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.

CES is still a few weeks away and while I'm swapped with a long list of to-do's I am starting to think about CES which is less than a month away.  While there's a bigger emphasis on gaming at the show this year outside of Microsoft, Sony, and Namco there aren't any other big game publishers making the trek to Vegas for the show.  Sure there are a lot of other game related companies making the trip but most of that is the stuff that normally would be relegated to Kentia hall if this was E3.  That's not a bad thing but I don't have a lot of expectations for big game stuff breaking at the show other than the Soul Calibur stuff on Wednesday.  I'm hoping I'm wrong about that but we'll see how it pans out.

Instead I think we're going to see stuff that impacts gaming in an indirect way.  The first being solid state drives (SSD) which are finally starting to appear in useful sizes.  These should be mainstream enough by 2010 that Microsoft and Sony could start considering them as viable hard drive alternatives.

The second big thing I expect to see a lot of is OLED TV's.  Last year we saw the small 15" TV that Sony was showing off and it was just amazing.  This year there are rumors that we might see a 40" OLED TV which would be amazing.  Not only are these TV's a lot thinner than standard LED TV's but the picture quality is off the charts.  We probably won't see available for sale until 2010 at the earliest but it's really the next step in HDTV.

Outside of those two things I think we'll see a lot of incremental updates to products.  I'm hoping sony will be showing off some of their big PS3 titles for 2008 like Killzone 2 and Little Big Planet.

I'm not sure what to expect from Microsoft. right now as they really don't have that big title for 2008 year.  We might get word on Gears of War 2 or Alan Wake but outside of those two I'm guessing we'll get some more consumer oriented stuff.  We're going to be talking to some MS execs on Monday and I'm already working on a set of questions about 2008 as Sony has built up a nice head of steam and Microsoft seems to be cooling off.

This video demonstrates two things:
 1- Why Tabula Rasa had so many delays
 2- This may be the coolest way to open a beer can ever (and maybe the only time it's acceptable to drink beer out of a can)

Thanks to Heartless Gamer for the find

Well, there's two hours of my life that I could have spent playing Rock Band, Mass Effect, or something else...

- Don King is here? Game Industry.cred(-20)
- Kind of cute intro - presenting best rhythm games
- First fart joke comes at the 89th minute, that has to be a new record for restraint
- There are other rhythm games besides GH3 and Rock Band? Sad category when Rock the 80's is there
- Rock Band wins...not much surprise there
- Foo Fighers are back! Again why no tie in with the game?
- DewMocracy? Really?
- The Long Ass war - awesome...fighting WWII for so long
- "it's true...I looked it up on Wikipedia" - line of the night?
- COD4 wins best shooter - no long or deep jokes? Nope, there it is
- Rocket Ishmail and some woman who's name I can't pronounce...
- Premier of Prototype - In game footage, what a novel concept....
- Game looks good though
- Officially two hours of my life gone...still a better show than previous years
- Another World Premiere - it's the guys from Chuck
- Little Big Planet premiere - God this game is awesome....impossible to describe though...
- God I heart Little Big Planet..., rewinding DVR to watch it again
- Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson...Summer and Darth Vader FTW
- Presenting Game of the year - Nice jokes about GTA IV - nothing like dead hooker jokes
- How can Mass Effect lose - Space Lesbians!
- VG Live does music for nominees - nice touch
- Bioshock wins... no surprise there
- Nice nipple covers on the model for the game
- Gamecock guys storm the stage for Bioshock...
- Big Daddy costume
- Not a bad show but still not what the industry really needs

Still going, here are the notes from the third 30 minute segment of the show
- Brian from Sarah Silverman show now on, you remember him as that guy from any number of movies
- second masturbation of the night...wow, that's graphic...
- it takes shitloads of nerds to make a game...nice
- Studio of the year award?  HArmonix wins...nice.  It's the chick from the Rock Bands YouTube vids!
- Prepared video of the Harmonix staff - AWESOME
- Hey it's Wayne's girlfriend, Tia Carerre - introducing Kid Rock on a related note it's time for the first bathroom break of the night....
- Kid Rock would like to F**K you like he'll never see you again...such class
- I imagine that Kid Rock smells like stale beer, weed, AXE, and Astro Glide
- Willing to put money down that Kid Rock has had intimate relations with most of the dancers, possibily more than one at a time
- Really wondering why I continue to put myself through this rather than just watching it on the DVR later
- The Chuck Norris Moutain Dew commercial never really gets old
- The Burget King Whopper freakout ad has though
- Colts kicking the crap out of the Ravens.  While this does depreciate two of the Bengals wins this years it couldn't happen to a nicer team
- If I upgrade to DirectTV will Beyonce come out and do the install?  Might be worth it then
- Patton Oswalt introducing award for most addictive game fueled by Mountain Dew
- I thought comedians were supposed to be funny...
- Halo 3 presentation chick FTW...camera could not show the full female presenter...
- Harold Ryan and Frank O'Conner accept...nice to see some industry representation...
- Voted on by fans...3-4 million copies sold...
- Red and Blue FTW!
- Sneak preview of Halo3 maps tomorrow
- Funniest part of the night so far
- Video Game Violence takes shot at Jack Thompson...weak
- Kirsten Bell again...was  Jade Raymond was busy?
- Borderlands preview time - new action RTS from Bioware...err...2K Boston/Australia
- No in game footage...weak
- Video Games Live presentation of history of games up next - Very awesome - guitar guy a little too into it maybe?
- Too short...good Tetris segment though
- I know it's going to suck but I'm actually looking forward to the next Aliens vs. Predators movie...
- Rock Band ads are cool but do they really show off what the game is?