(Insert stupid Blog name here)

Nintendo should buy out Atari from Infogrames. The Big N is the perfect owner for all of Atari's classic properties. The Wii and DS are ideal platforms for being able to download and play those classic games exclusively. Infogrames is still a company of idiots, run by idiots.

I'm no expert, but I think the issue with this is that a lot of the really iconic properties that people associate with "Atari" aren't owned by Infogrammes. A lot of them are actually Activision or Atari coin-op licenses. Probably by buying out what Infogrammes owns of Atari you just get the actual 2600 licenses. So, you get the 2600 version of Asteroids, Crystal Castles, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Centipede, but you can't make a new version of it (for that, you have to deal with whoever owns the original coin-op license). And etc. And we love the 2600, but how big of a market do you think there is here? The market space of "re-issued 2600 classics" has been pretty saturated over the last ten years, with compilation discs, dating back to the PlayStation, plus the FB and FB2. I just don't think the Atari properties that Infogrammes owns are worth much.

 

At least that's how I think things stand; I'm sure I'm wrong on several points.

 

Sony should slash the price of...the PS3 to $199. At some point, they're going to have to eat the cost on these things big-time to gain market share. They should also start up a "Greatest Hits" series for the PS3, bringing low-cost titles (under $25) to the console.

I wonder if, two years in, it's too late for the PS3. Many of the blockbusters have come out already: MGS 4, GTA IV, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc. If PS3 hasn't made inroads after 2 years and shooting their big guns, will they ever? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.

 

I think/hope 2009 will end up being the year of the Wii; the year that the big development studios realize that, despite what they thought going in, the money is in the Wii - and so they will start developing on the Wii and port upwards to the PS3/Xbox360 rather than the other way around.

I think/hope 2009 will end up being the year of the Wii; the year that the big development studios realize that, despite what they thought going in, the money is in the Wii - and so they will start developing on the Wii and port upwards to the PS3/Xbox360 rather than the other way around.

 

Well, EA just announced "MySims Party" and "MySims Racing" instead of "Mirrors Edge 2" or "Dead Space 2"

 

Joking aside though, actually I fully agree and share your hopes. I really love my Wii and 2009 seems to start with several big bangs already, I just read a first 90% Tenchu 4 review

A lot of them are actually Activision or Atari coin-op licenses. Probably by buying out what Infogrammes owns of Atari you just get the actual 2600 licenses. So, you get the 2600 version of Asteroids, Crystal Castles, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Centipede, but you can't make a new version of it (for that, you have to deal with whoever owns the original coin-op license).

Atari Games (who is owned by Midway, which is probably owned by someone else...) has the Atari coin-op rights post-1984 (not sure the exact break - but it coincides with the Tramiel takeover). The coin-op rights prior to that are still owned by Infogrames (Asteroids, Battlezone, Tempest, etc.). Of course, arcade games they licensed for the US arcade market (Dig Dug, Pole Position, etc.) or home games (Space Invaders, Phoenix, etc.), are still owned by the original copyright holders (Namco, Taito, etc.).

 

And etc. And we love the 2600, but how big of a market do you think there is here? The market space of "re-issued 2600 classics" has been pretty saturated over the last ten years, with compilation discs, dating back to the PlayStation, plus the FB and FB2. I just don't think the Atari properties that Infogrammes owns are worth much.

Well, I did say it was wishful thinking.

 

I wonder if, two years in, it's too late for the PS3. Many of the blockbusters have come out already: MGS 4, GTA IV, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc. If PS3 hasn't made inroads after 2 years and shooting their big guns, will they ever? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.

I doubt it as well - Sony has been largely written-off by the videogaming masses as just too expensive (especially in the current economy). If they can price it competitively though, I think they can bounce back. There are still a lot of Sony fans out there. But I don't really expect them to drop the price this year by more than $50, and I don't think that will happen until late in the year. But Sony isn't likely to give up on the PS3 - they've got too much invested in it.

 

I think/hope 2009 will end up being the year of the Wii; the year that the big development studios realize that, despite what they thought going in, the money is in the Wii - and so they will start developing on the Wii and port upwards to the PS3/Xbox360 rather than the other way around.

That would be very cool indeed. I'd love to see more mainstream series hit the Wii (Burnout for example). Maybe then I'd actually buy one.

Expect to see a lot more Disney/Pixar films on Blu-Ray this year.

I hadn't even read this yet when I'd written that...

Star Trek movies on Blu-Ray. Do a good job this time. Clean them up. Remaster them. And don't skimp on the bonus stuff. (You can, however, skip over ST5 and all of the Next Gen films.)

 

May 12th, apparently. (Thanks for the heads-up, Albert.)

Cool - been wondering when the original series was coming out on Blu-Ray. I saw some of the remastered episodes on TV and was very impressed with what they'd done, in both the quality of the High Def picture and the updated special effects. Sadly the local channel stopped showing them (they were at odd hours like 3 am one week, 12:15 am the next, but the DVR made that a non issue).

The logic of a hi-def Blu-Ray version of a 4:3, fuzzy TV show from the 60's that originally aired on fuzzy, interlaced tube TVs escapes me. I get that their are fans and all but at some point they just have to stop rereleasing the same stuff over and over and over. The DVDs already look better than the original ever did and there's so much more stuff out there that has never seen the light of day on DVD or even VHS. They just keep picking the low hanging fruit and letting the tasty morsels located higher up to rot on the branch.

The logic of a hi-def Blu-Ray version of a 4:3, fuzzy TV show from the 60's that originally aired on fuzzy, interlaced tube TVs escapes me.

 

A lot of the old TV shows weren't recorded on video tape, they were filmed. They've gone back to the original film (and/or negatives) and scanned them in high def. I've seen an number of old shows on HDnet (such as Hogan's Heroes, Square Pegs and Charlie's Angels) and the detail is amazing. I found a screen grab of Spock from TOS that shows the detail.

 

As for the 4:3, I've always preferred to see shows and movies in their original aspect ratio as you see what was intended. For Hogan's Heroes they cropped it to 16:9, it results in a lot of extreme close-ups an who knows what got chopped out of the picture.

For Hogan's Heroes they cropped it to 16:9, it results in a lot of extreme close-ups an who knows what got chopped out of the picture.

I hate when they do that. There are a bunch of real idiots doing HD out there. There are some channels (HGTV and Food Network are the worst) that can't figure out how to properly format for HD. They end up taking their 4:3 material, and distorting it to fit the screen. It's almost like looking through a fisheye lens - the outer edges are stretched, while the center of the image is (mostly) normal. It's actually a little nauseating to watch when there's any sort of panning going on. Worse still, shows that were natively shot in widescreen get the same treatment, so you're seeing it letterboxed and stretched in HD, when they don't even need to! ESPN gets it right: HD is shown in full screen, 4:3 material is pillarboxed within that. For the standard def feed, they send out just the middle 4:3 area of the screen.

 

I hate it when they can't figure out to just leave the original aspect ratio alone. I think they assume consumers would complain, because the TV watching public wants their new HD TVs completely filled with the picture, even if it's wrong. It's like the opposite of when people would buy a letterboxed VHS tape, and complain about it not filling the screen on their old TVs. I like that they remastered Trek in 4:3. It has the resolution of HD (and looks really good), but I'm not losing any of the original picture. The black edges of the screen don't bother me at all.

 

There are cases where films are shot full-frame though, then re-cropped differently for different movie screens. WarGames and Cloak & Dagger are two examples. (The WarGames DVD is widescreen, but the print they run on TV is 4:3 from a larger master.) The difference here though, is that when these films were shot, the eventual widescreen cropping was kept in mind. In fact, on some films the 4:3 prints reveal stuff that was meant to be left out of the frame.

Speaking of cropping, I can't prove it but I suspect for the "widescreen" DVD release of At The Earth's Core they actually took a 4:3 print and cropped into that. The result is a lot of uninteresting closeups of people noses and bad compositions.

 

 

Yes, At The Earth's Core. Yes, Doug McClure. So?

 

I should really consider using a different screen name when I admit to some of this.

IMDB says it's originally supposed to have been 1.85:1. What I've seen sometimes, is they'll take a widescreen print, crop it to 4:3, then letterbox that again to widescreen. I've only seen this on TV, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if some cheap DVDs did that.

 

You're not the only one who noticed it.

 

This blurb on VistaVision describes the way it's supposed to be done.

The iPhone will continue to see minor hardware improvements (more storage, better camera) but most advancements will come through software. I'll likely buy one after the next hardware revision.

Oh yeah... that's what I'm talkin' 'bout. Looks like an iPhone is in my not-too-distant future.

 

And incidentally... Safari 4 is way faster. It doesn't, however, fix sites like IGN which are a morass of bloated code and bad design, and probably wouldn't work on any browser.