Archive for November, 2005
The hunt for a PSP in time for Christmas
My little brother just decided he’d like to merge his November birthday present and his Christmas presents in the hope I’d get him a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP).
The hunt
I decided to beat the seasonal rush and get one now and checked out my usual on-line suppliers of merchandise… Amazon, out of stock despite their Google advert claiming otherwise, Play and MX2 out of stock (Play now have it back in stock for £179.99 including Donnie Darko UMD). A few other stores I’d not used were also out of stock or rather vague on the whole issue.
I hit our main town known as St. Peter Port – or just “Town” – and found that Woolworth had sold their last one today, Guernsey Computers had a waiting list that would probably be two weeks at best, Gruts had a headshake and a shrug. Number 19, known for it’s overpricing policy and twangy curry smell, had decided to sell grey Japanese import models for a whopping £179.99 (bear in mind we don’t have VAT here….) This is the same place that last week had Red Dwarf VII for £21.99… while Woolworth had it for £13.99 – a 57% mark-up over another shops retail price!
A quick trip to the secondary town area known as The Bridge led me to Southside Computers and NSEW (formerly PC Island) which yielded similar useless responses.
One might wonder if these stores are not capable of putting an “out of stock” notice over their huge piles of empty Sony PSP Value pack display boxes that adorn their window displays.
I recalled that The Bridge is home to a smaller less well known store called Big Byte. They deal with the usual gaming gear as well as a sizeable retro and used section and so I headed there.
Here a PSP Value pack, genuine UK edition set me back just £145.99, in-stock there and then. They also have a deal where you get two games for an extra £30 bringing it to £174.99 (these two games are listed at £29.99 each on Play).
They’ve still got a few PSPs left as I type this and are expecting a few more in but I don’t believe they do mail order so Guernsey residents only. Call them on 01481 240444 – they are opposite where Microgames used to be.
Intentional stock shortages?
All this lead me to wonder what Sony is playing at. I can only imagine the problem with consoles and the manufacturer subsidising the cost of the system is that they don’t want to sell too many at Christmas. Perhaps it’s a hit on their accounts or maybe the slightly disinterested receiver of such a gift doesn’t pay back the cost of the console buy purchasing a few games.
This probably explains why Sony is offering the current “Giga packs” which seem to be much more readily available for £265 (ex VAT) and include the PSP value pack contents, two games , a USB cable and a 1GB memory stick. The price of these components individually comes to £280 (ex VAT) hardly much of a saving but then this isn’t about giving you a good deal it’s about Sony minimizing that subsidy by ensuring you buy some products with a positive profit margin.
Subsidising the console is a pretty standard affair, the XBox360 is loaded to the hilt with the latest techniques to prevent you from running anything unapproved.. or more specifically not helping Microsoft claw back their massive per-unit hit. Sony’s PSP has been bypassed a couple of times, the latest technique allowing you to downgrade the 2.0 internal software back to exploitable 1.50 so you can run third party games and tools.
This can be a bit of a pain with some titles such as requiring 2.0 software. I’m only actually interested in one piece of third party software, ScummVM, which lets me run my favourite old point-and-click adventures on lots of hardware and as of v0.8.0 that list includes 2.0′ed PSPs :)
The whole concept is in total contrast to the mobile phone market where the networks subsidise the price of the phone and the manufacturers (including Sony) are clambering to make it as easy as pie for anyone to develop for their phone going so far as to provide tool kits and samples to do so.
Maybe Sony and Microsoft should satisfy the geeks among us with non-subsidised versions of the consoles that will happily run unsigned code as well as the legal stuff. Sony have done something similar with the hobby-developer PS1 Net Yaroze and the Linux kit for the PS2.
Now that would be a nice Christmas gift…
[)amien
Fahrenheit & The Movies
It’s been quiet here of late and while I did want to post I didn’t have anything ready nor did I want some whining apology with no content.
For the last few weeks I’ve been a recluse getting my Open University TM427 project wrapped up and delivered and now that’s out the way I’ve been kicking back and relaxing with a few games and a bit of retro computing.
Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy)
A murder takes place within the confides of a small wash room in a down town American diner and you are left holding the knife very unsure as to what just took place. And so begins the start of a point-and-click adventure affair interspersed with sections where you need to hit buttons rapidly as they are shown. Your actions, while not throwing the story much off it’s linear path, are at least reflected upon and determine dialogue and actions available later in the story.
From the forums and hype you’d believe that French studio QuantricDream has created a whole new genre, and you’d be quite wrong. We’ve had adventure games with much more freedom in the past – even in 3D – check out industry legend Yu Suzuki’s masterpiece Shenmue for something similar but much larger in scope and execution.
Where Fahrenheit does score highly is in the storytelling and atmosphere – taking control of multiple opposing people within the same story is just icing on the cake. The story leads through a few emotionally and physically charged pieces story telling more adult in nature than the standard affair, no doubt contributing to the 15+ rating on the box.
The experience is refreshingly much shorter than the 35+ hour fests that the gaming industry insists on pushing onto us for plot-driven games. With game production costs now getting out of hand it would make sense to produce shorter games for less money. This would surely allow companies to better absorb the cost of a flop here and there too.
David Cage, the Frenchman behind this little escapade, has already stated there is a sequel in the works. Here’s hoping they concentrate more on the game’s content itself by dropping their own inferior game engine in favour of something like Source or Max Payne 2′s… Then we’d be able to experience decent sized levels you can actually interact with.
The Movies
I’ve been waiting for this one since legend Peter Monolux started talking about it in interviews. Taking the same principles as Sim Hospital and Theme Park it sees you operating a Hollywood style film studio and lets you go down as far as editing the shooting scripts and even lets you export your movies out to put online.
Initially the game was quite fun, setting up in the usual fashion of introducing you a few concepts and buildings at a time but within about 8 hours of game-play things had gone awry.
The main problem, and one that is common to this genre, is that there is no way of delegating control of the aspects the player isn’t interested in or become repetitive over to the AI. Soon you find yourself clearing up litter and dragging individuals around to do the job they were employed to do (perhaps it was the quality of the staff I employed but frankly I had to employ everyone the game threw at me just to meet the positions I had. I could still have done with many more).
Perhaps I could live with that if it weren’t for the fact that the game simply moved at such as pace there was barely time to do anything. Inventions and scenes were flying out faster than I could get them in scripts and award ceremonies were coming up before I’d had even chance to dress my stars in attire suitable for the decade.
I guess that’s another disappointment from Peter – Fable had so much promise too. While features were dropped it had me hooked with the opening scene showing the mysterious abduction of a loved one. The game then proceeds to send you on unrelated trivial exercises that do nothing to advance said plot. Attention lost, game consigned to the dusty drawers.
[)amien
State of the broadband
A few changes from the various players so a quick run-down.
While local ISPs could argue their bandwidth is limited they have no such excuse for charging 3x the price of a UK outfit for IP addresses as Newtel are doing in both islands.
Jersey Telecom
Announced broadband price reductions which affect their 512KB, 1MB and 2MB home services. Interesting to note that the contention ratio has gone up from 40:1 to 50:1.
- 512KB @ £17.99
- 1MB @ £24.99
- 2MB @ £39.99
Newtel Solutions Jersey
No announcements yet on price reductions to follow JT but I’d be surprised if they don’t act soon. They have however dropped connection charges and are offering fixed IP’s for £15.99 a month.
- 512KB @ £24.49 (£23.50 if paid annually)
- 1MB @ £39.99 (£38.50 if paid annually)
- 2MB @ £79.99 (£77.00 if paid annually)
C&W Guernsey
Put out a new broadband “Pay-as-You-Go” package that includes 500 minutes. After that it is 3p/minute until you reach the maximum monthly charge of £34.99. Still at 40:1 contention as far as I know, actual product guide has not been updated and still claims 512K alongside the contention. Still no announced plans to offer fixed IP’s or 512KB/2MB services.
- 1MB @ £26.99
- 1MB “Pay-as-You-Go” @ £19.99-£34.99 (includes 500 minutes)
There has been debate over C&W’s offerings on the This Is Guernsey Forum. The C&W Gsy marketing manager Steve Eldrich addressed some of them.
Guernsey.Net/Newtel
Followed C&W Gsy with the double the bandwidth but are not quoting contention ratios for their home service anywhere I could find. Unlike C&W they are offering a fixed IP address at an extra whopping £15.99 a month. They are offering free install and rental until 1st January 2005.
- 1MB @ £25.99 (£24.50 if paid annually)
Bulldog (C&W UK)
Prices have come down again with the 8MB unlimited package costing now a mere £29.50. They are also offering a fixed IP address for £4.99 a month.
- 8MB @ £29.50
All the prices are per-month in GBP and do not include the additional monthly charge for a phone line and are unlimited usage unless specified.
[)amien
Do not expose the implementation
One of the things we are taught in object oriented design is that the outside world should not be exposed to the complexities of how our object achieves their goals. Other developers are busy, don’t care and really don’t need to know. It is a sound idea and goes hand-in-hand with ease of use.
Televisions used to expose the implementation with a single tuning knob that had to be adjusted every time you wanted to watch another broadcast. With time engineers replaced this with an interface that hid the implementation, specifically the concept of channels where each one could be individually tuned and switched between on a whim. Implementation no longer exposed.
Technology brings complexity but only good technology makes it look simple.
One thing that has always annoyed me here in the UK is an every day object that doesn’t hide the implementation.
Taps.
That’s right taps. I don’t care that water is delivered to my sink through two pipes, hot and cold. I don’t ever want scolding hot water and just as rarely require it uncomfortably cold. Most of the time I want the same warm temperature as last time.
Sure, there are taps that do this and indeed in many other countries it seems to be the norm but here in the UK builders keep putting in separate hot and cold taps in. Until either the public wise up or I actually buy my own house and can replace this sort of annoyance I’m stuck with it.
While taps have annoyed me for a while it was .NET 2.0 that reminded me of the whole issue again and a brief discussion with GrinGod that caused a similarly titled post of his own. Specifically the Hashtable class is now called Dictionary
If you previously generated strongly-typed collections in .NET 1.1 using the many tools around such as CodeSmith then you might be interested in this little tip. If you have a strongly typed class such as:
public class MyObjectCollection : Hashtable {
public MyObject this[object key] {
get { return (MyObject) pHashtable[key]; }
set { pHashtable[key] = value; }
}
}Then instead of replacing every single instance of
MyObjectCollection theseObjects = new MyObjectCollection();with
Dictionary<object, MyObject> theseObjects = new Dictionary<object, MyObject>;you can in fact simple change MyObjectCollection and leave the rest of your code alone:
public class MyObjectCollection : Dictionary<object, MyObject> { }Which will also mean that you can still have the additional properties and functions on MyObjectCollection if you had them previously. It’s rather obvious you can do this but many samples I’ve seen just create raw generic collections everywhere rather than inheriting from them.
[)amien