Category Archives: Video Games

Scott Pilgrim vs the PVG Review

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In some ways, Scott Pilgrim vs the World is the best video game movie made thus far. Then again, it’s really the only true video game movie ever made. Other movies merely borrow the plot of the video game they are based on. Scott Pilgrim vs the World adopts aspects of video games and manifests them literally in the world of its story. Meters pop up to indicate the status of the characters. Vanquished opponents explode in a shower of coins and award points to the victor. Various actions elicit sound effects reminiscent of video games (including some that are recognizably lifted straight out of The Legend of Zelda or Sonic the Hedgehog). Even the Universal globe at the beginning of the movie is rendered to look like an 8-bit graphic.

The movie also pays homage to its graphic novel roots. Black lines often divide up the screen, dividing it into multiple shots and angles much like the panels of a comic and sound effects are signified by onomatopoeia words (such as “thud,” “thwack,” and “krak”) popping out of the scene at appropriate times—an effect which will probably remind many people of the old Batman TV series with Adam West. The movie is also filled with other whimsical touches. A kiss is often preluded by a fade to black and a pink heart popping onto the screen. Curse words are censored out with a bleeping noise and a black box appearing over the speaker’s mouth (prompting one character to ask, “How are you doing that with your mouth?”).

For all I know, these are actually shots lifted out of the graphic novel the movie is based on. I haven’t read Scott Pilgrim, you see. And I’m happy to report that the movie entertains just fine without any knowledge of the source material. I’m told that the broad strokes of the plot are the same: Scott Pilgrim is a 22-year old pathetic shlub of a boy living in Toronto with his rather bad indy band. Currently he is dating hyperactive 17-year old Knives Chau, but it is clear that she represents a rebound relationship for him after a bad previous breakup. And then he meets Ramona Flowers who is the girl of his dreams (literally. She appears in his dreams before he meets her in real life). He manages to go out on some dates with her, but then he finds out that she has seven superpowered evil exes and that he must defeat them all before he can continue to date her. Although Scott Pilgrim seems vastly overmatched, his world obeys video game rules in which even the lowliest character can perform the “Fight” command and earn power ups throughout their journey. We are thus treated to, essentially, seven wildly creative boss fights rendered on the movie screen.

The central metaphor of the movie is not very subtle. The characters spell out how Ramona’s evil exes represent the previous baggage she brings to her new relationship, and in order to defeat them, Scott must learn the nature of her previous relationships and discover their weaknesses in order to ensure his own survival. Scott also has some previous relationships trying to sabotage his chances with Ramona, and in the end he must learn how to get in touch with his inner feelings (which are represented by flaming katanas) and move past his and Ramona’s dirty laundry. Despite the obviousness of the metaphor, it gets applied in a lot of fun and surprising ways throughout the movie.

I’m told that the movie hugely condenses the story of the graphic novel, cutting out several sub-plots and side characters in order to fit everything into a reasonable movie length. I didn’t really mind it. The central pacing problem of the movie is that it has to fit in seven major battles without becoming repetitive, and fortunately the fight choreographer is up to the task. Scott’s battle with the first evil ex-boyfriend is a straightforward beatdown, but each one after that involves twists on the formula (I particularly loved the battle with the vegan ex-boyfriend). Nonetheless, fitting that much action into the movie has the effect of giving it a rather frenetic pacing, and director Edgar Wright has elected to roll with it, often tossing away several hours in-story at a time with a simple camera cut (often to the confusion of Scott Pilgrim) and packing in as many sight gags as possible. This is a movie which is determined to do absolutely anything it can to keep you entertained, from hilarious send ups of indy band songs to the “expression” on Knives’ face when she realizes what’s going on. I don’t know what the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel was like, but the movie at its heart is a galloping comedy.

Nonetheless, even a movie like this needs to be anchored by well-developed characters, and this is where the time constraints of the movie hurt the most. All of the characters are essentially plot devices defined more by their relationships to the main couple than by their personalities. Michael Cera is fully capable of playing his typical role as an awkward boy looking for love, but he doesn’t get a chance to show much dramatic range otherwise. Ultimately, although he is winsome enough that we can root for him, he doesn’t quite connect with the audience as a real person. Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes for one cool hipster chick, and she very clearly enjoys herself during the fight scenes, but even so Ramona Flowers remains a cypher. It’s never clear exactly why she agrees to date Scott Pilgrim other than that he is nicer than all of her exes. Possibly the biggest success ends up being Ellen Wong as Knives Chau. The character could have been an irritating distraction whose purpose is to be gotten rid of so that the main couple can get together, but instead she remains relevant throughout the story. Although 25-year old Wong doesn’t quite look like a plausible teenager, she successfully channels Knives’ energy without becoming grating. In fact, her character makes a better emotional connection with Scott in some ways than Ramona does (which the movie acknowledges at one point).

Despite the brick-to-the-face nature of the story, there are some themes in Scott Pilgrim vs the World to consider. And compiling all the references to video games, comic books, or Canada would be a fun exercise that would probably reveal unexpected depths. Nonetheless, the movie really isn’t meant to be taken seriously (what does that say about video games, I wonder) and really has just one purpose: entertain us for a 112 minutes. And when you see the first evil ex-boyfriend summoning a harem of Bollywood hipster chicks, I think you’ll agree that the movie succeeds.

Sony Needs to Fire their PR Department #61

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It’s been a while since I wrote one of these, but it’s time to revive an old PVG standby. This entry comes courtesy of the president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida. He spoke for a little bit about how Nintendo continually emphasized with the 3DS that the device doesn’t need glasses for the 3D effect.

“I have hope that they have a broader perspective with 3D,” Yoshida said. “When you listen to what they are saying about the effect of 3D perspective to the games, they are saying the same message we are, but they don’t have to bash some small part of what the other company is doing.”

Source: IGN UK

The idea that the lack of glasses for the 3DS is a “small part” is pretty absurd. Plenty of people think it’s actually a pretty big deal. But setting that aside, this quote commits two terrible sins of marketing:

  1. It looks defensive. The public doesn’t like people who are defensive, be they politicians or corporate executives. What’s more, it looks needlessly defensive in proportion to the perceived attack. Nintendo wasn’t really bashing Sony that hard for needing 3D glasses on their screens.
  2. It tells a competitor what to do. I don’t mean that Yoshida was giving an opening which let Nintendo know what they should do next. I mean that on its face, he was telling Nintendo what to do (or in this case, what not to do). Think of political campaigns for a moment and all the times you’ve seen someone say something like, “Don’t talk smack about me unless you can take it, too” or “How about you quit making stuff up?” Such lines are always spoken to a crowd of supporters—the base, if you will. Here, Yoshida wasn’t talking to a group of Sony fanboys or even a Sony fan site. He gave this quote to IGN who is generally neutral on the console wars. The reaction of the IGN readership can partially be summarized as, “You’re the one to talk!”

Yoshida has just exacerbated a problem for Sony. The fact that the 3DS doesn’t need glasses and that any 3D implementation for the PS3 or PS4 will need glasses is actually a fairly significant point. By drawing attention to this difference, Yoshida has just made the comparison more stark. What’s worse, he has made it look like Sony is worried about this issue. It’s time for him to go back into his undisclosed location in the Sony campus.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising and the End of Stealth as We Know It

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Metal Gear Solid: Rising looks awesome. Of course, I still have to see more before I decide if I would want to buy it (a big part of that decision will be whether or not Kojima manages to restrict himself to mere ten minute cutscenes). The one consistent gripe I’m hearing is that it doesn’t have much emphasis on stealth. It should be noted that we don’t actually know that stealth is gone from the game. We are told that stealth will rely on Raiden’s agility and speed rather than just hiding and camouflage as Snake did. But even if the game is pure “Lightning Bolt Action” and “cutting,” I have to say that I won’t mind one bit. In fact, I just don’t care about stealth.

We are now entering a new phase in stealth videogaming. The latest Splinter Cell game ditches the emphasis on sneaking through completely unnoticed and instead allows, even encourages, you to just run right up to enemies and sock them. On the other end of the spectrum, the Assassin’s Creed games revolve around social stealth (i.e. blending into a crowd or hiring people to act as distractions) rather than physical stealth (i.e. staying out of sight and out of hearing). There is a very simple reason for this: it has become abundantly clear that the old ways of stealth gameplay don’t work. Just watch this clip from Splinter Cell: Double Agent in which Sam Fisher repeatedly and blatantly runs within two yards of guards in broad daylight (while carrying on a conversation out loud with someone on the radio).

The problem with stealth gameplay the way it has been practiced by the likes of Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid is that it is impossible to find a good balance between realism and playability. If guards are made too smart and wary, the game becomes impossible to play except through rote memorization. If guards are too lax and stupid, any pretense towards realism becomes a joke. Sneaking around in real life is accomplished through the use of dozens of senses that are not available to gamers. Making a realistic stealth game where the emphasis is on staying hidden from view and unnoticed at all times is simply not feasible. To that extent, I have always regarded the stealth element of Metal Gear Solid games as being somewhat broken. The much-parodied “hide for 50 seconds and then everything goes back to normal” element was novel back when the first Metal Gear Solid came out, but now it’s painfully dated. If it turns out that Metal Gear Solid: Rising consists of no attempts at stealth or subtlety and merely has Raiden running around chopping everything into little pieces, I for one won’t miss the Tactical Espionage Action one bit.

The Videogame Character Formerly Known as Prince

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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is the best videogame movie made thus far. If you’ve read anything I’ve said before, then you know I consider the previous sentence to be an incredibly back-handed compliment. To put it another way, Prince of Persia didn’t suck. Neither does it give a very compelling reason for watching (although Gemma Arterton is very easy on the eyes. More on her later).

Prince of Persia, as you know, is based on the Ubi Soft videogame from the last generation. I’ve been on record saying that the game would make a good movie. In fact, if the producers had simply taken the plot from the videogame, translated most of the cutscenes verbatim to live action, and done a little trimming to get it down to movie length, they would have had a decent little film on their hands. It wouldn’t have been unforgettable, Academy Award winning stuff, but that was never the goal. The problem with videogame movies was always that they failed at the basic aim of creating characters we care about in a story we are willing to follow and remember fondly (I include Tomb Raider in this criticism). Prince of Persia gets part of the way there but not as far as it could have (and some would say not far enough).

I am not a purist by any means. I often get irritated by people complaining that some movie adaptation changed some aspect and therefore the movie is not as good. But in this case, I can trace almost every problem in the movie back to a change made from the game, starting with the setup. Whereas the game has the Prince accidentally unleashing sand monsters on the world and working with the Princess as his only ally to fix his mistake, the movie has no sand monsters at all and instead has a plot involving a struggle for succession to the throne of Persia. I’m not really sure why this was done. The movie is advertised as coming from the people who brought us Pirates of the Caribbean which did have lots of monsters. Monsters are good for blockbuster movies. Heroes can kill them without feeling guilty. Instead of monsters, we now have a plot involving several half-developed characters, and the movie has to slow down to explain things to us. The Prince now has two brothers, and he was not born into the royal family but was adopted by the king from a life on the streets. Neither detail adds much to the story; none of the secondary characters have enough screen time for us to care about them. The setting for the action is no longer just one palace but is instead all of Persia, with the Prince running around the place like a medieval James Bond. Like most road trip movies, we generally don’t care very much about the traveling around although in this case there is some nice scenery. Finally, the ending has been changed. What the Prince does to get to the ending is very similar to what happens in the game, but the end result is a complete reversal of what happens in the game. I understand why they did it because the ending of the videogame is not a typical Hollywood feel-good ending, but it was the perfect cap to a fairy tale story. It’s kind of disappointing that they had to change it for the movie.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the fitful, initially antagonistic relationship between Prince Dastan (did I mention he has a name now?) and the Princess. Like in the videogame, the Prince’s country invaded the territory of the Princess and took her hostage so that despite being allies by circumstance, they are initially enemies. Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton manage to generate pretty good chemistry with each other which is good because the script doesn’t give them that much to work with. They throw barbed one-liners during lulls in the action and that’s about it. The one time they kiss each other, it ends up looking preposterous because they are in the middle of a battle at the time. With all that, it’s amazing that they do manage to convey a real sense that they are truly attracted to each other. It probably helps that, as I said before, Gemma Arterton is gorgeous and she delivers her lines with verve. She gets a lot more to do in this movie than she did in Clash of the Titans.

There is a good amount of parkour in the movie, but it unfortunately is not shot very well. Part of the reason is certainly because Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t actually doing the stunts, and that’s reasonable. But even taking that into account, there is a lack of gravity to them which is odd because as far as I could tell, there was very little wirework. Somebody really was running across those rooftops and swinging from those rafters. Nonetheless it all just ends up looking mundane rather than awe-inspiring and transcendant. The movie might have benefited from having the Prince pull up his hood to hide his face so that some professional traceur who doesn’t look much like Jake Gyllenhaal could really cut loose.

So in the end, as my previous post suggested, the movie didn’t suck. But in all honesty, I still can’t recommend that people go see it. There are better action movies out there, even this summer. The movie is faithful to the videogame in the broad details, but the changes have been for the worse. The videogame was a paragon of economical storytelling. Although the movie is not very long, it packs in filler scenes and extraneous characters so that it feels like it could have been a half hour shorter. Besides the central relationship between the Prince and Princess, there’s a strange lack of joy in watching the proceedings. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like how Pirates of the Caribbean would have turned out if Johnny Depp’s character hadn’t been around. The action is competent and the special effects are top notch. If that sounds good to you, then it may represent $10 well spent. For myself, I can’t help being disappointed at all the wasted potential.

P.S. I have no idea how they’re going to make a sequel out of this. I’m sure they will manage somehow, though.

Score One for Vietnam…I Guess

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Looks like Apple has lost another iPhone model. This time it was in Vietnam. I don’t know how exactly the phone was lost, but I do know that cell phone theft is big business in Vietnam. Visitors are often told not to use their phones while standing on the sidewalk near the road, for example. I once saw someone who was talking on his phone a little too close to the road and someone driving by on a moped snatched it right out of his hand.

Or maybe it just got left in a Bia Ôm by accident. In any case, here’s a video of someone checking it out.

If you’re really curious to know what he’s saying, I can translate it. But it’s really pretty basic. He comments that this model is slightly narrower (because of the straight edges) than the old model and also a little bit heavier. It’s also apparently very hard and solid (that’s what he’s saying as he taps the front and back).

Cheers to Leland Yee (for once)

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Unless you follow California politics very closely, the only reason you would know Leland Yee’s name is because he is a California state senator who went on frequent crusades against videogames. The issue reached its climax in the public mind when California passed an age restriction bill on videogames based on the ESRB. The bill was promptly struck down by the court system. You can read my analysis of a similar bill from Minnesota and the reasons it was found unconstitutional here.

The reason I’m posting now, though, has nothing to do with videogames. Rather, it’s because I noticed a story floating around that Leland Yee has been poking into a public university’s finances and has gotten hate mail for trying to find out the terms of Sarah Palin’s speaking contract. Contrary to what you might expect, this isn’t a public hit job on Sarah Palin. Rather, Leland Yee appears to be merely digging into the budget of Stanislau State University to find out how much they are paying Sarah Palin (who reportedly pulls a six-figure speaking fee). You can read a bit more about that story here. And I think this is a commendable thing. Regardless of one’s personal view of Sarah Palin, a state senator is well within his rights to want to know how a university funded by taxpayer dollars is spending that money and to ask whether a six-figure speaking fee for a politician is really the best use of resources. Before I get flamed, I know that the situation is a little more complicated than that, but it still boils down to the same issue. Stanislau State University in California is funded by the taxpayer and a state senator rightfully wants to know if paying for someone’s speaker fees is going to impact the education of students.

This story is one of those occasional reminders that people it is possible to agree with someone on some issues, disagree on other issues, and still not know much about personal character. I don’t know Leland Yee. And for all I know, he may be picking this fight in order to grandstand. What I do know is that he had a pet crusade on which he was wrong, he sponsored an unconstitutional bill, and he made a fool of himself in the eyes of many people in my generation. And now I also know that he is taking on a political task that I agree with and that I think any responsible citizen should agree with. Good for him.

The end of the loss leader

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On the launch date of the iPad, it occurred to me that Apple and Nintendo have both created products that emphasize interface and usability over other considerations. Say what you will about the iPhone, the iPad or the Wii, but nobody disputes that they have more intuitive and easy to pick up interfaces compared to the competition. They have been amply rewarded for it, too. Apple has been reported at one point to make about $50 in profit for every iPhone sold, and the Wii is the only videogame console to have sold for a profit right from the beginning. The Xbox 360 and the PS3 both sell at a loss so that Microsoft and Sony can recoup the difference with licensing fees from software sales. And for all that Microsoft and Sony might feel smug about the technological superiority of their machines, you can be sure they would love to have Nintendo’s profit margin.

This is three times now that Nintendo has sold their console for a profit. The GameCube also reportedly cost less to manufacture than its retail price, and although consumers did not reward it as richly as they did the Wii, a quick look at Nintendo’s financial reports reveals that they were still raking in the cash. The DS is also sold at a profit whereas the PSP followed the traditional loss leader model. Interestingly enough, the biggest competition for the DS now seems to be another device that isn’t sold at a loss: Apple’s iPhone.

The point is Nintendo and Apple have demonstrated that electronic entertainment devices don’t have to be sold at a loss with the promise of a cut from content sales to make up the difference. And if they differentiate themselves from the competition with a unique feature or interface, they will reap massive rewards. Consoles have been loss leaders for so long that sometimes it seems that they are manufactured that way as an article of faith.

The truth is more complicated than that, of course. The most technologically advanced and powerful gadgets cost money after all. And up until now, consumer demand justified the expenditure. But today we are nearing the edge of processor speeds. At the same time, there is now a greater demand for products that technologically unsophisticated people can use to do otherwise complex activities. And the thing about good design is it takes care, attention, and imagination but it doesn’t necessarily take money.

It will take a few years, but I have a feeling that we may be nearing the end of the loss leader console. The way things are trending, it just won’t make economic sense any more. If there’s any justice in the world, that would mean a reduction in licensing fees since console manufacturers won’t feel such intense pressure to recoup their investment. Even if there is justice in the world, though, don’t expect a move like that to start with Nintendo.

Why Microsoft doesn’t innovate

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I recently saw this Gizmodo report that Microsoft is soon going to be launching the Zune Phone. The device itself may be fine, but I don’t need to point out all the similarities to Apple’s iPhone. This is as of yet unconfirmed by Microsoft itself, but for the purposes of this post, it doesn’t really matter. It all fits into a larger trend. Ask yourself:  would it really surprise you if this turned out to be true? Over the past couple of years, Microsoft has launched a lot of rather quixotic attempts to break into markets established (or essentially created) by other companies:

  • Back in 2006, they launched Spaces in an apparent bid to compete with MySpace.
  • There was the Zune, of course, which was trying to compete with the iPod.
  • Microsoft is opening Microsoft Stores, rather blatantly copying Apple in the process.
  • They are pushing an internet search engine called Bing to try to compete with Google.
  • They tried to open a Twitter-like microblogging service in China called Zuku.
  • And of course there was the Xbox which is moving into territory occupied by Nintendo and Sony.

I’m not trying to disparage the quality of the products themselves. I happen to think the Xbox 360 is a pretty good gaming machine (when it works), and by all accounts, the Zune is a perfectly good and functional mp3 player. But as business ventures, Microsoft’s new products have ranged  from outright failures to mixed at best. Arguably the most successful of them is the Xbox 360, but as much as Microsoft executives may publicly claim to be happy with it, there can be little doubt that they would rather be in Nintendo’s place rather than fighting for runner-up with Sony. Meanwhile, the Zune has gone nowhere, Bing is making little progress, and the upcoming Microsoft Stores are coming in for so much advance mockery that it’s I’m seriously wondering if Microsoft will still go through with them.

Why does it seem that Microsoft is only interested in following the lead of other companies? Why can’t they come up with new, innovative products of their own? How masochistic do you have to be to try to compete with Google on their home turf?

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Will the iPad doom videogames as art?

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Now that the iPad is coming, people are talking about all the possibilities for gaming on the device. And why not? Games have been one of the major categories of apps downloaded on the App store for iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple products are set to become one of the major handheld gaming platforms, and unlike the PSP, they offer something uniquely different enough to be credible competition for the Nintendo DS, at least indirectly.

The thing is that applications on Apple’s mobile devices have a very deliberately placed size limit. If you want to make a game for the App Store, you’re just not going to be able to fit in a lot of FMV and voice acting. My personal view is that this is good for the industry. It means that small, boutique developers will be able to compete on equal terms with large development houses without being overwhelmed. And it also means that there will be a greater emphasis placed on creativity and good design rather than production values.

Nonetheless, some people view the rise of gaming on the iPhone, the iPad, FaceBook and other new platforms with decidedly mixed feelings. In a sense, this is a reflection of the old “hardcore” vs “casual” debate that has gripped videogame forums ever since Nintendo launched the Wii. But that doesn’t seem like the whole story to me. After all, despite the size limits, plenty of games available on the App store would fit most people’s preconception of a hardcore game: they require time and dedication to master, many of them have plots, and they were clearly produced with an eye towards pushing the hardware to its limits.

The problem, from the perspective of dedicated gamers, is that games on the iPhone and iPod Touch do nothing to advance the state of the art. Other than the occasional driving game which is controlled (usually not very well) by tilting the device, there are no games that couldn’t have been done on the Nintendo DS. In fact, judging by the reviews that I’ve read, it seems that most App Store games would play better on the DS where they would benefit from a stylus. In a way, this really shouldn’t be surprising. The Nintendo DS is a device designed specifically for playing games. The iPhone and the iPod Touch are not. Games are the entire reason for the existence of the Nintendo DS, but on mobile devices they are just one of the many things you can play around with. In effect, a game on the iPhone will never be regarded as anything more than a sophisticated toy.

And therein lies some of the unspoken defensiveness I feel from gamers. Even the most open-minded industry watcher seems to have trouble treating games on mobile devices as equal to games on dedicated machines. While acknowledging that there are some good games out there that are worth your money, they can’t help implicitly relegating the little nuggets to second class status. And from their perspective, they are right to do so: games downloaded onto mobile devices have objectively less value than a game purchased for the PS3.

But look at it from the point of view of someone who has less time to spend playing games. To them, the value in games is not how much they resonate emotionally with the player. The value judgment is simply this: how well does it help pass the time while waiting for something? And the problem with that is whatever your definition of art is, it probably doesn’t include mere boredom killing.

None of this matters to Apple or even to Nintendo. But it does matter to a certain segment of gamers who feel that their hobby is not taken with sufficient seriousness. This sort of attitude is also what leads gamers to clamor for their favorite franchises to be made into movies, even when such an adaptation would clearly be a bad idea. If a wider audience can see and enjoy what we do, the thinking goes, videogames will become a respected form of popular art just like movies. And the problem with that line of thinking is that every time the videogame industry expands, it does so by moving into areas that do not much resemble blockbuster movies. The iPad will just be the latest step in that expansion.

iPad: Insufficient Data

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Apple’s tablet has been revealed. You can read impressions from Engadget here and here. None of it is terribly surprising. It does all the stuff an iPod Touch does, only it’s bigger and faster. It read eBooks (which the iPod Touch does not do). It runs some new programs like iWork. And from what everybody is saying, it’s beautifully designed and superbly engineered. But will it sell?

The answer is we don’t know. We don’t know enough about the crucial support structure backing it up. To understand the path that the iPad is likely to take, it’s worth looking back at Apple’s too previous portable devices: the original iPod and the iPhone.

When Apple unveiled the iPod, the reaction around the web was one of mild interest at best. There were lots of mp3 players on the market already, and most people didn’t really see why Apple wanted to jump into this pool. But over the years, bit by bit, Apple began taking over the market until about 5 years ago, the word “iPod” was synonymous with “mp3 player.” There’s even an entire medium of communication now named after the device: podcasts. It’s easy to forget, but not too long ago, there was no guarantee that the iPod would achieve this level of ubiquity in the world.

Contrast this with the iPhone which instantly became the must-have device of the year and was a best-seller at launch. The difference is unlike the iPod, which was merely a very well-designed mp3 player, the iPhone was a device unlike any that had ever been seen before. It wasn’t the absolute first touch screen smart phone, but it was the first properly integrated one and the first that gained wide notice. It truly was a new, innovative gadget, and that’s why it got so much buzz and interest.

The iPad is more like the iPod than the iPhone. It does some new things, but at its heart, it is not a revolutionary device. It competes with other tablet PCs not to mention Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Nobles’ Nook. If it’s to achieve any kind of success, it will have to be the slow and steady way as the iPod did back in the day. The iPod was a very well-designed mp3 player with a great user interface, but most people agreed that it didn’t have much better sound quality than other mp3 players. The reason the iPod grew and took off was iTunes. Specifically, the iTunes store. No other mp3 player had access to the same convenient, comprehensive library of cheap, searchable music.

Likewise, the iPhone’s actual design is only a part of why it’s a mega monster hit. The other big reason is the App store which, minor griping from developers aside, was easy and convenient. As the commercials said, for anything you wanted to do, there was an app for it.

So what infrastructure has Apple built for the iPad? I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I would say Steve Jobs has something up his sleeve for eBooks. I find it hard to believe that Apple would release a good eBook reading device while using an online book store that doesn’t do anything differently than the competition. Maybe the use of an open format, unlike the Kindle, will be an advantage. Maybe the book store will be opened up similarly to the App store so that anybody who is reasonably determined can get their content online for others to see (as a budding author, I would fully support this). Whatever the case, Apple’s engineering and design, as considerable as it is, will not sell the iPad. What they do best is integrate their devices together with a support structure that makes everything seamless and easy. If they can do that with the iPad, they’ll have another hit.