Six things you should know about Grand Theft Auto IV before you commit to a work week’s worth of gaming
The epic stories of early reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV are already legend: stalwart game reviewers, shipped to hotels in undisclosed locations, are given nearly a week of time with the most hotly anticipated title of the year. They spend dozens of sleepless hours inflicting upon themselves the sins of protagonist Niko Bellic and the depraved Liberty City.
When they emerge, tired and unwashed, and with a nagging feeling that their next ride is only a broken window and a couple of twisted wires away, they rush to compile glowing homilies to their week-long captor. The results, Legions of perfect scores, could fuel a multi-year study on Stockholm Syndrome. Were the scores on metacritic posted in the same way that the Boston Red Sox use to update their scoreboard at Fenway Park, we’d be suffering a national shortage of green placards that read “100 OUT OF 100!”*
“These scores – you make them good, OK?”
(Source materials from mlb.com and gamespot)
To their credit, and I speak as a veteran with 28 hours of play time and a 42% completion rate, the glowing reviews aren’t just hyperbole. Grand Theft Auto IV presents by far the most immersive environment ever rendered in a video game. There are few other gaming experiences that I can recall that had characters this well-written, a story this clever, and an option to just putz around that, in many cases, is a lot more fun than the actual storyline.
For those who haven’t made the purchase, it’s natural to be skeptical of the unprecedented outpouring of love for GTA IV. There’s good reason for it, because as great as Grand Theft Auto IV can be, there are plenty of things that players, sucked in by the lure of the golden reviews, should know before hopping off the boat with Niko. Disclaimer: these should not be considered reasons NOT to buy the game, but just a friendly “heads-up” to my fellow gamers who may not quite know what they’re getting into. Minor, non-story related spoilers abound:
- Do you have a fear of commitment? There’s a geek syndrome that I call “Mulderscullyphobia,” the fear of getting trapped by the latest X-Files-ripoff TV series. The new show usually features a massive conspiracy/mystery that you KNOW you’ll have to follow every episode, whether the show runs for one season or ten, because once you start, you NEED to find out what happens. GTA IV inspires similar fear. Even though most reviewers say the game will take 40 hours, plan on a lot longer, especially if you’re new to the series. At four hours a night (you don’t have a job or family, right?), you’ll be in for at least two solid weeks of playing. And trust me, you’ll be stuck – this game is the epitome of “just one more mission, and then I’ll come to bed.”
- The immersive, expansive world is not immediately all available: Like with most GTA games, the most tantalizing locations are initially out of reach – all the bridges heading west are barricaded and protected by the Liberty City PD. I tried to run the barricade, and they called out the Special Forces. I tried to sneak through (hint: get your car on the El train track), and they called in Special Forces. I even tried to swim across the equivalent of the East River, and they called the Coast Guard to take me out. You’ll be able to cross eventually, but not until you put in 13 – 14 hours.
- You’re going to spend a lot of time getting places: It’s Grand Theft Auto, and it follows the standard Grand Theft Auto scheme: get a mission, drive across the map to the mission, fail mission, retry mission. After the sixth time around, you’ll manage to succeed, and then drive all the way back to where you started. Even with a built-in GPS map, it gets very tedious very quickly.
- But what about my needs?: Your virtual criminal buddies are all like insecure high school girls: pay them enough attention, and they’ll love you. Turn down requests to play darts a couple of times, and all of a sudden you’re out of the club. And since it’s in your best interest to keep them happy, you get to spend plenty of time with awkward bowling, darts, and pool simulators. And that doesn’t even include managing your in-game love life, which requires constant calls, dates, and wardrobe changes (my real life significant other’s favorite part of the game, incidentally). Nothing gets you in the gangster mood quite like choosing between the Russian hat and the Army hat.
- Didn’t I just do this mission?: Kill drug dealers/mobsters/bikers in a shootout that becomes disgustingly easy when you find somewhere to take cover. Chase someone in a car (or motorcycle), and shoot him. Perform a coup de grâce on a major mob boss. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- How am I supposed to finish the game when I can both watch TV and surf the internet in the freaking game?: I was even clicking on links in the spam, for God’s sake.
Daddy, please don’t play the hooker game again tonight!
(Source materials from www.azmortgageguru.com)
No darts? How about pool? Bowling? What about a strip club? Why won’t you LOVE me?
(Source materials from amazon.com)
If you haven’t bought Grand Theft Auto IV, and think that you can handle the time commitment and repetition, then it offers the best action and story combo since Bioshock. Just don’t be blinded by the brilliant gleam of all those perfect 100s – you’re going to have to work to get everything the game has to offer.
*For those that notice, yes, I know that metacritic adjusts everyone’s score to a scale that tops out 100, even if the reviewing site only rates on a scale of 1 – 10 or 1 – 5.
Editor’s Note: this is written by Dan Rubin, one of LIVEdigitally’s new reviewers. I’ll have a “welcome” post up soon enough, but in case you miss that one, welcome Dan!!
MacBooks will take 50% of notebook market share within a year
I saw an interesting blog post this week regarding how Apple is immune to the innovator’s dilemma (for those unfamiliar with the term). First, I don’t think the company is immune at all, I think that OS X and MacBooks ARE the innovation relative to Windows Vista and PCs. Second, there’ve been tons of recent articles regarding the company’s climb in market share. Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, I am personally a (small) AAPL stockholder.
Consumers are turning increasingly to their peers, friends, and family for recommendations of products. I’ve personally referred four people to purchase Panasonic plasmas after buying my own (of course, they all got the newer model, but no, I’m not extremely bitter). In each case my friends actually made purchases on nothing but my recommendation. That’s a pretty hefty price tag for a word-of-mouth referral. While there’s constant debate on the “power of influencers” there’s almost no question we all like to have a friendly opinion to back up a purchase decision.
Today, when buying a new notebook, I’ll make the following two statements that I believe are true:
- Virtually all MacBook owners will recommend most MacBook models when asked
- Virtually no Vista notebook owners will recommend most models from any given manufacturer when asked
The second point is probably the more debatable one. I’m not saying there’s *no* PC worth recommending. But, even a person happy with, say a Dell, cannot make a blanket statement “all Dell notebooks are worth buying.” Further, this situation worsens, not improves, over time. A year ago I’d have recommended a Vaio hands-down. Today I cannot (despite mine working quite well now – thanks again Ed!), because I simply don’t believe that all configurations are recommendable. So I’d have to say “Get model XX, with the YY screen and the ZZ video card” and even then, still leave a lot to chance. I wouldn’t be able to personally vouch for it, the cornerstone to any recommendation.
MacBooks do not have this issue, despite the occasional glitch here and there. They are almost completely recommendable, all of the time (although I’d never personally imagine buying the SSD version of the Air, but that’s more a budget/performance issue than anything else).
Also, I think there is a bit of a “trickle-down” effect happening. When I decided to make the switch, virtually all of my peers and industry thought leaders I read, know, and respect had moved to Macs. I had lunch with a VC friend of mine today, he confirmed that well over 90% of the startups who pitch him come in with MacBooks.
I truly believe this is a “perfect storm” for the MacBook (regardless of whether or not there are new models coming):
- Vista is just a disaster (I can count on one hand the number of people I know personally who think it’s a step up from XP), and there’s no solution imminently on the horizon.
- The PC manufacturer’s are caught in an Innovator’s Dilemma moment where the thousands of configurable options on a PC are what their customers have asked for, yet don’t truly want.
- The price point of an entry level MacBook is on par with a Windows notebook.
- Finally, and possibly most importantly, the introduction of BootCamp and Parallels have enabled the “tentative” customers to make the leap, knowing they can run Windows for anything they miss (Outlook!)
It’s not about the 3, 4, 6, or 12% market share they may or may not have across all computer sales. That’s almost irrelevant to address, since desktops have so many types of uses. But notebooks are much more telling of the shifting trends. Notebooks are for both personal and professional use, they have their place in the office and the home (and everywhere in between). Notebooks afford us more choice in the computer we choose to purchase and use.
Will I be wrong on the timing? Time will tell. Is this a slam dunk? Not at all! Can the PC guys do anything to stop it? Absolutely. But all the signs on the walls I read point to a very dominant iFuture.
Updated: a point I forgot to mention was production capacity (thanks yoshi). As was stated there, it’s pretty unrealistic to think that Apple could possibly ramp production up to the capacity that would be necessary to accomplish the feat. But then again, that’s what my friend Peter calls a “high class” problem to solve…
It's Okay To Pitch Here
Short post, just wanted to draw attention to the fact that we’ve put up a “how to pitch us” page. Why, you may ask? Well, first of all, we get a lot of pitches, and frankly, many of them have nothing to do with what we blog about. Enterprise pitches. TV shows. Viraga (and viarga and even v i a g a r a). You get the drift. So I wanted to help add some focus.
Secondly, I believe it’s the “right thing” for bloggers to do. I put up a post on my marketing blog implying as such. It’s not really fair for me to just say “here’s my email” if I don’t tell you what I want to know about.
Lastly, if you’re noticing I wrote “We” above, well, there’s a few new folks joining the team to help write more reviews. I’ve become a little too entrenched into too many different people/organizations to be able to effectively write reviews much anymore. Either I know the person/company behind the device or the PR firm (or both), and I feel way too conflicted way too often. So expect to see some fresh blood showing up in the next few days!
A Weekend of Making
Overall (with one glaring exception, which I’ll write about tomorrow), it was a great weekend down in San Mateo for the 2008 Maker Faire. As far as events go, it’s almost the anti-CES. Instead of expensive, polished booths, most exhibits were on foldout tables. Instead of a team of well-trained booth staffs, the typical demonstrator was the individual or small group who personally built whatever it is that’s on display. Instead of overpriced, greasy, carnie food, we ate… oh, well, I guess some things are universal.
I spent the bulk of the days at the Bug Labs booth, where we were showing quite a few demos of the BUGbase and modules in action. Our plan was to spend much of the time creating new gadgets, but there were so many visitors that the team only created a small handful of new applications. I really liked the “digital level” application, because it was such a great conceptual explanation for the power of the crowdsource-enabled gadgets. The digital level on its own worked just like any other (although Angel, a Bug Labs engineer, coded it in about 8 minutes using the motion sensor/accelerometer module!), but it’s the future of many “connected digital levels” that is so interesting. Still not making sense? Think of it as a globally connected, yet distributed seismograph. Again, not necessarily important on its own, but its the concept that is so important.
The show was a lot of fun. Much bigger than I was anticipating, I heard over 100,000 tickets were sold! I saw some amazing demos and products, including an open-source version of Rock Band, a digital foosball table (yes, I played, and managed to beat the guys who built it – sweet), a killer room of Lego town, warring battleships, DIY everything, geekdad.com RC airplanes, a homegrownremote control R2D2, and, of course, BBQ chicken on a stick. Check out some pix from Laughing Squid and Scoble’s video too. My pix are all here, but these are some of my favorites:
And, the most important photo of all…
AMAZING Lego town at Maker Faire
Is Sezmi a "cable killer"?
As I write this, Comcast is worth 67 billion dollars. Their stock has split 4 times in 20 years, and has grown massively over that time. They have over 24 million subscribers. They are one of several US cable companies, who take on the 2 satellite service providers as the main players in the TV space for the US. And startup Sezmi was labeled today as a cable killer, with TV 2.0, whose advanced set-top box apparently blows away the TV. Wow. That’s quite a strong billing, don’t you think. The last device I recall with this type of hype was supposed to transform the way we build cities.
This isn’t just David vs Goliath by the way, this is David the little tiny ant versus Goliath the elephant. Not only does Sezmi have to compete against huge players, they are doing it in a massively entrenched industry that spends ridiculous amounts of money advertising their own services. And let’s think about that advertising for a second – where exactly is Sezmi going to run their ads? Are they going to pay the very networks they need to compete with?
Now I do need to make a very clear disclaimer here: I have not used their product, nor even seen a demo. I will go on the leap of faith that they have built the very best darn box ever built (even better than the ones I’ve built!). I’m going to assume it’s utterly amazing, and the content quality is stellar, it’s really usable, etc. I’ve only seen one such demo in recent months, but that’s another story for another time. Let’s assume that in the world of “terrible Internet set-top boxes” they’ve built the iPhone of the batch. I still think they have a huge challenge ahead.
First, they need to market the heck out of this thing. I’ve watched MovieBeam try and fail, ReplayTV is gone, Akimbo is a service now, and even everybody’s favorite TiVo isn’t exactly a commonly owned product (somewhere around 5ish million homes is the latest I’ve heard). Each of these companies have spent millions of dollars trying. And I can name a dozen others who’ve tried. Even Apple can’t really move the AppleTV in massive quantities. And massive quantities is the only way to be successful as a startup in this space.
Beyond just “extremely good” marketing, it’s a big uphill battle for Sezmi. Both PaidContent and Engadget refer to the company as confusing. In the articles I’ve read the company’s advantages seem to lie in (1) price, and (2) Internet services. I don’t believe these to be true competitive differentiators in the “taking on the cable industry” space. The players that be have effectively infinite dollars to throw at the problem, and we know they are all working on introducing Internet-enabled devices themselves.
Having spent most of the past 10 years of my career attempting to introduce products just like these, with variations here and there, I do wish the founders the best of luck with the effort. I would love to try the box out, see if it’s exceeding expectations and get a sense of how they plan to accomplish their arduous task. I think the visions of wanting to “change television” are noble, but unrealistics. Just because we have deregulation and things like OpenCable doesn’t mean the window of opportunity is open.
I do believe we’ll see additional interesting new media concepts for digital devices and platforms, but I don’t believe going after the big guys is the way to be successful. It isn’t about a “better than your cablebox” or a “more channels than you have now” or even a “get the Internets on the teevees” kind of play. It’s about counterprogramming against the TV itself. It’s about innovating on other, existing platforms. It’s about moving around the concept of the cablebox and cable company completely. Is Sezmi here with that new Innovator’s solution? We’ll find out soon enough.
Come to Maker's Faire, Build Gadgets and More!
If you haven’t heard of Maker’s Faire before, check out details here (don’t worry, I’ll wait for you before continuing). I tried describing it on the phone to a friend earlier today, I said “it’s like a big county fair except instead of people throwing small items at smaller targets, you see them building flamethrowers and personal helicopters and solar-powered stuff.” It really isn’t the easiest thing to describe, but if you have any shred of childhood creativity left, it’s the kinda place you should go for a few hours this weekend.
I say all that, but now, wait for it, the truth is, oh boy, I’ve never been. As I mentioned on the Bug Labs blog today, I’ve managed to miss it year after year. I really believe that MAKE magazine and the corresponding event represent the best possibilities of “growing up”. Yes, I was one of those kids who took apart toys then put them back together again, albeit slightly worse than when I started (and even threw them out my bedroom window, just to see what might happen). I still have a huge bag of Lego sitting in my closet waiting for my son to get old enough to not eat them.
Tickets are only $25, though Scott Beale’s going to give away a few to some lucky folks. I’ll be at the Bug Labs “booth” along with others from the team. We’ll make some gadgets, hack some gear, and try to find a way to hook the BUG up to a flamethrower. Please join!
The Vaio Returneth
Here’s the detailed account of Ed’s journey with the Vaio.
The above video should give you a pretty solid understanding, but if not, here’s the background:
- Had a Vaio, it was great, it got stolen.
- Bought a new Vaio ($2500 with insurance check), it ran Vista, it was terrible.
- Bought a MacBook 10 weeks later ($1100), it’s been great.
- Mocked the Vaio many many times until Ed Bott approached me, interested in seeing if he could fix its problems
- He did, it works great.
My thoughts on the matter, in no particular order:
- It’s not Vista per se, it’s the PC manufacturers who are failing to deliver consumer-ready products. If you have either an IT department or an Ed Bott, you can do fine. If you don’t, you’re in a heap of problems.
- PC manufacturers should massively separate the “home/consumer” group from the business groups. Further, there is a huge opportunity for a PC company to make a finely tuned, consumer-ready Vista laptop.
- Making a great laptop requires a minimal quantity of options. For reference, call Apple. If the MacBook had 44,000 possible combinations, it would be just as bad as any off-the-shelf PC notebook.
- This is a very classic Innovator’s Dilemma situation – “the market” is telling PC companies they want options, but the reality is they want easy to use, reliable, affordable computers.
Until a PC company follows any of this advice, Apple will continue to gain market share, and here’s why: Virtually all MacBook users today are happily recommending others to try MacBooks, with a predictable, reliable recommendation. PC users cannot as easily do the same. I had a great Vaio, then a terrible one. I’ve used Toshibas before (great – in the 90s), a Gateway (wasn’t bad), and 3 Dells now (one good, one bad, one ugly). But they are all vastly different.
Thanks and hats off to Mr. Ed Bott for putting in so much time with me. I’ve learned a lot from this process, and I sincerely recommend to any PC company who is listening: go spend some time talking to Ed and take his advice. If you really want to stop the slide (and trust me, the slide is happening even if the numbers you look at today seem like rounding errors), you need to get experts like him to better explain the consumer PC needs of today.
22 Predictions About iPhone 2.0
Wouldn’t it be fun if they name it iPhone ][? It won’t happen, but … Then they could even have a mini-upgrade iPhone ][+! Okay, that’s enough geekiniscing for the day.
Spent the day hiking in Marin and having a BBQ with some old friends, somehow the iPhone came up as a topic numerous times, despite none of us being iPhone owners. There’ve been rumors aplenty about an iPhone 2.0, and I think it’s a pretty safe bet something‘s coming. As always, Steve’s playing it close to the chest, which is part of what makes Apple such a fun/special company (disclaimers: (1) I own Apple stock, (2) I own a MacBook, (3) I don’t own an iPod or iPhone, (4) I’m one of those guys that was fairly anti-Mac until mid-last year, (5) I don’t own any black turtlenecks).
In the day of chatting, a few ideas came through our conversations. I’ve decided to go throw my stage in the ground, even though I may be 4 or more months early on any timing. Further, I’m adding a little “likelihood” to each prediction.
- I believe Apple will have 2 different iPhones available on the market simultaneously (not just v1 and v2, but two distinct models with a lot of similarities). Likely
- At least one of these models will have a keyboard and will take on BlackBerry/Windows Mobile more aggressively in the business market. Possible
- 3G. I Garontee!
- Video recording. Very likely
- Deeper .mac integration will be built-into the phone(s). Very likely
- Put the above three statements together for a built-in live video streaming feature. Possible
- Bluetooth tethering will be possible. Likely
- A 4+ megapixel camera will be included. Possible
- One model will be somewhat smaller/lighter/thinner than the 1.0 model. Likely
- Microsoft will have some type of Office for iPhone available to coincide with the launch. Possible
- It will not have two cameras (Steve won’t even allow them to put two buttons on it!). Not a chance
- The battery still won’t be replacable. Likely
- Real GPS is included. Possible
And now for some more outlandish possibilities. All are a bit more… out there. Warning: to my more serious readers, this list gets increasingly goofy. If in a hurry, it’s probably best to skip it altogether.
- It might come in multiple colors.
- They include an ATSC tuner for live, real-time HDTV reception.
- They skip 3G but include Wimax support.
- Instead of just two (or one) models, Apple introduces two different distinct lines of iPhones. The second is a much smaller unit – think “iPhone Nano” – but is still all-touchscreen. In an even wackier move, it’s a flip-phone.
- They make the screen capable of playing 720p resolution video. Again, the more extreme prediction has an HDMI connector and IR interface and doubles as an AppleTV.
- It has an infrared emitter and supports the TV-B-Gone technology. Just kidding.
- Apple massively updates the .mac infrastructure to include mobile social networking features for iPhone users. This probably won’t be heavily used as iPhone people can actually feel the aura of other nearby iPhone people…
- Voice-operation for all controls. As a downside it has the voice of Marvin from Hitchhiker’s, and after 90 days of use goes crazy, HAL 9000-style. After this point, one in every ten times the user touches the screen the iPhone starts playing Rick Astley at max volume.
- Rather than continue support for YouTube, all videos are sourced from 1938Media, who Apple becomes a sponsor for and Loren introduces a Fake Steve Jobs puppet.
- Forget touchscreen, instead consider these three words: rotary dial interface.
Good job Comcast!
Turns out the speculation was true, you don’t have to be an a-lister to get attention from Comcast online. I must say, I’m impressed. I’ve never seen another company react this way before, and they deserve full praise for such actions. This is one of those stories that I will definitely be sure to echo in the future. Well done, no snarky or cynical remarks for you today!
Comcast, please support ALL your services!
Intro: Mike Arrington was able to get Comcast support via Twitter, I thought I’d do the same (although I am Canadian, I’m no Arrington and I’m not using Twitter). I’m a subscriber to the NHL Center Ice package, offered via Comcast through iNDEMAND. The regular season is over (Go Habs!), and now things got messy.
In the program guide, there’s no more information for the Center Ice package at all. No listings, just baseball. I googled, found a few scattered suggestions and possible answers. I then proceeded to try Comcast’s support chat, the agent was polite and tried his/her best, but found nothing. Eventually told me to call my regional office. Which I did.
Local agent looked through a variety of things, and sooner or later started surfing the Web looking for more. Nothing. Found the Center Ice info page, which is missing all information about the playoffs. Well, not all the info, just has a page showing where they would be, and nicely refers to them as the 2007 playoffs.
I called iNDEMAND. The most help I got from them was that (a) there was a confirmed game on Versus, which I already knew, and (b) the channels to find Center Ice were numbers 461-470, which I already knew. This information came just slightly after I managed to convince them that I was actually a paying subscriber. Bottom line is at 4pm on Thursday I’m going to have to have my Slingbox ready so I can quickly find the right game and set it to record on my DVR.
First I blame iNDEMAND for not having the right information. It’s not really Comcast’s fault since their vendor doesn’t have the data. That said, Comcast shouldn’t do business with vendors who do not have the information needed to support their customers. If Comcast made it an absolute requirement, I guarantee the iNDEMAND folks would have the answer already, but as it is, there’s little-to-no incentive for them.
As an aside, it’s like when I called Sony for support on my Vaio and they blamed Microsoft and NVIDIA. They might be right, but nobody exactly forced Sony to use NVIDIA chips. Then again, the laptop is on its way back from Ed Bott’s place, where he says it’s lightning fast!! Windows may just be re-entering my life (it still does have better keyboard shortcuts)…
Back to the topic at hand – customer service. Service is as important as any marketing or promotion activity. With the combination of blogs, Twitters, and Google, it’s impossible for a company’s bad habits to remain in the dark any longer. Fundamentally I believe if you sell a product, you must support it to the fullest extend possible. No passing the buck. Setting the right standards for your organization isn’t hard to do, and in the long term can have a huge payoff.