iSad: Technological Innovator Dies, Common Decency Dies with Him

Yesterday, the world lost a true technological visionary when Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56.  Whenever such a large figure in our society dies, there is always talk of his life. Right now, a lot of that talk is cruel and vitriolic.

E3: The Big Three Winners and Losers

The Big three have have drawn their battle lines for the rest of the year with three press conferences to open up E3 2011.

Microsoft kicked us off with a presser full of new Kinect announcements…Yay. That is all we need more ways to use a $200 microphone to watch netflix. There was also plenty of useless garbage about why I should watch more TV on my Xbox. Some of the games looked cool and hey hard to lose at E3 when you announce a pair of Halo games. I have to admit I am a little disappointed in Microsoft this year they have made a big splash in previous e3s but this one just felt like they kinda phoned it in and then went “BUT WE HAVE KINECT STUFF, LOOK AT US WE LIKE NON-GAMERS!”

Sony really made the first big waves showing off their new portable the “PSvita”. Which is essentially a very upgraded and featured PSP. Sony also featured alot of cool footage of the new Uncharted and some playstation move shovelware. Demoing handhelds is just awkward at these types of things, there just isn’t a cool way to do an over the shoulder shot of a guy playing on a handheld. I do give Sony credit for going right at the elephant in the room (the hackening).

Nintendo came out guns blazing announcing 5 new titles for the 3ds and most importantly showing off their new console the WiiU. The WiiU appears to be an xbox360 that is controlled by a wii classic controller with an iPad shoved into the center of it. Like all new tech jumps I believe this will be exactly as good as the 3rd party developers allow it to be. If Nintendo continues their policy of “let anyone make any crap with 1 motion control feature and we will give it a seal”, then this is just another pointless gimmick. If they actually care about the games that come out it could do really well. I am also concerned about pricing, it would seem there is a lot of R&D on this project and more horsepower typically comes with a higher price tag. I have heard a lot of comments about how low-res it still looked. It is worth noting that Nintendo’s art style doesn’t really take advantage of high end graphics it is the 3rd party developers that will benefit.

So who is the winner? looking at early reactions Nintendo’s new console would give them the nod. Although I would not say anyone dominated this year like Microsoft did in 2008 (Metal Gear, Netflix)

and the loser? well this is a no brainer