Christmas Ideas for 2022

Every year I try to post ideas for Christmas gifts related to computers and technology. I find it gets harder ever year as I try to come up with new ideas. After all, it is not hard to go back through old postings and see my recommendations from previous years. So what are some new ideas this year?

New Video Game Console - Yes I used to work for Sony PlayStation and now I work for another part of Sony and so it is easy to expect I would recommend picking up a PlayStation 5. They are still hard to find but not impossible. I have also seen several deals on the XBox Series X and Series S consoles. Which one you get really depends upon the person you are getting it for. If it is for your son and all his friends have XBox consoles, he will want to play online games with them and so I recommend an XBox. If all your son's friends play on the PlayStation then go for that console. I do not recommend just getting a new console because you found one in stock. Make sure it is the console that is wanted.

Video Games - Here you have a lot to choose from. Be sure to ask those probing questions about if there is a game the person on your list wants to start playing. I am not a fan of sports games and so I would be disappointed with one. I am an anomaly though and so don't base a game purchase off my preferences. Find out what games are wanted and then try to find a great deal on them. If you have no idea what to get and that someone on your list is a fan of Star Wars, I highly recommend "LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga" as it has games for all 9 movies. That is on my list this year.

A Quadcopter or Drone - When I worked in Research and Development at PlayStation we had a number of quadcopters on the floor and would race them around the office. It was a lot of fun. DJI has emerged as the drone vendor of choice and they make quality stuff. There are quite a few models to choose from and which one you get is determined by your budget and list of features. If it is a first drone, I recommend a budget version. More than likely it will meet with tragedy and you will know if it is a good replacement gift for next year.

Portable Bluetooth Speaker - I have a number of Portable Bluetooth speakers scattered throughout the house and use them all the time. Both my wife and I have small ones that put out nice sound and are great when you don't want to wear headphones or ear buds. They can range in price from $40 all the way up to $100's. I wouldn't suggest any lower than $40 unless you are willing to gamble with quality.

Another Robot Vacuum - My house has multiple levels and our current robot vacuum cannot go up or down stairs. To solve that problem my wife will carry the robot to another level and let it run until the battery dies. A better solution is to have a robot vacuum for each level of the house. Don't tell my wife, but that is probably what she is getting this year.

Hopefully there are some new ideas in this year's list and I have helped you out. If not, feel free to leave a comment about what you think would make a great gift.

Video Game Console Fanboys

With only a little over a month until the next video game consoles are released, there is a lot of opinions being shared online. There are several camps of people: PlayStation fanboys, XBox fanboys, and the undecided group trying to decide which console to buy. As someone who works for PlayStation, I am probably biased and so I will refrain from discussing the technical merits of either console. For me the big deciding factors are what I am used to and where I can get the cheapest games. You may agree with me yet still end up getting a different console than I will. That's just fine.

As I read through the various reviews and comments, I enjoy reading some good-natured ribbing  but some of the remarks are just plain mean. I don't like that at all, regardless of the product being discredited. It is also interesting to view how some people can read the same information and use it to argue against each other. Ultimately we should all agree to disagree with one another and not take it personally.

The most recent comments I have read deal with how Microsoft and Sony both handled the pre-order situation. Sony said that pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 would be available the day after their price and availability announcement. Unfortunately that is not what happened. As soon as the announcement finished, retailers made the consoles available and they quickly sold out. Those who waited for the day after missed out. Microsoft saw Sony's mistake and ensured that retailers didn't start selling before the agreed upon date and time. Then they sold out minutes after the consoles became available. So who had the better strategy?

Those in the Sony camp (remember, that is where I work but I am trying to be fair and impartial) defend what happen by saying things about how the unplanned release kept the bot authors from buying up all of the stock at the appointed time. Those in the Microsoft camp argue that at least they knew when to be in front of their computer or when to go stand in line at a retail outlet. So who is right? Ultimately it doesn't matter because both console makers underestimated how many people wanted to purchase the machines. This is my personal opinion but if my college Economics teacher taught me anything it is that if both Sony and Microsoft knew there was such pent up demand for the new consoles, they would have priced them higher.

I will admit that I am not a fan of rivalries. I think our sports culture does us a huge disservice by encouraging this hatred for the other team and it has started spilling out into other parts of our society. I would like to see it stop and this post is my attempt to enlighten everyone with my point of view from inside one of the major console vendors. Competition is good and companies rise to the challenge of trying to create better products because of it. If Microsoft decided to stop producing consoles and pushed all gaming onto the PC, tablets, or mobile devices, it would not be a win for Sony. The whole console segment of the video game market would suffer in the long run.

One more thing before I finish tonight is that Sony and Microsoft benefit each other in ways that most people don't see. A lot of my colleagues came from Microsoft and I have seen Sony employees leave us and go to them. We are like those sports teams that trade players from time-to-time. Therefore it is in my best interest to never badmouth the competition. After all, I may end up working for them one day and would hate to have one of my posts cause my future employer question my loyalty. In the end we really are working towards the same objective: create the best gaming console for a price we think people are willing to pay.

Greatest Hits Games

For anyone looking to save money on video games, there is a little trick to be aware of at this point in the console lifecycle. Both Sony and Microsoft have announced new consoles but they won't be appearing this year. In order to keep the game sales moving, there are some steep discounts on a number of really great games. While new releases are often in the $60 range, games that were best sellers a while ago can be had for $20. These are referred to as "Greatest Hits" in the PlayStation world. I'm sure Microsoft has something similar.

I have a lot of credit on my PlayStation account and so I thought I would run through the list of Greatest Hits to see if there is anything I might have missed and want to play now. I looked at what is currently available for $19.99 and have a couple of recommendations for those that have not played these games yet.

One of the best deals out there is the "Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection" available on the PS4. This includes Uncharted One, Two, and Three all for the low price of only $19.99. When the games were originally released on the PS3, they cost $60 each for a total of $180. Talk about a huge discount. All 3 games have been remastered for the higher quality sound and graphics available in the PS4 console. If you like those 3 games, Uncharted 4 is also in the Greatest Hits collection and is also only $19.99.

The second game I would like to recommend is Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition. This includes the Frozen Wilds DLC that came out several months after the original game release. I enjoyed the DLC so much, I paid the $15 full-price for it. I have a lot of fond memories playing the game and highly recommend it.

Video games can be expensive and so looking for great deals like this is one way to keep the costs down. I highly recommend these games and the price makes them almost too good a deal to pass up if you haven't played them yet. If you have, there are a number of other games in the Greatest Hits collection you might want to consider.

Hardware is No Longer Enough

I went to a company's presentation on Tuesday where they talked about how well sales are going. This company is known for producing hardware but have discovered that hardware needs infrastructure. Now half of the company's sales are for online services. That is a big shift in business.

The Apple iPod is probably one of the first instances where it became clear that hardware is no longer enough. When they released the original music player, Apple knew that they also needed a marketplace where users could go to buy content for the new device. They then invested in the infrastructure necessary to create an online music store. Furthermore they did the job well and have grown it to also include software for their mobile phones. Google had no choice but to match that investment in order for Android phones to even be considered an alternative to the iPhone.

Now we see the same thing happening for other consumer electronics companies. When video game companies released the first versions of consoles, all games came on some sort of media. Nintendo created cartridges while Sony started with CD ROM's. The latest versions of video consoles continue to support Blu-ray disks but both Microsoft and PlayStation have online stores where you can purchase digital copies of games.

Think about other consumer-electronic devices. How long will it be before Cannon and Nikon create online services that interact with the next-generation camera equipment? Companies should be looking at this new revenue stream and embrace it. Those that do will succeed while those that don't will cease to exist.

Trophies vs. Achievements

Both PlayStation and Xbox consoles reward you for accomplishing various tasks in video games. On the PlayStation they are called trophies and on the Xbox they are called achievements. While they are similar, there are one or two differences that do exist.

It is no secret that I am a fan of the PlayStation console more than the Xbox. This stems from when my brother used to work at PlayStation and got me a PS2 for my birthday. Therefore I am very familiar with the trophy system. If you are playing Far Cry 4 and rescue 15 hostages, you get the bronze trophy titled "No One Left Behind." Trophies come in 4 levels: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. They are supposed to be in levels of difficulty. That means that it should be more difficult to earn a gold trophy than a bronze one. Interestingly that is not always the case. I have earned a number of gold trophies much more easily than some of my bronze ones. It is the game developer that sets up the trophies and determines what actions are required for each award.

Achievements operate similarly to trophies with the addition that you are awarded points. The more difficult the task, the more points the achievement is worth. You can earn the same "No One Left Behind" achievement in Far Cry 4 for rescuing 15 hostages. You also get 10 points for your work. With achievements you are not restricted to 4 differing amounts of points. Scrolling through the Far Cry 4 achievements, they can be 10, 15, 20, 50, or 100 points. I'm sure other point values exist as well.

Trophies and achievements can help show how much of the game you have completed. If there are 1250 achievement points for a specific game and you have 1150, you know you only need 100 more points to complete the game or one final achievement.

One big difference with the PlayStation system is that they have a platinum trophy that is awarded once you have achieved all other trophies. Last week I finished earning my last trophy for Far Cry 4 and I can now say that I have "Platinum'd" the game. While some may argue that it is easier to indicate game completion with trophies than achievements, I don't see the difference between a platinum trophy and receiving maximum achievement points. The one exception may be when the game developer releases new content for the game and increases the achievement or trophy count. With trophies you will always have your platinum but you may only have 1000 achievement points out of a new total of 1250 unless you go back and earn the achievements for the new content. I'm not sure it matters that much.

Trophy and achievement hunting is a game itself. While I enjoyed Far Cry 4 enough to earn all of the trophies, it is not something I do for all the video games I play. After all, I think I am doing good just to get to the end of the main story.

Trophy Hunting

I am back from vacation and so I have been playing video games on my boat during the week. I picked up a stack of games for next to nothing and am trying to get through a number of them as quickly as possible. Don't worry, I will provide reviews for some of the good ones as I get to them.

One thing I have started to notice is the number of trophies I am accumulating for the PlayStation family of consoles. I am told that there is a similar system for the XBox consoles. Trophies have absolutely no value other than the sentiment one assigns to them. I don't really play video games to collect trophies but the topic came up during lunch today. Those are the types of conversations you have when one work for a video game company.

Naturally I got a lot of good-natured ribbing because while I have over 465 total trophies, none of them are platinum. Most are bronze with some silver ones and a few gold thrown in. One of the guys I eat lunch with loves to trophy hunt. That means he finds out what is necessary to earn a trophy and then plays to achieve it. He feels it adds to the game as he must try out new things. While I may find a favorite gun and use it throughout the game, he will mix it up as different trophies can be awarded based on getting a certain number of kills with differing weapons.

I asked how to find out about the various trophies and how to earn them. Most of the time, the game will tell you what to do. Other times you have to do a bit of research on the Internet. To me that sounded like cheating. My buddy didn't think so.

Someone else at the table pointed out how he earned a trophy by connecting a rubber band to his controller and letting it run three nights in a row to accumulate 75 miles of driving for a remote control car in one of his games. Doing so rewarded him with a platinum trophy for the game. Everyone at the table agreed that he is a trophy hunter and it definitely qualified as cheating. Personally I found it to be hilarious.

There is not much to the current game I am playing and if things continue I will earn my first platinum trophy. Simply playing the game all the way through is all that is necessary. Does that make me a trophy hunter? I don't think so because I am not altering how I play the game. However if you catch me attaching a rubber band to my controller and letting it run all night for 3 nights in a row, then you can call me a trophy hunter. Now if I only had a rubber band on the boat.

The XBox One

One of the nice things about working for a video game company is that you get to take time out of your busy day and watch press release announcements about new gaming consoles. Today Microsoft unveiled their XBox One, which is the follow-on to the XBox 360. Sony made their announcement of the PlayStation 4 back in February and so it is nice to be able to compare the two new consoles.

Microsoft was able to do something at their release that wasn't done by Sony, they actually showed what the new console will look like. It wasn't sexy or pretty as I thought it looked like a black box. As far as technical specifications go, the PS4 and XBox One look to be very similar. They both use 8-core CPUs, have 8GB of RAM, and come with BluRay players. I like the looks of the Sony Controller vs. Microsoft's, but then I am a fan of PlayStation and so that makes sense. Microsoft's new console will also come bundled with the next version of the Connect. I've never used the Connect but can't really say there is anything groundbreaking with this new version. Perhaps I am wrong.

Missing from both announcements are pricing and release dates. I think both companies are waiting until E3 to make those announcements. The software announcements made by both companies looked very similar, but Microsoft will include Windows with the XBox One. While Microsoft may see that as a benefit, I really hate Windows and that is enough to keep me from buying one. You may feel differently.

New Video Game Consoles

Tomorrow Sony PlayStation is expected to make a big announcement. The general consensus is that it will be regarding their new console unit which theoretically will be called the PlayStation 4. This brings up the question regarding if we need a new console or not. Both Microsoft and Sony seem to think we do as do a lot of industry experts. According to some, the PS3 and XBox 360 are over half a decade old and a new console will reignite the industry. Others think phones and tablets are the new gaming platform.

I think it all boils down to content. If you can create a compelling game on a basic console, then there is no reason buy an expensive next generation one. Sony sold a great many PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles because of a number of great games. Microsoft did the same for the Xbox and Xbox 360 simply because of Halo and a few other exclusive games. Publishers like EA and Activision don't care which console you own and create games for both. That is a lot of content.

With next generation tablets and smartphones, it is only a matter of time before they become powerful enough to play current console games. So what can the console creators do to make their products more compelling than the tablet and phone manufacturers? Perhaps we will find out tomorrow.