[a]list daily gathers organizers for a retrospective on Ayzenberg’s [a]list summit: Consumer Courtship events in 2012, which looked at how entertainment marketers woo customers.
Part 3 recaps [a]list summit Seattle in October, looking back at Jordan Weisman’s “Developer Dog and Marketing Cat” keynote presentation and a panel with Machinima, Microsoft and 343 Industries discussing the hit web series Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.
Star Trek Into Darkness is the sequel to the reboot movie Star Trek that came out over three years ago. British actor Benedict Cumberbatch provides the voice over and will be the film’s primary antagonist.
 
Namco Bandai provided this studio tour at Level-5, featuring prominently Akihiro Hino (CEO of Level-5) and Ken Motomura (Game Director). The video covers things like complexity of motion capturing for a cartoon-themed video game, and the difficulties of localizing Ni no Kuni, which released in Japan late in 2011.
To help celebrate the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy, Square-Enix recently held a contest to find the greatest Final Fantasy Super Fan. To be eligible, fans had to create a 60 second video showcasing how much of a Superfan they are. The content of the video was up to each fan but it could have included their Final Fantasy collection, outfits inspired by a Final Fantasy event they may have organized and attended or how they may have encouraged others to embody Final Fantasy.
Voting is still open, so vote as many times as you’d like for your favorite fan! The winner will be announced on December 10th who will have their name included in the closing credits for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and receive two tickets to THE CELEBRATION FINAL FANTASY 25th Anniversary concert January 12th, in Paris, France!
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If you’ve been to YouTube in the past 24 hours you probably noticed it looks different. The site has launched its second redesign in as many years. According to the site’s blog, the new design is meant to help “find the channels you love and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.”
YouTube has always been good at suggesting content based on videos watched. The new look adds a mechanism to keep promoting channel subscriptions. That’s likely related to the $100 million fund the site and its parent company Google created to help creators develop premium content. YouTube recently reaffirmed their commitment to that fund, renewing many of the shows it helped launch earlier this year.
The new look and functions translate to other platforms as well including mobile, PlayStation 3 and Google TV. Overall it’s a much cleaner setup that makes YouTube’s recommendations “both videos and channels” what visitors primarily see on their home page. A recommended playlist also now stays on the screen even while watching a video. Yet although the feature is meant to encourage browsing with a video playing, it could use an improvement. The playlist doesn’t scroll independently, which means scrolling below the fold moves the video out of view.
Separately, YouTube announced a partnership with Virgin America that brings a selection of its programs to in-flight entertainment for the first time. Starting in mid-December, passengers on Virgin airline flights in the U.S. and Mexico will be able to watch content from YouTube channels H+ The Digital Series, WIGS’ Blue, Geek & Sundry’s Written By a Kid, Crash Course and Barely Political’s The Key of Awesome.
G4’s X-Play has named Marvel: Avengers Alliance the Best Social Game for the Year. The game beat out The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Draw Something, SongPop and The Grinns Tales.
The hit social game has also been nominated for the VGA’s “Best Social Game of 2012.” That award ceremony will take place Friday at 9:00 p.m. ET on Spike TV.
Source: Marvel.com
Newzoo reported that there is expected to be a 3 percent increase in consumer spending on games in Western Europe compared to 2011, higher if markets such as Russia and Poland are included, compared to 1 percent in the U.S. Growth in consumer spending in Europe and the U.S. is expected to pick up in 2013. An early indication of that trend is how the number of paying gamers has grown 17 percent in Western Europe and 36 percent in the U.S. over the last year.
“In brief, digital distributed content, online, smartphone and tablet games make up for the decline of boxed retail sales,” writes Peter Warman, CEO Newzoo. “Since the uptake of tablets and smartphones as gaming devices, consumers now have four typical screens to access their entertainment. Consumers are spreading their budget across these screens putting pressure on individual game revenues and making it a necessity for game companies to offer games across all screens. The PC still grosses most time and money, but already 22 percent of American and 21 percent of European gamers are using all four screens.”
The share of paying gamers has risen to 59 percent in Western Europe, 55 percent in the U.S. and while social network gaming market is down 7 percent in the U.S. there is still growth in Europe, particularly Germany. Germany also has the highest growth in money spent on online “casual” game portals while Spain is the fastest growing MMO market in Western Europe. The U.K. is the best in Europe for mobile game spending, in absolute figures and in growth.
Meanwhile, traditional game spending is not so rosy with console game spending flat in most countries, though Spain and Italy show double digit growth. PC Boxed sales are down in every country, most noticeably in Italy, Spain, France and Germany and PC Download games spending is down in most countries except Germany and Italy.
Source: Newzoo.com
Flurry Analytics indicates that mobile app usage is now more popular than web browsing. They estimate that Americans now spend 127 minutes per day with mobile apps and only 70 minutes using a web browser.
“As smartphone and tablet penetration continue to rise, the next step for mobile apps is to challenge television as the primary channel for media consumption. What seemed impossible just a couple of years ago, doesn’t seem too far fetched today, as more and more content becomes available via mobile apps,” writes Felix Richter, media relations manager for Flurry Analytics. “The pace at which mobile apps have changed our media consumption habits is truly breathtaking, especially considering the fact that the concept is only four years old. The app concept has already started spreading to the living room, where apps are starting to change the way we interact with video game consoles and television sets as well.”
“For the moment, it seems safe to say that apps are the medium of the hour and quite possibly the medium of the future,” concluded Richter.
Electronic Arts has announced new pre-order bonuses for Dead Space 3. GamesStop users will get the EG-900 SMG, while those who purchase from Amazon will get the Tesla Enervator.
The EG-900 SMG, is describe as a EarthGov-issued sub machinegun “built for urban warfare” being both compact and deadly with an internal hyper-accelerator for maximum damage. Meanwhile, the Tesla Enervator is a Sovereign Colonies device designed for electrocution and molecular destabilization in the target.
Those that pre-order the game will also receive the Limited Edition version of the game with the First Contact Bundle and the Witness the Truth Bundle.
The NPD is reporting that games industry sales dropped 11 percent to $2.55 billion in November year over year. Software, hardware and accessory sales all fell across the board compared to November 2011.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II was the best selling title for November at 7.5 million units sold. Halo 4 sold an impressive 3.2 million units, while Assassin’s Creed III saw 2.9 million in sales and Need for Speed: Most Wanted sold roughly a half million.
Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360 managed a total of 1.26 million in sales for November after selling 750,000 during Black Friday, marking the 23rd consecutive month that Xbox 360 is the top selling console in the U.S. Total retail spend on the Xbox 360 platform in November (hardware, software and accessories) reached $1.2 billion, also tops among consoles in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Nintendo sold over 1.75 million total hardware units in November, led by the 3DS with 540,000, followed by the Wii U at 425,000. The Wii sold 420,000 units and the Nintendo DS sold more 370,000 units, bringing lifetime sales up to 40 million units and 53 million units.
New Super Mario Bros U for the Wii U sold more than 243,000 units and saw a console attach rate of nearly 60 percent. Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS reached 2 million units in lifetime sales, becoming the second game for that system to hit that milestone in the U.S.
