Day: December 16, 2010

Categories
Uncategorized

Natural Keyboards – don’t exist any more?

EDIT: no results on shopping sites, no results on Amazon … until someone told me to search for “keyboard 5000” or “keyboard 6000” – and suddenly appears this thing of awesome beauty: small, light, and Bluetooth!

I can’t find them. All I can find is a MONSTROUS thing from Microsoft that weighs a tonne. Nothing from the other manufacturers (!). And the MS one sadly is no use with a laptop :(.

A standard keyboard is very bad for your wrists. At the small end of the scale: discomfort, cramp, and bad posture. At the nasty end: RSI, long-term back/neck damage, tendonitis, etc.

So why is it that you can no longer buy the so called “natural” keyboards? They’re split down the centre, and/or curved, so that your wrists are at a normal angle that reduces strain and improves posture.

In Brighton, the shops I tried (from major high-street chains down to specialist independent computer shops) that sell 5-10 different keyboards each … claimed they had never even heard of / seen such a thing, and several salespeople suggested they’re a figment of my imagination! Yikes.

I’ve still got a couple of these keyboards, but I always bought PS2 ones, sometimes buying 2nd hand (when Microsoft stopped manufacturing them) so that I’d have an extra USB socket free.

Now I’ve got laptops with USB slots, but no PS2 … argh!

Categories
amusing Web 0.1

Wikia.com’s Uberfuzzy: you idiot

I just tried to create a free wiki on Wikia, to help the developer commuity with Entity Systems. This has no benefit to me, it’s purely for other people. I figured a system like Wikia would welcome such a wiki.

Wikia hasn’t yet implemented any of the common username systems, and won’t let you look at the Wiki to see if it supports the features you need … until AFTER you’ve given them your email address.

So I chose a username containing the text “get open ID”, as a quiet form of protest.

Oh. Crap. Wikia has now enacted a permanent block (their wording) – I cannot create any wikis, I cannot signup under a different username, I’m just blocked.

Wikia has a special page to tell me the name of the person who did this:

http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User:Uberfuzzy

Wikia then tells me to “contact them”.

Only … that person:

“has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users.”

Oh. The only way you’re allowed to contact them … is by creating an account. But Uberfuzzy has banned me from creating accounts.

Indeed, if you click the link to contact Uberfuzzy within the system, you get the text:

You do not have permission to [contact Uberfuzzy]…
…The block was made by Uberfuzzy…
…You can contact Uberfuzzy or another Administrator to discuss the block.

Sometimes the ability of otherwise intelligent people to be so incredibly stupid makes me want to weep :).

Categories
games industry games publishing iphone

Gamers play on iPhone instead of hand-held consoles

Even if you own a Nintendo DS or a Sony PlayStationPortable, there’s a high chance you’re playing games on your phone instead:

“27.2% of consumers who indicate that they play games on their phones only (and not on the DS/PSP) actually own a DS or PSP, but do not actively use the device(s).”

Admittedly, it’s a terrible, amateurish statistic – it’s missing the REAL stats that we need to corroborate the concept – but the report is pay-for, so I can’t look that up.

Still, assuming the report isn’t woelfully misrepresented, it’s a seriously big proportion who own yet have given up on their Nintendos and Sonys. Now compare that with all the people who haven’t forked out the hundreds-of-dollars to buy one yet: how much harder is it going to be to grab them?

Snapshot: But… is it worth publishing on iPhone?

Are there enough consumers purchasing games on iPhone to make it worth it?

(NB: this is an ultra-quick analysis, based on the various stats and info I’ve read recently – if you want references you’ll have to pay someone, or google it all yourself)

As of Dec 2010, approx:

  1. 140m DS
  2. 60m PSP
  3. 120m iPhones
  4. …approx 20m-40m iPhones “owned by under 30s” (many competing guesses in this area)

Given that iPhone has two of the top 5 slots on children’s Xmas wishlists (once as iPhone, once as iPod Touch), I’d feel confident in saying that iPhone has already overtaken PSP’s installed userbase.

Of course, iPhone app price is approx 10 times less than PSP/DS game price. But … family spending tends to be fairly constant, developers get much higher revenue share on iPhone, and cross-promotion of your own games is spectacularly successful on iPhone.

So, assuming you develop more than one game, you should be getting the same or higher revenues on iPhone games. And yet the development costs are significantly lower than on DS/PSP.