NBA 2K12 Legends Revealed

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2K Sports has announced that NBA 2K12 will have 15 legendary players including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Scottie Pippen, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, John Stockton, Isiah Thomas and Jerry West. Also, those that pre-order the game for PS3 and Xbox 360 will guarantee that they will receive a downloadable version of the 1990-91 Golden State Warriors and the 2001-02 Sacramento Kings.

“Fans across the country were ecstatic to see Jordan, Bird, and Magic on the cover of NBA 2K12, and have speculated for weeks about who would fill out the rest of the ‘NBA’s Greatest’ roster,” said Jason Argent, vice president of marketing for 2K Sports. “These 15 legendary athletes will allow sports fanatics to create the NBA’s most storied matchups – and lock in bragging rights for their favorite teams in NBA 2K12.”

NBA 2K12 will release October 4, 2011, for PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP and PC.

Microsoft Talks Exclusives As ‘Better On Xbox’

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Microsoft has closed its internal FASA, Aces and Ensemble Studios and let Bungie emancipate itself. Still, Microsoft Europe interactive entertainment VP Chris Lewis asserts that exclusive content is important, and a differentiator for the company.

“[Exclusives] are important,” he said. “DLC windows of exclusivity are critical for us for differentiation… Exclusive IP is critical. You’ll see more of that over time. You’ll also see us, though, committed to working with people like EA and Activision on their cross-platform consoles to make sure they play better, and they integrate better across PC, phone and the console in a way other people’s just simply can’t.”

“We’re also pretty confident the cross-platform experience is better on Xbox,” he added. “We enjoy great success with Call of Duty. Live is the oxygen that runs through our business. The experience users have through Xbox Live is a fundamental differentiator for us versus other platforms. FIFA is another one. Certainly here in Europe football is a religion. Our ongoing commitment to experiencing better and playing better on Xbox is partly a function of what we do with Xbox Live.”

Source: Eurogamer

The World Is Saved Music Video

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IGN’s Podcast Beyond community has put together at little music video dedicated to the pursuit of the end of a game. It’s a great reflection of a core gamer’s mindset when it comes to how it feels to be victorious.

 

Suit Up. Power Up. Team Up.

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On the official Facebook page for Disney Universe, a new app called “Character Locker”  {link no longer active}  has been released that lets fans explore through how they can mix it up in the game. Fans can browse through different character suits and download the corresponding trading card. Each month, a new costume will be released and fans can vote for their favorite. Currently Stitch is in a hefty lead with Mike Wazowski trailing close behind. A brief five question personality test asks fans to reveal more of themselves in order to find out who they might be in the Disney Universe and post their favorite costume to their wall. On the “Interactive”   {link no longer active}  app, fans can watch news videos and browse through photos in an online gallery and reveal more of the Disney Universe for themselves.

Ford Looks To Twitter To Market To Millennials

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Millennials can be a hard demographic to reach for car manufacturers. Compared to previous generations, this group of 16-32 year-olds are getting their licenses later and purchasing their first cars later still.

Twitter, however, is a vital way to reach millennials, since that generation comprises 55 percent of the people that use the micro-blogging service. Because of this, Ford has looked to have a strong presence on Twitter since July 2008.

“This group of consumers is an incredible market opportunity, but the way that millennials interact with brands is totally different from earlier generations,” said Sheryl Connelly, global consumer trends and futuring manager at Ford. “Understanding their priorities helps us market to them, so that we’re giving a message that is relevant to them.”

Ford knows that the old messaging about status attached to a car will not work for millennials. Priorities are instead turned to customization with choices of colors and patterns inside and out along with the ability to see traffic and weather instantly in their car.

Gamification is also seen as important for a generation of people who were raised by video games. Some Ford cars have a smart gauge with a visual display of leaves and flowers that either grow or shrink depending on how optimally the driver is using the car, with the ability to “play” against other drivers.

Having personalized access to a brand is also seen as key, with consumer relations needed on social media. It’s also important to make your content as genuine as possible; this generation was raised around advertising, so you should make what you put out there as authentic as possible.

Source: adage.com

Facebook Forbids Google+ Cross-Promotion From Games

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Facebook recently updated its Platform Policies forbidding cross-promotion from within Canvas apps on competing social networks. Some developers were worried that it would forbid social game developers cross-promoting their own iOS and Android apps or off-platform versions of their games, but that is apparently not the case.

“[We] don’t believe it’s appropriate to use our site to promote a competitive service whether through ads, platform or any other channel we make available to third-parties on Facebook.com,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “We’ve had this policy in place for our advertising platform for some time, and the recent update extended this to Canvas applications on Facebook.”

This update rather seems to target Google+ and ensuring apps aren’t promoting the platform on Facebook. It’s an important distinction, since Facebook’s social games ecosystem relies on cross-promotion both for cross-platform games and for each others’ games on Facebook.

Google Integrates AdMob/DoubleClick

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Google looks to be finally pulling their mobile advertising strategy together. The company recently announced that it has completed its first integrated campaign between AdMob and its DoubleClick ad server.

What this means is that advertisers will be able to better combine their desktop and mobile ad campaigns. Google believes that this will give better metrics to mobile campaigns and make them more efficient.

“It’s really a stepping stone to that place where you can say, ‘I want to reach this set of users, and I don’t want to have to think about whether they’re on a mobile phone,'” said Google product manager Clay Bavor, who added that Google sees this “seamless cross-platform [approach as] the future.”

The pilot campaign featured AdMob running rich media ads for Intel for a 1 million impressions in June. Google reports that 19.5 percent of users who saw the ad engaged with it and it was displayed for an average of more than 15 seconds.

Director of digital analytics at Intel’s agency Amit Prakash said that making DoubleClick into a source for both PC and mobile is attractive and that it’s appealing that they have such global reach. “With our global role, it makes sense to work with them a lot,” said Prakash. “They were able to start a campaign in seven countries at once, which is pretty impressive.”

Source: AdWeek