Posted by: Nik Taylor
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Posted by: Nik Taylor
Pick yourself a team of game-loving celebs, find another team of grizzled Halo 3 veterans, pitch the two against each other for a quick few matches of Halo: Reach multiplayer and guess what happens? Clue: the red-carpet types do not end up celebrating. 
Not even the presence of England captain Rio Ferdinand could inspire Team Noble to victory (or even, for that matter, respectability) over the hardcore might of Team Slayer at the Halo: Reach premiere last night.
Lewis Chapman, the 17-year-old Halo fan who beat 800 other contenders in online play to win a place as captain of the celeb team, looked on bemusedly as the likes of Ferdinand, Jason Bradbury and Mr Hudson ran round in circles, shooting each other and randomly lobbing grenades.
The cause of Chapman’s celebrity squad probably wasn’t helped by England rugby player Ben Cohen and T4 presenter Jameela Jamil, the pair of whom struggled to make a single kill between them.
To be fair, it was a somewhat unfair match-up – reminiscent of the kind of multiplayer batterings many of us will be familiar with when we first got started on Xbox Live. And it’s good to know I’m not the only one capable of blowing myself up with an ill-judged grenade when things get hectic.
Anyway, take a look at the pics from the Halo: Reach premiere in our gallery and then keep an eye on T&G for our full review of the game, which goes live in the early hours of Sunday morning.
And while you’re waiting for that, cast your peepers over some of the other top stuff we’ve had on T&G this week.
Well it’s safe to say I’m shattered. I’ve wandered all 25 halls of Berlin’s Internationale Funkausstellung (more commonly known as IFA), chatting to manufacturers and getting familiar with the gadgets and technology we’ll be seeing hit our shelves in the coming months.
As always happens at these big events, we’ve seen a number of themes crop up again and again, from manufacturer to manufacturer. One of the biggest ones this year has been 3D. You might have thought it would be a fad, but the manufacturers certainly don’t seem to agree.
In fact, most of the big companies, and even some of the smaller ones, were pushing the third dimension hard – from those just launching their first 3D TVs like Sharp, to 3D consumer camcorders at Panasonic, and 3D laptops at Toshiba. There was also plenty of glasses-free 3D on show too from the likes of Samsung, LG and Philips, so maybe we’ll be able to ditch those stupid glasses sooner than we thought.
Staying with the 3D side of things, there was something that couldn’t fail to catch my eye – LG’s 31-inch, 2.9mm thick OLED 3D TV, the biggest, thinnest OLED TV in the world and launched at IFA 2010. It is stunning. What’s not so stunning is its price tag – at £6000, you’re going to have to have a fair bit of cash at your disposable to be able to afford this beauty.
Another theme has been tablets. From the affordable, such as the surprise offerings from Binatone, to not so affordable but oh-so-desirable Samsung Galaxy Tab, it appears that where Apple has gone many others are now attempting to follow. As if we’d expect anything less.
From my time with the ones here at IFA, I can say it’s most definitely a mixed bag in terms of performance and user experience. The winner by a long way has to be the Galaxy Tab – and in fact, it’s probably my favourite announcement of the whole show. It really has the "wow" factor you want from a gadget – browsing was a breeze, it’s a great size for gaming, and really responsive (save for a touch of lag that will no doubt be solved in the fully-finished firmware). The price was a bit of a shock though – at 799 euros, it’s pricier than an iPad. However Samsung told me they’d expect most to buy the Tab on contract. No word on how much that’ll cost as yet though…
Finally it seems connected TVs are also the talk of IFA. They may have been hanging around on a number of manufacturers sets for a while now, but the content is finally getting bigger and better, not to mention more open – both Samsung and Philips have invited third party developers to design apps for their services.
Elsewhere Sony demoed its Internet TV with Google TV built in, LG announced its Smart TV connected service, Philips introduced new partners for Net TV, Panasonic promised ambitious growth for Viera Cast and Samsung promised content for Internet@TV would grow this year "like never before". Could this be the beginning of the end for the set-top box?
Probably the most interesting annoucement in this arena though was Qriocity from Sony, a cloud-based service that will offer music and movies to you across Sony devices (as well as some non-Sony devices too). It’ll work on Bravia TVs, Blu-ray players and home cinema systems, VAIO, PS3 and PSP, and will allow you to play music from the cloud for a monthly fee (cost unannounced as yet), and rent movies for a one-off cost.
From our demo, it seems that the music service will also offer a "premium" option, but unfortunately the representative we spoke to said he knew nothing about that. However he did confirm the standard service would be paid-for, so there’s no Spotify-esque ad-funded model here.
And while we’re on the topic of Spotify, I can’t round off this post without noting the IFA-announced Spotify and Sonos tie up that will now allow you to access Spotify through the Sonos S5 multiroom player. Easily controlled via a free app, you’ll be able to play your Spotify playlists and search for songs just as with the desktop version, but also be able to create a playlist on the fly by dragging and dropping songs you want to listen to into a queue. Awesome.
Keep an eye on our IFA hubsite for plenty of hands on pictures coming soon, I’m off to eat some thoroughly German food.
Post by: Nik Taylor
Rock Band 3 is imminent, complete with new keyboard peripheral, and EA has just announced the full setlist. It’s noticeably less ‘rawk’ than previous RBs, with 83 tracks from the likes of Amy Winehouse, Huey Lewis and the News, and Foreigner alongside the more expected Slipknot, Ramones and Rammstein offerings. Hang on… Huey Lewis and the News?!
Track list in full:
2000s:
1990s:
1980s:
1970s:
1960s:
*Songs available on Rock Band 3 for Nintendo DS
Posted by: Nik Taylor
EA has not been shy in trumpeting just how grittily realistic its Medal of Honor reboot is going to be, so it makes sense that the publisher has now got a genuine war hero on board to tell the story of the game’s characters.
Former SAS member and Gulf War veteran Chris Ryan, now a successful author, has penned a prequel novel that will introduce Medal of Honor’s main characters and set the scene for the events in the game.
The book will be given away with all preorders of Medal of Honor made at HMV, before going on sale at bookshops.
“It is a real privilege to be involved in a game with such a heritage as Medal of Honor,” said Ryan. “Combining my experience as an SAS soldier in the Gulf War with missions from the videogame itself enabled me to create an authentic and respectful account of an elite soldier fighting in Afghanistan for Medal of Honor: The Book.
“Bringing together the disciplines of literature and videogames has been a new but compelling experience for me as a writer, resulting in what is hopefully an engaging read for fans of videogames and novels alike.”
Posted by: Ashley Highfield, MD of Microsoft UK (Consumer & Online)
All together now
Almost three quarters of us now have broadband in the UK, nine out of 10 watch digital TV, and a quarter now carry a smartphone, as revealed 19 August by technology industry watchdog Ofcom. Apparently we’re happy with this – there is over 90% positive customer appreciation for each and every digital service. Although the amount we spend each month on our digital lives – a colossal £91 – is falling, that’s mainly because competition in the marketplace is leading to price drops on mobile and other digital services.
The recession appears to have had only a small impact on our digital world. More people will take bundled services from the likes of Virgin, BT and Sky to save costs, but no one’s switching off.
Expert multi-taskers
In fact, consumption is up: we now spend in excess of seven hours a day using media (almost half our waking hours – the average person clearly gets more sleep than I do!). Within these seven hours, some eight hours and 40 minutes worth of media gets consumed, by dint of people doing two or more things at once. Actually, although Ofcom trumpets this, this level of multi-tasking is less than I expected, until you look at the breakdown and realise that the trend is much higher for younger audiences.
At the moment, most of this simultaneous media consumption is still relatively distinct and unrelated. You text your friends while the TV is on, you IM while doing your homework on the PC (MP3 headphones on). But, in the main, these activities are unrelated.
TV still rules… but for how long?
The Ofcom report also highlights that peak time TV viewing, from drama to the mid-week football derby, is still a ‘solus’ activity – watching without any other digital distraction. I believe both these trends are changing fast, the best example of this being the huge rise of in-game gambling – people watching the match on the big screen and using the laptop, tablet or smartphone to place a bet on who’ll score the next goal.
The tipping point came during the world cup is not the fact that more money was bet over the internet versus the bookies, but that more money was bet during the match, necessitating two-screen coordinated activity (watch on one screen, bet on another), rather than one screen or physically placing a bet at a bookies before the match.
There’s another interesting point about all this multi-tasking. The report says that that “16-24 year olds managed to fit just over nine and a half hours’ worth of media into a little over six and a half hours of actual time”. So, far from being obsessed with doing nothing but texting and playing with apps, young adults actually appear to want to spend less time on these activities. They use this time more efficiently, consuming and communicating more in less time, so that they can get on with their busy, social lives.
The smartphone clearly plays an increasingly important part in all this and the rise in the number of users from 5.5m to 12m in the last two years with one of these high-end internet-enabled devices is striking. This is causing a shift in the way phones are used. Under 24s now only use their phone to make calls a quarter of the time: the rest is text (over 100 billion texts sent in 2009) and data (all the growth in broadband take-up in the UK has come from mobile broadband in the last year).
Content is king
So what are people using all this digital technology for and what are they doing with all this time spent in front of multiple screens?
Firstly TV which among the 16-24s at least appears to be enjoying something of a revival. A full 39% of this group cite it as the media they’d most miss if taken away; with internet and mobile (together 50%) dipping slightly. Is this the Simon Cowell effect? Is this trend being witnessed in other countries I wonder? Has the internet failed to offer alternative lean-back entertainment content?
Certainly, in the same way video didn’t kill the radio star, the internet hasn’t done for TV, and won’t: the rise and rise of time-shifted consumption though – up three fold in the last four years – does mean that ever more flexible ways of watching TV will continue to increase: Sky on Xbox and Windows 7, BBC iPlayer on mobile devices, MSN Video Player and so on.
Secondly, it looks like piracy may have plateaued, with the overall decline in recorded music revenue all but having stopped.
Also worth noting that after TV watching, the second most popular daily activity remains email, one reason we’ve spent so much time packing our new Hotmail full of easy to use, time-saving features.
The rise of social media
You have to plough through to page 235 of the Ofcom report before you get to one of the biggest trends: the rise of social media (accounting for almost a quarter of time online) driven by Facebook and Twitter (something we’ve been very aware of here at Microsoft, building Twitter into our search engine Bing, and Facebook and Twitter updates into the new MSN homepage and the new Windows Live Messenger).
However, there is strong evidence that this growth has plateaued. Since October 09 the number of people using social websites like Facebook and Twitter has stayed flat at 30 million in the UK, and the number of hours spent on Facebook has steadily declined from almost nine hours a month in October 09 to 6.5 hours in March 10, a significant annualised fall of 40%. Is ‘social media’ now increasingly becoming part of the web, part of every website, and perhaps less about standalone ‘destination’ sites?
The main brands online remain very consistent across age groups: Google with 56% reach, Microsoft’s online stable of MSN/Hotmail/Bing second with 45%, Facebook third, and BBC and Yahoo! tying for fourth place on 35%. On the PC, the two most popular apps are Windows Live Messenger and Windows Media Player, followed by iTunes and then Skype. (This combination of a large following on MSN/Hotmail/Bing and a leading position on PC apps helps explain why Microsoft is the UK’s number one digital advertising sales house.)
For me, the big take-away is that while this is still a very volatile emerging market, where trends like social media and sites like Twitter and FourSquare can still come from nowhere to pre-eminence very quickly (and may fall away like MySpace and Bebo just as quickly), traditional media like TV and long-standing brands like Google (yes, it’s heritage now!), Microsoft and the BBC, are still in rude health, and with the rise of multi-tasking, will all clearly find a way of bumping along together.
Ashley Highfield is Managing Director and VP of Microsoft UK (Consumer & Online)
Posted by: Nik Taylor
Wondering what the next online game to take off Farmville-style might be? I’ve got a fair feeling I might have seen it at Gamescom today. Instant Jam is a Guitar Hero-a-like that you can play in your browser, using the MP3 files you already have on your computer as the music. It’s on Facebook now, in beta form, and can actually be embedded into any site.
It’s graphically simple, but in terms of gameplay there is everything you would expect from a music rhythm game – properly designed note charts (rather than algorithms), four difficulty levels, power-ups for hitting long strings of notes, and so on. In addition, you get a bundle of social networking features thrown in. So you can challenge your Facebook friends to beat your score and check out what songs they’ve played lately.
The beauty of it is that you can play along while you’re sat at your desk, thinking about doing some work. The game can be played with keyboard keys for a sneaky game during your lunch-break or, if you’re at home (or have a very understanding boss), you can plug in a USB guitar controller for the full experience.
The game already features an immense 2,000 songs, and dozens more are being added every week. If you find a song you don’t already own, the game directs you to buy it from iTunes or Amazon – one of the ways it makes money. Another is that you can only play a certain number of times each day for free – additional plays must either be earned (by taking part in the social networking side of the game, or by levelling up by performing well) or by simply shelling out for them.
Take a closer look: Instant Jam
Posted by: Verity Burns
Oh the folk at EA certainly know how to tease us. So far, just three screenshots of the forthcoming Medal of Honor game have been squeezed out of Gamescom – check them out below.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed we’ll be seeing more before the show is up, and will of course be keeping you updated with anything we get our hands on. In the meantime, be sure to head over to our special Gamescom 2010 site for all the latest news, and follow Nik on Twitter who’s tweeting his thoughts from the show floor.
Posted by: Nik Taylor
It’s been press day at Gamescom today, and I’ve been wandering between various booths to get hands-on with the best of what’s on show in Cologne this year.
One game I’ve been particularly looking forward to trying out is Brink. I had a crack at it today and, on the basis of the all-too-brief 30 minutes I had playing it, I can say it’s the most interesting multiplayer game I’ve played all year.
Players start by picking a side: either the resistance (who are trying to cause chaos) or the security forces (who are trying to lay down the law). Whichever side you pick, you then have to choose a class for your character. Soldiers, engineers, medics and operatives all have different skills, and your team will need a mixture of them all to succeed.
What makes Brink a compelling concept – and hopefully this will play out when it hits the servers for real – is that the class-based set-up makes teamwork utterly essential in a way that out-and-out shooters such as Call of Duty and even MAG have never quite managed. Soldiers are tough and skilled with explosives, but a team of soldiers will be useless when you run up against a computer that needs hacking and realise you’re short of an operative.
Working together is the only way to get the better of the other side, and teamwork is encouraged right from the off. For instance, medics can hand out health packs to the rest of the team, while engineers can ‘buff’ the weapons of others to make them more effective. This simple give and take is essential to make the team competitive, and receiving such upgrades from your teammates ensures you value them for more than just their dead-eye shooting.
Then there’s the SMART system (the initials stand for smooth movement across random terrain), which works simply and well. It’s designed to make it easy to get around – you just hold down the spring button and run at an obstacle to vault, climb, swing over or jump across it. Your character will deal with these obstacles in different ways depending on how they are built. Lithe characters can wall run and slip through tiny spaces, while heavy built characters will be less mobile.
Brink is fast and frantic (game are played against the clock) but it’s also intelligent and mature in the way it approaches multiplayer action. We’ll have more on this one soon.
Posted by: Nik Taylor
A brand new demo of Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been on show at Gamescom, and I got to take a look at it today.
Being shown is a stage that is about 90 minutes into the game where you, as the game’s central character Adam Jensen, must figure out a way to retrieve a computer chip from inside the head of a guy currently cooling on a mortuary slab in the bowels of the local police station.
We were shown three different ways of completing this objective – either barrelling in gung-ho with all guns blazing (very messy), using your social skills to charm your way in (the easiest option, in this case) or sneaking in by using a nice bit of stealth (my particular favourite).
What’s interesting is that any of these options is just as valid as the others. You can choose any of these paths – or mix them up as you see fit. We’re promised that this is the case throughout the game – so that if you want to play Jensen as some kind of gun-crazed loon, you can. Equally, if you want to play him as an essentially peaceful character who has got caught up in something bad you can do that too.
Any style of play can work, but choosing one over another will ensure you get a noticeably different experience as you progress through the game. For instance, giving it all the chat to get into the police station will uncover some back story related to Jensen that you will not hear if you approach the level in a different way.
This is definitely one game I could happily have stayed to watch more of. Keep an eye on the main site for a more in-depth preview of this demo, coming up soon.
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