Ubisoft, the game developer behind blockbuster franchises like Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed has said this week that its creativity is now being limited by the PS3 and Xbox 360’s hardware.
Says Yves Jacquier, Ubisoft’s executive director of production services at Ubisoft Montreal:
Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox [360] is that we’re extremely limited in what we can do.
It’s a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time.
Ubi hopes that they will be able to significantly improve on AI with the next-generation Xbox and PS4:
The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you’ve failed. And that’s a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds. In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more… Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can’t show.
We think that the next generation of consoles won’t have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what’s the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?
Although unconfirmed, reports have stated that Sony is already preparing to launch the PS4 in early 2012.
Result for: executive director
According to the latest NPD figures, the Android operating system has finally overtaken the iPhone for the number two spot in the U.S. smartphone market share, taking 28 percent in the latest quarter.
RIM’s BlackBerry OS remains the clear leader at 36 percent, with the iPhone OS in third place at 21 percent for the Q1 2010.
“As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share,” adds Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. “In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones.”
Some of the prominent phones to be used in the BOGO promotions were the Motorola Droid and the BlackBerry Curve, both strong sellers.
Overall, AT&T subscribers accounted for 32 percent of all smartphone sales with Verizon close behind at 30 percent.
Adds Rubin: “Recent previews of BlackBerry 6, the recently announced acquisition of Palm by HP, and the pending release of Windows Phone 7 demonstrates the industry’s willingness to make investments to address consumer demand for smartphones and other mobile devices. Carriers continue to offer attractive pricing for devices, but will need to present other data-plan options to attract more customers in the future.”
Result for: executive director
SoundExchange, the establishment that has been tasked with collecting royalties for copyright holders and artists from music streaming services on the Internet, satellite radio and maybe traditional radio soon too, has told artists to label their music properly if they wish to receive their royalties.
SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson wrote in Billboard that the company actually has trouble finding out who owns the copyright to some songs it tracks and claims royalties for. He said the organization had about $40 million in royalties that it collected in 2008, which it could not distribute to artists and copyright owners because it couldn’t find them.
Why not? Because the copyright owners didn’t attach enough information to the song. Simson pleaded that at the very least, every song should include metadata identifying the artist, song name, album name, label or copyright owner.
SoundExchange also is holding $39 million for artists and copyright holders that simply have not registered with SoundExchange yet.
