Perhaps most interesting is Miscrosoft’s answer to the Wii, a motion sensing device called Kinect. Kinect works with the Xbox 360 and through a series of cameras and sensors detects user movements in order to provide a virtual reality type experience. This is actually the first time in a very long time that I can’t wait to get my hands on a Microsoft product. If done well the Kinect could mean a  surge for Microsoft in the video game/console market… However if the Kinect performance is clunky or otherwise imperfect word will quickly get out and put a damper on any Microsoft party. The Kinect is conveniently set to be released in early November (November 4th to be exact), right in time for the Christmas rush.

Okay, next up is Nintendo who is using E3 to promote a game that is sure to fly off store shelves -  The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The Wii remote will be fully functional in this game, with the ability to be used like a sword, and with the nun chuck serving as Link’s shield. However, as big as The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is sure to be, Nintendo’s main focus of the expo has been showcasing their upcoming portable gaming platform the 3DS. The 3Ds, as the name would suggest, is a fully 3D capable portable system — thankfully, no funny glasses are required. The 3DS isn’t due out until next spring.

And Sony? Sony also has a motion sensing device coming down the pipeline, theirs called PlayStation Move and due out in mid September. The PlayStation Move tracks user movements and reflects them in game much the same as the Kinect is supposed to do. Right now it appears users will also need to purchase the PlayStation Eye camera for the device to work, which kind of sucks – likely these two will be sold as a bundle at some point, hopefully right from the get-go. It should be interesting to see how the PlayStation Move compares to the Miscrosoft Kinect, and how Nintendo responds to this increased competition for the Wii.

Oh, Sony also revealed details about PlayStation Plus, a service costing $50 annually for additional features, including demos and maps.

Hit video game Guitar Hero is not only for you console guys anymore, apparently, the hugely popular guitar simulation game is coming to an unlikely platform: The Android-based G1 from T-Mobile. Guitar Hero is expected to be made available soon on the Android Marketplace, however while it won’t be a free offering, the price is not yet known.

How will it work? Well, it’s not completely clear yet, but what is known is that the guitar aspect of the game will be played by utilizing T-Mobile G1’s touchscreen. It will be interesting if they can find a way to make it as engaging as the plastic guitars that are used on the console and PC versions.

More and more games as well as applications are expected to be emerging for the Android mobile platform in the future, so if you’re not a Guitar Hero fan, there will almost surely be an Android marketplace offering that takes your fancy in the near future.

Is it possible that playing computer games can enhance the driving skills of people over 50? Allstate, a large Insurance company, is seeking an answer and, if true, the company could offer discounts to drivers who play computer games.

With a new pilot program called InSight, Allstate will offer specialized games to 100,00 customers ages 50-75 in Pennsylvania. The developer of the games, San Francisco based Posit Science will track the total number of hours played. The study group’s accident rates will then be compared to a control group of drivers who didn’t play the games. It is important to note that the games are not designed specifically for driving, but for reversing age-related cognitive decline and improvement of visual alertness.

For example, in a game named “Jewel Diver”, players have to track underwater jewels that appear on the screen for a moment and then become hidden behind a fish. Players have to click on where the swimming fish is. The level of difficulty increases when more fish are added.

Allstate recommends that study participants complete at least 10 hours of training. The Pennsylvania drivers receive the games for free and other states may be added later on.

According to a nine year study, although drivers at ages 50-60 have the lowest accident rates of all drivers, in the mid 60s this rate starts to climb again. If successful this new approach will save not just dollars but clearly lives as well.

Despite some lukewarm reviews of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, you have to admit, the virtual reality aspect of playing a video game with  a Wii saber is pretty darn neat. Frankly, these are no question the most unique and intriguing game controllers I have ever come across, and Star Wars really isn’t even my thing. I haven’t found them in any stores around here, but they are made by a company calling itself Thrustmaster (no comment), and are available from Amazon.com.

The sabers are designed to hold the wiimotes inside their handles, providing for a more authentic star wars experience. Also, they glow (either red or blue) when turned on. And yes, you will look fantastic wielding your Wii Sabre.

The Nintendo marketing genius must be making a killing off all of the wiimote accessories they get to peddle along with the actual games and the Nintendo Wii console.

Thanks a lot, Mattel. Although, I can’t really blame you – it was an obvious intellectual rights infringement. However, that doesn’t stop me from pining for Scrabulous.

One of the few Facebook (third party, of course) apps worth having, is now blocked in pretty much everyone’s neck of the woods, seemingly permanently. Scrabulous, which was already blocked last month for North American users, has now been cruelly banished from most international Facebook sites – due to a warning Facebook received from Mattel.

Scrabulous creators, the Argwalla brothers, have produce a some-what less-addictive clone called Wordscraper. The new app has a few tweaks such as circular tiles and the possibility of earning triple points in some cases. I suppose they feel Wordscraper is different enough to avoid further legal issues, but that’s yet to be determined – so try not to get too addicted, as the rug could be yanked out at anytime.

Hasbro, the American rights holder of Scrabble, have gone ahead and released their own scrabble-themed app, which is receiving mixed reviews. The main drawbacks appear to be an abundance of bugs, and the inability to play along with users outside of North America. We’ll see which of the apps wins out in the end.

Love boxing? Ever dream of being a professional manager to a team of boxers? It’s not childsplay, you know. You’ve got to hire the boxers, make sure they’re trained right, keep the sponsors happy, and if they’re not pulling their own weight, someone’s gotta fire these guys. And it’s not the towel boy.

When you start out, you’re not exactly at the top, but there’s plenty of room to improve should you have thesmarts and finesse that comes with being an A-list manager. You’ll accumulate points along which can be spent on improving different aspects of your business. When it comes to the ring, you’ll need to instruct your fighter in between rounds. Strategies include “Strike High”,”Strike Body and “Mixed”,and fighting styles of “Movement”, “Offensive”, and “Defensive”. Making the right choice, depending on your individual boxer’s abilities, can be the difference between a loss or a winning knock-out.

What really matters though is that this game is fun. If you like stragetgy, you’ll want to check out Univeral Boxing Manager. There’s a free trial, and if you like it, the full version is relatively inexpensive.

Related Link: Universal Boxing Manager

A few days ago, a couple of us were crammed into a truck on the way to lunch. Several of us have kids, and we ended up talking about how incredibly popular WebKinz is. Somebody said it was simply a training ground for games like World of Warcraft. As we were talking, I suddenly realized why World of Warcraft and WebKinz are so popular.

Humans love to quantify things. It makes things so much easier. We’re constantly trying to make the abstract have more meaning. We might say we want to “get in shape,” but when we get right down to it, we say things like, “I’m going to lose 10 pounds,” or “I want to run 15 miles.” Be honest, have you ever clicked on one of those ads for a free IQ test? You want to be able to quantify how smart you are. It’s in our nature.

World of Warcraft lets you do just this. It’s one thing to play a game. It’s another to be able to say, “I’m a level 70 Shaman, my blacksmithing is at 297, my mining is at 282, and I have tier 5 armor.” The higher numbers not only allow you to do new and nifty things in the game, but it’s an easy way to tell/show your friends just how good at the game you are.

The game allows you to progress, but it gives you a quantifiable way to show that progression. Webkins is the same way. You run around and do things and earn KinzCash. The Kinzcash is an easy way to quantify that. The more Kinzcash you have, the more of the game you can explore/purchase.

Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Sony has some big news coming out today: The company will allow “dynamic” ads to be placed in PlayStation 3 games. The Wall Street Journal is calling it “a boost for what could become a significant new revenue source for games companies” while Forbes thinks Sony is “set to ignite the world of advertising in videogames…”

Interesting, since the Xbox 360 has been doing this for nearly two years now. At the time (back in 2006), the gaming industry seemed pretty excited at what looked like a new source of revenue. But not much followed in terms of details of how this was to be a game changer for advertising (lame pun intended).

Now we have Sony joining the party late (sound familiar?) and everyone appears to be excited again about the prospects of in-game advertising. Not surprisingly, Electronic Arts will be the first publisher to feature dynamic ads inside its PS3 games. Upcoming version of Madden NFL, Need for Speed, and NBA Live will be among the first to have changing billboards and specific soda cans used.

But some questions are still unanswered this time around. Just how much advertising will gamers tolerate after paying $50-$60 for the game in the first place? And some games, such as fantasy or role playing games, might not work well with Diet Coke and Mitsubishi. Ads in such games might seem a little weird and out of place.

Not much has been done in terms of market research on in-game ad tolerance levels. But then again, not much complaining has been done on the amount that has existed for the last two years. Whatever the case, here’s hoping ad agencies and publishers don’t abuse this new way of reaching their target audience. Of course, “abuse” is going to mean different things to different gamers.

*Update* Microsoft has a press release out which discusses positive results (both from the advertiser and consumer perspective) of market research on in-game advertising. Lots of good discussion here and here.

An Amazon promotion good through June 9 has over 100 Blu-ray movies in the $14 to $20 range (with many around $14-$15). I thought this would be a good time to revisit getting into Blu-ray. The last time I checked out Blu-ray pricing on Amazon (my quick and dirty benchmark), the Playstation 3 was still the best deal.

That’s now a little debatable, but not really. At the time, the $400 PS3 price tag was lower than other players that weren’t also a gaming system. Now, Amazon has several Blu-ray players under $400 with the least expensive floating around $339. Still not even close to good enough, though. I’d take the PS3 for $60 more.

But even then, I don’t necessarily want a PS3. And I’m now used to the next generation of DVD players being priced in the $100 to $200 range thanks to HD DVD. If Sony’s plan is really to increase Blu-ray market share to 50% by the end of the year (that is, for Blu-ray to sell as well as regular DVDs), the company at least needs to half the price of its current best deal.

I’m not sure which company looks worse at the moment. Is it Sony by asserting such an aggressive goal while doing nothing to achieve it? Or is it Blockbuster with its whopper of an idea for movie download kiosks in stores? You decide.

For those who already have a Blu-ray player, here are some picks for movies that are pretty good and a good deal:

• $14.95 – Big Fish [Blu-ray]
• $14.45 – The Last Samurai [Blu-ray]
• $15.95 – GoodFellas [Blu-ray]
• $15.95 – Memento [Blu-ray]
• $15.95 – A Knight’s Tale [Blu-ray]
• $16.95 – Syriana [Blu-ray]

Paul’s Soapbox is a regular feature of TechConsumer where I sound off on various tech topics/products that I’m interested in (or hate). This is just my $.02, so consider yourself warned. This week’s subjects are all over the place: DRM, “3G” Wireless, and Playstation Home.

First award winner goes to DRM (digital restrictions rights management) for “How not to create a sustainable business model.” I don’t know how many of you consumers out there saw this, but Microsoft has decided to turn off the DRM services for the MSN Music Store. This means that anyone who bought leased music from MSN is effectively screwed. The music will still play on the machines they have authorized already, but when the computer stops, so will the music. And just like musical chairs, anyone who paid for that music will be left without a chair.

Now you may be saying to yourself, “Well who bought music from MSN? I want to know who these two people are.” But this has already happened with Google Video, Major League Baseball, MTV URGE, AOL Music Now, and Virgin Music Club. Somehow the mainstream technology media isn’t quite catching on to the realities of DRM. I don’t think that there is a sustainable business model for music ownership that includes DRM. Music subscription services are an exception because they don’t ever act like you own anything. Maybe that’s why I get my digital music elsewhere.

If DRM was the winner of the anti-business model, so-called 3G wireless service is the runner up. ComputerWorld recently reported on 3G data networks and while most of the review is generally positive there was one thing that stood out to me. AT&T and Verizon both cap their services at 5GB of data received per month, and word is Sprint will be following suit (they are actually capping it at 300MB if you are roaming!). At first 5GB might seem like a lot of data, but when you break it down that is not the case.

If a business user were to use the 3G service for 8 hours a day only on weekdays, they could average only 29MB per hour of data without going over. Considering that the TechCrunch homepage is 1.8MB by itself or about 1/16 of the hourly quota for a business user. Or put another way, your connection can only average 8KB/sec or you’ll go over. That is for only 20 days a month, for only 8 hours of the day. Heaven forbid someone used it everyday because then that is only 169MB for the whole day!

Last but not least is Playstation Home, which is soon to join Duke Nukem Forever as the world’s most famous vaporware (yes, I’ve heard some people have actually seen it, supposedly). For those not familiar with Playstation Home (also referred to as just Home), it is Sony’s total copy interpretation of Second Life The Sims Online a virtual world. It was originally announced in March 2007 and scheduled to come out in open beta in August 2007 and public release in October 2007.

Now I’m not really good at math yes I am but August is only five months after March, and we are now about fifteen months past that date, and there still hasn’t been a public beta. Later they promised a “Spring 2008″ delivery, only to announce in Spring 2008 that it would be coming out in Fall 2008. I don’t know if there is a solution to this problem for Sony other than to ship Home sooner rather than later, but you have to wonder what they were thinking when they made the announcement(s) about Home’s development timeframe. Any takers on it actually coming out in Fall 2008? Much less whether it will have been worth the wait?

The really amazing thing is, through all of the troubles the PS3 has gone through (and it really couldn’t be much worse) it is still a system people will consider buying. Talk about a powerful brand.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.