One reasonably high profile feature, and a personal favorite of mine, that you can see is Marketplace on the web, which you can find here.  Itrsquo;s a million times easier to find games and movies, manage the content yoursquo;ve already purchased, and play with your download queue.

Any feedback you guys have on either the new user experience, or especially the web-side stuff is welcome and appreciated!

Apparently Irsquo;ve been allowed to use my Avatar in public communication (although I canrsquo;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.

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

(Can you see Irsquo;m experiencing Writerrsquo;s Block?)

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 360rsquo;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 Irsquo;ve missed (Starting with second season of 30 Rock) from the last couple of years onto my 46Prime; Plasma seamlessly through my 360.  It brings tears to my eyes.

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 donrsquo;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.  Therersquo;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 donrsquo;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 wonrsquo;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 thatrsquo;s a plus too.

NASDAQ

• Microsoft [MSFT]


• Electronic Arts [ERTS]


• THQ [THQI]


• Take-Two Interactive [TTWO]


• Activision Blizzard [ATVI]

NYSE

• Midway Games [MWY]


• GameStop [GME]

TYO

• Nintendo [7974]


• Sony [6758]


• Konami [9766]

Irsquo;ll be starting coverage next week.  Keep in mind that I am in no way a professional analyst, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Valve Software has some of the most talented people in the industry working in their studios - games like Team Fortress, Half-Life, and of course Portal donrsquo;t happen on their own.  Steam has lots of publishers on board already (Eidos, Ubisoft, Activision, etc.), and Googlersquo;s ability to run a game studio internally is a huge unknown (although Irsquo;ve been wrong before).

All in all, a very uncomfortable position for me.

[Update]: Or maybe not.

As a result, Take Tworsquo;s stock price has taken a swan dive, as all kinds of speculators unload the shares of TTWO stock that sadly, EA is not going to buy from them at a premium.  What I find interesting is that analysts seem to think this is a mortal blow for Take Two.

EA saw a good opportunity to buy Take Two because they have some extremely talented people working there, and several key franchises EA would like to get their fingers in.  From my point of view, this little breakup is better for everyone involved, including you.

EArsquo;s new CEO has been doing a fine job of diversifying their development portfolio into new IP, but you canrsquo;t do this entirely buy purchasing studios.  The value in a studio, even more so than in most companies, is in the people who work there.  Intellectual Property they own certainly has a premium attached to it, but no IP in the world is going to be profitable if you donrsquo;t put it in the hands of talented developers.  But buying studios wholesale is a risky business, because if those developers think yoursquo;re going to mess with the way they run things, they tend to jump ship, leaving you holding the empty - and expensive - bag.

EA needs to look across the continent from Vancouver to Montreal, and look at what Ubisoft has managed to do by developing highly innovative titles in house, much to the delight of their shareholders and the gaming community.  A purchase of Take Two would have consolidated the entire suite of sports franchises under EArsquo;s grip stifling innovation in that arena even further - not something anyone wants to see.  Take Two has quite a few studios, and as much as analysts talk about EA being able to integrate these studios under their own technology stack, this has historically not worked out well for companies that tried to do so.

Take Two isnrsquo;t exactly bereft of cash.  GTA has historically been the foundation upon which Take Two operates, but they have other gems as well (Bioshock, Civilization).  If they can retain their top talent - and continue innovating new IP - I expect wersquo;ll continue to see both shareholder value and excellent titles out of Take Two in years to come.

The thing is, my friend got a macbook, and if you have a macbook made earlier than late 2007, no Spore for you.

The problem is that until late 2007, Apple was making Macbooks with the GMA 950 graphics card embedded, after which it was upgraded to the GMA X3100.  Spore explicitly does not support the GMA 950.  I told you that you should have bought a PC.  None of the Macbook Pro line have this issue.

That said, I think this is more a Maxis fail than an Apple fail.  Theyrsquo;ve got like, 4 video cards guys, you couldnrsquo;t support one that was brand new in the system less than a year ago?  Fail, and fail hard.

Without getting too far into it, it looks like both Steam and Impulse essentially have a web browser embedded in them, and they use the callbacks from this browser to kick off the downloads process.  Both services allow you to keep a catalog of your games, re-download them as many times as you want, and both services have community elements as well.

Steam has a better catalog of games, and has hooks into various Valve magic such as a Steamworks, and saved games in the cloud (which is awesome).

Impulse Storefront

Steam Storefront

But Impulse is shiny, and that matters.  I currently use both Quicken Online (at least until my trial expires) and Mint for personal finances, and even though Mint is horribly crippled by not supporting Canadian banks, I still log into it because itrsquo;s prettier than Quicken is.  Additionally, Steam has the unfortunate habit of randomly hanging in the middle of downloads, requiring me to stop and restart the download.  This isnrsquo;t a show stopping issue, but itrsquo;s irritating, and Impulse can capitalize on that.

Web design has moved forward since Steam was launched, and itrsquo;s time for Steam to bring some of those design principles to the table.

Game Career Guide is hosting two documents that Goddard has made publically available, the game pitch, and the 60 seconds of gameplay documents, for his newly released game Shred Nebula. 

The pitch document is officially what allowed Microsoft to give the game the green light. The ldquo;60 Seconds of Gameplayrdquo; essay is a separate document that Microsoft requires of all its published games, whether developed in-house or out. In it, the authors must describe, step-by-step what the player does, sees, hears, and feels during a full 60 seconds of gameplay, which can be taken from any point in the game.

As a professor of game development, Goddard clearly understands and values the passing on of knowledge about game design to future generations, and itrsquo;s good for the industry to make the standard practices more transparent.  Hopefully more developers will follow suit in releasing their design documents in the future.

FINALLY, with no prior warning, Nintendo has re-released Super Mario RPG - in my opinion the second best RPG ever made for the SNES - for the Virtual Console.  With the upcoming re-release of Chrono Trigger for the DS, if Nintendo would see fit to release the Mother games in North America, and perhaps the Secret of Evermore, my SNES revival list would be complete.

Time to dust off that Wii and get playing.

Irsquo;ve never heard of The One Ups before.  Apparently therersquo;s a band that does Jazz/Funk covers of video game music.  Thatrsquo;s more or less orgasm inducing.  Video of the One Ups covering one of the songs from Chrono Trigger below.

Presently therersquo;s two boys playing outside, and of all the games they have available, theyrsquo;re playing the XBLA version of the 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.

I burned a lot of hours playing that game as a kid.  I guess some things never change.

Major Nelson will be there showing off the new Xbox Live Experience, so if you donrsquo;t want to talk to me, you should at least go check that out and talk to him.  Hersquo;ll be in booth 412 at 10:30 and 3:30 on both Sat. and Sun.

His arguement is essentially that when you do the math, Braid has sold 55k copies (according to public estimates) at 15 bucks each, which translates into $825,000.  You have to multiply this by 70% to get the developers cut, and then do a bunch of math to account for localization fees, certification, and development costs.

Jeff Engel makes the claim that in order for Braid to achieve its goal of completely financing the next game Blow wants to make, the magic number of sales Braid would have to achieve is something like 100k copies.  Jeffrsquo;s concern is that many games donrsquo;t sell those kinds of numbers.

My response to this would be that I have absolutely no doubt that Braid will hit and exceed 100k copies, thatrsquo;s virtually a certainty.  Digitally distributed games certainly donrsquo;t have the market penetration that sales at brick and mortar stores do, but by the same token, the costs are significantly less.  XBLA arcade sales should follow a long tail distribution - meaning that after only two weeks of sales, the majority of the income from Braid is yet to be seen.

While it might be true that many games donrsquo;t reach 100k in sales, thatrsquo;s true when you sell your shovelware game at Gamestop too, and at least there yoursquo;re not giving a cut to the retailer, another cut to bribe the retailer into showing your title promenantly for three days, another cut for manufacturing and distribution, and an even bigger cut to the publisher.

If yoursquo;re unaware, Fable 2 Pub Games is an XBLA release (for 800 MS points) which essentally packages three of the mini games from the upcoming Fable 2 into a single package.  These three games are Fortunersquo;s Tower, Keystone, and Spinnerbox, which are variations on Blackjack, Craps, and Slot machines respectively.

Now, while these games are entertaining in their own right, but Strategically theyrsquo;re more interesting.  The gimmick with these games is that any gold you win, or debt you accumulate, gets transferred into Fable 2 if/when you boot it up.  Along with this, there is unique equipment that can be won through pub game tournaments, and this equipment gets transferred as well.

tower.png

spinner.png

keystone.png

If Fable 2 Pub Games was freehellip; I think there would be a potential for using it as a loss leader to bring people into the retail title, although I donrsquo;t think it would work out very well.  Irsquo;m not entirely convinced that this is an effective marketing tool, especially as you have to pay, although it is an interesting one.  On the other hand, you can draw parallels between Pub Games and the wildly popular Spore Creature Creature, so I may be wrong.  As it is, I do think itrsquo;s a unique and interesting way to throw some meat to the faithful. 

If Pub Games encourages you to buy the retail title, you were probably going to buy it anyway.  But much as those who are into buying the deluxe versions of games with extras included, this works along the same line, the difference being that you get the extras 2 months before launch, digitally, and maybe it whets your appetite to buy the game at launch instead of waiting for the holiday wave.

Hell, therersquo;s worse ways to blow 10 bucks.

Irsquo;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.

Irsquo;d really like to not make this an annual event.

And Irsquo;m going to have to agree.

Irsquo;ve spoken of Jonathan before, and if you havenrsquo;t heard any of his talks on design, you should, if thatrsquo;s the kind of thing that interests you.  Jonathan has made news recently based around many of his design philosophies.  I had thought that these views were lofty and optimistic, it was difficult to point to any one of them and demonstrate a successful title that really embodied it.  Then it came about that Jonathan was bringing a game to market, and I had intended to draw a bead upon it with a critical eye, looking forward to pointing out in his game where he was defying his own rules.

So much for that.

I realize that Braid is currently only available for Xbox Live Arcade, which Irsquo;m happy about from a business standpoint, but I almost wish it was more widely available in this case.  I feel bad for friends of mine who would rather spend a few hundred dollars in coffee than own an Xbox, because they are missing out on an a profound experience.  Braid is coming to PC later this year, but many of these friends own Macs (probably for the same reason they donrsquo;t own an Xbox 360).  So letrsquo;s talk about Braid and Jonathanrsquo;s design beliefs.

Jon holds the stance that playing a video games should be a holistic experience - you shouldnrsquo;t need to be artificially prodded into doing one thing or another, rather the game play space should naturally draw you to areas and concept that should be interesting, and you should discover them for yourself.  Braid contains no tutorials, and as the central game mechanic is about playing with the flow of time, describes a world in which things can happen which are not expected.  Nevertheless, the game is built in such a way that you will naturally discover the quirks of this world, in a very organic fashion, and every time you do, you feel really good about it.

Jon is vehemently against scheduled rewards (a term I used, and I believe he coined).  These are the little meaningless bonuses that at their best, try to get you to explore areas of the playspace you might not have, and at their worst, are a cheap mental trick designed to keep you in front of your box.  Nearly all games contain these in some way, theyrsquo;re so prevelant, itrsquo;s difficult to imagine a game without them.  Braid is such a game.  Taking them away gives the game a clean, minimalistic feel.  It invokes the feeling that yoursquo;re free of distractions, and can be focused on the exploration at hand.

Jon is of the opinion that there is often a dichotomy between what the gameplay is trying to tell the player, and what the story is telling the player.  The canonical example is Bioshock, in which the story tells you that the choice between saving or destroying the little sisters is critical, and the game play tells you it doesnrsquo;t matter (because the difference in rewards for doing one or the other are trivial).  Braidrsquo;s story is tightly integrated with gameplay, and in fact it didnrsquo;t occur to me until the sixth world that the story being told was an allegory for what was happening in each level, and vice versa.

Finally, Jon believes that developers should think about what theyrsquo;re teaching their players when they give them a game to play.  On this point I think the world needs a balance, and in general we are lacking developers who live in Blowrsquo;s camp.  Games have been used to teach people since time immemorial.  As a tool for teaching, it is certainly important that what is being taught is a Good Thing.  I think, however, that from a pragmatic standpoint, not everyone is interested in learning.  There is a place in the world for people who want nothing but to be entertained, and someone will always be there to fill that desire.

So what is Braid?  It is a world turning experience on both an intellectual and emotional level.  Braid integrates complexity out of simplicity, it evokes a sense of wonder and delight.  Free of distractions, you are brought into a masterfully crafted world where you are repeatly filled with a sense of delight as you learn.  The feeling is much like the feeling of exploring in Portal, only more so.  Jonathan values this feeling so much, that the official walkthrough simply urges you not to use a walkthrough - and hersquo;s right.  Using a walkthrough robs you of much of the experience you get out of this game, and you can never get it again. 

Braid is a bittersweet, magical journey, and missing it would leave your hand off the touchstone of our generation.  Jonathan Blow earns my respect in spades, and the world will never be the same again.