Thursday, July 30, 2009

Brain Teaser

Want to hurt your brain a bit?

OK, so how do you know when you've made a decision? When you've weighed the evidence enough to be confident proceeding? Well, you have to decide that...but how do you decide when you're ready to make a decision? I guess you have to decide... whether you've made a decision on making a decision. Etc.

So yeah. Decisions might seem a little unexplainable then.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Crazy? Idea for Sony

However commendable Sony's PS3 efforts have been, it's clear that public opinion does not regard them fondly (frankly, with the press they've gotten, I think it's a wonder that they've sold as many units as they have). The Wii is handily winning both at mindshare and marketshare.

What would it take to put Sony back at the top? I think something pretty dramatic, and here's my suggestion.

What does the Wii have going for it? It's control system. That's pretty much it. But here's the thing...it's all standardized. So what if...Sony added the ability to use Wii controllers with the PS3?

Suspend your disbelief here for a second, because I think this kind of action would really have some powerful impact.

There's plenty of people that have a Wii, and Wiimotes / nunchucks aren't exactly hard to come by. It would save Sony plenty of development effort and licensing, and it would be a huge dramatic impact. Admitting that people like this kind of control...and then enabling them to play games that don't look like a downs sufferer made anime (feel free to replace with your own insult). What if you could play games with both beautiful graphics and the controls you want?

All Sony would have to do to enable this functionality would be to write the driver and create a USB attachment to power the sensor bar - both are trivial. The only truly hard part would be to enable developers to easily use this functionality, but that shouldn't take more than a small number months, at the very most.

It'd absolutely shock the market. It could be a big win...and Sony doesn't exactly have a lot of good press they'd risk loosing.

The only potential concern would be whether it would interfere with Sony's own motion controller. I think the augmented reality sounds really cool, and wouldn't want to see that fall by the wayside, either. There's a potential that they'd have to sacrifice it, but I really think they could just use this as a stepping stone. When it comes time to roll it out, there's even a good story to make it compelling.

"Last fall, we were proud to add the ability to use Wii controllers to our system. It really changed the gaming landscape. Today, though, we are going to go beyond that. When we started the project to enable the Wii controllers, we knew those controllers were designed for what ultimately is a simpler system. And we're seeing that today - these controllers are putting limitations on the games that use them. The capabilities of the PS3 simply go well beyond what the Wii controllers are able to support. So today, we're excited to show you a product that improves our motion controlling to a level of accuracy and granularity that can truly take advantage of the power the PS3 has to offer. Introducing the Sony *cool marketing name here* controller."

Don't forget the really cool augmented reality demos.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Amusing

Just something I found amusing:
http://www.pgathrills.com/special/passinfo/pass_benefits_09.cfm
Check out the platinum pass section. You get "Unlimited admission...including Knott’s Berry Farm..." and also "Discount admission to Knott’s Berry Farm ($35.95 ages 12-61..."

Simple copy/paste error? Yeah, probably. Maybe I'm easily amused.