Tag Archives: Bill Gates

June 30, 2015 · 11:33

Lack of vision

It is nice to see something else than the collapse of Greece, ISIS in Tunisia or one or two other things that have covered the front page in the last few days. Although the abuse I got from my statement “Greece is no longer for billionaires, many multi-millionaires can now afford to buy that country” has been hilarious. You see, it is all about vision. I foresaw some of the issues now in play months ago, I can also see the events as some of the status quo players are panicking as they need a solution, or lose a lot more than they bargained for. All that is almost a given. The media is looking at ‘sexy’ articles from economists on how austerity is wrong, but none of them are looking at the accountability a nation has, whilst not keeping its budgets in order is equally hilarious.

You see, the status quo people are all about continuation of THEIR needs.

This all links to the article ‘Twitter to co-founder Jack Dorsey: ‘We don’t want you’‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/twitter-dont-want-jack-dorsey), it is a week old now, but for some reason it had escaped my view. It is a decent article by Alex Hern, not just because of the way he wrote it, but the consideration given in there gives us another view that is the consequence of ‘lack of vision’.

In the article we get the quote “The Committee will only consider candidates for recommendation to the full Board who are in a position to make a full-time commitment to Twitter”. This is an interesting quote to have from a board, especially as Jack Dorsey is one of the co-founders of Twitter. The wiki quote “The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber” gives us another insight. Jack boy was at the heart of the birth of Twitter and this board is now stating that they rather have a full time commitment person. So as Jack is not the person they want, let’s take a look at the vision that Jack build.

Because of an issue one of Jacks friends had, he came up with another idea in 2008, it founded a company called Square. Even though Square is not doing too well, I personally think that this could be turned around. In my personal view competitors of Square have been having a go at this, because of the threat they feel. Square is a sound idea, I reckon it has a decent future if someone with international Gravitas (read: massive brass balls/boobs) gets involved. Even though Business insider has been a little too kind on Jack Dorsey (comparing him to Steve Jobs is a little bit of a stretch), it is clear that this man has vision.

In my view the quote “According to Nick Bilton, author of Hatching Twitter, that first ouster came because he didn’t spend enough time in the office, leaving work “around 6pm for drawing classes, hot yoga sessions and a course at a local fashion school”. “You can either be a dressmaker or the CEO of Twitter,” the company’s co-founder and Dorsey’s successor as chief executive, Evan Williams, reportedly told him, “but you can’t be both.””

On one side there is the idea that the speaker has a point, the other part is that the speaker needs to be a civil servant and not much more. This would reflect on Peter Currie, the chair of the committee, it seems that he was, or he knows where that quote came from, whilst he is identifying a permanent CEO, he seems to be missing the point. Being a 60 hours a week workaholic does not make the quality of work better. It just gives you grey hairs a lot faster, without the benefit of yummy moments whilst they changed colour.

You see, Jack Dorsey is one of those people who needs the additional things like hot yoga and additional fashion lessons because his next idea could be just one course away. One simple conversation, an interaction with for example a nurse trying to fathom the hammock for her little girl and jack could suddenly get that next golden idea, which is likely to benefit both Square and Twitter. For those board members (read: Evan Williams), let’s not forget that some people get their golden idea’s in other ways. It seems to me that from what I have seen, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams are opposites to a larger extent. If Jack Dorsey is seen as another Steve Jobs, than Evan Williams should be seen as the next Bill Gates. They are totally opposite and whilst the board is trying to figure out which alpha designer they should side with, it might not be a bad idea to find a way to make it work with both. Having two visionaries in your flock is beyond extremely rare. I personally side with the Jack Dorsey’s. I have no business pattern no set discipline, other than my dedication to get the job done. Beyond that my mind wanders on other venues, trying to solve that next puzzle. In that view I saw that hiring specific people for Square could solve their customer service part. Consider the quote from Gigaom (at https://gigaom.com/2009/12/01/jack-dorsey-on-square-why-it-is-disruptive/) “My view is that Square (or something like Square) is going to disrupt the businesses of companies such as VeriFone and Symbol, a division of Motorola that makes point-of-sale devices. Verifone makes a $900 wireless credit card terminal vs. Square, which runs on a $299 iPod touch“.  Yes, this 2009 quote is industrious in shape, size and concern. Whilst places like Verifone are sitting on a business model that does work, Square revolutionised the idea overnight, basically, small business owners would have a tread stone of growth whilst avoiding all kinds of initial investments. Square is that golden idea the interaction of technology and innovation. That is at the heart of vision, how to make it all work differently!

What will be the next vision?

Consider these quotes: ‘People Want Safe Communications, Not Usable Cryptography‘ and ‘76 percent of consumers were not very satisfied with technology’s ability to make their lives simpler‘. There is a market, its consumer base is greying and they need a simpler solution that gives them access without heartburn of an instant stroke after a dozen error messages. The need for simple interface software, but with a range of options is a desire for literally the young and the old. The young because they don’t comprehend, the old because they don’t want the hassle. In all this, markets that are reason for powerful growth and Twitter is in the thick of it. Which means having both Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams is a good thing. If the G-spot of financial advisors is a growing customer base, than the revolution of both Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, could spell an age of loads of financial orgasms, so as we cater to an evolving mass of people, one cannot have too many visionaries in one building. In all this there is the hardware that changes and the software that grows, whilst the media remains hungry. In all this, vision is the key to unlocking the universe where we live in.

So when we see the quote “Project Lightning is one: the new feature sees Twitter taking an active editorial role during live events, seeking out the best content both on and off the network and embedding it in a dedicated section of the social network’s app“, with the mentioned similarity to Snapchat’s Live Stories, we have to consider that Twitter is now entering an iterative state where it follows ‘other peoples visions‘ to grow its base, in all this I state that catering to the eccentricities of both Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams might be the solution to come up with something new, making Snapchat follow the new Twitter ideas, not the other way round.

So in this we see the need for vision, not to applaud the lack of it.

This we see in the article ‘How same-sex marriage could ruin civilisation’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/jun/29/same-sex-marriage-ruin-civilisation-science), please do not worry, there is a link in all this!

Let me start saying that as a Christian, I do not care! I think any person should find the happiness that they feel they deserve, if that is in a same gender relationship, than that is just fine with me. Finding happiness is already rare enough, having it denied is just utterly counterproductive. You see, someone Facebooked Leviticus 20:13 the other day “If there is a man who lies with a male, he should be stoned“, the fact that the US legalised marijuana the same time it legalised gay marriage is just slightly hilarious when you consider Leviticus. It is all about looking differently at things.

Which is not the view the Guardian article had by the way. Now we get the quotes “Constant exposure to rainbows could mean people can’t see colours as well, and this could be disastrous. How will they know when to stop or go at a traffic light? Or which wire to cut when defusing a bomb?“, which some would call ludicrous, because we can always appreciate colours, only the colour-blind have a predicament, so they will not pass military service requirement, which means they will never defuse a bomb, as for the traffic lights, they can see when the top, the middle of the bottom light is on, which means there is no impact on that either, a science article loaded with half-baked truths and inconsequential arguments. This is how we should see some boards of directors. Their fear of requiring a status quo is now possibly hindering progress.

We need to move forward by innovation, by doing something different, because stimulating the brain is the cornerstone of innovation. For people like Evan Williams, it seems to be narrowly focussing on something related, which is fair enough, for some people that makes a difference, for people like Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey it is to get exposed to a field of events as wide as possible. It is not entirely unlikely that Jack will attend a course in Biomathematics only to come up with a new biometrics concept that will ensure data security for the next generation. All missed because a board of directors has an issue with what they called ‘dress making’.

You see, I find their stance slightly offensive, it is for that same reason I have been so harsh on Ubisoft. After it made its billion, it moved deeper into business models, which is a bad thought, I understand it from a business point of view, yet consider that video games are art. A business model will decrease the chance of failure, yet in my view it equally destroys the option of ‘exceptional’, the line between ‘genius’ and ‘murky’ is pretty thin. I listened for too long to corporate short-sightedness only to realise too late that they were clueless to begin with. People fixed on PowerPoint presentation de-evolving from ‘status quo’ to ‘getting by’.

And my evidence? Ubisoft has not produced any revolutionary game with a 90% plus rating (truly revolutionary games, not what their marketing calls revolutionary) for some time. The next evolution in games is mostly coming from the independent scene, those pushing forward on their own, remoulding a view and bringing true originality. Examples of this view is Mojang (Minecraft), Campo Santo (Firewatch), The Chinese Room (Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture) and Hello Games (No Man’s Sky), there are more, the larger players have been slacking in titles and in quality of games. They forgot to take a leap of faith, whilst relying on business models.

We see this more and more, considering that Elder Scrolls online has had massive delays, than the PS4 community gets “it’s even worse considering some cannot play on the games release date“, which is after a year delay. I came up with a sequel to Skyrim early 2014, no online, no multiplayer, just an option to make millions of gamers happy. It took me three hours to get the first idea, a few more hours to put part of this to paper. In addition, I randomly designed a new game in my head, no business model can correct for this. Is that it? No, I came up with a new concept for the game developing of RPG games. It remains in my head because I am a decent database programmer (as well as data cleaner and so on), but I am not really a programmer, which gives me a slight disadvantage. I will work it out sooner or later (likely later as I am finishing a law degree).

So I feel for Jack Dorsey and I am on his side. In the end, Jack will come up with another golden idea which will bring him millions, I hope he does that. That board of directors is another matter, these people seem to get the quorum to hold on to status quo and they will also have a person to blame when issues go south. This is at the core of my resentment of ‘the business model’ in the field of creation. It depends on what was and cannot truly value that what has not been made yet.

It is a lack of vision that drives us into extinction, not time. Because time makes us old, vision makes us wise.

 

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October 16, 2014 · 10:06

Views from an audience

This is a great day! Today I got confronted with John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) having a go at Russell Brand. I grew up in the age of Rotten, so the few times he speaks out, I will definitely listen. So seeing Mr Lydon speak out against Mr Brand and the politics of today, you are in for a treat (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2014/oct/15/john-lydon-russell-brand-revolution-video). His quote to the working class is “get smart, read as much as you can and find out who’s using you!“, a better statement regarding politics has not been made in 2014!

He was also outspoken against Ukip, whom he referred to as ‘You Kip!’ (So whether he refers to them as a herd following untanned pieces of hide, you the person asleep or a useless piece of weight (1000Lbs), it could even be all of the above!

Watching the interview was great fun, not just because I saw Johnny Rotten, but because the man is sharper then a razor, he sees anarchy in one way, me I always saw it a little different, but his view is great none the less. At the end he gives us this jewel “If you don’t contribute, or in some way try to reshape the society around you, you will have no effect and therefor become ignored, condemned“. He ends up seeing Russell Brand as a lifestyle of cardboard boxes by the river, making the others homeless whilst he preaches from a mansion. It is a strong view, but how did this get started? We need to take a look at the other side of that table.

I have seen Russel primarily as a comedian, yet his show trying to imbue ‘social awareness’ with his dormant style of subtlety tended to have an effect on me. He was at times a little too loud for me, but he did make me want to listen to it a little more, which means that there is something in what he claims or proclaims at times.

So what is this about?

Well, Russel Brand has been promoting his book (at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/oct/15/russell-brand-occupy-wall-street-protesters-video) and as he occupies Wall Street we see a person who is trying to say as much as he can as quickly as he can, but is this wrong? Russel states: “creating social enterprises that are not for profit and represent people“. This is nice, to create a book not for profit, yet the man is already wealthy, so does that influence things?

Here my view personally skews a little. We see how Bill Gates is pouring millions into all kinds of philanthropy and social programs. Yet, we seem to forget how he got there! It did start with an idea that caught on, yet over time, the use of monopoly approaches to prevent growth and stop innovation has been on his record too. Yet, if we paint with a large brush we tend to not see the details of the events, which is ultimately dangerous. This latter part becomes visible when we look at the 2001 Cartel charge against Microsoft when we see the Microsoft v Palm issues rise. In the Dutch Newspaper we see “In advertenties prijst Microsoft de kracht aan van organisers die van zijn besturingssoftware zijn voorzien. ‘Kan uw Palm dit?’, wordt de lezer gevraagd. Die lezer kan alleen in de kleine lettertjes onderaan de advertentie lezen dat de Microsoft-organiser alleen tot de kunststukjes in staat is dankzij extra voorzieningen. De handhelds van Palm beschikken daar standaard over“ [translated] “in the advertisement Microsoft praises the power of their organiser using Microsoft operating systems. ‘Can your Palm do this?’ is asked of the reader. Only in the small print at the bottom that Microsoft can only do this with additional accessories, whilst the Palm can do these things in a standard configuration“.

Here we see not the works of Cartel, but the use of quality advertising. The fact that this is brought in this way gives in my view weakness to the papers, as they could have shown in clear detail what Palm vs. Microsoft achieves in a tech article. This is not what I regard to Cartel acts. When I spoke out against the monopoly acts of Microsoft, I referred to their acts versus Netscape with the first browser war. There we saw clear Microsoft monopoly in action, Netscape lost and would become the foundation of Firefox, which is still around today. All that happened in the age of Gates!

So is Brand the new Internet Explorer? No, he is not, but as Johnny Lydon shows us, it could be stated that Russel Brand is going around it the wrong way and as such will cause more harm than good. Can I agree? He speaks a few things that seem to make sense to us all, but does that give him more strength in his convictions? It might on a personal level, yet it also comes fraught with dangers. I agree with Johnny Lydon 199.5%. This makes sense if we consider the Dutch proverb ‘A warned man counts as two‘, or ‘Warned is forearmed‘, which now gives me an unweighted power of 200%. Johnny states the reasons, as I quoted quite clearly, find out who is using you least, see if you can live with that (what does the politician do that helps you) and if not, go for his opponent. That seems to be clear and makes a good call. When we see Russel Brand in BBC Newsnight (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YR4CseY9pk), we see a view it is hard to agree with, but Russell does make one point, the current system is NOT working. As we see governments enabling big business, leaving more and more issues out of bounds and as they are less about budgets and more about debt driven spending, we see that the new powerbase is not of votes, but by those who holds debt markers, yet not voting seems to be a radical (a train Johnny Rotten knows), yet non workable solution.

You see, in my view, as I have stated it before, when the budgets collapses, and the debt are accounted away (likely not by Pricewaterhouse Coopers), when as a result currency collapses, the new currency will be in hands of the owners of the Intellectual Properties, which currency has but one master, the company that holds the IP and it subjugates all others to these services. And consider that IP is for 99% in hands of non-governments. Yet at times Russell does make good points, which makes his approach so appealing, yet he seems to forget that he is now in a largely comfortable life with a large bank account. Jeremy Paxman shows a good deal too, he is on Russell’s case without letting up, it is quite the interview. So even though facetiousness is funny (at times) as Russell correctly points out, he missed the point, one massive point as I see it, not once did he call for accountability of large business and politicians. There is a second part where Russell loses out. I think in the end, these cases are an interesting topic. Yet, does a more radical solution work? Russell does show vigour as he brings his case, yet it is the pragmatic view of Johnny Lydon that makes Russell lose out. I reckon that Jeremy Paxman had Russell figured out after 10 seconds, you see, the speed Russell talks at is so high that not unlike the passing Ferrari, we see something gorgeous and we desire it, but then when it strolls by, we notice the seats to be not comfortable, no extra’s and then we see the price tag. Russell is the same, we see him fly by with a 150 words a second dictionary and the words we hear seem to make sense, yet when he slows down and we take the words in the proper speed, we see the issues that Russell is indeed very intelligent but his view is not an effective one, his revolution (or revelution) makes sense, but it requires the machine he opposes and that cannot be avoided, no amount of intelligence will ever change that.

So I would take sides with Johnny Lydon, yet there is no denying that Russell Brand offers an appealing view, but there is no current way that his view can work, even though his views are whacky, they are stated in a very passionate way. There is one guarantee that I can give, if Russell Brand ever gets elected to parliament, there will not be a sleepy person in the entire House of Commons, which would be a unique event to say the least.

If there is one part that is in favour of Russell Brand is that although the pragmatic approach of Johnny Lydon is pragmatic, I give one additional marker to Russell, because the current system is not working, yet I feel that in the end that unless the system changes, we are all pretty much screwed (Johnny Rotten would have used the ‘F’ word). My opposing view is that I believe that the system can be improved if we are not just a nation of Laws, but also a nation of accountability, that last word is the one that will give us either an improvement, or the exploiters will leave and we can put people in place that will improve our world, yet this path of change will not go fast.

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September 14, 2014 · 22:26

The fear of creativity

It was not that long ago that I wrote the blog ‘Sandbox Games’. Now I learn that Microsoft has offered 2 billion for Mojang. 2 billion is not much when you say it fast, but the reality is that this is a massive amount of money, even with the ludicrous high taxation norm in Sweden, what is left with leave the man ‘Notch’ with an amazing amount of luxury time to come up with something new and unique. You see, visionaries like that cannot sit still. He might think he can, he might actually truly believe he can, but visionaries like Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriot and a few others never do. Now Swedish Markus Persson joins this group!

Some did not agree with my view given on September 5th, which is fine, but the facts seem to back me up. In the same story there was also an issue with subscriptions, and behold we see ‘World of Warcraft Loses 800,000 Subscribers in Three Months‘ (source: Gamespot), now let it be known that this fact was out before I wrote my blog, so I am not giving any weight to this. It is only my voice that claims that I did not see this until now. There is however another side in the article. It claims: “The company called the decline ‘seasonal’ and pointed out that the dip in subscribers was similar to what we saw in the second quarter of 2012, ahead of the release of World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria“, this is a fair enough answer for now, but overall Blizzard is not out of the woods yet, even though the nextgen versions of Diablo 3 are as wildly wanted as any other version they released, which makes for a quality long term dedicated relationship between Blizzard and their gaming fans. I feel the same way and hope on an additional Act 6, hopefully with the Necromancer and the Assassin.

There is another side to all this, at present several gamers are feeling the cold breath of Sony in several ways. First there is the change that only when online, can a person see his trophies, the port from PS3 to PS4 also came with losses, the gamers at large lost PlayStation Home, and it is such a coincidence that rumours from so many games places up to the days before the release of the PS4 have since gone quiet. Yet, recently Games industry dot biz gave us the following quote “Sony’s virtual world Home will close in Asia and Japan in March 2015, according to an announcement on the official Japanese site“. This has a few consequences down the road, because all you have bought, and all you buy now, will be utterly lost to you. So no more houses, no Harry Potter, no Hogwarts and a league of other items bought will at some point be lost.

We now see two issues:

  1. A console purchase might be temporary at best, and as this market evolved we see a move towards leasing, not buying games. I personally think that this is a dangerous development. We feel for that what we consider we own. Which means that this would enable places like Pirate Bay to grow vastly, even potentially in a exponential way, giving us a new issue, but mostly giving certain corporations new nightmares.
  2. The acquisition of Mojang (if it happens), could be the start of a new wave of indie developers (I really hope so). 99.8% will never have the visionary gene Mojang has, but those who do would soon be bought out and these amounts of money do tend to give the creativity gene the hyperactive status.

Finally I get to have a small go at Pirate Bay. I am no fan of theirs, if you like a movie, or soundtrack, you buy it! I have and lately I have not been able to, but that does not mean I am going all out with downloads. Yet, they could have other options; it seems to me that a large chunk of the population would not like certain steps to be taken to the public. IMPORTANT! Sony has not announced any changes outside of Asia/Japan, but is that such a far-fetched consideration?

I personally see these developments as dangerous for Microsoft/Sony. Yes they are NextGen, yet overall consider the success of Minecraft, people want a GOOD game, is that Google contraption (ouya) such a bad option? Ubisoft can go high-resolution all they want, but if people see their payments dwindle away, another issue will come knocking on their doors too. Ubisoft delivered, I think that it was partially because Watchdogs was new and on NextGen there was NOTHING, so there! Yet, this is not fair either. Yes, it has certain repetitiveness, not unlike the initial Assassins Creed, yet what came after (AC2 and AC2 brotherhood) was such an amazing leap forward, that it pardoned the mediocrity of AC Revelations and AC3 as they were to some degree ignored. This could also be the case for Watchdogs; whatever follows could set entirely new records (hopefully not dependable on cars all the time).

Because of my personal view of a failed Black Flag, I hold out for Unity at present, yet the initial views are a lot more interesting than any presentation of Black Flag EVER was. Yet, in Forbes magazine we see an additional view “If Far Cry 4 is anywhere as good as its predecessor”, and I agree. I kept away from Far Cry 3, for the mere reason that the original Far Cry on 360 was the worst game I played on that console, Far Cry 3 is not that. It had in my view a few issues, but nothing major. Far Cry 4 could set a new boundary and in gaming that is NEVER EVER a bad idea.

So where will gamers go to next? Well, that remains to be seen, but they tend to go where the games and the gaming value is. That part has been forgotten by both big boys Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo is picking up a little, yet the Google console could pick up a lot and they could do it a lot sooner too. Consider that a game like Minecraft can get any person to switch, now consider a treasure trove of great games, or even decently satisfying games. The CBM-64, Atari ST and CBM Amiga, three systems that have a league of quality history, that is even before we consider the early PC games, all waiting to be rediscovered by an entire generation of new players. With a system that can run it, independent developers who can re-engineer it and an eager audience ready to try and buy it.

System shock (1+2), Dungeon Master, Dungeon Keeper, Oidz, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima series, Wing Commander series and Lemmings (believe me, there will always be space for Lemmings). The list goes on and on. Giving it here will keep you needlessly busy for too many hours. I have played hundreds of them and I still smile thinking of some of them. If we could enjoy them in a system with 64Kb, why must we get pushed into impossible hardware requirements? Even today Fallout 3 and Oblivion have never lost their charm. Diablo 3 is another example, yes there is more graphics and resolution, yet both Diablo 1 and 2 have not lost their charm. It is clearly not just the resolution, but a basic form of gameplay that appeals to us.

As the gaming industry is pushing more and more to new micro transactional business models, it is within our grasp to push back and walk towards other solutions that is not about holding us ransom to a monthly fee. Yet, all is not fine there either. At present these monthly MMO’s are doing just fine, ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) with a little over 770,000 subscribers, millions of dollars come in on a monthly base, yet for how long? When the economy is good, many might not care, yet in the view of current developments, that revenue wire will become ever increasingly thinner, then what? At some point many will be forced to select 1-2 of their favourite games to continue, which leaves a gap soon enough, as the business model ‘fails’, or better stated, as the net income will not be in the area of acceptable numbers, what will these companies do then?

I stated it before, there is space if you change the premise of the player and change the options for play, be more fluidic. In my initial view it was a new mapping system, using established locations, but what else can be done? This is at the heart of many contemplations by gamers all over the world, this is partially (IMHO), because the new player tends to be smarter and is also more inclined to listen to their personal friends on social media, so 1-5 will drive the change of 25-100. It becomes a different issue, and if too many of these people are in the student budget ballpark, then the word ‘micro transactions’ will drive them away a lot faster. We will always have novelty moments with Unity (even though the main story line can be completed under 20 hours), Elder Scrolls Online, no one denies that, but the time that EVERYONE goes into the WOW mode is pretty much a given impossibility. I personally believe that WOW continues, not just because they are good (they are good, no one denies that), but the bulk continues because of the vested time they have on their characters. However, WOW is pretty much the only game that can rely on such a level of comfort, or make a claim anywhere near it.

I reckon that as No Man’s Sky develops, the eyes and ears will move more and more in that direction. The ‘promise’ of eternal gaming sandbox style is a lot more appealing than many realise, if you think I am wrong, then wonder why Microsoft is willing to pay 2 billion for a ‘basic’ looking game like Minecraft. Mojang got it just right and re-engineering a wannabe is a lot harder than shelling out 2 billion (Bill Gates likely found it in a jacket he brought to the dry cleaners).

This is the fear these larger players have, not that Minecraft is such a success, but the fear that 2-3 new indie developers have that one idea no one in the high income suits had thought of. Minecraft already represents a low billion and that is only at the start of nextgen gaming. As the game moves from system to system, that revenue will only increase, the secondary danger they fear is as the game is there on Nintendo and other consoles, the uniqueness of nextgen becomes smaller and smaller. A fear that only sounds more and more overwhelming as some regard the failure of Sims 4 and other established brands like Mass Effect are delayed until 2015, which could spell more consequences for the NextGen population, but none of this is new, so why come with this again?

Here we are not looking for the failing established brands (well not really), but the other side of the established makers, the indie developers are getting slowly but surely a new option to shine, as some issues by Sony and Microsoft have not been going forward, we see a growing interest of android development games. this we see (at http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/23/google-play-quarterly-app-revenue-more-than-doubled-over-past-year-thanks-to-games-freemium-apps/) where we see the title ‘Google Play Quarterly App Revenue More Than Doubled Over Past Year, Thanks To Games, Freemium Apps‘, now, I myself do not see my mobile as a gaming tool, but with the Chrome books and the Google ouya, we see a new player and his/her title is ‘gaming enabled’, a group that seems to have been forgotten by executives and gamers alike (myself partially included). Now look back at the games I mentioned earlier and now at the games that Rare developed for the N64. Games released between 1996 and 2003, some became the standard of excellent gaming. The N-64 original of Golden Eye is a lot better than the Wii remake and the Xbox had Time Splitters 3, but then they forgot to make a good compatible version for the 360. a host of games ignored, now ready for grabbing on low end consoles with the promise of great gaming, a premise the high end executives all forgot about.

This is a change in gaming that we had ignored!

We all seem to naturally want to move forward, but is such a step even affordable? Consider that there is a market going towards Christmas, many not able to scrap the coins together for Nextgen, yet the ouya with 3 games at $109 (the price of one nextgen game in Australia) is another matter. good business is where you find it (Robocop quote), that is a reality we have to face, the ‘better’ economy position for many is not getting released until past Q1 in 2015, so if you are an indie developer get used to creativity, because if you get that nice idea out into the open, there is a potential group of well over 100,000,000 gamers who cannot afford a nextgen system with an included game, especially if the android solution is set at 25%, it is an alternative to consider. A global population going the way of pragmatism, one good game is all they need.

This gets us back to my blog ‘The Toothless tiger‘, which I wrote last week (September 8th). I wrote “larger companies have been all about continuing a brand and less about the new idea, which makes indie developers the future (consider the massive success of Mojang with Minecraft), that is the streamline part all ignored“. I truly believe this, which makes the foundations of NextGen rather shaky as cash strapped developers will move towards an open android environment. It also gives us an interesting side effect. The larger players are so used to having the large pool of resources to drown in, that the limits of android will bring forth the old developers as they designed for Commodore and Atari. Games that are slim, sleek and possibly even decent bug free, which in turn gives waves of additional creativity. Will this come to pass? It seems a logical conclusion, but I am not sure. Personally I hope it will and I also hope we will see additional non-male developers, they can shine in this field just as easy as their male counterparts. Time will tell!

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November 23, 2013 · 16:45

A joke called ‘the Press’!

There is an absolute air of disillusion within me. I knew for some time that the press, claiming to be so worthy of self-regulation seems to look at the things that matter, but on which scale? This is of course their rights, but it seems wrong to ignore a market that impacted over 32 million in the EU, with a large chunk of that in the UK. When changes are being made on several levels, impacting millions, the silence is way too weird. Could they perhaps gain Advertisement space?

You see, Sony is in serious trouble. They have made a step, perhaps even a final step. The market of over a hundred million is gone. The PS3 sold less than their first PlayStation and they barely passed the 50% sales mark of the PlayStation 2. Questions on several levels are made and even though the PS4 launch price is only 75% of the price of the PlayStation 2, the stakes are high!

My PlayStation 2, which I got on day 1 (European launch date) had lived through the years until last year, when I donated it with a ton of games (still functioning perfectly) to the children’s ward of a hospital. Even the original controllers had never failed me. So, I have been a faithful fan for almost 4 generations of consoles. Consider that this is a multimillion user market (with according to the latest numbers almost 95 million people with a PSN account), it becomes a worry when Sony changes the rules, making it illegal to sell your games (trade in) and no one takes a hard look at it. It will impact us here, but it will hit our smaller island (aka United Kingdom) a lot harder, with millions of gamers in financial hardship. Many will not be able to buy a PlayStation 4, and now, with the pre-owned market under attack, the papers, the news and others remain silent.

It is unsettling to say the least.

Why is it such a big deal?

Consider that the Commonwealth economy gets hit, losing in one area a few million consumers because pre owned games are now illegal, more shops need to get closed as they lose revenue. We see more and more articles via game sites (not by the renowned press places) stating ‘Sony reiterates that PlayStation 4 supports used games’, then why make selling your game illegal in the Sony User agreement? This is all in the week before launch, this is all about getting traction and this happens under the allowing and supporting eyes of the press. No questions are asked! Big business calls the shots and changes the market.

This paraphrased quote came from Ethical consumer: “Sony received Ethical Consumer’s middle rating. Sony had subsidiaries in tax havens which were considered to be at lower risk of being used for tax avoidance strategies. However due to a lack of country-by-country reporting it is hard to tell whether a company is paying the correct tax or not. Multinational companies often shift profits between subsidiaries in different jurisdictions, allowing them to dump their costs into high-tax jurisdictions which can be deducted against tax, and shift their profits to tax havens, where they pay little or no tax.”

So Sony is no Google or Amazon, but it does play the legally allowed tax game. That is not a crime mind you, but avoiding tax on one side, and then slice the commerce that does pay taxation on the other side is getting a bit rich. In the end, governing costs money, not paying it means less to support. Worried about the lessened legal aid? Then look at the people using tax shelters!

So as we see the issues of pre-owned games, we see that MCV UK had the same issue, they had the quote from Sony Boss Shuhei Yoshida stating “If you are concerned about our new European TOS, we confirm that you are able to sell or share your disc PS4 products, including in EU.“, so again the issue remains, why make it illegal in the user agreement? A statement can be regarded as ‘erroneous’; an agreement is a binding contract. So the issue remains, can Sony be trusted and why is the press not all over this?

MCV (by Intent Media) is not the upscale journalism place on the grand journalistic scale of things, yet they are all over something the press in general should not be ignoring, so why is the press doing that? There is a third side to this that makes the silence of the press (with the almost unique exclusion from Brendan Molloy of the Guardian in this instance) even more worrying. The statement given by Shuhei Yoshida, should after that fact be regarded as a joke (and a bad one at that).

The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) is linked as this charter when we look at one part that set to the following “Criminalise the activities of small business by making every single infringement with the slightest commercial element into a criminal act“.

This means that breaking the user agreement, no matter what Shuhei Yoshida states, means that reselling your game makes that person eligible for criminal prosecution (and in other paragraphs, the shops selling them could find themselves in a similar predicament).

It is important to note that these thoughts come from other sources and even though Wiki leaks presented the full document confirming this, the fact remains that this is not the final published document. What is important to know is that steps are taken to gratify the agreement within the next 6 weeks, whilst according to the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/30/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-dfat)

The Australian political players involved were either not thinking straight or way too eager to please Microsoft and Sony in these matters, because those are the two players DIRECTLY benefiting from this in a massive way and this goes far beyond their consoles, this is a massive play for profit! Not only will they avoid trade tariffs by 90% at present, they pay almost zero taxation after the fact as well (at present). It seems utterly unacceptable that we open doors to government sanctioned tax havens whilst those big businesses pluck us clean and remain empty on responsibilities on the other hand. With Australia getting 30% – 60% more charged on games and other digital media, we seem to be getting the short end of the stick on many levels. This TPP is a bad idea on many levels and the impression is given that Australia seems to accept the advice from the US. I find it interesting to see a picture of a smiling Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, as she makes small talk with one of the two partners that cannot seem to get their own house in order, at minus 17 trillion the US might not be the actual player in charge. This TPP reads like a joke; it gives additional powers to big business, whilst that big business avoids billions in taxation (in the US alone). In my personal view, how stupid do you need to get here? America has done NOTHING to take on big business and tax avoidance. All their promises have been hollow at best! Acts that have been years in the drawer, issues are ignored and no one take the dangers we are getting to at present serious (they claim to do so and then shelf any acts until the 11th hour). The second partner I referred to is Japan, a nation that is presently holding on to a debt twice the size of their own GDP. So why are John Kerry and Fumio Kishida there, when their governments are basically bankrupt? Doesn’t it make for more honesty to have the TPP with Bill Gates and Kazuo Hirai? They seem to have ended up with the non-taxed revenues.

If we look at the world we just gave away and the innovative world we always fought for, it seems we are making several steps backward, steps that will hurt us for a long time to come, whilst the benefactors are those who remain behind the screens already owning more than god ever did. The greed game usually ends up having roughly up to 99.9992% of the affected being victims, why enforce it even further?

Even though the TPP will not hit the UK directly, these events will lead up to changes that also hit the UK shores sooner rather than later. Even though Tax avoidance seems to be ‘sexy’ enough for the press in general, the Microsoft tax avoidance issues (in the UK around AU$ 2 billion), seems to remain ignored when we consider that Microsoft is all about becoming ‘the entertainment system’ and as such we will soon enough buy TV series and movies online, whilst taxation loses out, which means that at almost no tax, consumers will end up with a temporary product whilst the government gets nil, shops will be driven back even further in economic despair, whilst ‘retransmission laws’ are changing giving the consumer less and less options to see that what they desire (and when they do, likely only by certain rules and certain providers).

All this hits back to the press remaining silent on many of these events. Why?

 

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