Geek Gestalt

Since its launch three years ago, Sony's PlayStation 3 has always been more expensive than its rivals, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii, in large part because the components in the PS3 cost so much to assemble.

At launch, for example, the console cost Sony about $805 to build, according to technology research firm iSuppli, with the highest-priced version selling for $599.

According to a report, the component costs of the Sony PlayStation 3 may finally mean the company is closing in on break-even for the console.

(Credit: Sony Computer Entertainment of America)

But now, a new iSuppli report issued Friday suggests that Sony may finally be nearing the break-even point with the PS3. It said that its teardown analysis service estimated that the design cost of the new 120-gigabyte PS3 Slim comes in around $336, while it sells for $299 in the U.S.

That means that while Sony is still losing about $37 per unit--plus somewhat more for marketing, royalties, box contents, and other expenses--it is for the first time closing in on breaking even with the console itself.

A Sony representative said Friday the company has a policy never to comment on the cost structure and breakdown of its hardware.

According to iSuppli, its 2008 analysis of the PS3's component costs showed that the then-$399 console was losing at least $50 per unit. So it's notable that even at the lower price, Sony is losing less money. Further, the analysis firm suggested that with component costs dropping rapidly, Sony could soon find itself making money on the PS3.

To be sure, companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are willing to subsidize the cost of their video game consoles because they make their real money on sales--and royalties--of games. The more consoles they can put in consumers' living rooms, even if they take losses on them, the more they can make on the games.

But Sony took a beating in the media in the early days of the PS3 because it was losing so much on each PS3, not to mention that the high cost of the console made it an unattractive buy.

Now, with the August release of the PS3 Slim, and its reduced price, the console is finally coming close to matching its rivals' sales numbers. In September, the PS3 even won its first-ever month, as measured by total console sales. In November, however, the benefits of a great deal of pent-up demand for a lower-priced PS3 seemed to have been played out, and once again, the PS3 came in third, trailing the Wii and the Xbox.

Still, the PS3 was only marginally behind the Xbox in units sold in November, and there certainly seems to be renewed enthusiasm for the console at the lower price.

And when Sony finally sees a profit on each PS3 sale, there will no doubt even be smiles in the company's board room. Stay tuned to see when that actually happens.

Updated at 1:05 p.m. PST with a response from Sony.

The video game industry just keeps on seeing its sales numbers decline, in spite of a huge month for Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the crucial holiday month of November was no different than the last nine months of 2009. For the month, according to industry analyst The NPD Group, sales across the entire video game business were $2.7 billion, down 7.6 percent from $2.92 billion a year earlier.

Yet, NPD added, industry-wide sales were so high in 2008 that even despite this November's significant drop, the month was still the second-best November on record. "I think we all have to realize the incredible year that was 2008," wrote NPD analyst Anita Frazier, in a research report.

Winning the month, yet again, at least in console sales, was Nintendo's Wii, with 1.26 million units sold. That's significantly more than the 1.1 million units that Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicted late last month, in the wake of Black Friday, that Nintendo would sell. Microsoft saw its Xbox 360 take a solid second place with 819,500 units sold, and Sony's PlayStation 3 brought up the rear with 710,400 consoles moved.

Despite a big year-over-year jump in PS3 sales, those numbers had to be disappointing for Sony. The PS3 had finished ahead of the Xbox in October and September, mainly as a result of the pent-up demand for the machine in the wake of its mid-August price cut to $299.

For the Wii, first place is nothing new, and it's clear that consumers had a bigger hunger for that console than its competitors' offerings. But while 1.26 million units sold is impressive, it's quite a bit lower than the 2.04 million Wiis that sold last November, even given the fact that Nintendo lowered the price of the Wii from $249 to $199 in September.

"Nintendo products top Amazon.com's most wished for and most gifted lists for video games, and Wii remains at or near the top of the most-searched for video game terms on Yahoo," Nintendo said in a statement. "As families and friends gather for the holidays, Nintendo games offer the best shared experiences."

Microsoft saw sales of the Xbox drop 2 percent, from 836,000 last year to 819,500 this year. But Xbox spokesperson David Dennis said overall, last month was the best November in the Xbox 360's history, in terms of dollars spent across the board.

Though it did finish in third place, the PS3's sales were through the roof compared to last year, almost certainly due to the price cut. Sony's sales of 710,400 PS3s was up 87.9 percent from last November's poor showing of just 378,000 units.

Indeed, Sony touted that big jump, though without mentioning the recent price decrease of the PS3. "In November, PS3 was the only hardware console to see any growth when compared to last November," the company wrote in a press release, "experiencing an (87.9) percent lift and a 122 percent increase from the previous month."

On the software side, it was pretty clear that the Xbox--with four of the top 10 best-selling games on that platform, compared to two for the PS3 and four for the Wii--was November's big winner. That was no more clear than in sales of the biggest game title of the year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which broke the single-day record for sales for any entertainment product when it launched November 10, and was expected to make up a fifth of all games sales in November. The Xbox dominated sales of the game, with 4.2 million units sold, while just 1.87 million were sold for the PS3.

Dennis said the reason for that was clear: "It's Xbox Live," Dennis said. "People's friends are on Xbox Live, and you buy the version of the game where your friends are."

I love tools that are all about providing people with information they want, and on Tuesday, the video game industry's official ratings board got my attention with something awfully useful.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) announced on Tuesday its new iPhone app, which is designed to put the board's full written summaries of more than 2,500 video games right at parents' fingertips.

A new iPhone app from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board allows parents to see the full ratings summaries of more than 1,500 video games.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

The idea is that with the app--officially called ESRB Rating, and available now, for free, in Apple's App Store--parents can punch in the name of any game rated by the board after July 1, 2008, and see not just the official rating--such as "M" for those 17 and up, or "E" for everyone--but the ESRB's full written summary of the title. The ESRB began writing the full summaries on July 1, 2008. Users of the app can also search for information about titles from before that date, but they will see only the basic letter rating and a brief content description.

Just over a year ago, the ESRB began making those summaries available to the public through its Web site, and through a mobile site (m.esrb.org). But the Web site isn't convenient to a parent who is actually out shopping for junior, and the mobile site is not something that many people who have standard cell phones will use, especially if they have to pay extra for data. An iPhone app is just so much easier.

Brilliant on-the-fly tools
Add this app, then, to the growing list of tools available for the iPhone and other smartphones that give consumers the ability to arm themselves with the most information about products and pricing while they actually have boots in the Best Buy, so to speak. Others include the brilliant SnapTell, which delivers comparative pricing information about books, DVDs, video games, and other items from sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Gamespot, and others based solely on a photograph, and RedLaser, which scans items' bar codes and delivers similar pricing information.

But what makes the ESRB app so terrific, it seems to me, is that it provides parents with exactly the kind of nuanced information they need to properly choose the kinds of games they want to buy for their kids. Sure, the basic letter rating gives some context--if you're concerned about violence or racy content, you probably want to stay away from "M"-rated games--but within a single rating category, there is still a wide spectrum of content.

For example, the hottest game in the world right now is Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game has an "M" rating, but that just doesn't say all that much. Reading the summary, though, a parent can see much more: "Realistic gunfire, explosions, and cries of pain are heard during the frequent and fast-paced combat. The most intense depiction of violence occurs during a 'No Russian' mission where players take on the role of an undercover Ranger: Several civilians are gunned down at an airport as players are given a choice to participate in the killings (e.g., players can shoot a wounded civilian that is crawling on the ground), or walk by and observe without opening fire."

The app arms parents with the information to make informed buying decisions.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

That's a little more informative than "M," isn't it.

To be sure, kids are going to be able to get the games they want regardless of what their parents buy them. But given that games can cost $60 apiece--at least for the AAA console games--it may be that they don't quite have the means to sneak off with each and every first-person shooter they desire. They may still be dependent on Santa Claus, aka their parents, to get them the bulk of their games.

And, of course, those buyers who don't have an iPhone still will have to struggle to access these summaries, and it's unlikely that retailers will be providing them in any useful form.

But all in all, I find this precisely the kind of thing that puts the power over decisions about which video games to buy right back where it belongs: in parents' hands. We are in an age where so many pundits, politicians, and others are moaning and whining about the breakdown of society, and parents are complaining about the corruption of their children.

Well, complain no more: If you've got an iPhone--and I certainly hope the ESRB puts this app out for Android and other smartphones soon--you can do the research yourself. And then if you're still unhappy about the content in the games you buy your kids, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Corrected at 12:50 p.m. PST: This story incorrectly reported how many games rated by the ESRB would have summaries available through the iPhone app. It is more than 1,500.

Nintendo seems ready to resume its dominance over its video game console competitors, Microsoft and Sony, and to shake off several tepid months of sales, an analyst suggested Monday.

Those comments came after Nintendo put out a press release boasting that it had sold 550,000 Wiis in the U.S. during Thanksgiving week, leading Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter to estimate that the company may have sold about 1.1 million of the consoles for all of November.

Analyst Michael Pachter thinks the Wii is ready to resume its dominance over its rivals.

(Credit: Nintendo)

Last November, Nintendo moved 2.04 million Wiis, so if Pachter is correct about this month's data--his estimate was based on a formula in which November sales numbers are equal to roughly double the Thanksgiving week sales figures--the company sold only a little more than half the units it did a year ago. Still, Pachter estimated that Microsoft and Sony will have sold about 700,000 Xbox 360s and PlayStations, respectively, during November.

A Microsoft representative said that, while the company doesn't provide internal sales numbers, Black Friday week Xbox sales were the best of the year and at least two times the previous week. A Sony representative said that the PS3 had a banner Thanksgiving week, and that 440,000 of the consoles were sold during the week. Nintendo did not respond to a request for sales numbers for Thanksgiving week a year ago.

Using Pachter's formula, the PS3 sales numbers would mean that about 880,000 of the consoles were sold for all of November.

Since the true beginning of the so-called next-generation console wars in November 2006--when both the PS3 and the Wii were released, joining the Xbox 360, which hit store shelves a year before that--the Wii has been the dominant player, routinely outselling its competitors.

Now the prices for all three consoles are within $100--the Wii and the lowest-priced Xbox are $199, while the PS3 is $299. That has led to an increase in sales for Nintendo's peers, especially for the PS3, which in September won its first month ever for U.S. sales, according to industry analyst the NPD Group.

Indeed, even Nintendo has acknowledged it had lost some of its steam. Last month, the company's president, Satoru Iwata, said, "The Wii has stalled."

But Pachter suggested that the Thanksgiving week numbers show that Nintendo has simply been a victim of its own success, and that the sales of the Wii--and its handheld game machines, the DS and DSi--are still very impressive.

"You can't really criticize Nintendo for" past success, Pachter said. "They're definitely going to be very solid and dominant this holiday season, but last year, they were so large and dramatic, (those numbers) are going to be hard to compare to."

For the Thanksgiving week, Nintendo said it sold more than 1.5 million devices, meaning that it sold almost 1 million of the DS and DSi. And to Pachter, that might be the most impressive data point of all.

After all, he said, the DS first came out in 2004. "When is this thing going to get old?" he said. "It never dies. It's amazing to me, but people just keep buying them."

Still, Nintendo's biggest advantage--over the PS3, at least--is that the Wii costs $100 less. And if Sony ever drops the PS3's sticker under $200, that could mean big trouble for the Wii, Pachter said. Such a move would force Nintendo to do something dramatic to keep up.

While he didn't say that Nintendo would need an entirely new console at that point, he did say that a sub-$200 PS3 would force Nintendo to do something like add a processor and graphics card similar to what is available on the PS3 and the Xbox. And that, among other things, means high-definition.

"I think consumers need that," Pachter said.

Updated at 5:10 p.m. with comment from Microsoft, and at 7:55 p.m. with comment from Sony.

A photo of a meeting between a participant in Must Love Robots, a small-scale alternate-reality game put on recently by the New York duo, Awkward Hug, and the game's signature robot.

(Credit: Flickr user Tim Scribbles)

For Kiaya Steele, the men in suits and dark glasses who appeared suddenly through the raindrops of a New Hampshire morning were the first sign that something very unusual was going on.

One of the men stood under an umbrella next to the car Steele and her friend Kellin had been riding in moments earlier and delivered a message. As Kelli's sister Jenna was brought out of a second car that had pulled up mysteriously behind them, Steele was told that if she couldn't quickly prove that she was "the real Kiaya," the bomb planted inside Jenna would explode.

And this was just the tip of the iceberg of a day spent driving all around the countryside, complete with vans, staple guns, cameramen in trees, threats, red phone booths, and a series of hidden clues.

But this wasn't a situation for the FBI. Rather, it was a very small-scale--and low-tech--version of what is known as an alternate-reality game, an entertainment genre that has grown in popularity in recent years, especially because its traditional use of mixed-media--the Web, cell phones, social media, and others--can allow large numbers of people to play together collaboratively.

Over the years, the games have become a favorite marketing tool of large companies like Microsoft, which has commissioned huge ARGs, as they're known, for the launches of things like the video game Halo 2 and Windows Vista. Indeed, the first widely known ARG was called The Beast, and was used as a promotion for the release of the Steven Spielberg film "AI: Artificial Intelligence."

Those versions of ARGs have seven-figure budgets and allow thousands of people to participate. Yet while they get most of the ink written about ARGs, there has long been a steady stream of games built for very small audiences or, as in the case of Steele and the friend with a "bomb" insider her, an audience of one. It turned out that the intrigue was all part of a day-long mystery concocted by Steele's boyfriend, and involving several of their friends, as part of an elaborate marriage proposal.

"We use a lot of fictional analogies in our lives--gangsters in an alley (and) later in the quest there was a Soviet scientist, all themes that had played out in our courtship," Steele recalled. "We would write stories of sorts to one another before we dated. We'd take an image and run with it until it was too tired to move anymore. The whole thing was kind of a collaboration of our lives together."

Given that the game Steele's new fiance planned for his proposal had such a small audience, it was, to be sure, at the extreme end of the size and complexity spectrum for ARGs. But at any given moment, there are several ARGs being played that have slightly larger, yet still very small, numbers of participants. And it is these games, usually carried out at minimal expense and with no deep-pocketed sponsor, that may well be the true lifeblood of the increasingly popular world of ARGs.

And while there are practical limits to the kinds of interactions that are possible between the people running the larger games--the so-called puppetmasters--and the players, these smaller adventures offer everyone involved a much greater chance at direct communication.

"There are quite a few people making [small] ARGs, either without profit in mind or marketing [who are] saying, 'Look at me, I can do this,'" said Michael Andersen, who runs ARGNet, the leading source for news and information about the genre. "The motivations for a lot of these things vary. [One] advantage of doing these grassroots games is working for yourself. [And], it becomes a lot easier to have those one-on-one interactions [and the] feeling that not only can you communicate, but you can change what's going on" for fans.

Robot love
Earlier this year, a New York duo calling themselves Awkward Hug built and pulled off a small-scale ARG called Must Love Robots, which was centered around the idea of helping make love connections between people and robots.

Through a series of Web sites, social media, YouTube videos and more, Awkward Hug founders Jim Babb and Tanner Ringerud turned a $3,000 budget into a 3-month-long game with at least 300 participants.

Babb said that the project, which was entirely self-funded, came out of an original desire to create a Web series about a robot. But when the two realized that they could "make it so much more" by adding the various multimedia elements, they set out to build a bona fide ARG, one that would allow them to communicate directly with almost anyone who wanted to talk with them, even to the point of playing online games of Scrabble. And, of course, there were real-world meetings between prospective "dates" and the game's signature robot (see video below).

Given the huge gap in size between a large-scale ARG and something like Must Love Robots, it might be surprising that many of the ultimate goals are the same. It certainly was to Babb.

"What surprised me the most," Babb said, was that "players want more and they want to do things with you. It becomes a collaboration. The audience becomes characters."

And while it's not always possible for everyone to participate in person--Must Love Robots attracted players from around the world--one of the great things about the ARG genre is how many people who play do participate directly in one way or another. In Babb and Ringerud's game, for example, 20 people created costumes related to the story line and sent in pictures of themselves wearing the outfits, all of which were intended to be folded into the larger story line.

Kids creators
A different kind of small-scale ARG was Find Chesia, a project put on by the Finksburg, Md., library on behalf of its local schoolchildren and their summer reading program.

The story, said organizer Heather Owings, was centered on the story of Chesia, a 14-year-old girl whose parents have gone missing on an archaeological dig and who sets out to find them. The game was designed by five small teams of 11- to 15-year-olds.

Like with many small-scale ARGs, Find Chesia encountered a series of structural problems, most notably, Owings said, the fact that the kids turned out to be resistant--mainly due to regular conditioning about the dangers of online anonymity--to the idea of posting information in character to the game's Web site. In addition, there was the unforeseen problem that almost none of the kids were old enough to drive to the game's real-world locations.

This bracelet is an important element in the ARG, Finding Chesia, which was put on by a Maryland library on behalf of a town's schoolchildren and their summer reading program.

(Credit: Finding Chesia)

Still, the game was successful enough for Owings to want to run the game again next summer, incorporating some of the lessons they learned this year. And despite the problems, Owings said that she came away with an appreciation for what the ARG genre can offer its organizers and participants.

"I like that ARGs use tools that were set up to do something else, and they're used to create something new," Owings said. "It's the taking of something and changing it and using it for something it wasn't intended [for] in a new and creative way."

Plus, she said, Finding Chesia turned out to be a perfect way to get the kids in on the enjoyment of building their own game, even though they lacked many of the skills generally considered necessary for such a task.

"It's a way for teens to create their own game," Owings said, "and we really enjoyed that aspect of it...They don't need to be computer programmer [and] here is a way for them to take ownership for creating a game on a fairly small level. [As well, it] helps them to realize how much the Internet does facilitate networking within the community, as well as outside the community."

These days, said ARGNet's Andersen, there are at least as many small, grassroots ARGs being produced as the larger, corporate-backed games. And those numbers could grow as an increasing number of people become versed in the tools for building them. According to Andersen, teachers at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Mary Washington are both teaching classes about ARGs.

But the real upside in the genre's growth will come naturally, as more people in more local communities get exposed to ARGs and discover the joy of playing something truly interactive and truly collaborative.

And while it's true that most small ARGs quickly peter out as players and organizers discover that they don't have the time or energy to follow through, there are those who feel that the ultimate payoff of participating is there for anyone with the stamina or commitment to grab it.

"For an independent ARG, the most successful thing you can do is complete it and have your core audience go all the way through," said Awkward Hug's Babb. "It's such a cool format, and the people who can make it through a whole one of these get an experience that no other media can provide."

U.S. video game industry sales plunged in October, dropping 19 percent from a year earlier, and 16.4 percent from September, according to data released Thursday by the NPD Group.

But with the tremendous, record-breaking, out-of-the-gate performance of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and the coming holiday season, NPD is bullish on the industry's fortunes for November.

Still, the $1.07 billion in total sales turned in by the industry in October were paltry, compared with $1.32 billion in October 2008 and $1.28 billion in September 2009. NPD analyst Anita Frazier tried to soften the blow a little bit in her monthly report, noting that while sales were down precipitously in October, it was still the third-best October sales report turned in by the video game industry.

"The continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales," Frazier wrote in a statement. "Our latest Economy Tracker indicated that although consumers' general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year."

That last sentence is no doubt one of the most chilling group of words imaginable to the honchos at companies like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Activision, and many others involved in putting video game hardware and software in consumers' hands, especially as their most important sales months of the year are now at hand.

As always, regardless of the monthly results, the big console makers each had some things to celebrate in the NPD numbers.

For Nintendo, which has seen sales of its once-high-flying Wii dip and perceptions that the console's days of seeming infallible may be over, the numbers had some hope: in October, the Wii took back first place among the consoles--respectively the Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Sony's PlayStation 3. In October, Nintendo moved 506,900 Wiis, beating out the PS3 (320,600) and the Xbox (249,700).

Sony was coming off the first month the PS3 won since being launched in the fall of 2006, but while the console was beaten out by the Wii, there must certainly be some measure of gratification in having the PS3 come out ahead of Microsoft's console offering.

"In October, we saw continued momentum [for the] PS3, with nearly 70 percent growth, when compared to last October," Peter Dille, Sony Computer Entertainment of America's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement. It was "the only console to see any growth year over year."

NPD itself touted Microsoft's chief bragging point for October: "Across all categories, the Xbox 360 platform contributed the greatest portion of total industry sales, representing 27 percent of total industry sales for the month," Frazier wrote.

Yet despite the record-smashing first-day sales posted this week by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the video game industry as a whole is facing a very painful reality: If sales don't improve quickly, there will be layoffs, slashed budgets, canceled games, and more.

Electronic Arts, for example, announced this week that it is planning to lay off 1,500 people as part of a major restructuring--the company's latest--and as a way to stave off growing losses.

And while the industry may have hoped that console sales--especially with prices for next-generation hardware now at their lowest levels ever--would help it rebound, Frazier did not offer much hope.

"Year to date, the hardware category has experienced the sharpest decline in the industry, with unit sales down 10 percent compared to the same time period last year," Frazier wrote. "Recent price cuts helped spur a one- to two-month increase in unit sales, and this month's Wii sales reflect that boost, but the other platforms have not sustained the sales momentum [after] price reduction."

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is said to have broken the single-day sales record for an entertainment property. According to Activision, the game earned $310 million in North America and England alone in its first 24 hours.

(Credit: Activision)

So much for the supposedly unbreakable first-day sales record set last year by Grand Theft Auto IV.

On Thursday, Activision said that its brand-new Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare, which hit store shelves on Tuesday, had "shattered" the previous record for opening-day sales by an entertainment property, earning $310 million in North America and the U.K. alone. That equates to 4.7 million copies of the new game sold in those regions, and, if true, would eclipse the previous first-day sales record of $310 million globally, which GTA IV set in May of 2008.

Given that GTA IV had nearly doubled the previous record of $170 million, set by Halo 3, I wondered at the time whether its new mark was unassailable. Clearly, the new Call of Duty has answered that question, and loudly.

Now, we have to ask once again whether there could be another challenger for the crown. It would be foolish, it seems, to conclude that there won't be, given the dominance of franchises like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Grand Theft Auto itself, and, of course, Call of Duty.

A bigger question could be: Why do we care? That's especially true given how frequently these mega-records are broken. Still, it's hard not to get worked up about what it means for a single video game title to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in a single 24-hour period, particularly while we're still mired in a fairly deep recession.

There are all kinds of arguments to be made about why video games do well in tough economic times, and I've trotted a number of them out in this space. But most games don't come anywhere near selling $310 million worth of product in their entire lifetime, let alone on their first day, so Activision--and its Infinity Ward studio, which actually developed the new Call of Duty--seem entitled to a little bit of attention.

But at the rate these records are falling, I'm going to have to start thinking twice every time a new game sends me one of these announcements about breaking records. Sooner or later, it's not going to be all that noteworthy, no matter how much money is earned in a single day. Until then, though, watch this space for word on which game will be next in line for the throne.

There are literally hundreds of banned Xboxes for sale on Craigslist right now in the wake of a decision by Microsoft to kick as many as a million players off of Xbox Live for illegally modifying their consoles to play pirated games.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Update (5:45 pm): This story now includes a statement from Microsoft.

Want an Xbox 360 but don't care about playing online or taking part in any of the Xbox Live services? Then this is your lucky day.

Thanks to a recent decision by Microsoft to ban as many as a million players from Xbox Live for illegally modifying their consoles to run pirated games, there is now an absolute glut of "modded" Xboxes for sale on Craigslist.

And while a brand-new Xbox Arcade--the lowest-price version of the console--sells for $200 with no free games, it is now possible to spend as little as $100 for a used, modded Xbox that comes with a slew of hit titles. You just have to be willing to give up using Xbox Live and be OK with your new game collection including mainly pirated titles.

Running a search for "modded Xbox" on Craigslist's Bay Area site returned 35 listings from the past three days. A similar search on New York Craigslist resulted in 87 listings. And dozens and dozens more are for sale on other local Craigslist sites.

One listing promised a "banned/modded" Xbox 360 with a 20 gigabyte hard drive; 20 HD movies; and 13 games including Madden 2010, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, NBA 2K10, and others.

"Everything works perfectly," the ad reads. "The 360 was treated better than I treat most people."

The ad also reminded potential buyers that, "since the console is banned, you will not be able to connect to the Xbox Live service. Therefore, this posting is for those of you who don't care if you can play online or not."

One Craigslist poster named Danny Cuccovia, a 22-year-old student from West Valley College in Saratoga, Calif., was actually looking to buy a modded Xbox 360, and despite the incredible deals available right now, wasn't interested in one that couldn't get him onto Xbox Live.

A gamer looking to potentially go pro, Cuccovia suggested that modded Xboxes are great because there is no end to the supply of pirated games and that sellers of those games put very realistic-looking labels on them.

He also said he was sure that many of the people selling their banned Xboxes on Craigslist were doing so because they want to get a new one.

That was certainly the case with Kevin, a 29-year-old from Manhattan's East Village who logged into Xbox Live a few days ago only to discover the bad news about his console.

"I logged in, tried to play a game online, and it said I had been banned from the service for violating the terms of service," Kevin, who wouldn't give his last name, said. "I cursed, put my controller down, cursed Microsoft, and then bought another Xbox."

But even though he bought another used console that was advertised as being unmodified, Kevin said that when he tried to log on to Xbox Live, he quickly discovered he'd been cheated: the new device had been banned, too. So on Tuesday, he bought another one.

"If you're interested in a modded Xbox," he said, "I've got one for you."

Interestingly, Kevin and another New Yorker with a banned Xbox, 16-year-old Muhummad Sheikh, both said that the ban seemed to apply only to the console and not to their Xbox Live accounts.

Kevin said that his account still works, and that he was able to keep all his achievements, but he lost all the saved games. "They've done something funny," he said. "They call it a corrupted profile."

For sellers like Kevin, the rush to sell their banned Xboxes in order to buy a new one is pitting them against dozens, if not hundreds of people in the same boat. That means that getting the price they want is going to be near impossible. Kevin said that he had originally asked for $175--with an available legitimate copy of Rock Band for an additional $50--but has now dropped his price to $150. And still he has no bites.

"Someone (offered to) buy it for $100," Kevin said, "but I haven't capitulated yet."

In a statement issued late Wednesday to CNET News, Microsoft suggested that players who buy used Xboxes should beware that the company doesn't necessarily stand behind the consoles.

"If you purchase a modified console second-hand, the warranty is not transferable and the purchaser assumes the risk for any previous modifications," the Microsoft statement said. "If you purchase a console that has been previously banned, you will not be able to connect to (Xbox) Live."

To Kevin, the fact that the consoles have been banned but players' accounts still work smells a little fishy since that means if someone buys a new Xbox, they'll be able to get right back into their Xbox Live account and pick up, more or less, where they left off. And that could well mean that for the Xbox Live obsessed, there's no choice but to buy a brand-new machine, especially since many of the other consoles for sale on Craigslist right now have also been banned.

"Well, the holidays are around the corner," Kevin said. "They know what they're doing when it comes to making money."

In a world in which Disney defines its brand and the content it releases under its own name as being aimed at the broadest possible audience, Mickey Mouse is known largely as a feel-good, happy-go-lucky cartoon character.

But that's not how Mickey was in the early days. Back in 1928, when he first hit the world stage, he was a very badly behaved mouse. And now, one of the best-known video game designers in the world wants to bring back a little of bit of Mickey's dark side.

And he'll get his chance to make that a reality. Warren Spector, the game designer behind the Deus Ex franchise, is working on a new game, Disney's Epic Mickey, which is being positioned, in part, as a "re-imagining" of Mickey Mouse.

Images: Mickey Mouse, behaving badly

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Planned for a fall 2010 release, Disney's Epic Mickey will be an adventure-platforming game exclusively for Nintendo's Wii. The story is built around a world--crafted by the sorcerer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice--in which a series of forgotten Disney creations live, and thrive. Among those characters is Oswald, Walt Disney's earliest cartoon star. As the years pass and Oswald becomes bitter at Mickey's success, Mickey inadvertently destroys Oswald's comfort zone in the cartoon wasteland and he must face the consequences of what he has accidentally wrought.

"It's a game where we remind (people) that Mickey is a hero who solves problems by dynamically changing the world around him and deciding how to interact with the people and places and problems he encounters in this strange new world," Spector said.

In 2005, Spector formed a start-up, Junction Point, which Disney bought when it commissioned him to work on the Mickey Mouse game. "I've wanted to work for Disney forever," he said, "so that was not a stumbling point for me at all."

And because Spector is a lifelong Disney fan and animation "freak," everything came together in 2007 for him and his Junction Point team to take on perhaps the best-known cartoon character of all time. On Tuesday, Spector talked with CNET News about the project.

Q: How did you get involved?
Warren Spector: I was out pitching a near-future science-fiction game and an enormous epic fantasy role playing game, and my agent suggested we talk to Disney. They turned things around and asked me if I wanted to a Mickey Mouse game, and I told them no, because I don't do kids games and Mickey's been kind of a kid property for a long time. But they said, No, no, we want someone to bring Mickey to a gaming audience in a whole new way and make him a hero for the 21st century. Pretty much at that point, I was in.

What was it like to get a chance to re-imagine Mickey Mouse?
Spector: How often do you get a chance to work with the most recognizable movie star character property on Earth? That's an opportunity most people never get. There was pretty much no way I could say no. Mickey touches everybody, and none of us will ever meet a human being who doesn't know about this character.

What's the best-case outcome for this game, in your fantasy?
Spector: The best case is to change the way people think about Mickey Mouse. He's not just your 8-year-old kid's best buddy, or a character who teaches infants colors on Mickey's Clubhouse. He's a hero again. In his early days, he appealed to every body. From 1928 to the mid-1930s, moviegoers around the world, everybody, men, women, old, young, you name it. Everybody loved Mickey. And the opportunity to bring him back to that place, where he's not just an icon on a watch or a T-shirt, but is actually a character that people care about in a narrative context, or want to be, to look up to as a character whose skin they want to inhabit for awhile, Boy, I can't think of a better (challenge) for someone who tells stories and makes games for a living.

The logo for Disney's Epic Mickey.

(Credit: Disney Interactive Studios)

Why does Mickey need re-imagining? And why now?
Spector: There's these characters, like Mario and Link (from the Zelda games) and Sonic, and I don't know if it's true, but you've got to believe that those characters--who are three heads tall and cute and iconic--at some level were inspired by Mickey Mouse. So why shouldn't Mickey be at the top of the gaming heap? Mickey deserves to be at the top of the game hero pyramid.

What are some of the things you're doing to make this new Mickey recognizable for everyone?
Spector: I came into this with a pretty good idea of who Mickey was. I wanted to remind Mickey that it's okay to be mischievous and badly-behaved. For so many years, he hasn't been allowed to do anything remotely mischievous. But if you go back to those early cartoons, he was very badly behaved, and we've got to let him get back to that. And in his early cartoons, he was very cartoon-y, he squashed, he stretched. He could remove his tail and use it as a sword. That was the second thing. And the third leap was mischievous cartoon character made of paint. So we talked about what we could do if we gave Mickey control over the stuff that he's made of and let him paint and then use paint thinner to remove stuff.

Were there other things that were essential for bringing Mickey to this medium?
Spector: One major challenge was finding a look for him, especially a 3D look. With a couple of rare exceptions, Mickey's always been in 2D and the animators cheated all the time, with the way his ears work and the way his nose fits relative to the rest of his face. In 3D you can't do that, so I looked at the few previous 3D Mickeys and I didn't feel anybody had gotten it right. We went through probably thousands of concepts trying to find the right look.There are a lot of people at Disney who care a lot about Mickey Mouse, and so getting a look that people could get behind was tough. Rendering it in 3D was tough and then getting it to move like a cartoon character was a huge challenge and tons of fun, and you'll tell me if we succeeded.

Warren Spector, lead designer on Epic Mickey.

(Credit: Disney Interactive Studios)

How much control did you have and how much control Disney assert?
Spector: I was really worried about that when I first started on this. There are lines you don't cross with Mickey Mouse, OK? But the thing that surprised me was how far out those lines were and how obvious it is where the lines really are.

There are people who say, 'Oh, give Mickey a big knife and put a gun in his hand, and then I'll like him.' Well, come on, nobody's going to do that. And you're not going to make Mickey evil, you know? And when you have an icon, where any combination of three circles defines Mickey Mouse for most people on the planet, you're not going to make his head square. I'd say it was a pretty easily negotiated deal, creatively.

Talk more about where the story idea came from?
Spector: During a meeting with the Disney guys, they showed us a PowerPoint with the concept of cartoon wasteland, a world of rejected and forgotten Disney creativity. And the foundation was making Mickey relevant to a gaming audience and a modern audience. It was funny because I watched this presentation thinking, Holy Cow, this is phenomenal and the seed of an amazing thing. And then all the execs were saying, Oh, you don't have to use any of that, this is just our think tank's concept. And I'm sitting there, going, Are you guys crazy. That's a great idea. Why would I not use all of that? I just thought it was so funny because they were trying so hard to make it clear that I had all this creative freedom, and I was like, No, I don't want it, I want this as my starting point.

Can you tell me something about working with these famous Disney characters that would surprise us?
Spector: I think the thing that surprised me the most is how easy it is to get these characters almost right. It's like, drawing Mickey or any other character in the Disney archives, they are so well known and defined and recognized and have such strong personalities that getting them 90 percent right is very easy. But that last 10 percent that just nails them, that's really, really hard. And that goes for how they look, and how they act and how they move, which is one of the reasons why I was so proud of my animators. I didn't tell them to do this. They came up with this idea on their own, of going back to the old cartoons, and rotoscoping them. They took the old cartoons and took our model and rig and then duplicated classic 2D animation, and composited our guy into classic Disney 2D cartoons. When you couldn't tell if it was our model or the original 2D animation, that was when I knew we had it.

Why only the Wii?
Spector: At the beginning, it was supposed to be on all platforms. I remember vividly how nervous I was about that. The idea was we were going to do a Wii port and I was never comfortable with that because the Wii really deserves its own design, something that takes advantage of what the Wii does best. We were talking about this one day and (Disney Interactive Studios executive vice president) Graham Hopper basically said, What does it take to ensure quality? I said, you can never guarantee greatness, but you need enough time and money to be competitive and it helps if you can focus. A single platform would be great. And it was an easy step from there to, Hey, we should do a Wii exclusive.

What about the Wii "stalling?" Does that worry you at all?
Spector: Yes and no. I've been doing this for 20 years, and I've had this saying, That I just need to sell one more copy of a game than is necessary to get my publisher to fund my next one. So I'm looking at this as, I've got a responsibility to Mickey Mouse and to Disney, and if I do something really good, commercial success will follow. I've got to believe that. And once you start talking about painting, people's hands (on the Wii) just immediately start moving as if they're holding a brush. It just totally works. I think we're on the right platform.