Nielsen Looks To Expand TV Viewing Membership

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Nielsen Co. is looking to roll out a system to better measure how consumers watch video content. This includes game consoles like PS3, broadband streaming and iPads.

Expanding beyond traditional TV ratings measurement came out of a “What Nielsen Measures Committee”. Members of this group include representatives from major TV networks, local TV stations, cable TV networks, advertising agencies and some larger advertisers.

A source from one of the four major networks expressed enthusiasm for the move. For years, networks have complained that total viewing of their shows isn’t being captured by traditional ratings measurements and this should do a great deal to rectify that.

Nielsen wants to set up in September 2013 new hardware and software tools in the nearly 23,000 TV homes it samples. These new tools will record viewership not just from the 75 percent of homes that rely on cable, satellite and over the air broadcasts but also viewing via devices that deliver video from streaming services and from TV enabled game systems.

iPads and other tablets using broadband will be included in the first phase of measurement improvements, though the second phase will be more comprehensive. Nielsen is said to have an internal goal of being able to measure video viewing on an iPad by the end of this year, a process where the company will work closely with its clients.

Source: HollywoodReporter.com

Torment: Tides Of Numenera Kickstarter Announced

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inXile Entertainment has announced that it will be launching a new Kickstarter project called Torment: Tides of Numenera. The story-driven CRPG is billed as a spiritual successor to the classic PC role-playing game Planescape: Torment.

For Torment: Tides of Numenera, inXile entertainment is seeking $900,000, and has already shot past a third of its funding goal. InXile’s first Kickstarter project, Wasteland 2, raised more than $3 million last year with a similar cash goal in mind.

Source: Kickstarter.com

Microsoft Looks To Slim Down Kinect

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Microsoft would like to see the Kinect camera in laptops and tablets. Rumors have already circulated that an improved, slimmed down Kinect 2 will be packaged with the next-generation Xbox system.

“You want to be as cheap as possible and physically as small as possible,” said Craig Mundie, senior adviser to the CEO at Microsoft. “My dream is to get a Kinect into the bezel of something like this [Surface tablet].”

Source: The Verge

Robin Dies, Comic Tributes Pour In

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Damian Wayne, the 10-year-old son of Bruce Wayne and the current Robin, will be killed in issue #8 of Batman Inc. The boy wonder dies fighting essentially an artificially-aged, evil version of himself — tribute cover will appear on the various comics of Batman and associated heroes.

“He saves the world. He does his job as Robin,” writer Grant Morrison said. “He dies an absolute hero.”

Morrison says that Robin’s death will illustrate how parents lose sight of their kids when they fight. “It’s all about the family and the family going to hell,” said Morrison, who threw in elements of his own parents’ divorce. “The two adults in the story are both culpable. The kid’s the good guy.”

Source: New York Post

China Concerned About Google’s Mobile Dominance

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A white paper by China’s Ministry of Industry highlighted the Android OS as a thing of concern. Currently, Android is by far the leading mobile OS in the People’s Republic of China.

“Our country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android,” the document read. “While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google.”

The Ministry of Industry report suggests that they believe Google discriminated against Chinese companies to protect its position. If China regulated Android in favor of Chinese companies, it could be a blow to Google in a region that is acknowledged to be the largest for smartphones in the world.

Source: Reuters

EA CFO Qualifies Microtransactions Remark

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Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen has qualified his recent statements over microtransactions coming to all EA games. While mobile games are likely to all have microtransactions, due to a free-to-play focus, that does not apply to larger AAA releases.

“I made a statement in the conference along the lines of, ‘we’ll have microtransactions in our games,'” Jorgensen explained. “And the community read that to be ‘all games.’ And that’s really not true.”

Jorgensen pointed to Real Racing 3 as an example of the company’s strategy on microtransactions. As for the non-mobile market, Jorgensen said the company was instead focusing on things like Battlefield Premium, offering players all five of the game’s expansions as well as some bonuses for $50 on top of Battlefield 3‘s retail price.

Source: GamesIndustry International

Facebook Finds Young Users Flocking Elsewhere

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Facebook’s last monthly report has found that some of its youngest users are starting to engage more heavily with other social sites. The company is finding heavy competition for Gen Now users from sites such as SnapChat, Vine, and its own photo-sharing site Instagram.

One recent sobering moment for Facebook was when it lost Blake Ross, director of product, who announced she was leaving the company last year with this odd (if perhaps tongue-in-cheek) statement: “I’m leaving because a Forbes writer asked his son’s best friend Todd if Facebook was still cool and the friend said no, and plus none of HIS friends think so either even Leila who used to love it, and this journalism made me reconsider the long-term viability of the company.”

More worrisome for Facebook might be how the exodus of youth could be fueled less by a lack of “cool” and rather indifference towards what the site offers. Web-expert Laura Portwood-Stacer has theorized that Facebook losing its luster goes beyond teens on the hunt for constant newness.

“I think it has less to do with kids consciously looking for ‘the next big thing’ than Facebook just no longer being a space that serves them,” she said.

According to its own report, Facebook’s main competition is dispersed among more niche social nets and micro-blogging sites, especially those that are more savvy on mobile. Teens are turning to sites such as Tumblr, which has more than 150 million users, and apps like Snapchat and Instagram that give them specific social networking and communication tools.

The Verge published a telling comment from 15-year-old Collin Wisniewski, who shared this view: “Tumblr is mainly my obsession as of now. It just seems more intimate and it’s not really a place of bragging, but more of a place of sharing.”

Facebook releasing an internal report on how users might be less engaged with it could be seen as a preemptive strike, showing that the company is aware of other studies such as Pew Research finding that people are using it less. Yet its own report might be the scariest yet, where it’s not just a cross-section of users finding other ways to spend their time online but a generational shift towards other social sites.

What do you think is driving users to rely less and less on Facebook Share your comments below! 

Source Online Mail

Stan Lee In The House

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Stan Lee is joining the fracas behind “Injustice Battle Arena.” The comic book legend will be among celebrity commentators once the quarterfinals round kicks off for the virtual fight tournament, part of Warner Bros. and Ayzenberg’s campaign for DC Comics brawler Injustice: Gods Among Us.

Herr Lee’s debut takes place next week. Meantime round 1 had its share of legendary moments.

Round 1 legendary moment

The folks behind the campaign have put together this video recap of it.

The Most Truthful iPad Ad Ever

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Thanks to Conan, Apple comes clean about how most people use their tablets. There’s some great text in the fast scrolling screens, but honestly, couldn’t this be said about almost any Internet device with a screen