website tracking
Stocking Stuffers on Game and Player
plate_08_1222_stuffers.jpg

Stocking Stuffers

Patrick Woods  //  December 22, 2008


On Nintendo, cybersecurity and rights management.

H

appy holidays, players of games. To start your Christmas week, here are some stocking stuffers of sorts. Be safe, and I will see you next year.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week lackluster November sales of Nintendo's Wii Music, selling just 297,000 copies against Activision's Guitar Hero World Tour sales of 475,000. Wii Play and Wii Fit have been on the market much longer, yet doubled Wii Music sales.

Is Wii Music a flop? Nintendo's creative lead, Shigeru Miyamoto, is unconcerned. "I don't expect Wii Music to be an immediate hit. It will be a steady long-running seller that will spread gradually by word-of-mouth." As a casual Guitar Hero player, but one who competes heavily with friends on single-song scores, I find it curious that Miyamoto designed Wii Music not to keep scores. Rather, it is intended to be an "improvisational, educational tool that teaches music theory."

David Hinkle, proprietor of NintendoWiiFanboy.com, expressed slight ennui with Wii Music: "I know what Miyamoto was doing with the game, the demographic that it was targeting, and that the game was designed to introduce folks to music, but as a real musician myself, I found the game to be a little too basic for me," he said.

Is Wii Music a flop? Shigeru Miyamoto is unconcerned.While I myself have not played the game, the tenor of this article makes me wonder if Wii Music is an example of Nintendo's interface, which I lauded earlier this year, getting too simplistic. Guitar Hero titles offer levels of difficulty and beginner modes that make strumming along much easier, all the while strengthening players' rhythmic ability. Guitar Hero allows graduation to more complicated, fulfilling rhythmic riffs alongside higher scores.

In an effort to differentiate itself, the market seems to be telling Nintendo that the company did so too much, at the expense of ignoring facets of Guitar Hero's superior interface (check the picture of Miyamoto playing the Wii title) and gameplay.

Over at Pajamas Media, Charlie Martin paints a chilling picture of a "Digital 9/11," in which terrorists attack the pistons of America's economic engine via the insecure computers, networks, and software that time their ignition, as it were.

Martin writes: "Railroads are largely controlled by computers; change a switch while a train is passing over it and you have an instant derail. Gas pipelines are also computer controlled; to my surprise, you can blow them up entirely by computer control. . . .Traffic flow, the electrical system, all much the same."

Notwithstanding the complexities involved in the software-input/output device-infrastructure interface, Martin argues that, "The truth is we're in this position because for the last 30 years no one has really cared about security."

His solution to our purported lackadaisical attention to security? Software liability law. "A law that made the vendor liable for damages when a failure in the software let an attacker do damage would mean that companies (yes, I'm talking to you, Microsoft) would have a much greater impetus to make systems more secure, and would also give the companies whose systems are secure (when did you last here [sic] of a damaging Macintosh or UNIX virus?) a greater advantage in the marketplace."

Is a marketplace's punishment of an insecure software vendor not punishment enough? The fact that Apple and UNIX systems exist and are many servers' backbones indicates the market is paying attention to security where it matters. I do not see a security failures that legislation would be efficient at addressing.If the mission-critical software that controls some of my company's industrial and business processes is any indication, I would wager that a lot of software that controls railroads, pipelines, and electrical grids is custom-programmed, some even internally by the corporation's staff. So who is liable? Providers of programming platforms? BNSF railway I/T staff who programmed a switching application? (As if they do not have incentive enough already to make secure software.)

Martin's solution strikes me as immensely problematic when one discusses potential assessments of liability, and implies that the market's incentives in this regard are distorted. While I will be the first to acknowledge technological market failures (see also: network redundancy and the Russia-originated cyberattack on Georgia), purveyors of software already have their reputations at stake, and should not be liable for custom use of their titles. I do not see a failure here that legislation would be more efficient at addressing.


Finally, Wired and the Wall Street Journal reported that the RIAA is changing its strategy to stem the tide of online music piracy. In a shift away from lawsuits — whose damages requests among other issues have been a public relations disaster — the industry group has been working directly with internet service providers to develop plans for throttling and then cutting off offenders' internet services.

The plan is for the RIAA to request that ISPs forward cease and desist letters to its users, who remain just an IP address and set of data transfers to the RIAA. Because ISPs are "increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies," they "may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years." RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol noted that "Part of the issue with infringement is for people to be aware that their actions are not anonymous."

Bainwol has a point in that anonymity allows for unscrupulous behavior. Kudos are due to the RIAA for pausing a bit to reflect on behavioral incentives rather than resorting to a legal truncheon.

Most consumers want to be good little girls and boys.Even if the music industry's Grinch has softened his heart a bit, he still must realize that his presents of mega-label albums in brick-and-mortar stores are becoming increasingly technologically obsolete. Annual album sales are down $156 million from 2003 through 2008, and figuring 11 tracks per album, 844 million legal song downloads last year shrink the shortfall by just about half.

Unless I am buying an album like the Dark Side of the Moon, OK Computer, or Bastards of the Beat, it is fair to say that I enjoy half of the tracks in my music library enough to purchase them were they offered a la carte. Most consumers want to be good little girls and boys; understandably, they do not want to pay gold-record prices for a stocking of half coal.





Articles by Patrick Woods

thumbnail_08_1222_stuffers.jpg

December 22, 2008



thumbnail_08_1121_evolution.jpg

November 21, 2008



G&P Latest

July 1, 2011



June 28, 2011




About  //  Editors  //  Contributors  //  Terms of Use