The Pensive Gamer

Posted 07/05/2008 @ 11:20:23 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360

Curious blog entry title perhaps, but it is my theory of where the new PlayStation Trophy system is going and where Xbox Achievements need to go.

I think Achievements were a brilliant idea. They entice gamers to play games longer, to play games differently and, until now, may have enticed those with both a PS3 and an Xbox 360 to take the 360 version of multi-platform releases.

Thing is, pioneers aren't guaranteed success. There are numerous cases where the pioneer opened the door only to have a more refined version from a later contender to win over the customers. In fact, Microsoft has won many battles using this exact tactic.

And so here we are with Sony introducing the Trophy system. In essence it is the same thing as Achievements BUT there is an additional novel idea in there. Users have a level. The more they earn trophies the more they level. The harder the trophy the more the trophy contributes to the next level. That just might be enough to sway a multi-platform choice.

But I highly doubt Sony is going to let the leveling stop there. Sony has stated they want Home to be more gamer focused. Like a massively multi-player game I fully expect that a user's level will carry weight in Home. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if it granted users certain benefits. Maybe users get more emotes at lower levels, increasing to clothes, furniture and maybe even bigger houses or access to exclusive 'clubs'. This is on top of how game makers can have the trophies appear/react in Home.

The idea of giving away virtual goods is brilliant since the goods are inexpensive to create but will garner an amazing amount of loyalty from Sony's customers as people become more attached to things that are seemingly more tangible than a number. Home becomes the embodiment of a gamer's success.

This is good for Sony and good for those developing for Sony's platforms. When Sony first released details of Home I wasn't terribly interested, but with their increasingly gamer focused features I could see myself being much more interested.

While the idea of leveling by playing a lot of different games is hardcore focused, the hardcore are influencers.  I do think Microsoft needs to react in some capacity. One benefit Microsoft has is that 360 games have always required Achievements. Not only can Microsoft use the nearly 3 years of data to see what users achieved, but if they do turn Gamerscore into some greater meaning, a lot of people gain the benefit instantly.

Posted 06/05/2007 @ 06:00:21 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: PlayStation 3

This post is a continuation of a series that takes a look at the state of the major home consoles. I have previously covered the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360, so today I look at Sony's PlayStation 3.

Where Nintendo changed the gaming landscape and put out a strong launch, and Microsoft had clearly laid out a long roadmap of things to accomplish, Sony's approach has, so far, lacked the same finesse.

Sony Invests in their Future

Let me be clear, I'm not saying that the PS3 is a bad piece of hardware. On the contrary, it is both impressively designed and manufactured. I'm saying that Sony's approach has affected its ability to easily sell an otherwise solid piece of hardware.

So when you look at Sony's and the PS3's strengths, they don't as much lie in what you see now, but what you will see over the lifetime of the console.

It's all about Content

Sony is an entertainment company first and that really shows. Of all the console makers they have the largest number of game developers and have a rich set of intellectual property and publishing rights. This includes God of War, Gran Turismo, Ratchet and Clank, and SOCOM, along with new properties such as Resistance:Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword, Lair, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Folklore.

As an entertainment company Sony is willing to spend money to experiment with how to entertain. I've commonly used the ethereal flOw and gorgeous game/game-maker LittleBigPlanet as examples, but other games such as the off-the-wall Pain and the Eye Toy-based game Eye of Judgment are more great examples. While obviously Sony wants these games to sell well, even if they don't they still paint Sony as a company looking to bring innovations in gaming.

But games aren't Sony's only content strength, which is important as consoles expand to become media hubs; Sony is a movie and music powerhouse. While not eliminating Sony's need to negotiate with other content producers, this gives them a huge leg up in providing content over their yet-to-be-announced, but undeniable download service (along with specialized games like SingStar).

New Technologies

In a market where technology still follows Moore's law with products that have a minimum of a 5 year life span, console makers do what they can to limit how dated their consoles feel as they mature. With that in mind Sony invested heavily by banking on new technologies, mainly the Cell microprocessor and Blu-ray optical drive.

The Cell processor is a departure from the more traditional concurrent processing abilities of both SMT and multi-core CPUs. While the Cell's abilities are less general purpose than, say, the Xbox 360's triple-core SMT CPU, the theoretical peak floating point performance of the chip is staggering. As developers discover the ideal ways to use the PS3's components, I have a strong feeling we are going to see some extremely beautiful games over the next few years that will be hard to duplicate on the Xbox 360.

Blu-ray's advantage is more immediately obvious. While DVD9 is generally sufficient for most games now, the Xbox 360 has already seen its first multi-disc game and more will undoubtedly come over the next few years. While Blu-ray discs are currently more expensive to produce, they provide more freedom and less constraints for the game developers. This eliminates any engineering efforts that would otherwise be required to optimize game content to fit on a single disc.

Updates

Where Microsoft makes updates to the 360's Dashboard every 6 months, Sony has preferred to do near monthly updates. While many of the updates are minor, a few such as 1.60 and 1.80, have added some important and truly interesting options. What is clear is that Sony is working hard to provide new features and to get them out to the consumer as quickly as possible.

Even if the number of changes in a 6 month time period only equaled what is seen on the 360, the continual releases keep the core platform feeling more fresh. Add to this the idea of Home and you see Sony not only extending the platform features but attempting to innovate with how people use their console.

So How Did We Get Here?

While the PlayStation 3 is a solid piece of hardware from a strong entertainment company, the PlayStation 3 is not selling anywhere close to what Sony is looking for. So what has gone wrong?

Public Image

This is the least of the issues, particularly when the PR issues made Sony look bad mostly, though not entirely, to the hardcore gamer (and those issues are largely behind us).

So instead of digging deeper I'll note a trend. The recent image being portrayed by Sony, at least in North America and Europe, is much less Japanese; in fact it feels British. Perhaps it is meant to distance itself with Ken Kutagari's outlandish comments, but with Howard Stringer at the helm and Phil Harrison being the new PS3 front-man things have definitely proceeded down a smoother PR path. Sony has successfully turned the staggering number of false promises, bizarre statements and variety of false steps into a thing of past.

New Technologies

New technologies are risky. They tend to be harder to manufacture, have lower yields and tend to cost more to produce.

Spring 2006 was suppose to be the world wide launch of the PS3, but with Cell yields low and the Blu-ray drive's blue LEDs hard to come by Sony was forced to not only delay the Japanese and North American launches until November 2006, but Europe and Australia saw an entire year delay.

Independent of delays, new technologies tend to increase retail prices. With a $600 US price tag some analysts are suggesting a $200 price cut to the PS3 before mass market acceptance begins to kick in. While Sony has been working hard to reduce costs by moving to more yield friendly 65 nanometer chips, removing PS2/PS1 compatibility chips, and decreasing the cost of Blu-ray drives, with recent SCE losses in the $1.9 billion range Sony has continually echoed that price cuts will not be coming any time soon.

Even if Sony doesn't want to price cut, the competition is likely to force it this holiday season and both Nintendo and Microsoft should both be able to maintain their lower prices this entire generation.

Where are the games?

For owning the most number of gaming studios it seems odd for Sony to be in a situation where there aren't a lot of titles, particularly when you consider the original notion of a Spring 2006 release.

This obviously has an impact both on console sales and attach rate. The following statistics from VGChartz is perhaps the best illustration. In Japan, Sony's home territory, lower than anticipated hardware sales have still allowed Sony to sell, in just over 6 months, nearly 2.5 times the number of PS3's as Microsoft's 18 month old Xbox 360 (934,800 vs 391,231), but Sony has yet to sell more games (1,195,052 vs 1,310,161). In particular, this shows that the average PS3 owner in Japan has only 1.2 titles.

Even with the solid set of releases coming as we head towards holiday 2007 there are some concerns. Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid were heavy system sellers for the PS2. Grand Theft Auto is not a timed exclusive, Final Fantasy is confirmed to be a 2008 release and Metal Gear Solid is looking like a 2008 release. Let alone FF and MGS continually attract rumours that they will not remain exclusive. People tend to buy well established franchises and new titles with a lot of buzz. Unfortunately for Sony this holiday season's most anticipated exclusives are in the hands of Microsoft and Nintendo.

Summary

Sony has used the word 'potential' to describe the PS3 and that is an appropriate word. There is no denying this is a solid, well engineered piece of hardware. However, mass market acceptance isn't going to hit until the price is much lower and a larger set of anticipated games are released. Unfortunately for Sony it doesn't appear that this is going to happen until 2008. That puts a lot more market capturing potential in the hands of Sony's competitors.

I'll close up this series in the next article which takes a look at the changes in the industry and how those changes have an impact on what winning means.

 

Articles in the series:

• The Nintendo Wii
• The Microsoft Xbox 360
• The Sony PlayStation 3
• A Look at What Winning Means (coming)

Posted 04/11/2007 @ 10:30:15 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: News Picks , PlayStation 3

While over the past few weeks there has been plenty of evidence that this change was coming, the news has still provoked a lot of discussion. While on the surface this move may simply appear to give Microsoft more pricing breathing room particularly with the introduction of the Xbox 306 Elite, this is a good move for Sony and future PS3 purchasers.

That may sound like an odd statement since things are forcibly more expensive to today's consumer, but keep the following things in mind.

First, this time of year generally has lower sales, the 20 GB model is not even offered in all territories and Sony's bigger games don't come out the door until the second half of the year. Therefore the impact on sales is relatively minor.

Second, Sony has been aggressively cost cutting by doing things like removing chip-level PS2 compatibility, shrinking the internal chips, etc. With the 20 GB PS3 reportedly loosing more more money than the 60 GB version, and the additional cost to manage two separate lines (manufacturing, packaging, shipping, etc), removing the 20 GB PS3 will save Sony money and potentially allow for a price reduction sooner than had both lines been fully operational.

Third, people are buying substantially more 60 GB models than 20 GB. Yes people are arguing that this is simply because Sony is purposefully not creating as many, but this is even more reason to drop the 20 GB model. Sony had to either fully commit to the success of the 20 GB PS3 or drop it entirely. Half-measures are just more costly, distracting and ultimately more confusing for consumers particularly when the 20 GB version is hard to find.

So while on the surface this may seem like a minor set back ultimately this feels like the right decision as we march toward the later half of the year.

Posted 03/13/2007 @ 06:30:43 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: PlayStation 3 , Product Feedback , Product Ideas

When rumours of Sony's PlayStation 3 Home first came to light I couldn't help but think of books like Neuromancer, Snow Crash and the movie The Matrix. Now that we have a good idea of what Home is, I thought I would put forth some of the more (or less) reasonable additional ideas that what went through my head when I first read the rumour.

Note: I'm purposely not outlining how any of this could be monetized.

Avatars

• The avatar should be customizable such that it may not even look human (think Spore).
• Reward exploration of Home, time spent in Home or certain actions in Home. Example rewards:
  • Allow better looking/more sophisticated avatars (read Snow Crash)
  • Gain abilities like flying, swimming, jumping (e.g. Crackdown)
  • Earn homes in more exclusive locations
  • Create in-game scripts, objects and even full spaces (e.g. Second Life)
• Users can get in-Home portable media players so that they can watch/listen to music and video accessible to their console while anywhere in the Home world.
  • The accessible media should include what is on their PC (similar to media center extensions and media connect in the Xbox 360)
  • The media player can be shared with another user while both users are online (like how you can share headphones in the real world).

The Home World

• Make a proper sandbox with sophisticated physics that is fully explorable and appears as one contiguous world with no loading screens (except when teleporting).
  • Fully connected internationally; public spaces exist for each geographic region but any location can be visited.
  • Spaces can have environmental effects (e.g. day/night, rain/snow) based on current conditions in a real-life geographic location
  • Certain spaces can only be discovered by exploring. This may require abilities like flying/swimming (see Avatar abilities above).
• Allow communities/clubs to register to have large invite-only spaces in Home.
  • Support existing web communities (e.g. Evil Avatar, Kotaku) by allowing single sign-on so users of those web communities have instant access to the Home space.
  • Support reading the web community news inside the community space (Sony already mentioned they could show web sites within Home).
• Support in-Home exclusive events:
  • Have tie-ins to real life events viewable through video feeds (e.g. be front-row at GDC while sitting in Home).
  • Like a massive multi-player game, support Sony and community driven challenges including tie-ins to alternate realty games.
• All locations, including personal spaces, are persistent and accessible to people with authorization to enter.

Personal Homes

• A user can give people keys to access their home and keys can be revoked any time.
• Some areas of the home can be fully private/invite only.
• A person's personal space can take on any look/style.
  • A person can have an outside area that is customizable, from gardens to sky, or environmental elements like rain.
  • The outside of a house is customizable (e.g. dilapidated shack)
  • Internal rooms are fully customizable (e.g. you can have a cell-shaded room).

Not Game Trophies, but Game Rooms

When you buy a game it gives you a whole new room in your house. Achievements can stack up in this room, but you can do plenty more.

• Rooms are styled after the game (e.g. dungeon for an RPG or garage for a Racing game).
  • Allow atmospheric music from the game
  • Allow animated figure/models from the game (e.g. a racing game's garage room could contain the cars you own in the game)
  • Your avatar could optionally change to the character from the game. When guests join you in the room and they own the game, you see their avatar change to their game's character.
  • If the game developer didn't create their own room then a room can be auto-created randomly from a series of templates created by Sony based on the genre of the game.
• Save games could be launched here.
  • Take on appearance suitable for the game (e.g. garage doors for racing games or a portcullis for fantasy games).
  • Multi-player/co-op games could use this as the launching point to a particular save game for the group.
• Support accessing tie-ins to other spaces or web properties. For example, if a game has an auction house to sell cars, then it could be directly accessible in this room.
• See your friend's scores/achievements from here, including a portal to their room.
• Support optional mini-games (e.g. if an RPG has an in-game puzzle/card-game, it could be made available here too).

In Closing ...

Home has garnered a lot of attention but hopefully this gives you some insight as to why I was a little under whelmed, particularly after seeing LittleBigPlanet. To engage gamers and the gaming community I believe the missing elements include:

1. a sense of creativity
2. a feeling of personal involvement
3. reasons to want to spend more than an initial investigation in Home

Posted 03/07/2007 @ 10:30:52 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Games , News Picks , PlayStation 3

Sony's Home

While interesting, I'm a little under whelmed by Sony's Home; this is the problem when leaks occur. I had a preconceived notion of what it could be and unfortunately the real thing didn't live up to those expectations. Next week I'll post a follow-up with what I was hoping for.

What I liked:

• Driving a sense of community in a much more interactive fashion than other platforms.
• Having a private space that I can customize and have others join.
• Social based mini-games.

My questions:

• How much can I truly customize and own? Can I create public or private spaces beyond one house and is money required to do so?
• Is any form of user based scripting accessible?
• Phil mentioned live streaming HD content, but how realistic is that? What are the bandwidth requirements? This seems unfeasible, particular when we are talking 1080p and/or when there are multiple video streams in a single space.
• Can I allow people to enter my private places when I'm not online?
• Are the trophies/achievements only viewable while in Home or can I easily see at least something while in the XMB dashboard.
• Is the Home network international? Can I visit user or public spaces that were designed for or located in different geographic regions?
• Phil mentioned clans. Is there going to be a clan system coming or will I need to individually invite a large group of people?

What I disliked:

• The graphics seemed uninspired particularly after seeing LittleBigPlanet.
• Spaces didn't really appear to be connected; a sense of exploration is missing.
• Home is a separate application which means I'm fully disengaged from my gaming experience. It would be great to see more of a connection than unlocking items.
• It came off more as a means to advertise or make money via company shops, billboards, premium clothing/housing purchases, etc. I suppose I'm not shocked given today's audience of developers and publishers. Just seemed more like a big ad than a place I would want to hang-out.

There is no doubt there is huge potential here but I'm not sure this approach will help sell the PS3 beyond the hardcore gamer, particularly at the console's current price.

The Amazing LittleBigPlanet

This 'game' is absolutely stunning. For those who haven't seen it, I'm not going to use words. Just watch this:

This is an example of what Microsoft and Nintendo should be afraid of. Using flOw and LittleBigPlanet as examples, Sony is willing to take a more avant-garde approach to games.

As seen with Capcom's Clover Studio there is risk that this approach won't prove commercially successful. However, it is great investment; it will paint Sony as a company willing to engage creative people and companies.

I personally believe games like LittleBigPlanet are more likely to help sell the PS3 than Home.

Posted 03/01/2007 @ 10:30:47 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: News Picks , PlayStation 3

Living @ “Home” in the PS3

A rumour broke on Kotaku today that was effectively verified when Sony blacklisted, and subsequently forgave, Kotaku. It is with regard to a coming feature that will allow users to have virtual homes within an online neighbourhood of friends. Apparently users can have friends over so they can show off game achievements, listen to music, watch videos and potentially play some casual games.

Sounds like a combination of Second Life, Xbox 360's Achievements and Wii's Miis. The technical geek in me finds this a very interesting idea if implemented well and certainly stirs up cyberpunk memories such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

Will it attract those who aren't hardcore gamers? I'll give my thoughts next week after the official details are given.

Sony Has Game

In the lead up to GDC, Sony has been spreading the word that they have more game developers than Nintendo and Microsoft combined. For PS3 owners this is great news. Sony owns some great gaming properties and will undoubtedly be working on some original titles.

I am curious, however, if this is a mixed blessing for Sony. I agree with David Jaffe’s statements that with third parties doing more multi-platform titles the first party titles play a much larger role. But, will pushing too many first party titles risk alienating third party publishers, particularly at a time when the install base of the platform is under the shadow of its competitors?

Posted 02/27/2007 @ 06:00:13 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Homebrew , PlayStation 3 , Wii , Xbox 360

Over the past few weeks I've explored the mass market homebrew options on the Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360. Today I finalize the 'Here Comes Homebrew' series by looking at what was preventing mass market homebrew and, for everyone's amusement, sticking my neck out with a few predications; appropriate on the eve of GDC.

What were the Barriers?

Four inter-related things: complexity, support, distribution and publishers.

Complexity

Console development is typically a complex undertaking. While Nintendo is historically credited with providing better tools than Sony, Microsoft and the Web changed things. Microsoft was built on the idea of providing tools to ease development and XNA lowers console development complexity to a new level.

As for the Web, its success was driven by the notion that anyone could bring their ideas to the world. Web development is more complex than envisioned in the early web days, but it is much less complex and more broadly reaching than traditional console development.

Support

Support needs cannot be understated. Not only are good tools needed, but so is good documentation and strong developer communities. This has been a strength of Microsoft's, from their developer website, MSDN, to Microsoft developer blogs, to communities built around Microsoft technology. The web is no different. Numerous companies provide free and commercial tools and there are plenty of communities built around Flash, JavaScript and HTML development.

Distribution

Until Xbox Live Arcade publishers owned the primary game distribution channel, retailers. With all consoles equipped with Internet connections and download services, along with two providing web browsers, getting homebrew to the console directly is no longer an issue.

Publishers

This one is not yet solved. It is easy to argue homebrew development isn’t competition for publishers but the consumer's time at the controller is likely a publisher concern. Particularly if homebrew games are free and publishers having rising development costs.

Microsoft Xbox 360

First off let's be clear, the $99 US annual fee for the XNA Creators Club isn't about Microsoft making money from the subscription. The number of people paying won't cover the engineering cost that has gone into creating and supporting XNA any time soon.

Requiring a fee and needing to provide source is about not drawing the ire of publishers and acting as a form of minimal quality control; only those serious enough to spend money will tend to create something. Microsoft is testing the waters while they complete full development and finalize their strategy.

So my predictions for Microsoft? I expect expanded APIs for Live support, including multiplayer, lobbies, etc. I do think they will eventually add VB.NET as a language choice, but they might wait to see some success first.

Microsoft will expand the Dashboard UI in a coming update. This will allow people to browse, play and rank homebrew games. Some form of both automatic and manual filtering mechanism will be put in place to minimize garbage, malicious and inappropriate homebrew applications.

While I don't believe they will remove the paid subscription for developing 360 homebrew apps, playing them will be free or require a Gold subscription. Publishers shouldn't view this as competition but as a way to find rough gems to turn into full titles. As a case in point, Sony took the free Flash game flOw and released it last week as a downloadable game.

Nintendo Wii

With the only current legitimate homebrew avenue being web, the question becomes what can Nintendo do to enhance it? They have already provided a strong browser. Providing some level of web API doesn't make sense when there really isn't the notion of a single sign-in/user focused central service nor the same kind of game completion tracking/achievements as on the 360.

They could offer extended support in JavaScript or Flash for mapping all aspects of the controller input, or offer application and game style guides including simple JavaScript/HTML/CSS templates. I don't believe this is high on their list and ultimately I don't think it matters. I really see the Wii community, not Nintendo, as the ones to carry Wii web homebrew along.

As for attracting native developers to the platform, a dev kit costs just under $2000 is well beyond homebrew developers. I think Nintendo is a bit taken back by their success and just trying to manage it. Demand by studios for dev kits even appears to be impacting Nintendo's ability to support indie developers, amateur support is likely an even lower priority. Ultimately, I don't see Nintendo sanctioned homebrew happening any time soon.

Sony PlayStation 3

While on the surface Sony has the most homebrew options, the options aren't viable as is. PS3's web browsers is apparently much weaker than Wii's and an installable OS is too complex. To compete at homebrew Sony has to bring changes.

While I can see Sony making updates to their browser, particularly as Nintendo gains attention with its browser, but just like Nintendo I don't expect Sony to create web APIs.

On the native homebrew side, Sony's Phil Harrison does have a keynote speech at next week's GDC that is meant to address 'Game Development 3.0'.

My primary guess is that it isn't homebrew, but instead APIs, store integration and maybe web support that game developers can use to allow user contributed content. While this will include game-specific scripts such as Unreal Tournament mods, this isn't true homebrew. Sony would need to officially provide tools and ideally allow mods without requiring the purchase of a game.

There are other options such as expanding upon IBM's Eclipse-based Cell SDK or porting Java with extensions just for the PS3. The former will definitely be more complex than XNA and harder to support. A Java port will be close to XNA's complexity, have benefits similar to XNA and even have a world wide developer community. I think both of these options are in the realm of possibility if Sony wanted to, but less likely than my primary guess. I anxiously await Sony's GDC announcements.

All articles in the series:

• The Sony PlayStation 3
• The Nintendo Wii
• The Microsoft Xbox 360
• Barriers and Predications

Posted 02/13/2007 @ 10:30:29 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: News Picks , PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360

Mods for sale on PlayStation Network, maybe Live Marketplace

An interview with Mark Rein of Epic may have stolen some thunder on what Sony was hoping to announce at this year's GDC. In the interview Mark mentions mods for Unreal Tournament can be sold through the PlayStation Network. Sony has been talking about user contributed content for awhile and Mark Rein has always associated user mods with Unreal Tournament. The fact mod makers can make some money is a great way to draw attention to the platform.

Mark also mentions that he hopes the same thing will be possible through the Xbox Live Marketplace. He continues by saying that Microsoft has given him an indication it would. I would be disappointed if Microsoft didn't allow it. Microsoft is undoubtedly concerned with two things. First, security, since it means a form of executable code is running on the console. Second, is how easily Microsoft can manage getting content onto the Marketplace without it being a huge process for Live staff.

Since Sony has been talking about user content for awhile and given PlayStation games have more control over their interactions with the PlayStation Network Store, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony designed the store to make it easier for publishers and developers to get content up. It will be interesting to see if the PlayStation Network gets more user mods than the Live Marketplace.

Posted 02/07/2007 @ 10:30:00 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Media , News Picks , PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360

Oblivion in the News

I am a huge fan of Oblivion. It is my only game with a 1000 Gamerscore. In my News Picks from last week I mentioned I would get the Shivering Isles expansion if it was going to take advantage of Microsoft's new Gamerscore policy. Well, according to this article on GameSpot Bethesda is going to add new achievements.

There are also multiple sources indicating that the PS3 version of Oblivion should load faster, handle the draw distance better and run at a more stable framerate. This is great news for PS3 owners. It is good to see a year of additional work didn't result in a straight port. My personal recommendation, assuming you have a couple hundred hours to kill, buy this game.

Battle of the Downloadable Videos

This week has seen Walmart and Amazon make some announcements regarding movie and television downloads. While Walmart appears to be having trouble, Amazon's move to work with TiVo makes a ton of sense. Downloading movies to watch on a PC just isn't, in my opinion, a great experience unless you are about to head on an airplane. You really need a device that makes it simple, like an enhanced cable box, Xbox 360, a PS3 (coming soon) and later this year, a TiVo.

Posted 02/07/2007 @ 06:00:58 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Homebrew , PlayStation 3

Gaming console homebrew is on the verge of a large metamorphosis. Traditional homebrew meant hacking consoles in ways console makers fought to prevent. However, for the first time all three current generation consoles, the Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and the Xbox 360, have mechanisms to allow for legitimate homebrew.

Given this legitimacy I believe we are looking at the start of a mass market homebrew phenomenon where the homebrew enthusiast can finally reach the average gamer.

The Sony PlayStation 3

I start our look at homebrew with the PlayStation 3 because oddly, compared to Sony's attempt to eliminate homebrew on the PSP, Sony has allowed the most legitimate options for non-handheld console homebrew.

Installable Operating Systems

In a move much stronger than Linux on the PS2, Sony surprised everyone when they announced the PS3's ability to install another operating system. However, it was no shock when they backed and got backing from the Linux community. Yellow Dog came first but Fedora Core, Gentoo, Debian, and Ubuntu all run on the PS3. In fact the Linux kernel was patched in early November 2006 to allow any PowerPC distribution to run on the PS3.

Sony's official solution is by far the most open and most flexible homebrew option. By allowing a separate operating system developers can quite literally create anything. You have network, I/O, blu-ray and hard drive access, and naturally full access to the Cell CPU. The biggest limitation is the lack of graphics acceleration. Yes there is access to the framebuffer, but it is near impossible to develop a game with the graphical caliber of an official PS3 title. Given Cell and framebuffer access, however, media players can be developed to run incredibly well.

From a gaming console standpoint the lack of graphics acceleration access, while disappointing to would-be game developers, is expected. Sony wants to and essentially needs to manage the process of bringing games to their console.

Traditional homebrew enthusiasts will have no issues installing Linux, trying to get the average console gamer to install Linux for a homebrew application is practically impossible. Let alone casual users will get frustrated with the library compatibility issues that commonly exist as Linux distributions version themselves. Don't get me wrong, there is the potential for a great niche audience. For example, MythTV on the PS3 is already coming together.

Bottom-line: While traditional homebrew enthusiasts will love it, the tantalizing close but unavailable graphics support for games and the complications of installing and managing operations systems means mass market homebrew is highly unlikely.

The Web Browser

The second way to legitimately run homebrew on your PS3 is through the web browser. In fact the PS3 is the only console to offer this capability out of the box.

I don't believe Sony thought of the web browser as an avenue for homebrew. Including web technology in the console eased Sony's development of things like the PlayStation Network Store. UI development is by far easier using HTML, CSS and Flash than it using C/C++. Of course including the browser also gave Sony a checkmark feature over its competitors, particularly the Xbox 360 which does not offer a web browser.

The amazing thing is that anyone who knows JavaScript, HTML, CSS, or Flash, has the potential to build applications and games that run on a PS3. No, we won’t be seeing Gears of War style graphics, but there are some engaging games built in Flash. Plus, if a site really wanted to provide an experience specific to the console, they can simply detect the user agent string of the PlayStation 3.

The benefit Sony has here is that the browser is included. Anyone with a PS3 can fairly easily access a web-based homebrew application, be it hosted on their personal computer, or somewhere on the Internet. Of course, the later is more likely. The moment an install is required the homebrew developer will lose a significant portion of their potential user base.

My only complaint is that the web browser is not as immediately engaging as starting a downloaded game or inserting a blu-ray disk; the web application must be found using the browser and run within the shell of the browser. The console makers, however, could provide a solution to this (I'll give my thoughts on how they can in a follow-up post).

Bottom-line: Web-based console applications are a big wild card that has huge potential. The success, however, is increased if the console makers officially support it. Even without support, significant potential exists.

Follow-on blog posts ....

I hate to stop here, but this entry is getting long. While I cannot write every day, I will continue this series of articles roughly every other day over the next week. I will take a look at the Wii and Xbox 360, the potential issues with officially supporting homebrew and the ways official support could come.

Currently in the series:

• The Sony PlayStation 3
• The Nintendo Wii
• The Microsoft Xbox 360
• Barriers and Predications