Have you been following the story of Xbox LIVE, the latest-generation video game console from Microsoft? If you have any interest in media, content creation, and the new digital economy, you should be. Here's why: it allegedly comes with some of the most onerous DRM I've ever heard of. This article from GigaOM explains some of the restrictions Microsoft has built in: • It automatically makes a cloud copy of every game you play—allegedly for your convenience so you can play without the disk, but additionally because the 'always on' Xbox will phone home to Microsoft every day to verify that you...

Yesterday evening, we posted as our final story of the day a fascinating article about a new Nintendo video game titled Tomodachi Collection: New Life, which has been described as not unlike a Japanese version of The Sims. The crux of the article was that Nintendo had unintentionally made it possible for the male characters in the game to have homosexual relationships. According to the article we posted, for example, "gamers playing Nintendo's Tomodachi Collection: New Life noticed that this latest iteration of the game ... had the option for the first time to have their male characters marry other male characters and raise children together." Nintendo, however,...

StoryBundle Launches Video Game-Themed E-Book Campaign (Good e-Reader) Is Nigeria Ready for the E-Book Revolution? (This Day Live) How I overcame snobbery to self-publish an e-book (The Telegraph) Samsung filed for e-book page-turning patent (Slash Gear) The Progressive Opens E-Book Line (GalleyCat) E-Book Deal: Self-Improvement E-Book Bundle...

For anyone who is still not convinced that DRM, as a concept, is a terrible idea, the recent Sim City debacle illustrates why. The short version is, software publisher EA so feared ‘piracy’ of the latest Sim City incarnation that they crippled the game to require a live Internet connection (to its authentication servers) at all times—not just on startup, but during play too. They dressed up the requirement in a sort of social play feature, which, to be fair, did add some cool features to the game. But there was no solo player mode. You had to play in the ‘social’...

Techdirt has a great write-up about a British children's author, Terry Deary, who is on a misguided campaign against libraries. Deary believes libraries are giving away entertainment for free; he also believes they are severely damaging the book publishing industry. Techdirt's Tim Cushing argues that, notwithstanding some of the fallacies the author is operating under, in fact, many forms of entertainment these days are indeed given away for free. And of course, many others are paid for... I decided to have a quick think about the 'entertainment' we consume in my own household. How much of it do we pay for? How...

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like I've been hearing about more and more companies lately—some of them new, and some that have been around for awhile—that are putting together large and (presumably) expensive teams of designers and developers to create digitally-enhanced "electronic reading experiences," as they're often called. The latest such organization I've heard of is Byook, a French company that was founded in 2009 by three friends who worked in the video game and digital entertainment industries, and they refer to their product as "a new reading experience." That might be a bit of a stretch, given the...

  We’ve carried posts before that posited that e-books had not yet reached the watershed moment where they became more than an attempt to reproduce one medium in another. (The way that television was originally “radio with pictures,” for instance.) At the moment, they’re just “printed books on digital screens.” And while that’s fine for the people who just want another way to read printed books, video game developer Simon Meek thinks that they’re still not reaching out to modern audiences. Meek has the idea of doing for the gaming generation what PBS used to do for the television generation: adapting classic...

A few days ago, the Supreme Court struck down a controversial California law requiring restriction of violent video games to minors. Without going too deeply into analysis, the court found dubious the claims that violent games were somehow more harmful to minors than other violent media—and since California wasn’t trying to regulate those other media, it was unfair for it to try to regulate video games too. As Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera puts it: While the California law would have added an exception to the first amendment to exclude certain content from protection, in essence...

I ran across a story the other day that made me think about the way that parts of our online activities can affect other parts, and the risk that you take doing anything that could draw negative attention to you if you’ve also got a book on Amazon. Published writer T. Michael Murdock also reviews video games on Joystiq. Recently, he gave a one-star review to a game called Conduit 2 (which he called “more like Con-don’t-do-it 2”). After he wrote that review, one-star reviews started appearing on his Amazon book listing—and it turned out that Conduit 2 developer...

Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera has a piece looking at why the Supreme Court hearing on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s anti-video game law is important. According to Entertainment Software Association President and CEO Mike Gallagher, the decision concerns nothing less than “the future of media in the 21st century.” Over 182 briefs have been filed in opposition to the law by a cross-section of media groups and organizations, including the American Booksellers Foundation. Kuchera writes: California's law, which makes the sale of certain violent games to children illegal, is based on the assumption that the gaming industry...

Video and computer games share a bit of an odd similarity to books and e-books. Like books, they can be an example of intellectual property encapsulated in an object, which can be bought and sold new or used—but like e-books, they can also be delivered purely digitally, and equipped with restrictive DRM. And as with both, there’s some controversy surrounding the idea of used sales. While many print book publishers look at the sale of used books and gnash their teeth, they are largely powerless to do anything about them. The First Sale Doctrine states that...

In some of my previous posts, I have looked at the computer game industry (especially Valve, with its “Steam” digital distribution service and focus on customer service that can even turn pirates into paying customers) with an eye to the examples it sets for the e-book and publishing trades. It turns out I’m not the only one who thinks like that. Paul Rhodes has posted on the Bookseller’s “FuturEBook” blog about the uses of new tablet and smartphone technology that he saw at the European “GamesCom” video game industry trade and consumer show. Rhodes notes that, perhaps surprisingly,...