Elephants at E3

[WTF]

Here's an article I came across on the NYT and while they have lucid thoughts the article is just plain stupid. I mean really.http://www.nytimes.c...aming.html?_r=1

 

I don't even know where to begin with some of it. For instance there's a quote and I'm not even going to bother with the source(it's there in the article, but would come as no surprise) that goes - 'Imagine the type of amazing game Nintendo could make for an iPhone, yet they can they barely even acknowledge that the iOS platform exists, and has the potential to eviscerate their portables business'. Now that doesn't even make sense, firstly while it may not be odd that they single out Nintendo since it's the only company that's a sole games company of the hardware manufacturers at the moment why would they do such a thing. Not to mention they acknowledge it exists and think it's a threat but treat it in an odd and awkward way. Nintendo's main mistake with the 3DS was just that they didn't have a good launch lineup and the price was too high for the average consumer in terms of what was the returns. It can still pick up in time though of course the Vita is on a much level playing ground this time around (considering all we now know and there's no $100-150 price difference between the two as was the case for the DS and PSP).

 

I do find it amusing that the MS rep says that bitesize gaming is casual but they want to focus on the 360 and Kinect which is perhaps not an overt denial of the latter not being casual. Also the question they posed was that why can't the iDevices take the place of a home console and why is there a need for other devices. This is a bit narrow-minded to the point where one can ask why should there be consoles if there's a PC and vice versa. One of the things that they seem to forget is that Apple isn't actively pursuing gaming, in fact they don't care much about it, it's something they don't invest too much into but get most of the rewards from. At some point we'll see that since they're not really dedicated to it that support could wane. All it needs is a healthy competitor that gives games with varying prices. Also most 59p games do not have huge budgets but then again the average consumer doesn't care.

 

As for Facebook gaming, it's there and was present at most conferences too, it's just that no one cares enough to make it something highly newsworthy. I do believe that the author had some points but his presentation was a bit too well for a lack of a better word uninformed and one sided in terms of just I like Apple why doesn't it dominate without other competitors perspective.

 

As for the Sony thing I've not really kept in touch but don't think they've had 18 attacks onto their gaming side though it was stupid not to fix everything up. Then again changing everything right now would take time and still again they should have had better security but oh well. It was a very odd article nonetheless. Somewhat naive too.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

We will be able to do gaming from our phones as the consoles. Onlive + HDMI out.

 

But yeah... I didn't get very far while trying to read that. I wanted my monitor to make it out alive.

[Cyber Rat]

He might as well have said that Youtube's bitesized clips are killing TV and movies as a platform.

[Thursday Next]

Apple and Facebook weren't in attendance for the same reason that Samsung weren't there. Yes, Samsung make the TV's we plug our consoles into and the mobile phones we play android games on, but they have nothing to do with the content.

 

Apple police the iTunes store to an extent, but they don't license games in the way Nintendo, Sony and MS do. The same goes for Facebook. As WTF said, gaming isn't their focus.

 

Also, the guy is talking about 7 million users not returning to PSN, well that's one way to spin it I guess, truth is for PSN activity to be at 90% of what it was before the outage so soon after a major security scare shows that the overwhelming majority of consumers have faith in the PSN. If there are 1 billion bacteria on a kitchen surface and a cleaner wipes out 99.9% that still means there are 1 million bacteria. It sounds like a lot, but % wise it's tiny. 7 million users sounds like a lot, but against the 63 million remaining, it's small potatoes.

 

Also, he's pulled the 7 million figure out of his arse. 70 million accounts hacked is in no way equal to 70 million active users deciding whether or not to return. Tretton said "activity" is at 90% of pre-outage levels. This could be number of simultaneous users, revenue per day, or number of accounts showing activity in the past day/week it's probably a combination of the three.

 

As others have said, the writer just seems a little uninformed (and doesn't understand percentages).

[WTF]

You're all quite right. I just found it a bit odd since the article popped up on my NY Times app. I did find the quote where he said you could play games on the iPad connecting it to the TV at no extra cost. I mean really that's just plain silly. It's not like everyone owns an iPad and they are more expensive than the consoles. In fact if you look for bargains you could get both a PS3 and a 360 for the price of an iPad 2 (otherwise it's a tiny bit higher) and you could get all three home consoles for the price of the top end model and have spare change.

I do use Apple products for FCP and the like but this is just silly.