The Oscars were a non-event this year for Sony -the studio took home only one gold statue-but Sir Howard Stringer was in town with plenty to celebrate. The globe-trotting Sony Corporation chief was fresh off his company's triumph in the high stakes, high-definition video player wars.

On February 19, Stringer was en route from Tokyo to London to attending a movie premiere and then a party for his 66th birthday when Toshiba held a press conference announcing that it would stop producing its less expensive, Microsoft-backed HD DVD players and would cede the battle to Sony-led Blu Ray.

It was somehow fitting that Sir Howard's next stop on his world tour would be Hollywood, because it was here that the Blu Ray battle was ultimately won-Toshiba only threw in the towel after the Warner Brothers studio decided last month to stop releasing its DVDs in both formats and to go exclusively with Blu Ray.

The victory was not only crucial to proving Stringer's strategy of showing that Sony's entertainment, electronics and games businesses could work together but - perhaps more critically-helped exorcise the ghosts of its failed Betamax video tape format that has haunted the halls at Sony for two decades. "I was a pain in the ass on this," Stringer told me. "Because of the Betamax experience, we made it clear to everyone that this was a Sony corporate mission."

Indeed, the pathos behind the Betamax saga can't be overstated. The early years of Sony's ownership of the Columbia movie studio in the early 1990s were legendarily disastrous and held up as the ultimate clash of cultures.

Brian Roberts, now the head of America's giant cable company Comcast, recently recounted to Stringer his first visit to Sony as part of a US cable industry group. Then Sony chief Akio Morita grew enraged when asked whether he was unhappy with buying Columbia, which had resulted in a $3.2-billion write-down in 1994. "You Americans don't understand." Morita shot back.

"We clearly had the best product with Betamax-but Hollywood picked VHS." In an email, Roberts recounted the encounter as very un-Japanese in its emotion. "And I vividly remember, with fire in his eyes what he said next: 'That will never happen to Sony again."

Fast forward a decade or so to 2005, when Sir Howard was the surprise choice to lead troubled Sony as its first non-Japanese CEO. Here was a former journalist and media executive who moved easily in Hollywood circles.

Sony had already taken the huge gamble of deciding to build a Blu Ray player inside its PlayStation 3 game console, which was a big factor in getting the big studios Disney and Fox to commit exclusively to it. (The idea was that such a move would help the technology gain consumer acceptance and provide consumers a bargain way to buy a Blu Ray player since a PS3 alone was less than half the price of the first Blu Ray players).

The only problem was that by building a new, unproven technology into a highly-anticipated game unit led to the kinds of production delays and cost increases that were hobbling Sony.

The PS3 came out in late 2006 to a mixed reception, and, initially, no one was sure whether anyone who bought one really cared whether it came with a newfangled video player. And, unlike the advent of video-cassette recorders which were first introduced to let people record their favorite TV shows, the progress form regular standard to high definition represented a leap in picture quality, but not in how people actually consumed entertainment.

Of course, any new product lives or dies by its relationship with retailers and its appeal to consumers. Stringer contends that Blu Ray was a better, more advanced technology with more storage capability that would come in handy down the road. HD DVD had the advantage of cheaper players and mighty backers from the get-go. The result was that sales of high-def video players came a steady trickle, with most consumers not wanting to commit to a format that might end up quickly obsolete.

It's now clear, though, that the biggest factor behind Sony's success was its efforts to get as many of Stringer's Hollywood mogul pals as possible to commit and stay exclusively to Blu Ray. And, he said with a laugh: "Nobody does anybody a favor in this town."

When it began selling the players nearly two years ago, Sony had signed on Walt Disney and Fox, and later wooed Lion's Gate and secured the library of MGM by leading a consortium to buy that studio. That left Warner Brothers, Paramount and Dreamworks (which subsequently merged) and NBC Universal to win over. The latter was exclusively supporting HD DVD from the get-go, while Viacom-owned Paramount/Dreamworks jolted Sony last August and announced it would no longer release discs in both formats and was going with HD DVD.

Both camps knew that Warner Brothers was planning to make a decision about whether to continue supporting dueling formats by the end of 2007. If it went with HD DVD, the stalemate would have gone on for years-or worse, other studios might have ...

Woe be the PC game developer these days, as various reports put piracy rates in the U.S. at approximately 70-85%.

Pirates?! I'm supposed to be fighting a hydra!
It's no wonder that Epic Games is dumping PC games for the greener pastures of console gaming: piracy rates for the U.S. market alone are hovering around 80%!

And beyond the U.S., the piracy picture becomes even larger and more menacing -- especially if you're an independent developer without "Madden-sized advertising budget," said THQ Director of Creative Management Michael Fitch, who laid out his case against piracy and hardware manufactures in an epic rant at the Quarter to Three forums.

In the post, Fitch attacked pirates, the PC software security model and everything in between. In Europe, he said, piracy rates approach 90%. In Asia, those figures are "off the charts."

"I didn't believe [the data] at first. It seemed way too high. Then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1. These are hardcore games, shooters, classic PC audience stuff. Given the difference in install base, I can't believe that there's that big of a difference in who played these games, but I guess there can be in who actually payed for them," Fitch said.

These are hard numbers for any PC developer to ignore, and from the tone of Fitch's message board rant the other day, things are likely to get much worse before they get better. Or should that be "if" they get better?

http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=165488 ...

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The time-honored tradition of stodgy men arguing over things they know nothing about continued in England during last Friday's game censorship debate in the House of Commons, with MP Keith Vaz showing us how it's done while speaking in defense of Julian Brazier's bill to add a censorship level above the British Board of Film Classification. In comparing the interactivity of video games to movies, Vaz unleashed this little gem:

However, someone sitting at a computer playing a video game, or someone with one of those small devices that young people have these days, the name of which I forget-- [Interruption.] PlayStations or PSPs, something of that kind.

"Well, whatever they are called, when people play these things, they can interact. They can shoot people; they can kill people. As the honourable Gentleman said, they can rape women."


The gentleman he is referring to is the bill's author Julian Brazier, though being completely off-base when quoting someone else doesn't excuse you from being off-base in the first place. The man can barely remember what these horribly offensive rape-machines are. When you have to struggle to remember what you were talking about in the first place it's probably a good indicator that you should sit down and shut up.

Luckily for British gamers, the House isn't completely full of uninformed idiots. Conservative MP Edward Vaizey actually took the time to check this claim out with the BBFC.

"Is the honourable Gentleman aware of any video game that has as its intention the carrying out of rape or that allows the game player to carry out such an act? The BBFC and I are unaware of any such game."
Look? Sense! What could the bill's author counter sense with, but more nonsense?
"I cannot comment on the rape in games issue, but I can tell the House what Stefan Pakeerah's father said after Warren Leblanc had murdered his son. He said that "Manhunt" is a game using weapons like hammers and knives...The object of Manhunt is not just to go out and kill people. It's a point-scoring game where you increase your score depending on how violent the killing is. That explains why Stefan's murder was as horrific as it was."
Aha! While I cannot comment on games that allow you to rape women as I know of none, look at this puppet on my other hand! It is a murderous puppet, with a hammer in hand! A video game puppet! Take that!

Taken, and rebutted by Minister of State Margaret Hodge, who explained that not only was the game found to have played no part in the murder, it was the victim who owned the game and not the attacker.

Perhaps the real story here isn't that Mr. Vaz decided to claim erroneously that video games let you rape women, but rather the fact the the House of Commons debates had people present with enough sense to challenge the claim. Good show!

http://kotaku.com/363120/british-mp-...you-rape-women ...

In what must be the laziest mod ever created by man, Instructables has posted a 7-step process on how to make your Nintendo DS into a notepad ripe for penciling notes. How they got to 7 steps we're not quite sure, since all you do is cover the case in Scotch Magic Tape. From there, you can safely write on the surface and even erase and start over.

To us, it seems like a simple, non-committal way to decorate the handheld however you'd like. In other words, the first person to scribble "the cake is a lie" all over their DS will rule the internet for precisely 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Pointing fish also come highly recommended.

http://kotaku.com/363260/nintendo-ds...encils-doodles ...