Using an electronic drum set with Rock Band

Posted on 2008/03/23 by richardykuo

Overview

This FAQ describes how to connect an electronic drum kit to the game Rock Band, which is currently out for XBox 360, PS2, PS3, and Wii.

Update 1/1/2009: Much of this FAQ focuses on building the MSA-P as an adapter … currently, the built-in GHWT drum MIDI input is likely to be a much more accessible means of using your electronic drum kit.  See the article about alternative ways of connecting kits to Rock Band for more details.  Other articles still apply.

Quick Q&A

All of the following questions are covered in detail in the main articles, but for the sake of a quick overview, read the following. 

How much does this cost?

Assuming you already have a Rock Band drum controller to modify, the adapter itself will cost around 100 dollars to build.  A used drum kit will be about 750 dollars if you go reasonably low end.  Top of the line electronic drum kits can run up to 5500 dollars new.

How long does it take to perform the modification?

The modification itself will probably take about half a day to complete once all the parts are in front of you.

Why would I want to do this?

Playing on an electronic drum kit is a more authentic and higher quality experience.  Rebound, foot action, and the room you have to move around the kit are all better and adjustable on a real kit.

In most cases, you can learn to hit the "correct" instruments and still play the game.  Also, for extremely competitive players that are aiming for high scores, an electronic drum kit completely overcomes the limitations of the "cheap" Rock Band drum kit.  Any misses will be your fault, and not the equipment's.

Who is using this modification?

Well, in addition to several enthusiasts you probably don't know, some of the top drummers, such as someguy913 and Javman158, have also started using their drum kits with Rock Band via this modification.

What equipment are you using?

A Roland TD-3 drum brain on the default MDS-3C stand.  All pads are upgraded to mesh.  I have a PD-120 for the snare and 1 PD-85 and 2 PD-80's for the toms.  The kick drum is a KD-8 rubber pad.  I actually prefer this over the mesh kick drums in higher end kits.  Cymbals are the default rubber ones that come with the TD-3 kit.

The drum throne is a Roc-n-Soc Nitro.

Drum sticks are Vic Firth SD4N's.

Kick pedal is a low end cheapo Yamaha.  Does the job, but I'm planning on upgrading.

Main articles

Without further ado, here are the detailed articles you should review to understand the modification.

Rock Band drumming vs real drumming

  1. Rock Band drumming vs real drumming – what you learn, and what you don't  

Understanding electronic drum kits

  1. Advantages of an electronic drum kit over the standard Rock Band drum kit
  2. Selecting an electronic drum kit for use with Rock Band
  3. Understanding the different parts of your electronic drum kit

 Buying, building, and configuring the MSA-P for use with Rock Band

  1. Using an electronic drum kit with Rock Band – The shopping list
  2. How to expose the controller inputs of the Rock Band drum kit
  3. Wiring up the MSA-P and the enclosure
  4. Programming the MSA-P and your drum brain for use with Rock Band

Other topics

  1. Selecting drum sticks for Rock Band
  2. Alternative solutions for hooking up electronic drum kits

Appendix A – Original posts and articles

Original forum thread on rockband.com – Rock Band with Electronic Drums (HOWTO)
Forum thread on rockband.scorehero.com – Roland TD-6SW (Electronic Drumset) in Rock Band w/Vids!
Forum thread about this FAQ on rockband.scorehero.com – Complete Rock Band electronic drum kit FAQ, feedback welcome

Flash's blog

MSA-P enclosure (limited supply) – http://www.markbusch.com/pics.htm

Moriah's Web – Rock Band Uber Mod! 

Homemade drum kit – http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53981

sethmeisterg's MIDI to PS2/PS3 adapter (a well received secondary option for those players that don't want to build their own adapter and have a PS2/PS3) – http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56287

Appendix B – Videos of electronic drum kits being used with Rock Band

Appendix C – Q&A for jackasses

You're dumb for spending so much money on a game.

The people performing this modification probably make more money than you do and can afford to spend it on something they enjoy.  Which raises the question of who is really the dumb one.

You aren't a real drummer!  Hop in front of my kit and let's see how you do!

Nobody here is claiming to be a "real" drummer after playing the drums in Rock Band…although nearly all of the top drummers in Rock Band ARE real drummers and play the game and enjoy it for what it is.  However, there are a lot of important fundamentals that can be learned by playing Rock Band.  These are outlined in the article "Rock Band drumming vs real drumming – what you learn, and what you don't".

Conclusion

Credit goes to anyone and everyone who contributed to the above threads and took risks on buying the necessary equipment and performing modifications "in the dark".  We couldn't have done it without you.

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Recruiting Wall – Feb 2008

Posted on 2008/02/12 by richardykuo
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Anatomy of a "House, M.D." Episode

Posted on 2008/02/10 by richardykuo

Like a lot of other people, I really enjoy the series House.  At its core, it's a medical drama.  But the chararacterization is what really makes the show tick.  House is a brilliant asshole of a doctor.  Everyone else on the show is a foil for his antics.

By its fourth season, however, House is incredibly formulaic in the structure of its episodes.  To their credit, they did manage to shake things up a bit this season with the Apprentice-esque setup in the first half of the season.

Each episode typically opens with the person in question getting sick in some rather dramatic fashion.  If you're lucky and blessed with a special episode, there may be some misdirection involved where one person acts woozy, but then someone else gets REALLY sick.

The next 5 minutes of the episode involve someone trying to convince House why this case is interesting enough for him to spend time on.  The next ten minutes are spent testing various theories and cures, at which point something dramatic happens … either vital signs crash or some really weird symptom manifests itself.  Cut to commercial!

We come back and they've managed to do something to buy some more time.  At this point we come in for a mish mash of the following.

1. House insults patients.
2. House insults his proteges.
3. House makes inappropriate comments about Cuddy's cleavage.
4. House suggests a dangerous treatment.
5. Someone has to talk the patients into a potentially dangerous treatment.
6. Someone mentions lupus or couple of other goto diseases that are never actually the disease in question.
7. Proteges break into patient's home to get more info.
8. House catches the silly patient lying about something.
9. Small bits of character development that rotate between anyone that isn't House.
10. House notices something small about a regular and correctly deduces a major piece of new and hopefully saucy information.

I'm sure there's a drinking game for this show somewhere.

At around the 50 minute mark, it's time for the episode to wrap itself up.  Nobody has any idea what's going on and things are looking grim for our Jane Doe.  Luckily, House will be having an innocuous conversation with a colleague, (usually Wilson) during which something will be said that will trigger something in House's stream of consciousness.  It typically goes something like this.

Wilson: You're a bitter and small person, House.
House: Yes…yes…small…just like the parasitic amoebas of the Lower Nigerian Basin! (runs off to cure the patient)

There's about a 50/50 chance that the diagnosis will come in just before the patient is about to go in for some major life changing surgery that is based on a previous incorrect guess.  Thus, our patient is saved in an appropriately dramatic fashion.

Despite the above, I forgive the writers because House definitely isn't a show pretending to be something else.  They do a pretty good job of giving the audience what they want…which is an irascible guy who says what everyone is thinking in the most creatively mean way possible and still gets away with it.  It's sort of like watching Triumph the Insult Comic Dog in the form of a genius doctor.

Um, I think I just came up with a brilliant Conan skit. =)  Too bad the strike is over!

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Kill a tree, read a book

Posted on 2008/01/28 by richardykuo

I have a lot of gadget related things to blog about … like the new phone I just got (Sprint Touch … SERO plan), bluetooth headsets, and so on.  But, somehow, I feel it's bad form to saturate this blog with too many posts in a row on gadgets.  So why don't we talk about something else?

Recently I bought some books off the "Books Recommended by Charlie Munger" list.  When someone as smart as Charlie Munger recommends a book to read, why not listen?  I haven't felt like I've had the time to read a lot of books since joining Google, but as I've roughly settled in after a year or so, I'm making the time now.

The first book I chose to read was "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor?" I'm about halfway through.

My takeaways right now…

I thank my lucky stars that I live in a country as safe as the United States.  Civilized behavior is not the default state of the human animal.  The fact that it IS by and large the default in this country is something to be immensely respectful of.  Barbaric acts were simply the normal status of affairs a few centuries ago.  Placed in a modern day context, I cannot imagine that a soldier in Iraq, for example, would easily be able to turn that switch off and on.

Personal freedoms and property ownership were the harbingers of economic growth in societies.  Cities all over Europe attracted industrious individuals with the promise of these freedoms, precisely because there was no other way to do it.  Another funny thing … free men not only work harder, they fight harder too.

Similarly, honesty and fairness were also quite rare, but eventually became required social lubricant for the really productive societies.  I always got that feeling from reading other Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger material, but it was nice to see it here in another context.

The "wrong" cultures and religions dragged many societies down.  The Chinese and Muslim cultures had opportunities to advance just as the European societies did, but those opportunities were never seized.  When religion stamped out everything (like science) that didn't agree with its preconcieved tenets, it also stamped out innovation and discovery along with it.  Cultures where serfdom reigned didn't care to do anything productive with their discoveries…after all, only the ruling class was going to benefit.  Who cared about being more efficient?

However, the fragmentation of religion and culture in Europe helped to stunt the negative impacts of "bad" culture, government and religion.  In fact, that division may have been the primary reason for Europe getting ahead of the rest of the world.  You also have to think that this is very much the model the founding fathers were going for in designing the United States…limited federal government and different states competing with each other on the merits.  Unfortunately it seems like as a country we've increasingly moved away from this.

Many stagnant societies, amazingly enough, contributed to their own failure by driving out their most productive members…often new and ambitious immigrants looking to create a better way.  Such ignorant behavior caused irreparable delays in advancement.

Finally, war is an exorbitant drain on resources and stalls the development of any country engaging in it.

My thoughts on this book, of course, can only be partially expressed since I'm only halfway through the thing.  However, one thought I do continue to have as I read is "Do our presidential candidates bother reading any of this stuff?"  It is abundantly clear that there are certain things that are just bad ideas based on past experience.  Yet we seem quite eager to repeat these mistakes as a country.  Surely we should know better?

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A quick analysis of the MacBook Air

Posted on 2008/01/17 by richardykuo

So Apple finally announced their ultraportable notebook.  One question … what took you so long, Apple?

It's a nice option for Mac lovers.  It's not so competitive, however, compared to the options in the PC space.

Pros

  • There's finally an ultraportable Mac option.  Yep, if you been wanting a really light and portable Mac, the wait has been long and painful….and now it's over.
  • 13.3" screen.  A screen of this size is unusual in the ultraportable class.  You tend to see 11.1" or 12.1" screens.

Cons

  • Design scheme is tired.  Come on guys, the aluminum look is starting to wear thin.  Add some color to the lineup or shuffle things around a bit.
  • Storage options are below par.  80GB max?  The Sony TZ can have both a 64GB SSD as a primary drive and a 250GB HDD as the secondary drive.
  • Battery is not user replaceable.  Apple does this with a lot of their products for the sake of aesthetics…but in a two thousand dollar investment, it's more painful issue.  Batteries tend to go bad within a couple of years, so if you're planning on hanging onto the notebook for longer, you might find yourself having to service the notebook.  Also junky if you're hopping on an international flight or doing some heavy traveling.
  • Ports and accessories are lacking.  One USB port?  No ethernet jack?  No integrated WWAN option?  These are livable problems, but smaller laptops have already done much better in the ports department.

Still, let's face reality.  If you want a Mac and you're a fan of traveling light, you have no other options.  Grin and bear it. Life could be worse.  =)

Personally, I went with the ThinkPad x60 last year (and painted it to take care of the looking nice part) and if I were to buy a notebook right now, it would probably be the Sony TZ.

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Hello again – some advice on wireless networking hardware

Posted on 2008/01/05 by richardykuo

Thought I would get back into the groove of things here.

Let's start back up on wireless hardware.  Seeing as how I live in an apartment complex, getting this right has been a bigger issue for me as of late.  I've run through more wireless hardware than I care to admit, but I've finally settled on the right combination of stuff for me and I'm going to share that with you in the hopes of saving you folks the same pains I went through.

First of all, if you want the simple advice…buy the D-Link DIR-655 as a home router or wireless gateway.  I use it personally and have recommended it to tons of friends, all with basically flawless results.  Check out the review of this device at www.smallnetbuilder.com for more info.

For more complicated advice, read on.

Solving the home gateway/wireless access point problem

Initially, I had a cheap 802.11g Netgear router.  This was crashing and slowing down constantly, so I decided to upgrade.  I'd already had pretty bad experiences with a lot of networking hardware, so this time I decided to try something with a bit more of a reputation … Apple hardware.

I bought the AirPort Extreme 802.11n (Fast Ethernet version) and installed it.

Initially, I was pretty happy with the AirPort Extreme.  Aesthetics matter to me and this thing actually looks nice in addition to doing its job.  However, after a couple of months I eventually ran into a problem.  I was testing a lot of Ubuntu based server installations, including a DHCP server on my home network.  The problem is that you simply cannot disable the DHCP server on the AirPort Extreme.  This isn't an issue for most people, of course … but keeping up to date on this stuff is important to me both personally and professionally.  So I reluctantly went looking for new hardware.

I eventually stumbled across SmallNetBuilder and read their review of the DIR-655.  Without a doubt, SmallNetBuilder is one of the most thorough sites around to review networking hardware.  I purchased an DIR-655 to replace the AirPort Extreme.

The DIR-655 is a great piece of hardware … it did everything that the AirPort Extreme did, but was more configurable, handled P2P traffic better, and even has a Quality of Service engine that prioritizes gaming/VOIP traffic over other types of traffic.  It's also extremely stable.

I'm currently using the gaming variant of the DIR-655 today.  We'll get to that in a moment.

Solving the wireless bridging problem – Intro

The next problem I had to solve was that only a couple of rooms in my apartment are wired.  The unwired room needs a high speed connection in it because that's where I hide the big ugly servers I own.  I did not want to run a cable between the rooms for aesthetic reasons.  So that left only one option … a fast wireless bridge.

Wireless bridging does not appear to be a very common scenario in consumer networking hardware…and is even less common amongst draft 11n hardware.  I was going to need draft 11n performance, though…bridging HD content over the wireless wouldn't be acceptable over anything slower.

We're not done yet … most networking hardware today uses the 2.4GHz band.  This is fine, but if you live in an apartment complex, there are tons of other people around using similar networking hardware…on top of the microwaves and cordless phones that are all sharing the same frequency.  Do you want to lose the connection to your HDTV server if someone decides to microwave some food?  Not a good idea.

A much better alternative is the 5GHz band.  Because the channel spectrum here is so uncrowded, you can bond two channels together to double the throughput.  You're also unlikely to have interference from anyone else around you because of the huge legacy investment in 802.11b/g.

So … now it becomes clear what the ideal solution is.  A wireless 802.11n bridge that supports 5GHz, without any other weird gotchas, will let you create a high performance bridge between rooms in your home or apartment without having to run ugly wires or knocking holes in walls.  Splendid!

It's not that easy to search out the above requirements, but long story short, I eventually realized that the AirPort Extreme has an "Extend a wireless network" function which actually does exactly what I needed at the time … creates an 802.11n wireless bridge.  It's highly unlikely that wireless bridging will work with hardware from different manufacturers… but I just happened to have one AirPort Extreme lying around, so…

Trying the AirPort Extreme as a wireless bridging solution – Spotty at best

I went out and got another AirPort Extreme (Gigabit version).  The DIR-655 would be the home gateway and the two AirPort Extremes would bridge the unwired room in my apartment.

In theory, this should have worked.  In practice, it didn't, and it was for the following reasons.

1. Reconfiguration of the AirPort Extreme can be unstable.  By this, I mean that you can set things a certain way on the base station and they won't work.  However, if you reset the base station to its default settings and configure it from scratch, things do work.  Because I was switching frequently between AP/bridging modes to test certain parameters, I would spend an hour trying to figure out why something wasn't working, only to reset everything and have the AirPort Extreme suddenly fix itself.  This leads to tough issues with troubleshooting since you have many "What the hell, I did that already, why is it working now?" moments.

2. 7.1.1 firmware transmits at an amazing 10MB/sec using WPA2 encryption.  Unfortunately, the latest firmware is 7.2.1.  7.1.1 is also, as I learned with some pain, unstable with P2P traffic running over it as a wireless bridge.  Last, but not least, the newest Gigabit versions of the AirPort extreme are only valid with versions 7.2 of the firmware or higher.

3. 7.2.1 firmware fixes the stability issue mentioned above, but kills bridging performance.  You can actually get 10MB/sec throughput over two bridged AirPort Extremes with the 7.1.1 firmware on the main AirPort Extreme, but 7.2.1 on the main AirPort Extreme drops that to around 2.5 MB/sec.  The throughput rises to around 6MB/sec if you disable encryption, so presumably there is something weird going on with accelerated onboard encryption and the AirPort Extreme.  Frankly, 2.5MB/sec for most people is still OK, but if you want to stream HD wirelessly, it's too close to the edge to be decent.

4. Several advanced options are hidden by default and can only be accessed if you know to ctrl or option click on the dropdowns.  For example, the stability of the connection on my AirPort Extreme to other 5GHz band hardware was spotty until I manually forced the channel to a high band frequency (153 instead of the default 36).

You would not believe how much time it took to track down all of the above issues. =)

Well, I put up with the junky throughput of the 7.2.1 firmware for a while, hoping that Apple would release some firmware to fix these ridiculous problems.  They didn't.

Solving the wireless bridging problem – DGL-4500 + DAP-1555 = success!

After a few months of putting up with low throughput and no new firmware in sight, I decided to try again. Some things had changed.

The D-Link DGL-4500 was released a couple of months ago and is the gaming equivalent of the DIR-655.  I have no idea why the DGL-4500 would be better for gaming compared to the DIR-655 as they both have the same QoS engine…but the major difference in terms of hardwar
e is that the DGL-4500 can use either the 2.4Ghz or 5GHz bands.

On top of that, the D-Link DAP-1555 was also recently released.  This is a product designed specifically to be a wireless 802.11n bridge and works with either the DGL-4500 or another DAP-1555.

Since I was so pleased with the DIR-655, I bought the DGL-4500 to replace the DIR-655 and packed up the DIR-655 as a Christmas gift for a lucky and unsuspecting friend.  The DGL-4500 has behaved exactly like the DIR-655 in other respects … remarkably stable and fast.

The DAP-1555 arrived and was very simple to configure via a web interface.  It immediately bridged to the DGL-4500 and has been working flawlessly ever since.

Final thoughts

1. The DGL-4500 is now acting as my home gateway and as a 5GHz access point.

2. The DAP-1555 is wirelessly bridged to the DGL-4500 and is getting around 5MB/sec of encrypted throughput…no weird gotchas doing so  either, which is remarkably important, as you can see from the above.  It's not the 10MB/sec of the AirPort Extreme with the 7.1.1 firmware, but it's enough that I'm happy with it.

3. I reconfigured one of the AirPort Extremes to be a 2.4GHz b/g/n access point for visitors.

4. I brought home the other AirPort Extreme to be a 5GHz access point at my parents' house.

So, the story is over.  After all of the above … I finally have a home networking setup I can be happy with.  The wireless bridge handles P2P downloads easily and has plenty of bandwidth to stream the TV I record to the other rooms in my apartment.  Simple in theory, but difficult in practice to implement.

I'll leave you with these words.  Every time I go through something like this, I am reminded constantly of how much of a gap there is between saying something like "I want to stream HD wirelessly around my home" and actually implementing it.  Good product philisophies find a way to magically translate those English statements by normal people into reality with a minimum of fuss.  And we're not even close yet, folks.  Not even close.

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D-Link DIR-655

Posted on 2008/01/05 by richardykuo
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Optimize your life #10 – When to stop planning and start acting

Posted on 2006/12/16 by richardykuo

I often tell folks
that schools teach bad habits as well as good ones.

 

For one thing, your typical college course
habituates students into believing that everything consists of neatly packaged
problems that they can be graded on. 
Is that how people are evaluated in the real world?

 

Similarly, most college courses teach students to cram random bits of
information into their heads at certain intervals so that they can pass big
bang tests.  Is that how projects and breakthroughs succeed in the real world?

 

What is the actual
value of trying to memorize everything? 
Can we actually memorize everything we need to know?  I
think the answer is clearly no, or else search engines like Google
wouldn't exist.  Would you rather have access to your own memory for information, or access to Google?

 

Schools assume you
have all the information you need available to you.  Schools assume you
should be able to perform tasks and recall information without referring to a
book.  These assumptions are simply not correct. 
Perhaps that's why there's no shortage of stories of people who did well
in school but didn't in the real world, and vice versa.  The correlation is there, but it's not in
lock step like it should be.

 

Real life, of
course, is not simple.  Problems don't
fit into neat testable boxes.  The
information you need probably isn't in a book on your desk.  Sometimes problems solve themselves without
you even needing to lift a finger.  And
other times, the solution itself becomes unnecessary.

 

So, with that in mind, here are some questions I often ask when deciding when to stop planning and start acting.
 

What is the cost of
failure?

 

Failure has a rather
negative connotation associated with it in our society.  Nobody likes to fail.  However, it only takes a single flash of
insight to realize that it is not failure that one should be afraid of, but
rather the cost of that failure. 

 

Failure doesn't feel good to most people.  However, the amount of
planning you perform before acting should be roughly proportional to the actual cost of failure
and not to any psychological hang-ups related to failing.

 

Can the cost of
failure be lowered?

 

You will find that,
most of time, the cost of failure is negligible.  However, when failing is expensive, that's when you will
need to be on your toes.

 

When encountering a situation where failure will hurt, it's important to understand that you have two variables to
work with.  The first is to plan
more.  The second is to reduce the cost
of failure.  Call it the "walk before you run" strategy.

 

Reducing the cost of
failure has advantages over simply planning more.  Changes in the
problem to be solved or project priorities can quickly invalidate even the best laid plans.  Most importantly,
planning lacks a direct connection with reality.

 

The great takeaway here is that there are often ways
to reduce the cost of failure without changing the nature of what needs to be
done.  For example, releasing a buggy
software product can easily kill a company. 
However, if you restrict the releases of a product to a smaller
group of
users who are willing to deal with problems and provide feedback, you
locate more bugs but affect a much smaller subset of people who are
also more tolerant of those bugs.

 

Simple
changes in process like this can easily mitigate huge amounts of risk
at a fraction of the cost.  Try doing anything once or twice before you
do it a thousand times.  It's simple advice, in theory, but you'd be
surprised how often people still don't follow it.

 

What have you
learned?

 

The second important
point, after acting, is that you have to learn from what you've just done.  You might think that this is patently
obvious…after all, who does something and doesn't learn from it afterwards?  Trust me, people and teams repeat mistakes more often than you think.

 

In many cases, it's
simply enough to make a mental note and move on.  You're either the type that takes something
away from the process or you aren't. 
Unfortunately, I don't believe I can offer specific advice on how you
become the type of person that learns from everything happening around him.  So we'll move on.

 

However, as tasks
become larger in scope, the correct takeaway does become more specific.  I think that it probably comes as no surprise
to you that memories are quite fallible.  In software development, for example, an engineer often writes code to automate
all the little things that previously had to be performed by hand in order to
accomplish a task.

 

While writing code
to automate tasks is somewhat beyond the reach of most people, creating
checklists isn't.  In fact, writing
everything down that you have to do is one of the core tenets of the popular
Getting Things Done system.  If an activity seems to occur often, something anyone can do is create checklists.  That speaks directly to the entire point of acting quickly, which is to expose new information, remember it, and feed it back into the process as soon as possible.

 

Summing up

 

So there you go…three simple questions that tell you when to get over your "analysis paralysis" and get on with it.

 

I've
done a lot of background chatting here on the topic of planning vs
action, so let's wrap this up by summing up the general strategy.  My
general opinion
on deciding to act is as follows.  Most
of the time, the cost of failure is cheap or can be made cheap.  In these cases, you should favor a very brief
period of planning, followed by immediate action.  Make
sure to write down things as you act so that you retain the extra knowledge and
experience for the next run.

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Nintendo gets it

Posted on 2006/12/10 by richardykuo

Are you impressed at how Nintendo has managed the development, announcement and launch of the Wii?  I am.

It's been pretty clear that the suicidal game of chicken being played by Sony and Microsoft is fraught with risks to anyone caught in its path…Nintendo included.  Both companies are willing to lose mega millions of dollars.  Both have other interests in play.  It doesn't look good for anyone else who wants to be in the business.

It's a rather classic business move to adopt a differentiation strategy when market conditions like this occur.  Nintendo is executing on this masterfully.

First, look at the Wii.  The physical form of the device has been designed specifically to appeal to both male and female sensibilities.  I've said this before and I'll say it again…megahits cross gender and ethnic boundaries.

Second, look at the price point…250 dollars.  The system hardware isn't as advanced, but that's not really the point…it's made up for in other ways.  At 250 bucks, the system is clearly sending a message to anyone who doesn't want a 400 to 600 dollar system.  Buy me instead!

Third, look at the pack in.  The system itself comes with Wii Sports, which is a simple and intuitive set of sports mini games that are very easy to pick up and play.  In fact, the interesting thing about Wii Sports is that it's a party game that practically screams for you to bring over your friends to try the Wii out with them.  It's basically the equivalent of "E-mail this link to a friend", except it's been packed in with the system.  Viral gaming, anyone?

Your friends try the Wii, some of your friends get hooked.  The Wii-mania spreads.

You have to question at this point why anyone would ever release a system without a game like this. 

Not only that, but Nintendo has to be making a killing with the remote and the extra nunchuk.  At 40 dollars for the remote and 20 for the nunchuk, three extra controllers is a LOT of extra revenue just waiting to be sucked in.  The odd thing is that even though it's a bit expensive, you don't really mind that much because you're getting a gaming experience in the process that no other system can give you.  Which brings us to the last point.

Fourth, look at the games.  The motion sensitive controller and philosophy of game design mean that games on the Wii will largely be unique.  In many cases, people aren't going to be choosing between the Wii and the Xbox 360 or PS3.  They are going to be choosing between the Xbox 360 or PS3 and playing games they can't play anywhere else on the Wii.  Exclusive content has always been a key crutch for Nintendo … Mario, Zelda, and countless other franchises have kept Nintendo's consoles going, but the Wii brings it all front and center.

Meanwhile, Sony's killer game for the PS3?  Resistance, Fall of Man.  The cover of the game is a human skull sitting in a helmet, for god's sake.  I dare you to bring over your friends and their girlfriends and get the entire room engaged with a game like that.

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USBCell now available

Posted on 2006/11/12 by richardykuo

The USBCell seems to be available for ordering now in the US.  For those of you who haven't seen this yet, it's basically a rechargeable AA battery, except it has a built in USB plug so that it can recharge via the USB ports on a computer.

Capacity is only 1300 mAh, which is a little over half some of the highest capacity rechargeable AA batteries…but that's somewhat understandable, considering the USB plug takes up about a third of the battery.

Of course, the nice thing is that if you travel a lot, using USBCell batteries means a battery recharger is one less thing you need to carry around.  I figure that pairing these batteries with the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 gets you pretty close to the ideal notebook mouse.  No wires since the mouse uses Bluetooth, and you'll be able recharge via the laptop itself when needed.

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