April 14, 2006
The Odyssey 2 was not only one of the earliest videogame consoles, but one of the first devices outside of a typewriter to bring a keyboard into American homes. Unfortunately, it was a flat membrane keyboard that offered no tactile feedback. Technologies such as DialKeys and projection keyboards seem to be repeating this mistake.
April 6, 2006
Yesterday, Apple announced and released the public beta of Boot Camp, a boot manager and set of drivers that enable Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP (Vista s not yet supported). I'll discuss the trade-off between dual-booting and virtualization another time, but one advantage of enabling XP to run natively on Apple hardware is that Windows games will be able to utilize accelerated graphics hardware. In other words, Mac owners will be able to play most PC games at native Windows speeds.
Apple's stance is that what is good for the Mac is good for Mac developers, and the company has an interesting theory that this capability will show game developers just how many Mac gamers are out there. But I still don't think that that will help the fundamental economics of the Mac game market. The translators and publishers of titles that appear first on Windows like Aspyr Media and MacPlay and are going to feel some at least some short-term pain, pain that could be prolonged if Microsoft continues stepping up efforts to evangelize Windows gaming.
March 18, 2006
Had a great chat last week with the Xbox 360 team regarding Live, incluing all the thoughtful changes they've implemented this time around and the considerable investments they've made. Indeed, it looks like Microsoft has set the pace with Live although the industry metrics will continue to fiocus on traditional revenue metrics such as tie ratios for some time. While Microsoft is sure that the 360 has expanded its demographic base, they acknowledge what I suspected — that the 360 is still being purchased by the hardcore gamers and that initiatives like the retro Live Arcade are only helping to bring in gamers after the purchase.
