Steve Nash once again proved that he has a sense of humor by appearing with Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast characters on a new promotional site for Vitamin Water. On the site, there’s a personality quiz, a timeline comparing Nash and Space Ghost and an interview conducted by the intergalactic talk show host and the two-time NBA MVP.
Source: Adult Swim
In one of the rare important announcements prior to an pre-E3 press conference, Microsoft unveiled the official title of Project Natal during a Cirque du Soleil performance. The “controller-free gaming device” will officially be called Kinect.
Welcome to thd new Kinect, same as the old Natal.
Microsoft purposefully withheld other specific information about Kinect. Microsoft promises that details like the release date, games and more will be unveiled at their press conference on Monday.
One of the first major tests for 3D on televisions will be the World Cup, which ESPN will broadcast on a new 3D sports channel. Procter & Gamble , Sony Corp. and Disney’s Pixar have all ponied up for 3D ad spots for the channel, but it has cost somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million for a 30-second TV ad.
Because it is such an emerging medium ESPN didn’t sell ad time specifically for the 3D channel, offering it as part of other World Cup packages. They will not, however, broadcast 2D ads on the 3D channel because they don’t want to disrupt the viewing experience.
The new ESPN 3D won’t run 24-hours a day, but is planning on airing 100 events over the next 18 months like the X-Games and the Home Run Derby. Still, many marketers aren’t sold on 3D for advertising yet.
“There will be a high hurdle to get 3D commercials through in a period of time when advertisers are increasingly scrutinizing [the production side of the ad business,]” says Brad DeHart, practice leader of marketing services at ICG Commerce.
Nevertheless, ESPN is forward looking about the matter. “I think that advertisers are always looking for ways to stand out and to build their brands and if they can figure out that these 3D ads enhance a brand or sell a product they will do it,” says Ed Erhardt, ESPN’s president of customer marketing and sales.
Erhardt points out that several advertisers were also reluctant to create HD ads several years ago, and now 65 percent of ads on ESPN are filmed in HD.
Source: Wall Street Journal
DFC Intelligence and Live Gamer today released projections for Free-to-Play/MMOG Lite gaming. The survey, called “Consumer Trends in Virtual Goods and Downloadable Gaming in North America and Europe,” suggests the F2P gaming could be a $7 billion industry worldwide by 2015, double its total in 2009.
“Another interesting result of this study is that the idea that F2P games have a ‘microtransaction’ business model is actually quite misleading,” says DFC analyst David Cole. “Historically, the average purchase is over $10 and some games offer an optional subscription. Going forward, it is obvious that understanding consumer purchase patterns and preferences will be a necessity for continued success. Advanced analytics provided by platforms such as Live Gamer’s are a valuable resource for tracking these patterns.”
F2P titles are expected to grow in Europe and North America from $800 million in 2009 to over $3 billion by 2015. Interestingly, Korean F2P games with client-side downloads have over 10 percent of users paying in some way, while social network games on Facebook have less than one percent of players that pay.
“The free-to-play model is increasing in popularity at an astounding rate, both in the US and worldwide,” said Andrew Schneider, co-founder and president of Live Gamer. “We’re seeing average revenue per paying user top $28 per month across the 145 titles that Live Gamer powers around the world. With engaging games and a solid monetization strategy in place developers and publishers can see great success leveraging item-based business models.”
Source: dfcint.com
David Hayter has been a staple of the Metal Gear Solid franchise since the beginning as the voice of Solid Snake. While he starred in the recently released Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the veteran voice actor and screenwriter hasn’t been contacted about Metal Gear Solid: Rising.
“I don t know if I m doing Metal Gear Solid: Rising,” said Hayter. “Nobody s contacted me about it, so I have no idea.”
Metal Gear Solid: Rising will focus on Raiden instead of Solid Snake, so it could simply be that the super-spy has no role in the game. Still, it’s not too late for the inclusion of Solid Snake or David Hayter.
“They usually call me once the Japanese game is done and they re starting to get into the English translation, explained Hayter. So we re not completely done, but it’s on its way by the time they get in touch with me.”
Source: MTV.com
Google recently conducted an experiment on their homepage, where the plain white background was replaced with a variety of colorful displays. While the experiment was designed to go on for 24 hours, it ultimately ended up being pulled early.
“Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users choosing as the background for the Google homepage,” writes Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience. “Today, we ran a special ‘doodle’ that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today s series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.”
For a company built so meticulously on research and consumer experience, this change was not subtle and highly unexpected. “They’ve never done anything like this,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. “That was the most dramatic change to the Google home page ever, for that many people, without any warning.”
The lack of an active opt-out was surprising and “remove google background” was one of Google’s top 10 searches during the experiment. “I have no doubt they found out fairly quickly that they weren’t pleasing a significant number of their users,” added Sullivan.
Source: San Jose Mercury News
Unrelated to the recent movie trailer, Warner Bros. has revealed the new Mortal Kombat. This new trailer clearly demonstrates that the series is returning to its roots with 2D gameplay and bloody fatalities.
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Valve has had some of the most clever trailers over the past few years with its Meet the Team spots. In that tradition, they launched a brief trailer today celebrating the launch of Steam on OS X.
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Because of the nature of viral videos, sometimes genuine looking things will pop up and not be real. Such was the case with a recent PS4 viral video from SCELabs, which made clever use of recognizable symbols and sound effects to create the illusion of a real production.
The illusion, however, was shattered by Sony hardware PR representative Al de Leon. He simply said, “I can confirm that this video is not from SCE [Sony Computer Entertainment].”
Steven Jobs recently claimed that the camera on the iPhone 4 has more sensitivity than the human eye and called it a “retina display.” However, Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technolgies, disputes the claim.
“The resolution of the retina is in angular measure – it’s 50 Cycles Per Degree,” wrote Soneira. “A cycle is a line pair, which is two pixels, so the angular resolution of the eye is 0.6 arc minutes per pixel. So, if you hold an iPhone at the typical 12 inches from your eyes that works out to 477 pixels per inch. At 8 inches it’s 716 ppi. You have to hold it out 18 inches before it falls to 318 ppi. So the iPhone has significantly lower resolution than the retina. It actually needs a resolution significantly higher than the retina in order to deliver an image that appears perfect to the retina.”
Soneira said the resolution should compare to that of the Motorola Droid. “It’s a great display, most likely the best mobile display in production (and I can’t wait to test it) but this is another example of spec exaggeration,” Soneira concluded.
Source: PC Magazine
