thoughthead

You may or may not have heard the nerdy outcry of FOUL over the recent discovery (translated) that two new Activision games for the Xbox 360 (Tony Hawk’s Project 8 by Neversoft and Call of Duty 3 by Treyarch) don’t actually run at high-definition resolutions, but instead some seemingly arbitrary lower resolution, presumably this is done to help improve their frame rates. Regardless of the reason and regardless of the fact that both of those games still look great it brings up some interesting political issues in addition to the technical ones. (more…)

          

Have you been to a GameStop lately? If so you were probably accosted at the door by a register jockey in a red shirt asking if you if you had any trade ins or wished to place a pre-order. Nothing against the hard working GameStop employees, it’s their job after all. I sometimes feel bad for them, but then I realize that I made the choice to not ever work in retail again and they have that very same freedom. Once when I was asked this question I asked back of my friendly semi-local GameStop sales associate: why should I pre-order? (more…)

          

For years I’ve been enamored by unique user interfaces. While studying product design in college I read a book called The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. This book literally changed the way I view the world around me, particularly how people interact with the rest of the world. That’s not to say this book is for everyone, it’s terribly dry but you’ll like it if you have any interest in the design of things that people use. Through my time in college I used this new found insight to develop my own theories on user interaction. (more…)

          

In Part 1 I discussed how Sony broke into the video game market by garnering 3rd party support and brought their standard of low quality products with them setting a precedence in the industry.

They would have been unable to set this precedence if it wasn’t for the new market they had created in the industry, almost out of thing air; the casual gamer. While the industry had been trying for years to expand the market, they were making slow and steady steps towards that end but Sony managed to do it almost overnight. The problem here is the quality of the new customers they created. (more…)

          

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Fall update was just released today. with 80+ new features and bug fixes you’d think the buzz surrounding the 2nd major software update for the console would be that of excitement or perhaps wonderment over some new software toys to play with. Instead I see nothing but Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (otherwise known as FUD) and a hefty helping of paranoia. Basically all of the game pirates who hide behind the thin veil of a security blanket they call “backups” are worried that their free games pass is about to expire. (more…)