Apple

On September 9, the Beatles will release their entire catalog, digitally re-mastered for the first time, on CD. The same day, The Beatles: Rock Band will be released, and there is speculation of an Apple music-related event the same day. Could it be an entertainment perfect storm?

(Credit: The Beatles)

What is it with the Beatles and nines?

As my colleague Caroline McCarthy pointed out in March when the launch date (September 9, 2009) for The Beatles: Rock Band was announced, the band's song "Revolution 9" ends with the words, "number nine, number nine, number nine."

So clearly, the date 09/09/09 has at least some symbolic significance for the band. And now, in addition to that date being the launch of the Rock Band title, it was announced Tuesday that on that same day, the Beatles will release a CD box set of their entire catalog, digitally re-mastered for the first time, re-confirming reports from months ago.

At the same time, many people have been talking about the high likelihood of an all-music-related Apple event around some unknown product announcement on September 9. So, with all these facts--and some informed speculation--in hand, one has to think seriously that we may get a star-studded event with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (who, you may remember, showed up at Microsoft's E3 press conference to promote The Beatles: Rock Band) and, of course, Steve Jobs, to announce the availability of that same digitally re-mastered catalog on iTunes.

If that were to come to pass, it would seem to me an entertainment perfect storm. Of course, as is always the case with these things, we have to temper our enthusiasm because the most exciting speculation could well turn out not to be true. But if it does happen like this, well, it would easily be worth the price of admission.

As for today's news, EMI Music and Apple Corps--the Beatles' publishers--said that it took engineers at the famed Abbey Road Studios four full years "of utilizing state of the art recording technology, alongside vintage studio equipment, to create these amazing re-masters."

Having talked to the folks behind both The Beatles: Rock Band and the Cirque du Soleil's Beatle-themed "Love" about the re-mastering processes, I know that this is something that those involved with the band have been putting a lot of effort into over the last few years. And assuming that there will be a digital distribution element to this whole 09/09/09 thing, it's nice that after being very strict for years and years about how their music got out into the world, the band may finally have agreed to loosen the reins a little bit.

Of course, it's not altruism. There will no doubt be massive amounts of money flowing into the coffers of everyone financially involved with the band. And that's because even for people like me who already own the entire catalog on old mono CDs or records, there may be a few extra dollars available for legitimate digital copies of songs like "Hey Jude," "Yesterday," and "A day in the life."

But, of course, as of today, we don't know anything for certain about the Beatles and iTunes. What we do know is that The Beatles: Rock Band will have 45 songs, and that the digitally re-mastered CD collection will comprise all 12 Beatles studio albums--in stereo, no less--as well as "Magical Mystery Tour" and a combined "Past Masters Volume I and II," for a total of 14 titles on 16 CDs. The whole thing will be available, along with a DVD set of Beatles documentaries in one--presumably pricey--stereo boxed set.

The iPhone 3GS is already wooing game developers with its faster, more powerful platform, but don't expect a ton of games fully taking advantage of it to flood the App Store--yet.

Though 1 million iPhone 3GSs sold in one weekend, the latest Apple mobile device is essentially still a niche product, compared to the 40 million original iPhones, iPhone 3Gs, and both iPod Touch models already sold. And those won't be able to run games with the same efficiency and speed as the new iPhone 3GS.

1 million iPhone 3GSs sold the first weekend, but it's still considered a niche device for many iPhone game developers.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

In short, it's still too early to declare the era of iPhone 3GS games officially arrived. Some game makers are waiting, or not creating games to take advantage of the device at all. Some say it's "not wise" to play specifically to what is still a small slice of the audience combing Apple's App Store for the latest downloads. For example, Pop Cap, the company behind Peggle and Bejeweled for the iPhone, said its games are benefiting from the faster load times the 3GS offers, but it has no plans to create games that are iPhone 3GS-specific.

This wait-and-see approach may be contrary to what some expected. The iPhone 3GS was essentially an update to the iPhone 3G. The "S," we were told, stands for "speed." Indeed, there's a faster processor, a PowerVR SGX graphics chip that can handle 3D rendering, and support for OpenGL ES 2.0, a standard use for creating 2D and 3D graphics. It also has a magnetometer and a video camera, unlike other Apple mobile devices.

... Read more

(Credit: USPTO)

It seems the success Apple has achieved with gaming on the iPhone might spill over from pockets to living rooms. The makers of the iPhone have filed a set patents for a Wii-style wireless controller that looks to be made for the Apple TV and could be used for a number of applications.

The patent filing, including the image above, clearly shows an icon for Safari, as well as images that appear to be an iPhoto-like app.

(Credit: CNET)

The Apple TV is a fairly powerful product for what little it currently does. Don't get me wrong, I love the device. I have one and use it almost every day. It's the easiest way to get my movie fix on in my living room, and the Flickr and YouTube functionality is amazing, as well as fun at parties.

Right now, though, that's about all it's good for. Apple has put together a pretty good method for distributing games (and other apps) via the iTunes App Store. And because the basic operating system on the Apple TV is very similar to the iPhone's, it wouldn't be too big of a jump to develop for it.

I'm excited about the prospect. Imagine playing a game like Light Bike on a 720p TV with surround sound. And if Apple TV app development is anything like the iPhone's, you could see an avalanche of good, inexpensive games.

It wouldn't aim to compete with the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but the guys at Nintendo might want to keep an eye on what Apple ends up doing with this patent filing, if anything.

(Via PC World)

The number of iPhone users downloading mobile games to their devices jumped 14 percent in November, putting them in the lead of all mobile-phone game downloaders in the U.S. that month, according to a ComScore report released Friday.

The figures, based on a year-over-year comparison of three-month averages, showed that game downloads in November rose 17 percent overall to 8.5 million.

(Credit: ComScore)

Although mobile subscribers users are increasingly putting their phones to work to download games, only 3.8 percent of all U.S. mobile phone users took the time to download a game in November, according to ComScore.

However, a significantly higher percentage of all iPhone users, 32.4 percent, downloaded a game that month, according to the report.

Mark Donovan, a ComScore senior analyst, said in a statement:

The rapid growth in smartphone adoption in the United States has provided a boost for mobile gaming, as 34 percent of those downloading a game in November did so using a smartphone.

Last year, not one smartphone appeared in the top 10 devices used for mobile downloads. This year, six out of 10 are smartphones, excluding devices with smartphone-like functionality, such as the Instinct and Voyager, which also make appearances.

Apple may be planning a new section of the App Store dedicated to premium game titles that will put more cash in the pockets of developers.

The new section will supposedly cater to games that sell for about $20, according to the blog PocketGamer.biz, which first reported the rumor.

The new section will be restricted to only games of large publishers, rather than titles created by smaller gaming developers that are already offered through the main App Store, the site said.

PocketGamer believes that Apple will likely introduce the new section its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.

The App Store currently offers more than 1,500 games, which is more than the combined titles offered for Sony's PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS, the two main competitors in the handheld gaming market. But some developers have complained that the open market place of the App Store and its Top 100 lists tend to reward cheaper but higher-volume applications.

That said, the Web site AppleInsider quoted Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPhone and iPod product marketing, as saying one of the benefits of the App Store is the low overhead required to become an influential player in the market. Developers don't need a publisher on the App Store to get their game out to the masses, which he said he considers a good thing.

Games are the most popular type of application in the App Store. And they make up almost 25 percent of all titles.

A young software developer has decided to pull his iPhone game from Apple's App Store because it was too similar to the classic arcade game Tetris.

Noah Witherspoon, a college student in Atlanta, created a free game called Tris for Apple's handset platform. But Apple recently contacted Witherspoon to let him know that the Tetris Company, which licenses the eponymous video game, had notified it about copyright and trademark infringement claims against the app.

Witherspoon wrote on his blog that he has chosen not to take the matter to court and will pull the game on Wednesday. "I'm a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now," he said.

He added, though, that he believes the Tetris Company has "little to no legitimate legal claim, and (is), presumably, relying on my being a small developer with insufficient resources to defend myself."

Apple has removed several applications from the App Store on its own for various reasons, including one called "I Am Rich," an application that did nothing but cost $1,000.

Copyright and trademark claims are a more complicated matter in the game world than elsewhere on the Web, something that came to light in the controversy over Scrabulous, an unauthorized clone of the classic board game Scrabble that rose to fame on Facebook's developer platform and was pulled after legal complaints.

The creators of Scrabulous, which was generating ad revenue, relaunched it with a redesigned game board and new points system under the name Wordscraper.

Likewise, Tris creator Witherspoon says he's not through yet. "I don't think this will be permanent; when I have the time and can find a good copyright lawyer, I'll be figuring out exactly what my position is and how I can make Tris available again," he wrote on his blog.

The state of the PC gaming industry is fine. Just ask any executive whose business depends on PC gaming.

Representatives from Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Crytek held a combination political rally/pep talk for the PC gaming industry Friday at Nvidia's GeForce LAN 4 event in Alameda, Calif. The audience--several hundred rabid PC gamers with plans to spend the entire weekend playing Crysis--cheered the panelists as they reassured attendees that all was well in the PC gaming world.

The runaway success of gaming consoles like Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii, and Sony's PlayStation 3 has the PC gaming industry on the defensive these days. Once the only destination for serious gamers, the PC has lost a little momentum as less expensive and increasingly powerful consoles proliferate. According to NPD, sales of PC gaming software in 2006 were down substantially from 2001, when $1.5 billion worth of games were sold. Last year, total sales were just $970 million.

Some of the panelists took issue with those numbers, claiming they don't reflect the increasing number of games distributed digitally. And Michael Wolf, global product manager for Microsoft Games for Windows, pointed out that there are more people playing games on PCs than on all consoles combined. Still, the executives couldn't help but sound defensive as they discussed some of the broader issues.

Part of the problem is that modern PC games require a very expensive system to deliver a suitable experience. Nvidia's Roy Taylor, vice president of content relations, noted that Crysis can't be played at its maximum settings even on top-line PCs today. Half the audience upgraded their systems just to play Crysis, which is great for hardware companies like Nvidia and Intel but tough on the average person's wallet.

Consoles deliver a pretty good gaming experience for far less, and even an audience of hard-core PC gamers had to agree. About two-thirds of the audience owned either a Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3--or both. As a result, the PC gaming market is increasingly devoted to more immersive games, such as complex first-person shooters like Crysis, while the consoles are thought of as more of a social experience, Taylor said.

And that's what the PC industry would like to try to do: find a way to get casual gamers interested in the PC again as a gaming platform. Randy Stude, director of Intel's gaming platform office, fielded several questions about the integrated graphics performance of Intel's PC chipsets. No one at the event was using an integrated graphics chipset, which is designed to deliver basic graphics performance for cheaper desktops or notebooks. And that's part of the problem. "Something needs to be done so a person buying a PC at Wal-Mart could be a PC gamer too," Stude said.

There are always going to be inherent advantages of the PC as a gaming device, said David DeMartini, vice president and global general manager for EA Partners, a division of Electronic Arts. For one, it's easier for game developers to write software for Windows PCs using Intel's or AMD's chips, as the three major consoles all use different technology. It's also possible for gamers to evolve their systems with the games, dropping in new processors or graphics hardware to accomodate the demands of new games. Once a console is developed, it doesn't evolve, and the game experience doesn't evolve along with it.

But it seems that PC gaming is becoming more of a specialized experience for only certain types of games. At an event last week, Intel's Dadi Perlmutter, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobility division, bemoaned the fact that just about every game developed for the PC these days seems to involve killing on a mass scale.

There's more to it than that, of course, but PC games do seem to either be first-person shooters or complex role-playing and strategy games. And that's the interesting question for the PC industry: people are buying PCs anyway, why don't game developers focus on casual yet compelling games for those of us without an itchy trigger finger?

Perhaps because they are making so much money on the current audience. The several hundred gamers at the Nvidia event are willing to spend vast amounts of time and money on the games that are already out there, and no good business executive wants to alienate their best customers. It seems likely that the PC will continue to be the platform of choice for the rabid gamer, but if the gaming industry wants to convince people who are buying PCs anyway to think of those systems as more than just a word-processing and Internet surfing device, they've got some work to do.

Apple's online store is now taking orders for the four games from Electronic Arts that were promised for July, and they'll soon be available in retail as well.

The four titles--Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, Battlefield 2142 and Command and Conquer 3--are the first EA games that the company has published for Mac OS X, EA said in a press release. In the past, EA has only released Windows versions of its popular games that other companies had to port over to the Mac.

Harry Potter is finally coming to the Mac.

(Credit: Electronic Arts)

But Bing Gordon, chief creative officer for the game developer, earlier this year told Apple's developers that EA would release the four titles in July, and it would follow up those releases with the simultaneous release of Madden NFL '08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 for both Windows and Mac operating systems. EA shipped Madden '08 earlier this week to much fanfare, but the Mac version is nowhere to be found.

And it won't arrive until September or October, when the Mac version of Tiger Woods '08 will also appear, EA said in Friday's release. In response to an inquiry about the delay for Madden NFL '08, an EA representative said "we've shorted the gap between the Mac launch and other platforms to just a few weeks. This is a huge leap compared with past launches. Over time, as EA gains experience in completing and shipping Mac games, the gap will narrow." The representative did not specifically address what caused the delay, but some Mac gamers think there could be problems with the Cider technology used to port the Windows games to Mac OS.

Apple retail stores will have Need for Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on shelves this coming Tuesday, and Battlefield 2142 and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars the following Tuesday, August 28.

Owners of PCs with Intel's 965 chipsets can finally download drivers that will immediately improve the performance of games running on those systems.

The 965 chipsets were supposed to be a dramatic step forward for integrated graphics performance. Most PCs come with graphics technology built right onto the chipset that connects the processor to memory and the rest of a PC. Serious gamers opt for discrete graphics made by Nvidia or AMD's ATI division, but most people save a little money and get the basic graphics.

Intel wanted to make an integrated graphics chipset with more powerful graphics performance that would allow basic PC users to play some of the latest and greatest 3D games when it shipped the 965. But it has been unable to write the drivers needed to enable that performance until now.

Windows XP drivers are available here, but if you're on a Vista PC with Intel's 965 chipset, you'll have to wait a little longer. Intel put together a video here that shows the improved performance of PCs with the new drivers.