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On Friday, my 12-year career with Reuters came to an end. In a little more than one week, I’ll be starting a new job with Microsoft as executive speechwriter for the Xbox division. I can’t wait to finally crack open the Big Book of Xbox Secrets and find out what’s coming down the pipe.

The past year that I’ve been covering the gaming industry has been about the most fun I’ve had as a reporter since I started in 1996. It was sometimes hard to focus on other aspects of my job.

My other main responsibility was covering Apple. Apple’s a great story in every sense. The stock has doubled in the past year, giving it a great financial angle. The products are used and salivated over by tens of millions of people, giving it a great consumer and general news angle. The passion and quirks of Steve Jobs are the stuff of Silicon Valley legend, giving it a fantastic human angle.

The problem is that Apple is notoriously tight-lipped. They don’t talk about anything they are not ready to announce themselves. They don’t make executives or managers available for interviews. They don’t host events or give presentations for the benefit of reporters or analysts to get to know the company better. And because the company is so high profile these days, most analysts who cover it closely are stingy with their time and often don’t respond to press inquiries. That leaves a small handful of Wall Street analysts and consultant types that are contacted for many stories.

In the gaming industry, on the other hand, everyone wants to talk. PR plans on games are drawn up many months in advance, and companies are only too happy to have an outlet like Reuters highlight one of their titles. The industry analysts, too, are probably the friendliest and most open I’ve ever encountered. That means it’s never hard to find a fresh angle or a quick comment, and you don’t have to pester the same few guys day in and day out.

I’d be a bit more wistful about leaving Reuters and the great colleagues I left behind, but I don’t have time. After originally telling us that they couldn’t get to us until June 30 at the earliest, the movers called today and said they’ll come pack up our stuff on Monday and load it up on Tuesday. We’ll roll out of Albany for good on Wednesday morning.

Lots to do. 

I had a small glitch pop up in Wii Fit. The balance board is supposed to be a pretty accurate digital scale, but the readings I had for the first few days were about 10 pounds lower than what I got on our bathroom scale and the gym scale. Then suddenly two days ago it came up with the accurate weight. The only annoying thing is that on my Wii Fit weight chart, it looks like I gained 11 pounds in one day. I’d also set a goal of losing 10 pounds in 6 weeks, but Wii Fit thinks I need to lose 21 pounds since it is comparing my current weight to my target weight. I hope I don’t get any more fluctuations, like the program thinking I’ve lost that 11 pounds again, only to gain it back a few days later. Anybody else have this problem?

Speaking of scales, according to interviews with the game’s creator, Nintendo actually approached several makers of digital scales to sound out possible partnerships for the hardware side of this. The scale companies were interested, but all of them figured such a product was too risky since it had never been done before. To be fair, this was probably before the Wii had been launched, at a time when even the gaming industry was skeptical that this underpowered console with the funny name and weird controls could be a viable competitor. 

Still, think about it: what scale brands can you think of? I don’t know any. These guys had the opportunity to hitch their companies to one of the most powerful consumer brands in the world. The company name could have been on all those millions of copies ofWii Fit, and it would almost certainly have established them overnight as the cool, fitness-oriented scale company. One of the great “what could have been” stories of the year. 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Activision Inc is adding drums, bass guitar, and microphone to its popular “Guitar Hero” video game, a move aimed at winning away fans of MTV’s rival musical title “Rock Band”.

“Guitar Hero World Tour” will include the ability for two groups of four people each to compete online, as well as let players compose and play their own music, Activision said on Thursday.

The game will feature songs from bands such as Van Halen, The Eagles, Linkin Park and Sublime, with every song being an original master track, unlike past games where many of the songs were cover versions.

Due out in the fall, the game will mark a new direction for the “Guitar Hero” franchise, in which players push colored buttons on a plastic guitar-shaped controller to match notes on the screen.

“I certainly think it takes the edge off ‘Rock Band’,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with Janco Partners. “What’s ‘Rock Band’ going to do now, add a flute and banjo?”

Activision’s money-spinning franchise got its first real competition last November when Viacom’s MTV unit launched “Rock Band”, which featured drumming and singing in addition to guitar playing.

The “Guitar Hero” series has raked in more than a billion dollars for Activision and has helped drive a 72 percent rise in the company’s stock over the past 12 months.

That compares to virtually flat performance in the shares of Activision’s top rival Electronic Arts Inc, which distributes “Rock Band” for MTV.

Shares in Activision were up 19 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $32.82 in late morning trading on Nasdaq.

Activision did not say how much the new game will cost. Last year’s “Guitar Hero 3″, which came with one wireless guitar controller, sold for about $90. “Rock Band”, which came with one guitar, a drum kit, and a microphone, sold for $170.

“World Tour” will be the third “Guitar Hero” game coming out this year.

Next month will see the launch of “Guitar Hero Aerosmith” focusing on the best-selling American rock group, as well as a portable version called “On Tour” for Nintendo Co Ltd’s popular DS handheld device.

“Guitar Hero World Tour” will come out in versions for Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360, Nintendo’s Wii, and Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2 consoles.

My arms are still aching from my Wii Fit workout routines this week, but that’s not stopping me from bringing you the latest news and views on Nintendo’s new workout game.

Game review site GameSpot found that Wii Fit fell short as a game and as an exercise product. They criticize it for not offering a multiplayer component, for not letting you create custom workouts and dispensing shallow fitness advice.

Former ninja turned tech blogger Brian Lam says it’s better for building “fitness consciousness” and building you up to a base level of fitness that will let you graduate to more strenuous exercises.

Quick notes from my Day 6 workout yesterday: I started with 10 minutes of jogging in place, which got the heart pumping a little and gave me a light sheen of perspiration.

That turned into full-bore torrents of sweat once I did the push-ups with the torso-twisting “plank” maneuver.

The yoga activities actually got a little easier.

I’m still unlocking new activities, so there’s been something new to try every day.

Anybody read anything else interesting about Wii Fit?

A few days ago I received a review copy of Wii Fit, the new exercise game for Nintendo’s video game console. The kit consisted of the game disc and a surprisingly heavy “balance board” about two feet by one foot and some three to four inches thick.

Some quick background for those unfamiliar with the product: Wii Fitis probably the biggest mass-market game from Nintendo since the introduction of the Wii itself. In fact, “game” is probably too narrow a word for it. “Entertainment product” is closer. ”Exertainment” – which is somehow both more concise and clunky — is even closer.

The Wii Fitbalance board is essentially a fancy digital scale with a wireless link to the Wii. The game disc contains more than 40 activities in the following categories: aerobics, strength training, yoga, and balancing. You stand on the board and follow the on-screen instructor through the activities. The Wii keeps track of your progress, charts your BMI and makes suggestions. Think of it as Jane Fonda for digital generation.

I’d seen demos of the product and had expected it to bear about as much resemblance to actual exercise as Wii Sports (in which a flick of the wrist translates into a full tennis swing) bore to actual athletics.

Boy, I was wrong. 

Now, I’m not the picture of perfect health or anything, but I like to think I’m reasonably fit for my 37 years. I run several times a week and pump a bit of iron at the gym when I can. So I was expecting my first “Wiikout” to more or less be a cakewalk.

I had set up my profile the night before, inputing age, height, etc., and being run through a short series of tests to check my balance and determine my “Wii Fit age”. The balance board is supposed to be a pretty accurate scale, but it puts me at about 10 pounds below what our home scale and the scale in my gym say. It did get Harlan’s weight within a pound or two, though.

The next night I decided to try a fairly complete workout, sampling two activities from each of the four categories.

I started with an aerobic warmup to get the blood flowing. The first one was a Hula Hoop (the things are trademarked by Wham-O, hence the caps) exercise in which you stand on the board and rotate your hips in a circle. On screen, my Mii (the personal cartoon avatar you set up when you first get your Wii console) started working the hoop while a counter tracked how many rotations I pulled off. Every once in a while, other Mii a short distance away would toss additional hoops my way, requiring me to lean to the side to catch them with my Mii’s body.

The second activity was a short run. In this one, you step off the balance board and put the motion-sensitive Wii remote in your pocket or just hold it in your hand. As you run in place, it senses your cadence and propels your Mii forward. According to the Wii Fit manual, there is a whole island to explore on your runs, though your Mii only runs on set courses that are unlocked the more you run.

As I mentioned before, I run often and don’t have a problem cranking through a 5-miler. So as I felt my heart rate rise and the sweat start to bead, it dawned on me that there might be something to this after all. You definitely use different muscles running in place — I bounced on the balls of my feet, and the next day my soles felt a little tender from the uncustomary stretching.

Definitely warmed up at this point, I switched over to strength training and selected push-ups for the first exercise. I was little prepared for the butt-kicking about to be delivered to me. There were two things about this that made it extra challenging.

First, I’m 6′2 with a moderately large frame and my normal push-up stance is about a foot wider than the balance board. That meant I had to place each hand about 6 inches farther in than I’m used to, which works the pecs and triceps in a different way.

Second, the Wii Fit push-up includes a rotation move where, when you finish the actual push-up, you place one foot on top of the other, lift the arm on that side off the board and twist your torso so you’re now pointing at the sky. Then you hold it for a couple seconds. Although you start out only doing this six times, by the time I was done my arms were shaking and sweat was pouring off my face.

Time for some leg lunges. This involves standing on the board, extending one leg behind you and then dipping your hips down and bending the leg still on the board. On screen, you try to keep a red dot inside a yellow rectangle as a way of tracking your balance and staying in the proper position. You are then scored on how well you are able to keep that red dot steady. I did pretty good on this one, but was still happy to move on to the less-strenuous balancing activities.

These are some of the funnest exercises in the whole thing, because Nintendo’s turned them into mini-games with your whole body acting as the controller. The starting selection includes heading soccer balls, a ski slalom, a ski jump, and rolling giant marbles into holes. The soccer one is pretty hard. The balls come a pretty good clip, and it’s challenging to get your Mii to react just right. You also have to dodge shoes and other objects that deliver a head-rocking smack if you don’t. Harlan derived much amusement from watching his dad repeatedly take cleats in the face. The ski jump exercise is fun, but brief. You have to squat as your Mii skis down the ramp, shifting your balance to keep a red dot hovering over a blue dot to gain maximum speed. Then you forcefully stand up at the end of the ramp to pull off the jump.

I wrapped up my workout with yoga, figuring this would be an easy, relaxing way to finish off. It was my last mistake of the night. I did the “warrior stance” and “half moon”. I read somewhere that pain often blocks your memory of some events, which must explain why I can’t recall exactly what the warrior stance was about. It consists of standing sideways, stretching your stance out and leaning in the direction of the board while extending your arms and keeping your weight evenly distributed on your two legs. The half moon looked deceptively easy, but it quickly had my arms screaming in agony. You stretch your arms over your head and clasp your hands. Then, stretching skyward, tilt to one side and hold, hold, hold; then do the other side.

I tell you, I have a new respect for yoga. Underneath that soul-calming, body-limbering, Enya-soundtracked philosophy is a vicious, muscle-burning, ass-kickingly tough set of exercises that would lead any masochist to swear off the cat ‘o nine tails and nipple clamps for life. Today I was feeling a strange pain in my thighs and finally figured out that it had to be from working groups of neglected muscles.

I also have a new respect for Wii Fit. It remains to be seen if it will have staying power or if it will soon be collecting dust next to all those exercycles, Bowflexes and ab machines. An article I wrote on Firday (incidentally the top result when you search Google News for “wii fit”) touches on some of these issues and also gives some background on the game’s designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s resident creative genius and the guy who came up with Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda and Nintendogs.

I plan on doing about 20 minutes a night with Wii Fit and see where I end up. The return of long days and warm weather means I’ll be doing more actual running and swimming as well, so it will be hard to tell what the exact contribution of Wii Fit is, but I’m hoping it will at least engender a continued awareness of fitness at home. I can see coming home from work exhausted after a long day and doing 20 minutes of quick exercises to bring the spirits back up.

Hopefully I’ll at least notice those yoga routines getting easier.

(Recommended additional reading forWii Fit: New York Times article here, Time hands-on here. Hit the jump below to read my article from Friday,or clink the link above)

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The activist and writer Susan Estrich penned a column about Grand Theft Auto 4. Let’s take a look at what she thinks:

“I write for a living and still have difficulty finding the words to describe it. Awful doesn’t begin…

“Imagine gratuitous violence. Then imagine people with more imagination than you or I making it more graphic and awful than we could ever dream…

“It’s the genius that is being distorted into creating more and worse violence. There’s no question that great minds are behind these games, in terms of creative and technological skill. But think of what else they could be doing. And aren’t…

“It’s a shame and a waste, and it portends a generation going down the tubes. “Rockstar” my you-know-what. Shame on you. You owe the kids who worship you — and line your coffers — better than this garbage.”

It’s hard to imagine someone of Estrich’s sophistication writing something like this about Martin Scorsese or David Chase. Right away she falls into the trap of pigeonholing all games as designed only for kids.

I’ve played about 7 hours of Grand Theft Auto 4’s story so far and I can tell you the violence isn’t nearly as graphic as recent horror movies like Saw, or even The Passion of the Christ. Probably by an order of magnitude.

What disturbs Estrich and many other critics is the aspect of agency in video games. You are an active participant, tasked with carrying out these horrific actions. Watching a movie at least gives you some detachment or distance from the on-screen action, but in GTA you pull the trigger yourself.

But look at any thoughtful review of GTA4. The choices, often between two equally bad evils, are creating lots of discomfited gamers. Watching movies like Good Fellas or Colors, we’ve all probably thought about what we would if placed in those situations. Well, GTA4 gives you that opportunity. I’m just really surprised that Estrich, who has watched enough of the game to see key turning points that provide context for these choices, hasn’t picked up on this.

There are two half-points, however, on which I sort of agree with her.

“But think of what else they could be doing. And aren’t…”

Let me pre-emptively say that I realize a huge part of the attraction for GTA is that it lets you try out the criminal lifestyle with no real-world consequence. Rockstar thrives on pushing the bounds of taste. It’s a key part of what has made the series so popular. So what follows is just some brainstorming, and is not in any way meant to say, “GTA would have been better if…”

But anyway, a few days ago I was wondering if there would have been any way to make GTA more socially acceptable. Or something that would retain the edginess without casting you, the player, as an actual criminal. What if the game cast you as a police officer caught between trying to clean up both the city and your own department? That could allow for equally gritty and disturbing scenarios: go take down such and such drug dealer, only to find that one of your superior officers is in on the deal. Go undercover and be forced to choose between proving your loyalty to the mafia by killing a fellow cop, or following your conscience. It could still retain the total freedom to beat up passers-by and pick up hookers, only this time you’d be a Harvey Keitel-style Bad Lieutenant.

The other half-point for Estrich is that she at least refrains from calling for legislation to ban games like GTA. She has the common-sense attitude that personal responsibility matters. Despite her reservations, she lets her son play because she knows he’s a good kid with a low risk of picking up any bad behavior that could be potentially imparted by the game.

While I happen to disagree with Estrich’s main points, I can accept her column as reasonable criticism of the game’s themes, or of Rockstar’s objectives in general. Just because Rockstar has the right to make any game they want doesn’t mean they can’t be called out for doing so. I can understand the argument that even though something is allowed to happen doesn’t mean it should happen. We employ that reasoning every day in hundreds of little choices. I could smoke, but I don’t. A friend of mine could eat meat but she doesn’t. Those kind of choices are the way a free society is supposed to work.

Oh, I do have one last bone to pick with Estrich. Rockstar doesn’t just make GTA games. They have also made the biting school satire Bully, Western adventure Red Dead Revolver and the Midnight Run street racing games. Oh, and Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, known far and wide as the most realistic ping-pong simulator ever created. So there.

My latest weekly column is up, and I finally managed to run my piece on Grand Theft Childhood. I actually interviewed the authors about a month ago but a combination of a busy news cycle and writer’s block stymied my efforts to get this piece out earlier.

Some people get writer’s block when they don’t have anything to say. I get it when I have too much to say. This book is so interesting and well-written that it’s almost impossible to sum up in a 600-word article. Almost every page has something interesting. On top of that, I spoke to the authors for more than an hour, giving me even more material to work with.

So I’m a bit frustrated with the piece I produced, mainly because it had to leave so much out. There is also so much rich social and political context to this debate that I was only able to touch on briefly. I do urge anyone curious about video games and kids to pick up a copy. It’s a fascinating, informed and thoughtful look at the issue.

Read on, or hit the link:

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO, May 8 (Reuters Life!) - Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers.

Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do”, which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the effects of video games on kids.

“What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence,” Kutner told Reuters.

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So I was walking around downtown San Francisco today when I was struck how it reminded me of Liberty City. Not the specifics, of course, seeing how Liberty City is modeled on New York and not San Francisco, but in the general feel of the place. I was enjoying the spring sunshine and lacework of shadows cast by local buildings and other structures, and it was very similar to the feeling I have in Grand Theft Auto IV when I just cruise around admiring the handiwork of the creators.

That led to the realization that this was just the latest example of game experiences closely paralleling real-world ones. Here are two other examples:

Game: Oblivion. One of my favorite things to do in Oblivion was just to head off into the wilderness and wander around the empire, exploring for ruins, castles and temples marked on no map. I particularly liked the glow of the early evening sun on the forests and foliage.

Real world: I live in Albany, a little burb just north of Berkeley whose main geographic feature is a hill called, appropriately enough, Albany Hill. The southern and eastern flanks of Albany Hill were built up many years ago, but at some point the city turned the rest of the hill into a park. Our apartment building is at the western foot of Albany Hill, and after a solid session with Oblivion, I would emerge, blinking, into the sun, which turned the hill’s blanket of eucalyptus trees into the exact same shade of greenish-gold seen throughout the game. I almost felt that if I charged into the brush, I would be sure to stumble across some ancient ruins and perhaps a dungeon to explore. Alas, the closest thing I have to a broadsword is a decent set of four steakknives I bought at Target a while back.

Game: Crackdown. Like everyone else, I loved how this crime-fighting game took an open-world setting and went vertical. I thrilled with vertiginous wonder as my genetically enhanced character put Spider-man to shame with his gravity-defying climbing and Matrix-style rooftop leaps.

Real world: I vividly recall going into work the day after playing the game for the first time. Downtown San Francisco looked totally different, the buildings imbued with new significance. I now found myself automatically picking out handholds and ledges that would allow me to ascend to the ceiling of the city. It really was a powerful sensation and had become second nature overnight.

My initial thought is that this sense of changing or enhancing perception of the real world is something that is seen more in games than movies. It’s not exclusive: The Matrixbascially altered my perception of the world for three or four days, a sensation that was only enhanced by listening to the soundtrack as I wandered around downtown Los Angeles. I’m trying to think of other movie examples but can’t. Certainly movies can leave deep impressions. There Will Be Blood and The Darjeeling Limited are two films I saw recently whose imagery and atmosphere lingered with me for days.

I’m guessing that any special evocativeness that games possess would stem from the fact that games (the good ones anyway) tend to engage you for longer and require conscious effort to carry out tasks. After all, you play games, whereas you watch movies.

The early reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV are trickling in, and all indications are that not only did Rockstar hit a home run, they knocked the freakin’ ball into orbit.

Metacritic so far has the Xbox 360 version scoring a perfect 100 based on 13 reviews. If that holds, it will finally knock BioShock (which “only” scored a 96) to second place. I’m not quite sure how Metacritic is getting the perfect 100 since two reviews gave GTA4 a 98 and one came through with a mere 95. It proabably has to do with Marc Doyle’s weighted system that has the views of more influential outlets count for more.

I will say that the circumstances surrounding the reviews are certainly odd. Typically, embargoed reviews are lifted all at the same time. Such was the case with Halo 3, the game that probably most parallels GTA4 in terms of hype and gamer reaction.

But Rockstar seems to have assigned staggered embargo times for various outlets. IGN was the first out of the gate with its “exclusive review” earlier this weekend. Kotaku told readers it would post its review at 9am Pacific on Sunday, and stuck to that (posting an hour later, even) despite that IGN’s piece was already out. Tonight I see GameSpy, but not GameSpot, has a review out, and The New York Times has its review.

Variety’s Ben Fritz calls the ethics of the whole enterprise into question. While I’ll leave that topic to in-person discussions over a mug or two of beer, I will echo his sentiment that if someone else is already running with news you have agreed to hold until a later time, then any embargo is effectively broken and you should be clear to run your story. In most cases this does require a phone call to be placed to the source of the news, first to ask about the circumstances of the early report, and second as a courtesy to inform them that you now plan to run your story. The only situation I can envision in which you might hold back is if the terms of the embargo you agreed to explicitly stated that other outlets may be running reviews earlier than you, but you must hold yours until the agreed-upon time anyway. 

The other major implication of all these positive reviews is that I may be compelled to go to my local GameStop tomorrow at midnight to procure my copy. I am seriously contemplating buying it, coming home, and playing it for 7 hours or so until I have to get back to the office. Grand Theft Auto? More like Grand Theft Good Night’s Rest.