John and I have both been having a lot of fun with the Pyro class in Team Fortress 2 lately so this vid hits a bit close to home

 

Found over on the 'Stiq

 

No John, this is not cool to do to your kid.... 

Dear EA,

I need to be able to pull this off in NHL 09

Thanks,

 ->Chuck

OK it looks like Cyril can take a victory lap around his apartment as this article backs up his arguments in my PS3/Blu Ray post.  Maybe we are looking at Laserdisc 2.0...

The Blu Ray player in the PS3 has caused Sony all kinds of grief.  From the added cost of the device or the shortage of Blu Ray parts which restricted supply in the early months of the system's release the Blu Ray player has been a bit of boondoggle for Sony.  Of course with Blu Ray movies continuing to outsell HD DVD movies by a margin of 2 to 1 it looks like that strategy seems to be paying dividends. 

I had an interesting conversation with my cousin over holiday dinner this year.  My cousin is a smart guy, he graduated from the the Air Force academy a few years back, has flown transport missions in and out of Bahgdad, and has just wrapped up a new degree at George Washington university.  He started asking questions about the PS3, not as a gaming machine but as a Blu Ray player.  Sure it was basic stuff but he wanted to know about the variety of movies, the extra features, and how you controlled the system.  For him the game playing was the icing on the cake as the ability to play Blu Ray movies was his mechanism for getting the PS3 past the wife.

We in the press sometimes miss some of the other arguments for getting a console and this was yet another eye opening example of how outsiders perceive the gaming market.  Sure he cared about playing games but his focus was on something other than whoc platform had the best exclusives and which platform was "winning" the race.

"This has way too many buttons" my sister said as she picked up my Xbox 360 controller.  "You've got a full keyboard [the chatpad], you've got these two buttons [triggers], these two buttons [bumpers], two joysticks, and these four buttons on the front".  My sister isn't the biggest gamer in the world but she and I did spend a lot of quality time on the Atari 2600 when we were growing up so here expressing such distress over Microsoft's Xbox 360 controller was a bit intereting.  I pointed out that she had missed the thumbpad and the fact that the joysticks could be pushed down for an additional button push which caused her to roll her eyes a bit.  Spying the Dualshock controller next on the end table she picked it up and repeated the fact that the controller just had way too many buttons for "normal" people to use.

This was a bit of a shock to me as my sister has a little bit of gamer cred (we both spent a lot of time with our Atari 2600 growing up and she played a mean game of Kaboom! back in the day) .I use both controllers on a nearly daily basis without any hesitance so this was something a bit unexpected.  While it pains me to admit it this does seem to lead some credence to Nintendo's philosophy of changing how people interact with the consoles.  Maybe we as hard core gamers need to realize that not everyone is used to the 10+ button controller and that the Wii and DS really are the way to bring in new gamers.  

We played a bit of Rock Band this weekend and that went over well.  After finally figuring out some of the timing issues we were rocking out in style with my sister and fiancee on lead guitar and bass respectively and myself banging away on the drums. This certainly re-enforces every tidbit I've read about the rise of casual gaming this year.  But the question is, do casual gamers become hard core gamers or does the road end once you get a Wii?  If it is a dead end then will the niche of hard core gamers get left behind in the race to bring new gamers into the fold or not.  

Twas the night before Christmas

Ann all through the house, just one creature was stirring, me and my mouse

 

The sentry guns were arrayed in the basement with care

In hopes that enemy scouts  soon would be there;

 

The demomen were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of explosions danced in their heads

 

And a medic and me as a heavy

Had just started out across the levy

More...

Skipping the first softball question

Q from Briance Crecente-  Tens of thousands of pre-orders for the rain check program, PR from Gamestop later today

Q from Stephen Totilo - Still getting a shift of balance.  Wii's will only be manufactured in Far East to keep proprietary data

Q from Franklin Paul - Asking about attach rate - Wii shoppers not buying new games - Reggie finds it hard to believe that 1.2 M for Super Mario is disappointing.  Sold 6M pieces of software for Wii.  Attach rate is up over rate for PS2 at that point.  Nintendo quite happy with sell through.  Scores are good. 

Q from Colin Sebastain - Rain check program is exclusive to Gamestop because they have the ability to track specific packages/stores.  Certificates have to be matched to stores (Best Buy IS would disagree).  On 3rd party, good games sell well (Carnival games?) and should get better as companies learn to use the controls.  No "quality" controls because quality is so subjective. Takes time for publishers to learn the capabilities

Q from Michael Antonoochi - Asking about average age.  PC games inflate the general #, console age is a bit lower...and Wii is bringing that number up.  No shortages of DS systems right now.  May have spot shortages around the holidays but should still be able to find them

Q from Andru Edwards - asking about boutique stores upselling.  No fixed pricing but Nintendo is always disappointed if retailers are pricing their products above the MSRP.  Will not reward those stores.  90% of sales through big box sellers

Q from Leigh Alexander - No single element is constraining production of the Wii.  6M units in one year is a record. 

This is the live blog for the Nintendo press conference to discuss the ramp up in Wii production, Reggie is on call so it should be fun.

11:00 - Music hold, it's nice classical music....if I was more sophisticated I could tell you who this was...
11:03 - Still on music hold, would have been nice to have started on time but oh well.  Reggie is probably having a nice breakfast with crossaints and orange juice.  Me, sausage biscuits and Diet Mtn. Dew.
11:05 - Operator keeps logging in to tell us that it will begin shortly.  It's a lot like being on hold for tech support at this point
11:07 - And we are off
11:08 - It's Reggie (w00t) - we're going to talk about adding perspective to Wii production and DS issues
11:09 - got caught flatfooted by the success of the Wii, sold 6M Wii's in US in just one year.  Biggest console launch evah
- Appeal to non gamers has taken away seasonability and inability to stock up over the summer
11:10 - producing 1M systems at launch.  Look at producing 1.8M systems a month right now
11:11- just can't manufacture more, component dependent.  Constrained by this.  Tripled manufacturing capacity
11:11 - introducing rainstop process with Gamestop, can buy for $250 which will guarantee sale if picked by January 29th
11:12 - will be on sale this weekend.  Walmart will push out all week long
11:13 - doesn't expect a slowdown after the year, will keep up
11:14 - No way to know when they will meet demand.  Avg age of gamers is 29 -most are core game players -just tip of the iceberg for causal gamers
11:15 - Biggest month ever for DS  - 1.5M systems last month , 6M for the year - 1 DS every 5 seconds

That's it, it's time for the Q&A.  I'll post anything interesting if it comes up

I got my standard holiday card from Sony today and tucked inside was a $20 card for PSN.  So now the question is how do I spend it.  Right now I think I'm going to save $8 for the Warhawk expansion pack and then maybe plunk down the cash for Everyday Shooter and the Eye Toy Fish game.  I think I might have a little left over after that but we'll see what shakes loose.