In the stillness after the Wii launch, owners of the odd console may have slipped into lethargy in advance of the next official Nintendo release. Their Wiimotes, bolstered by robust new straps, rest in cases of velvet. Now would be a great time to get them out.
Elebits is very entertaining, actually, and I think it would be even more entertaining if I were younger: the premise (conveyed by panels of strikingly beautiful art) is that there are tiny creatures (guess what they're called!) which animate all electrical devices. Where the rubber meets the road is that you need to tear rooms apart looking for them so that these lazy elementals can be put back to work. Similar to Katamari Damacy, you need to cross certain thresholds of performance before you can get the most out of an area. The concept had potential, and I think they've largely delivered on it: part shooter, part physics simulation, it's essentially a game where you enter pristine rooms and then ransack them to obtain omnipresent voyeurs.
It's really an under-served genre.
I met a reader shortly after I'd purchased my Zune, and in growing shame over my weakness I revealed to him what I had done. I was not chastised; rather, he wanted to know if it was any good. Well, it is! Sort of.
After announcing that my resolve had failed and I had purchased one for (essentially) no good Goddamn reason, Hawk from Applegeeks communicated his disappointment in my having purchased the Microsoft knockoff of the iconic Apple lifestyle totem. I was dimly aware that silhouettes in general are very enthusiastic about the iPod, making up over sixty percent of all purchases, and they often retreat with them to monochromatic realms to cavort. Well, Hawk would cease being merely disappointed and might evolve to spitting incoherent rage if he knew the fullness of it: not only did I purchase it, I hook it up to my iMac, booted into Windows XP. I'm going to let that one sink in.
Gabe is fairly unhappy with me for buying it as well, because (and he is quite correct) we live in a world where the iPod and digital audio are synonymous. He would not have used the word synonymous, but he would have meant it. That shit is on airplanes. The wealth of first and third party peripherals for the device extends, in some cases, beyond the reasonable. But I had a very good reason for doing what I did. Just give me a couple hours to think of it.
Seriously, though - come back in a couple hours.
(CW)TB out.
I've used a lot of wiggle language and grim turns of phrase, but I am not actually unhappy with my purchase. As the only person outside of Microsoft's blogger phalanx to appreciate the device, it feels very much like I should be. It presents interesting "scenarios", but opportunities to use them are (for me) so rare that they never factored into my decision making process. I would say that there are three key reasons I own one, which might help you make sense of it.
I purchased an iPod Nano for Brenna several months ago, and we have had nothing but problems. I've never heard of this, not from anyone, so I'm not trying to give this paragraph a sinister undercurrent - but for me, the iPod is not a no brainer purchase. My many failed attempts at resolving our issues with the machine make the overriding mental image I associate with the brand not "the unfettered joy of the music lifestyle," but rather "being dragged by slavering dogs through broken whiskey bottles."
Two, I didn't really own a competent MP3 player. As a member of this ostracized sect, my ways can afford to be a little eclectic.
The most powerful motivator for me was the "Zune Pass," which is virtually identical to something I was already subscribing to - Napster. When you're at your desk, you have almost unfettered access to a gigantic database of music, and since we listen to streamed playlists practically all day, the value for us is stratospheric even when not partnered with a mobile component. With the service, you can copy the same stuff - stuff you don't technically own - and listen to it portably, even though portably may not even be a word. It's basically a way to subscribe to The Year 2000, when you could download anything you wanted without the RIAA hauling your grandmother into court.
It's true enough that when you stop subscribing, you lose access to that music - but at fifteen dollars a month, that's less than a Goddamn CD. I can't make it out of Sonic Boom Records for less than forty dollars these days, so the idea that there may be some theoretical month where I wouldn't have bought an album isn't really compelling to me. Broken down further, Item Three here has two corollaries, A and B.
A states that, in the unlikely event that I meet another Zune Owner, having a subscription to the service means that the Three Days/Three Plays thing doesn't really exist for most songs - I can sync the device and gain unfettered access to the tracks. Will this ever happen? I think they have enough money to bring the device to Critical Mass, yes.
B implies that, by using the "Pass" rather than buying the tracks, by (in effect) leasing the Library, I'm not out a ton of accrued music in two years if I choose to switch to an iPod or some new Korean device, twinkling (as they do) with LEDs. I consider this one pretty serious.
By this time next year, when they've released several flash-based players in a variety of form factors, when the entirety of the Zune Philosophy is revealed, maybe it will appeal to a larger audience. As it stands, I'm happy to own it, but - as you can see - it takes six paragraphs to explain why.
(CW)TB
(CW)TB
