A year or so before the Wii controller was unveiled, 
I had the chance to sit down with Satoru Iwata, president and CEO of Nintendo. As I expect every other reporter did that day, I bobbed and weaved with him about what was so “revolutionary” about the company’s next product – and why they were guarding that secret so closely instead of getting consumers excited about it. His answer always stuck with me. Competitors, he said, tend to copy the company’s moves – and they wanted to own this market for as long as possible.
Author Archives: Chris Morris
App review: The Price is Right HD
The Price is Right has always been 
a show about subtle advertising, but it’s not something you have to pay to watch. Paying a few bucks for an app that then proceeds to bombard you with commercial placements is a bit extreme, though. While the game is well-paced and offers a variety of unlockable mini-pricing games and play modes, it’s not entirely stable, sometimes crashing without warning (though this will likely be fixed in updates). Playing with a friend in multiplayer mode is more fun than playing by yourself.
App review: Press Your Luck HD
The television version of Press Your Luck
is cheesy fun — and the app has the potential to match that. Unfortunately, the current version is a buggy game that’s prone to locking up and has a very limited number of questions. After you play just two rounds, you’ll start hearing questions repeated. The single-player version is fairly boring, since the automated contestants pick answers seemingly at random — and are never intellectual threats. (In one round, for example, the automated contestant guessed that Muhammad Ali was best known as a scientist.) Multiplayer, which is all done locally and not through online matchmaking, is a bit more fun, but still nothing incredible. Finally, the game moves at an incredibly slow pace — and the host’s continually repeated comments get old fast.
App review: Thomas Tilt and Go
There’s nothing particularly educational about Thomas Tilt and Go
, but kids who are big fans of the television show will enjoy the chance to control some of their favorite characters. It’s not a challenging game, either. As long as the player keeps Thomas moving forward, he or she will easily earn enough points to advance with time to spare. (They’re rewarded with short clips from the television show.) The upside of this is kids won’t get frustrated, but unless they’re die-hard fans of the show, the might get bored after one or two tracks. The gameplay is virtually identical from level to level. Is it worth $2.99? No. But if the price falls, it’s a good, safe addition for young children.
Consumer electronics: The App effect
The advent of the app era has certainly 
changed how people view their phones, but its real impact has been less on telecommunications – and more on the electronics industry.
A new study by Deloitte, released today, finds that mobile apps actually aren’t a key driver on smartphone sales, but they do play a big role in people’s decision-making when they’re looking for something like a gaming console or GPS.
Can Nintendo get its mojo back?
Four years ago, Nintendo could do no wrong in
the video game world. The Wii was beginning a triumphant run at retail, and the handheld DS unit had been flying off of store shelves for the past 24 months.
Publishers courted the company and competitors quickly learned their initial scoffing over the Wii’s less-than-eye-popping graphics and lack of a traditional controller was wildly off-base.
Warner Bros. vs. Apple
Don’t expect to see “The Big Bang Theory” or “Smallville”
among Apple TV’s rentals anytime soon.
Warner Bros., the studio behind those and several other hit shows, is among one of the highest profile holdouts for the service – and recent comments by CEO Barry Meyer would seem to indicate the company has no plans to change its mind soon.
Analysis: The Vast Wonderland Of Once-Great Games
[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris examines the “shaky steps” of the game industry to ensure long-term access and viability for older games, amid controversy over a GOG.com shift.]
Game industry enthusiasts take an odd joy in pointing out that retail sales for this industry now regularly beat the annual Hollywood box office receipts. It’s a fun headline that makes it look like games are winning the culture war – assuming you resist that urge to scratch the surface.
The reality, of course, is that Hollywood smokes games when you compare apples to apples. Movies don’t disappear once their theatrical run ends. There are pay-per-view revenues, DVD and Blu-ray sales (both the original release and the inevitable director’s cut), initial network rights, syndicated network rights and more. Games? Well, they tend to disappear after a brief stay on retail shelves.
4chan hacks MPAA, RIAA websites
Frequenters of infamous U.S.-based website 4chan.org have declared war on Hollywood.
Its users led the charge in a distributed denial of service attack on the MPAA and RIAA websites Monday — blocking their pages for hours.
The move, say the anonymous attackers, was in retaliation to action the orgs have taken to squash filesharing sites such as Pirate Bay.
Chris Morris: Journalist 