Maybe I'm missing something. Did Microsoft just show last year's E3 press conference? After all, last year it was all Kinect this and Kinect that and then nothing actually materialized except for the Kinect. Granted, the hardware sold well, but where were the games? This year it's all Kinect this and Kinect that, though I guess the script has changed a little bit. Last year it was all about the motion control. This year it's all about the voice control.

Now, I know I'm on the downward side of the hill of life, but I can't quite figure out this demographic Microsoft is targeting. Who are the people who actually are having fun screaming at their TV when playing games?

Here's what I saw in all the Kinect tech demoes...

A guy showing off a shooter (Ghost Recon) in which he spent most of his time in menus and his actual gameplay did not look fun at all. How is playing a shooter by flexing your fingers open more "immersive" than pulling a trigger? I'm firing a gun. Give me a trigger!

A Bioware peon showcasing voice recognition in Mass Effect 3 by blandly repeating the bits of dialog on the screen. Um, maybe it's just me, but I want to listen to the Shepard voice actor say the lines, not say them for him. Actually, it's worse than that, you say a sentence fragment and then Shepard says something completely different. Can we say, "Break immersion?"

Here's Microsoft's problem. They aren't focused. Nintendo has decided they are the kings of casual gaming and they're happy with that. Sony has decided they're the hardcore gaming company and they're trying really hard to appeal to that demographic. Microsoft is sort of just jumping all over the place.

Plus, they still haven't figured out Kinect. Look, the technology is cool. Kinect essentially turns your TV into a giant smartphone/tablet interface. But, it's lacking. First, there's no tap action. You can't "click" things on the screen so every game invents some different exaggerated gesture you have to make in hopes you "hit" the right button. Second, the smartphone/tablet interface is limited. There's only so much you can do with it. When games are designed within those limitations, they are fun. When they try to go outside those limits, frustration sets in.

Third, actually making your body "the controller" requires a level of fitness most gamers just don't have. I've played "Kung Fu Live" on PS3, where you have to perform punches and kicks in front of your PS Eye in order to play the game. I last about five minutes. I saw the guy jumping and slashing in the Star Wars game. Most gamers are only going to be able to play a few minutes before taking an extended break. Yes, it would be nice if those types of games encouraged an increase in fitness; more likely the unfit gamer will just get frustrated not being able to play for extended periods of time.

And then there was all the hoopla over watching video through your Xbox 360. Now I can watch badly pixelated, low resolution YouTube videos on the big screen through my 360! Yay? Oh, and what does watching "live TV" on my 360 mean? I can already watch "live TV" on my TV. What?

Again, Microsoft just can't seem to find a rhythm or style and careen from one banal announcement to the next. Maybe next year they should save themselves some money and just show this conference again. After all, they'll still be trying to sell the same tech.

Yawn. I think somewhere around the umpteenth short, utterly non-engrossing gameplay demo, I started nodding off. Maybe some of that stuff looked better live than on an Internet stream, but, still, there wasn't anything NEW here. (Game-wise.) Sony just kept showing us stuff we already knew was coming out. Including an Infamous 2 trailer. Really? The game hits store shelves tomorrow and you had to waste time during this conference to talk about how cool it is? What, haven't gotten enough pre-orders yet?

Sony had two really interesting, really exciting pieces of news. Here's what their press conference should have been:

"I'm Jack Tretton. I'm really sorry that we got hacked. I hope all the freebies we're giving you convince you not to join the class action suit. By the way, we learned our lesson from pricing the PS3 so high five years ago. Here's a new 3D TV that lets two players play local multiplayer with each person seeing a different full-screen image. With glasses and a game, it's only $500. Here's our new portable. We call it Vita. It's way more powerful than a 3DS or an iPod touch or a Droid. It only costs $250 for WiFi and $300 for WiFi+3G.

":cough:cough:we'rerepeatingapple'smistakeofgoingexclusivelywithat&tfor3gaccess:cough:cough:

"Good night!"

Now that. That I would have stayed awake for. Or, Kevin Butler. Why didn't they trot him out?

PlayStation Network is coming back online. The outage has been an annoyance to me, but not fatal. I don't play any online-only or primarily-online games. Having thus admitted my bias, let me say everyone is blowing this WAY out of proportion. Corporate databases get hacked all the time and credit card numbers get stolen all the time.

First, your name and address might have been "stolen." It's hard to call copying public information that's in the phone book and about 100 other places "theft."

Second, your credit card number, though encrypted, might have been stolen. If you don't want your CC number stolen, don't use credit cards. I've had mine stolen before. The bank called me as soon as they detected a possibly fraudulent charge and I verified I had not made that charge and the bank canceled the number and sent me new cards. Annoying, yes. Costly, no. If you are using credit, online or offline, your credit is always at risk. Bank with a reputable company that offers fraud detection. Keep on eye on your charges at all time (easily done with an online account). If you're really paranoid, don't use credit, use cash to buy gift cards and use those.

Third, your email address and password may be at risk. This is actually the most damaging information in the PSN database, and for one simple reason—most people use the same email address or username and password for every online account they have. If that's you, then maybe we should all blame you? See, blaming the victim is not the answer.

Blaming Sony is like blaming the victim of a robbery because they didn't use strong enough deadbolts on their doors or put iron bars over their windows. Sony is also being blamed for "inviting" the attacks by suing George Hotz. Again, that's like blaming an assault victim because he insulted his attacker. Retaliation is not self-defense and what the hackers attacking Sony have done is criminal. They are the only ones to blame, not Sony.

Was this a problem? Yes. Is Sony to blame? No more than any other victim of a crime. All of us who subscribe to PSN are also victims. I hope they catch the jerks who did this. Then we can watch the haters hate on them.

I'll buy the popcorn.

I'm a pirate. No, not the kind that sails the seven seas or posts games on the Internet. No, I buy used games. And, for that, I'm considered no better than a pirate by game publishers and industry pundits alike (1). A great many analogies are bandied about during these discussions (including the well-worn and never-fitting car analogies), but no one seems to focus on the one market that is most like games: DVDs. Like games, DVDs can be resold and retain their intrinsic value (a used DVD is no different in quality from a new DVD), yet the used DVD market is almost non-existent. Why?

Price.

The used game market is large because new games cost way too much. I can buy three new games for $60 each for a total cost of $180. Or, I can buy the same three games used for $55 each, less a 10% discount for having a Gamestop Rewards card and during a Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale and spend a total of $100 for the three games. That's a BIG difference in price.

Price, inevitably, is what drives almost every game purchase I make. I don't buy new or used based on preference, only on price. When Gamestop marked down Batman: Arkham Asylum to $20, I bought a brand new copy. During Target's after-Thanksgiving sale, I grabbed shrink-wrapped new copies of Final Fantasy XIII & Killzone 2 for less than $20 each. From Amazon.com in the week after Thanksgiving, I purchased heavily marked-down copies of NFS Hot Pursuit and Uncharted 2 GotY. The "problem" I have with buying new games is not their newness, but their price.

When I do plunk down the $50 or $60 for a new game hot off the presses, I usually finance it by trading in games I no longer play (2). This is an oft-overlooked dynamic, the used game market not only provides a method of buying games for less money, it also offers consumers the ability to decrease the cost of buying new games. The used game niche, then, is an integral part of the overall gaming market.

The used game market also offers security. New games cannot be returned. Buy a $60 game and you don't like it? Tough. You can't get your money back, but you can get at least some money back by trading it in. Cut out the used game market and fewer people will feel comfortable purchasing an expensive product that cannot be returned if it does not meet expectations.

I can understand why publishers don't like the used game market. I don't think the existence of used games drives up prices on new games; to the contrary, I think if used games didn't exist to provide price pressure, new games would become even more expensive. If publishers really want to move more new games, there are three solutions (and a good strategy would be to employ all three methods)...

So, now that I have a Playstation+ membership and am getting a lot of free games and early-release betas, etc., my 80GB hard drive in my PS3 was filling up. I was down to about 10GB and decided to do an upgrade. Here are two helpful articles that walk you through putting a new hard drive in the PS3...

With pictures and without pictures. It should be noted my 80GB model doesn't have the same drive bay as the one pictured in the CNet article, but the steps to remove it/insert the new drive are very similar.

My upgrade went smoothly, so I'll just run through the steps I took. Your mileage may vary...

A few weeks ago I went with my family to Busch Gardens, Williamsburg. My oldest wanted to ride a roller coaster so we picked Griffon and got on the front row.

Big mistake.

Griffon is a coaster with 90-degree drops and at the top of the first drop, they pause the train to let you contemplate your life as you stare into the pit of despair, straight down. The front row actually gets hung over the edge. As I hung there, my body suspended 205 feet in the air, gazing at the merciless concrete below, my life did not flash in front of my eyes. Rather, the only thought I had as, "This is stupid."

OK, the Wii has been a phenomenal success story. It has outsold the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 by huge margins. It has brought gaming into houses that never knew gaming. But...

There are troubling signs. The Wii is not this generation's Playstation 2 and it probably won't have a long shelf life. We're four years into the Wii's life cycle and Nintendo's focus appears to be on handheld gaming, not console gaming. The Wii's software sales are declining and the attach rate is poor. Every time you hear Nintendo talk about "evergreen" titles, what they're really saying is, "We can't get decent third party games for our console, so we're making first party games that we can sell and sell and sell without coming up with anything new because we're doing this all ourselves." Their E3 press conference for 2010 only highlighted this problem as they spent most of the time hyping 3DS and the rest of the time was devoted to a handful of SNES and N64 remakes headed for the Wii in the coming months.

Yikes...

In drumming up a new market--new gamers--Nintendo both assured their success by opening up gaming to a vast, new audience. At the same time, they victimized themselves because this audience just does not buy games! In the process they abandoned the "core" gamers--the ones who actually buy new games on a regular basis--by pushing out a console that is technically a Gamecube with a fancy controller. In 2006, that was an OK thing. In 2010...well, it's not looking so hot.