Burger King Wants People To Get Whopper Lust

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Burger King has launched a new channel that is supporting their new campaign called Whopper Lust. It is channel 111 on DirecTV which is simply a burger with some CG flames without commentary or music, with button prompts appearing at certain points to prove you’re still watching.

Those that stare at the image of the burger for five minutes will get a free Whopper, with more free stuff at the 15 or 30 minute mark. So far, it’s been a success, with 300,000 minutes of viewing and roughly 800,000 minutes expected to be watched by the time the campaign ends on July 1.

Source: youtube.com/user/WhopperLust

Electronic Arts Loves Free-To-Play

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Electronic Arts is looking into emerging gaming fields like free-to-play and mobile as much as they are AAA blockbuster titles. According to EA Games label head Frank Gibeau, F2P games can be just as profitable as any major retail release.

“We’re aggressively investing in things that are very low cost like free-to-play. The free-to-play group inside of EA Games is growing extremely fast – we’ve got 17 million users,” said Gibeau. “Frankly when they get to scale, have huge audiences, are very profitable, they’re not cannibalizing the main games and they actually reach markets that we’re not currently serving. With Need for Speed World, Russia and Brazil are number one and two – the Ukraine is in there too. I can’t sell packaged goods in those territories.

“But I’m reaching an audience with Need for Speed content,” added Gibeau, “noting there are five million registered users of Need For Speed World. It’s an engine that’s not as advanced as Frostbite 2 but it’s certainly got great production values and great game designs, and it’s free-to-play with micro-transactions. It’s a very exciting time from our perspective because it’s not all about consoles. It’s about smartphones, tablets, free-to-play, browser, social.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Angry Birds Dev Pics Up Marvel Movie Veteran

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Only a few weeks after purchasing animation studio Kombo, Rovio announced that they have hired former Marvel Studios executive vice president David Maisel as a special adviser. Maisel helped launch Marvel Studios which helped lead the way for the company’s purchase by Disney and will be executive producer on all future Angry Birds films.

“I m very honored and excited to join Rovio, and my goal is to help unleash its great potential,” said Maisel. “Rovio has already had amazing success and established a great brand with Angry Birds. The business model, intellectual properties, and the franchise potential of Angry Birds give Rovio the most exciting prospects I have seen in the entertainment business since Marvel in 2003.”

Digital Gamers Purchase More Games, Says NPD

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According to the NPD, those that play digital games acquire an average of 5.9 new games every three months compared to just 5.4 amongst core gamers, while playing barely less time (16 hours a week compared to 18 hours a week). They estimate that over a third of all game content is acquired digitally.

“The name of the game in 2011 seems to be choice. Gamers are increasingly branching out to methods of play other than those that the industry has traditionally expected them to use,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “Fueled by the growth of smartphones and new tablet devices, mobile gaming continues to accelerate, and what a game is and what it means to be a gamer is evolving, reflecting the rapid nature of change within the industry.”

Fable III: Molyneux Says Game Wasn’t Good Enough

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Fable III received the most mixed critical reception in the history of the RPG franchise, having a Metacritic rating of around 80 percent. While that’s not exactly a terrible score, Lionhead Studios head thinks they should have done better.

“I’m pretty ashamed of that, to be honest, and I take that on my own shoulders, not the team’s shoulders, said Molyneux. “When you have something like that, which you can feel as a kick in the teeth, you have to pick yourself up and fight even harder. I still think it was a good game.  I just don’t think it was a great game that took us to 5 million units. It didn’t end up being the game that I dreamed it would be, because I thought the mechanic of the ruling section were really good ideas. I thought they were good ideas, but we just didn’t have time to exploit those ideas fully.”

“I look at Fable III and it’s hard to be completely honest without offending people; but I know, when I read in the middle of a review that said the quality just wasn’t good enough, I actually agree with those reviews,” he added.

Source: Gamasutra

Norton And Captain America Team Up To Battle Cyberevil

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Norton 2011 has teamed up with Captain America on Facebook and launched an app that lets fans go behind the scenes of the upcoming Marvel film. A short video Behind the Shield plays taking a look at what it means to be a super powered human. Within the app, fans can play the cyberevil challenge and win a trip to a Marvel movie premiere or an actual shield used in the filming of Captain America: First Avenger. Weekly prizes like smart phones, movie passes, a Captain America mask, Marvel digital comics and redemption codes for items at Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins will also be given away. To win, fans must knock out the cyberevil word in a mini-game experience starting with 5 shields and 60 seconds to knock out the right letters as they glow red. As the game starts, fans are greeted with the word which relates to cyberevil and a definition and then can start blasting away! Each time the user plays, they get a chance to enter to win. Also within the app, an exclusive Captain America comic featuring an all-new story written by Stan Lee can be read online or is available for to pick up and read in 3D at a participating retailer (Best Buy, Fry’s, Office Depot, OfficeMax, etc.).

Microsoft Talks Broadening The Xbox 360 Brand

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Xbox 360 has been expanded beyond mere gaming by Microsoft’s own admission, pointing to Netflix, Hulu and ESPN support as it being an entertainment brand. Xbox COO and CFO Dennis Durkin is enthused that it has expanded beyond hardcore shooter fans.

“The last 12 months have been really important for us as a brand. We do a lot of consumer testing and 12 months ago, I think, certainly, everyone would have said that the Xbox brand really is a male core gaming kind of brand,” said Durkin. “And we did a lot of testing to see, ‘Can we stretch our brand Will consumers allow us to extend our brand from that position ‘ And our testing really told us that we could, assuming you create unique experiences and provide content for broader audiences than just that core audience.

With Kinect, which in and of itself has communicated a certain brand promise to consumers about intuitive game play, about ease of use, and about sort of family friendly, if you will, our brand over the last 12 months has really expanded and I think it s in a much broader place demographically than it s ever been before, he added.

Source: IndustryGamers  {link no longer active}