Geek News and Musings

Nintendo Boss: Used Video Games Aren’t Good For ConsumersTechdirt
The folks over at GamePolitics are highlighting the most ridiculous part of a VentureBeat interview of Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America:

VB: Used games are coming up as a big issue again. Why?

RFA: More and more retailers are experimenting with the used game model. We don’t believe used games are in the best interest of the consumer. We have products that consumers want to hold onto. They want to play all of the levels of a Zelda game and unlock all of the levels. A game like Personal Trainer Cooking has a long life. We believe used games aren’t in the consumer’s best interest.

VB: Because?

RFA: Describe another form of entertainment that has a vibrant used goods market. Used books have never taken off. You don’t see businesses selling used music CDs or used DVDs. Why? The consumer likes having a brand-new experience and reliving it over and over again. If you create the right type of experience, that also happens in video games.

First off, it’s rather stunning to claim that a vibrant used market isn’t in the best interest of consumers. As studies have shown repeatedly, healthy second-hand markets actually help both consumers and original producers because it adds more value to the product. That’s rather obvious once you think about it. If someone knows they can resell the product at a decent price later, then it both lowers the risk and increases the value of the original product. On top of that, the used market also helps better differentiate on pricing, again benefiting both customers and producers.

Second, it’s quite odd to claim that there’s no used book, used CD or used DVD market. A few years back we noted that the used book market had become a multibillion dollar industry, and you just need to look on, say, Amazon or eBay to see thriving sales of used books, CDs and DVDs. To claim that there’s no such market either shows ignorance of the market or is an outright lie — neither of which is a good thing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Is Office Finally Coming To The iPhone?

I’m here at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote, where Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division, hinted that we may be seeing Microsoft Office make its way to the iPhone some time soon. After his interviewer Tim O’Reilly caught him on the comment, Elop backtracked a bit, stating “not yet, keep watching”. But it’s clear that an iPhone version of Office is on his mind.

Rumors of an Office client for the iPhone have been circling for over a year, as users clamor for a way to edit their Word and Excel files on the go (the iPhone allows them to view them, but doesn’t include any editing functionality).

Unofficial editing suites are also on the way. Today saw the annoucement of QuickOffice, a suite of applications that can edit office files (though it has yet to be released). Also worth checking out is this spreadsheet application.

In other Office-related news, Elop said that Microsoft plans to launch an ad-supported online version of Office for the web, though it won’t be out this year. He also notes that of the 500 million people who use Office, only 250 million actually pay for it. When asked what Microsoft’s biggest fear concerning Office was, Elop said that it was afraid of innovation slowing down, explaining “It’s not about having bolding or underlining in the browser… The real threat is if we’re not continuing to innovate”.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Artist paints herself having sex with each president of the USA
Artist Justine Lai’s new project is a set of oil paintings of her having sex with every president of the USA, in order.

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that’s strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably “controversial.” One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its “Fuck the Man” symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

NOTES ON JOIN OR DIE (Thanks, Frank W!)

White House Opens Up For Questions About The Economy
I’ve been a bit critical for the Obama administration’s lack of transparency and inclusion on certain issues — or rather, their claims of being “transparent” and “inclusive” by simply asking their mailing list to “sell” the packages put together in backrooms. I was hoping for a much more participatory process whereby citizens actually could take part a bit earlier in the process. So, it’s good to see a step in the right direction, as the White House has announced its Open For Questions initiatives (thanks to everyone who sent this in). The site lets people ask questions of the president, and lets people see and vote on each other’s questions. The President will then answer a few of the “top” questions.

This is definitely a nice thing to add, but I'm hopeful that it ends up going further. At this point, it seems like nothing much more than a glorified suggestion/Q&A box. Rather than involving the community to tackle the questions raised, it simply gives them to the President to answer back. Real participation is about allowing the community to help out — not just pass big questions up to the top. Obviously, it's still quite early in the administration, so hopefully we'll see more participatory tools on the way as well. This is definitely a good step — and I don't mean to take away from it. But, I'm going to keep pushing for further participation and further transparency because I think it could be quite powerful and transformative.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Storytron goes public — a game-engine built for real storytelling
The long-awaited game Storytron, from legendary game-designer Chris Crawford, is now visible to the public. Storytron is a system for creating games in which real stories take place — and it’s designed to allow you to create your own stories as well. The launch-game, Balance of Power is “a geopolitical strategy storyworld.”

You begin on September 12th, 2001. You are the President of the United States and your job is to advance American interests, as expressed in a list of policy goals. These policy goals can be found by clicking on the Things button. Each of these is a policy of some sort, with its “owner” (the country that would actually do it) listed first. The USA’s own policy actions are at the top of the list. If you select any of these policy goals, you will see a lot of text explaining exactly what it entails. The desirability of that policy goal to the USA is also displayed next to the bold text Undesirable_Desirable. You want to make certain that the policy goals that are desirable are eventually executed, and the ones that are undesirable are never executed. For now you can just skim through this list, but in order to do well in BoP2K, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with each of these, even those that don’t appear to affect you. Why? Because you will need to make deals with other countries involving some of those policy-treaties.

Your first task is to select which policy goal you want to pursue first. You’ll see the incomplete sentence: “I” followed by a menu entitled “Do What?” listing two choices: “set goal” and “set goal to prevent.” The first means “I want to set a goal for something I want to achieve.” The second means “I want to set a goal to prevent something from happening.” Select the first menu item (”set goal”) and a list of twelve policies desirable to the USA is presented. This being September 12th, 2001, you want to get your hands on Osama bin Laden. Select that option and click on the little period button that appears. (It means: “period—end of sentence—that’s what I want to say.”)

Balance of Power: 21st Century (via Beyond the Beyond)