Survival challenges are the icing on the LittleBigPlanet and here are the basic steps how to create them. Pretty straight forward if you know how. I am still amazed how complex this game could be.
It's been a little quiet around here lately, which is only to some extend due to the fact that that I am back at work. Part of it is caused by my new toy I guess, a Nabaztag:tag which is the second first wireless rabbit.
Well, Nabaztag is basically another device WIFI enabled device that connects to the Internet and allows you to interact with various, configurable services in an very unconventional way.
Nabaztag has a couple of in and output devices that can be read and controlled by the Nabaztag server. There are 4 multi-colored LEDs that can be turned on, 2 moveable ears that can be either moved or read, a microphone that understands defined voice commands, a speaker to listen to Nabaztag and finally the most versatile thing I have seen on a consumer electronics lately, an RFID reader.
What makes Nabaztag so powerful is the fact that Violet, the company behind Nabaztag, offers a configurable service on the Internet that allows you to connect various applications with you little rabbit.
How about reading RSS feeds through a high quality text-to-speech system? Or how about listening to your favorite web radio? Or are you looking for tomorrows weather forecast? Or maybe you just wanna send a text or audio message to your Nabaztag. The possibility are almost endless and due to the fact that there is even an open API you can to some extenddevelop your own applications that interact with Nabaztag.
But that's just the start. Using custom RFID tags, so-called ztamp:s, you can now for the first time make your daily objects kind of intelligent. Attach a ztamp to an object, like your keys, and everytime you let Nabaztag sniff the tag with its nose you can for instance read you current messages. Similar to the applications you attach to Nabaztag itself, you can attach all kinds of apps to those ztamp:s as well.
The fascinating thing about this platform is the flexibility and the personalization that's possible. And if you eventually reach a current limit, just write your own service and let Nabaztag or one of your ztamps call it with custom parameters. You can even customize those requests by reading out the rabbits ear positions. How cool is that?
I'll keep you updated on this little projects progress as I am about to find out how I can eventually revolutionize my daily life. Why can't the PS3 have an RFID reader?
P.S. The Mood status that's shown at the top of the page is actually reflecting the position of my right Nabaztag ear ;-)
Here are some interesting sales stats from the German video games market. According to Media Control the overall market was growing by 25,5% in 2008 to a total of nearly EUR 700 million.
But what really surprises me is the specific distribution across all consoles. Focusing on the next gen consoles, the Wii achieved a 16% share of the total software sales given a hardware base of 2,20 million units. But guess you comes right after? PS3 with 12,5% and a hardware base of 850.000 units and finally the 360 with 7,9% leveraging a hardware base of 790.000 units. Surprised?
Well, this result seems to backup Sonys strategy in terms of focusing on software sales vs. hardware sales. 12,5% for the PS3 vs. 16% for the Wii is even more impressive as the Wii has such a hugh lead compared to PS3. If I am doing the math right, PS3 users are spending more money on software per unit (EUR100) than any other console owner (EUR70 on Xbox360 and EUR50 on Wii).
Nevertheless, those figures still show some opportunities as this basically means, that PS3 owners bought on average 2 games last year, while 360 and Wii owners had just one game on average. Not much if you ask me. Would be interesting to see figures for other markets. And no idea how the PS2 is doing these days.
and course the index page which counts for roughly 60000 page views.
Alltogether we had about 200.000 page views in total generated by nearly 106.000 visitors which accessed the site from more than 160 countries, US, UK and Germany being the top 3 (60%) closely followed by Canada, Denmark (!), Spain, France, Sweden, Netherlands and Italy. Wowww, what a small world.
On the browser front it is funny to see that after Firefox (43%), IE (37%) and Safari (7%) the PS3 is already in 4th position (5%).
When it comes to site referrals here is the top 10 list
Remember one of my posts on those new age rating tags that have to be applied to video games in Germany since last fall? Basically the same is true for movies.
Looks like Sony has at least a kind of solution for those movies now, as from March on Sony Pictures will provide double-sided covers that feature one side with the age rating whereas the other side has a clean print. Shouldn't that be possible for games as well?
With the new firmware update we once again got a new app: the Photo Gallery. Well, it's free so we can't complain, right. Actually, the Photo Gallery is a pretty nice add-on to the photo section with some nice features like the grouping function, but what I am observing more and more during the last couple of updates is the fact that the PS3 is obviously missing a consistent UI concept for it's various apps.
Just look at the last three apps that have been released on PS3, Life on Playstation, PlayTV and now the Photo Gallery. All three have completely different controls, menus and overall UI concept what makes it kind of difficult to use them. For instance, I always find myself pressing the go back button on PlayTV even though I want to press the menu button. There are numerous examples where the same function is implemented differently in all of those three apps and I am missing the XMB consistency I like so much about the PS3.
So, here is my suggestion: give us more of those apps but make sure you guys use the same style guide. Keep in mind, that this is not a computer but a simple consumer device. What do you think?
P.S. Before I forget, once again no Flickr integration. I don't manage my pics on PS3 but on the net. And yes, there is an API that could be used.
Here is one of the most unconventional explanations why the PS3 isn't selling better these days. In simple words Variety's Ben Fritz says that both the PS3 as well as the exclusive PS3 games are too good for its customers. Ben Fritz calls the PS3 too "artsy", which I had to look up first. Well, let's take this serious as I am a big supporter of the fact that the PS3 has the most innovative games these days as well as the PS3 being the most refined console these days.
The interesting twist here is the theory that customers aren't treasuring this enough compared to the crappy competition. Well, I agree that there might be customers that care more or less about those things, but the idea that a good to use UI like the XMB is prohibitive in terms of sales is really a bold theory. Industry designers of the world forget what you have learned, people want crappy, inconsistent, flashy UIs which don't give you the impression that someone thought about it longer than a minute.
I am just waiting for someone to suggest Sony to introduce a PS3 Walmart edition: ugly, unusable, only able to play multi-platform games, but just 199.
I am not a big fan of Peter Moyneux or better the type of games he and his Lionhead studio have created so far at all, but his latest nomination of LittleBigPlanet as the most creative innovation 2008 is not in question for me. But wait a second. Aren't those Media Molecule folks not former Lionhead guys? Well, I guess this doesn't matter in this case. What are they saying, honor whom honor is due.
Btw, the reason why I think LBP is ground breaking is many fold: first, the UI of both the game and even more of the creative part are so different to what we've seen in the past and second, the realistic non-realistic (did you get my point) style is so unique that it easily makes up a good definition of HD gaming. And finally, the multi-player aspect of the game melts so nicely with the normal game that it is actually difficult to really talk about two different game modes. From which other game in the past can you say something similar?
Unfortunately, it's kind of rare that such games show up within the industry and even though this is great I can already see 10 copies eventually showing up over the next couple of years which basically try to replicate what LBP does, just worse. Anyway, I guess the LBP has left a mark that many other games will eventually pick up in a totally different way and this is what moves the industry forward. So let's see what LBPs descendants are. I am not talking about the copies, of course.
Just figure yourself being a let's say product manager for a console like for instance the Xbox 360. What would be your statement when somebody asks you like let's say Kotaku what the philosophy in 2009 is to expand the Xbox 360 market?
Just to give you a rough idea what you could eventually answer to that, here is for example what Aaron Greenberg said:
I think what we'll see is, as a result of how 2008 shaped up - the fact that we had our biggest year in history and we're now expanding our lead over the PS3 in a global basis - we went into 2008 with a solid lead over PS3 in North America, but Europe was a much closer race. Now, we're really expanding our lead there. We've become, by far, the lead global platform for third parties. I think you'll see us getting some benefits from that.
Uh, wait, let's just stop here for a moment. So, they had their biggest year in history and they are now expanding their lead - ups - gobal lead over PS3. Hmmm, well, looks to me like the two products are in a different phase of their life. While the 360 already passed the hard core phase in their product life cycle (meaning only the typical hard core gamers are spending the the money to by the product) the PS3 is still in an early adopter phase, when only people willing to spend those 599 - 499 and now 399 for a product. Even though this is the case, the PS3 has a considerable market share of 21,1% vs. 29,6% for the Xbox. By all respect, I wouldn't say that this is a solid lead. Ok, let's continue ...
Historically, third parties would give us great support and lead developed on our platform, but they would say "In Europe, we have to still support the PS3" but now that that has switched, I think you'll see us get some benefits from that.
So, in other words, publishers are not going to support the PS3 or what? Yeah, because they don't wanna sell those additional million units of their game? I see. And because the PS3 is not going to grow any longer, this is not a good market to invest in. Obviously, I must have missed my economy classes. Ok, but there is some more ...
I also think we'll have our first full year at mass market price points. We saw a lot of success this holiday as a result of that. I think this is a year where the masses really come into the industry. We know that the PlayStation 2 sold 75% of their systems below $200. The vast majority of those consumers still have not upgraded yet. So I think it's the year where those consumers go into the store and start making purchases. We think that will benefit us tremendously in 2009. Us having the largest community of core gamers is going to drive blockbuster and core games as well.
Well, this is absolutely correct and has been proven by the PS2 as he said. The only question here is: who is gonna get those other PS2 owners that are going to upgrade their system in the near future. Let's hypothetically assume that all of those 24 million last generation Xbox users already bought a 360. So, Microsoft got already 4 million users owning a different console or even no console before. It's very likely that some of those 45 million Wii users might have been former PS2 users or even own already a different next gen console. In any case, there are still about 100 millions or even more PS2 owners out there, not willing to jump on a different platform and those consumers are the once that everybody is focusing to. The only question is: who has the best chances to do so and how brand loyal are those users? No matter how you look at it, there is one thing clear: this console war is by far not yet over and Microsoft would be a fool to think it is. Anyway, we all know Greenberg is not believing in what he says. Anyway, it was nice talking about .
Is this the next logical step after HD TV? Philips says yes. Due to the fact that big screen movies are usually in 2,35:1 format, also known as Cinemascope, most movies use only part of a typical 16:9 screen, which is the typical letterbox format as we know it. Or you miss part of the original movie by cutting parts of the image left and right, extending the actual image to the full height, also known as pan & scan format.
In order to display a Cinemascope movie full screen you actually need a 21:9 format display which based on a 1080p vertical resolution has then a 2560 pixel horizontal resolution. In order to display normal 16:9 footage fullscreen, the TV can actually stretch the 16:9 image to 21:9 by leaving the middle of the screen almost intact while streching the outer left and right parts of the image.
I actually see another possible usage: how cool would it be to actually do a split-screen race on such a screen? A Motorstorm 2-player match side by side. I just don't think that even though there is a good reason for such a format, we'll never gonna see broad support for such a format in its native resolution. Remember how long it took to adopt 16:9 in the end. Nevertheless an amazing piece of technology and maybe even a successful product in its own litle market.
Here are some interesting 
It's been a long time since I looked at the site stats the last time. One of the things I am always interested in are the most read articles. 
With the new firmware update we once again got a new app: the Photo Gallery. Well, it's free so we can't complain, right. Actually, the Photo Gallery is a pretty nice add-on to the photo section with some nice features like the grouping function, but what I am observing more and more during the last couple of updates is the fact that the PS3 is obviously missing a consistent UI concept for it's various apps.
Just figure yourself being a let's say product manager for a console like for instance the Xbox 360. What would be your statement when somebody asks you like let's say 
