Console Market Set To Rise In 2013-14: IDC

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International Data Corporation (IDC) published their Worldwide Video Game and Entertainment Console Hardware and Packaged Software 2012-2016 Forecast. The report states that they don’t believe that the console cycle is failing, that Wii U will reach 50 million by year-end 2016 and that digital sales will eat retail sales to the tune of 3 percent annually through 2016.

“The console ecosystem is in a state of flux since these platforms need to support an ever-growing array of non-gaming features and services at the same time that game distribution and monetization is moving in a digital direction,” said Lewis Ward, research manager of IDC’s Gaming service. “At the same time, it doesn’t appear that alternative platforms – set-top boxes from cable companies, Web-connected smart TVs, and so on – are positioned to materially disrupt the trajectory of the ‘big 3’ console OEMs in 2013 or 2014. Discs will remain the console game revenue mainstay for years to come.”

“2011 and 2012 were tough for many console game disc developers and publishers,” added Ward. “With the advent of eighth-generation consoles, starting with the Wii U, historical norms strongly imply that game disc revenue will stop bleeding in 2013 and rise substantively in 2014.”

Source: IDC.com

Dragon Age Writer Talks ‘Increasingly Toxic’ BioWare Social Network

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Fan communities are an important thing to nurture, but the online community for BioWare has been increasingly hostile towards the developer and games it claims to love. David Gaider, the lead writer for Bioware’s Dragon Age, acknowledges that the forums have become toxic and therefore are a harder place to parse out any real feedback as a result.

“Spending too much time there starts to make me feel negative- not just about the games we make, but about myself and life in general. That’s not a good feeling to have,” Gaider said. “I’m sure there are folks there who would bristle at that comment, suggesting that all negative feedback is justifiable and that ignoring it is the equivalent of us sticking our heads in the sand. How will we ever improve unless we listen to their scolding and take our lumps like good little developers That is, of course, ignoring the idea that we haven’t already digested a mountain of feedback- both positive and negative- and there’s really only so much of it you can take. Eventually you make decisions (informed by that feedback, though only in part- it can only ever be in part) and move on.”

“Eventually you get the feeling like you’re at one of those parties where all anyone is doing is bitching. It doesn’t matter what they’re bitching about so much as, sooner or later, that’s all you can really hear,” he continued. “I think there’s something to be said there about the level of rhetoric and entitlement among online gamer communities in general. Perhaps there is also something to be said about whether the games BioWare makes still satisfy our core fans.”

Source: Tumblr.com

Apple To Sell $39 Billion In Macs, IPads Through 2014: Analyst

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Forrester Research believes that Apple will sell $39 billion in Macs and iPads through 2014, having sold $7 billion worth of Macs and $11 billion in iPads to the corporate market this year. In 2014, Apple will sell $8 billion in Macs and $13 billion in iPads.

Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels also believes that Apple has having success in the corporate market. Employees enjoy using them, believe iPads are the best tablets on the market and sales organizations tend to deliver competitive prices.

Marketing Predictions: 5 To Watch For In 2013

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There will be several trends to look out for in the next year in marketing, and Seth Fiegerman came up with a list of what he thinks are the five most important. Among them are mobile advertising being increasingly important to marketers.

Mobile advertising is expected to nearly triple to $4 billion in 2013, with companies like Google and Facebook seeing huge mobile ad growth last year. While these platforms are refined, even more money will be spent on them, as marketers turn from desktops to mobile.

“For many years, you had marketers emphasizing a build-for-the-desktop-first approach, and similarly you had a lot of advertising publishers and platforms that developed their products for the desktop,” said Clark Fredricksen, VP of communications for eMarketer. “Now we are seeing more people build for mobile first with the desktop as the second priority.”

There’s also trouble with banner ads, which many adverting executives never believed in. There have been some innovations, like ESPN’s banner ad changing color depending on which team was leading the polls, showing some room for innovation.

“People look at ****ty banner ads and think the problem is the banner ads,” IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg. “The problem is ****ty advertising.”

Native adverting is also becoming more common, where ads are delivered in-stream and integrated as seamlessly as possible into the core user experience. Facebook and Twitter applied this formula with great success in 2012 by inserting sponsored posts into their respective streams on mobile devices.

“If 2012 proved anything in mobile, it proved that the ad publishers using so-called native formats are able to deliver much more effectively with mobile devices and in essence are able to overcome the historical disadvantages of display advertising on a small screen,” Fredricksen said. “We are seeing a dramatic upswing and we expect that to continue.”

Recent studies have shown that large numbers of followers in social media does not mean that they have more engagement. This means there should be more emphasis on metrics beyond how many likes and followers there are.

“Every business has to measure what they do and make sure that it is effective,” said Riley Gibson, the co-founder and CEO of Napkin Labs. “Likes can be part of that measurement, but we need to start looking beyond that a bit, and start looking in more depth at what fans are actually doing.”

For some companies like BloomReach and Swipe.ly, they’ll use big data to help with SEO and understand large social trends. These tools will change how many large companies run their business.

“Big data is really emerging as a key currency in marketing,” Fredricksen said. “Increasingly, we are seeing more companies use big data and analytics to drive customer insights, create their budgets and to manage operations, the supply chain, customer support, product strategy and pricing.”

Source: Mashable.com

Star Wars Trilogy Map Pictures

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Andrew DeGraff and Bennett Slater have composed impressive maps for the original Star Wars trilogy: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. These have been on exhibit since Saturday, January 5 at Gallery 1988 Melrose in Los Angeles.

Source: SlashFilm.com

GameStop Talks Rising DLC Attach Rates

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GameStop says that attach rates of DLC to games have gone up, as it is easier to sell than other game products. The DLC for Gears of War 3 was heavily promoted and got a 10 percent attach rate (better than the two percent for the first two games) and a good turn around considering 75 percent of GameStop’s Power Up Rewards members said they weren’t aware of the DLC before the game’s launch.

“Downloadable content is easier for us to sell compared to strategy guides or accessories,” GameStop’s director of retail digital distribution, Brad Schleisser said. “They’re games and our sales associates are gamers.”

Attach rates have increased steadily over the past year. For instance, 17 percent of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 players paid GameStop for Elite and 30 percent paid for Mass Effect 3‘s From Ashes.

Source: Destructoid

The Sims 3 University Life – Announce Trailer

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No matter how productive or not your college years were (or might be) this trailer for The Sims 3 University Life shows a pretty good approximation of the experience. This trailer is a great reminder of all those non-video game related moments of college.

Facebook Timeline Changing, Again

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Changes that Facebook announced to Timeline in late December are starting to show up for some users. Last month, ABC News revealed that Facebook is eliminating elements such as thumbnail images for Friends, Photos and Map from the tab below users’ Timeline image.

At the time, a Facebook rep had told the network, “This is a new design Facebook is testing with a small percentage of people to make navigating Timeline even easier.”

Image source: Mashable

The change is now rolling out slowly, and apparently starting with users in New Zealand. People there are reporting that the thumbnails are indeed gone, replaced with tabs that as a default setting list About, Friends, Photos, and a drag down menu for more options. That “More” tab is where Facebook’s more meaningful change comes in, where there’s now a functionality to manage what appears at top, and with the option to link to Instagram and Spotify right from the tabs.

Source: Mashable