Universe’s Tech Blog

Just to mention…

What’s worse than 100,000 units at launch? How about 80,000? The Nikkei Keizai Shimbun morning edition reports today that due to component shortages, Sony will have only 80,000 units ready for the PS3’s 11/11 Japanese launch. This cuts back by a fifth the initial launch target of 100,000.

The lack of digits in that number is even more staggering when you consider that the PS2 sold out of nearly a million units when it launched back in March of 2000.

Having lived through a few weeks of attempting to obtain a PS3 pre-order, we’re not too surprised by the lowered shipping numbers. Allocations disappeared quickly at online retailers that were brave enough to start pre-order programs. The online arm of media retailer Tsutaya ran out of units in 6 minutes according to Nikkei (it felt more like 1 minute to us).

Major electronics chains like Yodobashi Camera won’t be taking pre-orders, Nikkei reports, so there’s only one option left: line up the day before launch. Although with fewer units to go around, we’re considering getting in line starting from the week prior.

With the Playstation 3 launch just around the corner, Sony has released further information about the next gen console. The PS3 is a power hug and consumes around 380 watts of power more than double the Xbox 360’s 160 watts and eight times the PS2’s nimble 45 watts. So spending an average of 4 hours a day on the machine will add approx $ 80 to your yearly power bill. Coming to the files supported included in the list are MPEG-2 (PS and TS), MPEG-1, H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC / SP video formats and MP3, ATRAC (but of course), AAC, WAV audio formats. Also supported are various image formats like JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF and PNG. The optical drive in addition to BD-ROM games can read BD video, BD-R/RE, DVD±R/RW (VR-Modes also supported), Music CD’s, SACD along with support for AVCHD media.

Just to refresh your memory the Sony PS3 goes on sale in Japan on November 11th and USA on November 17th. Whereas it will be launched in Europe and remaining markets by March 2007.

Google Inc. said Monday that it wants Microsoft Corp. to make sure users can easily choose Internet search engines in future products — but Google refused to say if changes Microsoft has already made to its upcoming operating system, Vista, have gone far enough.

David C. Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development, spoke to reporters after meeting with European Union antitrust regulators but refused to give details on those talks, beyond saying there had been no particular agenda.

”It’s been our view that any new version of Microsoft products that include search, that that be done in a way that preserves user choice for search and other applications,” Drummond said. He said that Google would monitor the situation but that it was ”too early to tell” if there were would be any antitrust allegations arising from Vista.

Vista is Microsoft’s first major update to the company’s flagship operating system since Windows XP was released in late 2001.

Microsoft said this month it had changed Vista in several key sectors — including its search service — in an attempt to soothe European antitrust worries. Regulators had said they were concerned that computer manufacturers or consumers might be prevented from having a proper choice between different software packages.

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in March, pointing out possible issues with Vista’s integrated Internet search, digital rights management tools used to protect copyrights and software that would create fixed-document formats comparable to Adobe Systems Inc.’s Portable Document Format, or PDF.

Security vendors Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. also complained that Microsoft had been slow to hand over technical details needed for their antivirus software to work smoothly with Vista.

There is no formal investigation into Vista, but Microsoft is still embroiled in a long-running legal challenge to the EU’s 2004 antitrust order that found the company broke competition law. Microsoft was fined $613 million.

Some users of Google Apps for Your Domain report that their Gmail accounts have 15 GB of storage space. There are at least two people who noticed it, so it’s hard to consider this a mistake.

Officially, Gmail accounts included in Google Apps for Your Domain have 2 GB. Does Google want to be generous or it’s just an original promotion for a paid service, with a big storage and support?

Nintendo clearly has a lot of faith in Wii Sports. The game ships with the Wii console, after all – at least in America and Europe, anyway (sorry, Japan!). But I’m not so sure. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the chance to log several hours into the compilation of games and I’m not entirely convinced that these mini sports outings work as well as Nintendo hopes, prays and maybe even believes they do.

Take, for example, Wii Sports Tennis. You don’t control anything except the swing of your player’s racket. The movement of these Mii-alike athletes is all done automatically by the game. You simply swing the Wii remote back and forth to make your on-screen character do the same thing. You can even control the power of your shots. Nothing to it and true enough, most of the time it all works and feels just fine. You swing the racket and your motion is reflected on the tennis court. However, ether I’m completely missing something or sometimes the directions and motion of your swings goes ignored. You might swing your racket to the left, for instance, and the ball will go flying off to the right, anyway.

Probably not as good as you think…

When you consider that you’re in control of a single item – the tennis racket – you want that control to be perfect, and more and more I’m finding that simply isn’t the case in some of these Wii Sports games. Furthermore, you can easily cheat, if that’s what you want to call it – and frankly, I think it is cheating. You don’t have to go through the full motion. In Wii Sports Baseball, you could make a full throwing gesture with the Wii-mote to hurl the ball at the plate. Or, you could quickly flick your wrist to replace the full-blown motion. I might be able to overlook this cheap gameplay shortcut if the motions were at least calculated equally. But you’ll oftentimes find that a simple flick of the wrist yields a speedier fastball than the full arching motion. What the eff is up with that, Nintendo?

When Bozon and I played against each other, he tried repeatedly to throw the ball slowly so that I could blast one out of the park, but he couldn’t. He tried the full-arch motion (as I’m officially dubbing the exaggerated movements made by actors in all the Wii advertisements and promos) and he tried the wrist-flick motion; both resulted in super fastballs, despite the fact that he deliberately made slow gestures each time. That moves out of clunky territory and into broken country, as far as I’m concerned.

Wii Sports Baseball has other puzzling deficiencies. For instance, when you want to throw a curve ball, you don’t actually motion it, as you might suspect. No, why would you want to use a gesture for a console whose primary purpose is to promote unique and innovative ways to play? To throw a curve ball, you first select it on the D-Pad and then make a standard throwing motion. Huh? I can only guess that the accelerometer inside the Wii remote is incapable of distinguishing between a curve ball and a fastball. It is, nevertheless, very unfortunate.

The real exception and the big standout, in my opinion, is Wii Sports Bowling. This might take you by surprise, but right now this is far and away (without a second’s hesitation) my favorite Wii Sports game. You know why? Because it actually lives up to the control potential and it feels both natural and right. When you want to pitch the bowling ball down the lane, you cast your arm backward with the Wii remote in hand, hold down the B trigger, and then swing forward and depress the B trigger to release the ball. There’s more to it, though. You can add spin. You simply rotate your wrist as you’re releasing the ball. I really put some time into bowling and found that I couldn’t stop playing it. It’s addicting. You learn how to put spin on the ball almost immediately and from there you find yourself really thinking about where you want to line up your shots and how much angle you’ll need for a strike.

If all of the Wii Sports games could be as intuitive and responsive as Bowling, there would be no need for this blog post. But for now, I’m just not feeling the others as much as I do bowling. That may change. Perhaps there are intricacies of the control mechanics that I have yet to master and I’m jumping the gun with this critique. I’m actually crossing my fingers that this proves to be the case. However, in my experience with Tennis and Baseball thus far, the controls seem to suffice half the time (and the experience is fun) and in contrast feels broken the other half (which really takes away from any enjoyment you might try to sustain).

It is a freebie so I suppose I can’t complain too much. But when I get to thinking about how Wii Sports is supposed to represent Nintendo’s bold new direction with Wii, I can’t help but feel a little skeptical. Many of these new gameplay experiences that the Big N trumpets as loud as it can are, in practice, unproven at the very least and broken at the very worst.

One of the advantages to having a “connected console” (i.e. one that is hooked up to the Internet), is that companies can conveniently make regular updates to the consoles’ system software. Microsoft first tinkered with this with the original Xbox and its online service, Xbox Live.

With a bit of experience and a second console under its belt, the company has taken its idea of a connected console even further with the Xbox 360. Tomorrow morning, the console’s dashboard gets its second large update, following the Spring System Update that added camera functionality and tweaks to the menu system. The free update will be available to all Xbox Live members.

The biggest addition to the Fall System Update is crystal clear–for owners of high-definition displays. Xbox 360s will now support the vaunted 1080p resolution that is so valued by videophiles–just in time for November’s launch of the Xbox 360 external HD-DVD drive. Both games and videos will have the ability to be played back in the sharp resolution, and a Microsoft rep confirmed that existing Xbox 360 games can be upscaled to 1080p.

But that’s not all for video updates that will be ready by tomorrow. Gamers will be able to stream Windows Media Video (WMV) files from connected PCs, as well as play video files from data media discs (CDs or DVDs), USB 2.0 flash drives, and Xbox 360 memory units.

Now that Xbox Live Arcade is a bona fide success, Microsoft is making it easier for gamers to get their pseudo coin-op fix. An option to automatically download trial versions of new Xbox Live Arcade titles has been added, with the company hoping that a tease of the game is enough to convince gamers they should purchase the full version.

The wait to jump into arcade games has also been decreased, with owned Xbox Live Arcade games appearing in the dashboard “almost instantly.” In addition, a “Tell a Friend” feature has been added to spread the word about arcade games, and an “expanded Achievements View” solely for XBLA games has been added to the Arcade blade.

Other enhancements include support for XNA developed games, 50Hz HDTV modes, and upcoming Xbox 360 peripherals. A full list of changes is available at the official Xbox.com site.

Microsoft has also confirmed info Xbox Live’s Major Nelson mentioned on his blog. Xbox Live Gold members will have early access to some free content (up to a week in advance). Paid content will be available at the same time for both Gold and Silver members.

Last week, Microsoft announced its financial results for the quarter ending September 30, 2006. As usual, its game division lost money–a lot of money. For the July-September quarter, the company’s Entertainment and Devices division, which makes the Xbox 360, lost $96 million–an improvement over the $173 million the company lost during the same quarter in 2005.

Today, one of Microsoft’s rivals in the game arena announced that it too would take a loss on its own game division. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer announced that losses at Sony Computer Entertainment are expected to now total 200 billion yen–or around $1.71 billion–for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2007. The figure is nearly twice the shortfall Sony originally projected.

“Considering some of the additional costs of PlayStation 3, we have to generate some excitement and profits from elsewhere in the company to offset the performance of PlayStation 3,” Stringer told the Reuters news service.

One reason cited for the increased costs is Sony’s decision to drop the price of the lower-end PS3 model in Japan. At last month’s Tokyo Game Show, the company announced it would lower the price of the 20GB version of the next-gen console from 60,000 yen (about $515) to 49,980 yen (about $429).

Despite the increased cost, Stringer expressed confidence that the PS3 will be a success. “The point really is that PlayStation 3 is already finished and has been tested in America and has been deemed a creative success,” he said. “In the end that is what counts.”

The executive also expressed apparent befuddlement about some gamers’ anger that the PS3 launch was pushed back to March 2007 in Europe. “I think the idea of worrying about a delay in PlayStation is slightly strange to me,” said Stringer. “Every complex technology runs the risk of delays.”

When the PlayStation 3 was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2005, Sony showed off the console in three different colors–silver, white, and black. But with the launch of the system a mere weeks away, early adopters will only have the black hue to take home.

For Sony fans who pimped out their living rooms in a silver motif in anticipation of getting a silver PS3, all is not lost. The company today confirmed what online retailers previously leaked–a silver-colored PlayStation 2 redesign is now available in North America.

The model, previously released in Europe and Japan, will retail for $129.99, the same price as the black model. In today’s announcement, Sony indicated that the model will be available “while supplies last.”

Next-generation gaming consoles offer upgraded graphics, PC-like multimedia features, and…hefty price tags. With the PlayStation 3 and Wii launching next month, some have assumed that Microsoft will bolster its yearlong head start in the market with a price drop for the Xbox 360.

According to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft has no plans to drop the price of its new console anytime soon. Citing the higher price of its main competitor, the $499/$599 PlayStation 3, and the fact that Microsoft still loses money on the console, the Seattle PI says gamers will have “to wait awhile for a price cut.”

The prospects of an early price drop aren’t unsubstantiated. Six months after the original Xbox was launched, Microsoft cut the system’s price by a third, going from $299 to $199 in an effort to match Sony’s pricing moves. At that time, the PlayStation 2 had been on the market for about a year and a half.

However, roles have been reversed this time around as the Xbox 360 was the first system out of the gate last November, giving Microsoft the option of holding onto its original price point longer.

When asked about a price drop for the Xbox 360, a Microsoft rep would only say, “We have no announcements at this time.”

After a considerable drought of quality releases, the PlayStation Portable is getting a trifecta of AAA titles this week. Foremost among these is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, the second GTA game to hit the handheld. As its name suggests, VCS is a return to the setting of the best-selling 2002 PlayStation 2 game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and will center on Vic Vance, brother of the earlier game’s sidekick/villain Lance Vance.

While the PlayStation 3 edition of Killzone has been missing since the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2005, the first PSP game from the franchise will storm stores this week. Killzone: Liberation will begin eating up gamers’ free time come Halloween. That’s one day after the release of Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony, the first title from Gas Powered Games’ action role-playing game franchise to explore Sony’s portable format.

Speaking of Sony platforms, one of the most anticipated PlayStation 2 titles will arrive on Tuesday. Five years after Square Enix revealed its existence, Final Fantasy XII is finally getting an American release–seven and a half months after it prompted long lines outside Japanese retailers. The game will be the last FF title on the PS2, with the next–Final Fantasy XIII–having been already announced for the PS3.

The week will also see one of last year’s most acclaimed first-person shooters ported to the Xbox 360. Vivendi Games’ F.E.A.R, which was named GameSpot’s top shooter of 2005, will also scare gamers on Halloween. (The title will ship for the PS3 later this year.) The other big release for the platform is Need for Speed Carbon. The latest entry in Electronic Arts’ enduringly popular racing series will also ship for the PC, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube, with PS3 and Wii editions to come next month. A portable version, Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City, will ship the same day for the PSP, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance.

The OG of gaming platforms–the PC–will be getting one of the year’s highest-profile RPGs this week. After a series of delays, Atari’s Neverwinter Nights 2 will finally ship on Halloween. The sequel to the popular Dungeons & Dragons-based title was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, an indie shop founded by veteran RPG designer Feargus Urquhart (Fallout 2) and a series of ex-Black Isle Studios staffers.

A full rundown of this week’s new releases are listed below (list taken from retailer information–actual dates may vary).

OCTOBER 30, 2006
1701 A.D. (PC)
The Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery (PC, GBA)
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses (PC, GBA)
Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (PSP)
Rush (PSP)
Star Chamber Special Edition (PC)
Strawberry Shortcake: Adventures in the Land of Dreams (PC)

OCTOBER 31, 2006
ATV Offroad Fury 4 (PSP)
BattleZone (PSP)
F.E.A.R. (Xbox 360)
FIFA 07 (Xbox 360)
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP)
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (GBA)
Killzone: Liberation (PSP)
Konductra T (DS)
Mind Quiz (PSP)
Need for Speed Carbon (PS2, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, GC)
Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City (PSP, DS, GBA)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC)
Power Stone Collection (PSP)
Scurge: Hive (GBA)
The Sims 2: Pets (DS)
Tom and Jerry Tales (DS, GBA)
Unreal Anthology (PC)
Worldwide Soccer Manager 2007 (PC)

NOVEMBER 1, 2006
Age of Pirates: Captain’s Blood (PC)
Camp Lazlo: Leaky Lake Games (DS)
Children of Mana (DS)
D-Bug (PC)
DIRT - Origin of the Species (PC)
Disney’s Chicken Little: Ace in Action (DS, PS2)
Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (PC)
Jewel Quest Solitaire (PC)
Kim Possible 5 (PS2, DS)
Knights of the Temple II (PS2)
Reel Fishing: Life & Nature (PSP)
Scurge: Hive (PC)
Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock (PC)
UFO: Extraterrestrials (PC)

NOVEMBER 2, 2006
That’s So Raven: Psychic on the Scene (DS)
World Championship Poker: Featuring Howard Lederer - All In (Xbox 360)

NOVEMBER 3, 2006
Scrabble 2007 (PC)
Shootout (PC)
Snoopy vs. the Red Baron (PC)

Wii Prices…