LeBron James has made his decision, and he has decided to help form the ultimate basketball trio in Miami with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Clearly, he wasn’t swayed by this hilarious last second plea from Betty White.
Ah, Rob Corddry is a fun actor when he’s pretending ( ) to be drunk, like in Hot Tub Time Machine and What Happens in Vegas. He’ll be his usual over-served self in an unusual circumstance (a bunch of assassins going after each other) in Operation: Endgame.
During the recent E3 Expo in Los Angeles, we had the chance to meet up with some of the top dogs in the games business. We recently brought you some of their insights into game marketing, and today we’re happy to bring you another installment. In Part Two of this feature, we speak with EA Sports President Peter Moore and Bethesda Game Studios’ Executive Producer Todd Howard.
Todd Howard: I think so. Although I don’t have a ton of insight into that… I’m involved in the creative of the marketing. I’m a big believer that that is part of the game. That is your first experience. So when you see a teaser for Fallout . . . I created that in-house. This is your first look at the game; this is part of the experience. The box is part of the experience. The manual is part of the experience. The disc itself, all these things are part of the experience of the game. I think smart creative you need to have. Ayzenberg is great at that stuff. Past that, it becomes scale. How many places are you going to run ads I think most places have a metric: “This is how many copies we are shipping,” and it becomes almost an insurance policy. “If we don’t support this with this amount of money, we’re taking a risk that everybody’s not going to know about it.” So I think most marketing is scaled to what they’re going to ship.
Peter Moore: Yes and no. I think, you know, you build franchises that become part of the culture: Madden, FIFA, Tiger. You could argue, and we always have a little joke, we should just send our core email and say, ” it’s shipped, it’s the cost of an e-mail blast.” At the same time, we actually, with Madden, love the big events. We did Mardi Gras this year in New Orleans; we’re doing a ton of stuff with Madden. I think it’s important for the industry. I get a great thrill, watching ESPN and all my ads come up and, you know, it ends with “EA Sports: it’s in the game,” and I think that’s important, to continue to brand build. Marketers look at their marketing spend as a percentage of the revenue. That’s the way we look at marketing spends and how we get after it becomes the tactics within that.
And at the other end of the spectrum, we just shipped FIFA Superstars on Facebook and haven’t spent a penny, but somehow we have, according to my friends at Playfish, 1.5 million monthly users purely by word of mouth, purely by me sending invites to my friends, and them sending invites to their friends. You know, it’s a whole new paradigm we need to learn to live in: how to market a social network game within a social network. And, you know, it becomes very interesting with different tactics. It’s no good doing that on TV. I’m not even sure it’s good doing it online; you’ve got to do it within the network itself and find innovative ways to do that.
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Stay tuned for Part Three of this feature next week, when [a]listdaily speaks to Sega’s Darren Williams and Ubisoft’s Chris Early about the digital perspective.
YouTube has launched a new feature that will allow the service to compete better with televisions. Called Leanback, it will allow users to more easily watch HD video in full screen and make a playlist based upon videos the user watches.
Just as its name implies, YouTube Leanback is all about letting you sit back, relax and be entertained. Videos tailored to your interests play as soon as you visit the site and they play in full screen and high definition, continuously, said YouTube senior project manager Kuan Yong,. There s no need to click, search, or browse, unless you want to, of course. Watching YouTube becomes as easy as watching TV.
Playlists can be created based upon genre or what your friends on Facebook like. The Leanback beta is already receiving commentary and criticism.
“Whether they can win in the living room is the billion dollar question, said Ben Parr, co-editor of news website Mashable.com. It is just unclear if people want to watch YouTube video after YouTube video versus professionally made shows on the networks.”
“It’s the ultimate goal, after all: users being able to watch Internet video as passively as they do television with YouTube being the only channel just waiting for friend to upload the next home video of their bunny rabbit,” wrote Brian Barrett of Gizmodo.
Additionally, YouTube announced changes to their mobile site, increasing its speed and including features from the desktop version like search query suggestions, playlists and the ability to like or dislike videos. They expect that mobile devices will be more popular to connect to the internet than desktops within five years.
As the world continues to go mobile, we think this is a great improvement for users who want a more consistent YouTube across many devices, no matter where they are, said Andrey Doronichev, a YouTube product manager in a blog post.
Source: Toronto Sun
The Mii avatars have become an iconic part of the Wii experience and even appeared on some of the 3DS demonstrations shown. It brings up the possibility that there will be cross-platform continuity for the Miis on Nintendo platforms.
We need to keep in mind how we evolve the Miis and how we think about compatibility with Miis between different systems, said Shigeru Miyamoto. But that’s something that we’re definitely giving consideration to and want to continue to try to allow people to use their Miis on different Nintendo systems going forward.
When asked about quick rush jobs to the 3DS and other shovelware, Miyamoto added, I think we just have to rely on the integrity of the developers and the products that they’re making. At the same time, we do think that there will be new ideas, particularly what we’re finding is that with some of the lead developers at key publishing partners, people like Mr. Kojima from Konami and Mr. Inafune from Capcom. These are individuals who are themselves very excited about developing for the system and are talking about leading development with their main teams, so I do expect that there’s going to be a lot of new content and new ideas coming out of them.
Source: IGN
Blizzard’s recent announcement of its new Real ID system, which forces users to go by their real names on the official Battle.net forums, has been met with controversy from fans. The Real ID system is currently optional within Blizzard games like World of Warcraft and StarCraft II.
“[We] will be carefully monitoring how people are using the service,” said Blizzard. “Real ID is a new and different concept for Blizzard gamers — and for us as well — and our goal is to create a social gaming service that players want to use.”
Currently, the requirement for Real ID is only planned for the Battle.net community forums. World of Warcraft will begin using Real ID with the Cataclysm expansion, while StarCraft II‘s forum will implement the feature later in July.
“It’s important to note that both enabling Real ID in game and posting on the official Blizzard forums are completely optional,” said the Blizzard rep. “Players can continue to read the forums anonymously regardless of whether they choose to post in them, and their gameplay experiences will not change if they choose not to use the Real ID communication features in game.”
Real ID will have parental controls to prevent children from disseminating their information. Accounts for games must be tied to a CD key and Blizzard says it will enforce use of actual names.
“We have multiple teams here who will be monitoring the forums and looking for inappropriate names,” the rep explained. “When the situation does arise, our community and customer service representatives will investigate and determine if any action is needed. In addition, our Terms of Use agreement requires that players provide us with accurate information, as certain aspects of the customer service we provide (for example, addressing forgotten-password issues) rely on identity verification — if a player uses a fake name, it would ultimately impact our ability to provide him or her with timely service.”
Source: Gamasutra
Pop star Prince, known for his occasional odd moves, is going to be releasing his new album 20TEN free in the U.K. in the Daily Mirror this Saturday. He won’t be releasing the songs on iTunes, has banned YouTube from posting his songs and has even closed down his official website.
“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it, said Prince. “The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”
So there you have it: shut off all the lights, the internet is over because Prince said so.
Source: Daily Mirror
Currently, game console makers have relied on traditional wireless networking for their handheld consoles, but that might be changing. Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo indicates that it is negotiating to add a 3G network connection to next-gen portables.
“Video game makers know that in order for portable game machines to take the next step forward, they need wireless communication,” said NTT DoCoMo President Ryuji Yamada. “We are discussing this with various players.”
3G options would give wireless carriers additional revenue streams and give Sony or Nintendo access to important software and security patches which aren’t dependent on user initiation. Yamada believes that NTT DoCoMo’s 3G network could be accessed using a built in component or use a company router that uses a 3G connection to create a local Wi-Fi network.
Nintendo has already revealed that they want to improve the online capabilities of the 3DS over its predecessors. While Sony hasn’t announced a successor to the PSP, it is expected they will launch a successor that will compete with portable game machines, tablet computers, e-book readers and netbooks, and certainly could benefit from a 3G connection.
Tokai Tokyo Research Center analyst Yusuke Tsunoda says that this indicates that smartphones have put pressure on traditional platform holders. “The distinction between gaming devices and mobile communication devices, like smartphones, are blurring. And it may eventually disappear,” said Tsunoda.
Source: Wall Street Journal
2K Sports has revealed the the official cover art for NBA 2K11. They changed the pattern of previous covers to go with a highly-stylized, three-panel image, reflecting the fact that Michael Jordan will be the spokesperson this year.
“We knew as soon as we signed Jordan that we needed to do something special for the cover,” said Jason Argent, vice president of marketing for 2K Sports. “This could possibly be the most highly anticipated cover art in the history of sports games and we think the image we came up with delivers on every front. I think fans will be pleasantly surprised at how Jordan is actually used in game, as NBA 2K11 will pay homage to ‘His Airness’ in many ways, but the cover art represented our first chance to stop and honor him along the way.”
“Its exciting to see it all come together,” said Michael Jordan. “I am looking forward to seeing the final product, but my kids might have to give me some lessons.”
Mozilla has opened up the beta for Firefox 4. Part of the new additions include a brand new interface, with tabs on top by default and hiding the menubar inside a new Firefox button.
Firefox 4 Beta has crash protection, such as closing a plugin if it crashes rather than the entire browser. Other features include improved HTML5 support, full WebGL support for 3D rendering and support for Google’s WebM video format. Download the beta for yourself at mozilla.com.
