He tried to arrange with the repair facility to have either the same console returned (after being repaired) or to have the case transferred to the replacement.  Of course he feared the worst, that he wouldn’t get the same console back.

Except that what happened did seem worse, as he got the same console back, but believes someone had wiped off all the signatures (with some smudges left that support this theory).

My first thought was not the same as most people’s, apparently.  If you look at the comments, they seem to all present theories like “Some jackass obviously stole his console and faked the smudges so he’d think it was gone forever.”

Come on people.  Why so cynical?  Remember the old adage, “Don’t attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”  Or more appropriate, ignorance.

My theory?

Someone did their best to fulfill his wishes, and made sure he was set up to receive the same console back.  Things were looking good, until someone further down the line saw the console and assumed it was a refurb / repaired unit being sent to some random joe who sent in a different console.  They then decided in ignorance to “clean” the console according to their standard policy, removing any foreign markings that might not be welcomed by its new owner.

It’s just a theory, of course, but a plausible one I think.  One that doesn’t assume people are evil or that this was an act of malice, but simply an unfortunate mistake made out of ignorance.

I feel really bad for the guy, I know I’d be pissed in his place.  But at least it seems that Microsoft has contacted him personally.  I don’t know if they’ll be able to completely “fix” things, but I hope they’ll be able to do something for him – as whatever the explanation, the outcome really sucked.

Now they’ve gone and lowered the price… a good move only because the original price was so absurd.  But coming barely half a year after its release, this $100 price drop reeks of desperation.  The 360 still hasn’t had a price drop because it’s selling so well, and it’s coming on up its two year birthday in a few months.  Oh, and it still costs less.

Also, this Halo 3-powered Red vs Blue video kicks ass.

It didn’t take long for Sony’s marketing department to get wind of this, and take swift action to strike down any hint of positivity in the gaming community about their ill-fated console.

I’d hate to be one of the people working on the PS3 or its software these days. They’ve really done some cool things and obviously want to do more of them, but corporate bungling has kept their console at single-digit marketshare.

Sony should fire their marketing department. Then let their engineers start blogging (the people working on the Playstation Online service, Home, etc). Then maybe they can keep it a three console race.

Now they’re promising to alleviate “shortages” of the PS3 by May.  Apparently their plan involves going back in time to early January and delivering more PS3s than stores can sell.  Holy crap, that means it must have worked!  I’m blown away.  Who knew those crafty japanese had mastered time travel?

Seriously… how stupid are these guys?  And what is their goal?  Do they hope that by pretending there’s a struggle to alleviate “shortages” that some people are going to see a stack of 50 PS3s at Fry’s and think they’ve struck gold?  Despite the signs of retailer desperation that abound?

At this point, most companies would completely ignore the rumor, and maybe give an ironic public comment that they don’t comment on rumors or speculation.  It’s generally the best response for many reasons, including the fact that in most cases it does absolutely nothing to give away the veracity of the rumor.

Instead, Sony decided to confirm the rumor by blackballing Kotaku, disinviting them from their upcoming press events and cutting them off from Sony completely.

If you didn’t have enough reasons to hate Sony before today, rest assured that they’re working hard to earn your scorn.

I’m estimating that Jack Tretton owes me about $72,000 as I count about 60 units (actually it’s probably 63).  While it may look like there’s one missing, and that might lead you to think it has been sold, you would be wrong.  I joked to one of the blue shirts, “I guess you sold one!”  He just shook his head and pointed me over to the PS accessories section, where the PS3 box had been placed on the floor, ostensibly after its carrier realized the price was per unit and not per stack of 60.

It lets you stream non-WMV video files to your 360!  No media center needed.  And unlike the Transcode 360 option for Media Center, you don’t even have to do any tricks like picking “transcode” from a “more info” menu.  You just fire up your 360, go to “Videos” and then “Computer” and you have a list of everything you’ve shared out.  Just pick one and click play.  Couldn’t be easier.

It even works great on Vista (including the x64 version).  I had to add a firewall rule manually, and manually start the service (because of UAC I think) but it told me to reboot which would have started it as well.  For a free beta app that’s pretty good.

Only improvement I want is for the list to display videos in folders.  I have 200+ videos right now and it shows them all in an alphabetical flat list.  However, that’s something the Xbox 360 software will need to solve since right now a flat list is all it supports for video (it does folders for Pictures so I imagine it would be do-able).

Anyway, I’m especially glad they have this solution since yesterday I managed to break my Media Center PC (the Mac Mini) during an attempted memory upgrade gone horribly wrong.

Check it out.  – Paolo and I show up about 10 minutes in.

So I called up my friend who had a Wii pre-ordered weeks ago so that I could add him to my friend’s list.  I guess I kind of took for granted that a modern console with an online service would have such a thing – though I began to worry for a while since it’s very difficult to find (you go to the “Message Board” and then “Write new message” and then “Address Book” – yeah, wtf).  But here’s the kicker – you don’t have a screenname.  Nope, you basically have to pass someone a MAC address.  Actually a MAC address is shorter since it’s in hex.  Your “Wii Code” is 16-digits (looks just like a CC number).  Good luck memorizing that one and passing it to your friends. 

And let’s say you do manage to remember your own Wii Code and write it down for a friend – that’s not good enough.  You also need his or hers before any kind of communication can be made.  Absolutely absurd. 

So then I got a few friends onto my friends list (a few had to wait a couple days before then Nintnedo network acknowledged our friendship), time to play some games right?  Wrong.  No launch games support online play.  Not one.  Pathetic. 

Oh well, at least I can see which of my friends are online and what they’re doing, right?  Nope.  The Wii maintains a list of “Today’s Accomplishments” in the message board, but I’ve found no way to share it with friends or view their accomplishments or standings in games.  I can’t invite anyone to chat, since there’s no chat capability.  I can’t invite anyone to play games because there are no multiplayer games.  And even if there were, it appears there’s no mechanism for sending such an invitation, unless maybe you both happen to be playing the same game and the game developer decides to let you find each other.

So what can I do with my Wii friends online?  Well, I can send them text messages.  But that seems to be it.  Oh, and I can send pictures (but not from my computer – lame) and “Mii” characters (cool, but the novelty wears off quick without any games, details, or communications functionality). 

I have to ask… Did anyone at Nintendo ever even try an Xbox 360?  Did they ever try out Xbox Live?  The only explanation I can think of is that no, they never tried it.  If they had, they would have been far too embarassed to actually deliver such an incomprehensibly awful online service.

I, like other mortals, do not have a PS3.  But I can’t help but think that Sony can take some small pleasure from the fact that whatever their online service is like, it cannot be this bad.

For Nintendo, there is a bright side.  And that bright side is that these problems can be fixed.  Until then, the Wii is entertaining at parties and a good Zelda machine.  But if it really wants to be a “next-gen” console, it needs to wake up to a little thing called the internet.

Back to Part 1

WiiConnect24 is a joke.  There, I’ve said it.  As soon as I connected to the service, it told me it needed to update my Wii.  Okay – they probably had some features that they wanted to test as much as possible before release, and they were probably just the online features so delivering the final bits through the service made sense enough.  I’ll just wait 10 seconds while it downloads and applies the update. 

Then I’ll wait some more.  And some more.  About ten minutes later the anemic little progress bar showed some signs of life and soon afterward the download completed.  Okay now I’ll select my location from a large list of countries.  Why didn’t it ask me this during its initial setup?  Whatever, I’ll scroll down and select the US so that I can get to some online goodness.  But wait, there’s an update available that needs to be downloaded.  Again.  Are they serious?  Apparently they are, and another 10+ minutes of my first day with the Wii is spent watching a progress bar.  Little did I know, I would soon miss that little guy.

When I finally got online with the Wii I decided to check out their “Virtual Console” system and online store.  So off to the Shop Channel I go.  After entering my credit card information (including overcoming a REALLY ugly UI bug that resulted in entering the expiration date via guesswork), I purchased some Nintendo Points.  I decided the first game I would download would be Mario 64 – an old favorite of mine (even though I also own it on the DS).  So I stuck in an SD card and decided I’d download it there.  But oh no, the Wii had other plans.  It even told me, “Hey, I know you’d probably like to download this onto that there SD card.  That’s what I would want to do too.  Unfortunately, my designer was waaaaay too lazy to allow that.  So you’ll have to download it into main memory, and then go all the way out to the Wii menu, go into the obscure memory management page under system settings, and move it to the SD card later on.  It should only take about 10 extra minutes, have fun!  ”

Whatever, let’s just start the download so I can get back to looking at the rest of their catalog.  Surprise!  No background downloads on the Wii.  I mean, it’s not like some other console made this mistake and had to fix it in the last year after an outcry from the users.  Perhaps Nintendo just likes learning things the hard way?

Anyway this is where I quickly started to miss my old friend the lame grey progress bar.  Instead of him, I got an 8-bit Mario running across my screen picking up coins at random intervals, making annoying and non-rhythmic but repetitive sounds that I am certain qualify as a form of torture.  And he kept going, and going.  If it weren’t for the “mute” button on my remote, I’m certain I would have gone insane and started flipping over cars or something.

Once it’s done I find that Mario 64 is now taking up a slot on the Wii’s “home screen.”  Not in a “Virtual Console” menu, or even a “Virtual N64 games” menu.  No, it’s got a spot all to itself.  Yeah, that’ll scale.  Oh, and get this – when I go back to buy more Nintendo Points, I have to re-enter my credit card and billing information!!!  No option to save it.  No account to bind to.  What could possibly compel a company to make it unnecessarily hard to give them my money is beyond my comprehension.

So the Shop Channel and Virtual Console need some work. 

Continue to Part 3 to see what else they screwed up.

What’s more, your competition knows exactly what you’re offering.  They can see your strengths, and your weaknesses.  They can make sure that they don’t get called out for the same mistakes you made.  They can and will learn from your mistakes… unless their name is Nintendo.

I picked up my Wii about 9 hours after its official launch.  I arrived at Best Buy in Bellevue around 8AM, and as I approached the line a blue-shirted fellow handed me a ticket saying, “Wow, we have just enough.”  In fact, they had 101 consoles on hand and I was the 100th person to arrive – and I only had to wait about an hour in the rain.  This was of course greatly preferrable to last year’s 15 hour wait.

Wiimote – A step forward.  When I got it home my housemate Jon (half-asleep from a fruitless attempt to procure a Wii the night before) and I set up our first game of Wii Sports.  It was great, it was fun – it was just as compelling as when I played it at MindCamp a week or so beforehand.  This is what Nintendo promised - fun, engaging gameplay where you won’t care about the unrealistic graphics.  And this was just the freebie bundled-in game.

Graphics – aka The trade-off.  Most of us that follow the video game scene knew that Nintendo was basically using slightly beefed up Gamecube hardware inside the Wii.  This allowed them to offer a compelling price point, make millions of consoles very quickly, and ostensibly require developers to do “less work” (at least on visuals).  But if you’ve been playing an Xbox 360 for the last year (or modern PC games), playing a Wii will be very jarring.  I haven’t yet been able to acquire the elusive component video cable (WHY is this not included???), but games on the Wii just look bad.  At the best of times they look like a game on the original Xbox, and often worse.

But that’s okay.  Nintendo offered us a deal.  We look beyond the last-gen visuals, and they’ll give us totally new gaming experiences at an affordable price and with fewer hassles.  It’s all about fun with Nintendo, they said.

Continue to Part 2

1. I don’t need one in my car.  My car has a built-in MP3 player that reads from two 4GB SD cards (which I can easily swap in and out) with a great UI that I can control from my steering wheel.
2. I don’t need one on the plane.  I have a laptop for watching videos / movies, or I could watch them on my phone which has the same size screen as the Zune.
3. I have a 4GB SanDisk “Nano” clone.  I fill it up with music from Urge, and I basically use it at the gym and pretty much no where else.  I picked it up for that exact purpose and it works great since I can keep it in my shorts pocket and not even feel that it’s there (And not have to wear one of those goofy armbands).

So why would I buy a Zune?  If some genius decides to make it accessible as a storage device for my Xbox 360, where I can download videos from the upcoming Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

Why would this be such a brilliant coup?  Because right now you can download TV shows and movies to an iPod from iTunes.  I bet Zune has or will have the same thing on a PC.  That’s great, but I don’t really want to watch TV shows on a 3-inch screen most of the time.  But if I could have my Xbox 360 download my favorite TV shows in high-def straight to the Zune – and then let me play them back on the Zune or on my Samsung DLP using the 360… Now you’ve offered me something quite valuable.

There is an alternative, though.  If I can buy the same TV shows from the Zune Marketplace without actually owning a Zune, and then stream them to my 360 off of my PC’s harddrive – that would work almost as nicely.  But the Zune-as-big-hard-drive approach could really do wonders for the storage-starved Xbox 360, offering an answer to the upgradeable, larger PS3 hard drive(s) while still putting money directly in the Xbox/Zune division’s pocket.

Well it looks like soon enough you’ll be able to…

Microsoft announced a full-on embrace of the “Homebrew” gaming community.

XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows^® XP-based PC and will provide them with Microsoft’s next-generation platform for game development. By joining a “creators club” for an annual subscription fee of $99 (U.S.), users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360™ and access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress. This represents the first significant opportunity for novice developers to make a console game without a significant investment in resources.

 

Full press release here.

Also, here’s an FAQ about the program.  It sounds like there aren’t yet plans to make it easy to distribute games you’ve written – and that only other “Creator’s Club” members will be able to see your work However, I think and hope that is only the beginning.  I could see a vast community and ecosystem of “indie” developers, hobbyists, or open source collaborations becoming a huge part of the Xbox 360′s long-term success.