Why the Lizard Squad did us all a favor knocking out console gaming’s two biggest online services was a good thing for gamers, and the lasting effects of the events that unfolded over the Christmas week.

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring except, well, Lizard Squad. December 24th, Christmas Eve late in the afternoon, the hacker group Lizard Squad began a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network services. The attack, which would be like refreshing a webpage in a rapid, more complicated manner, knocked both of the services down by Christmas. They kept it down until internet entrepreneur turned activist, Kim Dotcom negotiated with the group to stop the attacks so service could resume on both services.

Jesse Snyder on Twitter

Me: "Kim Dot Com is working something out with Lizard Squad to get PSN and Live back up." Wife: "Are any of the things you just said real?"

The above tweet by game developer Jesse Snyder of Call of Duty and Halo fame, probably sums up the interactions that many of us had with our family on Christmas Day. By late in the day, my own family was watching “The Interview” but not before I hopped on Xbox Live to play a few games of Halo 4 on Xbox 360 to see if the service was up and running yet. It had seemed that by then the service was working for 360 and a few hours later PS3 as Microsoft and Sony managed to keep the attacks off of the older consoles. As my daughter was napping, I decided to have some fun with the situation and posted a few humorous tweets on the matter:

John Olin on Twitter

Remember everyone on #PSN on @PlayStation & #XboxLive on @Xbox: Lizard Squad hate us cuz they ain't us! pic.twitter.com/c8QHgw1y9c

Something interesting happened that day, gamers on all consoles united as one on Twitter. No longer were we worried about screen resolutions and which controller was better, but rather that we all had a common thread, that we all just wanted to play online together. Many others posted their own humorous images and memes about what was going on as a way to keep us occupied while we itched to play our new titles and spend our gift cards.

By nightfall, almost all services were up and running and by Saturday, PSN on PlayStation 4 services were restored. So besides brining us all closer together for the holidays via Twitter what else good did this bring us? It brought us proof that Sony and Microsoft aren’t ready for the future of online gaming just yet despite spending millions on infrastructure. What proof is there? The next day after Lizard Squad had completed their auspicious trolling they began to attack the non-profit Tor Project, a service that essentially keeps it’s users identity and network a secret. This could be used for nefarious reasons but it many countries with oppressive laws, is used as a way to communicate amongst people that are seeking outside help. While people representing Lizard Squad have denied such attacks, a Twitter representing hacktivist group Annonymous thought otherwise:

Anonymous on Twitter

Hey @LizardMafia don't fuck with the Tor network. People need that service because of corrupt governments. Stand the fuck down.

So if this were true, this would mean despite an effort as large as the effort was to take down Microsoft’s Xbox Live, and Sony’s PlayStation Network, Lizard Squad was unable to take down a small non-profit organization formed by some of the best minds in IT. It is likely Lizard Squad is claiming they never intended to take the network down, simply because they couldn’t. Unlike Anonymous, Lizard Squad’s methods seem to be less sophisticated. Even if they didn’t try to take down Tor, the fact still remains: a couple of guys spread across Europe were able to take down two of the biggest online networks in the world, on arguably the biggest day of the year for both of them.

So How Was This A Good Thing?!

This isn’t a new occurence for either company. While in the past it was excusable for Sony to have such outages be it through nefarious means or having legitimately high traffic to their services, Sony now follows a pay model similar to Microsoft’s charging a set amount yearly to use PSN on PlayStation 4 for online gaming. Still, it should be no surprise considering Sony’s tough month in general with its companies various IT departments. It’s even more alarming however that it has happened to Microsoft, a company that has based it’s entire future on cloud computing in general.

Another way of looking at it, is you bought your movie ticket to go see the next Avengers or Star Wars movie and you are waiting in line with everyone else outside, only to find out that the UPS truck delivering the film reel blew a tire and wouldn’t make it there to the next day. You don’t care if it was the movie theatres fault or not, they need to make it right. The first thing the theatre would do is apologize, offer you a free popcorn, and then start using FedEx or some other measures to make sure the film got there on time and you got what you paid for.

What Microsoft and Sony Should Do About It

In this case the movie theatres are obvious Microsoft and Sony. The free popcorn would be a month of their service free or a free game, and the firing of UPS for FedEx would be coming up with better countermeasures for these kinds of things.

The first time I recall Microsoft having trouble with Xbox Live was in 2007, shortly after the release of Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 and in Christmas week as well! Microsoft was quick to apologize to all users, gave us all a free month of Xbox Live and since then the service has been solid for the most part. What makes this attack worse, is Lizard Squad warned Microsoft and Sony that they were going to do this weeks before. What happens when a more sophisticated group is able to do this and then grab our information? Perhaps Microsoft and Sony needs to look at their data usage of the peak periods, and put more servers, money, and resources up during those times. Microsoft and Sony relies on keeping the cutomers trust and if they want to take their services to the next level (ie cloud gaming) they are going to have to keep convincing us why their services are worth the fifty dollars or so a year on top of the ISP we each respectively pay for already. It is especially important that Microsoft and Sony apologize for the outages to all of their customers, especially because many of them probably have no idea that Lizard Squad was doing this in the first place, and may have thought they were doing something wrong or it was specifically something Microsoft and Sony were doing to their own services.

Follow me on Twitter and let me know your thoughts. With that said, I leave you with this short, embarrassing Christmas music video that sums up what happened in about ten seconds:

All Hail the Lizard People! was originally published in I Am Manbaby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do most of these top 10 apps on iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite have in common? Either they take advantage of the new updates new features or they play off eachother thanks to Apple’s Handoff Continuity Features on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Watch the videos below for my very conservative but useful top 10, and comment in YouTube to let me know your take!

The Best iOS and OS X Apps of 2014 was originally published in I Am Manbaby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While it is true Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and the rest of the titles on this list are coming to both PlayStation and Xbox systems the differneces lie only in the graphics. If this year’s MGSV: GZ was any indication, the difference in visuals between the new and old generations won’t take away from the incredibly well done stealth combat. The game should be coming out in the first half of 2015 and should hold off any gamer that loves a good story, incredible action, and what looks to be shaping up to be a great online experience.

The Back Catalog

Chances are there are some games you missed out on that are still worth checking out. Better yet, if you are a Gold Xbox Live subscriber or a PlayStation Plus member you get two free games a month, with plenty more variety to choose from than what you would get on the current generation.

Sure you can get Mortal Kombat X on the new gen consoles but if you are a fighter fan, chances are you already have your favorite arcade sticks ready to go for your current system, not to mention there will be plenty more compeition on the old generation of consoles! Get ready for Kombat when it comes out in April.

The money

Sure you might have been gifted an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, but then what? Games, and accessories are more expensive so you get less bang for your buck. On the other hand check out your local videogame store and chances are they are having huge sales to clear room for the new generation systems so take advantage of that! Don’t bother with yearly titles or older online centric titles though, they typically aren’t supported anymore or just aren’t very popular overall. Also several major titles like Call of Duty and Destiny give you the ability to transfer over stats or upgrade to the new generation version of the game for $20 or sometimes even free!

While you could also get this stand alone expansion of the wild sandbox title Sains Row IV for the new generation, if you already have the game on your Xbox 360 or PS3 you got a head start and probably a lot more options opened up to you out of the box! Look for it in January.

So I hope everyone had a great Christmas and don’t worry if you didn’t get that shiny new PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, there’s always next Christmas. Until then just remember that old trust PS3 or 360 still has plenty of life left in it and most of the experiences at least the first half of 2015 you can find everywhere.

5 Reasons Why Being Stuck With An Older Console Isn’t So Bad was originally published in I Am Manbaby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Forget the console wars — the real battle for gaming supremacy is just heating up and Sony took a big step in the right direction today.

Sony has had a pretty busy Christmas Eve. While the big news is that you can now watch The Interview on Google’s services and Xbox they also announced that their streaming service, PlayStation Now will be available on upcoming Samsung Smart TVs. PlayStation Now is Sony’s game streaming service that streams PlayStation 3 titles to all of Sony’s current PlayStation consoles and Bravia televisions. In short, it’s Netflix for games.

What makes today’s news so important is Sony is taking this seriously. They know that if they don’t get started on creating the service and make it high quality then another company could beat them to the punch. As Sony manage to ramp up the service and infrastructure, it will likely be quite a force. After the service exits out of its current beta stage and matures it could even be a game changer like Netflix was. Netflix’s streaming services started off fairly light on content and on devices that could use it. Initially it launched on Xbox 360 and Roku boxes in 2008 then gradually proliferated to other devices. It quickly had more content to choose from, becoming a force that has caused traiditional means of media consumption to be re-examined. If Sony were to follow this model, releasing a PlayStation Now app on Vizio and LG televisions, PCs, and even mobile devices, people would be hard pressed not to go out and buy a PS3 controller and start using the service.

The service itself is using a rental model for now but going forward, Sony has teased a subscription based model. You save your games on the cloud and it has all of the same advantages that PlayStation 3 titles have with trophies and the PlayStation Network. All it takes is a PlayStation controller, at least a 5Mbps connection to play the game and your in business.

What’s more surprising is Microsoft has been slow to respond. There have been various rumors over the years that Microsoft is working on its own Xbox streaming service. Such a service could actually be part of Microsoft’s overall consumer strategy for Windows 10, as the company plans to unveil more plans about how Windows 10 will impact all of Microsoft’s services and devices next month.

Microsoft will likely follow a similar strategy that Sony is following by slowly rolling out such a service, first across their own devices and then onto others such as television sets and maybe even devices such as iOS and Android devices. You can get Office on pretty much any device now in some form or another afterall.

This is the beginning of a new kind of war; a war where everyone wins. While currently in order to play the next Halo you have to buy an Xbox One console and in order to play the next Uncharted title you will have to buy a PlayStation 4 in a few short years this could mean we could all be playing these titles under one device, just as we have our choice of which music and video streaming services we use on our phones and smart television sets right now.

Death of the Console?

The death of the console has been predicted for quite sometime. As broadband speeds get better it’s only logicial that consoles, like CDs and DVDs have will become less important but will still remain an option. There is always an audience for physical media, but as long as the experience with local media and cloud media become indistinguishable, people buying one box for gaming will become a minority.

Cheers to Sony for taking a big step in the right direction. Hopefully Microsoft has a response soon and heck maybe even Nintendo and Valve’s Steam. I look forward to the day where I can play The Last of Us and Halo all from my computer simply by opening up an app and turning on my wireless controller.

PlayStation Now Is Ushering in a New Era was originally published in I Am Manbaby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

However, Apple blamed Forstall on the initial failure of paramount projects Apple Maps and Siri. This combined with less than expected profits at the time, Apple put blame on Forstall. There is of course more to the story; Steve Jobs held Forstall in high regard and besides Apple’s other pillar Jonathan Ive not caring much for the guy, he likely believed himself to be the heir-apparent.

While Apple has been spending millions on painting the next chapter coming later this year, the Apple faithful know: Tim Cook truly began his chapter when Forstall was out. Many Apple faithful are just that; faithful. Of course even the most faithful question their faith sometimes and at that very moment a lot of us got a little nervous. So it is almost eerie to see some of the parallels in the firing of two Apple’s most creative forces.

The Parallels:

Why they were officially fired:

Fired for being abrasive and was blamed for a lot of Apple’s shortcomings.

Fired for being abrasive and was blamed for a lot of Apple’s shortcomings.

When Apple wanted you to know that the CEO was taking the company into it’s next chapter, they showed off their pet projects:

On the CEO Steve Jobs appointed:

Tried to gather support for a coup against the CEO to take over.

Tried to gather support for a coup against the CEO to take over.

What they did when they left:

Hopefully history isn’t repeating itself. Still, Apple Maps has only been getting marginally better every month, mostly thanks to acquisitions and having a better understand of the underlying work that goes on in making it. Siri is more hit than miss nowadays. Maybe the more frequent iOS 8 and Yosemite bugs and crashes are just a growing pain, or maybe Apple lost it’s way when it made a stop at the fashion show.

From Firing Jobs to Forstall: Will History Repeat? was originally published in I Am Manbaby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The past few weeks have been rough for Sony. This isn’t a new occurrence — it’s been happening to them for over a decade.

If it isn’t already apparent to you, Sony has screwed up pretty bad. As it has been reported by GameSpot today a new survey shows that the companies overall public perception is down at it’s lowest ever. The blows have been coming left and right for Sony the past few weeks after hackers easily accessed a plethora of their files. After being embarrassed by trade secrets being revealed a non-descript threat caused them to pull “The Interview” only to be bad-mouthed by our president, then foolishly trying to reshape what they had did into a move that was different than the original intent. Then a washout comedy star decided to reprise his role as a dictator on last week’s SNL to claim the last thing Sony did worth while was the Sony Walkman. When news broke that they would eventually bring the movie to VOD it quickly got reported that Sony’s own VOD service that no one has ever used or heard of, Crackle would stream the movie. After a few short hours of outrage on the internet from that, Sony claimed they never confirmed that was happening.

So the question is, what the hell is going on with Sony? Sony has been suffering a long, long death for quite awhile. The only markets they are able to make a respectable profit on in the first play is their media empire (music, movies, television) and PlayStation and even through each of those they have had massive gaffes. The company as a whole has been going through a slow restructuring and esssentially doesn’t know what it wants to be.

With their music market they are pretty safe; the artist and catalog they have is enough to keep their overall market value up and if the shit really hits the fan for the company then they have some market stars like Michael Jackson and AC/DC that they can auction off.

Their movie business while respectable has been finding it difficult to make a true hit. Big bets like “The Amazing Spider-Man” series are not paying off as well as they had hoped and critical reception for the last movie was pretty bad. While Warner Bros, FOX, and Disney both have pretty solid plans to spin off their top franchises into comic universes Sony has been unable to drum up as much excitement or concoct a cohesive plan. Then we have what happened with “The Interview”. Already millions had been sunk into promotion of the movie and this has undoubtedly left a sour taste in stars Seth Rogen and James Franco mouths. The duo, Rogen specifically, has been a powerhouse for Sony in the past dating all the way back to “Knocked Up”. If Sony is unable to find a solution that best suits the fans and the duo, then Rogen can likely find no problem getting funding for other projects with other frequent studio collaborator Universal. The division has had it’s share of security attacks in the past, in 2011 users information was attacked. With their television business that relies heavily on some lesser known online offerings, and sattelite tv channels, as well as syndication, the thing that has threatened this business can be summed up in one word: “Netflix”.

With PlayStation, Sony has been doing a very good job of making sure that worldwide, the system does well but it still has been having challenges. In Europe the system is hard to find and Sony is gearing up to launch in the unproven market of China, while in Japan despite selling well, has underperformed thanks to the advent of the popularity of mobile gaming in the region. In United States while the system still sells well, Microsoft’s Xbox One appears to be breaking their hold by pushing the price down below Sony’s machine and offering more value to the consumer. The PlayStation Vita on the otherhand has been a failure, with it’s biggest selling point of PS4 Remote Play going from being a Vita exclusive, to Vita + Sony Android phone exclusive to now being available on all Anroid phone hardware that can support it.

The Symptom

The problem is that none of this is new. For every good bet Sony makes, they make three very bad ones that they find it difficult to recover from. Sony’s stock and the company’s brand itself has been in freefall for quite sometime. While we can thank Sony for popularizing such staples as the CD, DVD, and PlayStation, they haven’t been able to do that next big thing that wowed everyone. In the early 2000's Sony’s stock was at it’s highest thanks to DVD and their own PlayStation 2 being the cheapest DVD player on the market at the time at $300. Every since then, every dip in their stock price correlates with major events in the tech and entertainment space that they have recovered from less and less each time. In late 2001 the Apple iPod and Microsoft Xbox threatened two of their key businesses causing the stock to drop. By 2003, it was painfully clear that the Sony Minidisc, Discern, and Sony’s MP3 players were losing to the rising star of Apple’s iPod resulting in even more of a stock drop. By 2009, the cellphone market, a market that Sony used to have a fair share of became crowded by the likes of HTC, Samsung, and Apple creating handsets that were better than Sony’s offerings. By the end of 2012, Sony was a former shell of it’s past glory and wasn’ #1 in any industry that it had business whereas before it was #1 in many.

So what should Sony do to fix itself? Apple’s late CEO and founder Steve Jobs idolized Sony’s co-founder, Akio Morita and wanted Apple to become the next Sony before he left Apple and after he came back. In a little over ten years, not only did Apple achieve that but it became the company that now Sony strives to be. Apple is probably the biggest competitor to Sony in electronics; even more recent victories like Blu-Ray becoming the high definition disc of choice had been overshadowed by the advent of the download market ushered in greatly by Apple and the companies trying to mimic Apple’s success as well as faster broadband connections. Sony continues to hemorrhage money and what has happened with “The Interview” has done quite a bit of damage to the company. So what can they do? Truly try to be like Apple. Think different.

A Four Pillar Plan

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple back in 1997 he quickly uprooted what had become the status quo at the company and made a simple plan for them to follow to get the company healthy: One consumer and pro desktop and one consumer and pro portable. Along the way, they introduced software and services that helped to extend these devices until they were healthy enough to go into other areas such as the iPod and the iTunes music store, followed by the iPhone and iPad. Now the company is getting ready to make a watch. While this may sound like an over simplifcation of one of the biggest companies in the world, this is essentially it at it’s core and every single one of these businesses intertwine with one another in a way that is incredibly sophisticated, but easy enough for the lowest common denominator to grasp. So what four pillars should Sony concentrate on and how?

Supplier

One of the businesses that Sony has been in that most of us don’t pay to much attention to is as a supplier of compontents to several different devices. These devices range from things such as camera components, television components, audio, you name it. Chances are even if you don’t own anything braned with Sony on it, you own something that has a compontent they have created. This is an area that compeititors such as Samsung have been beating them at in several areas, but with the advent of better mobile camera technologies and a strong supplier relationship with Apple, we may be seeing a whole new generation of cameras in our next iPhone, complete with DSLR quality 22-megapixel lenses. On the subject, they can better control the cost of supplies if they were to exit out of several areas including television sets, cameras and audio equipment. These are areas that while Sony shines in some areas, they have tarnished the brand quite a bit in the past few years, specifically in audio, and many other brands being associated with value or quality in television and camera equipment. For now at least, it would be a good idea for them to exit these areas until they regain consumer trust. Having a better control on their supplies can also mean that they are able to drive down the overall cost of PlayStation and mobile devices, yielding higher margins on their investment.

Entertainment

Ultimately this is where Sony can gain at least some trust as long as they aren’t making crap. In order to do that they need to keep doing what they are doing with the music business, get out of any streaming music businesses they are in, out of any VoD businesses they are in (that means Crackle) and concentrate specifcally on making high quality entertainment in music and the theatre. These theatre and music experiences can even be better by making special apps on tablets and phones that go with each, or making exclusive content on the PlayStation. When it comes to a “Superhero strategy” it could probably be beneficial if Sony were able to come up with a decent partnership with Marvel/Disney. Sony may even be able to become a gap between a bigger partnership with FOX, which also owns rights several Marvel properties for theatrical release.

Through ther movie properties and expertise in high-end electronics Sony may even be able to introduce gee-whiz technologies into movie theatres that we have only dreamed about, including holograms. Could you imagine going to a theatre, and watching a holographic movie at the IMAX? Perhaps even going to see the movie again in a different seat only to see the same movie from a totally different perspective? Sony actually has been dabbling in this technology for quite sometime, as proof from this video dating back from 2008:

Mobile

Mobile is an area that when Sony wants to, they can do pretty good. The problem is they have several different variations of the same thing every year. The solution here is simple: One phone, one tablet a year. If Sony were able to specifically concentrate efforts on these things, they would be able to show innovation far more clearly to the consumer. On top of that, get rid of the PlayStation Vita and and make their Xperia series the go to for Vita games. This would give consumers a reason to choose these over other smartphones. Build in their best camera technologies, build in their best display technologies, and build in the PlayStation store making that their one stop shop for any electronic entertainment wares. Communicate far better to consumers that your devices are more water resistant and strive to give them better battery life so they can compete better with the iPad and the other Android devices out there. While you’re at it ditch the wearables market in this space and move it to PlayStation.

PlayStation

PlayStation is Sony’s crown jewel. It has been for quite sometime. It has lead all the more successful efforts in Sony’s consumer electronics areas: DVD, Blu-Ray, and ultimately they have changed the face of gaming. The first and second PlayStation systems sold over 100 million; the PS3 however has had lower numbers in the face of increasing compeition. The PS4 so far has outdone even the most optimistic estimates, selling well over 15 million in less than a year and currently the “king” of this console generation.

So how do you make a great thing better? Sony can’t currently compete with Microsoft on price and while that may hurt Sony in the short term in North America, the recent price drop hasn’t specifically harmed their position in Europe or Asia. Sony’s VR tech “Project Morpheus” could not only replace their television business for the time being, but it could also be a segaway for technologies they introduce into movie theatres, as well as a new way to play games. This is where the disconnect to PlayStation however would have to begin. In order to make it successful, gaming could only be a part of the VR headset. If you wanted to game and get the full experience then you would buy it for use with the PlayStation 4. What if you wanted to just watch movies, or perhaps experience television or computing in a completely different way? Then it could be easily interfaced with computers, tablets, and mobile devices. Such a device would need to sell for a price that is reachable and likely sold at a loss for Sony.

As broadband connections begin to get faster in the years to come (think Google Fiber connections) then instead of being stifled by progress like they were in the past they can take advantage of it with everybody else. Become the Netflix of gaming with their PlayStation platform and take it into the next decade. Sony has already been testing this technology with “PlayStation Now” and Microsoft is rumored and likely to have a similar service in the future. It will be an uphill battle for Sony in this respect as Sony needs to invest heavily on their network infrasturcture and security, something companies like Microsoft and Apple have had over Sony for quite sometime.

To conclude I will admit I’m not a fan of Sony’s. I haven’t been for years. When I was a kid I admired their televisions and audio equipment and when I got older I bought some of their stuff. I had a TV that lasted for a decent amount of time then I bought one of their crappy audio systems. I got a Discman and then was more interested in getting a iPod that worked with my brand new PowerMac G4. I ditched my PlayStation 2 because the Microsoft Xbox delivered on launch what Sony promised for two years. This stuff with “The Interview” will pass but Sony won’t be able to recover if they don’t innovate all over and cut the fat. Sony and it’s brand used to stand for something. What does it really stand for now? Whatever magic they have in the PlayStation brand they need to distill it down to its essence, bottle it up, and inject it into the other parts of the company. If Sony is gone then companies like Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and others have one less reason to innovate themselves. People are to preoccupied with the whats not possible to invent the impossible. Sony is one of the few companies left that can invent the impossible. There was a time when the Discman seemed impossible.. In short, they need to be brave, be bold, and innovate or die.

Fixing Sony was originally published in I Am Manbaby on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.