According to a report in Next Generation, Wal-Mart will soon stop selling UMD movies and most of Hollywood is also backing out of Sony’s portable movie format. Why? Sales of UMD movies have died completely. None of the UMD movies are making any money. Chalk this one up as another Sony format failure.
According to Reuters, Google is raising $2.1 billion in a new stock offering by offering to sell 5.3 million shares of what was not so long ago the hottest stock out there. Now, as soon as I found out about this, the first thing I thought was, how in the hell is Google going to spend another $2 billion? Rob Hof over at Business Week thinks that maybe it could be to buy Facebook, which supposedly turned down $750 million and is seeking $2 billion. Now, the numbers do match up as far as Google having $2 billion and Facebook wanting $2 billion, but what would the real motive be?
While Dick Cheney might have won the super duper oops award for accidentally shooting a fellow hunter a month ago, Google strikes back this month with its own blunder. According to the official Google blog they deleted their own blog by accident. Now, I don’t understand how this happens, but then again I’ve only been writing The Mole for the last few weeks. Perhaps it’s not the Google bloggers’ fault. I think it’s probably something as simple as the ghost inside the machine that is the Googleplex decided to play an early April Fool’s day joke. It’s three days early, but who cares? This is easily funnier than 75% of most April Fool’s day jokes. Way to go Google Ghost in the Machine(beta)!
So, this week we found out that the consumer version of Windows Vista is going to be late. It probably won’t ship until January or February. Yep, right after the holiday season. I’m sure Dell and others aren’t too happy about this. At the same time, an article came out this week stating that Microsoft has to rewrite 60% of the media center code and that they are scrambling Xbox programmers to the task. The same day that seemingly every tech news blog reported that, Microsoft came out in public to throw the b.s. flag. I for one am glad that they did so to what was obviously a huge lie. (more…)
Well to make the Revolution renaming matters worse, Engadget is reporting on a leaked presentation slide for the Nintendo GO. Now, some are calling it the possible renaming for the Revolution. I think it’s more likely to be the name for Nintendo’s Online service. At least Nintendo might have the good sense to not boast about how their service will be Live, as Sony did last week.
Well, sometimes rumors do come true and this is one of those times. Today Dell announced that they are indeed buying Alienware. As I speculated a couple weeks ago, Dell will let Alienware act as a standalone unit and that a primary reason for buying them was their excellent brand:
“Alienware’s products are an excellent complement to Dell’s own line of high-performance computers designed for gaming, enthusiast and media content customers. In addition to offering high-quality, high-performance products, Alienware has tremendous brand appeal with consumers and creative business professionals,” said Michael Dell, chairman.
Yep, brand appeal and high-end products. Alienware is going to be Dell’s new Caddilac. It’s sleek, sexy, and has high profit margins. All in all, I think this is a great move for Dell. Way to go Dell, you’ve made another step into a much more mature business model.
The Mercury News is reporting that Microsoft is working on a portable game system based around the Xbox brand. It’s being assumed that this portable gaming device is going to be some kind of iPod/PSP/DS killer. I really just don’t think that Microsoft can pull it off. Wait, let me rephrase that. I sincerely hope that Microsoft doesn’t rip off the PSP or the iPod because if Microsoft does that, the Xbox Portable would be a failure. The iPod is great because of the fantastic iTunes integration and a super-simple interface. It’s does all the important things right and is a huge success because of it. Competitors who have tried to kill the iPod have failed because they tried to do the whole bigger is better/more features thing that just doesn’t work in consumer electronics.
The PSP is successful because of the Playstation brand and that’s it. There are a handfull of games that are good, but it’s mostly overpriced trash rehashed from the PS2. To combat the lack of real games Sony has opted for a media strategy with the PSP. Make it do everything other than games and people will love it. Where this strategy falls short is that it doesn’t do music as well as the iPod and it doesn’t do games as well as the Nintendo DS. In most respects I think that the PSP is a pretty weak product among gamers. I and I’m sure many others don’t even use mine anymore and am waiting for the Nintendo DS Lite. The hottest thing to do on a PSP is to play emulated (and illegal) copies of old Nintendo and Super Nintendo games. Even UMD sales are slowing to a halt.
Microsoft, take notice of these facts. You need to create a device that capitalizes on the coolest innovation that you’ve created in gaming - The Xbox Live Arcade. Don’t try to do what Sony has done and made a portable PS2. Instead, make a cool device that plays Xbox Live Arcade style games - fun games that I can pick up and play for a few minutes and stop as needed. Geometry Wars on a portable console would be incredible. Gamers don’t want to play through an hour long Halo level on a portable gaming machine. Gamers want quick fun that they can put down at a moment’s notice. If gamers have to spend ten minutes getting to a save point, then you’ve already lost the battle. Take a page out of Nintendo’s playbook. Make the Xbox Portable cheap, make it have some killer games, and make it “portable fun” instead of living room fun. After all, the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance SP, DS, DS Lite are the gaming machines that are on top, not the PSP.
I know that the Video iPod is one of the most talked about Apple products that has not yet been released. Yes, the 5G iPod can play videos, but Steve Jobs and company are very careful to say that the 5G iPod is a music playing device first and that it just happens to be able to play videos. However, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the 5G iPod wasn’t made specifically for playing movies. It has a 4:3 screen ratio, a somewhat limited video content selection currently available, and most importantly, a horrible battery life for playing movies. If Apple wants to sell full movies on iTunes, they are going to need a device capable of playing movies in a widescreen format at the very least.
Now, before the latest Apple annoucements, a lot of rumor sites reported on a possible video iPod being announced. Someone even went so far as to make a really excellent fake of a real production sample of the iPod Video. It was really joke on everyone. Needless to say there are many people out there who think that it’s only a matter of time before Apple launches the iPod Video. I tend to agree.
So, this latest bit of rumor comes from the good folks at Apple Insider. According to the site Apple has put the “at risk” classification on the 5G 60GB iPod. That means that within the next 60 days the product could get replaced and that retailers should carefully monitor their inventory levels.
Now, I will be the first to admit that rumors and speculation mean absolutely nothing until the real products are unveiled. This is especially true with Apple. I don’t think that this Apple Insider report proves that Apple is going to unleash the iPod Video soon.
Also, this week iTunes did start selling a Disney Movie. It wasn’t a big hit movie like the Lion King. Instead, it was a Disney Channel movie, so it seems like more of Apple testing the market, rather than making an honest attempt at selling whole movies on iTunes.
So, will we see the iPod Video during Apple’s 30th birthday celebration?(probably the next Apple event) I honestly don’t know. The last two Apple media events have been a bit of a letdown for me. Macworld unveiled the MacBook Pro, and the February event unleashed the iPod Hifi. I realize that the MacBook Pro is really exciting to a lot of people, but we all knew Apple was going Intel, so it wasn’t exactly a shock. Ever since the “one more thing” event there hasn’t really been “one more thing” for Steve to unveil. I hope that Apple has been saving the good stuff for the 30th anniversary. Otherwise, we won’t be seeing an iPod Video, we’ll be seeing the iProjector - a LCD projector that has a built in iPod dock. Whoop-de-do.
A lot of sites today are posting about the rumor that the next Bungie project is going to be a Halo game that isn’t Halo 3, but does exist in the Halo universe as more of a prequel. I know what you are thinking, sequels suck but prequels are worse and I agree. This project is being called Forerunner, a refrence to the race of beings that created the Halo rings in the first place. Most sites are calling this pure rumor or speculation. It’s possibly an April fool’s joke.
Now, being that I am the mole and I love to banter about such rumors I have to put my two cents in on what is likely to happen. As you may already have read, I was pretty much right about the PS3 annoucements earlier this week, so maybe I can go 2 for 2 on rumor prediction for the week. Ok here goes:
The next game will be online. MMOFPS if you want to call it that. Let’s just call it Halo Online. Ok, so Halo Online will be all about being a huge multiplayer battleground. The battle will probably be for Earth and the player can pick a side and battle in huge battles - 100+ people trying to take over a base and 100+ people trying to hold the base. Instead of getting tons of XP to level a character as you would in a MMORPG, players will need to carry out missions to get better equipment, tanks, and just more bases. The game will probably launch this fall, let’s say around November or at the very least will be announced at E3. Halo Online will be as big as World of Warcraft and will be Microsoft’s first “billion dollar game.” Don’t be surprised if this game gets 10 million subscribers paying $10-15 a month within the first three years. That would be over a billion dollars a year in revenue.
I know this all sounds a bit crazy, but here is the reasoning. Bungie originally promised huge multiplayer battles and epic battles for earth in Halo 2. That didn’t happen, but I’m sure Bungie tried to make it happen. At the same time World of Warcraft has been making huge waves in the gaming world with it’s 6 million subscribers worldwide paying $15 a month just to play. A couple years ago those kinds of numbers would have been seen as pure insanity, but Blizzard’s near-perfect execution of the MMORPG genre in World of Warcraft made 6 million subscribers a reality. Bungie is one of the few studios who could make the same thing happen to the MMOFPS on a console. After all, Sony and Nintendo pretty much wrote off online console gaming before Halo 2 came out and lauched online console gaming into a viable business. Now even Sony is raving about how the PS3 games are going to be “Live” and online(just like Xbox games have been for the last couple years).
In short, Halo Online is just too big of an opportunity for Microsoft to pass up. It’s a billion dollar idea that if they don’t do they would be completely foolish. The Halo fanbase would go crazy for it and it would be the biggest game of the next generation. If Bungie and Microsoft make Halo Online happen, the Xbox 360 will will the next-generation console war. Period. Not only that, but a version of Halo Online playable on Windows Vista would ensure that gamers who don’t have an Xbox 360 will still upgrade to Vista.
