The two key players in this scene are Apple and Samsung, who until recently were playing nicely and making money from each other quite happily. Apple’s recent spate of legal attacks on its competitors such as Google, HTC, Samsung and Nokia , to name a few of the many (estimated to be 46 as of March 2011) have sparked some support from Apples ever loyal fanbase, cries of outrage from those looking for open technology platforms and more importantly a raft of counter suits against them.

So why is Apple so keen to shut down the competition? Could it be they feel threatened by Android and Googles ever steady march on their market share? I think so. If you discount the iPod and iPad which are mobile, but aren’t phones, then Android accounts for 43% of the market. This is a skewed view I know, what with the boom in the tablet computing market, but the prevalence of smartphones over tablets, for me at least, gives this statistic weight. I think you’d be hard pushed to find a company who doesn’t want to be in everyone’s pocket, next to their wallet or purse no doubt.

With this realisation we arrive at the crux of the matter. If your competitor is putting its software on a device which people are buying, it’s going to be much easier to shut down the device than it would be to shut down the software. So this is where Apple is attacking, the soft underbelly of Google, its phone manufacturers. Thus the lawsuits against companies like Samsung and HTC, to tackle the manufacture of the device and thus blocking Google from being able to ship Android.

Samsung have recently announced that they are looking to block the sale of the iPhone 5 in South Korea and Europe, just as Apple have done with the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Europe. These pre-release lawsuits are part of Samsungs new stance against Apple’s continued aggressive protection of its technology. For me, as a fan of open technologies, I think this is all much of a muchness as they are all using the same base technologies in order to create the devices that the consumer wants to buy. Wouldn’t it be better to have an open standard for these technologies which could be shared amongst manufacturers and thus enable a collaborative enhancement of the technology rather than a childish playground antics we see at the moment? Well, yes, it would be marvellous but unfortunately the large technology companies spend millions of dollars developing these specific tweaks and features in order to try and edge out the competition and thus are not willing to share anything with anyone. If you thought you owned your phone, I’d be willing to be you’d be wrong. You’ve probably got a license to use the technology from the manufacturer.

So why is this hugely expensive and petty legal chess game now so popular? It’s certainly popular enough for companies to buy whole companies just for the patents. This summer saw Google lose out to a consortium of Apple, Microsoft, RIM, EMC, Ericsson and Sony for the company Nortel, and more importantly its portfolio of 6000 patents worth $4.5b, a little too rich for Google’s top bid of $4b. So you can see why Apple don’t have many or any, that I can find, lawsuits against its consortium buddies, and has thus focused its Sauron-esque gaze upon Google. Google’s time did come in August, when they announced the purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5b and with it a patent portfolio of 17,000 patents with which to battle its legal challenges.

Another team to consider is Microsoft and Nokia who brokered a deal in February to work collaboratively to drive the Microsoft mobile operating system forward with Nokia manufacturing the phones and Microsoft providing the software support. We’ve yet to see anything from this partnership other than a handful of Nokia Windows devices, and some information about Windows 8, and its tablet capabilities.

The speed at which this new mobile computing market is moving is truly staggering and it shows no signs of slowing down. It certainly seems that if you don’t already have the money to compete you’ll either get bought, shut down, or end up in court on patent infringement. Let’s hope the market does open up and we can see some unhindered innovation.

Written in memory of Palm WebOS.

Ref:

1. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/stephen-frys-100-greatest-gadgets/articles/the-list
2. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/21/samsung_could_block_iphone_5_in_europe_patent_wars_rumble_on/
3. http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/apple-counters-samsung-lawsuit-in-uk-39849
4. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/19/samsung_will_block_sale_of_iphone_5_in_korea/
5. http://www.blognotes.in/apple-iphone-patent-violations-list-nokia-lawsuit/
6. http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/08/apple-vs-samsung-list-of-all-19.html
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Mobile_devices
8. http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2011/07/04/google-lose-out-in-nortel-patent-portfolio-auction/
9. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-to-buy-motorola-mobility-for-125-billion-2011-08-15-1013140
10. http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/exclusive-nokias-windows-phone-7-concept-revealed/
11. http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/10155/hp-to-discontinue-webos-devices/

So what has lead to this change in the way that computer games are marketed to consumers? Could it be the meteoric rise of the industry from its indie roots in ‘70s to an industry in modern society worth an estimated USD $105 billion worldwide. Personally I think so; being a gamer myself I can only feel that more and more companies want to make sure that they get a finger into that pie before they are left behind. I guess that’s capitalism for you.

The way that these companies are changing their business models means that as a consumer we are being sold on a dream, on a magical trailer, or a snippet of advertising about the game rather than the experience that we need to better judge it. Thus the pre-order was born, the saving golden thread of publishers everywhere, a way for them to generate revenue from the consumer without the consumer ever having played the game. Brilliant. No more agonising management of the backlash against poor marketing or design decisions such as the uproar caused by the Spore DRM, Bioshock DRM, or the catalogue of others.

So this golden bullet to the piracy issue, amongst others – the pre-order – means huge expenditure on marketing. Now all of a sudden consumers have to make a choice about a game based on the marketing, the adverts, the Facebook pages and the blog posts. This has spurred on huge investments in the marketing of computer games and why not with such potentially rich rewards to be had. I recently went to the cinema and was presented with trailers for two computer games alongside the regular movie trailers.
I would assume that most people have heard of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, but would it surprise you to know that these are both owned by the same company, Activision Blizzard, which in Q3 of 2011 has so far reported net revenue of USD $650 million. They have actually axed projects in order to focus on these popular franchises, in order to ensure that there is absolutely no milk left in the udders of that poor cash cow. Electronic Arts are also guilty of this, but I digress into darker waters. This investment in marketing and pre-orders has lead to the huge queues that are now popular at computer game release events. Yes, I just wrote ‘computer game release events’ – fanfares, celebrities, music and interviews with the first customer through the door – all things which are akin to the red carpet. It’s not hard to see how video game stores are eclipsing the movie theatre.

Although there are pitfalls with pre-orders, I recently placed a pre-order with Steam for Dungeon Siege 3, having been a huge fan of the last two instalments. I was excited and eagerly awaiting the release of the game, watching the counter on the Steam store page. Then disaster! Ironically, a demo of the game was released about a week before the official release date, I downloaded it and got playing. Oh dear, words cannot describe the horror. All of the core mechanics were gone, the visuals were dire, and the control method was just wrong. Needless to say the first thing I did was cancel my pre-order and get a refund. Phew! A close shave. Had there been no demo of the game then I would have just lost out on my £30, rather like I lost £18 on Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, which turned out to be diabolical, but I digress, again.

The example that I wanted to highlight was the launch of Aion, an MMORPG released by NCSoft in 2009. This game got a huge number of pre-orders, about 400k to be precise. Then launch day arrived and the game went live and that 400k people logged into the game to what turned out to be a queue, but not a queue like in the pub on a Thursday, but like a Post Office queue on car tax day. Waits of up to 5 hours were reported by gamers before they could even play the game, and that was after having downloaded the latest patch. To summarise, it was a disaster. Someone had completely underestimated the effectiveness of the marketing and sheer volume of players who would login. The result was anger amongst people who had already paid a pre-order for a game they could now no longer play. The game then started shedding players, hundreds and thousands of people left. Even now if you mention Aion to anyone who had a pre-order you’ll see their face drop or they’ll spout derisive comments about the game.

Will this model change any time soon? Personally I don’t think it will. With the current crop of CEO’s of major publishing companies still marketing to demographics which don’t exist with products which are subpar, we’ll be forever be stuck being bombarded with marketing to buy products which we know very little about and haven’t even played. It is my fond hope that companies recognise the USD $2 million made by the Humble Bundle team for their crop of indie games for which you can pay what you want and you then own them. Sounds simple? It is. No licenses, no DRM, install where you want as many times as you want, if it’s meeting customer demands to the tune of $2m then why not?

• http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103064-Videogame-Industry-Worth-Over-100-Billion-Worldwide
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/23/gaming-makes-hollywood-look-embarrassing
• http://www.joshuakennon.com/the-reason-the-video-game-industry-is-bigger-than-hollywood/
• http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/26/the-slow-strange-death-of-the-demo/
• http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/50379/Aion-Launch-Good-Bad-Or-Ugly
• http://www.humblebundle.com/
• http://investor.activision.com/index.cfm

Dave

Please do check it out, and let me know what you think of if I’ve missed an iconic tune.

http://sharemyplaylists.com/the-hip-hop-omnicron

So after doing the few hacks listed in the wiki I cracked it with ease. So that’s got me my ‘Elonian Grandmaster Cartographer’ along with completing my ‘Legendary Cartographer’. Those two titles pushed my ‘Kind of a big deal’ title to 6 netting me the first title ‘Kind of a big deal’.

The real upshot of this fantastic moment is that it net’s me one Hall of Monuments point. Which is ace, hopefully I can see them on the site soon

Here is the glorious moment.

From Guild Wars

So far my ‘to do’ list is looking like this,

• * Imperial Phoenix
• * Eternal Elonian Cartographer
• * Eternal Legendary Cartographer
• * Vabbian Armor
• * Elite Kurzick Armor
• * Tormented Weapons
• * Oppressor Weapons

This looks very simple, but there is still plenty to do! Firstly will be completing the cartographer’s! I’ve got about 98% of Elona so far so netting that last few % will get me two titles, and one precious point!

The other stuff is much harder, which entails gathering LOTS of expensive crafting materials, but this is balanced as the reward for two sets of armour is a whopping four points! How about that, although the materials are hard to come by,

• 100 Platinum
• 600 Bolt(s) of Cloth
• 40 Bolt(s) of Linen
• 80 Amber Chunk(s)
• 32 Elonian Leather Square(s)
• 16 Ruby(s)
• 16 Sapphire(s)

Everything is fine except for Amber chunks, which are okay ish, it’s the Rubys and Sapphires which are the killer. As everyone is now after the Vabbian armour set, the prices of these have sky rocketed! Meaning you are looking at a few platinum per item. So perhaps the Vabbian armour is out of reach? We’ll see about that!

Lastly that Phoenix. Now this is straight forward, you just kill Shiro. Sounds simple right? Well yeah with people it is. With noone in my guild bar one or two people playing the game now, nearly 6 years later at the time of writing this, it’s even harder. All hail the Guild Wars Live team! for the full hero team update! Finally I might be able to build a specific team build to take down Shiro and earn my Phoenix and net those two elusive points.

So there we have it, this is my to do list detailed here more for my own benefit than anyone elses, but by breaking down the tasks into smaller chunks it makes the points all stack up. With these few items complete, I actually end on 31 points! Not bad

If you want further information on reaching 50 points! Check this out, http://massively.joystiq.com/tag/the-road-to-50/

Beardyman’s Essential Mix – aired on Radio1 22/1/12 by Beardyman

Find the album on my Picasa, http://picasaweb.google.com/neon1024/NewForestInWhite#

Just go listen to it, it’s awesome, DJ Flow drops some amazing mixes of old classic hip-hop with dance and hip-hop beats.