Why doesn't Microsoft want mouse control on the Xbox 360?

Traditionally consoles have been all about playing games, it's only in the last eight years or so that consoles have been more than just games players. I haven't done exhaustive research. I am sure there have been PDA type software for the Super Nintendo and Megadrive. But the PS2 was really the first useful diversion with it's ability to play DVD's. Since the growth of the mobile phone it has become unthinkable not to cram your gadgets with a plethora of potentially useful items. The mobile phone has become ipod and camera. The PSP became the portable do everything box with UMD video and all it's music and web browsing features. In this climate the newest consoles have to compete. We see the Xbox 360 and PS3 being able to play video and music from hundreds of sources, and download, web browse etc. In fact the PS3 and Xbox 360 have more in common with a pc than ever before. Apart from one thing in the case of the Xbox 360, the mouse. The PS3 supports mouse control from it's operating system, it has basic drivers, and a mouse can be used in its web browser and in games that support it. The Xbox 360 can't, why?

The use of a mouse on a console isn't new, there was a paint program for the SNES called Mario paint that was bundled with a mouse, The Playstation one had an official mouse and some games might even have supported it. My interest was lost at the time when Quake, which was touted to support mouse control announced that they weren't going to bother and in disgust i never went back to being interested in buying the PS1 mouse.

So if it isn't a new feature why was it left out of the Xbox 360? The SNES could do it, the Playstation one and i presume 2 could do it. the PS3, the main competition, can do it. So why on earth doesn't Microsoft?

There may be an answer to that question, one that isn't that particularly hard to find out. Nobody seems to want to use a mouse when playing a game on a console, of course on the PC it's a different matter.

There is thriving in game mouse usage on the PC, indeed I painfully remember my initiation to mouse and keyboard control on FPS games. It was 1995, doom 2 and I had just bought my 14kpbs modem and found a bulletin board to connect to and left an advert to play doom. I got a response from a nice bloke called Gary, who called me and we set up a game. He made mincemeat out of me, you see, i was playing with my nice Gravis joystick and he with mouse and keyboard, the score was around 80 to 1. Not deterred I found out that he was using mouse and keyboard and after much fiddling with .ini files got it up and running, found it total murder, but persevered. I played with Gary many more times, and after a few weeks was beginning to frag him almost as much as he was fragging me. By that time the internet proper had hit my backwater and online games began to become easier to find. The lessons were learned though, one, even though in my own house at the time I was raining doom champion, once online i found out that in the wider scheme of things I was really bad at it. The second lesson was that on PC mouse and keyboard is the only way to go with FPS games.

So what is different on a console. The controller seems to hold some key here. Controllers are important pieces of console history, consoles have been made and broken by the quality of their controller, well maybe not, but atari jaguar, i am looking at you here. The controller is great, you can slouch on the couch and control the whole thing, game developers have to be inventive to fit all they want to do onto a handful of buttons, which leads to some nice innovations that inform all aspects of user interface design. Is it simply down to that, we like to be comfy on our couch, floor, beanbag etc rather than sitting at a desk? The older attempts always had cables, is that the key? Imagine the usual console setup it's under the tv somewhere. Unless the supplied cables were really long that would mean that you would be sitting in the middle of the floor trying to use the mouse mat on the floor to get anywhere. Is lack of wireless technology the reason that the mouse went the way of the dodo on the SNES/PS1 etc?

For older 2D games and some 3D games, racing games come to mind, a controller is more than adequate, it's only real time strategy and FPS games that suffer from the want of a mouse and keyboard. The Xbox 360 has had a few, Middle earth, Command and conquer and is getting Supreme Commander, all of them use controller.

I wonder to myself if the PS3 got a good real time strategy game with mouse and keyboard control, what would happen? As much as it pains me to say I think it would bomb, which is a shame. I don't think the user base of the PS3 would buy it in significant numbers to prove me wrong. I would love to be saying here that a PS3 real time strategy game with mouse control will sell 3 or 4 million and force Microsoft to rethink, imagine if it did, we would see a mouse for the Xbox 360, with patches for Middle earth and C&C to use mouse so i can finally play them without becoming frustrated.

Maybe someone could point out to Microsoft that there is money to be made here. Package a gaming mouse, i am sure Microsoft already make such a mouse. All they would need to do is include an extra code in the circuitry that says to the console, here I am, I am an official Xbox 360 mouse, why you ask?  So that we can't just pull out our PC mouse when we aren't using it.  Simple really, Microsoft get more of our cash and also support mouse and keyboard for FPS and RTS games. I would buy it without a moments hesitation, why because I want to play the two games which I already own with comfort. Also I wouldn't mind trying FPS's with mouse and keyboard as well.

What happens when some hapless PC gamer buys an Xbox 360 and wanders innocently into a forum and wonders to the world, "wouldn't it be good if you could play Halo 3 with a mouse and keyboard?" I will tell you what happens the person gets 100 plus posts in return, all calling him every kind of derogatory name under the sun and besides that, is firmly told, that no thank you, the Xbox 360 community would not like mouse and keyboard support for Halo etc.

What is the reason for this? Have these people been the ones who played PS1 games with the mouse and shudder thinking back to the sore back they got playing cramped up on the floor at the end of the cable leash? Are they scared that they would not be able to play FPS's with mouse and keyboard and would look like newbies online? It is true that mouse and keyboard control does take a bit of learning, though I would say that controller FPS skills also take some learning for the uninitiated.

Let's try and see this from Microsoft's point of view. You would need to have mouse drivers that support every mouse out there, or at least 80 percent of them. The other alternative is to badge a current Microsoft mouse product for the Xbox 360 and only provide a driver for it and disbar any other mouse out there through the use of proprietary technology. That way makes money for Microsoft, the downside is internet backlash from all the people who feel that wireless adapters and hard drives should be off the shelf versions and much cheaper. Before all that though you would need to have a demand for a mouse in the first place. Microsoft must be torn, they see reviews of RTS's with "needs mouse and keyboard control" stamped all over it, and on the other hand they see the reaction to mouse control in FPS's which seems to be a firm no. RTS games are something that microsoft seems to want to encourage, lets look at the sales

Battle for middle earth 290,000

Command and Conquer 3 : Tiberium wars 480,000

(data from vgchartz)

Hmmm, Houston we have a problem! Now which came first the chicken or the egg, did the RTS sell poorly or did it sell poorly because people knew that playing it without a mouse was going to be an exercise in frustration.

Another topic here is the XFPS sniper, a gizmo that you can plug into the usb port of the Xbox 360 which maps a standard usb keyboard and mouse to the controller allowing you to play game with a mouse and keyboard, after a fashion, it isn't true mouse control you see, no matter how quickly you move the mouse the aiming still moves only as fast as the controller would move. It's passable, but somehow not the same. The fact that you can't buy one of these on your high street is testament I think to it's popularity.

Something occurs to me, couldn't game developers making a real time strategy game for the Xbox 360, just make their own. They could cobble together a mouse driver for their game, something that would only work whilst that game was running i.e. not at dashboard/guide level. Make it support a few big name mice and there you go, You can advertise that your game has mouse support, though only for x y and z mouse and get a little deal with the manufacturers of the mice for promoting sales of their product, win win all round. The only way that wouldn't work is if Microsoft has specifically stipulated that developers aren't allowed to do it. I mean I can't program very well, when I did my programming it was on an Amstrad CPC 464 and at college on 286 PC's, when basic, pascal and cobol were the languages of the moment, C was only on the distant horizon. All that aside I can't imagine that a mouse driver is that hard to write for people who make today's games. Secondly if Microsoft forbid it, what is the reason?

It seems that console gamers don't want mouse and keyboard control for FPS games, it's only gamers who migrated from the PC or have an Xbox360 as well as a PC that seem to want it. The real time strategy genre doesn't seem to be selling particularly well for anyone to get off their arse and do anything about it. It looks bleak for me getting my mouse to play C&C! You would think that all the PS3 users posturing about Unreal tournament 3 on PS3 supporting mouse and keyboard would provoke a response from Microsoft, after all who would it actually hurt to provide mouse support. Only a few want it, but making a few people happy is what it's all about, if you always aim at making everyone happy you end up making a generic summer blockbuster, and we all know that they have little substance, cater for the art house fringe that wants the odd stuff and you never know where it might lead!

Watch-processor?

Have you ever wanted something that seems quite obvious, but never seems to get built?

I love my gadgets, I love sci-fi and every time I read something by William Gibson or Peter F Hamilton I am consumed with lust for technology. I read Spook Country recently and had a nagging need for a macbook, which so far due to having no money, I have managed to avoid doing. Each time I finish something by Peter F Hamilton, I look into getting solar panels for my roof, or a wind turbine etc. Now being deluded that I myself can write novels, I attempt to do so. To this end I have bought a series of handheld computers for the express purpose of writing when i am out of the house and find myself with time on my hands. I have bought a laptop, a psion handheld and a series of palm devices with connectable or infra red keyboards. I currently use a palm and fold-up wireless keyboard and it is great, it does the job. Being a gadget freak I tend to daydream about how I could make my portable writing solution better. This is my concept, it's nothing wonderful, just an amalgamation of technology that is out there but doesn't seem to have been brought together in this way. Here is my mash-up, I call it the watch-processor. Forgive my feeble attempts at illustration, I would never make a visual artist.

What is it? It's a mobile phone and a watch, both function exactly as intended, you can have all the functionality of music, video player, camera and text/voice communication, mobile internet etc. The new part is that the whole thing doubles as a portable word processing workstation. The mobile phone incorporates two newish technologies which are available / in the works as we speak. The first is a DLP pico-projector. Which simply put, is a tiny projector that fits inside current mobile phone case sizes. The second is the laser projection keyboard which is an actual product you can buy. With both of these in the phone, you can stand it on it's end on the desk and project a large screen on the wall, and also have a keyboard projected on the desk surface in front of you which works as normal,  I don't know what the resolution is so far on these things but hopefully it is better than current phone screens.

In ideal conditions I hope it could be like using a desktop PC, in less than ideal conditions still better than trying to word process using a mobile phone size screen. The watch comes in as storage and PC connection. There is no real need for this to be on a watch. It could be built into the phone. I like the idea of it being separate however. Why you ask, well it means you can carry your data with you safely at all times.

I sometimes carry a usb stick, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I have my phone and at other times It's left in my jacket in my locker at work. What I am trying to get at is, sometimes, I have need of something I can plug into a PC and store files, and sometimes I don't have my phone or usb stick on me or don't have a cable to connect it to a PC with no bluetooth etc. So What the watch would do is have a usb cable you could attach to a PC tucked out of the way under the watch on a small retractable cable. It would also have say an SD card slot.

Now I never take my watch of and can't remember the last time one got broken on my wrist, I have had usb sticks get crushed in my rucksack however. I don't take my watch off much at all. So I should never be in a position that I don't have usb storage on me ever again. Obviously this thing would have issues with waterproofing but should be as good in the rain as an average mobile phone.

For Sony Ericsson and Nokia think of it, you can sell a watch and a phone as a pair and have them match etc. Think of the bluetooth connectivity between them, you could dial the phone by touching number buttons around the wrist strap instead of having to take the phone out of your pocket, the watch screen could be a second display for the phone.

Imagine this, you are walking down the street, your phone rings in your pocket and you look at your watch and see it's your friend calling. You tap the answer button on your watch and talk into the watch mic and hear the voice on speakers in the watch, you realize that it's going to be more than a few second conversation, so you pull out your bluetooth earpiece and change to it. Your friend tells you about some news that will interest you, after saying goodbye, you touch your wrist to hang up and place your headset back in your pocket. Excited by this news, you decide to go to a nearby coffee house and sit down. You place your phone on the table facing the wall, on the projected large screen you can browse the web through the coffee house wifi, you use the motion sensing track pad of the laser keyboard to browse as your would on a laptop, you read the news your friend told you about while you sip your cappuccino. There is a demo of a new game you wanted to play, it's 500mb, so you download it to your watch SD card. You decide to email a few other friends about the news, so using the laser keyboard projected on the desk you fire of a short email to three friends and then slip the phone back in your pocket and go about your day. No problems spilling your cappuccino in the keyboard either.

Now all of these things can be done with an iphone palm eeepc etc. I stress there is nothing new here, other than a nice display and portable keyboard that blink into existence when you press a button and don't weigh you down. What can I say I like big displays and big keyboards. and if we can project them from our mobile phone why not?

Here are some links which illustrate the real world tech which supports that my vision is already a technological possibility.

http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/texas_instruments_adds_dlp_picoprojector_in_a_mobile_phone.php

laser keyboard in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH8CUTimTvY

So I am begging, please make my little dream gadget, I think there might be a market besides me, i could be wrong, what do you think?

Call of Duty 4 Review

System: Xbox 360

This game redefines console first person shooters. There is an intangible factor in this game that seems to lift it higher than most FPS games. When I try and put my finger on what it is that makes the game so nice to look at it keeps on coming down to the character animations. They seem so real. There is no people disappearing into walls or into each other. The people move, crouch, fall and blow up in a believable way. There is much talk of breaching the uncanny valley in computer animation, now this game's character models aren't aiming for that but I think they have gone a lot of the way in crossing that uncanny valley that corresponds with our perception of figures moving in the distance or around us. Simply put the character animation is the best I have seen in a first person shooter. The environments are superbly detailed, I would say on a par with Graw 2, some being better, some being the same. Coupled with the great explosion and focus tricks played with the graphics they make a much more realistic experience. You really get an impression of the chaos that a real modern warfare engagement would be like, and I am damn sure, that in real life, I wouldn't last a second.

The level design is good, with mixtures of middle east and eastern europe locations. Each location is blasted and war torn, chernobyl a radioactive ghost town especially bleak. The overgrown junkyard and middle eastern town stick out as being especially well put together. Graphically there is an acceptably smooth frame rate throughout. The resolution isn't the highest but with a fluidity and looks as good as this who really care?

The story concerns a coup and possession of nuclear materials by terrorists. A nuke is actually set off in the course of the game and the eastern Seaboard of America is very nearly turned into radioactive Ash. The characters are slightly memorable, though don't ask me anyone name other than Soap who you play for a large part of the game. The British are strongly accented nutters which seems a little better than the usual british stereotypes. There is some humour, especially in the silo when with only minutes to disarm the nukes a huge metal door swings open at a snails pace. Though after doing this section about twenty times the joke was beginning to wear thin. The story is typical of modern warfare fps', however, the death of a major player controlled hero, the failure to prevent a nuke going off, the very near miss of armageddon and the downbeat final scene make this a slightly less standard and more unconventional ride.

Before playing this game I had been told by reviews that it was a little short. My opinion on this is that it probably does seem a little short as there is no padding here, no running around the same levels looking for things, no lock stock duplicated areas to repeat ad nauseum. The game is story driven, with unique environment all the way. It might feel short if you play through on easy. On hardened and veteran it does not feel like a short game, don't get me wrong this is no 100 hour epic, but it's long enough thank you.

The Game mechanics are probably the only point you can criticise call of duty 4 for. However, the fact that  we have seen it all before in many other games is not call of duty's fault. The aiming down the gun with the right  trigger is ever present and the compass point waypoints govern the objectives as usual. There is the usual diversion missions where you are fixed in a jeep or bombing the ground from a bomber. There is also an attempt at a covert mission like metal gear solid. This is particularly good, though not to be looked into too heavily as though it feels like a proper stealth game there is really little changed. The part where you lie prone and tanks and soldiers walk around you is particularly tense. It isn't fair to criticise, as it isn't really trying to be metal gear or splinter cell, but it does feel like you are playing a stealth game in the middle of an action heavy fps and for that infinity ward should be praised for trying to keep the pacing varied.

The a.i. is adequate, they do the usual stuff, running around like cannon fodder in the open, however, they do use cover and come at you from all angles. There is nothing here really to praise, however, nothing here to criticise either.

The checkpoint system is employed here well. there was only one point in the game where I felt like I was being sent back too far after dying and that was on the silo mission, and as this could be considered the main finale really then I suppose to make that too easy would have left less of an impact. The counter clicking down in this mission is particualrly nail biting as for the first part of the mission you play normally and then find that you only have seconds to spare, so remember from the time the missiles go off get through things as quickly as possible. You will thank yourself at the end when you have minutes to locate the terminal and enter the abort codes instead of seconds in the control room.

Achievements are given out reasonably fairly. There is points for nearly all levels being completed and more points for completing them on veteran. There are little in game moments to achieve like saving other soldiers or killing dogs which reward you. There are also collectable laptops of which collecting 30 will get you some points. I played through through on hardened first and got 430 points, a respectable amount for a first play through. I will go back to this game and try veteran and will probably play through on easy looking for the laptops, so some replay value there.

The multiplayer is where this game will really have long lasting appeal. This game may become the new halo. The multiplayer is fast a frantic, smooth and mostly lag free. joining games is a breeze, there is a ranking system which unlocks in game goodies and ranks you based on points scored. There are good variations of game modes with headquarters appealing to me in particular. Halo is great online but call of duty is it's equal. The games play slightly differently, and there is room for both.

Scoring

Graphics 9

Gameplay 9

Story 7

Level Design 8

A.i. 7

Total 40 out of 50

Score 80%