Bit Shift

Since the reports a few weeks ago about Ubisoft’s 93-95% claimed piracy numbers, Ubi has continued sending ambassadors out discussing how they are reducing their DRM away from the always-on requirements type to the just-activate-it-on-your-machine type. Tying a game to a machine (or even 5 machines) is still dumb, but not nearly as reviled as requiring one to always be online when server downtime or sunsetting is always a possibility. I guess that if we go from the fire back to the frying pan, we are supposed to be grateful.

It saddens me when I see video game publishers still wrestling over simple customer-satisfaction items like this that are pretty-well solved in the minds of average customers. I look at the video game world as a precursor to the inevitable digital mainlining of most media (mainly the PC gaming world, because the consoles are still acting anti-competitively).

Downloadable music still has a ways to go there, but it’s farther along than TV shows and somewhat movies. But most MP3 customers don’t understand DRM and really shouldn’t have to. Because of the early rifts in digital music rights, there remains a lot of misinformation about where you can play a song you buy on iTunes (the answer is anywhere, now, but at first it was not so) or what to do with music bought from Amazon (drop it into your music device, or import it into iTunes if you roll that way).

It’s odd to me, looking back, that Apple was content to throw away the Fairplay DRM that it developed and move into DRM-free music as soon as it could get the labels to agree to it. Contrast that behavior to Ubisoft’s cattiness when asked by RPS if their DRM had been a mistake. RPS thinks they’re protecting their shareholder’s perspective, but Apple saw a resurgence in its stock following the removal of DRM from iTunes songs.

In fairness, Apple wasn’t producing the music they sold, but their profits were still tied to sales. And, surprise, the world didn’t come down. And people still buy music on iTunes even at their relatively high prices. I suspect that Ubisoft still kind of believes that DRM works, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. And, even if it doesn’t work, as least they’re doing something. If that something alienates the people waving money at you instead of serving them, that something you did was wrong.

I know there has been a lot of love for the Apple iOS devices, and there will doubtless continue to be as the next generation of them roll out for this holiday season. But Apple has always been, and appears to continue to be, detrimental to the video gaming ecosystem.

The Good Parts of Apple in Gaming

Probably the best contribution Apple has to the modern video gaming world is that it elevated high level devices into the norm. So much so that average consumers are playing games that otherwise wouldn’t be just because they have an iOS device that is game capable. This timed very nicely with the practical shunning of the PC by major game publishers from about 2004-2009, which in turn resulted in a boom of indie games being welcomed on the PC. Lots of those same indie developers, or on-lookers, saw a redemptive opportunity in the iPhone and subsequently the iPad. And, despite a few barnacles, I think most gamers appreciate the increased respect that video games received from the iPhone effect. 

BTW, Countless video game designers credit the Apple IIe as a big early influence into their life designing software and making games. That’s awesome, but that’s not the Apple that I’m talking about today. 

The Bad Apple

I’m asserting that, once a game is introduced to the iOS Game Center, it’s locked there and that is bad for a few reasons:

Apple pretty blatantly prefers itself to be the only avenue for iOS apps to make digital dollars. That’s completely within their right. But it prevents benevolent companies from extending the utility of the another purchase into the iOS world. For instance, Dynamite Jack developer Galcon wanted to make a cross-platform purchase of the game available on both the PC and iOS devices.  To do so, he could only have the initial purchase happen on the iOS App Store in order to reciprocate to the PC. This is only possible because download stores like the Humble Store in this case or Steam in others permit this to happen for free. If everybody walled off their purchases this way, nobody could do cross-platform reciprocation. That sucks. 

Because Apple is so prominent, they can get away with doing this and it keeps all the 30% cuts coming in to them. It’s a potentially great thing for Apple in two ways; it slows the buildout of a ubiquitous game ownership across all devices and it continues to earn them all of the money.

If Steam began stating that all transactions that reciprocate to other platforms now had to pay Steam its 30%, I suspect game devs would be a bit up in arms about it. But devs that have worked with Apple in the past know that it’s just par for the course. 

Apple Doesn’t Care

We might also see Apple tempted to do the same thing with its Mac App Store. Certainly, that’s the temptation Windows developers seem to believe Microsoft is facing.

And the Mac is interesting, because I recall the 2007 Quakecon keynote. In it, John Carmack lamented Apple’s on-again-off-again relationship with video games while wishing they would take advantage of the unique position they have and optimize gaming performance across their machines since they are the only company to have absolute control over all of their hardware. That’s probably never going to happen and it’s a shame. But it’s really the fool-me-twice side of Apple that saddens me the most. Such as anecdotes of game developers being courted by Apple with promises of a sort of game-focused renaissance only to be let down by the inevitable lack of support.

Apple is good at making its own business decisions, and they are within their right to do that. I also would love to see viable PC gaming alternatives to Windows. But jumping from sort-of-closed Windows frying pan to almost-totally-shut iOS or Mac the fire doesn’t need to happen.

With the official announcement of Steam’s dip into the non-gaming software ecosystem confirming the rumor we heard a few weeks ago, the thing I said about Greenlight’s potential for pollution looks like a pretty tame worry. In comparison to the pitfall of a gimmicky list of games, the problem of narrowing down the best in quality of utility and productivity software looks like a Mt. Everest problem.

Of course, it’s a problem that can be and needs to be solved. It’s just that it’s been hard for the existing PC software download stores to be very good about keeping the storefront relevant and the contents high quality. 

Take NewEgg, for instance. Their downloadable software storefront has gone through many iterations and it seems to have improved a little since downloads were first introduced. But the vast majority of their software pushes has been all about boxed copies. So all that seems to be remaining is just a lot of Microsoft Office titles. It seems to me that any remaining customer base Office has after free online solutions like Google Docs sprung up would either be on a corporate license or wouldn’t know that you can buy software outside of Best Buy.

Amazon’s downloads store is arguably worse. Well, it has more selection (and it’s Amazon, so they had better), but the content is a mixed bag of quality and relevance is maybe not very good straight away. That’s surprising to me because I’ve bought some software and hardware from Amazon in the past, including downloadable games. I’d expect their recommendations to be over-my-shoulder prescient. I don’t recall any time I was interested in guitar or piano lesson software, but maybe some of my normal product search history is affecting it.

So, improving relevance is a big deal. Steam ends up being pretty good at this purely because Valve is a recognized force in the gaming world. Their featured items aren’t just “Here’s what’s on sale.” Depending upon how the marketing campaign goes, a featured item on Steam can tell the predominant gaming audience, “Here’s what you should buy. Oh, and it’s only $11.49 each if you get a 4 pack.” And gamers like me happily subject our wallets to that sort of torture, because we like the ecosystem very much.

Naturally, the big competition comes from the Mac App Store and the pending Windows App Store. Apple is doing it well enough that people are buying stuff, and the fear from Valve is that Microsoft could do it 1/8th as well and still make 20x the revenue. 

Still, it’s a hard sell for me on the sheer desirability of a lot of software. It’s not super-tempting for me to see something like this:

Without belaboring the point too much, Steam’s Greenlight can help sift out the stupid ones (or it could hurt if it ends up being game-able). There should probably be a more software-friendly interface (at least less black, but just as minimal is fine) than the gaming side of Steam. And success will largely depend upon how willing the software devs and pubs are to give up their often premium prices every once in a while to hit the sweet spot of the Steam sales.

Valve says that gamers say they want their software to be on Steam. No doubt. Auto updates are somewhat important. But really, we just want to have a reason to spend $2.50 on Photoshop.

Recently, I was (and still sort of am) in the market for a streaming device. I was caught between Boxee and Google TV. The problem for me, and I imagine many early-adopter consumers, is there is no one platform that has ubiquitous platform support. Options are a big deal when you’re looking at living room devices. The only streaming platform supported by every device is Netflix, which is great for Netflix but is a terrible indicator of the state of streaming.

I like to rent Amazon movies to stream, but even Google TV only supports it via the built-in browser. That’s just OK for now. Roku’s Amazon app is much better, but of course Roku is notoriously lacking a YouTube app and a few others like Vudu. Boxee has a good browser that will support Amazon Video, too, and supports Vudu well and YouTube with a so-so app. Boxee also has your local media covered really well with the best media recognition algorithm that I’ve witnessed to date.
Google TV has the brightest app potential, however, because at least theoretically any Android app can be made a GTV app trivially. But so far, the GTV apps remain mostly unimpressive. My hope and guess is that Boxee will come over to Android and GTV will be a viable platform for me.

For the rest of the consumers, price is still way too high. Consider that Apple TV is selling for $100 retail while most of the other players (except Roku) are trying to make out like a streaming bandit for $200-$300 device prices. That’s a huge leap. And that’s why Roku has a great install base despite having a much less capable product. It’s taken a few years to see the Revue and Boxee devices reach a price point where normal people might be compelled to to see it as a good value (BTW, I hate this race to the bottom as much as anybody, but I think if Apple is pricing their streaming product at $99, you really have to fight for $200).

I’m also not going to be surprised if some of the living room players are eliminated or consolidated in the next year. I don’t know if Boxee can make it on devices much longer, so maybe a Plex-like presence is in their future. If so, they need to get on board the ubiquity train if they expect people to pay. I am guessing Roku will be fine because they are so inexpensive that many folks will not mind dropping $50 on a streamer for a spare room or on a whim. Xbox could have been a much bigger player in this space if Microsoft didn’t squander their heyday (but then, isn’t that what Microsoft always does?) Of course, Nintendo is apparently clueless about its home presence. Netflix makes more now from the Wii as a stagnating platform than Nintendo does, I’m sure. 

So, I think we’re all expecting an Apple living room shake up this year from a reborn TV product. If that happens, all of a sudden consumer demands will be crystalized and Google and Boxee will have something to parallel and/or contrast from a feature and interface standpoint. As it is, nobody really knows how people want to interact with their boxes. Do they want a Wii-mote controller? Do they want QWERTY remotes? Do they want just a D-pad? Do they want voice controls? Do they want to use their smartphones? Do they want Kinect? Apple will probably tell consumers what they want and the rest of the devices will adapt (and subsequently have their pants sued off). Most people seem to believe that Siri will be involved in that. Talking to me TV is a tough sell for me but Apple works miracles with marketing. And we’ll all be paying attention to the Apple sell on this one, because I think all the other companies are too exhausted to innovate.

In a recent post about ad quality, Google notes that it’s been rejecting an exponentially higher amount of ads than just a few years ago. If Google’s primary product is advertising, as many people say, it’s interesting to note the similarities between its ad policies and Apple’s App Store policies. 

Google cleanses its ads from scummy content or for sites that are not worthwhile (but apparently has no such system for its Android apps), and it does not basis ads on the basis of competition with itself or even trademarked search queries. 

On the other hand, Apple routinely rejects its apps for poor quality (which is debatable, but probably a good thing) and also rejects any apps that provide competitive services or even features. As a point of reference, the fact that Apple did not reject the Opera browser app made headlines. 

The anti-competitive stance for a platform controller like Apple is one of the biggest reasons that geeks like me find it hard to back iOS for the future. Most customers don’t seem to mind (probably because they don’t know to mind), but I’m sticking with the freedom of choice that Android gives me, for now.