I wish there was a auto-repeat toggle on Youtube.
New Entry In The Internet Video Pantheon
– Posted on December 11, 2007Posted in: Internet Phenomena
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Review: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
– Posted on December 11, 2007Posted in: Reviews, Video Games
Naughty Dog’s inaugural Playstation 3 effort, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune has been hotly anticipated as one of the pillars of Sony’s 2007 holiday lineup for the embattled system. The creators of Jak and Daxter continue their tradition of creating new franchises for new generations of Playstation hardware by putting forth one of the best titles of the year on any platform.
Uncharted combines intense cover-based combat with fluid platforming to create a gameplay experience that’s just plain fun. It also doesn’t hurt that the game boasts some of the greatest graphics in a video game this side of Crysis, along with a stellar presentation comparable to a summer blockbuster film. The game is definitely the best single-player game released on the Playstation 3 thus far and a good reason to “play b3yond.”
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Satellite Radio Gets Off Easy
– Posted on December 5, 2007Posted in: Music
The Copyright Royalty Board just finalized the new royalty rates that satellite radio providers will pay for the next 5 years.
Under the terms of the CRB Satellite Radio Services, XM will pay a performance license rate of 6.0% of those gross revenues subject to the fees for 2007 and 2008, 6.5% for 2009, 7.0% for 2010, 7.5% for 2011 and 8.0% for 2012.
This seems like a pretty sweet deal for XM and Sirius, with a modest rate increase over 6 years. Gary Parsens, chairman of XM radio seems pretty ecstatic over the decision:
“Moreover, the music performance fees set by the CRB are in the range projected by many financial analysts who cover this industry.”
Now, while satellite radio isn’t a money printing enterprise, it sure as hell has a lot more revenue generation going on for it than internet radio. OEM partnerships with a multitude of automobile manufacturers, portable devices, aftermarket add-ons for existing automobiles, internet subscriptions, the list goes on. Would someone care to explain to me how on earth the CRB decided the internet radio royalty increases were the least bit fair in light of this? Not only is the CRB/SoundExchange imposing a higher royalty rate on internet radio, they aren’t even offering the option of a revenue-based royalty payment scheme.
wat.
Read more [money.cnn.com]
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Activision Blizzard
– Posted on December 2, 2007Posted in: Video Games
This morning, a wholly unexpected press release went out announcing that Activision and Vivendi/Universal Games (including Blizzard entertainment) are set to merge, creating the largest game-publisher in the world. The new company will be boringly named “Activision Blizzard”.
So now we have Activision Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, THQ, and 2k Games.
Hmm… this uncannily looks like Universal Music, Sony Music, BMG, EMI, and Warner…
RUH ROH SHAGGY
Read the press release [busineswire]
Read the Blizzard FAQ [blizzard.com]
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You know that “whoa” feeling you get when you’re watching the second season of a television series and a character or event happens that ties seamlessly back with the first season? This sort of payoff is a big part of what makes serialized content so appealing. Shows like Lost and The X-Files were always maligned for being impossible to jump in the middle of. It’s hard to cannonball into these shows because the creators have spent so much time building the mythos, that not knowing this history severely impacts the enjoyment one can derive from a given episode. Fans of these shows, though, will tell you that the payoff from these shows is infinitely more satisfying than from episodic shows (Law and Order), or even season-contained series like Heroes or 24.The reason I bring this up is because I just got caught up with Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons’ summer blockbuster comic storyline, The Sinestro Corps War. It’s one of the most entertaining experiences I’ve had all year in any medium. The Sinestro Corps War is the comics equivalent of a well-done summer action flick. I found myself in an interesting position with this story because I’ve never been much of a Green Lantern reader. I’ve read one or two GL storylines in my life, but by no means am I a regular reader. However, the writers have woven in characters from previous DC mega-stories which I have read. If DC’s goal was to get non-Green Lantern readers to start reading the books, they would have achieved it unquestionably.
Pinpointing What Makes Comics And TV So Fun
Now, barely anyone I know reads comics, but almost everyone follows some sort of TV series. I sorely want to tell everyone I know about this story because I want them to experience the same sense of “fuck yeah!” I had, but I question what its impact will be on a person who knows nothing of the characters. In a sense, comics to the non-reader are like Lost to a non-watcher. It’s too daunting or too disorienting to start in the middle, but comics have an added problem of always being “in the middle.” Comics are essentially television series that have been going on for over 40 years. I imagine publishers are constantly trying to figure out a balance between appeasing long-time readers and getting new blood in, but I really don’t think you can truly duplicate a long-term payoff without diluting the experience.
It’ll probably have to wait until we can download experiences directly into our minds before I can fully share with others what makes comics so awesome.
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Internet Radio Sucks It From SoundExchange
Siding with the music companies, the board in March ordered that royalties be raised to 0.11 cent for each song listened to from 0.08 cent last year. The rate is scheduled to reach 0.19 cent in 2010.
“The current math doesn’t add up,” said Lisa Namerow, managing director of AOL Radio in Dulles, Virginia. “If the rates remain as they are, it would be very challenging to sustain a business that is profitable.”
It may seem trivial when we are talking about fractions of a cent, but keep in mind this is for each play of each song for each user. When you start multiplying millions by thousands, you’re talking about significant number of pennies per year. Don’t forget that the rates are essentially doubling in the span of a few years.
The thing that caught my eye was the revelation that both Yahoo and AOL experienced a 10-11% decline in users last month. The Bloomberg report says it was due to AOL and Yahoo not linking to their radio sites anymore, but I’m still able to see links from their respective music home pages. Perhaps both companies pulled advertising or intra-site promotions. Regardless, this development is very troublesome and a portent of doom for the nascent internet radio industry.
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Review: Assassin’s Creed
– Posted on December 2, 2007Posted in: Reviews, Video Games
Odi et amo. I love and I hate. No blockbuster game this holiday season has created a big of a schism between gamers as Assassin’s Creed has. Much brouhaha has been unleashed upon the internet gaming community between the two entrenched camps of people who either loved the game or hated it. Regardless of critics’ opinions of the game, the fact remains that Ubisoft Montreal’s big-budget production is one of the most anticipated games of 2007.
From the time I viewed the incredible initial trailer of the game, I had it filed away under my short list of “must purchase” game titles this year. As release date neared, though, the increasingly negative buzz that emanated from early reviews and word of mouth nearly swayed my decision. However, after tempering my expectations and finding a great deal on the game ($39.99 from Fry’s), I took the plunge anyway. I’m not regretting the purchase one bit.
While being far from perfect, Assassin’s Creed is still a genuinely entertaining video game title. The presentation, graphics, animation, and plot are some of the best seen on the medium. However, several flaws keep it from being the true “must-play” experience it was hyped up to be. Nevertheless, Ubisoft has a great first entry in what should become one of their flagship franchises.
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The interview isn’t posted online yet Read the interview here, but this choice excerpt sums it all up:
Doug Morris Is Easy To Bullshit
– Posted on November 26, 2007Posted in: Music
“There’s no one in the record industry that’s a technologist,” Morris explains. “That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?”
Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn’t an option. “We didn’t know who to hire,” he says, becoming more agitated. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.”
wat.
It boggles my mind that an entire industry of “business savvy” executives were so myopic, egoistic, and just plain stupid as to not even learn who to talk to about the impact of digital music. I imagine Morris is exaggerating a little bit here. Out of the thousands of employees that worked for the majors in the golden age of 1.1 million first week *NSYNC CD sales, there were at least a handful of people who saw what was coming. Nay, the real problem was the music business’ stubbornness in adapting to the times. In an industry where you’re only as good as your latest numbers, there was no incentive for anyone to look at any sort of long term growth or stability. It was (and to an extent, still is) all about hitting your quarterly numbers no matter the cost. The more likely scenario is that prescient employees drafted up hundreds of pages of meticulously researched reports that were placed in the inboxes of various record label executives only to be summarily ignored and trashed because they had nothing to do with making the 4th quarter margins.
The interview goes on to talk about Universal’s Total Music venture and how Morris’s primary objective nowadays is to unseat iTunes from power. Again, Dougy is missing the point here. Guy, we’re in 2007. No one cares about you trying to show that you have a bigger dick than Steve Jobs. What you should be trying to do is creating a service with the music fan in mind. Make something that puts both Napster circa 2000 and iTunes to shame.
In other words, clone OiNK.
Update: Wired now has the interview online here
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Trent Reznor Is Being Kept Down By The Man
– Posted on November 21, 2007Posted in: Music
Nine Inch Nails’ official site for fan produced remixes of Year Zero was supposed to launch last Monday. Unfortunately, according to a post by Trent Reznor on the band’s website, legal issues brought upon by Universal Records, the band’s former label, are the cause of the site’s delay.
Universal feels that if they host our remix site, they will be opening themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing these companies for. Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix one of my masters with material Universal doesn’t own – a “mash-up”, a sample, whatever – and upload it to the site, there is no safe harbor under the DMCA (according to Universal) and they will be doing exactly what MySpace and YouTube are doing.
While Universal’s legal concerns are legitimate, the overall situation is, in one word, bullshit. Doing exactly “what MySpace and YouTube are doing” is building your consumer base. It’s nice that Universal isn’t so myopic as to prevent Reznor from launching the site, but by taking this course of action, they are implicitly condoning “what MySpace and YouTube are doing”.
Situations like this are exactly why the major labels are fading into irrelevancy. Like the Napster situation before it, if only someone saw user generated content as an opportunity to evolve the way their business instead of futilely trying to stop the juggernaut of technological evolution, they might not be in the situation they are in now. Unfortunately, they tying their own nooses with legal red tape.
Read Trent’s Post [nin.com]
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Indie Game Spotlight: Undertow
– Posted on November 21, 2007Posted in: Indie game spotlight, Video Games
Welcome to the inaugural entry in a new ongoing feature series highlighting gaming’s best independent titles. If music and movies can have their “indie” titles be cutting edge and hip, why can’t games? The advent of digital distribution and micro transactions in the gaming industry has allowed more independent developers a shot at producing quality titles without a huge budget. While you may or may not have heard of the titles featured in these spotlights, rest assured that they come wholly recommended and are solid purchases for your gaming library.
Undertow is a new Xbox Live Arcade game from Chair Entertainment available for purchase today for 800 MS points ($10). The developer is best known for employing many of the driving forces behind the 2005 adventure game Advent Rising. They are also involved with Ender’s Game author, Orson Scott Card, in developing games based on the author’s Empire universe.
The game is essentially a 2d Battlefield 1942 that plays like Geometry Wars. Players use the left thumbstick to move their character and the right thumbstick to shoot in 8 directions. In addition, players can drop depth charges (read: grenades) with the left trigger and dash with the right trigger. Each team starts off with a certain amount of “tickets” with the goal being to deplete the other team’s ticket total. To accomplish this, teams vie for the control of several “bases” on the map. The more bases your team controls, the faster the opposing ticket count will decrease.