There’s a lot of backlash from various people on the internet. Many of them with some really well thought out comments on the subject like “Hulu should grow a pair”.  Now I do understand the point they’re trying to make, however ineloquently, but I can’t completely agree with it.

On the one hand, Boxee and the PS3 aren’t doing anything wrong. They’re just making the Hulu experience better for users. The same users who made Hulu so popular in the first place. These users win because they get more convenient access to an already great service. Even, Hulu seem to benefit because it gets to serve more ads to more people, making them more money.

Of course, even a great service like Hulu isn’t going to be very useful if it hasn’t got any content. Sure, right now, Hulu is my go to source for watching television. (Except for LOST on ABC, which should be rectified before this coming season.) But, if the people who own all those TV shows that make Hulu so popular disappear then they’re losing the users, including me. Basically, Hulu is forced to say “How high?” when the content owners say jump. Hulu can’t survive without them and while it’s in the best interest of the content owners to support Hulu they can get by without them.

That’s what happened to Joost. I signed up for the beta checked it out, realized it was a sweet piece of software and had tons of potential. Then never used it again because there weren’t enough shows worth watching. I don’t care how well the technology works if they don’t have anything worth watching I’m not going to use it.

So sure, the user complaints are justified but Hulu really doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Who knows maybe all the complaining will convince the content holders that people actually want to watch their shows. The they’ll change their evil ways and everyone, on any system, can have their brains turned into goo.

Last night Nintendo had its fall press conference in Japan. It was obviously for Japan but most of the announcements will make  their way stateside eventually so of course I was eager to see what was announced. Of course it was a Japanese press only event meaning the only way to “see” it was to follow blogs that were actively translating Japanese “live” blogs written by people at the event. Meaning there’s at least 3 layers of interpretation between everything I read and what was actually said. But enough about the amazing accuracy of the blogosphere (is that a word now?) and on with the good stuff.

Nintendo’s first order of business was to unveiled their newest license to print money which they call the DSi. As the name implies the DSi is a new version of the DS, with the “i” apparently representing its connection with the Wii. Nintendo is calling it their third platform which is a nice way of saying they’re not retiring the DS Lite quite yet. Although I they said the same thing about the GBA when the original DS was released.

Introducing the DSi

Overall it looks pretty much the same. It’s slightly thinner and no longer has a GBA slot.  It now sports Dual touch screens both of which are The dreams of a dual touch screen device have been dashed as there is only a single touch screen on the DSi but they have had their size increased to 3.25 inches which is a whopping 17% bigger. There are two built-in cameras. One appears to be on the on the cover and the other is located on the hinge in between the screens. One of the cameras, presumably the outside one is 3 mega pixels with VGA resolution (640×480). An SD card slot has been added for storage as well as more internal memory how much exactly wasn’t said. I’m somewhat surprised there’s not an accelerometer in there too.

Along with the hardware updates are several new multimedia features. The DSi can now play back music and supports the ACC format. although I’m unsure what formats are supported. It also allows the adjustment of pitch and playback speed which will help for language study but is only likely to be used to make everyone’s songs sound like they’re being sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Similar to the Wii the DS will also support channels.

Along with the DSi, Nintendo will also be launching the DSi Shop which will allow users to buy DS Ware (games and other content) via a Wi-Fi connection.  DS Ware is bought with Nintendo Points which are the new Wii Points and will cost 0, 200, 500 or 800 points. Anyone who buys a DSi before March 2010 will also get 1000 points for free. Nintendo Zone hotspots which are the successor to the DS Download stations, will allow for free Wi-Fi connections at Japanese McDonald’s. Part of the DS Ware content is a free web browser application. The browser will be Opera based and supposedly runs faster than the previously released DS Browser. The first two DS Shop games will be revamped version of Brain Age 1 and 2.

The DSi will be available November 1st in Japan for $178 in either Black or White and is will be available sometime in 2009 for everyone else.

Also announced was the ability to download games directly to SD cards on the Wii starting in Spring of 2009. (Hooray!) After the american conference I’m still not sure if you’ll be required to copy games over to the Wii’s system memory in order to play them. It was mentioned that copying speeds between the SD card and Wii System memory has been dramtically increased. A new Wi-Fi adapter that was previously announced was re-announced. Also WiiSpeak and presumably Animal Crossing City Folk will be released November 20th in Japan for $79 and support both Miis and the swapping of data from the DS version of the game.

As for Wii games there were a few different. Certain Gamecube games including Pikmin are going to be re-released for the Wii as a sort of best seller series. Hopefully they won’t just be direct port and include at least wide screen and 480p support. A few new games were also announced for the Wii including Punch Out, Sengoku Musou 3, Sin and Punishment 2, Taiko no Tatsujin, and Another Code. The only one that interests me is a fully motion controlled Punch Out which has the potential to be amazing. After seeing a short video of the game it looks like it might have a chance of living up to my expectations. Miyamoto also demoed Wii Music (again) and it still sucks. They sure are putting a lot of effort into promoting a game that nobody really seems interested in.

As for the US release day it’s “well into” 2009. There’s also a picture editor included.

Some news from the American Press conference.

The Conduit which I had a chance to demo at PAX is now a first party Wii game. *Update* Turns out The Conduit isn’t going to be a first-party game. The presenter simply confused the terms first-party and first person shooter. It was recently announced that the Conduit is actually going to be published by Sega.*/Update* I’m seriously excited about this game. After playing it and talking with some of the developers I’m positive it’ll be huge. A Halo 3 for the Wii if you will.

There is going to be a WiiSpeak channel that will allow up to 4 people to chat with each other and can be downloaded off of the Shopping Channel. A coupon to download the channel will be included with the WiiSpeak Mic, hopefully this also means non-WiiSpeak microphones can also be used with the channel.

Most of this information was shamelessly stolen from the following sites:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/02/nintendo-announces-the-dsi/
http://www.destructoid.com/sort-of-but-not-really-a-liveblog-nintendo-announces-a-new-ds-model-the-dsi-105937.phtml
http://kotaku.com/5057867/liveblogging-the-nintendo-press-conference-liveblog

Penny Arcade Expo 2008

PAX 08: Day Zero
PAX 08: Day One
PAX 08: Day Two
PAX 08: Day Three
PAX 08: Left 4 Dead
PAX 08: Rock Band 2 & Guitar Hero: World Tour
PAX 08: Media Meltdown
PAX 08: The Conduit

Overall I had a blast at PAX. The biggest problem I had was there was way too much to do. Spending time in the exhibit hall meant missing the panels. Going to one panel meant you missed 2 or 3 other equally interesting panels and the exhibit hall. There were a least a dozen times when I ended up missing a panel or demo that I wanted to see because I was enjoying what I was already doing. Sometimes it worked out for the best. If I hadn’t ended up watching all of Nerdcore for Life I wouldn’t have gotten to see MC Frontalot. Other times I was too engrossed playing TF2, a game I already own, in the PC Free play room. I should have taken some time to look at the schedule ahead of time and figure out what I wanted to see and then setup some calendar appointments on my phone to remind myself.

Of course there were some issues with PAX. There were 58,000 people there over 3 days so it was pretty crowded at times. Some of the panels I would have liked to have seen filled up before I even considered getting in line for them. I didn’t have trouble getting to see any of the big events like the keynote provided I lined up early enough. It would have been nice if instead of making everyone sit in line for an hour and a half they gave out wristbands to the first 3000 people to show up and said come back in an hour. Of course then there would likely just be a line to get a wristband that would be almost as long.

Pictochat was epic. It was a great way to pass the time while waiting in line although I’ve never seen so many digital renditions of the male genitalia as I did that weekend. Occasionally the connection was spotty probably due to the sheer number of people using not only DS pictochat but wireless devices in general. I think at least 2/3 of the attendees had some sort of wireless device usually an iphone/ipod touch. Speaking of wireless the wireless connection at the expo hall didn’t work the one time I tried it my phone’s crappy WAP browser came in handy more than a few times. Mostly for Twitter which I used for keeping track of everything so I could write all this up.

One of the most annoying issues was the sounds quality. Throughout the entire Harmonix panel there was some pretty noticeable feedback whenever someone spoke. Freezepop had three or four nasty bouts of feedback while they were playing. Most notably MC Frontalot had to do a sound check after their first song because none of their monitors were setup correctly. I don’t know who was doing the sounds but it was not great. Most to all of the PAX Enforcers are volunteers but next year I’d really suggest getting some professional sounds guys in there at the very least for the concerts.

I’m definitely going to try and go back next year, hopefully with a better game plan. I’d like to get more involved with the non-PAX community activities next year as well like the Tri-Wizard Drinking Tournament or the PAX Twitter Shitters Meet up. I really wanted to get involved with that stuff this year but it didn’t work out. PAX 2010 is in Boston so that pretty much guarantees I’ll be there, I might even be able to convince a few people to go with me.

Left 4 Dead - Coop Zombie Survival Horror. nuff said.

They only had the 360 version setup so I wasn’t very good at it but I got the hang of it. The controls worked pretty similar to just about any other 360 FPS I’ve player with the addition of the left shoulder button making you do a quick 180 degree turn. The thing I really noticed was the team dynamics. This definitely isn’t a game where you can run off like a commando and kill everything without your team. At one point I attempted to rush into a room only to find myself overwhelmed with zombies. The neat thing is you can keep track of your teammates easily. Their outline lights up on your screen when they’re in a different room or behind object. White means they’re ok, and red means they’re under attack. Reading the previews I thought that might be a weird and hard to get use to it but in reality it’s just really useful.

Instead of just dying you fall to the ground and pull out your pistol. You can still shoot zombies but can no longer move. Assuming you and your team manage to kill off all the zombies, another player can come over and help you up. They can also optionally heal you if they’ve picked up a first aid kit and are feeling generous. Of course, if you don’t manage to kill the zombies, they’ll swarm you and rip you to shreds. That effect was pretty cool aside from the being dead part. Respawning works differently too. Once you die you go into a spectator view similar to how it works in CS. As your team moves forward they’ll eventually see your aura appear ahead of them. To get back in the game your team needs to find the room you’re in and rescue you. This basically boils down to getting one of your teammates to open the door and let you out.

I only remember 3 different types of enemies: zombies, an exploding fat zombie and a big muscle-y thing that showed up right before I got ripped into a million pieces by about 20 zombies. The random spawning system Valve created keeps things tense. Sometime you won’t see anything for a minute then you’ll run into a group of 4 or 5, or out of nowhere 20 zombies are swarming all around you and it’s all you can do to beat them off. One particular creepy instance came while rescuing one of the previously killed players. While my team was letting him out of the closet, I turned around to see a single zombie running towards. I started shooting at it but it jumped to the side and clung to the side of an information booth. Of course then the four of us blew it to bits. I don’t recall any of the Zombies randomly spawning behind us like they did in System Shock 2 which is nice in a I can catch my breath way. Another really neat thing I witnesses as a group of guy who were on a street, at first there was a group of like 4 or 5 zombies ahead of them. Then one of players somehow to set off a car alarm which caused a shit ton of zombies to come running in from all directions.

I think I can safely say this is will be the best co-op zombie game ever. In just 20 minutes of play time I had 2 or 3 “oh shit moments” and while watching other people play it was apparent they were having the same experience. My only concern is Valve’s recent announcement that the free updates for TF2 on the PC are going to be Pay DLC for the 360 version. I know both my laptop and PC aren’t capable of running L4D is a playable manner but I’m hesitant to get the 360 version only to miss out on extra content later on down the line. I may end up having to finally upgrade my PC to play this game.

The showdown: Rock Band 2 vs. Guitar Hero: World Tour

Harmonix had a single setup on a large stage that gave a rock concert vibe aside from the occasionally terrible singing. There was almost always a crowd around the stage watching or waiting in line to play. Overall it looks like a nice update to the original. Same basic setup with some minor tweaks like better sorting options on the song selection screen. One feature that I’m excited about is the inclusion of a no fail mode which should make it easier to get amateur fake rockers into the game. The new drums seemed quite a bit quieter but of course there was loud music all over the hall so it’s tough to say for sure.

Activision on the other hand chose to have 4 or 5 smaller GH: WT setups. It wasn’t quite as cool to watch but it did allow for more hands on time for anyone who was interested. Really GH: WT looks almost exactly like Rock Band. There’s a slight difference in color and the notes are round but in general the layout is pretty much the same. Of course the drums are a bit different, there are 3 toms and 2 cymbals.

I’ll probably end up buying both RB2 and GH: WT eventually. I’m more excited about Rock Band 2 but since Guitar Hero: World Tour is compatible with my current RB setup I don’t see any harm in getting both.

Champions Online seem to be pretty much be City of Heroes 2. That isn’t a bad thing though since I enjoyed CoH way more than WoW. I talk to one of the developers a bit while I was playing. Cryptic apparently bought the Champions IP so they could have complete control over it and were trying to expand the universe’s stories to for the game. They have cross-platform play between the PC and 360 working in test versions at the office but she wasn’t sure whether or not it would make it into the final product. She also wasn’t sure how DLC and expansions would work on the 360. I got a hopefully but no overly convincing vibe. The game itself played pretty well on using a controller but I could for the life of me figure out how to swap different powers in and out.

I checked out all of the PAX 10 games but the only one that caught my attention was The Maw, an Xbox Live game developed by Twisted Pixel Games. The basic premise is you play as a captured alien whose only chance of escapes means releasing a blob that will eventually eat the entire universe. You start out the game leading the blob around on a leash and as he eats more and more he grows larger and larger until by the end you ride on him. The blob gains different powers depending on what he’s eaten and I saw some sort of fire power and some sort of flying power.

I’ve pretty consistently had very little interest in Little Big Planet. First of all I don’t own a PS3 and secondly I had almost no idea what it was supposed to be and no interest to find out. After seeing Sony’s demonstration of LBP I still have no idea what it’s about but it did look kind of neat. Sony showed off a small jungle level that was created during the demo. Four players had to then race to the finish line which was rather uneventful until one of them figured out how to use the rocket cars. They then proceeded to kill everyone with it and crashed into the spawn point which caused everyone to die when they respawned.

I played Resistance Retribution for a few minutes mainly just to get a free hat. The controls were tough to get used to, the analog stick moves you, the ABXY buttons look around and the shoulder buttons fire. It was OK but it’s not really my thing so I’m biased. Other people seemed to like it. This was the first time I’ve ever used a PSP and I was pretty impressed with the PSP’s analog button.

I briefly played Sega’s Bleach: Dark Souls. Despite hearing a lot of buzz about the game it didn’t impress me much. I think they were going for an old school SNES type fighter look but the graphic mostly just looked meh. All I thought about while playing it was how awesome Smash Bros DS could be and why Nintendo hadn’t created one yet. I mean it’s just about the only Nintendo IP without a DS version.

Gearbox was doing a promotion where if you let them shave your head and paint Hell on the back of your head they’ll give you a free copy of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway. A free game sure is tempting but I’m not sure I could pull off the bald look. I also once again hit the PC free play area for some more TF2 LAN goodness. Mmmmmm

After I was finished with the exhibit hall I got in the very long line for the final round of the Omegathon which also served as a sort of closing ceremony for PAX. The Omegathon is a tournament featuring 20 contestants randomly selected from those who pre-registered for PAX. Over the course of expo they compete in various games that generally aren’t considered competitive games. The winner of the event gets $5,000, an all expenses paid trip to the Tokyo Games Show, and custom PAX versions of the 360, PS3 and Wii. This year’s games were Peggle, Boom Blox, Geometry Wars 2, Rock Band, Jenga (the real version) and a secret surprise game. I skipped all but the final round.

The absolute best marketing at the fair was in the Omegathon line. A could of people from 5th Cell showed up right as the line was forming told everyone that they had downloadable demos of Lock’s Quest available via DS download play. There were about a dozen people who took them up on this offer. Lock’s Quest is a tower defense game, but instead of just watching as the enemies pound away at your defenses you can have your character, Lock, who can attack the enemies and repair your structures. I mostly played the battle mode which was just straight up tower defense. I ran through part of the single player campaign but only got through part of the tutorial. It was a fun way to waste sometime in line and an interesting take on tower defense. Hopefully other companies will catch on and do the same thing in lines next year.

The final game of the Omegathon was revealed to be Vs. Excitebike for the Famicom Disk System. One of the guys easily beat the other, 4-0 in a best of 7 matches. It wasn’t a very exciting end but it was pretty cool to have be watching a video game competition with that many people all of whom were into it as much as I was. Gabe and Tycho then took their turn at the competition and Gabe bested Tycho 4-1 which was apparently the second year straight that Tycho has lost. With that PAX was over. I had a great time and was sorry to see it end but there’s always next year.

When I did get to PAX the first thing I went to check out was Starcraft 2 which was disappointing. Not that SC2 is a bad game but the lines to play it were really long, at least an hour and a half. The game itself looked like Starcraft with updated graphics. The Terran Thor units looked pretty sweet and combines with some siege tanks tore through a Zerg base in no time. The interface looks basically the same but with more stuff; they still appear to limit the number of units you can select at once to ~36ish. Nobody had that many units in the demo so I’m not exactly sure. The interface took up a lot of screen real estate; it would have been nice if they had slimmed it down a bit more. I’m sure SC2 will be a blockbuster no matter what. Blizzard makes good shit.

Rather than waiting to play I decided to go to the History of Harmonix: The Rockening panel. This was basically a bunch of Harmonix employees sitting around and talking about Harmonix and how everything came together behind the scenes.  It was a little boring at first since it was mostly just them talking about games they made but I did learn some interesting facts there. Disney made one of the attractions at Epcot, it’s a music game (go figure) where you wave your hands around and it makes different sounds. I remember playing with it when I was at Disney and thinking it was kind of neat. I believe it’s location in the imagination building after you get off the Figment ride. Harmonix is also the world’s largest maker of drum sticks. There was also a Q&A section where one guy asked a really technical question about how they did the voice detection in Karaoke Revolution using the PS2 hardware and another guy complained that he couldn’t re-download “Brass in Pocket” on his 360. The answers were “None of us worked on that” and “you need to talk to MS about that”. The panel picked up a bit at the end and Harmonix made two announcements. First, they are going to be releasing a PAX Pack for Rock Band, featuring Darkest of the Hillside, MC Frontalot and Jonathan Coulton. The second was a new play mode in Rock Band 2 called the Bladder of Steel set list. Harmonix noticed that a lot of people were completing the Endless set list in RB1 and decided to kick it up a notch. The bladderless set list requires that you beat all 84 songs in the game without pausing or failing. That seems pretty impossible to me but I’m almost positive some will have done it within a week. Although it seems like disconnecting the controller might allow you a brief respite but who knows maybe they’ve prevented that.

After the panel I check out the table top lounges and then headed back over to the exhibit hall. While there I bought a SNES controller. I also checked out the PC free play room which was probably a bad idea since I ended up playing TF2 on the LAN for about an hour. Eventually I ended up in the Handheld lounge where I played some Mario Kart DS over Wi-Fi and watched people draw penises on Pictochat. Pictochat was a really fun thing to have while waiting in lines. It was a bit laggy at times but when it worked it kept me entertained.

I should also say that Brawndo failed utterly today. Before I had got there yesterday they didn’t have any cups AND wouldn’t let you take the cans. Which made it a bring your own cup event; this was cleared up before I arrived yesterday. However, when I got to their booth at about 11 am today, I discovered they were out of Brawndo. Apparently used up all 40 cases of the stuff on the first day. Today they just had a bunch of empty cans on the table and a pad where you could write your info down for chance to win a year’s supply of Brawndo.

After doing a bunch of non-PAX related stuff (dinner, wandering around the city) I decided to watch the first half of the Nerdcore for Life documentary and then go see what they were playing for “Geek Movies”. Nerdcore for Life turned out to be more interesting than I expected so I watch the whole thing and then seeing as I just watch a documentary about it went to see if I could get into the concert downstairs. I didn’t have any problems getting into the concert and MC Frontalot came out at almost the exact time I joined the crowd. Even though I didn’t know any of his stuff I enjoyed the concert. After MC Frontalot was the MiniBosses. I was tired and not really into them at all so I went back to the hotel after the second song.

Ken Levine’s keynote was entertaining. He gave a brief overview of his history as a nerd. From his early days of wanting to fuck the scarlet witch and his first awkward experiences with D&D all the way to his failed screenwriting career and his decision to go get into the game industry and join Looking Glass Studios. The theme of the whole boiled down to “We’re all geeks, love it, embrace it and go have fun together”.

I skipped the Q&A panel to hit the exhibit floor. After a quick walk around I stopped and checked out Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour . I discovered that Brawndo The Thirst Mutilator, did indeed have what I (and plants) crave. It’s pretty tasty but oddly not got sale. (I’ve since learned that it wasn’t for sale because the convention center doesn’t allow non-convention vendors to sell food or drink)

Nintendo was nearby so I checked out some of their stuff. WarioLand: Shake It seems like a decent platformer although depending on how much it’s used; constantly shaking the controller could get annoying. Kirby Superstar Ultra was fun but there really isn’t much new about it. After that, I had some fun creating a creature in Spore Creature Creator for the DS. I couldn’t do anything more than walk around with it once it was created which makes me what the game play would be like in that game. I finished off my day in the exhibit hall with Left 4 Dead which was amazing.

Next up I hit the concerts. It was probably the strangest concert I’ve ever been too. No one was really getting into any of the bands mostly everyone was just sort of hanging out listening. The OneUps were kind of neat but it sounded a lot like they were just jamming the whole time and not really playing songs. Freezepop isn’t really my thing but they ended up being pretty good. During their entire set, there was a guy nearby playing Final Fantasy Tactics which was odd. Freezepop’s encore ended up being a cover of The Final Countdown and it was really good.

Finally Jonathan Coulton was up. I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing him but figured it would be cool to see “Still Alive” from Portal performed live. Of course, I was completely wrong and he ended up being the best of them all, I suppose that’s why he was “headlining”. I enjoyed all his songs, my favorite was “re: Your Brains” there is nothing cooler than a room of people out of sync and groaning “All we want to do is eat your brains”. He also managed to Rick Roll the whole audience twice. The first time the video played over the projectors and most of the crowd started singing along. The second time was mixed in the middle of “Mr. Fancy Pants”. For “Still Alive” Felicia Day, who is like geek goddess, came out and sang with him. He ended the night with a sing along cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” which was unexpected and really cool. Over all, Day One was amazing.

Pictures still to come.

First I could stay connected for more than a few minutes without getting strange errors. Turns out I switched the MAC address on my 360 to match my laptop’s so I could use it at my hotel. It worked great in the hotel where I only had a single LAN line. When I brought it home and had both of them plugged in to the same switch; however, it didn’t work quite so well.

Once that was straightened out, I wanted to add MS points to my account. Every time I tried I got error code 80169d94 and some “Not available” message. At first I figured maybe it was a temporary problem on MS’s end. After a  few hours I began to suspect something else was up. I finally got around to googling the code today and it turns out that my account has been locked. Which means I need to call MS support and then convince them to transfer me to the credit department. From what I’ve read that isn’t going to be an easy task. I’m hoping I can find out what caused this and avoid it in the future. Right now I’ve got three possibilities:

1. Rapidly connecting and disconnecting from XBL because of the duplicate MAC addresses.
2. I bought points with my 360 using both the original and  changed MAC address.
3. Repeatedly traveling cross country with my 360.
4. Some combination of 1-3.

I’m going to give MS a call in the morning and see how it goes.

***Update***

0:00 Called MS Support someone picked up right away. She sounds a bit like a character I saw on Mad TV.

19:30 After spending 20 minutes S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G out all my information and explaining my problem I finally get transferred to Billing.

33:24 Billing confirms all my information a second time and makes me update using the XBL site. Transferred back to support.

41:50 Transferred to the supervisor. Apparently MS randomly audits the XBL information and if there is anything missing locks the account. Turns out when I originally setup my XBL account I entered my name as Ryan T and their system didn’t like that much. In 5-10 DAYS, MS will unlock my account and call me to let me know I can buy stuff from them again.

47:08 Done. For now.

***Update 2 – 9/01/2008***

MS called me twice.

The first time after putting my phone on speaker and turning the volume all the way up while putting it against my ear all I could make out was that it was the words “hi…xbox…call”

The second time I managed to get the number but they left the main support number. After 20 minutes on the phone all I had managed to get was a lot of voice prompts without an option to talk to a real person. I hung up and said screw it.

***Update 3 – 9/5/2008***

I finally made it home and managed to buy more points. FYI, Castle Crashers is awesome.