment, Xbox Live, whomever it is that did this…
…Seriously.  Not.  Cool.
I mean really.  Xbox Live Marketplace has been kind of a great forum for purchasing stuff you like, and not purchasing stuff you don’t like.  This however is the first instance of a product that people DO like however the manner in which it is served to the consumer is frankly insulting. 

The key here is that Lumines’ creator, Q Entertainment, by pricing the game as one of the most expensive products on Xbox Live Marketplace, is essentially acting like that big brother that used to tease you by holding a your favorite Hot Wheels car over your head and saying, "What’s the matter?  Don’t you want your car?  If you want your car, why don’t you come and get it?"

Then after you’ve grovelled, begged, pleaded, and said he’s the greatest guy in the world and no other brother is better than him… blah blah blah… he then proceeds to physically remove the tires off the car, and hands you the body saying, "There!  I gave you your car back.  Aren’t you happy?"

You little snivelling ingrate.

And on top of all of this… "The Cherry"
The cherry on top of this big ice cream sundae of fun is the fact that a lot of content has actually been stripped out of the game, in comparison to the original version of Lumines on the Playstation Portable.  Lumines was originally a launch title for the PSP and out of the box the PSP version comes with 40 puzzles.  Not so for Xbox Live’s version:  It comes with FIVE… with the opportunity to buy the other 35 and a new feature called "mission mode" with a "Puzzle Pack" which is probably going to be $10 at a minimum, bringing the total to $25 or 2000 Microsoft points.

Also skins as missing.  The Xbox Live version comes with only 12 skins.  The PSP version came with tons of skins.  Again, the "Artist pack" will likely fulfill this empty portion of the game… for the low low price of $10 again.  Now were up to $35.

Now let’s just put it all to bed by telling you that the PSP version with all it’s features and all it’s portability is $19 for a brand new cartridge at BestBuy.  Compare this to the $15 "disabled" version that you download and buy online which a) doesn’t have any physical medium for Q to pay for, and b) doesn’t have to be stocked on shelves and distributed, being that there is a very negligible cost for moving bits instead of physical discs.

I should point out that Lumines for Xbox 360 has a multiplayer feature that can be used locally or over Xbox Live.  There is also a Time Attack mode that allows you to attain Xbox Live achievements which is good. 

However the question is not, "Is the new UI and these new features worth the $15 difference?"  The question is more like, "Why does the customer get positioned to feel like  they were sold a bill of goods?"  At the end of the day, all because the game clearly has been "partitioned out" for upselling, and the missing components have been laid before the user in as obnoxious a way as possible, the user feels like he bought an incomplete product – especially if they’re used to the PSP.

The "You don’t have to buy it" Argument
Now for the record, I respect Larry Hyrb.  He’s a great guy and he’s answered several of my questions personally over our internal network and he’s even volunteered to fly down and talk to one of my customers.  The poor guy must be incredibly busy.

That being said, his argument around the Lumines/Microtransaction debate is simple: 

"You don’t have to buy it.  You don’t have to buy any of the add-ons."

This is where historical perspective I think provides me with a little bit of a benefit.  This is the same line we’ve given to consumers about a lot of things we sell.  Internet Explorer = "You don’t have to use it."  Windows XP Professional = "You don’t have to buy it."  "Office Professional = "You can buy Standard Edition"

From my vantage point, this is the wrong tactic and approach for pissed off users/consumers.  These folks aren’t like corporate customers – every nickel matters.  They’re not ones to blow things off… to them, it’s personal – not business.  We have a great deal of goodwill built up in Xbox Live Marketplace.  People like it and people look forward to new content that they can download on the console over the Internet.  And for many people, I think they believe we’re pissing all over them by insulting their intelligence and selling them a "shell" of a game.

We’re selling them a proverbial dinette set with only 1 butter knife, 1 dining fork, a bowl, and a bread plate.   We then go tell them that they can buy the salad fork, the soup spoon, the stirring spoon, the steak knife, the wine glass, the water glass, the dining plate, the placemat, and the napkin separately… only as they need them.

YES, you’re damned right you need to buy them.

I mean seriously.  How many people are going to buy the "base game" then not want the additionals.  Case & point:  Xbox 360 Core System sales vs Premium System sales.  People are willing to pay a little more, but don’t go nickeling & diming them right in their faces with "unavailable features" that they can only unlock if they cough up another $10.

I’m talking about Lumines… not other Xbox Live products
Now to be clear, I’m talking about Lumines specifically here.  There’s some debate about the viability of lame add ons like "Horse Armor" for your horse in Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion that’s basically just an aesthetic upgrade.  This is a $5 purchase that’s just stupid and really shouldn’t have been posted.  I’ll bet they made less than 1000 sales of that dumb upgrade. 

However Larry makes the point that Oblivion was worth EVERY PENNY of the $60 you likely paid for it at the store so if you ended up paying a little more for a microtransaction for ANYTHING you might be interested in that’s posted on Xbox Live Marketplace, so be it.  The game was worth far more than the $60 paid for it and had far more content in the game than anyone could have really gone through.  I know folks that simply never expect to "finish" the game it’s so expansive.  And I agree with him on this point.

But Lumines?  The inclusion of "unavailable options" in the main Lumines game download, combined with $10 downloads for every add-on just smacks of greed and insults the gamer at large.

What should they have done?
Hindsight is 20/20 however I believe they should have:

• Made the game $20 and included everything in the PSP version + multiplayer & Time Attack.  It would have been a shocker but folks that aren’t used to $20 XBL games but they’d get over it.  It is a killer game.
• Made upgrade areas "invisible" unless you actually purchased it from XBL in which case the option "appears".  This would be less like link-baiting, and more like a real software "expansion pack".  Right now, the "unavailable options" that are listed in Lumines just taunt the player that just coughed up $15 for the game.
• Apologize.  Concede that while it is within the right of Q & Xbox Live to set prices to whatever they want, this was an experiment that wasn’t received well and that this was a mistake.  Product marketing misjudged people’s perceptions of value of the product. 
  Continue to sell Lumines for $15 temporarily & make the Puzzle Pack available for FREE immediately to people that buy Lumines today.  Then after say 11/15, either reset the price of the Lumines game to $20 and continue to have the Puzzle pack a free download, or reset the price of the Puzzle pack but make it $5, not $10.   Everything other add-on can remain a microtransaction.

But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.  Here’s a video debate on the topic brought to you by G4TV.

VIDEO:  G4TV – Are you being ripped off by microtransactions?
http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=698cb537-20eb-4c63-a224-238eb5a2c965

Unless you have no friends whatsoever, I’m sure you’ve received a "funny forward" email.  And I tell you, with the number of people I meet on my job, I get some of the craziest stuff sent to me by my customers.  (And former customers)

I’ve received this one particular forward a dozen times and I still find myself opening it because it’s that funny.  Basically, according to the flyer, some Malibu couple got divorced however part of their settlement was that they had to liquidate the estate – part of which was a Tuscan Villa in Malibu – a 3 story, 5 bedroom palacial palacial abode overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The master bedroom alone is 1600 sq ft.  For reference sake, that one bedroom is the size of my current condo.  And they’re including all the amenties as well – flat screen TVs, surround sound systems, refrigerator, antiquities, etc.

And they’re selling it for $2,999,000.

Now, I’ve seen brand new houses in Westwood that have gone for $2,500,000 unfurnished just a block away from where I live.  This thing looks phenomenal.  And it’s completely new.  And while I realize that it will sell for much more than that after the bidding is in, I can only dream… of being able to afford to ridiculous property taxes that would undoubtedly have to be paid on the property.

This could all be a big hoax of course.  I haven’t bothered to Snopes.com the thing, nor have I bothered calling the phone number.  But y’know, it’s still funny from an Internet lore point of view.  (Kinda like the infamous "Tiger Woods’ House in Hawaii".  Oh?  You didn’t get that one?  Sighhhh.)

MALIBU AD:  http://www.evilkoala.org/download/0718_001.pdf

Holy crap!  We just acknowledged that the Xbox360’s USB-connected HD-DVD drive will work on Windows Vista seamlessly however it will still require a 3rd party player like Intervideo’s DVD.  (This is likely for the purposes of obtaining an H.264 license as well as using software that conforms to the rigid requirements of the DVDforum – mostly to prevent easy HD content duplication)

I think this is a really big deal!  I think this announcement shows a few more of our bigger strategic cards on the table.   More importantly it also demonstrates how broad our decision maker’s thinking is – something I’ve always been proud of.   I mean, just think about it.  This move impacts:
– Windows Vista’s advancement against competitors like Apple & Linux
– Xbox 360’s advancement against competitors like Sony & Nintendo
– HD-DVD’s advancement over competitors like BluRay

NOT JUST MICROSOFT ANYMORE
I would surmise that a move like this implies that the XBox360 HD-DVD drive is not just a tool to develop interest in the Xbox360 itself.  This implies, liked I’d mentioned the other day that Microsoft is not the only source of subsidization for the Xbox360 HD-DVD drive’s cost.  In fact, I’ll bet (although I have no actual visibility into this part of the company – it’s just my hunch) that the DVDForum/Toshiba is in on this as well to help advance the standard on next-generation desktop systems and further permeate the hobbiest world that isn’t interested in purchasing a $1000 BluRay drive or a $600 Playstation 3 console. 

IT’S ABOUT WINDOWS VISTA
Another thing to note is that they clearly state "on Windows Vista".  I’ll bet $1000 right now that the drive is not supported on Windows XP.  This would be a good marketing tool to encourage individuals to adopt the HD-DVD standard along with Windows Vista for media-a-philes, which I think we can all agree will eventually become the next desktop OS standard.

SONY’S DILEMMA
WOW.  And the implications of this are huge relative to the next generation HD standard a.k.a. the BluRay vs HD-DVD war.   Sony’s discounted BluRay player is embedded into the PS3, and they’re marketing the PS3 as "the way to get a cheap HD quality video player".  By tying the drive however to their game console, they’ve essentially locked themselves out of a huge opportunity to move BluRay forward.

• – On one hand, if they continue to make PS3 the "way to get BluRay", then they miss out on the PC crowd while people buy XBox360 HD-DVD drives for their systems on-the-cheap.
• – On the other hand, if they subsidize the creation of a low cost PC connectable BluRay player for ~$200, they’ve just taken the wind out of their "buy a PS3 for a cheap BluRay player" argument.

They’re at a strategic disadvantage on either BluRay or PS3 – one or the other.  Given that PS3 is make-or-break for the company, I doubt that they will opt for the latter option and instead hope that HD-DVD doesn’t grab a foothold as rapidly as it could.

THIS MOVE HAS PRECEDENT
And y’know what?  This move actually has precedent in our history.  In 1995, Microsoft and Chinon subsidized the cost of a PC CD-ROM player to enable a next generation of developers and users to start installing Windows 95 via CDROM instead of installing using the 25 3.5inch floppies that the OS required.  I think the cost was something like $100 for the drive with the purchase of Windows 95.  It was a huge hit and people actively bought Windows 95 for the CDROM drive (and only Windows 95 supported CDROM using high throughput 32-bit drivers) or people that wanted Windows 95 likely took advantage of the CDROM drive just so that they could start to take advantage of the multimedia playback capabilities of the new OS.

It was a very successful move that put CDROM actively on the map.  Some might argue that CDROM would have been successful without this deal, but I think historians have acknowledged that the offer was one that made greatly accelerated CDROM’s adoption – especially on the Windows platfrom – and recognized it as the technology replacement for floppies instead of things like Iomega’s Zip Drive technology which, while it arrived on the scene later, never quite got a foothold in the marketplace because it was never recognized by either PC manufacturers or Microsoft as a "must have" storage medium.

Had it been, we might be booting up to Zip drives instead of CDROMs, USB keys, and external USB-connected Hard Drives like we do today.