Today’s video of the day focuses on Sony’s EyePet, an alternate-reality game hitting shelves later this year. Developed by Sony’s London Studio, the game takes advantage of the PlayStation Eye camera to insert a virtual pet in your real-world home.
We didn’t think they’d pull it off, but prepare to see the future of gaming.
{video link no longer active}
Today’s AFK comes from the always-interesting The Autumn Society of Philadelphia and showcases a nostalgic scene from the NES light gun game Duck Hunt.
We would hang this in our dining room. For serious.
From Joystiq:
The gaming community really throws the word “limited” around with little thought of its meaning. Walk down the Xbox 360 aisle of any GameStop — there’s more Halo 3 Limited Collector’s Editions than there are stars in the sky. However, it sounds like Infinity Ward’s upcoming blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will have a limited edition worthy of the adjective — no additional copies of the Prestige Edition of the game will be made following the title’s release.
Activision is so serious about keeping this edition to a limited run, it is denying requests from retailers to create more.
“We’ve already been asked by retailers to up the production numbers due to demand, which we immediately denied,” Community Manager Robert Bowling told IGN in an interview].
Nice to see a retailer stick to its guns and allow an extremely marketable special edition to stay special (much to the chagrin of ATVI shareholders).
Interested in the games most people are playing on Nintendo Wii? We’re not talking sales data or Metacritic rankings, but actual numbers tied to consumers playing games in the month of July.
Kodak {link no longer active} rounds them up:
1) Super Smash Bros Brawl
2) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
3) Animal Crossing: City Folk
4) Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
5) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Let’s see how high Wii Sports Resort places in a few weeks after selling over 500K in North America in the first week alone.
From Kotaku: {link no longer active}
That theme song wasn’t written for the game. Dubbed “Get It Together,” it’s a instrumental pop tune by British band The Go! Team, but it has become linked with the game […]
The undeniable connection “Get It Together” has to LBP hasn’t stopped Microsoft from using the tune in this recent ad.
The video for your viewing pleasure:
Catchy tune, huh So why the hell did Sony just let it get licensed by their biggest competitor in the hardcore space, an audience that is very familiar with the tune in the first place? Just odd.
Google last year announced a contest to create a creative video that focuses on the logo for Google Chrome, their Web browser. The problem Google faced was trying to penetrate a market dominated by Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox, and their Google Chrome branding would be key to making it a three-man race.
Here is the original contest video:
Now the results are in and you can see what Google Chrome users have done by clicking over to YouTube {link no longer active}.
Is the strategy working, and is it something that can be applied to some of the lesser known game IPs that are trying to become breakthrough hits For example, would a game like Mirror’s Edge (critically solid, but a sales bust) have benefited from a contest that asked users to contribute to the Mirror’s Edge story/brand/main characterGoogle Chrome has a browser marketshare of 2.6 percent, up from 1.7 percent in the first six months of this year.
From Direct Marketing Observations:
Wanna know something great about social media? If you’re a dick, eventually people will know it. Why? Because of the transparent nature of the platforms and its associated tools. You see, if you hang yourself out there far enough, your personality starts to show. Take Twitter for example. If you Tweet long enough, patterns start to form. Just like in grade school, high school and college and at your work. You start to see the personalities of the people that you hang with every day.
We get it, social media can allow conversations to flow fast and furious, and some of us can lose our cool, especially in the volatile video game industry with its fanatics and advocates.
Just remember, everyone’s watching, so handle yourself with some composure and respect, and the audience will realize you’re not just trolling social media, looking to sell your wares.
Build up your reputation through social media and don’t misstep too often, and you ll find yourself ahead of the pack.
As important as budget is the way you spend it, we all know that. It doesn t pay to be too thrifty until you have a strategy that maximizes every dollar spent, and Budgets Are Sexy {link no longer active} (are they ) has some analysis on the matter.
The boil it down to a few bulletpoints:
– Use Twitter Search to see trends in user conversations about a product
– Shop Social Communities (they recommend Buxr) to see what people are actually buying
– See What Your Facebook Friends Say, using Facebook apps like What I Want to see what that targeted audience is looking for
– Use Product Review Aggregators, again to see the feeling a general audience has about released products
Social media gives you a chance to really analyze the public s perception of a released or upcoming product, and you should give these tools a chance to bring you more insight.
[more at Budgets Are Sexy] {link no longer active}
Popular microblogging platform Twitter was down for several hours yesterday due to a heavy DDoS attack from as-of-yet unknown sources. Since that affects significant parts of our marketing plans (and daily communication with friends, customers, etc.), Mashable took the time to explain what DDoS means:
The goal of any Denial of Service is to take out a specific online resource and make it unavailable to its users. Targets are typically hugely popular destinations with a lot to lose, and with Twitter’s explosive growth comes its emergence as a juicy target for hackers and miscellaneous enemies or pranksters.
DDoS attacks often involve sending a flood of external communication requests to the site that at first glance may appear just like legitimate traffic. The intent is to overwhelm the service s resources to such a degree that it can’t respond to real requests for real users, effectively rendering the site unreachable or so slow to respond as to be impossible to use for some period of time.
DDoS attacks have happened for years now, targeting sites small and large, including Yahoo!, Amazon and more. Facebook was also reporting a slowdown in its service, though a connection to the Twitter attacks wasn’t confirmed.
So if you were wondering why your Twitter feeds weren’t showing up, now you have some more knowledge to give your audience.
The UK-based Barclaycard recently launched an iPhone app called Waterslide Extreme, and since it s launch last month it has been downloaded 4 million times.
The free app has the distinction of being the most popular branded app in the entire iTunes library in 57 countries.
How did this happen Ad Age {link no longer active} lends some insight:
The game is based on a popular TV spot by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London, in which an office worker strips down to his Speedo and gets on a water slide for a high-octane commute home. On the way, he uses his Barclaycard at various points to pay for groceries or train tickets.
In the iPhone game, players negotiate their way down the twists and turns of a massive urban water slide, picking up as many points as they can along the way. Players can ride the slide from a first-person or third-person perspective as either a male or a female character. The app is subtly branded with the Barclaycard logo.
Quick lessons: keep the branding subtle, make the game fun and free, and try to tie it into a larger campaign so it feeds off each other. Simple enough, right Right…
