September 28, 2015

 

Who will be the next console champion


About 9 years ago I wrote a blog post predicting why the Nintendo Wii would win the war of the 7th generation of video game consoles. And it kinda did, at least in terms of hardware by selling a tremendous amount of units, over 100 million (by comparison the Xbox360 and PlayStation 3 each sold around 84 million, which was not too shabby).

This was great but in itself is not really winning, because the real money comes from licensing the software that runs on the platform. Where the Wii excelled was in it's innovative controls, specifically thanks to the Wii remote and nun-chuck. The wii remote opened all sorts of exciting new interactive opportunities. Problem was, the only games you really needed to make the most of the Wii experience were the ones that came bundled with the product. Development from third party game creators never really materialized for the Wii due to the systems limitations. The Wii hardware was a success, but revenues for games licenses would never match that of Microsoft or Sony.

Now that we're a couple years into the 8th generation of consoles, the Wii's successor, the Wii U has only sold a tenth of the original Wii's numbers, which is sad because the Wii U is a fantastic machine. The Wii U's controller contains a second screen making the experience of using it more like the two screen experience of using Nintendo's very popular DS portable gaming device. However, Microsoft has already caught up to Nintendo, and Sony has more than doubled Nintendo in units sold.


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September 27, 2015

 

Here's a fun web update

One of the things I've been busy with is a new personal portfolio website - Dream With Pixels.  It's kind of a place to showcase a little of my work - mostly fun projects I have done with friends and web work I've done for Habitat. 

One cool example is this map I made of uptown Charlotte:


And another is this map I made of Purcell Park:





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Wow, it's been a while!!

It's been a really long time since I've done any serious blogging here.  So much to talk about.  Too much to talk about.  I've just been a little busy, is all ... hoping to change that and keep this blog up to date. 

Anyway, I will say I am looking forward to lots of movies coming up!  First on the list: The Martian!  (The book was SO GOOD!)

And after that, we have the new James Bond, the list Hunger Games, Star Wars Episode 7, just to name a few.  It's going to be a great Fall for movies!

Also of interesting note:  Today I experimented with Virtual Reality (VR) for the first time ever trying out the free Google Cardboard app.  It's totally awesome!!!  Walked around Paris a little quickly getting lost, checked out some museums, and stood on Mars.  All without walking into a wall in my apartment.