Pros and cons

A couple quick observations about living a post-journalistic life. 

First, it’s weird being cut off from the firehose of news that Reuters reporters drink from in the newsroom. Not only are CNN and CNBC playing, but press releases pop up in constantly, you have real-time stock prices, and you see the latest headlines — lit up in red caps — constantly scroll down your screen.

As much as the Web has done for spreading news more broadly and giving people quicker access, relying on even aggregator sites like Google News or Yahoo News for the latest breaking story is like viewing the world through one of those fisheye security peepholes.

A couple of examples. When Apple last reported earnings, I checked Yahoo News 15 minutes after they reported and all that was up were short stories of a couple paragraphs. I know that for a major company like Apple, Reuters would put out 15-20 headlines, have five paragraphs out in five minutes, followed by a 6-8 paragraph update 10 minutes later.

The other example was the Olympics. At Reuters, I could sit at my desk, punch in “OLYMPICS”, hit F9 and have every Olympic story instantly pop up. That’s for every sporting event, every political story, every color story, any story that had an OLYMPICS tag on it. NBC’s official Olympics Web site got lots of praise for its breadth and depth of coverage, but it couldn’t hold a candle next to the comprehensive file any reporter with a wire terminal has at his fingertips.

On the plus side, I came to realize a couple weeks ago that my evenings and weekends are completely mine. I’m not expected to know what Apple, or Sony, or EA is up to on a Saturday night, or any night. For the first time in 12 years, I have a clear separation between work life and home life. As a reporter, your job doesn’t entirely end when you leave the newsroom. You always have to be ready for the late-night call from an editor or overnight staffer saying that something on your beat has just happened.

In China it could be even more nerve-wracking because we’d take turns at weekend and evening duty and you’d never know what would happen — the central bank could raise interest rates, an earthquake 1,500 miles away could kill 10,000 people, a high-ranking official could be brought down on corruption charges.

Not to say I don’t ever work evenings or weekends, but it’s for stuff you know is coming down the road, crunch periods with long lead times, like E3.

It’s something I think I can get used to.

Hey, where did everyone go?

Just over two months ago, I wrote that I was taking a job with Microsoft’s Xbox division. The ensuing 5 weeks ended up being one of the busiest periods of my life. In fact, I think we must have set some sort of record for doing a complete interstate move.

My last day with Reuters was June 20. By June 26, me, my wife and 6-year-old son had packed up and hit the road on the 900-mile drive to Seattle.

I received my Microsoft badge on June 30, just two weeks before the E3 expo in Los Angeles that is the video game industry’s most important show of the year (and which, incidentally, we won hands-down).

We closed on a new house on July 31 and were fully moved in by the evening of August 2.

It really was one of those moves in which everything comes together, A-Team-like. It was about time, since we’d had enough practice. Here is a brief history of our wanderings since the mid-90s:

• April, 1996: Take full-time job with Reuters in Beijing.
• January, 1999: Take job with Reuters in Los Angeles
• February, 2000: Take job with Reuters in Seattle
• May, 2002: Take job with Reuters in Beijing
• October, 2005: Take job with Reuters in San Francisco
• June, 2008: Take job with Microsoft in Seattle

That’s five major moves in less than 10 years. I guess all that practice paid off since pretty much everything went off without a hitch this time.

In a corporate move like this, there are so many moving parts: moving company (and a separate company to move one of our cars), corporate HR for both Reuters and Microsoft, the temp housing company, the real estate agent, the mortgage lender, the home seller, etc. In every case, each party totally went to bat for us to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible. It was amazing.

I don’t have much to report right now. Scratch that, I have tons to report, but I’m not going to do it right at this moment. This is sort of the re-launching of Command-K, and I just needed to log in and get the ball rolling again.

In the coming weeks I’ll be writing about the new job, my evolving perspective on the games industry from the inside and other random thoughts.

Well, that went pretty well

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. 

The week in review

Wow. What a busy week. I’m going to just do sort of a link dump here, with additional comment exclusive to you Command-K subscribers. Premium stuff, and worth every penny you pay for it. This should also mark the resumption of regular blogging, now that I have a couple days to breathe and collect my thoughts.

There is this little companythat makes these cute little digital music players. And computers. And something called the iPhone. Everyone was wondering how they had held up amid the worsening economy. Pretty well, as it turns out.

Oh, and in the meantime, they boughta microchip design firm. That sort of threw everyone for a loop. The initial reaction was along the lines of “WTF does Apple want with a semi design shop?” Some of the speculation was that P.A. Semi’s low-power microprocessors could be modified for the iPhone or iPod. As it happens, I was briefed by these guys more than two years ago in my former life as semiconductor beat reporter. Ironically, their chips are based on IBM’s Power architecture, which Apple dumped from the Macs a while back in favor of Intel’s x86 chips. P.A. Semi’s products are aimed at hi-po computing: servers and supercomputers and the like. Not too likely that those will end up in an iPhone any time soon. But apparently, Apple does employ a number of chip designers who work with partners to tweak features to meet certain capabilities Apple’s product engineers have in mind. Still, it’s a curious play since if they wanted a bunch of chip designers, why not just hire them from the job market. Why pay a couple million per headcount to buy a whole company?

As if Apple wasn’t enough to handle, there’s a little game coming out next week that might just be, oh, only the biggest single entertainment property of the year. The Halo 3 launch last year opened the eyes of many reporters and editors to how big A-list video-game properties can be. Not only is Grand Theft Auto IV big business, it’s a game that has as much cultural relevance as The Matrix or Harry Potter.

My main preview story of the game is posted below, but before I get to that, I want to highlight two other pieces.

First is my Gameworld column on Sony’s Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. It’s a gorgeously realistic driving title, but only a fraction of what is promised when the full game comes out next year. Racing fans will love it, but I’m sure many consumers will see the $40 price tag as too high. 

What really interested me about my interview with Taku Imasaki, the U.S. producer on the game, was the vision that the title would become a platform for all things automotive: a driving game at the core, but augmented with videos of races and information about cars. 

Sony plans to add more features and pipe a steady stream of video content into “Prologue” in hopes that gamers’ interest will be redlining by the time the full game is released.

“Our goal is to become another medium for car companies, like magazines and TVs. We’re the perfect game for that and ideally we could become the MySpace or Facebook for auto enthusiasts,” Imasaki said.

Along with Rock Band and possibly Guitar Hero, it’s an example of how these connected consoles with gobs of processing power and storage are enabling games to become destinations/portals/aggregators for certain topics. Rock Band and GH do it for music, GT5 is doing it for cars. I’m sure there are other areas where it makes sense. Sports comes to mind. Take Madden football as an example. They already have a scrolling sports news ticker in Madden, why not buff that up to include highlights of the week’s games, interviews with athletes, and tutorials that show you how to use the video game to enhance your appreciation of the actual sport (I would love, for example, some breakdown of defensive schemes, which I only dimly understand).

The second piece I’ll highlight is an analysis of GTA4. Everybody knows this game is going to sell a buttload. The only question is it going to be serious buttload or just a regular buttload? Estimates from several Wall Street analysts range from 9 million to 12.5 million units by the end of this year, with most looking at about 10 million units. At that scale, analyzing the game’s sales is a little like speculating on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Let’s just call it “a lot” and leave it at that.

What I found more interesting was the question of what effect the game will have on console sales, and which console stands to benefit more, the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3? My expectation was that most people would say the Xbox 360. After all, Microsoft having locked in the exclusive downloadable content for later this year, combined with the superior implementation of online capabilities in Xbox Live, makes a pretty compelling argument for the machine.

It turns out that most people, from Wall Street analysts to industry observers who know far more about this stuff than me, figure the PS3 will get the biggest hardware sales boost. It basically boils down to two reasons: the hardcore gamers who dig GTA4probably already have an Xbox; those who aren’t hardcore gamers but love the GTA series probably got into it on the PlayStation 2, and are likely to stay loyal to Sony.

If you’ve made it this far, bless you. Hopefully it’s been worth it. I’ll leave you with my preview of Grand Theft Auto IV. Hit the link or go below the fold for the whole thing. It was a fun story to research and write.

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO, April 25 (Reuters) – Beatings, carjackings, drive-by shootings, drunk driving and hookers. For video game fans, it can only mean one thing: “Grand Theft Auto 4″ is here, arrving with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast.

The latest chapter in the wildly popular and controversial criminal action franchise from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc is poised to be the biggest entertainment product of the year, with expected first-week sales of up to $400 million — dwarfing Hollywood’s biggest box-office openings.

The handiwork of Take-Two’s Rockstar game studio headed by British brothers Sam and Dan Houser, “Grand Theft Auto 4,” which will be launched next Tuesday, promises to crank up the thuggish drama that made previous installments the equivalent of “The Godfather” for Generation PlayStation.

“We also felt over the last few years there hadn’t been a great standout gangster movie. Maybe we could do something ourselves that would live alongside that stuff,” Rockstar’s Dan Houser told Variety magazine in a recent interview.

EA: The repentent Borg?

As the drama over Electronic Arts’ play for Take-Two drags on, one question is whether EA, should it be successful in its bid, would end up ruining “Grand Theft Auto”, cranking out yearly updates with an ever-lengthening list of ill-conceived features and steadily declining quality.

A year ago, the answer could easily have been yes. Today, though, there is convincing evidence to show that CEO John Riccitiello is out to rehabilitate EA’s reputation in the eyes of gamers. Two weeks ago, I wrote an analysis laying out the issues. Read on to see what EA has in common with ancient Greek politics, alien menaces, and whether shareholders will smile on his efforts.

   By Scott Hillis
    SAN FRANCISCO, April 4 (Reuters) – As it pursues its $2 billion offer for Take-Two Interactive Software Inc, Electronic Arts Inc is trying hard to prove it won’t drive the “Grand Theft Auto” video game series to mediocrity, a fate that has befallen some of its other acquired franchises.
    It’s an important theme in EA’s current takeover drama with Take-Two, home to some of the industry’s leading lights, including Rockstar, the crown jewel studio behind the upcoming “Grand Theft Auto 4.”
    The company has a spotty history in getting hard-won talent to stick around. Its 1990s acquisition of well-regarded studios such as Bullfrog, Westwood and Origin led to mass defections and the marring of once-proud franchises with ho-hum games.
    Chief Executive John Riccitiello, who rejoined EA a year ago after heading private equity firm Elevation Partners, acknowledged as much at an industry conference in February.
    “I would state simply that we at EA blew it, and I was involved so I can say I blew it,” Riccitiello said of past acquisitions that ended badly. “The command and conquer model, the command and direct model, doesn’t work.” 

Financial data as a game?

Or at least a virtual world. That’s what my boss (many times up the chain of command), Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, has to say over at his blog. Tom tells a nice anecdote about grokking from his kids that in-game achievements can sometimes be as significant as real-world ones.

Tom has earned a reputation as the most technologically savvy CEO our venerable British newswire has yet had. He is fascinated in new technologies and what they mean for journalism and financial data, the twin engines of the Reuters ship. He famously opened a Reuters bureau in the Second Life virtual world and has embraced official Reuters blogs.

In this new post, he gives a glimpse into why he thinks this stuff is important for the future of Reuters. First, a bit of background: I mentioned above that journalism and data are the key businesses for Reuters. In fact, as much as we journalists like to believe we’re the heart of the company, the data and trading side of things accounts for the lion’s share of profits. Financial clients use Reuters terminals not only to read news reports, but to obtain data feeds of all sorts, and to chart, graph and analyze that data in useful ways.

One of the reasons I thought such experimentation would benefit the company was that the generation of gamers today would expect far more participatory graphics environments when they came of age professionally.  So for example, I imagine that the current generation of teenagers reared on World of Warcraft, the Sims and Second Life, would find 2D financial graphics pretty lame.  What I overlooked was the wonderful focus group growing up in my own house.

Just in the way that some military systems have been designed to resemble the video-game controls that young recruits are familiar with, Tom seems to suggest that its possible that future financial analysts will find it easier working with 3D models of data rather than Flatlandish spreadsheets and charts.

Personally I think it would be awesome if Reuters partnered with a game developer to make a financial MMO. Towns and geographical areas would be named for and tied to real-world financial instruments — the Options Ocean, or Fort Forex. You’d gain experience and, of course gold, by making real-world profits. Traders could take the roles of rangers or rogues depending on their trading style. Technical traders could be magic-users. Automatic trading systems would be NPCs, or the equivalent of procedurally-generated opponents. Regulators could ride around as paladins, or even assassins. Analysts could be monks (Sling of Downgrading, anyone?) and journalists could be bards.

It’s a scenario rich in possibilities, at least for a science-fiction story if not an actual business product.