A Tree Falling in the Forest

Maybe cliche' by now, but still creepy . . .   Quote from 1984 About Telescreens "The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever the wanted to. You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. -1984, Book 1, Chapter One, George Orwell Quote from Katherine Boehret Allthingsd review about Xbox One with Kinect: A Skyp...

I saw a good friend of mine who is very smart and I respect very much - he still finds the time to talk with me though.   He told me he likes my blog, but asked a question he said he hoped would not offend me. "Do you write your blog for yourself on in the hopes of gaining an audience?  Because if you write them for an audience, you really should have a point."   I may be paraphrasing a bit, but it came out like that in my mind.  It was kind of a funny question because I never really thought about writing for anyone else.  My blog is completely self indulgent and admittedly, often only finds entertainment or genius at the point of creation.   The blog is actually a permanent record of the thoughts I find fascinating, and often the expression is only intelligible to me. Along the same lines, when Ken Rutkowski asked me to speak to his METal Internationa l group, I was honored, and excited by the opportunity to entertain - myself.   Because ...

Our business is growing more like Hollywood every day. Budgets go up and publishers, like studio executives before them, rely more and more on established franchises to hedge their bets. We are just as used to seeing things like Transformers 2 and 3 or Hangover 2 as we are to the ensuing debate over whether the sequel is as good as the original. But this time Microsoft has gone just too far. In fact, so far, there is no need for a debate. For those of you who do not remember, just before the launch of the 360, Microsoft invented J Allard and he was good. I can't help watching the interview and wanting to buy a 360 all over again. But J left and Microsoft decided to make the sequel. C'mon guys . . . J worked, but can't you come up with something new?

Someone asked Steve Jobs about television at the all things D Conference and he explained why Apple TV remains a hobby. In the clip above he explains the existing market market is heavily subsidized by cable operators who "give everybody a set top box for free, or for $10 a per month. That pretty much squashes out the opportunity for innovation because nobody's willing to buy a set top box." Everything makes so much sense when he says it. . . but Microsoft got consumers to purchase their set top box and through the sale of content they are able to turn the sale of the box and operation into a profit center. He then says the problem with adding a box to the user's experience is they end up with a variety of different boxes each with its own remote and user interface. "The only way that's ever going to change is if you can really go back to square, tear up the set top box, redesign it from scratch with a consistent UI across all these different functions...

A few days after the Googletv announcement and the press is still looking at this is a battle of Apple v. Google. It is certainly a lot of fun to watch the snipes go back and forth between the two companies but their battle is WWE - only entertainment. The real battle for the living room is between Microsoft and Google and Apple does not even have a horse in the race. Despite their clear market dominance on the set top, Microsoft continues to maintain a stealth position relative to mainstream press. I recently spoke with a senior executive at Microsoft - real Microsoft not the game guys - and he was talking about their competition. He said they accept losing out to Apple because Apple makes cool pieces of hardware and that is just not what Microsoft does. However, those Google guys are a different story. Google is a bunch of engineers with the same drive, the same intellect and the same strategic goal of world domination. They are scary. The guy was proven right today when Go...

Sony’s new video is great, but the silly rabbits over there still think the Natal is for games. While the game world continues to try to figure out how to turn us all into Marcel Marceau in front of our 360s, linear content creators are recognizing the real value. Natal is not an attack on the other game consoles. It is an attack on the remote control. The natural input to drive your television experience is just one more reason my wife will be willing to use the Xbox, and maybe even more than me. I know I said it a lot before , but the 360 is cable and every move Microsoft makes moves them one step closer. This is why the smarter agents in Hollywood are pitching content to Microsoft. This may be a surprise to those who view the Xbox 360 as just a game console or the three people who heard of the Zune. It could also be viewed as a step back to those who pitched content to MSN and other Microsoft incarnations in dot com days, but they better take another look if they want their c...

"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 ...