A Tree Falling in the Forest

Everyone in the world knows The Beatles Rock Band is out. That's the point, everyone in the world knows The Beatles: Rock Band is out. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a piece of media about the game. I believe this single game has more media hits than the aggregate hits for all the games being released in the fourth quarter. Don't believe me? Ask your mom, or if you are a bit older, your wife if she knows about The Beatles game. Now ask if she knows Splinter Cell and Bioshock 2 slipped out of the quarter. How about Assassin's Creed 2? Is she waiting for that one? Sorry to revisit old posts , but the folks behind the game did a simple little thing no game company has ever done before. They made a good –some say great, accessible game and told people it was available - and they are not even a game company. What seems so obvious to the marketers behind two of the best known brands in the world - MTV and The Beatles - is the antithesis of game indust...

Someone is giving Uncle Steve bad game industry advice and we have to wake him up. He has the chance to do something to pull our industry forward with the same impact he had on the music industry - and perhaps dominate our future - but instead, he is choosing to run down the same rat hole as the rest of the industry - and by extension use his reality distortion field to pull us along with him. At at time when we so desperately need to pull the mainstream iPod buyers into games, he is chasing after the same limited number of gamers we so jealously covet and cater to. He started out so perfectly, mainstream device, mainstream applications, reviewed and approved all the applications, pick up and play games, cheap to make, easy to earn out, and all of sudden, he decided to spin into the already crowded game industry hell last Wednesday. The iPod/iPhone is a unique device with the opportunity to magically create an economic opportunity for never before seen games, catering to unique ...

"We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are." — Talmud The time between posts seems to be increasing and as you may notice, if you make it through this one, I’m a bit of practice when it comes to brevity. I started this about two weeks ago and have been thinking about it a lot. It kinds of goes off on a tangent that has very little to do with games, so in the spirit of this blog, I’ll let you know, I am playing Arkham Asylum right now and loving it. I think it’s not just because I am huge Batman fan and have been waiting for a good Batman game either. It really is great. And now for something completely different. The blogosphere is alight with stories of Apple’s anti competitive behavior. We’ve gone down the typical path of Apple is great, to Apple isn’t nice, to Apple is anti competitive, to Apple is Satan incarnate to your mother sleeps with goats. All of the discussion arises from Apple’s continued to decision to control the content distributed ...