News - Gaming and Culture

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced that the U.S. Department of Justice has closed its nearly two-year antitrust investigation into ATI Technologies, a graphics chip company it acquired shortly before the investigation began.

The Justice Department has decided not to take action against the company regarding ATI's pricing and marketing practices.

In December 2006, antitrust regulators began to investigate ATI and Nvidia, the two largest add-in graphics technology players, for possible antitrust violations within the graphics processing unit and cards industry. AMD acquired ATI for $5.4 billion in October 2006, and within weeks of that merger closing, Nvidia debuted its GeForce 8800 graphics card.

At the time, one industry analyst noted that because ATI and Nvidia were the two main players in the graphics chip market, the pricing was often similar for products of theirs offering comparable performance.

Nvidia was not immediately available for comment.

In the new Xbox Live experience, much of the interface is designed to cascade horizontally across the screen, allowing users to see a wide selection of choices. On HD TVs, users will be able to see even more information, given the wider screen.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Whether you're one of the legions of hard-core Xbox players or someone who's only played with the game console casually, get ready for an all-new Xbox Live.

Since the first announcement of the new approach to the massively popular service at E3 in July, some longtime fans have fretted that Microsoft is morphing it into a place for purely casual players at the expense of those for whom Xbox Live is nearly as much a home as where they actually live.

Well, based on a demo I got recently of the (not quite finished) new version of Xbox Live, I'd have to say, fret no more.

Dubbed the new "Xbox Live Experience," this re-launched service--which is rumored to be launching in November, but which Microsoft will only say is due "before Christmas"--really does seem to have something for everyone: an easy-to-use graphical interface complete with deeply customizable avatars that casual players will enjoy, and all kinds of new functionality that will actually reward the dedication of the hard-core Xbox player.

With the new Xbox Live interface, users will be able to see all information relevant to their account in a simpler, easier-to-understand format.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft readily admits that there may be a bit of a transition period for those core players--a time during which a lot of griping might be heard--but the company fully expects a gradual realization on the part of those players that the new service takes the existing Xbox Live and adds all kinds of new community and interactive functions to it.

And, again, I would have to agree.

To date, the Xbox Live interface has been based on what are called blades, essentially pages of information stacked on top of each other in such as way as to maximize the number of choices Xbox Live players have and the directions in which they can go. They can see lists of games to play, choose to watch a movie, go into a section to buy add-ons for games, and so on. The new interface largely does away with the blades era and moves into a more advanced motif of full windows that spread out on the screen and stretch off into the distance, allowing users to shuttle through them, left to right or right to left.

But that's getting a little too far ahead.

This screenshot shows one way Google will place ads in games, including casual Web-based games like PlayFish's Wordplay.

(Credit: Google)

If Google's entry into a field of advertising doesn't legitimize it, nothing can. And that's why the in-game advertising industry just got a huge shot in the arm.

On Tuesday night, Google announced the beta launch of its new AdSense for Games program, the search giant's first foray into the video games market, and the long-awaited answer to the question of what the company planned to do with AdScape Media, which it bought for $23 million in February 2007.

According to Christian Oestlien, the senior product manager for AdSense for Games, the program's beta launch will focus on the placement of a variety of forms of ads in Flash-based casual games and some larger titles.

In the beginning at least, Oestlien said, Google will work with partners like PlayFish, Mochi Media, Demand Media and Konami.

The latter, Oestlien said, would use AdSense for Games to place ads in well-known titles like Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution.

Of course, the in-game advertising field already has several well-established players, including Microsoft's Massive, DoubleFusion, and IGA.

"By (Google) finally launching in the space," said DoubleFusion CEO Jonathan Epstein, "it confirms for all parties...that this space is of interest to one of the largest media companies in the world. Google does not enter into markets that don't have billion dollar-plus potential for them."

To Epstein, having Google plant its flag in the in-game ads space shows everyone that games cannot be taken lightly as an ad platform, no matter what other choices advertisers have for their dollars.

"The battleground here is not between ourselves and Massive and Google," Epstein said. "It's getting games their rightful share of the ad dollars, as opposed to TV, print, and (traditional) online ads."

For its part, Google is well aware that it will have several significant competitors, but still thinks it can set itself apart.

According to Oestlien, Google intends to do so by leveraging its network of thousands of advertiser partners, as well as its proven experience helping those partners with the placement of effective print, image- and Flash-based creative ads.

Google's long-term play
Given that Google announced its AdScape buy more than a year ago, Google's move is by no means a surprise. Some see that it's only natural that the company seeks to repeat the success it has had with AdSense in as many new environments as possible.

And some think that while Google may have its work cut out for it in the games space in the short-term, the AdSense for Games move is really part of a long-term play involving several different media.

Earlier this summer, just as Twitter started to really pick up steam, the microblogging service began to have major stability problems.

The more users who signed up, the more the site seemed to be down, and it became nearly as commonplace to see the so-called "fail whale"--signifying that a desired operation wouldn't go through--as it was to have the service work properly.

For countless users, this was extremely frustrating, as Twitter had become the live conversation medium of choice for many early-adopters. And into this vacuum jumped a series of other microblogging services, each trying to pick up where Twitter seemed to be leaving off and hoping that large numbers of users would migrate to these new choices.

Evan Prodromou

(Credit: Evan Prodromou/Indentica)

One such service that seemed to come out of nowhere and get instant buy-in from influential digerati around the Web was Identica, an open-source microblogging alternative from Montreal resident Evan Prodromou, who in 2003 had co-founded Wikitravel, a wiki-based travel service that gained a widespread following and that has since expanded into printed guidebooks.

For Prodromou, Identica began as a side project that leveraged his experience with open-source software and free software projects and quickly became a popular place for people looking for a stable microblogging service to go.

Now, Twitter has regained much of its footing, and it has a huge name recognition advantage over any of its competitors, but Prodromou thinks his model could eventually take the microblogging genre to its natural next evolutionary step.

Q: What is Identica?
Prodromou: Identica is a microblogging service, a way for people to publish small messages about themselves. The messages are limited to 140 characters or less, so one to two sentences, maybe three sentences about what you're doing, what you are interested in right now, and you can broadcast it to your social network. I launched Identica in July, and of course, microblogging has been around for probably about two to three years right now with some leading services like Twitter, Jaiku, and more recently Pownce and Plurk.

How do you differentiate yourselves from Twitter and the others?
Prodromou: Recent numbers show there are already around 110 microblogging services, and with others that have been announced, there are probably 200 different services right now. What we've seen with other kinds of social software is this kind of fragmentation and we are seeing that now with microblogging where you are on Twitter, and I am Jaiku, and we can't be friends and we can't send each other messages. That's not the way the Internet is supposed to work. We are seeing these information silos happen around microblogging just like we're seeing them in other social media and my goal is to see that not happen with microblogging because I think it's a very valuable kind of communication.

Isn't that where something like Friendfeed comes in, to aggregate all the different services into one place?
Prodromou: Friendfeed is a great way to listen to multiple places, but to me, that's a stop-gap solution where we've got lots of silos, so you can listen to lots of silos. I want one microblogging place, where if I'm on one and you're on another, we can still communicate and still be friends. That's the long-term solution to the problem. It should be up to the services to talk to each other. That's really the difference with Identica. I made the software open source, so you can take the software that runs Identica and install it on your own server. Maybe you're involved with a Web community or you have a group of friends that like to talk or maybe you're in business and you want people in your business talking to each other in the enterprise. You can install the software and tailor it just for your group. I built a protocol called OpenMicroBlogging, so if you take the software and install it on your server, people on your server can still subscribe to other people on Identica and vice versa, so we're no longer having these little silos that are fractured and different from each other.

So will Indentica users be able to communicate with Twitter users?
Prodromou: That's my goal. If we get enough people using these open standards and open systems, perhaps Twitter sees it as a business advantage to join this kind of open network. We've seen that before on the Internet. In the early 1990s, there were lot of silos around e-mail and if you had an AOL e-mail address and I had a CompuServe e-mail address, we couldn't send e-mail to each other. But e-mail became so ubiquitous that even the companies with the biggest groups and users had to allow their users to send and receive Internet e-mail and I think that that's going to happen with microblogging, too. But it means that we have to grow the rest of the system.

It seems you had the good fortune of launching Identica last summer right when Twitter was having major stability and scalability problems.
Prodromou: Yeah.

But as Twitter solidifies itself, why won't people just say, Okay, Twitter is working, I'm just going to stick with that because most of my friends are there? How do you fit into that dynamic?
Prodromou: I'm a big openness advocate and I want to make sure that we follow the winning solutions. With social-networking sites, in around 2003 or 2004, Friendster was probably the only one worth caring about. But they had big scalability problems. That gave openings to alternatives like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and so on, all the ones that have become very big since then. Twitter's gotten back on its feet, but there are other players now, and some Twitter users got accounts on Identica and others went to Plurk. A lot have gone back to Twitter, but as we saw with social networking, the growth wasn't in those early adopters, the early, say 2 million, that are using Twitter. There are a billion people online, and there is a lot of room for growth in that billion people. You can't just have a bunch of players fighting over the same small pie of early adopters. Eventually the market grows, and the MySpaces and Facebooks grow beyond the early adopter market, and I think that's what's going to happen with microblogging.

Explain what Laconica is?
Prodromou: Identica is the name of the service and, it's open source. I'm very interested in ways that service providers can give their users the same kind of autonomy as people have using open source software. So, one thing I did when I started Identica was made the software open source. It's called Laconica. The software is available for download from Identica and it's pretty easy to set up. It runs on PHP and MySQL, which you can get on pretty much on any hosting service. So my goal is to make it very easy to install and have lots of people installing their own systems and using it. I believe that if that becomes the case, as the network grows and gets stronger and it's advantageous to everyone.

What's your business model?
Prodromou: I have four possible revenue streams. The first is a premium services model. Some things cost us money, like file sharing, or heavy SMS use, so we have to limit that. But we may let people buy their way out of those limits. The second is enterprise deployment. A lot of companies are interested in microblogging but they're concerned about putting their company data out on third-party Web services. But if they install Laconica inside their firewall, they can have more control of access to the data. The third business is the WordPress.com model, where we provide hosting for online communities using this open-source software, like if, say Boing Boing wanted to provide microblogging services for its community. And the fourth one, which is probably not as attractive to me right now is advertising. One other thing that I think could be very good, is helping companies or brands have a presence on the open microblogging network. So if Levi's wanted a new campaign, we could help them set up micro.levis.com and they could have people subscribe to their messages.

Which of these models are you going to follow?
Prodromou: I'm actively pursuing all of them, except for the advertising one. I've already started approaching people for doing white label hosting. I'm already talking to people about doing pilot enterprise deployment and we're at a point where we're going to be doing some multimedia file sharing later this month so I should be pushing it out. I hope to push it out for trial on Identica soon. So that will be a point at which we would start talking about premium services.

So you founded Identica by yourself?
Prodromou: Yes. My background is in creating open content. I started a Web site a few years ago called Wikitravel, which is the Wikipedia of travel sites. I've also been involved with conversations about open network services and running free software on Web services. I wondered what I could do with this, and at the time, the most popular Web service with the digerati was Twitter. So I decided to try writing an open-source Twitter. I really did it in my spare time and invited about 150 people to check it out. But one morning Twitter was down and so the time was right to have the users start blogging about it, and TechCrunch and Mashable and ReadWriteWeb and CNET did, and we had a big explosion right at the time when Twitter was having a hard time. We're about two months in right now and it's looking like we're just about feature complete compared to Twitter. We've got a really good group of 50 people on our developers mailing list and we've got an IRC channel that usually has about 50 or 100 people in it all the time.

Do you have investors?
Prodromou: I'm definitely seeking investment right now, I've got some very strong leads, I haven't finalized anything yet. So my hope is that I'm going to have an announcement to make probably in less than a month.

Correction: This story reported that Fossett would have been the first person to dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. In fact, a team of two men did the dive in 1960, aboard a bathyscaphe--a "deep boat"--called the Trieste. Had Fossett made the trip, he would have been the first to do it solo.

Hawkes Ocean Technologies, a Richmond, Calif., company, was close to finishing a deep-ocean submersible for entrepreneur Steve Fossett when he disappeared a year ago. It's called the Deep Flight Challenger.

(Credit: Hawkes Ocean Technologies)

Steve Fossett was known for many things, but perhaps the millionaire entrepreneur was best known for the many world records he set in a variety of different adventure sports.

And were it not for what seems certain to be his untimely and tragic death in a small airplane crash high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Fossett was poised to set a new record, one that could have far surpassed his many others in scope and shock value.

The record? To become the first human being to dive solo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 36,000 feet below the ocean surface near Guam.

This was no scuba dive, of course. Rather, Fossett had hired a Richmond, Calif., company called Hawkes Ocean Technologies, which specializes in building submersible vessels, to build him the craft that he could take down to the deepest known spot on Earth.

This is a CAD drawing of the Deep Flight Challenger with its outer skin on.

(Credit: Hawkes Ocean Technologies)

That submersible is called the Deep Flight Challenger, and the company was just four weeks from putting it through its first real tests when Fossett disappeared in September of 2007. But already, it had gone through a series of tests at U.S. Department of Defense facilities and was deemed strong enough to withstand water pressure of up to 20,000 pounds per square inch, more even than the 16,000 PSI pressure known to be found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

The project was first reported by KGO-TV.

"It's been well known that for the last ten years, we've been working on revolutionary designs for underwater flying craft," said Graham Hawkes, the firm's chief engineer, "and we wanted to solve the problems of getting ultra deep. So I think it was fairly natural that he'd come to us."

Hawkes explained that because of the tragedy of Fossett's death, the Deep Flight Challenger is now sitting behind locked doors in a warehouse near Hawkes Ocean Technologies offices. It is owned by Fossett's estate, and it is not known what will happen to it given that the adventurer is no longer around to make the dive himself.

But--with apologies to Native Americans--to hear Hawkes talk about deep diving like this is tantamount to what it must have been like to talk to someone explaining that the American West was unexplored territory and that he (or she) had the technology to take people there to open up a giant new frontier.

This is a CAD drawing of the Deep Flight Challenger without its outer skin.

(Credit: Hawkes Ocean Technologies)

Today, Hawkes said, there are just five deep ocean submersible craft in the world, all of which are owned by national governments. The United States has one, Russia has two--including one used by film director James Cameron to shoot some of the underwater sequences in Titanic--and both France and Japan have one.

Each of those vessels, however, are vastly expensive operations that require dedicated "motherships" to launch a mission, and which, Hawkes said, have extremely limited exploration range once they reach their desired depths.

By comparison, he said that his company's expertise has been the development of submersibles that are just one-eighth the weight of the nationally-owned crafts. And that's the major benefit of the technology. The submersibles can be launched from a wide variety of small rented ships; and once at depth, they can explore as much as 20 kilometers of territory.

And because the company's submersibles are so much lighter and don't require dedicated ships, they can cost approximately a tenth as much as the existing technology, said Karen Hawkes, the company's manager for marketing and communications.

Further, Graham Hawkes said, while the government's submersibles require as much as 20 tons of fuel oil per day, his company's craft can operate on just a few gallons of fuel per hour.

While the Fossett project may be on hold indefinitely, Hawkes Ocean Technologies is hoping to become the world leader in (relatively) affordable submersibles for private and public customers.

Hawkes said recent changes in how countries determine the outer edges of their sovereign territory have resulted in the United States and many other nations claiming twice as much coastal territory as they had before. In fact, he said, the U.S. and other countries are now claiming exclusive economic zones that extend to 200 miles beyond their shores.

"Few people noticed in the United States," Hawkes said, but many others outside the country did. Now, "the U.S., along with every other ocean state, has doubled their sovereign territory, and that territory has not been explored."

Here, the Deep Flight Challenger team poses for a picture with the craft. Due to the tragedy involving Fossett's plane crash, it is not known what will happen to this submersible, but the company is hoping to develop similar craft for private investors looking to explore deep ocean territory all around the world.

(Credit: Hawkes Ocean Technologies)

And alluding to the nineteenth century opening up of the American West, he added that, "You think of the Lewis and Clark expeditions going West to find out what was there, and we're back in that" kind of exploration.

Of course, the United States is not alone in its interest in discovering what resources exists in these newly-claimed economic zones. Other countries, like India, Ireland, Portugal and Spain have all been building up new fleets of oceanographic exploration ships, Hawkes said.

"These kinds of craft, we see as being necessary to be the cutting edge of that exploratory effort," Hawkes said, "so we see markets in 26 countries that are already gearing up for ocean exploration. It's not the kind of marine science where you're looking at protecting marine species, but you're looking at...expanding your national territory."

Among the resources that various national and private interests think they could find in these deep ocean places are new kinds of minerals as well as food sources.

Not being able to complete the Fossett mission, of course, has been a blow to Hawkes and his company's plans, and while it must certainly be frustrating to see the Deep Flight Challenger sitting prone behind locked doors, Hawkes said it isn't in any way up to him to determine what happens to the vessel now.

But given that the company was so close to completing the project when Fossett went missing, it is easy for Hawkes to envision having finished.

"I would obviously have liked for Steve not to have crashed into that mountainside," he said, "and gone off and finished that expedition. It would have been a game changer."

That's because, he continued, his company's technology would be the world's first to easily and cost-effectively get man into the deep ocean.

"That's what I would have wanted to happen," he said. "How we get there from here, that chapter is about to be written."

For the last few years, most of the attention on new territory to explore has been up in the sky. Hawkes thinks that the private interests that have been pouring money into such efforts have it wrong.

"We're telling the five people in the United States building rockets and rocket companies that (space is) wonderful," Hawkes said, "but that they're 180 degrees off course, and they need to turn that thing around."

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime holds up the new DS-i handheld device.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Updated at 10:42 a.m. PDT with new information from the rest of the Nintendo press event.

SAN FRANCISCO--Nintendo on Thursday said it expects to ship a much higher number of Wii video game consoles to retailers this holiday season than it did last year.

At its annual fall media event here, the Japanese company's North American president, Reggie Fils-Aime, told the gathered media that the company intends to try to address the well-documented shortages of the Wii that occurred during the 2007 holiday season.

He didn't say exactly how many Wiis had been available last year, nor how many more would be making their way into consumers' hands this time around. And he didn't even commit to being able to satisfy all demand this year.

"Will there be enough (Wiis) to meet demand?" Fils-Aime said. "Talk to me in January."

Still, it's important for the company to at least try to address the shortages that resulted in long lines at retailers that happened to have a few Wiis available.

But Fils-Aime added that the company is in uncharted territory with the Wii, and he suggested that the company doesn't have the ability to judge exactly how many units would be required to satisfy all consumers this holiday season.

He did say, however, that Nintendo expects to increase supplies of the Wii by about 50 percent in the fourth quarter of this year.

Asked how much more demand there had been for the Wii during last year's holiday season than available units, he said there was no way to quantify that.

"All we know," Fils-Aime told me, "is that as soon as units were available at retailers, they were gone in seconds."

Fils-Aime opened his remarks by unveiling Nintendo's new DS-i handheld console. However, because Nintendo also had a media event in Japan last night, that news had already made its way around the world.

A publicity photograph of the new Nintendo DS-i.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

He said the DS-i will not be available in North America until well into 2009 because there is still strong demand here for the existing DS Lite. He explained that the DS Lite is still selling better here than any device ever has and that there is still a large amount of penetration to be had.

In fact, he said that while one in every two Japanese households already has a DS or DS Lite, that number is just one in five in North America. Nintendo said it won't release the DS-i, which is expected to cost the equivalent of $180 in Japan, in North America until that penetration rate is higher.

Whether there are warehouses full of DS Lites that still need to be sold is not clear, and Nintendo isn't saying what its specific game plan is regarding the North American transition from DS Lite to DS-i.

After fighting off an unsolicited buyout offer and reviewing its options with other potential suitors over the past five months, Take-Two Interactive Software announced on Thursday it has decided to remain an independent company.

Take-Two, publisher of the popular video game franchise Grand Theft Auto and other titles, said it has completed its strategic review and determined that it would like to continue operating as an independent entity, following a couple of strong quarterly results.

"Take-Two's recent performance demonstrates our potential to create value for the long term. We have delivered solid financial results and expanded our portfolio of leading titles, which includes the powerful Grand Theft Auto franchise," Ben Feder, Take-Two chief executive, said in a statement.

He added that Take-Two also has no debt and has yet to draw on a $140 million credit line, giving the company financial flexibility.

Nonetheless, Wall Street has yet to applaud the company, since Electronic Arts withdrew its unsolicited $2 billion buyout offer in mid-September. After that announcement, Take-Two shares plummeted nearly 25 percent to end the day at $16.57 per share. The stock closed on Wednesday at $15.93 a share.

"Take-Two's board of directors and management have a clear mandate from stockholders to maximize value," Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two's chairman, said in a statement.

EA went public with an unsolicited buyout offer for the company in February at $26 a share and then launched into a hostile bid in March. In August, EA dropped its hostile tender offer, and the companies entered negotiations up until several weeks ago, when EA stepped away from the deal.

Video game retail chain GameStop announced Wednesday that it has agreed to purchase France-based Micromania for $700 million in cash from a private equity fund.

The acquisition is part of GameStop's efforts to expand in Europe, increasing its store count in that region to 1,077, according to a Bloomberg report. Texas-based GameStop currently has no stores located in France, while Micromania has 332 store locations in the country.

Under the deal, the company will purchase Micromania's outstanding shares from private equity fund L Capital, which gained control of the video game retailer in 2005, according to Bloomberg.

The deal, which will still need approval by the European Commission, is expected to close in November.

A group of the biggest Hollywood studios said Wednesday that they will invest more than $1 billion to upgrade 20,000 North American movie theaters to digital projector systems.

According to Reuters, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Lions Gate Entertainment have reached a pact with investors, including Blackstone Group and JPMorgan Chase. The work would begin in 2009 and could take as much as 3 and 1/2 years to complete.

For some time, the studios have wanted to embark on the upgrade project, Reuters wrote, but have been unable to nail down the financing. But now, with the money in place, work can begin with the goal of making it possible for the studios to send films digitally to theaters--which would be a sea change for studios, allowing them to cut costs immensely on prints and distribution--as well as to more easily present 3D films.

"Our initial goal is to convert existing theaters of our owners, AMC and Cinemark, and Regal, which operate a little over 14,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada," Travis Reid, CEO of Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, told Reuters, adding that each screen upgrade costs around $70,000.

Already, Hollywood and theaters around North America are in the middle of a major expansion of 3D screens and a major change in the technology being used for 3D films. In the spring of 2007, there were just 720 screens equipped to run 3D films, but that number has now jumped to 1,300, Reuters reported.

For the studios and the theaters alike, adding 3D screens is a boon because of ticket premiums of $3 or more.

And that's why several studios are planning on rapidly increasing the number of films they release in 3D.