Book Review: 1776

Maybe all you Americans learn this stuff in school while we Canadians are learning about fur trappers and maple syrup production, but I wasn't familiar with a lot of the details of the American Revolution. Certainly not the details of the tumultuous year of 1776, portrayed in nail-biting detail in David McCullough's book.

Not being familiar with the details of Washington's first year of the revolution, I had no idea just how precariously close the American's came to losing. The fact that they survived the year to go on fighting the British was a combination of several strokes of brilliant strategy, blind luck, and severe underestimation on the part of their enemy.

There are many lessons about leadership (good and bad) to be taken from both sides, but the main thing you'll get out of the book is a vivid sense of just how difficult the logistics must have been and how hard the conditions under which they fought. (e.g. To think that ten thousand men, stationed only a few hundred yards from their enemy, could in the course of one night pack up and sneak off without detection, boggles the mind)

If you like military history and stories of epic struggle, 1776 definitely meets the bill.

Predictions for 2011

At almost three weeks into the new year, I suppose its getting on the late side for "2011 predictions" posts. That said, I'd made some notes to author such a post, and the recent CES trip I did helped crystallize this thinking.

I think these types of posts are healthy to do for two reasons. The first is humility. I'll surely be wrong on a number of these and so when I look back on them in early 2012, I can be reminded of just how off base I was (and thus generally am!). Secondly these assertions can start conversations. Ones in which I hope you, esteemed reader, will partake.

Lets first dispense with the usual stuff you are hearing around the internet: There will be lots of smartphones (duh), tablets will take over everything (they won't, but they'll be a big category), TVs will get thinner (would they get thicker?), etc. A lot of these things you can take for granted as true or false, either believing vendor claims or not. The more interesting things come in thinking about implications and general trends that result thereof.

So that said, here are a few that come to mind.

1. "Bespoke Design" and "Devices of Emotional Attachment"

For years now, the PC industry has wondered why it is that its machines can't hold a candle to Apple's when it comes to design. I think that the consumer electronics industry as a whole has come to terms with this. In the past few years they have been copying Apple (e.g. remember when everything went "white plastic"?), but this isn't the answer. The answer is in designing things that people care about. Either because they embody something they stand for, allow them to state their place in a tribe, or recall an era for which they have affection. Examples include Google's Chrome laptop (logo-free minimalist bespoke look), Fuji's retro looking camera, or similar examples from Leica or Olympus. Combine this with things like falling manufacturing costs and a premium that people will pay for this kind of design, and there's opportunity for many small hardware niches (e.g. laptop vendor that does build-to-order chassis based on custom materials).

2. "Appstore Fatigue" and the coming competition over connected commerce

(This is a big one on which I'll do a lengthier post in the coming weeks)

In a quick - by no means comprehensive - survey of products at CES, I counted no less than twenty "appstores" across a variety of phones, tablets, PCs, Netbooks, TVs and settop boxes. With the improved capabilities that apps bring to devices, and of course the revenue stream it brings to the vendors, it's not surprising that so many device vendors are doing just this. However, I believe it's unsustainable at current rate/scale. It will have fallout in a number of ways:

• “AppStore Fatigue”: Consumers are not likely to trust (or want to bother) maintaining an ongoing commercial relationship with every device they own, though it appears that every device is going to ask for one. Consumers are going to forgo some in favor of others. Those appstores that fail to resonate with users are going to become ghost towns of sorts. Users being assaulted with yet-another-appstore will suffer ‘AppStore Fatigue’, not wanting to fire up yet another appstore credit-card entry. Those launching appstores will have to think about how to incite that customer in the door. I’d imagine we’ll see lots of “Comes bundled with $50 worth of AppStoreBux” types of offers. Similarly, developers will be faced with a huge choice of channels. Even with lightweight click-to-accept agreements, most will not have the bandwidth to launch on every service and customize for services/devices. This is playing out exactly as the PC Download Casual market did in 05-06 when I worked at MS. As it did then, it will lead to lowest-common-denominator development, a rise of distributor/aggregators, and developer focus on the 1-2 leading platforms leaving others to wither.
• "Competition over Connected Commerce". Again, I'll address this in longer post, but the short version is this: A large part of determining who will win here will be dependant on which vendor walks the line best between (a) giving developers tools to innovate in commerce (light up new business models, create new pricing models, develop external direct commercial relationships with customers) and (b) presenting the end user with something that they can still understand, navigate, and trust. Consider that developers on the AppStore are lighting up new hybrid business models daily or weekly, while Xbox took several *YEARS* to light up a F2P/item-sales model in ONE game. This is going to be the front on which the most exciting innovation is going to take place.

3. Stereo 3D will reach a point of "undeniable lack of success"

Fall 2010 didn't see the furious adoption of Stereo3D that the more bullish were predicting. At CES this year, plenty of vendors were still hawking it, but (a) with less enthusiasm, and (b) as only one of several things they were showing, not the main attraction. My belief is that by end of year, it will be evident that Stereo3D is a niche at best, and likely a small one at that. Vendors will blame the glasses, but this is a red herring. The real issues are more fundamental, and I beleive insurmountable:

• There are fundamental physiological issues with Stereo3D at close distances that make it fatiguing at close distances. This isn't an issue in the cinema where the focal and convergence points are near-identical but becomes and issue at close range. Headmounted displays are extremely uncomfortable. TVs and PCs for extended periods, YMMV.
• Authoring 3D Content costs money. The model Hollyowod is pushing is predicated on a long-term-sustained premium over the whole content waterfall. While theater goers are paying the premium for ticket prices, it's not at the level they'd like and it's not clear that cable, blue- ray, etc, will be able to command a premium at the same level.

The two things that Stereo3D has in its corner are home-theater enthusiasts and sports (gaming enthusiasts are mice nuts in comparison) . I'm not in the camp that beleives these two niches are enough to evade a collapse, but who knows.

4. 3D printing, on the other hand, is about to take off

Several sub-$2k printers, several startup services allowing printing of your own designs (Ponoko, Shapeways, Figureprints) or offer boutique products for sale. Feels on the cusp of something big, though what exactly I'm not sure. Print your own board game pieces? design your own jewelery? Maybe Alice will figure it out for us! There's certainly some overlap with #5:

5. Gaming's Virtual & physical worlds meet

There were a number of toy manufacturers around CES this year, and some of them are doing interesting work in melding physical toys/games with the virtual. There was of course a first step in this direction with toys like WebKinz, BarbieGirls, and BuildABear, but this was only a commercial link, using physical toy as proxy/token for the games cost of entry. What we are seeing now are things like Mattel’s Rock’em Sock’em robots having a complimentary augmented reality game, SphereO a remote controlled robot ball that you drive via smartphone; and ARDrone, a remote controlled helicopter that you pilot with your iphone while simultaneously playing augmented reality games (e.g. 2 real-world copters, but the ‘bullets’ and ‘rockets’ are in virtual space). Also, I got a chance to play Sifteo, a tactile game platform made up of physical cubes that react to how to you move/tilt/connect them. I think all of these are indications of an interesting trend melding the virtual and real worlds. The uber-smart Frank Lantz once said “we think of games as something you put into computers, but this is wrong. Computers are something we put into games”. I think this captures the essense of this trend – that we’re finding ways for technology to pervade and enhance all aspects of play, on and off the screen (which includes things like Nike+, etc)

6. Apple has a gaming platform.

Well, they have two of course. The iPad and the iPhone. What I mean though, is that this posturing (part BS'ing, part wishful thinking) from game console manufacturers about iPhone not really competing with the DS/PSP (it does) and iPad not competing with high-end consoles (they do for share of wallet) is no longer going to fly. Market data will emerge that proves that Apple's platforms are taking gamer money out of the pocket of traditional game platform manufacturers.

7. The Post-PC-Era will officially arrive.

Classify it how you will; Smartphone & tablet growth outpacing PCs, or more people connecting to the Internet on non-PC devices, or any other metric, it will be clear that it's no longer a PC world. This will have all kinds of implications for people developing games content. HTML5 (and

related tech that often is thrown into that bucket) will become increasingly important, cross-platform services will become attractive for gamers, and we'll see the emergence of #8

8. Brands-as-Memes.

This proliferation of app-enabled platforms will lead, I think, to another interesting phenomena. It will be hard and expensive for large-budget games, outside of their core market, to get onto enough platforms to rise above the noise of the collective conciousness. On the other hand, smaller titles, being able to appear across iPhone, iPad, Facebook, consoles and PC, will - when they 'hit' - spread across the cultural landscape like wildfire. Red Dead Redemption made tons of cash, but its got to be a little bit frustrating to work on a $100M AAA blockbuster thats supposed to be the biggest thing in gaming, only to turn on the TV and see that everything from SNL skits to Jay Leno monologues are talking about Farmville and Angry Birds. When Angry Birds gets this level of virality, its no longer just a brand, it's a meme.

9. E-reader apps & services will see an explosion of innovation

The first wave of e-reader devices, apps and services have been too focused (a) on improving their supply chain and costs, and (b) too focused on emulating paper, not on surpassing it. The device war is going to be waged on a number of fronts (Kindle will stick e-ink, but they'd better add a touch interface), but for 2011 its going to be Kindle loyalists and the iPad juggernaut, with some niche-serving tablets in peleton further back. On the software front though, there is room for a ton of innovation. Trying win customers over, people will build social networks or latch onto existing ones, and then layer on features for book clubs, shared annotations, circle-of-trust recommendations, book lending/sharing, gifting, treasure-hunt games, and of course acheivement systems. Lots of magazines and newspapers trying their hand at different interpretations of what their content should look and function like on digital platforms. HTML5 will make it easier and cheaper to produce high quality typography and layout and to make it portable. There's also a ton of work to do to make text more readable on screens.

It took us a few thousand years to get paper to where it is today. YOu didn't think we were done with e-readers upon reaching the iPad, did you?

Some people to watch in this space: Craig Mod, James Bridle, Bill Hill, Copia (who have the right idea, and whose feature set will likely be copied by Amazon and/or Apple)

10. Cracks in gaming's walled gardens.

Consoles are walled gardens. Platforms like Apple's are as well, but less so. As I wrote about a while back, as consoles are tempted - or demanded by their partners or customers - to reach out into the broader Internet to leverage the benefits of other services and platforms, they'll start to lose some degree of control on their platforms. The recent Steam/PS3 headline is a prime example.

And now, FIVE more bonus predictions!

11. HTML5 begets real apps: Real, viable competitors to Office, Visio, Photoshop, etc, etc.

12. Android consolidation. Such a mess right now there has to be some consolidation in device UI and form and application distribution or the app landscape will be bleak.

13. Games market analysts will struggle to segment an amorphous landscape. They used to segment handheld differently than phones, differently than console, retail vs digital, etc. Things like iPad blur all those lines. It'll be hard to make sense of the market.

14. No 'official' Kinect for PC. Some are predicting it. I just don't see it happening. It was so hard to bring Live to the PC, and not particularly successful, that I can't see them overcoming all the calibration/usage issues, nor the high demand for it materializing.

15. Tablets as producer platform: People are framing tablets as 'consumption-only' devices because largely today they are. However, people will innovate on the platform and turn them into production/editing platforms, and we'll see them take off for real in many niches as PC replacements, not compliments.

That's it! Let loose the commentary on this broad-reaching food for thought!

Book Review: We, Robot

A while back, I reviewed Mark Stephen Meadow's book Tea Time with Terrorists. Since that time, I got to spend a couple days hanging out with him in Mexico, and he sent me a copy of his latest work, We, Robot to check out.

Needless to say, they are pretty different books in terms of subject matter. If there's a common thread though, its that when the author sets out to understand something, he goes out and finds people who know, where ever they might be.

We, Robot is a rather unique look at our progress in robotics. The book looks at a number of famous Sci-fi robots, from The Jetson's Rosie to the Terminator T-1000 to Avatar's avatars. He then compares them to progress of different projects in the robotics world, asking how close we've come to the original sci-fi vision, and of what differs, why.

It's a fun tour of some of the field's better poster-bot/children, and the interviews with some of their creators are quite interesting.

The real gold for me though, was in some of the conjecture and philosophizing that Meadows does in considering implications of robotics near future. This is especially true when looking at the borders between hardware and software which he sees little distinction. I'm of the same school of thought, but it's surprising how many people deem them completely different.

For example, when considering the implications of privacy and giving one's personal information up to 'trusted' parties, he asks us to consider whether we'd accept a "Rosie"-like robot from Google, provided for free, if in exchange we understood that it would mill about the house in spare time, learning about our personal habits and behavior and such. Is this really so different than G-mail? Really, it's not, when you think about it.

There are a lot of great nuggets of food for thought along these lines. I found myself dog-earing the corners of a lot of pages with the intent of going back to think about more deeply.

At this year's CES, I saw a surprising number of toys and gadgets blurring the lines between digital and physical worlds. Robots will be one of the conduits between those spaces sooner than we think. This book is a good tour of both the state of the art, as well as a tour of some of the unanswered questions.

We, Robot: Skywalker's Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots, and How Fiction Became Fact

Professional Whuffie anyone?

Yesterday I posted a review of Super Sad True Love Story, the social network sci-fi setting of which includes people real-time ranking one another in a process called "FAC'ing".

Then today Techcrunch posted about CubeDuel. Think of it as the bastard child of LinkedIn and HotOrNot. Social ranking of your professional network based on who would like to work with whom.

Don't tell me you aren't heading there right now...

Oh sure, it's all fun and games right now, but how long before employers are looking and saying "how'd this guy rank among former peers and coworkers?"

They say truth is stranger than fiction, in this case it's just neck and neck.

Book Review: Super Sad True Love Story

Seeing as how it is mid-January, it's probably too early to call my fave book of 2011, but Super Sad True Love Story is certainly going to rank high on the list.

The book is a romantic tragedy, set amid near-future distopian sci-fi which it uses as heavy satire about current-day American decline and materialism. 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" + "Little Brother" + later Adrian Mole volumes, perhaps. It is to Facebook & Amazon what Halting State was to MMOs and Virtual Worlds.

The love story at it's heart is, as the name implies, sad. However, what I really loved about this book was the commentary on social networking & whuffie, materialism, information control and willful ignorance. One of those pictures of the future close enough to be plausible, and thus disturbing and frightening.

Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

Book Review: The Assault on Reason

We started the audiobook version of the 2008 Al Gore book, The Assault on Reason, on the way back from our recent ski trip. I finished it up on the work commute.

At a high level, the book is about the threat to democracy that comes from an ill-informed citizenry, making the point that we are currently under such a threat. The book covers a number of topics at length, including the growing influence of television vs print over the past few decades, misinformation about global warming, and the implications of the fight over net neutrality.

The bulk of the text is spent on a lengthy and detailed skewering of the Bush-Cheney administration and their many transgressions. These Gore goes into at lengthy and with many detailed fact-based accusations.

Though they are no longer in office, many of their policies are still in place and thus the book is still applicable. As well, the book goes into much detail about the delicate balance between our three branches of government. For me as a non-native, this was educational.

While a little dated, the ideas in the book are still very relevant and applicable.

The Assault on Reason

Great overview of the 'Gamification' landscape

Pawned. Gamification and Its Discontents

View more presentations from Sebastian Deterding.

Twitter-abstinence experiment over

A couple years ago, when all the intertubers got all hot and bothered over the next wave of technical hullaballoo, namely Twitter, I decided to try an experiment and sit out one round of technology.

Well, it's been long enough and here I am: @kimpall.

Did I learn anything from the experiment?

• It's not the end of the world to be off the grid, or at least off the latest medium/tech. In fact, plenty of young, tech-savvy, innovative people are not on Twitter or Facebook, and yet they manage to thrive. Imagine that, twittees!
• Twitter, like Facebook, can be a serious timewaster and ADD magnet, if you let it (at least it seems that way)
• On the other hand, it seems a killer app at conferences
• While I don't need to be abreast of every meme to the very minute, it does seem like there's a lack of reliability of the more relevant memes leaping off of Twitter and onto the less ephemeral blogosphere. Some do, some don't.

So, I'm on it, but I will aim to have some goals while using it. I'll try to keep time-wasters to a medium (try...)

Privy among ghosts

photo.JPG, originally uploaded by Kim Pallister.

My Intrapreneurship talk from 2010 IGDA Leadership Forum

2010 in Books

Having sync'd my book reviews from my trip, here's a summary of what I read this year. I hit my goal of 30 books, up from 25 last year (though 8 were audiobooks if you count those differently). I'm hoping my new iPad will help me get up to a more ambitious 36 for 2011 (Half-way done two already).

Taking a cue from Jason, I'm grouping by topic area. Links are to my review posts, which in turn have links to the Amazon pages. One asterisk for recommended books, two for highly recommended. YMMV.

Business

• Starbucked
• Free (*)
• The Big Lie (*)
• Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators (**)
• Secrets of the Moneylab (**)
• The Black Swan
• Intrapreneurship in Action
• The Big Short (**)

Politics/History

• Invention of Air (**)
• Audacity of Hope
• Nickel and Dimed
• Tea Time with Terrorists (**)

Culture

• Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential (*)
• The Art Detective (*)
• Don't Get Too Comfortable

Technology

• Dot Font
• EPub Straight to the Point
• Fundamentals of Typography (**)
• HTML5: designing rich internet apps
• Dive into HTML5 (*)
• Screen Future (*)

Science

• Universe in a nutshell
• Our Days Are Numbered

Fiction

• Makers (**)
• For The Win (*)
• The White Tiger
• Boneshaker

Self Improvement

• Body For Life

Graphic Novels

• Media Meltdown (** - for kids)
• Fables Vol 1

Book Review: Secrets of the Moneylab

This book surprised me and is probably one of my favorites of the year, at least as it is really timely for our industry, as I'll soon explain.

Technology companies generally have laboratories in which they do research & experimentation. Game developers often do so as well. Perhaps not formally in R&D labs (though some of the larger publishers have them), but certainly doing experiments for new rendering techniques, AI models, physics experiments, etc.

For all this though, it's surprising how little science is put into the business side of the business. Things like pricing, to pick one example, are often done using some gut-feel starting point and by following competition.

Kay-Yut Chen, author of Secrets of the Moneylab, runs a lab at Hewlett Packard. He is also an economist. The lab he runs does research on behavioral economics and it's application in the tech industry. The book runs through experiments they did on consumer pricing, marketing, supply chain management, and much more. Also, they look at a number of different experiments from different industries.

Why is this so timely?

Consider the point made by Neal Young of NGMoco at his GDC2010 keynote, where he said that for the first time in the games industry, the business model is in the hands of the game designers. Add to that the fact that digital distribution channels and competing appstores will mean that developers have the opportunity to try many different experiments as they bring their games to market on different platforms (Something Dave Edery at Spry Fox has been doing).

Success on these emerging platforms is going to come from people's ability to put some science into the business side of their business, and this book provides an excellent start to getting your head around that kind of thinking.

Secrets of the Moneylab: How Behavioral Economics Can Improve Your Business

[note: I'm post-dating a couple of these posts as I didn't have a chance to sync them while I was travelling, and I like to track by when I read the book]

Book Review: Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential

After reading Brian Ashcraft's great book on the Japanese arcade gaming scene, I figured I'd like his next book on Japanese schoolgirl culture. It didn't disappoint.

Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential is a pretty deep dive on a number of different aspects of what can only be called a phenomena: The idolization, monetization, and 'fetishization' of the Japanese schoolgirl look and surrounding culture.

Ashcraft and his co-author (also his wife) Shoko Ueda take the reader through the history of the uniforms, idol worship, schoolgirls in films and games, as well as how different aspects of business (fashion and telecom in particular) have changed behavior to target the schoolgirl demographic.

Some of the book (e.g. the history of the uniforms) were more depth than I needed, but other parts were really enlightening. The sections on the evolution of cell phone texting, the fashion industry's capitalization of the schoolgirl market, and schoolgirls in video games were probably the most useful, and therefore recommended, sections for those in the technology and/or gaming industries.

Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool

[note: I'm post-dating a couple of these posts as I didn't have a chance to sync them while I was travelling, and I like to track by when I read the book]

Book Review: Don't Get Too Comfortable

I picked this one up as an audio book for our recent ski-trip, looking for some different stuff that my wife and I would both enjoy. Enjoyed it somewhat, but I'm not putting it at the top of any lists.

It's a set of sarcastic, humorous, "queenish" rant-like essays on a wide variety of subjects, from his experience on one of the last Concorde flights to attending a soft-core porn shoot at a tropical resort. Good for some laughs, but I did feel like sometimes his lashing out at the over-indulgent was itself a bit over-indulgent.

Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems

[note: I'm post-dating a couple of these posts as I didn't have a chance to sync them while I was travelling, and I like to track by when I read the book]

Dara O Briain Live at the Apollo - i love videogames ( 09/12/2010 )

This will be one of those youtube clips everyone in the industry links to.

Recommended iPad apps?

I have it on good authority that Mr Claus may be depositing an iPad under the tree for me on Xmas morn.

When I get it, I have one day to get it set up before taking it on a ski trip for a few days. I'm hoping the blogosphere can save me some trial and error on a number of different app needs. So, chime in to the comments if you can help.

1. Best Feedreader? (Would like it to sync feeds between PC/iPad/iPhone, allow offline viewing, set refresh frequency, etc. I've used RSSBandit and others in the past. Currently using IE8 because I like the Outlook integration, but I'm guessing it's not an option on iPad)
2. Best eReader app? (Would like it to have top-notch typography, support for EPUB and other formats, bonus for PDF support, should be able to keep multiple bookmarks support for annotations and the like)
3. Best document-sync apps? (I'm thinking of apps to let me view and/or edit Word & Powerpoint files off my PC)
4. Best sketching/drawing app? (keeping in mind I'll have a stylus)
5. Best notetaking/sketching/brainstorming app? (e.g. Onenote equivalent)
6. Best GPS app?
7. Best Browser? (Is the stock one sufficient?)
8. Best Wikipedia client? (I use Wikiamo on iPhone - is there something better?)
9. Best magazines/news site apps?
10. Best cookbook-type apps?
11. Best Twitter client/aggregator? (Yes, my opt-out experiment is over and I'll become a Twit in the new year)
12. finally, recommendations on best stylus?

Thanks, y'all!

Good blog on dog-fooding Chrome OS Laptop

My friend and former co-blogger & co-worker Vlad Cole has started a new blog where he's documenting 99 days of moving to an all-cloud model and using a Chrome OS laptop.

Vlad used to blog for Joystick, and we jointly worked on VGVC.net for a year. He's tech savvy, and definitely a guy that walks his talk, so it'll be a good experiment to follow:

99 Days in the Cloud

Hi-end facial mocap in Rockstar's LA Noire

The video below has a nice example of how we're likely to see high end game titles evolve over the next couple years.

With performance more or less tapped out on current gen consoles, which are going to have to live on a few more years, those studios looking to out-gun their competition will increasingly do so by dialing up the spend on the authoring side.

The runtime rendering being done here doesn't look like anything that far beyond what we're seeing in other titles. However, the content authoring - combining a high-end mocap rig with recognizable actors and whats likely to be TONS of dialog - is clearly going to be a huge cost increase.

Red Dead Redemption was rumored to cost north of $100M, and LA Noire looks like it could easily climb north of there.

(And yes, the uncanny valley runs way deep)

Word 2010 Declaration of Independence

This is the first Microsoft ad I've seen in a long time that I've liked. Funny, but totally gets the point across. Bravo.

The boy who cried 'advergame'

So, back in 2006, Microsoft did a deal with Burger King to do 3 BK-branded titles and distribute them with value meals at a nominal fee ($3.99). The fee aside, these were essentially free advertising-subsidized game titles for the console.

The three titles were met with lukewarm acceptance (Sneak King got a 54 on Metacritic, Big Bumpin a 63, Pocket Bike Racers a 54), with a nod of the head to the $3.99 price point.

Then Yaris came out, and was deservedly panned. A 17 on MC, which, well, you have to really try to score that low don't you.

Later, another ad-supported title, Doritos Dash of Destruction, came out and scored a 53, and yes, wasn't a very good game.

Then in the past week, two more Doritos-sponsored games were released on Xbox Live Arcade. "Harms Way", and "Doritos Crash Course". How did they do on meta-critic?

No one has rated either one? Really? Not one critic review? Not one user review? Really?

Is it possible that people have become so soured on sponsored titles that they just assume they are crap?

Here's the thing too. I played Crash Course a while last night... and it's pretty good. Kind of a Trials-HD meets Ninja Warrior using player avatars. Definitely better than a lot of games I've paid $10 for. Proof that the ad-supported model can work on console.

If only people don't assume that they get what they pay for.