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It’s taken long enough but it finally looks like next gen HD disk format has been chosen - Blu-Ray has won. Ever since Warner went Blu-Ray only the writing has been on the wall. Most people seemed to give HD-DVD until the end of the year. That looks to have been optimistic.

Reuters are now reporting that Toshiba are giving up on the format. RIP HD-DVD. This comes in the same week that many large retailers moved to either Blu-Ray exclusive or to promoting Blu-Ray as the first choice format. I couldn’t give a toss about what format was the best from a technology standpoint. I just wanted one to succeed and for the HD market to grow with a sole format like CD’s and DVD’s. Hopefully thats what will happen now even if the HD-DVD fanboys think that Blu-Ray is a bad choice or that downloads will now take over.

The downloading options are starting to get interesting though. Apple TV Take 2 launched last week offering HD video rentals. I’d dismissed these as although they are HD in terms of resolution there bitrate is usually low to reduce bandwidth, so making them not much better than DVD, especially a good upscaled DVD. However the reviews have so far shown the rentals to be very good, in between Blu-Ray and US cable broadcasts. With start times rumoured to be under a minute it’s starting to look good for HD, especially with Apple TV. However why spend £200 on Apple TV when a PS3 costs £280, can play Blu-Ray disks, is a very capable media playback device (for Mac users try MediaLink) and when Play TV is released will be a Freeview player including HD and also act as a PVR. Even more impressively, the PS3 allows you to browse the internet and again with Play TV can do a slingbox and broadcast TV to the PSP. All very impressive. Almost forgot - it plays games too.

If someone asked me today to recommend one media player it would easily be the PS3. That’s something I didn’t expect to say even a year ago.

• I prattled on the other day about backups and how SuperDuper is now out for Leopard. Since then Shaun Blanc has published a superb post on Bulletproof Backups. It’s a great read like most in his Mac Software Reviews (Coda is a great example).
• Open source is good. Usually. This list of 50 Proprietary Programs and their Open source Alternatives has already delivered a couple of nice programs that I hadn’t heard of before. For Windows, Mac and Linux users.
• Everyday Shooter is finally out this week for European PS3 owners. It’s only about 4 months after the USA release and while I appreciate it can take time to add languages the delay has been pretty sucky. Looking forward to it all the same. PS3 has got a great crop of arcade style titles now - just need to sort out their full price catalogue.
• This week is my last week working for engineering at my current firm. From next Monday I’ll be working in IT, mixing analysis with a bit of hacking. For my sins I now have a laptop at work and boy do I miss my Macbook when I’m using it. I don’t think the hardware’s really to blame. It’s Windows. Well, maybe it’s both. Wireless on the PC is really flaky so much so it’s blue screened a few times, something I hadn’t seen in a long time. Sleeping/waking is also an issue for the PC compared to Mac. Even though the PC is newer and has a better spec than the Macbook it’s really slow in day to day use, probably down to the security software on the PC and stuff like Becrypt. It will be interesting to see how it pans out over the next few months but in 4 days it’s reinforced my Mac loving opinions. Still, looking forward to new job. In fact, I can’t wait!
• New Leopard update out tonight. Lot’s of fixes (> 300 Mb download) and just when you think thats the last update there’s some new graphic drivers to grab as well. Nice to see them addressing stacks list view and transparent menu bar (some of the biggest grumbles on Leopards release) in that they are now user options. Should have been there for Leopards release but shows how tight it’s original release date probably was. Impressive how quick the update is to download when you think about how many Mac users are downloading it right now.
• Any good backup software for Windows? Need something to back up work laptop.
• New Sony Ericsson Xperia looks like a great phone. Loving that screen resolution.
• FancyZoom - nice effect for images that’s easy to add.
• Frustrated with the amount of sites blocked at work. A well as the pron, torrents, e-mail, IM and normal stuff you’d expect it now extends to social networking sites (Facebook etc) and also Twitter, every hosted Wordpress blog, anything to do with games and the playing/buying/reviewing off and some real oddball sites including some on Oracle. Bizarre, frustrating but I guess I’m at work and should be…working?

Finally, following on from Listen 07 and Watch 07, a round up of my favourite games from 2007.

Orange Box
This is really five games for the price of one. Usually a box set is an indication of average games being sold together but all of the content here is AAA. The main meat is provided by Half Life 2 (HL2), HL2 Episode 1 and HL2 Episode 2. While all three are new to the 360 and PS3, HL2 has been out for a few years on the pc. With slightly slicker graphics being the only main change in HL2 I was a bit worried it would feel stale. However the story still feels fresh and it’s been a joy playing through HL2 again. I’ve enjoyed the story more on the console than I did on the pc - I’ve no reason why, it’s just what I’ve found during play. I’ve yet to complete HL2 yet so Episodes 1 & 2 remain untouched but I am really looking forward to them.

Portal is a puzzle game that is unique to Orange Box. Using a portal gun the player creates two portals. Walk through one portal and you appear through the other. Using this simple concept a number of puzzles must be solved eventually enabling the player to escape from the Aperture Science Labs. Gameplay is pretty short coming in well under five hours. However this is a unique and enjoyable gaming experience that I hope everyone will get the chance to try. Portal alone is worth buying Orange Box for - that’s how much I enjoyed it. Even the end credits are pretty special. The game length is also perfectly judged and once completed you get the chance to go for quick times through each of the challenges or try some of the advanced puzzles which are pretty tough. Stunning.

The final game is Team Fortress 2. This is multiplayer only featuring a totally different set of visuals and sounds. Very cartoony with some great audio and presentation. What differentiates this from the other FPS on the market at the moment are the variety of classes. There are nine options and there is a much larger emphasise on team play to win when compared with Halo or Call of Duty. I’ve only played a few games but they have been lag free (thanks to an update) and great fun. Initially everyone will go for the Soldier or Heavy but over time you realise the importance of Medics, Engineers, Spy’s and Scouts. I think there are only six maps which feels a bit tight but they are pretty large and due to the variety of classes there is a huge amount of replayability in them. Over time I would expect more maps to become available.

So that’s Orange Box. If it was just the Half Life series or indeed Portal alone it would have been in my games of the year but to have all five for the price of one is great value. Even at double the price it would have been in my list. So what’s next?
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Announced today, there’s a new PS3 for £299 with no backwards compatibility, a smaller hard disk and only 2 USB ports, no media card drives. A pretty good price. The 60GB model drops to £349 and includes two first party PS3 games. So that’s what they are doing with Lair then!!

It’s a good price drop and takes it into 360 range especially as the features dropped aren’t essential in my opinion. However it leaves just one little question. Where’s the fecking games?

The table show the top 20 games on the PS3 and XBox 360 according to the average ratings as shown on Metacritic. I thought this would be the fairest way as biased reviews would be averaged ut across platforms. Doesn’t make very good reading for the PS3, does it? Where are the AAA exclusive titles for the PS3? They’ve been and gone and weren’t that good. It’s poor that the best rated exclusive title is Resistance which was a release game. It was good but that review score was very generous. Compare with the top 3 on the 360 and it makes for a compelling reason not to pick up a PS3. Even cross platform games are picking up the same score if not better on the 360.

If Sony wants to pick up sales it needs to address the games. If the PS3 had the AAA titles that the 360 has enjoyed then price wouldn’t be an issue and there wouldn’t be an entry level console launched today.

Why has the games industry compressed a year long sales window into three months? Take the 360 for example. From January to end of August the only games I bought were GRAW2, Crackdown and Forza 2 alongside a few Live Arcade titles.

In the September to November months this is the likely list of games I want to buy:

• Bioshock - bought
• Tiger Woods 08 - bought
• Madden 08 - bought
• Halo3
• PGR4
• Orange Box
• Pro Evo 2008
• Call of Duty 4
• Mass Effect
• Assassins Creed

That is just too many in a short space of time and also leaves out games like Skate and Sega Rally which have OK’ish demo’s but are lost in amongst the flurry. I understand it’s holiday time but surely having so many AAA titles launching in the same period can only hurt there sales. Imagine how crowded it would have been if GTA IV was launching in October? It would certainly make more sense to stagger these releases over the year. Well more sense to me as it owuld give me more time to enjoy each game.

However this is shaping up to be a vintage year for games. The game’s over the last few weeks have been excellent. The Call of Duty 4 beta has been a superb taster for the game, Halo 3 is out on a few days and in October alone PGR4 and Pro Evo 8 are both big big titles. Only caveat with Pro Evo is that the demo is a little odd. It plays faster than previous versions and that can end with real pinball sessions in the box. Still, it’s smoother and a lot prettier than previous versions although no doubt online will still have some issues. It also has a dive button. Finally.

You’ll notice there’s no mention of the PS3. A few of the games above are also out on the PS3 but due to Xbox Live and also friends with 360’s it makes sense to get the 360 versions of the non exclusive games. Heavenly Sword was pretty disappointing and Metal Gear Solid, Little Big Planet and GTA IV are delayed until next year. So what’s left for PS3? Killzone 2 does look very nice and Uncharted - Drakes Fortune picked up a lot of buzz at E3 but both would need pretty stellar reviews to make them purchases. There is also a bigger demo version of GT5 that does promise online racing for up to 16. I’d normally be sceptical of those numbers but Warhawk has been a great multiplayer game on the PS3 with 24 and 32 player games. Server support makes all the difference and hopefully it will come to Xbox Live soon, especially as it’s a paid for service unlike PS3 which is free.

So next up is Halo 3. Considering I was playing Halo 2 over two years after release there’s an argument that I should only be picking up one more title this year. I’ll post up some thoughts on Halo next week…if I get time that is.