Australian's Who Campaigned For So Long For An R18+ Rating Get This?

Fable Was Rated 'M' By The Classification Board. The HD Remake? R18+ - Kotaku Australia

This is joke right?  Right?  Anyone...  Oh, they're serious.

When the original Fable was released way back in the wild heady days of 2004 our illustrious classification board gave it a solid M rating at the time.  Was this because of sex, or drugs (the usual suspects)?  Nope.  It is very combat heavy and you have the choice of being nice (only fighting bad guys, and often sparing their lives) or nasty (kill anything that gets in your way).  So why on earth would the HD remake suddenly become an adults only R18+.  Well, it's because of sex.

Apparently, under the updated classification rules, the fact you can get married and consummate said partnership comes under the "Sexual activity related to incentives or rewards".  Below is what happens in this game.  Before you click play remember this is something the classification board is deadly serious about...

Well that is about as interactive as a brick that is sitting on a high shelf.  But then there are the "incentive or rewards" from this little piece of fade to black.  So what advantages does your character get from this sordid encounter?  Nothing.  Not a thing.  The original article above suggests you and your partner can have a child but that little feature wasn't introduced until Fable 2.

The inconsistent and just plain ridiculous decisions relating to games since our pretend R18+ rating was introduced really shows that the system is still broken.  If this decision stands then I guess the next Sims game will have to be R18+.

The ongoing review by the Australian Law Reform Commission has a possible answer.  An industry based classification system like the ESRB in the US and PEGI in the UK is the real answer.  This doesn't take government regulation out of the picture since any developer or publisher can still have their rating reviewed should there be reports of inappropriate material for any given rating.

As for the Fable decision... seriously I actively participated in the R18+ campaign for over a decade and THIS is the outcome...

What Can You Watch On Your Xbox One In Australia?

Xbox One Isn't About To Revolutionise TV In Australia - Gizmodo Australia

Ahh, remember the heady days of May 2013 when Xbox One was announced and the focus was rather strong.  If not, here is a quick reminder.

So, how about that TV functionality then.  Well with the imminent arrival of these shiny new black boxed Microsoft has revealed what each region can expect.  So what is in it for us Australians I hear you ask.  Well, hold on to your hats people and get ready...

Not much really.  We get the following:
- Crackle (I thought this was US only, turns out it is available in Australia with a lot less content of course)
- Machinima (wooo, direct access to a YouTube channel)
- MUZU TV (a music video service to compete with Sony's Vidzone)
- Network 10's Tenplay (Catch up service for the 10 network - has a lot of stuff in it's list, some of which have actual episodes you can watch)
- Quickflix (Like Netflix but double the cost for a tiny fraction of the content)
- SBS On Demand (SBS Catch up, has good stuff occasionally but not much content)
- TED (see Machinima)
- Twitch (good if you like watching other people play games)

And that is it.  There has already been quite a stink due to the ABC iView app not making the transition from 360 to the new beast which is quite a shame since that is the best streaming service available in Australia.  The Foxtel service for 360 is also a notable omission, but it's Foxtel so who cares.

Of course North America gets over double the content (and probably even more in the near future) mainly because every service is already available there in other formats.

I am sure setting up a VPN and telling Microsoft you live in the US will unlock more content for you, but you'll still be missing out on iView.

Hopefully we'll get details of the PS4 services available at launch pretty soon.  As soon as it is available I will do a full comparison.

Australian/Canadian Study Disputes Cost Of Piracy

Downloads make little mark on box office - Sydney Morning Herald

Academics for the University of Sydney and the University of Calgary have cast doubt over the long held claims of the movie industry that they are losing significant amounts of money due to the evils of digital piracy.  In fact AFACT (now the Australian Screen Association) once claimed the Australian Film Industry loses $1.3 billion a year, a figure somehow determined from a two month survey of a whole 3,500 adults.

These shocking figures are usually based on an assumption that every download is a lost sale.  The amount of assumed downloads is usually based on how many IP addresses that monitoring companies see attached to a particular torrent file.  I've always seen this as a very... loose translation of data.

This recent study looked at 166 films released in Australia between January 2010 and August 2011 and found that while there was some indication that piracy led to reduced sales it usually happened shortly after the films release and it took at least 6 to 8 downloads to equate to a lost sale.

Groups, such as the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, have already expressed cynicism over the results of the study even though it does, at least partly, agree with their claims!

Unfortunately the above story didn't delve too deep into the nitty gritty.  There are many factors beyond pure box office takings that can affect the profitability of a movie.  Movie budgets can run into incredible amounts of money and the marketing of a movie as well can add up to pretty astronomical figures all before a single ticket is able to be sold.  Plus there is ongoing revenue from licensing the movie for public broadcast through to distribution to disc and streaming services.  There has been many a box office flop predating the modern digital "free for all" that have gone on to do big business in the home and cult screening markets.

The results of this study may be getting closer to the real picture of the impact of digital piracy, but I still believe there are many more points that should be considered.  In order to take ongoing earnings from the home market into account the scope of the study needs to encompass a much broader period of time.  This is simply not possible with more recent blockbusters (or even box office flops) and since the anti-piracy focus is on "we need all the money now" it is very unlikely that we will ever see a fully comprehensive review.

As for the figures that are normally quoted, I'll just leave this here...

PS4 AND XBOX ONE - THE FORM GUIDE

With E3 fast approaching, and Nintendo announcing they won't be having a big showcase conference, all the attention will be on Sony and Microsoft to see where they go with their brand new consoles. Instead of trying to be psychic and speculate on what may be I thought I'd take a look at what they have done so far so that we are all up to speed on the state of the next generation of consoles.

THE SONY ANNOUNCEMENT

Sony kicked it off by providing a teaser that something would be announced back in February. The grand reveal came around and they proudly showed us... a controller... yeah.

They went on to give us the specs of the PS4 and show us some very pretty footage of tech demos and games in progress including a dude who seemed very, very excited about cars. I actually started to wonder if he was going to be ushered to a quiet and private room out back.

After all this wonderful smoke and mirrors they completely failed to roll out a console which of course set the internet on fire for about a week and then everyone went back to looking at grumpy cat memes.

THE MICROSOFT ANNOUNCEMENT

When Microsoft announced that they were having a reveal on 21 May there were some people wondering why they didn't wait till E3 and of course what would actually be revealed. The big day rolled around and front and centre was the new XBox One console complete with Kinect 2 and apparently ready to roll. So what next gen gaming treats would the latest version of one of the most popular games consoles in the works bring? 

TV apparently.

The announcement was dominated by the televisual features the new console had. If you ever try a drinking game with a replay of it do not make 'TV' or 'sports' a drink word. It would kill you.
Game wise there was footage of some stuff still in very early development and, umm, a mo-cap dog in the new Call of Duty (I am so referring to it as Call of Doggy from now on).

The internet buzz lasted a few days until nobody had anymore time for that.

IN SUMMARY

So, to recap, the early announcements really came from opposite directions. Sony focused on games but not what you could play them on while Microsoft gave us a feature filled shiny black box with no actual games. It's safe to say that at E3 Sony will be focusing heavily on the hardware while Microsoft will finally give us the games.

I think Sony will steal most of the thunder as they will probably introduce some new IPs and then try to wow us with the other features

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't speculate but, you know... oh look at these funny videos.








Update: Larry Hyrb has announced via twitter that TV is not on the agenda for Microsoft's E3 conference.