Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve got the Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray in my hand. But it’s more than just a Blu-ray. It’s a BD for my PS3, a DVD for my bedroom and a digital copy for my laptop.

Disney, who is probably the most IP-protective company in the entertainment industry, realizes that I’m a lot more likely to buy their Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray for a small price premium if it includes every other format I could possibly want.

So why isn’t the video games industry offering me the same choice with multi-platform titles like Call of Duty? Or, put differently, why is it that buying Call of Duty on the 360 doesn’t give me a portable version for the DS or my iPhone?

I know, how ignorant of me to ask such a question! Porting a Call of Duty title from the Xbox 360 to PS3 is an expensive endeavor—we’re talking huge development teams costing millions of dollars. For the DS or Wii, it’s likely that game is designed again from the ground up to accommodate the unique hardware and lower processor specs. If I own an Xbox and a DS, they can’t just give me the DS version for cheap or free!

Or could they?

Let’s use Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2‘s numbers as an example. According to data from VGChartz, 4,890,348 discs sold of Xbox 360 version alone in the first week. Imagine, for a moment, that $5 extra would buy you Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox 360 alongside a bonus version for the DS. If only 10% of buyers were tempted into this upsell, that’s 489,000 additional DS version sold, or an extra $2,445,170 in DS-related revenue for Activision.

And for all of you think this would just cannibalize DS sales, I respond, what sales? Only 12,000 units of the DS’s Modern Warfare 2 sold over the same period of time. (More figures on Kotaku.) Plus, by using digital downloads tied to existing PSN, Xbox Live and Nintendo accounts, software companies could greatly limit sharing/resale of these extra versions.

Assuming my rough numbers aren’t too nuts (actually, I believe they are quite conservative), why isn’t the games industry following the movie industry’s lead? Why can’t buying a game on one platform allow you to play it on many?

The real limitation isn’t development costs, it’s that the video games industry is fundamentally designed to ignore competing formats and charge developers licensing fees that would cripple such a model. Nintendo doesn’t want to acknowledge that a gamer might want to play Call of Duty on the Wii for motion controls, on Xbox 360 for networking and on an iPhone for the road. Nintendo wants Nintendo gamers to live in a digital bubble. And the same can be said for Sony and Microsoft.

We’re not supposed to want to play games on more systems than one. But you know what? We already do. According to the NPD, 42% of Xbox 360 and PS3 owners also own a Wii. And if those same numbers were run in relation to mobile devices, including cellphones, the number would skyrocket to nearly 100%.

Nintendo, with the Wii and DS, and Sony, with the PS3 and PSP, are both advantageously positioned to make such a model work. But ideally, software companies and retailers could take such promotions cross-platform, cross-company.

I don’t live in a Utopian dream state, believing that the next generation of games will play on one uniform platform. And in fact, I think diversity and competition within the market is key to innovation. So let’s leverage these differences to a more consumer-centric model that will probably, ultimately, make all involved companies more money while offering shoppers more choice.

Staying loyal to his roots, Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak said he would purchase an Apple tablet next year, assuming it ever ships.

Wozniak, who is now a chief scientist of storage company Fusion-io, said during a conference he’d buy an Apple tablet no matter what.

“If there is such a thing,” he said of the rumored Apple tablet. “I buy everything Apple comes out with.”

Attention, Segway: Here’s a prime opportunity for you to get started on a remote control app for the Segway. Charge $1,000 for it, and Woz will probably buy a copy for himself and each member of his Segway polo team.

Via The Wall Street Journal

See Also:

• Everything We Know About Apple’s Touchscreen Tablet
• Video: Sports Illustrated Makes a Play for a Tablet App
• Video Demonstrates Wired’s Concept iTablet App
• In-App Sales and iTablet: The Killer Combo to Save Publishing …

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The Flip Video may be pocket-sized and ludicrously easy to use, but it’s got nothing on Exemode’s SQ28m Pocket Digital Camera when it comes to charm. This thing is small enough to fit on a keychain and, though the footage is recorded at a mere 320 x 240 and 8fps without audio, the inclusion of a number of color filters make results look more “retro 8mm” than “cheap digital” (see for yourself below). It starts shipping next week at ¥5,985 ($65), a bit too far above impulse-buy territory for us, but we’re certainly more into this than the company’s previous efforts.

Continue reading Exemode SQ28m Pocket Digital Camera fits on a keychain, takes charmgingly low-quality footage (video)

Exemode SQ28m Pocket Digital Camera fits on a keychain, takes charmgingly low-quality footage (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of being badgered by your contemporaries over in the Northwest Angle about having to deal with those silly “three-year contracts?” Buck up, ’cause a new player has just been cleared to go head-to-head with the likes of Telus, Bell and Rogers in the Great White North. In a surprising reversal of an October CRTC ruling, the federal government in Canada has cleared Globalive to begin operations as a wireless cellphone operator in the country. The most amazing part? No changes are required in the outfit’s debt structure or ownership hierarchy. You see, Canada generally requires that its wireless carriers be Canadian-owned, but as it stands, the majority shareholder in Globalive is Egypt’s Orascom. Whatever the reasoning, we’re just stoked to hear that the company can kick open the doors “effective immediately,” and we’re hoping to hear that it’s doing just that in short order.

[Thanks, Martin]

Update: Whoa, that was quick! Looks like WIND (the brand this will all fall under) already has a site ready to rock. No sales or anything yet, but it looks like they won’t be taking this reversal of fortunes lightly. Thanks, Leon!

Reversed decision enables Globalive to enter Canada’s cellphone market ‘immediately’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Asus’ Eee brand was once strong and so much a part of the early netbook market that the words “Eee” and “netbook” were almost interchangeable. Now, Asus sprays the name around like a tomcat sprays… well, you get the idea.

The latest will be called the Eee Pad and will, according to Digitimes, have a four-to-seven-inch touch-screen display. This is, you’ll notice, a rather vague description and we think it more likely that Asustek will actually bust out a range of tiny touch-screen devices. The tablets are supposedly “inspired by the rumors of Apple’s planned tablet device”.

It may seem somewhat strange to plan your future business based on nothing but rumors, but we’re not surprised. The fabled Apple Tablet is affecting everyone, to the extent that Apple has almost single-handedly created a product category without doing anything. How’s that for influence? Sadly, we doubt the Eee Pad will be up to much: If the original Eee inspired the compact size and low prices of the nascent netbook market, it also lent it its bad design and low-quality hardware.

Asustek planning to launch Eee Pad device [Digitimes]

Photo: Claire Wroe/Flickr