Month: February 2009

Apple: When is enough DRM enough?

Posted by DarkJedi – February 18, 2009

Coming from the company, who’s CEO a year back claimed that he would love to be able to provide music over iTunes without DRM, one could be surprised to see Apple’s latest claim: Jailbraking a phone is suddenly against the DMCA... Suddenly you find Apple siding with the likes of MPAA and realize one thing: Apple is only against DRM as long as they keep complete control of their customer and their market. The entire ecosystem around Apple’s products, from the iPod to the iPhone and iTunes are surrounded by guarding technologies that “protect” the customer against other choices than that of Apple. Meanwhile the customers are complaining widespread about DRM… A complain that apparently goes on deaf ears at Apple!

Naturally Apple gets its fair beating on blogs and criticism for being this arrogant on the DRM issue, but one would not expect them to receive a direct attack on this issue from Microsoft. However, Steve “Throwing Chairs” Ballmer apparent goes out criticising Apple for being a closed company… Guess it takes one to know one :)

It is, none the less,  strange to hear Steve Jobs talk about Apple as an open company, when their entire moneychain is built around fencing in their customers completely. In my opinion they should rethink their strategy and become an open company! But who cares?…. As long as there are customers for their fenced-in technology they will continue to build more DRM into their products!

The Game of Protection

Posted by DarkJedi – February 17, 2009

What is the difference between protecting your Intellectual Property from Illegal Copying and Trying to control the consumer and the free market? The difference is often difficult to spot if you are a company in this digital age apparently… The first thing that goes wrong is that you start of with the assumption that every possible customer is a criminal. The second thing that goes terribly wrong is that you mistake illegal copying with stealing. You do not loose the original when you copy – big difference! Imagine someone stealing the Mona Lisa compared to someone who can make a perfect duplicate… BIG difference! The third and last mistake is that companies thinks that this problem can be solved using DRM…

How did they expect their customers to react when they are essentially taking over the rights of the customer’s PC? … And when customers complain they keep singing that old, worn-out song of piracy problems even though nothing in the ever-booming sales numbers of videogames supports this! Let’s be realistic here. This has nothing to do with piracy and the company already knows this. They are instead fighting a market they have little or no control over and which costs them millions of dollars each month: The second-hand game market. Normally you would not be against the forces of the free market and just be happy that you are in a market that keeps growing with incredible speed in the midths of a major financial crisis… but not in this market! They want to control the customer, their PC and instead lease their products for full price…

Of course when you act that way in the face of your customers you better not mess up and that’s exactly what Epic did with their major title “Gears of War”. Of course EA had already created a great fuss on the market by creating some of the most restricted DRM on the games market ever on their release of their major hope, Spore, which was suppose to take over the success of The Sims. However, they quickly found out that in this digital age gamers will let their voices be heard quickly once you try to screw them like EA did. It didn’t help that the CEO of EA came out and showed the whole world what little understanding of their customers and how much arrogancy EA had at that point. Later on EA put the same titles on Steam – now without the DRM…

Now, there’s no denying that piracy exists to some degree, but since the numbers can never be validated it will always be used as a poor excuse. However, as Valve and others keep reminding us: Pirates are just unsatisfied customers! Why not try to find out at what price mark pirates vanish, like you do with other software in third world countries? Why not offer the choice between a cheaper copy with DRM and the “normal” game for a normal price without DRM – thereby letting customers show their intent with their vallets. Naturally this can only be done if the companies start to make it clearer on the boxes for their games what restrictions actually applies when they sell DRM-ridden titles.

Ubisoft has already had its trouble with DRM and are now searching for new alternatives. They have now released their newest Prince of Persia game for PC without DRM to see how it fares. Naturally it can easy become a quick excuse for Ubisoft: “See… We did it without DRM and we didn’t sell 100 million copies over night! Pirates will never change!”. A poor game will never sell – even without DRM.

At this point in time gamers are fed up with non-functional DRM schemes that only hurts the paying customers. Pirates never feel the poor quality of DRM since their version never contain any, which in itself is the clearest point one can make in this matter. The DRM doesn’t help because every title is out there in a pirated version – WITHOUT DRM – so only the remaining paying customers are being screwed. Lately gamers, together with the EFF, have started speaking out publicly about the many problems in DRM, which are illegally taking away user-granted rights without consent.

Let’s hope that some headroom is finally made. The situation is unacceptable. We all know that DRM is doomed to fail. A perfect solution doesn’t exists and never will. It is clear now that this situation with ever increasing strictness of DRM is a passing period – however, one that is annoying to be living in. In five years time everything will be digitally sold and shipped and at that point those silly schemes will have been replaced by a few centralized, transparent dsitribution solutions, like Steam. God, I wish I had a time machine… and so should many of the game publishing companies! EA and Epic aren’t the last to make a big public scandal on DRM and who knows which company will end up being remembered as the Sony of the gaming world with their version of the XCP copy protection and the following massive lawsuit, followed by a publicity nightmare… I can’t wait :)

Halo Forever?

Posted by DarkJedi – February 12, 2009

The trilogy is complete with Halo 3 and let’s face it… Bungie has had a good run! The trilogy has become a classic and will be remembered. However, many people has also forgotton the original promise from Bungie, when they first announced Halo – BEFORE Microsoft bought the franchise. Back then it was to be a coop game with extreme difficulty and realism – meaning that you could take out one guard of course, but you would be in trouble and had to be tactic to take out two guards at once. This sounded brilliant… A coop game with a real difficulty, forcing real cooperation and not just run and shoot everything with ease FPS! That, however, was not the result after Microsoft bought them and forced it over as an Xbox exclusive… and with dissappeared the realism and difficulty. Yes, the opponents were still more clever than many other games of its time, but it was not a realistic game with enemies almost as good as yourself – it was a mere shooter for the console with good multiplayer gameplay and a good story.

The series then became better and better over time – both graphically but also gameplay wise…. Then Bungie called it quits and what happened? Microsoft wasn’t about to let this great franchise go into history just yet… No, let’s make a spinoff with Halo 3 : ODST… That’s apparently not enough for Microsoft! Let’s make another spinoff with the genre we know doesn’t work on the console, RTS, and call it Halo Wars! Dear god… help them see the error of their ways?!

So, instead of letting Microsoft’s poor managers run around frustrated about getting the next idea for a Halo spinoff out in time let me help you here and now… How about “Halo Pinball”? Naturally you need the younger audience as well, so why not “Halo Pokemon” and naturally “LEGO Halo”. Of course to let Sega think they have a franchise remember to do “Sony does Halo” . In order to better the chances of a movie adaptation how about “Harry Potter and the Mysterious Rings” then?… And what about a personal trainer program with Master Chief called “Halo Fit”? … For the brutal minded you need a combat game and why not go for something people remember? How about “Mortal Kombat: Halo Vs. Sesame Street”? That way you ensure that you both get the young ones in on it and that the Halo team always wins! The last one for today is that you need a racing game in that little franchise of yours… How about “Project Gotham Racing: Halo Kart”?

Well, that should get you through this week of poor spinoff, Microsoft…. Call me next week when you need more ideas!

Sony’s problem

Posted by DarkJedi – February 7, 2009

Red as blood. That is the only way to describe the latest numbers of lacking income at Sony. A company that once was at the top of the hardware business with enormous successes such as the Walkman, the Trinitron TV technology and the PlayStation 1 and 2. A hardware company that lead the business with innovation for many years. Now the times have changed and some might be wondering why. The answer, however, is painfully obvious… Sony is no longer one company, but rather a gathering of businesses with opposite directed interests.

The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…