By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 23, 2006
With all the buzz over the new Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3, there's been little mention of one new feature available in both game consoles: Tucked into the interface of each are content-filtering software tools designed to give parents control over whether their children can play violent video games.
Microsoft's Xbox 360, released last year, features the same sort of functionality. Like the PS3, the Xbox 360 is a multimedia device that allows users access to the Web and the ability to watch movies. So the designers of those two devices included software that users can activate to make sure their children cannot watch R-rated movies or chat with strangers online.
For an industry with image problems stemming from violent content, some might find it surprising that Sony and Nintendo aren't doing more to publicize their parental control features. Packed with the box for the new PlayStation 3, for example, is a sheet of paper that explains the video game ratings system to parents -- with ratings like "E" (deemed suitable for "everyone") or "T" (for "teen" audiences and up). But there's no mention of the parental controls, which automatically detect the rating for games and let parents determine if games in a certain category are available to their children.
Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said the parental controls on the PS3 were put in to "future proof" the device for a day when, the company hopes, the PS3 is used widely in people's homes.
"We tried to anticipate everything this system will need for the next 10 years," he said. "Most of the folks buying the system today are the hardcore early adopters who don't have kids in the house and aren't focused on that."
The Xbox 360, by contrast, has been on the market for a year and is now reaching for a more mainstream and family-oriented market. Microsoft has started to promote the Xbox controls in a 20-city bus tour currently underway. In a partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Best Buy, the company has been offering to teach parents how to use the controls and understand the game industry's ratings system.
Some owners of the new consoles, meanwhile, say they weren't aware of the settings.
Stephen Baker, a father of two in Reston, picked up the Wii console on the day it went on sale last month. As a tech analyst for research firm NPD, he's no Luddite, but he said he was surprised to learn that he could adjust the system so that anyone wanting to play a violent game would need to enter a four-digit code.
"As a father, I didn't know, and as an analyst, I didn't know," he said.
He said he doesn't really care about the filtering option because he exercises a different kind of parental control. "If I think a game's not appropriate for them, I'm just not going to buy it," he said. Baker said he doesn't pay much attention to ratings, which are featured on the box of every video game sold at retail -- he mostly just goes with his gut on whether a title is appropriate for his 12- and 13-year-old sons.
This isn't the first time electronics firms have incorporated content-filtering features, and it isn't the first time such features have gone largely unnoticed.
Some techies compare the new controls to the V-chip system built into TV sets. Since 2000, all televisions with screens larger than 13 inches sold in the United States have come with this device, designed to let parents filter programming.
Analyst Gary Arlen of the Bethesda-based research firm Arlen Communications, said the V-chip is rarely used. As for whether the parental-control settings built into game consoles have a better chance of catching on, he said it could go either way.
On the one hand, he said, today's parents are more tech-savvy and likely to explore a gadget's extra features. "This generation of parents understands technology better than the parents who were around when the V-chip hit the market," he said.
On the other hand, Arlen wondered if today's generation of young parents -- who grew up playing video games -- will be less likely to worry about whether games are suitable entertainment for children and may be less likely to adjust the settings as a result.
Microsoft spokesman Aaron Greenberg said the company's studies show that slightly more than 10 percent of owners of the Xbox 360 are using the controls.
Game industry analysts say Microsoft has been the most aggressive console maker in trying to spread the word about its content-filtering tools. And that's logical, they say -- with the Xbox 360 on the market for over a year, Microsoft is now reaching out to a mainstream, family-oriented market to increase sales. The PlayStation 3, which has still sold only a few hundred thousand units so far, is still owned mainly by hardcore gamers -- typically, young males.
"We have done everything we can to make these tools simple to use," said Greenberg, "but we know that, at the end of the day, parents will have to be parents."
Nintendo of America said it did not know how many users have tried out the parental controls on the Wii, and Beth Llewelyn, director of corporate communications, said she was not sure that the company would be able to track their use. "We felt it was something important to do, because content has gotten much more varied on the gaming front," she said.
The system isn't foolproof. For example, the Wii is "backward compatible," meaning it can run games designed for its predecessor, the GameCube. But that console didn't have a parental-control system, so those discs don't contain ratings information. So it's possible to play a violent, M-rated GameCube game on a Wii console that has been set to prohibit the playing of games with that rating.
The system has another little hole in that anybody can set up its security code for the first time. Even a tech-savvy kid could do it, for example.
At one forum at Nintendo's Web site, where users converge to talk about the new system, one Wii owner asked last month if anybody had tried setting up a parental-control security code. Among the dozens who replied, none had. But one young correspondent said that he (or she) might use the feature preemptively.
"Now that I think of it, I might go set the code . . . so that my parents can't randomly decide to set them one day. Even though I doubt they will or know of [the codes'] existence."
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