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It's marvelous! It's educational! It's mildly toxic!

On banality and foolish blowhards.

posted by CMD on 2008-12-28 at 07:24:35

Alright, I have a bone to pick, and since this is my blog, this is where I pick it. Sure, I've got nothin' on a big site like IGN, tucked here in my lowly corner of the 'Net, but I'm frothy with rage. It's time to correct some asinine statements and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of gum.

On December 19th, Editor Levi Buchanan of IGN Wireless released an article, exploring the supposedly critical question as to whether or not the iPhone and its new game service renders the PSP obsolete. Yeah. That question has really been pressing hard on my mind too...

I don't know why I still read IGN. I guess it's because they're a large site, so they review a larger volume of stuff than good sites like GiantBomb, where much of the content is user-submitted, WIKI-style. User content is generally written by... well, users - people who are not professional writers, and therefore unable to convey themselves with anything nearing coherency. Then again, when the "professional writers" write tripe like this, the alternative actually seems rather welcoming. It may not be fluent, but at least it's honest.

While IGN articles always have at least a twinge of bias in them, this one doesn't even try to hide it - or if it does, Mr. Buchanan is even more deluded than he appears. Unlike the author of the IGN story - which is supposed to be a news article yet reads like a fanboy puff-piece, full of understatement, overstatement, fallacies, and straight-out inaccuracies - I'm not going to waste time on panderous, "Although I own one of those too" statements that would theoretically paint me as an unbiased factuator. Truth be told, I don't own an iPhone - in fact, I hate Apple with unbridled passion. What's more, the PSP is my favorite system, as it provides me with a near console-like experience no matter where I go. There is no way I could be painted anywhere near unbiased, yet I bet your monkey's uncle that this reaction piece will be more centered and well thought-out than the banal, malodorous turd that provoked it.

This segment includes quotes and block quotes taken from the IGN article as linked above. The original author retains all credit and copyright - there's no way I'd associate myself with this level of stupidity. Well, maybe for a Klondike Bar...

Adding on to what I was ranting on in the forum disussion which sparked this fire, my main problem with this article - and with the debate as a whole - is that the iPhone fan-nuts seem to want it both ways. As a part of the superfluous article, Mr. Buchanan brought in Chris Roper of the IGN Playstation staff for a "debate". Of course, with Buchanan starting, moderating, and giving himself the last word of the debate, it was largely a one-sided affair. Roper did an admirable job, but Buchanan's iSkull was completely unscathed. Two quotes from Buchanan's opening email to Roper, from page 4 of the article:

I see waning relevance for the PSP. And it's not because of the DS. It's the iPhone and, to a lesser degree, iPod Touch.
Why would a gamer want to buy a PSP at this point when the iPhone does what the PSP does -- and more?

Oh yeah, this is going to be a great debate. He sounds so open-minded and ready to hash things out with someone who has an opposing view. I shouldn't have to tell you I'm being sarcastic. I firmly believe you should never enter into a debate unless you're willing to change your mind if your opponent unequivocally proves you wrong. If you're already set in your ways, it'll just devolve into a shouting match until the more sensible bloke steps down or a third party tires of it, throws in a flashbang, and takes both of you into custody.

Anyway, when Roper confronts Buchanan's dismissal of the PSP with the opinion that the PSP is vastly different, offering a more "serious", console-like experience when compared to the casual nature of the games on the iPhone - a statement which is in fact made mostly true when you compare commercial games with years of development time against the common homebrew fare in the AppStore right now - Mr. Buchanan replies (also on page 4 of the "article"):

But there are what you call "serious games" on the iPhone. Hero of Sparta. Fast and the Furious: Pink Slip. Ferrari GT: Evolution. Tap Tap Dance. Plenty of them.emphasis added

Oooh. Plenty of them. Remember that bit, though, because two pages later in his final email, after having been confronted with the potential battery life concerns of using your phone - a necessity - as a gaming device - the understood point being the wasting of the battery of what is in fact a phone on peripheral frivolity when you may well need it later for emergency - Mr. Buchanan blurts out the following:

However, your concern about the battery addresses a central tenet of mobile gaming. There are very few iPhone games that are designed like console games -- games you would normally sit down and sink an hour or more into in a single gaming session.emphasis added

Oh. Now there are very few. Did Apple go on an AppStore purge between emails, or is Buchanan just spouting things as he thinks of them? And yes, when he says "designed like console games", he's talking about the games for the PSP, as evidenced by the next-next paragraph in his email:

The PSP was designed more as a to-go console with console-like games. Great in theory, and fine if you are sitting on a plane (and you have the latest system update) or just vegging out on your couch. But as entertainment to be consumed in ten-minute bursts? No good.

Alright, as a quick aside, why on rye does he point out PSP system updates? Every single licensed UMD game ever made comes equipped with both the game you bought and the minimum firmware version required to play that game right on the disc. So, even if you were outside of a wireless network and also hopelessly out of date on your firmware to where this would be an issue, you'd still be able to install the firmware from the UMD and play the game. The only possible way this could be an issue is if your battery is too low - I do find the PSP cuts off firmware updates way too early in the battery cycle, as if 40% battery isn't enough to install a 25MB update. Regardless, look at Patapon which came out this year - even that game only requires firmware version 3.73. Firmware 3.73 was released in November of 2007. If you're that far behind on your updates, than you're not playing your PSP anymore anyway.

But more importantly, let's address the duality here. Buchanan goes from saying there are plenty of games that do what the PSP does, rendering the PSP obsolete, to saying there are very few games that are designed the way PSP games are designed, rather being intended more for quick bites of gaming than to sink time and effort into. I'm confused, but probably not as much as he is. You can't have it both ways, sir.* You can't say the iPhone renders the PSP's console-like experience obsolete because it does the same things, then say the iPhone is fundamentally different, designed to address ten-minute gaming sessions that the PSP is useless for. We have a word for those micro-games (well, a hyphenated word): time-killers. The Internet is full of them, perpetuated by that God-awful technology: Flash. You play them during spots of down-time: while you're uploading something, while you're in the back of a meeting you don't care to listen to; places where you don't have time to do any real gaming, but don't feel like just sitting there for five minutes.

That's all well and good, and the iPhone is great for that, but we're talking about handheld gaming, not handheld putzing. I suppose the iPhone is much better than the PSP at short-term gaming sessions - you know, unless you count LocoRoco or Patapon or Echochrome or Super Stardust or Buzz. Heck, when I need to game in short spurts, I pop in Rainbow 6:Vegas and go through a Terro Hunt mission or two, or Medal of Honor Heroes and fire up Skirmish mode, or a puzzler like Mercury and try to tackle a level that's been kicking my butt, or Tekken: Dark Resurrection and play a few Arcade Mode matches, or WipEout and practice at a track that comes up in the next Championship which I'm still shoddy at. Should I go on? You're essentially praising the iPhone for having short-lived, mindless games, with no story to follow, and thus no time commitment required. The PSP certainly has some of those, but they're offset by the masterpieces like Crisis Core, GoW:CoO, the PSP Syphon Filter saga, the GTA Stories games - games that are actually worth sinking a few hours into.

If the kind of games that are offered in droves on the iPhone are your cup of tea, so be it. But don't you dare call that handheld gaming, and don't you dare use it as fuel for your Sony hate-wagon. If you don't like the PSP, that's fine, but stop trying to convince people it's irrelevant. You're just making yourself look foolish.

* Who do I think I am, Keith Olbermann? [Wink]

Posted in: Frothy Rants

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Birdie, why don't you sing no more?

posted by CMD on 2008-12-04 at 03:30:35

You know what I've never been able to understand: How can "final" software be less stable than the Alpha and Beta versions I've been testing for months?

This is the question I've had to ask myself yet again this week, this time in response to Songbird. I've been using the program since it was introduced to me. It wasn't exactly pretty when I started using it, but it was good, it worked, and it was open source, which is the first thing I'll admire about any program. I've been following the program ever since - though I admit I did not go through the Release Candidate builds due to time restraints making it too troublesome to install a new build every week.

When the final came out though, of course it was time to update! I had used the internal update system throughout the testing, and I did the same thing when 1.0 dropped the other day. I installed, restarted, went through the rigmarole of checking for updates to addons that were no longer compatible, double-clicked on a song, and...

And...?

The program locked up, saving the contrails of other programs that had passed in front of it like all good Windows programs do when they decide they don't want to do anything else. I let it sit for a few minutes: Nothing. I force-quit the app, restarted, double-clicked on the same song: same result. I force-quit again, restarted again, double-clicked on a different song: it works! So while that song was playing, I double-clicked on the song I'd tried the first two times: it works too! So I closed, restarted, crossed my fingers, and double-clicked again on the song I'd tried the first two times: no more worky.

[Cry]

I wiped my Library and re-imported the songs directly instead of using the iTunes Library Importer, thinking perhaps that was the problem. Nope: still broken. I uninstalled the application, re-installed: same result. This program just doesn't want me to listen to Storm the Gates of Hell...

At this point I'm thinking it must be a problem with my library - Even though I installed from scratch, it still had my library in it when I started it up. So after I uninstalled, again, I went through and deleted any "Songbird" folders I could find.

After I swept through and removed the Songbird profile folders from all the Application Data folders, I tried installing again. This time, it walked me through everything first-install style, which was a good sign. I set everything up, told it what folder it should parse and import, and let it do its thing. Once it was ready, I double-clicked on Storm the Gates of Hell one more time...

I'm happy to report that Songbird is working again, and better than ever, I might add. Faster (than their previous iterations) library management, better song pre-caching - playback is just a hairs-breadth away from gapless now - and better UI responsiveness - in every Beta I had, the Volume slider would hang for ten seconds minimum before it would let you use it on the first time after app start-up, even if the program had been up for five minutes.

Please don't get me wrong: I absolutely love Songbird. The transition experience was anything but smooth for me, but the program itself is every which-way of awesome. It's the Firefox of media players, and if you're at all into customizable, open-source software, I'd highly recommend you check it out. If you've never used it before, you don't have to worry about having the same problems I did, after all. [Wink]

That's all for today, happy people. Thanks for reading, and check out Songbird if you get the chance.

Posted in: Daily Chat

1 comment on this article.

The Best Week Ever

posted by CMD on 2008-10-15 at 02:58:10

Only two days into the week, and already it has brought us PSP Firmware 5.00 and OpenOffice 3.0. The OpenOffice update is awesome, since this one introduces support for importing OOXML documents (Office 2007), but the PSP update is what really has my face in a tizzy.

Today - shortly after 1am CDT October 15th - Sony released PSP firmware version 5.00 update. If ever there was something that could legitimize the PSP as a worthwhile console - not just "handheld" - this was it. Two words: PlayStation Store. Clarification: Direct, on-system access to the PlayStation Store.

If you didn't already know that, odds are you don't have a PSP. I've been restless ever since it was confirmed for this month in the US territory, and tonight I let out a girlish squee of happiness when the update was finally made available. No longer must you tether your PSP to a PC for the latest demos and PSone classics, no longer is browsing and downloading the latest PSP game trailers on the losing end of the cost-benefit ratio, and no longer does the PSP smack of the disappointing step-child to Sony's PSN family.

Times recently have not been kind to PSP owners, and I realize there's still a ways to go - the PS Store was a giant step forward, but content from the PSN is still staggeringly skewed against the PSP when compared to the abundance of content released every week for the PS3. As I posted on the PlayStation Blog, this is great news, but only if it's the beginning of a burgeoning emphasis on providing content to PSP users. The PSP is a current-gen Sony system too, and it deserves to be treated more like one by Sony - no more of these two-wallpapers-and-a-game-trailer weekly updates. Being a relatively nostalgic gamer, I'd love to see a stronger focus on PSone Classics as well - I've purchased most all the ones that interest me already.

Still, if there's one thing that Sony fans have proven throughout the firmware update glitches and the incoherent, ever-changing SKU schemas and the in-again-out-again backwards compatibility and the loss of exclusivity on several major third-party exclusives, it's that we're persistent. Thick-headed, if you will. We love Sony's consoles more and despite any evidence you attempt to present to the contrary, we won't be swayed. The PSP has been my favorite console for a while now - I still don't have a PS3, you see - and today I love it just that much more.

If you're into portable entertainment and you don't yet have a PSP, I'd strongly suggest that you put it on your radar as something to look into closely. I'll bet you'll like what you see.

Posted in: Daily Chat, Techy Chat

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