I posted the Tron Legacy Teaser a while back, but that was more of a visual effects test. Now we have an actual trailer to look at. I cannot wait to see this film. Hopefully it will go over better with audiences today then the first film did back in 1982. Also, I have to say that I like the direction Daft Punk is taking the music. It is a departure from the original’s music, but this movie looks darker and grittier, and the music reflects that well.

A game so legendary they just couldn’t stop remaking it.

Gizmondo is running an interesting article about how Sony has been on the wrong track lately. Looking back at old blog posts over the years, I find this this piece says a lot of the same things I have been thinking about. Its a pretty good read overall, and I suggest checking it out. Some excerpts from the article:

On Proprietary Formats

Sony’s last huge format hit was a product called “Compact Disc”. You might have heard of it. Spinning plastic wheel with pits in the bottom? Read by lasers? Co-developed with Philips?

It took a couple of years for CDs to take hold, but once they did, Sony raked in the cash. Not only by selling players, but by manufacturing CDs for themselves and others. It’s a huge part of their business even today, as Sony DADC produces not just CDs, but DVDs, Blu-ray, and PlayStation discs in facilities around the world.

Sony became spoiled. For decades, a success in a new media format meant that Sony could expect to make money selling the media itself. Through the ’80s and ’90s, they became less inclined to share the market. Sony developed the 3.5-inch floppy disc drive for computers which found wide adoption as blank discs were available from a variety of manufacturers. MiniDisc followed, but with less success. In 1998 as the flash memory market started to warm up, Sony introduced Memory Stick, what eventually became an entire family of expensive flash memory formats that were not compatible with devices from any other manufacturers.

And don’t forget the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war. Sony eventually won that one, but the battle continued for such a long time because neither consortium wanted to lose the market to produce media for consumers—consumers who were increasingly getting their content online.

See the problem? Time and again, Sony took an excellently engineered solution and held it tightly, the better to extract big profits. But every generation, every iteration, Sony’s need to control the format became more and more of a liability. Even loyal Sony customers could tell the proprietary formats were a screw job, eroding their happiness with their Sony product every time they had to shell out a premium to buy a Sony-authorized blank.

On Sony’s Arrogance:

There’s no better example of the arrogance of the modern Sony than the launch of the PlayStation 3. It was the last of the current generation of game consoles to market. It cost more than all its competitors. Kaz Hirai, then president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America and now the head of the entire ball of wax worldwide, said infamously, “The next generation doesn’t start until we say it does.”

People were rolling their eyes at Sony even as Hirai and his executive team made those lofty statements—but our eyes flipped all the way into the backs of our skulls after Sony spent the next three years struggling in a videogame market they once dominated.

Why Sony would present this cocky face to the world is impossible to understand, until you realize that it’s the sort of self-delusional bluster, pre-game trash talk, from a team that hasn’t won a championship in years.

It’s clear in their marketing and press relations, too. Sony is always quick to throw a big party, launch some laptop with a silly event like a fashion show, or hand press review units out to lifestyle magazines but not technical publications. Having had one accidental lifestyle product success with the Walkman, Sony mistakenly believes that its products are stylish—when in fact the Walkman became a style icon despite its often garish or pedestrian looks.

You got Tribes in my Halo! Bungie has released a new Halo Reach Multiplayer Beta trailer. This is not at all what I was expecting, but I am extremely pleased with the direction that it looks like they are taking the game. The jetpacks put a huge smile on my face, as did all of the various game modes that the trailer showed off. Some of the new weapons looked pretty sweet as well. I cannot wait until this May when the beta launches. Now I just have to practice hitting mid-air shots with the rocket launcher. Who is going to be there with me?

So the folks over at Games For Windows Live are running a great 75% off sale for Batman: Arkham Asylum, which brings the price to $12.50. Of course to take advantage of the offer, you have to first install their Games for Windows Live client, which gives you access to their Games on Demand store. I already had the software installed since I used it to buy some of the DLC for Fallout 3, but this is the first game I have purchased using the software. My impressions:

What was good

• As soon as I loaded it up, the Batman 75% off sale was right there on the man page in their banner rotation. This made finding the page to buy the game easy.
• You are offered the choice of paying for the game with Microsoft points, or directly using your credit card. I have been wanting to lower my Microsoft Points balance for a while now, so I was glad that I could use them here.
• Buying the game automatically adds the game to your download queue.

What was bad

• The UI doesn’t show download speeds, only percent complete.
• The download was extremely slow. Perhaps its because of the sale, or maybe buying games on here always takes this long. Either way it took hours to download the game. Of course I cant tell you exactly what speeds I was getting, because of my first issue.
• The GFWL client locked up at about 40% downloaded. This was well over an hour and a half into the download. After restarting the software, the download did not resume from where it left off. Instead, the download started over again. I have never heard of a download manager not caching or downloading in chucks to avoid this. This was pretty poor, and made worse by the slow download speeds.
• Once the download was finished, I clicked the install button. I was prompted with some of the usual stuff, such as language and the license agreement. However, I was never asked where to install it. This resulted in the game being installed on the wrong hard drive. I later found the setting hidden in the menus, and changed it to the right location.
• After uninstalling the game so I could reinstall to the right drive, I had to download the game for a 3rd time.
• I am still waiting for it to download for a 3rd time.

Hopefully I will actually be able to play this sometime tonight. Games on Demand does have some potential, but at this point I would never buy a game using that client over Steam unless Games on Demand had a significant price savings.