Is this a sign that DRM is on its way out?

Apple announced today that all music purchased from iTunes will now be DRM-free (digital rights management free), meaning that a track purchased from iTunes can be played on any music device regardless of manufacturer or owner.  In the same announcement, Apple also indicated three tiers of pricing: $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29 USD per track, as opposed to a flat $0.99 per track previously.  Most albums will still cost $9.99 USD.

Apple’s move away from DRM really doesn’t seem to be so much about offering benefits to subscribers.  Customers happily bought from iTunes even without being able to purchase DRM-free tracks, and most people know that you could always burn your purchased albums to CD-ROM and then re-rip them (perhaps at a loss of audio fidelity) back into DRM-free MP3s, amongst many other methods of removing DRM from Apple’s iTunes music.  It would appear, however, that this move is more about getting away from DRM as a mechanism to protect content due to its unpopularity with consumers.

DRM as a technological concept has caused much heartache for consumers.  Much of the early complaints about Microsoft Windows Vista had to do with the excessively restrictive DRM requirements around high definition content, and the hardware connections required to view it – through video cards and monitors that supported HDCP.  Gamers have been miffed with unrealistic DRM requirements as well, with EA fighting a publicity backlash over their decision to only allow a limited number of installations of their much-anticipated game Spore, which ultimately led to them making a DRM-free version available as well.  Spore still sports a 1.5 star rating from Amazon.com, with most complaints being about the DRM restrictions.  And many sites that sold DRM-enabled content, such as Yahoo Music, have recently gone under, leaving many customers with unplayable music tracks.

DRM seems like a shortcut to solving the real problems around monetization of digital content – in whatever format it might be, including videos, music, and software content.  Publishers seem to think that the only way to keep people "honest" is to overload content with restrictions and limitations, even ones that clearly impinge on fair use.  But the market seems to have spoken loudly about DRM: it doesn’t work (in its current forms), and there must be a balance of fair use.  Hopefully the news from Apple today represents a signal to content publishers that DRM is broken, in more ways than one.

More than 146 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 87 videos per viewer in November. Google Sites attracted 98 million online video viewers, or approximately two out of every three Internet users who watched video during the month. Fox Interactive ranked second with 58.1 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites (40 million) and Microsoft Sites (35 million).

Meanwhile, LG and Netflix announced plans for LG to sell the first HDTV sets with Netflix streaming built in.  It’ll come at a premium, though: the Netflix-capable sets will cost $200 to $300 above market value for similar HDTVs.  I’ll stick to watching Netflix video streaming over my Xbox 360 for now, thank you very much.

Also adding to the mix, Intel announced a new set-top device that will allow consumers to view Adobe Flash content (including YouTube, Google Video, Hulu and others), as well as other content live from the Internet.  But if you own a Nintendo Wii, you’re probably already doing that today using Opera and maybe visiting VideoSift.

Radio, telephone, newspapers, and television.  Is there anything the Internet can’t do?

[comScore details c/o PRNewswire]

The second one died, of course, about another 6 months from the first.  I’d left it dead on the floor for a number of months, swearing I would call Microsoft tomorrow, ultimately never getting around to it.  I finally decided I would just get another, newer Xbox 360, just so I could have two, get a newer 60gb drive, and be sure that I wasn’t going to get a warranty repair unit with the same internal architecture as the first two.  The newer Xbox 360s have some substantial internal changes that supposedly make them less susceptible to the RRoD.

So, then it was just a matter of getting my saved game data from one drive to the other…

Initially, I just used the original 20gb drive on the newer 360, but the new dashboard feature of copying a game to the 360 hard drive for faster load times meant that I was going to need more space, and fast.

I’d bought an XSATA kit from Datel about a year ago after my Forza 2 profile got corrupted.  I thought maybe there was some way to recover the saved data (which I had spent about 15 hours on), but ultimately it proved to be a futile attempt. 

I figured I could make some use of it now, though, and use it to copy the saved games on my 20gb hard drive to the new 60gb unit.  The first problem I ran into, though: the original Xplorer 360 program that came with the Datel kit only recognized the original 20gb Xbox 360 hard drives, and not the newer 60gb and 120gb drives.  That is to say: it recognized the 60gb drive, but it didn’t display any of the contents of Partition 3, where all of the saved game data is supposed to be stored.  So I was able to back up the original drive, but not able to restore any of the data to the 60gb drive.

It took a little searching, but I finally found a more recent release of Xplorer 360 (right on the place I should’ve been looking in the first place) on Datel’s website.  Datel renamed the program, from Xplorer 360 to Xport 360, which made it a bit harder to find.  The current version of Xport is 1.12, and was released on October 27th, 2008.  So, without further ado, here are the steps for transferring your saved games from a 20gb drive to a 60gb drive:

1.) Connect the 20gb drive to the XSATA (or if you’re using the Datel Xport, connect the drive to the Xport unit), connect the USB connection to your PC (and install the drivers if necessary) and back up the original 20gb drive with Xport 360.  This will create a full 20gb .bin image on your local hard drive, so be sure you have enough space before proceeding.

2.) If you want to move only selected content and saved games from the original drive, open the image you created with Xport and expand Partition 3.  Under the folder "Content", you’ll find a list of sub-folders.  Each of the sub-folders is a profile.  The one with all zeros is the downloaded content directory.  In my case, I wanted only the saved games from a few select profiles, so I copied over the ones that I cared about.

3.) Connect the newer 60gb drive to the XSATA unit and load Xport 360 again.  Drag and drop the original profiles that you expanded on your local hard drive back onto the 60gb drive under Partition 3, and place them in the same Content folder.

4.) Re-connect the 60gb drive to your Xbox 360, boot up and make sure that everything copied correctly.

I kept the 20gb backup image (and compressed it) just in case I need to recover a saved game in the future, or in case there was something else I wanted to pull from the old drive.  This method is also good in general if you want to periodically back up your Xbox hard drive (in case of catastrophic Xbox 360 drive failure).

Note: I don’t recommend buying into the story that you can re-use other people’s saved games to gain achievement points.  Microsoft caught on to that scheme really early on, and started banning people from Xbox Live who were caught doing it.  And besides, that’s flat out cheating.  What good are achievement points if you didn’t really earn them by playing through the game?

For those in need of some festive tunes to compliment holiday entertaining, a Christmas song pack will be released mid-December on the SingStore. The pack will be available for $6.99 and will include the following:

• Toni Braxton — ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas’
• Babyface — ‘Sleigh Ride’
• Shakin’ Stevens — ‘Merry Christmas’
• Paul McCartney — ‘Wonderful Christmastime’
• Celine Dion — ‘Christmas Eve

(Emphasis added.)

Yes, they included Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ – a song that Paul probably wrote on his Casio keyboard late one Christmastime night after a few too many rummed-up glasses of Eggnog.  Ugh!  Couldn’t they have licensed a better song than that???

Also, for anyone who loves ABBA, SingStar’s ABBA hit stores yesterday.

Review:

The Saints Row series is a clone of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto.  Nonetheless, THQ did a great job making a fun game with the first Saints Row, and Saints Row 2 is a complete re-build of the entire game.

The first Saints Row was pretty glitch-y.  You’d be driving along in a car, minding your own business, and the car would hit a curb and fly into the air several thousand feet.  Or worse, the game would just lock up entirely.  Saints Row 2 is much more stable.  There are still a few glitches, but none really detract from the overall playability.

Despite being an obvious clone of Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row 2 offers a lot of unique and actually fun side-missions, unlike the pointless and half-finished side missions of Grand Theft Auto IV.  My favorite: mayhem.  Go to a specific district and blow stuff up as fast as you can (with unlimited ammo).  Definitely a good stress buster!

Tips:

- Yes, there are cheat codes for this game.  But if you’re playing the Xbox 360 version, the cheats disable the ability for you to earn achievement points, plus the game is actually pretty easy if you just play straight through it, so don’t bother with the cheat codes.

- Stop a taxi and write down the number on the side of the car.  Enter it into your mobile phone at least once so that you can call a taxi.  It saves a bunch of time to take a taxi across town instead of having to drive yourself. (Note: taxi’s aren’t available during most missions, though.)

- Spend the money you earn early and often on clothing and accessories.  These increase your style ranking, and that increases the amount of respect you earn for side-missions.  Once you earn enough respect (x60), you’ll have infinite respect, allowing you to retry the main story missions and strongholds without having to drain your respect meter.

- Buy the stores in the neighborhoods you control.  They earn you extra money that you can collect at your hideout.  Also, play all the stronghold missions as soon as they become available.  This allows you to quickly extend the number of stores and neighborhoods earning you cash.

- The old car entry glitch from the original Saints Row still exists: jump on top of any car and press Y to enter the car immediately without having to throw the passenger out.

- Complete Snatch Level 6 (Downtown) in order to unlock the unlimited SMG ammo reward.  This will make all the missions much easier.  You can complete Snatch much easier if you hijack an FBI Bear vehicle.  It can carry 4 passengers (including the driver), it has a top-mounted machine gun, and it’s nearly indestructible.  To obtain an FBI Bear, raise your wanted level to 5 stars and look for the huge vehicles with the FBI lettering on the side.  Jump in and toss it into your garage to keep it for later.

According to Microsoft:

Strong game sales rounded out a historic Black Friday for Xbox 360, with record-paced software sales continuing for key Microsoft titles, such as “Gears of War 2,” “Fable II,” and “Lips.” Xbox 360 continues to have the highest game attach rate of any console at 8.1 games per console.

“We entered into the Black Friday sales period with cautious optimism, knowing that dollar for dollar, Xbox 360 offers more social entertainment value than any other console on the market,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “Record Black Friday sales in the U.S., coupled with our existing global install base of 25 million and an online community of more than 14 million Xbox LIVE members, have laid the groundwork for continued global sales momentum in 2009.”

Considering that, according to Forbes, Microsoft just about breaks even with sales of its Xbox 360 console, the high attach rate for games and millions of Xbox Live subscribers is key to Microsoft making any money from the Xbox platform.

Meanwhile, in the same article by Forbes, Nintendo is rolling in money from the success of the Wii, making $6 on each console sold, and selling more of its own game titles than any other platform.

I never played the original Midnight Club Racing for the PS2, but I did play Need for Speed:  Underground on the original XBOX.  Anyone that’s played NFSU will recognize the similarities right away.  I’m not sure which came first, the original Midnight Club or NFSU, but it seems to me that NFSU was the blueprint for Midnight Club LA.

This game is really hard, even by racing standards.  I’m a big fan of racing games, and it was pretty challenging even for me.  The most annoying part is that it’s really easy to go off course, and once  you’ve gone too far off course, you just have to re-start the race.  That gets old pretty fast.

The best part of the game is the car editing.  If you don’t like car editing, and you hate races that are hard to beat, then you’ll probably hate this game.

Tips:

- Buying faster cars and adding performance parts just puts you in different brackets.  It’s not exactly easy to just go buy a fast car and race.  You’ll always end up on the line with cars that are just about as fast as yours because they’re in the same class.  Try to keep your performance level at the top of whatever class you want to race in (I usually use B-Class, for example), and try to max out acceleration.  Don’t worry about speed or handling.

- It’s worth it to go through and find the hidden barrels (map) in the game.  Finding the hidden barrels will allow you to enable cheats from the settings menu.  The cheats themselves are actually worthless: you can’t gain cash or rep, or progress your career.  However,  if you find 50, you can get the “No Police” cheat, which is useful in case you either need to escape the police after a race or if you need to travel all the way across the map to start a race and don’t want to get hassled.

- To level-up easier, and get cash fast, the best tip is to wait until one of your friends calls you to start a race that you determine.  Accept the race (make sure your cheats are off first!) and use the Ordered Race map called Welcome to Hollywood.  Select the “Easiest” level and you should be able to win just about every time in about 45 to 60 seconds.  As long as you keep selecting “Race Again” at the end of the race, you can keep repeating the race.  This is the fastest way to gain cash in the game.

It would  be easy to assume that there’s no hope, but actually there is: DS-FTP for the DS is a great way to FTP files to and from your flash card.

Keep in mind that the maximum transfer speed of the Nintendo DS WiFi connection is about 20kbp/s, so unless you’re transferring some really small homebrew NDS games onto your Games ‘n Music cart, you’ll have to find something else to do to kill time.

But hey, at least not all hope is lost.