[Platform and Distribution] Essay Draft

BA5 Platform and Distribution: Sony

In 1945, Japan was in turmoil following the destruction left by World War 2. Needing to rebuild their infrastructure quickly, this gave many opportunities to potential entrepreneurs and upstart businessmen such as Masara Ibuka and Akio Morita, who would later go on to be the founders of the modern day Sony Corporation. Following the conclusion of World War 2, Masara Ibuka took advantage of cheap property prices in Japan to open a radio repair shop in a damaged department store building in Tokyo. The following year Ibuka formed the company ‘Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation (Totsuko)’ with his colleague Akio Morita.

The main problem for Ibuka and Morita at this point was financing. With Japan being in economic crisis, there were very few opportunities for financial backing for the company. This was made worse in 1946 when an ordinance by the government was issued switching from the ‘old yen’ to the ‘new yen’. This made it even more vital for Totsuko Corporation to obtain the new yen notes to stay in business. According to Sony.net history, the company could barely even afford the equipment needed. “The engineers at Totsuko made all the equipment themselves. Beginning with soldering irons, they made screwdrivers from motorcycle springs fished out of war ruins. They constructed their own electrical coils and substituted telephone cables for electrical wiring in their trial products.”

In 1950, Toksuko’s fortunes changed when Masara Ibuka met with Bell Labs to licence their newly invented transistor technology to the company. While American companies were looking in to using the transistor for military purposes, Ibuka and Morita wanted to apply it to a more commercial scale. This led them to create Japan’s first tape recorder later that year, followed by Japan’s first transistor radio in 1955. Wanting to continue their worldwide commercial success after the TR-72 transistor radio, Ibuka and Morita wanted a strong name to market themselves globally. The problem they encountered with the name ‘Toksuko’ is that many Americans were finding it difficult to pronounce. Shortening the company’s name to TTK or Tokyo Teletech was considered, but was abandoned based on the similar sounding ‘Tokyo Kyuko’ (TKK) and the American company ‘Teletech’. The following year Toksuko made a deal with cartoonist Fuyuhiko Okabe for his character ‘Atchan’ (also known as “Sony Boy”) to become its advertising character for the new TR-6 radio. The name Sony originated from the Latin word “Sonus”, meaning sound, and the 1950s American slang “Sonny boy”. Although there was pressure from the company’s financial bank to change the name to something such as ‘Sony Electronic Industries’ or ‘Sony Teletech’, Akio Morita was firm that he “…did not want the company name tied to any particular industry.”

Sony continued its success in the coming years with a key focus on creating its own criteria for new technologies instead of adapting those of their competitions. Sony believed that producing the highest quality products would be their winning edge in a competitive market. This was displayed in the late 1970s with the introduction of the ‘videotape format war’. Although Sony’s Betamax lost to JVC’s VHS format, they did manage to impact the film industry with the ‘Betacam’ – an adaption of the Betamax technology. With the introduction of the first portable music player in 1979, the Sony ‘Walkman’, and the development of cathode ray tube televisions, the company solidified its position in the consumer electronics and recording business.

Originally, Sony had no intention of entering the computer games industry. Sony executives were determined that the company was not to be a toy company and that the computer games market was already dominated by other businesses such as Sega who owned 52% of the market. It was only with the threat of the Sega Genesis CD that Nintendo decided to approach Sony, who was already manufacturing sound chips for Nintendo, to create a CD drive for their Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). This would be in the form of a peripheral attachment for the SNES, but would also be available as a combined unit which would be called the ‘Play Station’, the latter being sold by Sony. This marked the rise of Ken Kutaragi, an engineer hired by Sony in 1975. Kutaragi was the one responsible for work on the sound chip for Nintendo (the SPC700), which was originally kept in secret from Sony executives. Upon hearing of the news, Sony executives were extremely angry. It was only with the help of Norio Ohga (Sony CEO at the time) that Kutaragi managed to keep his job. Ken Kutaragi’s reasoning for making the chip was that he had always realized the potential of video games, and after his ideas for a video game console had been rejected by Ohga, he jumped on the chance to manufacture the chip for Nintendo.

Despite hostility from Sony executives, Norio Ohga gave Kutaragi the funding required for the SNES CD and assigned him as the leading engineer of the project. It was at this point that Nintendo secretly cancelled all their plans upon realising that Sony would own all rights to the CD technology under the original contract. This would cut Nintendo out of a large profit margin in addition to a potential conflict of interest, so Nintendo decided to approach Philips about creating the CD component for their SNES without informing Sony. In 1991, Sony made an announcement at CES about the Nintendo Play Station unaware of Nintendo’s secret deal. Shortly after, Nintendo following by releasing a statement they were going to work with Philips on the CD technology. Ken Kutaragi pushed his original idea to Sony executives of continuing to make a full games console since they had already developed the CD technology. Feeling the recent betrayal of Nintendo, Ohga who had rejected the idea before was now very supportive of Kutaragi, and Sony commenced work on the ‘Sony Playstation’, followed quickly by the formation of Sony Computer Entertainment on November 16^th 1993.

Previously, Sony was well known for their high quality electronic storage and recording devices, but the Playstation marked a venture into new hardware development and distribution for Sony and many were questioning whether the Playstation would be viable. Sony execs were convinced that their console was a glance into the future, and with the company’s key focus of creating new technology of highest standards, they began to be sure the Playstation would be a success despite sceptics.

The Playstation’s success lied in its 3D graphics infrastructure. It was faster than any other console at the time and allowed game developers much more freedom. Sony was aware that the only thing the Playstation was missing was software – they needed to win the trust of game developers and publishers. This marked a fundamental moment for Sony, as it is likely the console would not have been a success without the aggressive marketing strategy Sony engaged in at this time. With the ironic release of Virtua Fighter by Sega opening many developers eyes to the possibility of 3D games, many companies approached Sony about making 3D games for the new Playstation.

When the Playstation was released in Japan in 1994 it was an instant success, selling over 1 million copies in the first month. Because of Sony’s large organization they were able to spend large amounts of money on marketing for the European and US launch of the Playstation. This in turn with a clever marketing technique by Sony designers caused the Playstation to be a huge success by the end of 1995, causing the Sega Saturn to be virtually eliminated from the market.

Sony continued the success of the original Playstation with the release of the Playstation 2 in 2000. The Playstation 2 quickly became the most successful video games console of all time selling more than 150million units to date.

Sony’s ‘Dual Shock’ controller is regarded as one of the best designs for game interface by reviewers. The controller is ergonomically designed so that it can rest in a player’s hand without fatigue, and still have easy access to a large array of buttons. The original idea was taken from the Atari D-Pad, where the left thumb would control movement while the right thumb would correspond to certain actions. Sony further improved upon the D-Pad design by adding two joysticks that would allow much more fluidity of movement than analog buttons. The Nintendo 64 controller attempted this with a joystick in the middle for ambidexterity, but was generally considered uncomfortable and hard to use. Sony’s Dual Shock 2 controller’s joysticks were made of a soft rubber composite that meant the player’s thumbs wouldn’t take stress when playing for an extended time. Nintendo made this mistake with the Gamecube joystick, where player’s reported discomfort and even swelling of the thumb after several hours use.

In 2003, a problem arose for Sony Computer Entertainment when they were sued by Immersion Corporation for infringements of their patents by Sony’s ‘Dual Shock’ controller. Immersion were awarded $82 million with an additional $8.7 million in damages. This also caused Sony to have to remove the rumble functionality from their SIXAXIS controllers, and was a terrible incident for Sony – especially since Microsoft managed an out-of-court settlement with Immersion and an agreement for use of the technology in their new Xbox 360. Sony later returned the rumble functionality with their ‘Dual Shock 3’ controllers.

The recent advances in wireless technology have caused all current generation consoles to adapt a wireless interface, with the most recent being motion (or gesture) controllers. With the introduction of the Nintendo Wii, the controller market was revolutionised. Going one further than the gyroscopic sensor of the SIXAXIS, the Wii-mote uses wireless Bluetooth 2.0, infrared and a 3-way accelerometer to translate a players movements onto the screen. This tapped in to a whole new range of casual gamers being drawn to the Wii’s user-friendly interface, in addition to experienced gamers who were enthralled by the feeling of interactivity.

In 2010, Sony released the Playstation Move and Microsoft released the Kinect as direct competitors to Nintendo’s motion controller. Sony’s aim was to allow players to have a more immersive game experience due to the increased accuracy of the Playstation Move and Playstation Eye versus the Wii’s controller. The Microsoft Kinect uses the same theory as the old 2007 Playstation Eye but features much more advanced technology, such as 3D motion capture, facial recognition and advanced gesture recognition. The Kinect uses multiple infrared and RGB cameras in addition to monochrome CMOS camera to map a room in 3D regardless of the lighting conditions. This makes the technology somewhat superior to that of Nintendo and Sony’s due to more accurate 3D mapping and without the need to hold a peripheral device to be detected.

Sony have attempted to recover and expand from the slightly disappointing release of the Move with the ‘Move.me’. The Move.me is essentially a software toolkit that allows users to make applications using the Playstation Move technology. This is very similar to the Playstation Move SDK (Software Development Kit), but is available to researchers and designers who aren’t licenced Sony developers. The Move.me application receives data from the PS3 about the current state and situation of the Move controller(s). This is essentially Sony opening up motion technology to the masses, allowing non-professional organisations who wouldn’t otherwise be able to acquire the Move SDK to develop applications for the technology, the only limit being you have to operate the Move controller within a radius of a Playstation 3 and ideally the computer running the Move.me client. So far the Move.me has been kept fairly secret by Sony, so it is hard to gauge its mass appeal, but from initial findings it looks as if the Move.me could realistically be used in a multitude of different scenarios. The general consensus with reviewers is that the only thing that lets the Move down is the lack of dedicated software for it, but with the Kinect SDK now being available for free from Microsoft’s website I can’t see why Microsoft wouldn’t market the Kinect for the same applications the Move.me is thinking of being utilized for.

Because of my lack of coding experience in C++ or C#, I tested the Move.me based on its responsiveness and ability to track movement. The interface was very easy to navigate and strangely enthralling. Even with the pre-packaged sword application, it felt entertaining and easy to use. Gyroscoping of the sword was lost occasionally near the edge of the screen.

The Move.me has potential to be used in a large number of applications. This would include physical rehabilitation as mentioned by John McCutchan, allowing patients a much more engaging way to do the required exercises, but also allowing doctors to get advanced data on their exact movements. The sports industry is also another big market. Most sports revolve around accuracy, timing and consistency, and training can often be halted in the winter or summer months. The Move.me would allow players and coaches to simulate a highly dynamic sports environment, such as seeing exactly where a golfer is hitting the ball regularly and where they are meaning to aim. This would let coaches more easily identify errors in technique, and can be done virtually anywhere.

[Platform and Distribution] Sony Research

I have been researching several different aspects of Sony, including their history as a company, their history in the computer games industry, their controllers and build up to the Move.me , as well as the Move.me itself. These are the extracts of research that I have found most useful, and will be using to write my essay.

"Ibuka had prepared a founding prospectus for the new company and had left it with Tachikawa. Since Ibuka was so involved with preparations for the inauguration, he completely forgot to ask for the prospectus. When he saw it later, Ibuka reaffirmed the significance of this document. Since he had found the document, he made this the focus of his inauguration speech. He said, "We must avoid problems which befall large corporations," "While we create and introduce technologies which large corporations cannot match. The reconstruction of Japan depends on the development of dynamic technologies."

"The situation was no better for equipment, as the company could not afford to spend scarce money on them. The engineers at Totsuko made all the equipment themselves. Beginning with soldering irons, they made screwdrivers from motorcycle springs fished out of the war ruins. They constructed their own electrical coils and substituted telephone cables for electrical wiring in their trial products. Although such deficiencies posed problems, these young engineers actually enjoyed working this way.

The biggest concern of all, however, was financing. The burgeoning company's urgent need for financing had also been affected by the government's policy of switching from the old yen currency to the new, as laid out in the Emergency Financial Measure Ordinance of February 1946. Therefore, earning new yen notes became vital for the company to stay in business. The best-selling Totsuko product for the new yen market was an electrically heated cushion."

"Originally, Nintendo requested for Sony to develop a CD addon for the SNES. This was known as the SNES-CD, which was to be announced at the May 1991 Consumer Electronics Show. However, Nintendo realised that in the original contract, Sony would have had compete control over all SNES-CD titles, and they secretly cancelled all plans. Sony developed a console from their existing technologies, called the PlayStation. The two companies reached a deal where the PlayStation would have a port for the SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony-designed audio chip. Sony then began to rework the PlayStation concept to target a new generation of hardware and software. The SNES port was removed, as well as the space between "Play" and "Station", making the name of the console PlayStation."

"The PlayStation Move motion controller features an orb at the head which can glow in any of a full range of colors using RGB light-emitting diodes (LEDs).^[13] Based on the colors in the user environment captured by the PlayStation Eye camera, the system dynamically selects an orb color that can be distinguished from the rest of the scene. The colored light serves as an active marker, the position of which can be tracked along the image plane by the PlayStation Eye.^[14][15] The uniform spherical shape and known size of the light also allows the system to simply determine the controller's distance from the PlayStation Eye through the light's image size, thus enabling the controller's position to be tracked in three dimensions^[15][16] with high precision and accuracy.^{[fn 1]} The sphere-based distance calculation allows the controller to operate with minimal processing latency,^[19] as opposed to other camera-based control techniques on the PlayStation 3.^{[20][fn 2]"}

[Interactive Narrative] Full Resolution Scenes & Music

Since After Effects and Flash require lower resolution formats (720p, <70dpi), as well as additional quality loss with rendering, I thought it would be a good idea to post the full resolution image I created for backdrops in various scenes.

The music used in my Interactive Narrative was "Dance of the Knights" by Sergei Prokoviev. I decided on this music because it has a very repetitive nature, but also very dramatic, both of which fit very well into the narrative I developed.

[Interactive Narrative] The Making of the First Scene

Under the working title, 'Project Zero', I have made the first scene of my animated narrative. The first scene details the soldiers the story follows coming into the region on a Chinook (large personnel helicopter). I kept with the idea of using parralax with multiple layers to give that dynamic visual appearance. To begin with, I painted the Chinook from scratch, leaving a blank space where the blades would be. I then made 4 seperate layers for the front and rear blades. This would allow me to animate the blades while keeping the main body of the Chinook still.

The main sky background is a photo I took from outside my window. All photos used in the narrative are all ones that I have taken. This layer moves slowly as it is supposed to be in the distance.

The last layer is a diffusion clouds layer with a displacement filter and put on to screen blending mode so that it appears like foreground fluffy clouds.

[Interactive Narrative] Painting Practice & Idea Iteration

As I don't spend much time painting landscapes and environments, I thought it would be a good idea to try some various styles and techniques to enhance my enviromental painting. Using two different techniques, I painted a potential draft scene of the 2 main environments in my narrative -> a Winter Mountain and a Pine Forest.

The first image of the mountains was painted with a new set of custom brushes I am experimenting with in character design. The brush said is made by 'Rahll' and has a much more traditional painterly feel to them.

The second image was made using the standard hard round photoshop brush, with a mixture of photoshop filters and photographs for detail and texture. This has a much more stylized look, which is very eyecathing but can also look slightly unusual and unclear.

The second image was made using the standard hard round photoshop brush, with a mixture of photoshop filters and photographs for detail and texture. This has a much more stylized look, which is very eyecathing but can also look slightly unusual and unclear.

Idea Interation

Slightly changing the direction of my idea, I have also decided to focus the story around a group of soldiers trying to retrieve the plant rather than the plant's journey. I think this would give the narrative much more depth than merely a serious of hotkey timed events with the plant. The narrative will act almost like Groundhog Day, where all decisions will lead back to the start (possibly due to the strange phoenomenon of the plant), but offer a different outcome of how the story turns out.

[Interactive Narrative] Initial Ideas 2

Thinking further about my Interactive Narrative, I am continuing with the idea of following the journey of the plant rather than an individual character. I have also looked at various designs of exotic plants, as I really want to convey the unusual power it possesses.

I am thinking of the plant having a hard outer shell to offer protection from damage and once opened has a miniature sapling inside which is the real power of the plant. The outer shell will have a radiant glow to make it very distinctive from other flora in the narrative.

In the narrative everyone will have their own agenda for wanting the plant. There will be clearly evil and good characters wanting to acquire the plant, be it to make weapons to gain power or to ensure the forests protection. Additionally there will be neutral-aligned characters that want the plant for their own means. Because of this there will be several sub-narratives, and the player's actions will decide whether the forest is protected or destroyed.

[Interactive Narrative] Game Engines Research

Flash:-
Adobe Flash is a versatile program that revolves mainly around 2D vector animations, but in recent versions also has support for importing of 3D models. There are tools in Flash such as tweening that makes animations easier, but often with more simplistic details.

One thing Flash can be used for however is fake 3D parallax effects, where you layer 3 images on top of each other and move them at different speeds. For example, the first scene in my narrative where a young boy discovers the plant, the player's input is required to continue the story. While the player decides what to click on, I could do some parallax effects like have some out of focus grass in the foreground the moves at a moderate speed and a backdrop/skybox that moves at a slow speed, while leaving the mid-ground focal point the same. This will create the illusion of fluid movement when only 3-5 images are used. When there is time for a player input, time will freeze and several objects will be highlighted. Depending on the object selected, an action will happen with that object that causes the story to progress and the plant to get passed onto a different person.

I want this to be similar to the I Am Legend animated comic illustrated by Jason Chan; 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P92V1NWTwVs'

UDK:-
The Unreal Development Kit

After Effects:-


I Am Legend animated comics.

[Interactive Narrative] Initial Ideas

In the project, we have to decide whether to develop the interactive narrative for web or iOS. I have thought about what platform to use and am initially leaning toward a web based platform. I'm planning on doing a parallax style animation with no text but instead expressions and emotes similar to the early Final Fantasy and Golden Sun games.


The main story will be slightly abstract, but is based around the transfer of a small blue sapling-like plant between various people. Depending on the decisions of the player at certain points in the game, the plant will either leave or stay with a certain person. There will be several of these actions that dynamically cause the plant to end up with multiple people, hopefully around 6-10 each game, with maybe a possible total of around 15.

The game will begin with the 'main' character finding the plant in the middle of an opening in a forest in which all the recipients live. Depending on the actions the player takes, the plant will then be taken by another creature, for example a bird sweeping down to snatch the plant just as the main character digs it up from the ground.

I'm planning to have multiple routes, but for all routes to eventually lead back to the plant being in the original main character's possession.

The parallax style will allow the scene to appear stylistic and animated without having to render out every frame. For example, while the game is awaiting the first decision while the character is digging up the plant, the long foreground grass will be slowly moving to the right, along with slight adjustments in the scene to make it appear as if the camera is marginally rotating around the player. There will also be the distant view of birds moving in the sky, hinting at a possible outcome of a player's decision.

I am planning to animate in Flash using Adobe Flash Pro CS5. Flash is a very widely supported format with virtually all modern computers coming with Flash pre-installed. It is now also supported by most handheld and tablet platforms, including iOS.