| Set On Stun |

Yeah I'd like AC2 and ME2 with some large fries to go

Up until now if you were a Mac gamer then you did not have access the to catalog of games that was offered up by Valve’s Steam service. Although we did report here last week that there’s been rumblings about Steam adding Mac to their subscription service. Well until they stop dragging their mice to get that rolling Onlive, a startup game-on-demand service will launch their subscription service for Mac and PC in June.

With a catalog that’s set to compete with Steam, OnLive will serve up a slew of top-notch games from a variety of publishers for a monthly fee. A big plus is that you don’t need a G5 or Alienware CPU to run the software as that will be taken care of from the Onlive side. Announced at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference, this throws down the competition gauntlet as this service brings Mac users into the fold and gives PC gamers a chance to get their hands on top titles a lot sooner than they usually do. OnLive CEO Steve Perlman for just  $14.95 a month gamers will have access to titles from EA, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros just to name a few.

The launch promises 12 to 25 titles and depending on how well their deal making goes that will surely increase. The big edge here is unlike Steam, OnLive is looking to give gamers fresh titles that haven’t been around gathering dust. So how exactly can the run these high end games from their servers?  Simply put — compression baby.  Game data stuffed into  a tiny package that gets transferred  over a broadband connection to a server, where the data is computed. Then a video is sent back over the broadband line to the user’s computer. So that’s how.

For Mac users this service  is a big boon because up until now even if they could get a game like Mass Effect 2, they would have to wait a really long time. The big launch is set for June 17 just around E3 time. It’s a good guess that if Steam is really going to compete with this, then they now have a deadline.

Crowbar? Yeah I've got an App for that!

Take at look at the picture above — you see the little apple on Gordon Freeman’s chest? You have to look real close — it’s obscured by the crowbar. Yeah. WTF? Not that anyone would scream bloody murder if Valve made the big switch to the Mac OS for future games but what does that mean for the PC folks? Up until now it’s been a fairly solid split of PC and console offerings. And does this have anything to do with the distribution service Steam gearing up for Mac support? The question here is what’s with all the subtlety?

So many questions but seriously what is going on Valve? Look it’s not that it’s would be a bad thing for Valve and Steam to get Apple-friendly but why go with this ambiguous strategy that more vague than messages from Half-Life’s G-man? Especially since in 2007 we heard this from Valve about why they didn’t want to work with Apple. This was around the time of the Orange Box release

..We have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go “wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming”. And then we’ll say, “OK, here are three things you could do to make that better”, and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. Those words from the mouth of Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell.

To anchor that quote was this from Newell — “They seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there’s never any follow through“.

So you can see, there really was no love for the Mac OS back in ‘07. What changed in three years? Well for now we have no idea. All we know is this Sam Fisher sneakfest coupled with some weird things going on on the Steam site means change is a-coming. It’s highly possible that Valve will spill the beans at next week’s GDC but until then we have to sit around and wonder.

could you be more obscure?

Apparently, Set on Stun and every other blog on the planet has been writing (and writhing) furiously about the Apple iPad announcement.  In the past few days, my partner Shawn and I have produced a few of those articles as well.

While I’m hesitant to add yet another article in the current cacophony of critical and complimentary yet credible connoisseurs of computing culture, I feel that I have yet to put my finger on why I simultaneously love and hate the Apple iPad.  I hate it because of what it is, yet I love it for what it could potentially be.

Why I Love the Apple iPad:

As my friend, mentor and former boss Thom Kozik noted in a past article, about my skepticism towards the Apple iPad, the revolution of the iPhone was not in the technology, the same could be said (and is being said) about the iPad.  He makes the point that

There’s an old adage in product design & marketing that the mass market will never recognize they need and thus will not demand, truly innovative products. I would challenge anyone to argue that they would have specified in some 2006 survey or focus group that what they *really* wanted was the kind of capabilities/functionality an iPhone user takes for granted (nay, is *addicted to*) on a daily basis. Design by committee doesn’t work here.

He goes on to describe the nearly imperceptible learning curve and its ability to “just work”.  In a sense, he described the brilliance of the Apple strategy.  They make products that they control to give people technology that fits the way they consume media (games, blogs, the internet, music, movies and more).  With the nit-picking of the iPad due to its lack of GPS, media outlets, Adobe Flash capabilities and many more, I realized that in my mind, I am looking at this device with the perception of a media creator.  I create things all day long, analyses, spreadsheets, articles and more.  I sit at my PC and I think, I work and I create.  With those lenses, I have judged the iPad and found it wanting.

However, after a brief IM with Thom and reading his response, I took a look at how I use my badly damaged iPhone and realized that the things I create with my iPhone is minimal.  The emails, texts, tweets and updates are minimal.  However, the media that I consume compared to what I create is staggering.

I sent 12 emails via my phone yesterday, read 12 blog posts, viewed 20 pictures, played 6 games, listened to music for 7 hours and watched over 10 videos.  The iPad would allow me to do that, and more (multitasking aside).

The iPad as a Media Consumption Product is Amazing.

As a content consumption device, it has flaws, but what I think Apple has figured out is not just what people consume on a mobile device, but how they consume media on that device.  The iPad version 1 will always be a test, it will find out what works and what doesn’t.  Patches will be added to update and upgrade the firmware, apps will be created to supplement and work around some of the idiosyncrasies.  Don’t even start talking to me about hating the iPad because of the “walled garden”  each gaming console is itself a walled garden.  I agree in principle, but the reality is that every popular manufacturer of content consumption (games, ebooks, music and movies) have some level of that baked into their process.

Why I Hate the Apple iPad

Simply put, for me, it’s superfluous.  I have consoles, both mobile and static… I have an iPhone, I have a laptop and the iPad is just one more piece of beautiful technology that doesn’t replace any of these items, doesn’t really do anything that these things do significantly better and has some drawbacks that I just don’t have to live with in the context of my current digitally mobile life.  I hate it because I’m attracted to it.  I want it… I want to play games, experience what I’m sure will be a new way to perceive and experience games.

That’s the crux.  All I see now is potential, the iPad is a platform that has a beautiful, yet flawed architecture that holds an incredible potential.  I can see that potential and I can see how Apple has designed this product to be iterative, to blend in with digitally mobile lifestyle and I can see how good it can be.

From Gizmodo’s liveblog.  I’ll take a look at the gaming aspects of the new Apple iPad.

So, there it is. The Apple iPad. "meh" so far unimpressed.... c'mon Jobs, bring on the games!

At this point, I’m watching the liveblog event on Gizmodo and within minutes, tweets and status updates are furiously scrolling past, “OMGZZORS will TEH Twitt3r Breakz?”  There are comparisons to Roman emperors and all sorts of fascinating geekery happening.  So far, nothing about the iPad and gaming.

Instant critique: It’s not widescreen formatted (lame)

Instant like: It supports HD even in YouTube.  (neat)

It looks good.. but no widescreen? WTF?

Some technical stats are in:

The iPad is 0.5 inches thin, weighs just 1.5 lbs, 9.7 inch IPS display.  It’s thinner and lighter than any netbook.  H.264 up to 720p @ 30 frames per second.  This part, I like.  However, it STILL seems like an amped up iPod touch.  Sound is done in glorious mono.. wait, what?  MONO?  I’m sure that stereo headphones fix that problem.

This is no surprise... but still good. Can it handle 2 handed multi-touch? How will that change gaming?

First look at the app store.  Calendars, Contacts and Maps.  No Games yet….

Urge to kill.... Rising... no games!

Alright, here are the games.  You can play in tiny mode or full screen with low rez.

I'm still in the "meh" territory.

Not bad. but not impressed.

GameLoft is on the stage and they’re showing the game Nova, which is already on the iPhone.  In this game, on the iPad, you can slide your fingers across to throw a grenade, you can slide the D-pad up and down the screen and potentially customize UI elements.

You can “interact with the game world in ways that weren’t possible before”.  Not sure what this means, but i’m sure its a more sensitive multi-touch.

Alright, I'm almost hooked. For this iPad specific game, it looks really nice and there are some interesting UI/ Touch capabilities.

EA is taking the stage:

EA is showing Need for Speed and it looks damn good (not as good as the Xbox or PC versions though)  but it’s better than the iPhone.  Basically, if you play an iPhone game really close to your face, then you get the idea.

Mingames and other aspects to MLB on the iPad.

Jobs said that the guys from EA only had a few weeks to put these together, “Imagine what they’re going to do in the next few months.”

I’m intrigued.  The iPhone did a lot to put gaming into a new, more casual and widely distributed audience, which significantly changed the game space forever.  With the larger capacity, more sensitive multitouch, the HD capabilities, the iPad should present an interesting challenge to game designers, developers and game enthusiasts.

@ferricide (from Gamasutra) tweeted:

“so hacky iPhone ports will be all over the app store at launch. devs: let’s think ahead instead.”

While it’s really cool, and there are some aspects of the iPad that I’m liking… it’s not a game changer.  It looks gimmicky (from a gaming perspective) the good thing: it’s bigger than a PSP or DS, it supports HD and will have massive gaming support.

The bad news is that it’s probably going to be prohibitively expensive and you’ll still have to deal with the draconians at the Apple App Store.  (just don’t say “fuck” in your app… as Trent Reznor learned).  Another thing is the excellent critique that the iPad is not a Mac, it’s a giant iPod touch and that it’s proprietary innovations stifle competition and boost up a business that’s become more closed than Microsoft.

Well, I think that the gaming section of the iPad is pretty much done.

Overall impressions: it’s an interesting and fairly useful piece of tech.  However, it seems to me to be the “segue” of computers.  It’s not a smart phone, it’s not a laptop, it’s in between.  It’s got some decent functionality, but I’m not sold.  I can easily predict that the games will be significantly more expensive and, at first, shittier due to the flood of ports.   I’m just not convinced that there’s a need or a vulnerability in the gaming world to accept this.

Lastly, it’s priced at $499.  Which is more expensive than any console… but considering, this isn’t just a console.  Overall, not a bad deal, most pundits were expecting closer to the $1,000 mark.

Doesn’t suck.  I kinda want one, but I don’t think this is going to revolutionize gaming or the industry in the same way that the iPhone did.  Not even close.  However, I still feel like a jerk-wad for saying “iPad” out loud.  I now remember how I felt saying “Wii” for the first few days.

Image Credits: Gizmodo

Update: They’re using AT&T.  Dammit.

Update 2: More detailed pricing structure from IndustryGamers.com

“The $499 model gives consumers 16 GB of storage, with WiFi built-in. Then for $599, the storage steps up to 32 GB, and $699 brings it up to 64 GB. A 3G model will cost an extra $130. So that means for $829 you can get a 64 GB model with 3G. “

Update 3: Gamasutra has a very good article on the gaming aspects of the iPad.

By now, we’ve all seen Apple’s Mac vs. PC commercials. There’s Justin Long, the hip young and eternally helpful Mac guy, and then we have John Hodgman, the clueless but always trying PC.

When these ads started running, John Hodgman’s main claim to fame (to the public eye) were brief and hilarious spots on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  We in the geek community were already fans of him, he’s always been one of us, he speaks our language, he tells our jokes back to us in new and fresh ways.  Yet as Apple’s spokesman for the PC, he looks exactly what Apple wants people to see the PC and ultimately PC users as (well, those of us who haven’t moved on to Linux, but keep a Windows box for gaming).  Apple presented John Hodgman as the PC as clueless, inefficient, desperate, roundish, not very hip and stuck in the past with visions that his crazy plans will somehow work.

Justin, as the Mac, is the opposite of Hodgman.  He’s hip, young, a little scruffy, generally approachable, helpful in his own “we can make the world a better place” attitude & he generally gets the nod from the women in the commercials.  Justin walks a fine line, and often crosses it, between being hip and helpful to just being smug.

That’s the rundown on the Apple commercials.  Yet in the minds of geeks, who really has more credibility?  Which one of these guys really get us?  At what point does the familiarity, genuine affinity and connection with John Hodgman, the actor/ writer/ comedian, turn into a advertising and marketing liability to Apple for portraying the PC?

Here’s John Hodgman:

The dude was a neuroscientist who operated on a Cylon’s brain in Battlestar Galactica.  I don’t know if I’ve ever written a sentence with such a high geek ratio in my life!  That sentence had 14 words, and 5 of them were pure geek.  That’s a 35.71% geek word ratio!  He’s the “resident expert” on The Daily Show, and he’s apparently friends with the likes of Jonathan Coulton (at least on Twitter).  He was in Coraline and Flight of the Conchords.   He was also the comedian who roasted Obama at the Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner and declared that Obama is a geek like us.  That’s a hell of a geek resume.

Justin Long on the other had was in the horrible movie Live Free or Die Hard.  While it was a brainless ’splosion flick which, in honesty was the Bomberman: Act Zero to Die Hard’s Bomberman.  It was so bad, that Penny-Arcade skewered it.

Granted, I give Justin some props for being in Idiocracy (update: and of course, as Superman’s gay lover in Kevin Smith’s Zack & Miri make a porno)… what a great movie that was.  But Justin just doesn’t seem to have the geek cred to really speak to us.

It’s become painfully obvious that the Apple ads were initially fresh, inherently viral and really damn cool.  But they’ve evolved into “maintenance mode” where we get the point Apple is trying to make, we’ve heard the jokes, we’ve seen the gags now and because Justin’s the counterpoint to Hodgman, Justin just appears to be more shrill and smug than clever and hip.  yet the affinity geeks feel for Hodgman (and not for Long) could actually be translating into seeing Hodgman (the PC) as the one we’re rooting for now.

On the surface, this seems to be fine.  Apple is not marketing to geeks, nerds, gamers or anyone who has an opinion on the Sci-Fi vs. SyFy channel name change.  Yet, what Apple is seeming to forget is that while they may be marketing to non-geeks, word of mouth marketing and recommendations from trusted friends still trump any and all forms of marketing.  Who do non-geeks ask for their recommendation when they’re about to buy a computer?  Their geek friends.  With this in mind, can Apple change the dynamic of the commercial?  Can they start a new campaign?

What if they turned Hodgman into a Mac convert, they can make it a big deal, it would continue the narrative and it would speak to people who are on the fence of changing to Mac.  The problem is, who would become the new spokesman for PC?

I’d suggest Ben Stein.  He’s already skilled at shilling his Nixon era economic experience to anyone who’d wave a dollar bill at him (Clear Eyes, the predatory FreeScore.com & the propaganda hack piece Expelled) He’s still recongizable and can be believable as a PC.  Slow witted, faulty logic, random crashes and outbursts… Ben Stein would be the perfect spokesperson for PC.  It would be hilarious to see both Hodgman and Long rip into Ben Stein as the PC.

But seriously, at what point does Hodgman as the PC become a liability to the Apple brand as he becomes more endeared to geek culture.  Apple needs to market to us.  We already know what their OS can do, and generally, we like it.  We bitch and moan about Windows, but it’s a powerful and versatile gaming platform that runs DX10.

So, Apple, you’ve done a great job in introducing this commercial, you’ve started an imitable iconography that we all get.  But you’ve done such a great job… and we recognize Hodgman as “one of us” that it might be time to recognize that we like Hodgman more and that could cause us to (not like PC more) but like Justin Long as the Mac less.

Until then, play nice you guys.