Chester Zoo

Came home from the zoo from with a little giraffe.

Great day and weather.

Playstation 4 to also follow the Xbox One on Pre-Owned

I am a great believer that we will see a full move to digital only within years.

I am also a believer that the PS4 will use the same methods to restrict the pre-owned games market and also stop you loaning games to friends to try as the Xbox One has.

Microsoft has had to put up with a lot of stick from gamers around the world after the Xbox One reveal last week. As a playstation user I have defending some of the stick from other playstation users as it’s unjust. Somethings I think will be the same on both consoles.

I have read an article published by CVG where they quote a US journalist comments from Gametrailers on the subject of pre-owned games after Microsofts announcement.

“Sony has sort of been seen as this kind of white knight so far that’s not going to restrict used games. Based on some of the things I’m hearing, I don’t think that’s entirely true, because I can’t see publishers allowing one system to do one thing and one the other.”

The thing which resonates here is why would publishers get revenue from pre-owned on the Xbox One but not the PS4? They wouldn’t. They will demand the same on both consoles.

I also then re-read the information from Sony’s patent application at the end of last year/start of this. Yes the anti-pre-owned games one. Here is a link to Eurogamers article on it.

If you read between the lines. Remove that NFC tag to an on disc code you have the system Microsoft have announced for how they will tie games to your ‘Gamer tag’ and ‘Console ID’.

All you need then is a system where the link can be broken for a fee (again as MS execs have stated they will be doing).

This system will no doubt increase the price you will pay for pre-owned games and going forwards I can see it doing what I have always believed will happen, pre-owned games will not be financially viable to the people who currently rely on them. New games will slowly move from physical media to digital downloads (Microsoft have started this with the disc only being used for a first time install, this will move to them being replaced with codes such as xbox live cards and PS+ code cards) Then there will be no pre-owned market to worry about.

My advice to people is what ever console you choose for next gen, make sure you get unlimited internet within the next 5years if you don’t already have it.

 

Edit;

I am adding this to this post as after being shown it by a fellow OAP It’s to the point and well most game publishers need to see it. So as much airing as it can get is fine by me,

You admit you only hold this view because of the detrimental effects (you think) are impacting the industry,” the poster wrote in response to another user who seemed to suggest that pre-owned was a damaging force in the games industry.

“You are asserting that a fundamental aspect of property rights and consumer rights as it has existed since the beginning of trade should be adjusted and recodified on a per-industry basis, not because it’s inherently bad or unethical, but just because you think it’s a threat to the industry’s health. Which means you are essentially arguing for protectionism for corporations – consumers are free to exercise their consumer rights only up to a certain point, but if that free exercise is perceived to threaten the viability of the industry, then their rights must be limited in order to save the industry.

“I don’t think I can put into words my disgust at this demeaning display of groveling at the feet of your game developer overlords. Even a die-hard laissez-faire capitalist would not be so subservient, because even a capitalist would accept that sometimes industries die and that’s the way the world works.

“As much as I enjoy games, there is no inherent good in this industry. The ends do not justify the means here; there is nothing that makes the gaming industry inherently worthy of preservation, not to the point that would justify carving out a special exemption for them where used games are somehow magically not OK when they are OK for every other packaged good on the planet. Just because your favoured set of content producers couldn’t properly adapt does not justify rewriting the rules of what ‘property ownership’ means and fundamentally removing the ability to preserve, inherit, pass on, lend, and share its products.

“The industry does not come first; consumers do.

“I have no sympathy for an industry that cannot properly stumble its way around a viable second-hand market like every other mature industry in the world. Sometimes your old product just isn’t good enough, and the way you solve it is by making a better product, not by forcing consumers to adapt to your archaic and myopic business model with your dying breath.

“If this industry can’t find a way to make money off the primary market – even with DLC and exclusive pre-order content and HD re-releases and map packs and online passes and annualized sequels and ‘expanding the audience’ and AAA advertising and forced multiplayer – then, if I may be so blunt, fuck it. It doesn’t deserve our money in the first place.

If an entire industry has its head so far up its ass, is so focused on short-term gains, and has embraced such a catastrophically stupid blockbuster business model in the pursuit of a stagnant market of hardcore 18-34 dudebros that it thinks it has no choice but to take away our first-sale rights as its last chance of maybe, finally, creating a sustainable stream of profits, then it can go to hell. It doesn’t need your protection, it needs to be taken out back and beaten until it remembers who its real masters are.

“I especially have a hard time having any sympathy because so many of the industry’s problems are of its own making. They chose to focus on shaderific HD graphics over long-lasting appeal and gameplay; they chose to focus on linear scripted cinematic B-movie imitations that were only good for one playthrough instead of replayability and open-ended design; they chose to pour so much money and marketing into military porn and fetishized violent shootbang Press A to Awesome titles, exactly the kinds of games that hardcore gamers, the most likely gamers to trade in games quickly were prone to buying and reselling; and perhaps most galling, they chose to give Gamestop loads of exclusive pre-order bonuses while they knew exactly what Gamestop would say to those customers once in the store.

“They kept making insanely lavish and nonsensical displays of spectacular whizz-bang, despite that being exactly the kind of game most susceptible to trading after one week because there was nothing left to do with it. And now they’re discovering that putting so many insanely expensive eggs into one fragile and easily breakable basket is maybe not the most sustainable business model ever.

“So forgive me if I find myself not caring one bit when the industry complains that it’s just so hard to sell six million copies of Gears of Medal of Battle of Uncharted Angry Dudes VII in the first week and that’s why they need to take away used sales for the entire platform. No, the problem isn’t at this end.

Cancel Google Play Music All Access sub via play store

You can now manage your subscription via the Google Play Music app page on the play store.

Google Play Music – All Access

I have been using Google’s new music service since the trial went live on the evening of I/O presentation.

Although I was disappointed that Google released it as a US only service (we could see it coming). Thankfully we have work a around for such circumstances. Just as when Google launched Google Music back in 2011, I used my favorite US proxy settings and signed up via https://play.google.com/music/listen#/settings and selecting the ‘All Access’ trial links

You will be sent to Google Wallet to confirm your payment details. (See my previous post on how to create a working US billing details using a UK card) There is no payment required but as it’s a subscription Google want the payment details upfront. Once it’s been confirmed you are good to go. You can now remove your proxy settings as they’re just required for the initial setup.

Cancelling the subscription if you want/when Google release the service in the UK is easy as well. In https://play.google.com/music/listen#/settings there are the details of your All Access subscription including refresh/payment date. Next to then you will see the clickable ‘cancel’ button.

Go forth and enjoy

 

Images of Google Play Music All Access.

Creating a Hybrid address so you can register and use your UK bank card via US websites

Creating a Hybrid address so you can register and use your UK bank card via US websites that require a US billing address.

I am posting this as I have been asked several times how I manage to use some US services online that require a US payment method/billing address. I have used this so I can use my UK bank to subscribe to services such as the recently announced Google Play Music All Access and services such as VUDU.

It seems that when processing payments the bank does not check all your payment details. All the card details are required to be in place but the address is only partially checked. First line and numbers from postcode.

To start off you will need to find a US zip code that uses your postcode numbers and the rest zeros to create a 5 digit number (your postcode numbers need to be in the right order, zeros slotted in anywhere)

For example if your post code is AA1 2BB you will need 1 and 2 and 3 zeros in any sequance that gets a correct zip code on here

I found that ‘10020’ is a NY zip code.

Now you need to find an address in NY which uses that post code and a phone number that is in that area. (I did try to enter my Google talk number but it was never accepted)

For case of this I went with a business in the required location. I know a lot of people use hotels etc as well.

Now to create that hybrid address.

 

UK address

123 Smith Road

Smith Town

Smithshire

AA1 2BB

 

US Address

1251 Avenue of the Americas

New York

NY 100200

 

Hybrid Address

123 Smith Road

Smith Town

New York

NY 10020

(local area phone number is required by a lot of sites)

This hybrid address is what you need for billing information to get a UK Visa, Visa Debit card working (I have not tried other cards)

*Please note you may get charged by your bank for using your card abroad. This can be for currency conversion, international use fee and or a % of the total amount in the transaction.

I also do not take any responsibility for this or any other issues you may have using this method.

It works well for myself and lots of other users of this method.

Google Play Store update v4.1.6 download

Latest and greatest version of Google’s play store has been released

v4.1.6 is now available to download if you do not want to wait for it to be pushed to your device.

Android Custom ROMs (Galaxy S3)

I have always been a tinker when it comes to mobile phones.

There is always something that I think needs changing in one way and another.

There was a time when such things were not really that possible. When almost all you could do was alter the carrier logo/image via software such as logo manager when owning phones such as 8210 8850 etc. 

In more recent years (back to early and mid 2000’s) I was a huge fan of Ericsson/Sony Ericsson phones and owned a lot though this time which I guess is where I really got the modding bug. Camera drivers, audio driver mods were all the rage. At that time I became a member of SE-NSE.net the now struggling fan site.

Users here made some great modes to the then DB2010/2020 handsets. With the release of the hugely popular Ericsson T10/18 T68, T28 and later K750/D750 & W800 phones and working in the mobile industry I was able to get genuine parts and interchanging cosmetics and colour of the said cosmetics added another layer to my modding bug.

After ditching all I loved when this ‘small’ computer company released their first phone in 2007, I lost my way and did very little to alter the handset in the first year. Which really has something to say with the quality that apple actually released back then. Sure enough I was back tinkering but this time I was solely reliant on the Jailbreak community. Although things did start to get very stale for me just before the iPhone 4 came out (Which was not helped by working with mobile phones and getting daily delivery of samples to ‘play with’ customise and test). As you can see from previous posts not long after that I left and went on what has become a wonderful journey with Android.

I was a little down hearted in the first few days with Android as a daily driver, thankfully Sony Ericsson released ways of unlocking the bootloader officially on the Xperia Play and I could get on with tinkering. Things have got better in recent years with the continuing improvement of ‘stock’ Android OS and there is an ever-increasing ROM community. Like all communities there are good and bad aspects. After several Android handsets I now find  myself using a Samsung Galaxy S3 (for now) which has made me more than ever reliant on the ROM community. I just can not use Samsung’s functioning but awful touchwiz.

I have tried a few ROMs now, Rootbox, Paranoid Android, CM10.1, SuperNexus just to name a few. At the moment I think to have found the best ROM I have yet to experience in over all quality. PACman ROM. This ROM takes in features from PA, AOKP and CM hence the PAC name.

The ROM is very stable and I have only experienced 1 restart during the past few weeks which is a first for me. CM and RootBox had almost daily seizures and restarts.

There is some current battery performance issues which I have yet to iron out. Although the life is ‘good’ there is some general issues. Android OS sucking life out of the battery no end. With moderate use, few calls, text messaging and twitter and youtube use today I am down to 67% in 5h 46m. General performance is better than I got when on CM and RootBox which had times of almost running flat in 7 hours.

Some screen grabs of PACman ROM.  

I have had some issues with the ‘quick view/reply’ to text messages not actually sending replies unless I manually go into the messaging app and send them. A very minor issue to me as I almost never use the quick reply option.

There has recently been an update to the ROM v22.2.0_20130513-114321 I will see how this goes in the coming days.

The launcher I use on all my devices and pictured above is Action Launcher by the excellent Chris Lacy (great dev who listens to users and previously gave birth to TweetLanes)

There is a little insight into the history of why I have a desire to tinker with my devices and what I think is currently one of the best ROMs you can get for the Galaxy S3 and other devices.

Matt.

 

Unblock-us.com

I have been using http://www.unblock-us.com/ for 10 months now.

Fantastic service.

check them out and join – http://www.unblock-us.com/7006.html

Matt

Phone troubles

Well, my fantastic wonderful girlfriend had some issues with her HTC Sensation, I having worked in the industry for 10 years was asked to “fix” the problem of it powering off every 30 seconds to 2 minutes. I fixed that but also caused an issue with the display now just showing “snow” like a de-tuned analogue tv.

So as any loving boyfriend would do I gave her the use of my Nexus while I tried and failed to use my sons Galaxy Ace (how the hell they sell it as a smart phone is beyond me? Crap processor, memory, screen… the list goes on and on)

The thing struggled to even open up the play store. failed to install the twitter app of my choice which is currently Falcon Pro, struggled with Gmail. Well safe to say I hate the thing. He only uses it for Netflix or Angry Birds.

After a few days I couldn’t take anymore of the Ace. I raised some funds and went phone shopping. (Phone shopping is something I like. With my previous career I use to have access to any phone I wanted, sometimes I would have a new phone a week for work)

Usual advice from friends was iPhone, I have owned all iPhones up to and including the iPhone 4, 4s and 5 meh! iOS grew stale. I went with an Android device less than 4 months of iPhone 4’s launch. Now having owned several. – Widgets and not a crap grid system Apple that’s all I am saying.

Xperia Play, Galaxy S2, Galaxy Nexus… no surprise that I was looking at Samsung for a new device, although I still toyed with the idea of ‘trying’ a Windows phone but couldn’t justify the risk!

I was thinking about a Samsung Note/2 but I wasn’t sure on the size. LG Nexus 4, bar the spec vs cost it really did nothing for me look wise.

Just when I was about to go for a Note I was offered a new S3 at a price I couldn’t say no to. (SIM free) So that was that. I am now an owner of a S3. I’ve even left TouchWiz on it for now. Although I miss stock Android at times I have not found a reason other than to fiddle to alter the software at all.

 

 

Gamer