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Will VidZone kill the MTV star? MY FAVOURITE THING RELEASED on the PlayStation 3 this month wasn’t inFamous – although it is a frustratingly brilliant game – nor was it the awesome eco-Tetris/Katamari mashup Trash Panic. No, it was the launch of VidZone: Sony’s music video-on-demand service, like MTV or The Box but with a playlist you control. Or maybe it’d be more zeitgeisty to describe it as Spotify, but for music videos. No matter how you describe it, it’s an awesome example of forward-thinking on behalf of a company that, when it’s come to online, has largely been playing catch-up with Microsoft. It’s also probably a scary thought for companies like MTV: not only are TV viewers now controlling when they watch traditional TV content through PVRs, they’re also now doing it for music videos through their PS3s. Of course, the content delivery side of it is intriguing in its execution, but one interesting thing we were told recently was how it uses Scaleform GFx to handle its interface. Interesting because VidZone is free to all PS3 owners, both in terms of initial cost and subscription, in which you might think it might be cost-prohibitive to deploy middleware. As consoles become less game machines and more media centres, the opportunities for middleware to be used in a non-game context is certainly bigger. Take CRI for example – its focus on sound and video compression systems might have spelled disaster as we move into the Blu-ray era, but with efficient internet transmission of these very things now a vital cornerstone in the format war, there’s all new opportunities to exploit. And especially on the still-bandwidthconstrained smartphones, onto which CRI is training its eyes. What I wouldn’t give for a proper release of Spotify on Android.
Ed Fear ed.fear@intentmedia.co.uk 70| JULY 2009
Smart thinking With the iPhone still stealing developers’ hearts across the world, is it a market ripe for middleware exploitation? Ed Fear spoke to the head of CRI Middleware’s new smartphone division, Tomonori Haba, to talk iPhone, the smartphone future and Japan as a middleware market… Why has CRI chosen to enter the smartphone market now? At CRI we’ve been offering middleware for home consoles and arcade machines for over ten years, starting with the FM-TOWNS and expanding to systems such as the Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and now PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP and DS. However, we weren’t particularly active in the mobile arena. There were a lot of companies that already specialised in middleware for Java or BREW developers, and we didn’t really see the benefit of being the last person to the party. However, recently there’s been a real push towards open mobile platforms, and the specs of phones have really advanced too – they’re now powerful enough to be considered as entertainment devices. I saw this and realised that the time had come for CRI to port its movie, audio and compression solutions to mobile platforms, and so started the smartphone division. The launch of the iPhone in Japan was also a big reason behind us establishing the division, I think, but we’re not just looking to offer our middleware on iPhone – we want to be able to support Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS and all other smartphone platforms. And we’re not just offering middleware, either – we plan to expand into helping produce and develop iPhone, iPod Touch and other smartphone apps, as well as help with all kinds of promotion and business matchmaking. Do you think that those other smartphone platforms hold much potential for game developers? I think that all of the smartphone platforms hold equal potential for the future. It’s just that the huge success of the iPhone has been seized upon as a great phenomenon – and a very encouraging one at that.
The operating systems that smartphones run on are being used more and more outside of the smartphone industry – various machines are being developed that run on Android, for example, and of course the iPod Touch runs on the iPhone OS even though it’s not a phone. So, in that regard, the word ‘phone’ doesn’t actually matter that much. We think that the smartphone OS industry isn’t bound to things made specifically for phones, but can be applied to all sorts of digital gadgets and machines. You’ve performed a number of surveys about smartphone development – what have you learnt about the Japanese market’s attitude to the iPhone? One interesting thing that came up from the survey was just who is actually developing the iPhone apps within studios. I figured it would have been those teams that work on the PSP or DSi, or maybe Java or BREW teams if they had those. But, looking at the results, more frequently it was the console teams – PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii – that were doing it. I thought this was interesting, so decided to investigate further. I think that they don’t think of it as just being a phone or as a mobile platform, but as one of the many digital distribution platforms alongside XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, DSiWare and PSPgo. So, I think that developers are looking at the iPhone as a base platform for downloadable content and games. When you decide to make a digitally distributed game, in order to minimise the risk involved and get it in front of as many people as possible, it’s natural to think of doing it on multiple platforms. I think that’s why there’s more console teams making iPhone games than mobile teams. I’m interested to see whether this is just a trend in Japan, or whether it’s something that’s the same the world over.