Content Delivery on Xbox

A post I wrote with some of the members of my old team just went live on the Xbox Engineering Blog.

Excerpt:

In the beginning, there were the blades, and they were good. For years, the beloved blades lit up television screens everywhere. Although we loved them dearly, the blades had limitations that made it difficult to create new types of compelling content, to run promotional or community events, and to highlight whatever new things are going on in Xbox LIVE.

NXE changed all that. Obviously, there was a huge change in layout, moving from the blades to a grid format consisting of several rows of horizontal “channels,” each containing many “slots.” In the blades style dashboard, the layout was almost entirely baked into the console flash. NXE UI, conversely, is downloaded from a system called Dante.

Playstation Home Hacked

The Telegraph reports today that Playstation Home has been hacked, less than a week since the launch of the open beta.  These hacks allow users to manipulate the environment on their personal machines to display content other than intended, as well as providing access to download any file they want from Sony’s webservers.

More scary, however, is a hack allowing users to upload or delete any file they want from the Home Server.  This presents the opportunity for hackers to send malware to every single Home-enabled PS3 on the planet, or to perform DDOS attacks using PS3s.

That’s pretty much the worst case scenario for a console environment, short of leaking customer PIFs and credit card numbers.  Sounds like Home needs a security review before they let it out of Beta.

You know, in addition to the fact that it’s basically useless.

Club Nintendo launches in North America. Is Broken.

Club Nintendo has finally launched in North America (or at least in the US and Canada).  You can go visit it here.  If you’re compulsive like me, you probably already have a “My Nintendo” account where you’ve been registering your games for some reason, in which case you can migrate that account to the new Club Nintendo site.

Unfortunately, logging into the site after you’ve migrated that account seems to be booched right now.  It either just sits there, swirling a ring around, or tells me I don’t exist.  This is probably because the entire free world is hammering on that site all at once, and hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Avatars

Apparently I’ve been allowed to use my Avatar in public communication (although I can’t talk about NXE any more than has been publically disclosed, so track your vision balls to the left.  I can however point you at some reviews other people have done that I agree with, in lieu of opinions of my very own.

Secret of Mana released on WiiWare

Woot.  Although I prefer its alchemy wielding and unpopular little brother, Secret of Evermore, a SoM re-release is definitely a plus.  With Chrono Trigger coming out on the DS next month, and Super Mario RPG’s release a couple of weeks ago, if they get SoE in, that would pretty much round out re-releases of SNES era Square RPGs.

One can still point to a major gap in the lineup though.  Hopefully that will be fixed soon.

NXE has a street date

Via Major Nelson:

John Schappert, Corporate Vice President of Xbox LIVE, Services and Software, announced today during his Tokyo Game Show keynote that the New Xbox Experience will ship to Xbox 360’s around the world (in 26 countries, localized in 11 languages) on November 19th 2008.

I just tried out Netflix last night, and all I can say is that my god, there is something truely beautiful about streaming nearly any TV Show I’ve missed (Starting with second season of 30 Rock) from the last couple of years onto my 46″ Plasma seamlessly through my 360.  It brings tears to my eyes.

Nintendo DSi

Nintendo launched a new hand-held this afternoon.  Some have called it underwhelming, I call it fail.

Physically the DSi is slightly thinner than the DS Lite, and boasts a slightly larger screen.  New additions also include a 3 megapixel camera on the back, because you don’t already have one on your cell phone, and a low res version on the front, which will presumably be used for some kind of chatting or facial detection gaming.  The DSi also features an SD Card slot, providing storage options for a range of new features.  So lets talk about those features.

The DSi now has a browser built-in, instead of having to put Opera into the slot, which I think is cool, but not exactly revolutionary.  There’s a built in music player as well, which is quickly becoming a standard feature on every single electronic device that could potentially be put into your pocket.  Not really impressed there either.  What I do find cool is that there is an online DSi Shop where you can buy DSiWare, which I guess is similar to WiiWare, to be stored on the DSi.  To my knowledge this is the first time a full blown handheld has implemented an end-to-end digital distribution retail channel.

In my mind, however, other than the new online retail channel, none of that is very exciting.  All of those features are implemented, and better, in any cell phone you would care to choose, and for most the cell is a device you carry around constantly, where your portable gaming system is probably not (although if it was also a phone, I would consider it).  Which brings me to another point: Battery Life.  The new DSi has 50% less battery life than the DS Lite.  Apparently the WiFi is faster as well, which to me means either higher processing speeds or wider bandwidth, both of which mean more power consumption, so don’t even get me started on what having the WiFi on will do to your battery.  Additionally, the GBA slot is gone, ending the backwards compatibility of the DS with the slew of highly excellent GBA games that were still being released a year ago. 

On the other hand, maybe the new DSi won’t have shoulder buttons that stop working after a year and a half, and hinges that break for no appearant reason.  One can hope.  Also, Club Nintendo will be available in North America by the end of the year, so that’s a plus too.

Red Ring of Death - Redux

Un-fucking-believable.

I’ll have pics up shortly, but I imagine you know by now what they look like.

If you recall, I already went through this fun last year, when my system failed the first time.  You can read that saga here, here, and here.  My repaired system lasted more than an entire year without taking a dive once again.  I first noticed issues while playing Braid on my birthday, after an hour or two of playing, the system would chirp and freeze.  This happened a few times, and I had hoped it was just a bad copy, so I re-downloaded it.

Apparently not.  I got about 30 seconds into Call of Duty this morning before beginning some project work, and now my system is keeled out like an overdosed junkie.

I’d really like to not make this an annual event.

Blizzard’s Multi-Game Achievements

As if Blizzard’s games weren’t addictive enough, in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for WoW, they’re adding achievements.  Okay, old news.

Blizzard told MTV Multiplayer’s Jeff Kaplan last week that this upgrade would be the intial step in a cross-blizzard effort to create achievements across their entire game portfolio.  You’re going to have a “Blizzard Level” that is impacted by your performance, not only in WoW, but in upcoming titles like Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.

And this is how the universe ends.

Adventure Game Revival

One of my favorite gaming genres has always been the point and click adventure game. In North America, it’s been tough to point at a game in the last few years that was on par with the offerings from Sierra On-Line and LucasArts in the 90s - both studios that have since been eviscerated.

Europe, on the other hand, has generally been known as a more casual market, and maybe that’s why most of the scant few adventure games of any quality that have emerged in the last few years have come out of Europe. I’d love to throw some attention at FunCom’s masterpiece - The Longest Journey, but it came out eight years ago, and the sequel Dreamfall wasn’t up to par with the original. While it might be premature, I have a very good feeling about an upcoming title from Daedalic called The Whispered World.

The Whispered World follows the adventures of a young clown named Sadwick and his companion Spot through a melancholy world doomed to crumble and fall. The artwork and music are beautiful, and I suspect good things will come of it, but we’ll have to wait until launch I suppose.

Although, perhaps I have reason to hope yet. One of the critical factors that killed off the Adventure Game genre to begin with was the emergence of 3D graphics, and the games that technology ushered in. We’re now seeing a reversal in fortunes as the gaming market reaches out to those who were once outside their domain. That the industry is trying to gain appeal with the masses is one of two things that have changed in favor of adventure games. I suspect as the casual masses explore the new land they’ve found, interactive adventure stories are going to become interesting again.

Secondly, platforms now exist to market games which have niche appeal for reasonably low cost through digital distribution networks. Services like Gametap, Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and Nintendo Virtual Console has created a space where these freaks can be shown in the daylight, without offending their muscular, brawny siblings. Creating these spaces is important - not just for adventure games - but for the future of the medium. Without these spaces, the story of game development becomes eventually more like the science of creating an addictive drug - increasingly refining only to what is known to work - and less like the exploration of the human psychology that it should be.

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