HomeWeekly News Roundup (13 September 2009)
I managed to get the August 2009 US video games sales analysis done, based on NPD stats as usual. August was an interesting month, with the PS3 price cut and the PS3 Slim announcements, plus the Xbox 360 price cut as well. September may prove to be even more interesting, with the PS3 Slim official going on sale right at the beginning of the month and the Xbox 360 price cut in full focus as well. But August was, in most areas, as expected, but Nintendo has got to be worrying a bit because it might lose its steady hold on second place in the hardware charts, and may even slip back to as much as fourth, depending on how successful the Xbox 360 price cut is. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet week with the US Labor Day holiday meaning no news for a couple of days. This allowed me to finally complete GTA IV, to gain the 100% completion stat (don’t believe me? Go to the Rockstar Social Club’s GTA IV 100% page, and search for my nick, LastMinuteGoal, which is the 3895th global entry if you sort by “joined”). Read it and weep (you read it, I weep as I realise the amount of time I’ve wasted trying to get this stat).
Let’s start with copyright news in this very quiet week, which means I’ll have to ramp up my rant-o-gizmo to fill the space. I can also write completely meaningless sentences that occupy a lot of space, which makes this WNR look more content rich at first glance, but not too much as to make it too boring to read or too much like the ramblings of a mad men, which does nobody any favours, unless of course you’re auditioning for the TV show of the same name, which I have yet to watch a single episode of, although I’ve been meaning to. I’ve heard good things about it.
With the above 85 useless words out of the way, do you still remember the Amazon Kindle thing? Well, it was a huge PR disaster for Amazon as they deleted 1984, of all books, from people’s Kindle e-Book reader remotely without their permission. They’ve apologised, issued refunds, and lots of other things, but the latest should finally settle matters once and for all. Or at least Amazon hopes so. They’ve promised to replace copies of the deleted books, this time with authorised copies, and this should restore people’s notes that were also lost when Amazon pulled the plug. Those that no longer want the books can choose to receive $30 gift certificates instead. It’s nice of them, but it’s too little too late, and while I doubt Amazon would pull a stunt like this in the future for fear or further backlash, but the fact of the matter is that the ability to do so remains, and DRM is still evil.
Redbox: Hollywood's latest target in their crusade against innovation
Hollywood’s latest target is Redbox, the DVD rental vending machine. Universal Studios, Fox and Warner Bros. have threatened to stop the supply of movies to Redbox, so they will no longer be able to rent out movies from these studios. Redbox had earlier made deals with Paramount and Sony, but the demands of these other studios were designed to basically to put Redbox out of business, and so at the moment, no deal seems likely. Amongst the demands are that Redbox destroy all rental copies they no longer need, which previously they sold cheaply on the second hand market. I won’t mention the environmental impact of this, but since Redbox has already agreed to this demand with Paramount and Sony, this wasn’t the major point of contention. What Universal and co. wanted was 40% of all of Redbox’s profit from the rental business as royalty, which is simply ridiculous and something they do not demand from other rental businesses. Also, they want to price fix the rentals to ensure it doesn’t go below $1.00 per night. And as if these demands weren’t enough, the studios also want Redbox to only rent movies 45 days after release, so as not to hurt the straight sales business. You might wonder why the studios want Redbox to fail? It could be because Redbox’s cheap rentals means less profits for studios, or that it might really hurt their sales business (although in my experience, people who buy movies will always buy them, and people who rent will rarely buy them, regardless of how many days you delay the availability of rentals). But I think it’s because studios fear losing control, and Redbox’s business model means studios have less and less control over how their discs are sold. It doesn’t matter if it benefits consumers, or that this could lead to bigger and better things, even for studios, as Redbox expands and perhaps gets into the digital download kiosk business. Change is what the Hollywood studios fear, change to their traditional business models for which they’ve gotten very rich on over the years. And it’s not the first time Hollywood has challenged innovation, as they did with VCRs (it was also Universal Studios, back then versus Betamax), DVRs, HDTV (see last week’s story on selectable output control), digital movie storage systems (like Kaleidescape) and digital downloads.
The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, organizations opposed to a three-strikes system
And it’s not just Hollywood, the music industry is even worse at dealing with change. The whole DRM’d music fiasco, which eventually forced the studios to back down, was a total waste of time and money. And now, their crusade against Internet users seems to be succeeding, at least when it comes to lobbying governments for three-strike Internet banning systems. But the studios claim they are only looking after the musicians, whose hard work does deserve to be rewarded, but do musicians really think that banning potential customers and fans from the Internet is really the solution? They do not. At least not the UK ones, as groups representing the likes of Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney have made it clear that they vehemently opposed to any such plans to ban people from the Internet. The Featured Artists Coalition, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and the Music Producers Guild have all called the three-strikes system as “extraordinarily negative”. They believe there are other ways to raise profits, like through integration with video games like the Guitar Hero series, and they are right. Video gaming is a growing business, often at the expense of music sales, as interactivity is what people crave these days. There are also other solutions, such as a subscription download system, or more focus on music video digital downloads, but just like Hollywood, the music studios want to protect their old way of doing things, which has also served them well, but perhaps no longer cuts it in today’s digital world.
Movies, music – software is another product that’s experiencing growing piracy. But again, the industry fails to grasp and take advantage of the changes in people’s needs, and their latest attempt at an anti-piracy video, dubbed the worst ever, proves this. It only shows how out of touch these industries are when it comes to dealing with piracy, and how they totally fail to connect to the current generation by using a modified campaign from the 90’s (against floppy disk piracy, no less) to fight piracy. The fact that the video compares a college student sharing some DVDs with professional pirates who are arrested and sent to prison, just shows how they are not grasping at the difference between piracy for profit and personal piracy. They’re also still assuming people do it because A, they don’t think they’ll get caught, and B, that they don’t know it’s illegal. They do know it’s illegal, and maybe they do think they won’t get caught (and statistically, they’re right), but most do it because they can’t afford to do anything else if they really really need a piece of software, or music or movie (academically, or even for social reasons, as you want to keep up with friends who do use said software or have watched and listened to the movie or music). It’s not an excuse, that is true, but it’s also a fact. The legal alternative is of course for the people who cannot afford it to not use it, but does that really help the software, music or movie industry? They don’t get any extra profit from people not using their products, and they certainly lose a lot of the Internet based hype surrounding tools like Photoshop, or the latest movie, or music video. And from the loss of this, they actually lose more money as a result. Of course, they could discount things to make it affordable, so that every person who pirates it now will become a loyal customer. And I suspect for a $300 piece of software, the number of people who pirate it will greatly outnumber the people who buy it, possibly by a factor of 100 to 1 – and so the companies can reduce prices by a factor of 100 (to $3) and still make the same amount of money, but they only need to reduce prices by a much smaller factor, and they will actually come out ahead. Would you still pirate Windows 7 if you could buy a copy for $49, as opposed to $199?
Let’s move on to high def news. Sony is the latest manufacturer to add video streaming support to their Blu-ray player. This is actually kind of a big news, for the founding father of Blu-ray to adopt support for a form of video distribution that is seen as a competitor to Blu-ray, and perhaps even eventual successor once bandwidth catches up. Sony will add Netflix, YouTube and Slacker support to the BDP-N460.
Sony's BDP-N460 will feature Netflix, YouTube and Slacker integration
In the same news post, LG also announced that they’re adding Vudu support via a firmware update to their Blu-ray player range, which already includes impressive support for Netflix, YouTube and CinemaNow, as well as Wifi capabilities and support for home network media streaming. Samsung has been equally busy adding everything from YouTube support to MKV playback and USB drive input. It seems the disc playing capabilities of these players have been relegated to almost a side feature, as these “media boxes” (for want of a better description) can do a lot of things that were once limited to a cumbersome HTPC, or games consoles. And this is good for the consumer as they get these for no added cost, and great for the video streaming companies that can forgo expensive and usually ineffective set-top-box rollouts. And it’s all thanks to BD-Live, or rather, the requirement of BD-Live to include Internet connection capabilities on players (and to a lesser extent, Bonus-View, which requires on-board storage that can be used for video streaming, as well as downloads). And BD-Live being available so quickly after Blu-ray’s introduction is, in a small part, thanks to HD DVD’s mandatory Internet connection requirement, without which the Blu-ray people might not have had the competitive urge to ad what could be seen as a entry point or a Trojan Horse for a competing distribution service.
And lastly in gaming, Sony is still feeling great after the successful launch of the PS3 Slim, and the price cut that went along with it. What they’re not feeling too great about is perhaps the reaction to the PS3 3.00 firmware, which has disappointed a lot of PS3 owners. I know I talked about this last week, but this week, even Sony admitted that some of the changes brought about by the new firmware has been a failure, like the changes to the friend list, and they’ve suggested that changes are being made. So 3.01 shouldn’t be too far away, but it’s nice to know that they do respond to feedback, which they haven’t done enough in relation to firmware updates. And whoever thought that using a major version number like 3.00 was a good idea without introducing any major new features, should be sacked. It wasn’t even as if the previous firmware had reached 2.99 and there was no way to go by to 3.00, and even then, they should have done a 2.991. Don’t raise people’s expectations, especially when it comes to fanboys that have very active imaginations when it comes to pre-emptive gloating about how great the new firmware is going to be when it comes out.
So that’s all for this week. Should be more news next week, and with GTA IV out of the way, I might even bother to search the net and find some, although that Monopoly Cities Streets thing has been interesting me enough to suggest I might have found something else to occupy myself (please don’t put hazards on my streets, pretty please!). See you then.