Lionsgate Opens The Gates To Movie Streaming

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Hollywood is now embracing streaming technology with news of major studio Lionsgate’s decision to stream 200 big-name movies, all for free. The films will be distributed through humor website Break.com, which Lionsgate has maintained a small stake in since 2007.

Tim Packer, Lionsgate’s president of worldwide television and digital distribution, praised his company’s move as an exciting opportunity. “Break has built an enormous, engaged viewing audience by creating and curating world-class video content. We’re pleased to supply them with a broad range of titles to enable them to continue expanding their offering into longer-form, professionally produced content.”

“People are watching on all different platforms now,” added Break.com parent company DEFY Media CEO Matt Diamond, referencing the decision to release the slice of Lionsgate’s library on console, desktop, and mobile. “This just expands what they consume.”

Break.com plans to operate on turf dominated by Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, drawing on their success with humorously specific categories like “Never Ending Sequels” and the planned release of a new film every week.

The extensive library, featuring films running the gamut from critical darlings like Requiem for a Dream and Winter’s Bone to crowd-pleasers like Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, will be released through humor website Break.com’s Movies On Demand platform. Streaming will be supported on desktop, iOS, Android, and Roku to start, with Xbox One soon to follow.

Lionsgate’s decision to open generally wide-release films for streaming creates an opening for consumers favoring big-studio fare over the indie and foreign flicks dotting the competition’s landscape. Direct studio support could also serve to ease concerns by advertisers about oft-hostile negotiations between other streaming services and distributors.

CREATIVE: Mercedes-Benz Gets Comically Serious In New Film

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If you’ve ever watched any number of fashion films, you’ve probably noticed the ramped-up emotional elements and the locations carefully handpicked for their photographic splendor all add to the general removedness from real life. The whole thing can be a bit cloying and is basically a perfect target for somebody to riff on.

Enter Mercedes-Benz newest little short, A Fistful of Wolves, whose director, Danny Sangra, saw the opportunity to add some levity to this particular genre. The main character drives his 1970 Mercedes-Benz C111 concept car at night only. He feels “like a lion caught between two pandas…” whatever that means.

It is fantastically funny and hopefully we’ll be seeing more of the same great content from the auto brand in the future.

Meet The Playbox: An Xbox One-PS4 Hybrid Console Mod

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Serial tinkerer Eddie Zarick has created what can only be described as an Xbox One-PlayStation 4 hybrid game console mod. Zarick calls his creation the Playbox – a laptop-resembling device that combines both consoles into a single case, decked out with a 1080p 22-inch screen.

This isn’t the first time Zarick has messed around with intricate game console mods. Zarick was put on the map a while back after turning an Xbox One and PS4 into individual “laptops” as well as creating, what he refers to as, the Xbook Duo: a unit containing both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The Playbox, meanwhile, features the best of both worlds. The revolutionary contraption houses a PS4 on the left side and an Xbox One on the right. While the same cord seemingly powers both consoles, they cannot be turned on simultaneously for fear of overheating. However, there is a switch on the back that allows you to switch from one console to the other.

According to the Verge, Zarick is not currently selling any of his Playboxes – Zarick says this prototype was built for a custom order. This being said, his regular Xbook Duos sells for a nifty $1,500 while the Playbook 4s go for roughly $1,400, with even cheaper prices if customers supply their own consoles.

Funtactix: Mobile Games Go Hollywood

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Funtactix is a game company that’s reinvented itself several times in its history, and it’s in the process of reinventing itself yet again to take advantage of its strengths amidst a rapidly evolving game market. The company has been very successful with its Hunger Games Adventures mobile game, and has been rapidly building a portfolio of licensed games that covers a wide spectrum. The company, founded in 2006, is based out of New York with development studios in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Los Angeles, and its team has seasoned veterans from companies like Microsoft, Sony, LucasArts and others.

Propelled by the huge success of Hunger Games Adventures, Funtactix is now in the process of rebranding itself as FTX Games, and working as a mobile game publisher to bring together top licenses with the best mobile developers around. New titles are coming based on licenses like Power Rangers, The League, and Hot Tub Time Machine, covering a wide range of genres and audiences. The [a]listdaily spoke with Casey Dickinson, Head of Publishing and General Manager, about the company’s new directions and what this says about the state of the mobile game industry.

Casey Dickinson

Please give us some background on Funtactix and how you arrived at where you are today.

Funtactix was founded in 2006 with a mission to create synchronous multiplayer action games that ran in browsers. The games required plug-ins, which proved to be a huge barrier to entry, and we made a pivot to Flash and from there started focusing on making entertainment-based games for Facebook. Then, like everybody else, we started branching out into mobile. That’s where we’ve been for the past five or six years, since I’ve been on board with the company.

As the only company at the time that was specifically focused on entertainment properties, we found some early success. We did some titles with Paramount, Rango and Mission: Impossible, and then attached ourselves to the rocket that became The Hunger Games. We’ve been working on The Hunger Games for more than three years. We launched day and date with the first film in 2012. From the outside, we’ve kind of been “the company that does The Hunger Games game” for the past couple of years. However, based on the success we had with The Hunger Games, we started being inundated with people bringing IP to us saying “we love what you did with The Hunger Games, we’d love you to make a game based this movie.”

What we found, in practice, is that that’s a very hard mode to scalel. You might have a film that is a perfect fit for a puzzle gameor a racing game or something else, and we were still a relatively small company and we didn’t have multiple development teams that were focused on individual genres. We’ve created a world-class publishing and production team. We saw an opportunity to leverage that experience by opening the door to co-development with thord-party developers. Over the past year or so we’ve been building out a portfolio of developers that we partner with and we co-develop with. This model allows us to scale, and to find the ideal development team with the right engine and skillset, and then leverage that as needed for the specific IP.

A good example of that is we did a game at the very beginning of the NFL football season with FXX, for the show The League. The League is all about these guys who play fantasy football together. We don’t know the first thing about making a fantasy football game, but happened to be pretty close with a studio in Los Angeles that had an innovative fantasy football app and was really looking for a way for them to stand out amongst the crowd. They are huge fans of The League, and so are we. We became the publisher and brought that deal together, and then managed the process for approvals and driving creative development. Certainly licensed IP-based games are a little bit more tricky to get approved and launched. It’s all about the process, the creative uses of the IP, the marketing, the PR around the actual launch, and then the live ops to support the fanbase once it’s out there..

Developers who haven’t worked with licensors before probably don’t understand just how much goes into making a licensing relationship work well, do they?

I think it’s a specific skill set and there’s a lot that goes into just developing reputation and level of trust. IP holders want to know their baby is going to be taken care of. We’ve also watched the market change. From the Hollywood side, this has been really interesting because traditionally this has been very much licensing-driven. When you go back to the console-focused days, movie-based licensed games were run out of licensing divisions where they were getting X amount of dollars up front, and then their work was done. It was fire and forget and the publisher had to scramble to put together a game where the margins were pretty tight, and the time frames had a very firm launch date where you were contractually obligated to get it out before the theatrical release. Then once it’s out there, it’s done. There’s no way for the theatrical team to communicate back with the player base that was created.

Now, with the change to mobile and social, that has changed. What’s really interesting to the studios is that there’s a lot of parties that are suddenly getting involved. You have the theatrical marketing team that says “Great, this is part of our social media strategy, this is part of our digital marketing. You bring us a couple of million users prior to the theatrical release that we can communicate with, that we can show trailers to, that we can promote the different elements of our marketing plan with. You can help us get butts in seats.”

Then the licensing team says, “Wait, we’re going to get paid when we do this and there is the potential for significant upside without a ceiling That sounds great, this is a money-making venture!” Then you have the home entertainment team that says “Fantastic! This game is going to live after the theatrical release, you guys are still going to be updating this game so we can be promoting the DVD sales and the digital downloads ” There’s just so much more that’s available, the way mobile and social games work, that wasn’t available on console games.

See the rest of this interview on the [a]listdaily to find out more about this interaction of Hollywood and mobile games and where it’s all heading.

PS4, Xbox One Software Sales Boom

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It’s good news for the game industry, but somewhat bad news for the retail chain GameStop when it comes to the report of holiday video game sales.

The retailer revealed its sales stats for the holiday season, ending January 3rd, 2015, and showed that new software sales showed a healthy increase of 5.8 percent, while PlayStation 4 and Xbox One bounced up over 94 percent in sales, according to GamesIndustry International. Games like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Grand Theft Auto V and Far Cry 4 easily led the charge, with total global sales for the company during the holiday season reaching an incredible $2.94 billion – although it was a 6.7 percent decrease compared to the 2013 holiday sales period.

GameStop believes this drop was due to the negative impact from foreign currency exchange rates, and also showed comparable store sales decreasing by 3.1 percent, a balance between the 3.3 percent lost in U.S. stores and 2.7 percent lost overseas).

In pre-owned games, sales dropped 1.3 percent, but mobile and consumer electronics rose a whopping 28 percent. Non-GAAP digital receipts also rose 42.8 percent, to $296.6 million. That’s a 50 percent growth over the previous year, showing clear signs that digital based games are here to stay.

Said Paul Raines, chief executive officer for the company, “During the holiday period, consumer demand for video games was strong, resulting in new software sales growth. We expect that trend to continue into the first quarter. Overall, each of our business units performed well giving us positive momentum as we look toward 2015.”

With the news, however, GameStop has already seen an earnings per share increase, going from $2.08 to $2.24, and $3.40 to $3.55 for the full year. The company does expect sales to be down a bit for this year. The market responded positively to GameStop’s news, boosting its share price by over 10 percent for the day.

Bottom line, it looks like this year waned a bit compared to 2013 because of the lack of big system launches, since PS4 and Xbox One launched around November, marking huge sales for the company. However, with 2015 – and a number of premium releases coming to the market – GameStop should have no trouble sustaining business and getting back to posting sales increases.

Mobile Revenue Matches U.S. Box Office

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While movies may still be a big thing in the United States, their success could very well be eclipsed by that of mobile entertainment, if current statistics are to be believed.

Re/code has reported that, between tablets and smartphones, mobile entertainment has managed to generate $9.14 billion in revenue over the past year. That’s a total that’s coming ever so closer to the $10.35 billion that American moviegoers spent purchasing tickets in the past year, per numbers compiled by SNL Kagan.

The revenue is a combination of videos, music, games and other services used with the mobile devices, which has grown a combined 50 percent over the past few years, since 2011. At that rate, it wouldn’t be a surprise if home entertainment managed to overtake the box office numbers – perhaps even by this year, if trends continue.

Games have easily led the charge, with primary releases like Hearthstone: World of Warcraft and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood generating big bucks, with more than $5.2 billion in revenue alone. Video followed closely behind, with an estimated $1.8 billion in revenue, including popular video sites such as YouTube.

Music has also seen a bit of moving and shaking, with ringtones being replaced by on-demand music streaming services, such as Spotify. It’s doing quite well, though with mobile music bringing in $1.76 billion last year alone, and with various companies introducing new services (including the rumor that Google may launch its own comparative music service), that number could easily grow.

Some folks just feel it’s more convenient to watch their items in the comfort of their home, rather than heading to a local theater and paying big bucks for tickets, concessions and other items. That’s not to say the movie house is doomed – not in the least – but it’ll be interesting to see what big studios do to draw attention back to the box office again. Certainly, hyped films like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens will make a difference.

For The New ‘Avengers’ Trailer, Facebook Trumps YouTube

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There’s no doubt that the May 1st release of Marvel’s latest film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, will be a huge box office draw. Last year’s trailer debut already drew a massive online audience, and Marvel recently debuted a new ad that ran during the college football playoff championship earlier this week.

But the real sparks flew when Marvel posted the trailer online to both Facebook and YouTube, at the same time. Many companies were paying close attention to the numbers generated by the trailer, to get an idea of how they would shape up in competition with one another, according to Adweek.

As you might guess, the trailer did big numbers with its arrival. Within its first 24 hours, it was viewed more than 12 million times across both sites, providing proof that Facebook could be just as effective as YouTube when it came to promotional advertising.

In an interesting move, Marvel’s championship game commercial was first directed towards its Facebook page, rather than YouTube. “It’s very easy on Facebook to virally spread an ad, users click one button and share, whereas on YouTube it’s a little more clunky and not as easy as one click,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer. “So, a lot of marketers are considering the power of Facebook to share video quickly and easily.”

That’s not to say YouTube will lose business anytime soon, as many businesses and marketers still consider it a go-to partner. However, Facebook is clearly on the rise, with users viewing three billion clips on a daily basis, up from the one billion just a few months’ prior.

eMarketer’s numbers show, however, that YouTube continues to lead the pack, with 162.3 million viewers in October, compared to Facebook’s 93.8 million viewers. But could this change soon

“Facebook is a challenge, but marketers and agencies are very used to using YouTube as a library of content to point people to videos,” said Williamson. “They don’t want to create baby YouTubes on every social site.”

That isn’t stopping companies from looking, though. “It’s great that Avengers got roughly the same number of views,” he explained. “But what is the sharing that is happening in one versus the other ”

It’ll be interesting to see where the video advertising game goes from here…but don’t think this is over for Avengers. There’s still three and a half good months of advertising before it launches in time for the summer movie season.

D.I.C.E. Award Nominations Revealed

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The D.I.C.E. Summit is set to launch next month in Las Vegas, bringing together thousands of talented and up-and-coming developers to host workshops and take part in presentations for attendees to see to their heart’s content. However, it’s also the home of the yearly D.I.C.E. Awards, which recognizes the best in video game development. This year’s nominees have just been announced, and there are plenty of surprises on the list.

The nominees, which were revealed here, include a number of favorites, including newcomer Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, which managed to walk away with nine nominations, including game of the year. Other nominees in that category include Activision’s Destiny, Electronic Arts’ Dragon Age: Inqusition, Ubisoft’s Far Cry 4 and Blizzard’s addictive mobile title Hearthstone: World of Warcraft.

Pete Holmes will host the event when the awards are given out on February 5th, live from The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. The event will also be live streamed through Twitch. In addition to the yearly awards, Al Alcorn, the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, and the late innovator Ralph Baer will be given Pioneer Awards.

“Each year there are so many great games to celebrate, and 2014 was no different – with rich and enveloping experiences to satisfy any demographic and across all platforms,” said Martin Rae, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. “Congratulations to all of our nominees, whose integral work has made a deep impression on our peer panelists.”

The full list of nominees is below:

Outstanding Achievement in Animation

 

  • Assassin’s Creed Unity
  • inFAMOUS Second Son
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Sunset Overdrive
  • Titanfall

 

Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction

 

  • Assassin’s Creed Unity
  • Monument Valley
  • Sunset Overdrive
  • Valiant Hearts: The Great War
  • The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

 

Outstanding Character

 

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Jonathan Irons)
  • Far Cry 4 (Pagan Min)
  • inFAMOUS First Light (Abigail “Fetch” Walker)
  • inFAMOUS Second Son (Delsin Rowe)
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Talion)

 

Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition

 

  • Destiny
  • Far Cry 4
  • Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
  • The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
  • Transistor

 

 

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design

 

  • Assassin’s Creed Unity
  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
  • Destiny
  • Far Cry 4
  • Valiant Hearts: The Great War

 

Outstanding Achievement in Story

 

  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • South Park: The Stick of Truth
  • This War of Mine
  • Valiant Hearts: The Great War
  • The Wolf Among Us

 

Outstanding Technical Achievement

 

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
  • Far Cry 4
  • inFAMOUS Second Son
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Sunset Overdrive

 

Action Game of the Year

 

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
  • Destiny
  • Far Cry 4
  • Titanfall
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order

 

Adventure Game of the Year

 

  • inFAMOUS Second Son
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Valiant Hearts: The Great War
  • The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
  • The Wolf Among Us

 

Family Game of the Year

 

  • Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes (2.0 Edition)
  • LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
  • LittleBigPlanet 3
  • Project Spark
  • Skylanders Trap Team

 

Fighting Game of the Year

 

  • Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-
  • Nidhogg
  • Super Smash Bros. Wii U
  • Ultra Street Fighter IV

 

Racing Game of the Year

 

  • Forza Horizon 2
  • Mario Kart 8 
  • The Crew

 

Role-Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year

 

  • The Banner Saga
  • Bravely Default
  • Divinity: Original Sin
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition
  • World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

 

Sports Game of the Year

 

  • FIFA 15
  • Madden NFL 15
  • MLB 14: The Show
  • NBA 2K15

 

 

Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year

 

  • Boom Beach
  • Dungeon of the Endless
  • Endless Legend
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth

 

D.I.C.E. Sprite Award

 

  • The Banner Saga
  • Hohokum
  • Monument Valley 
  • Threes! 
  • Transistor

 

Handheld Game of the Year

 

  • Bravely Default
  • Child of Light
  • Shovel Knight
  • Super Smash Bros. 3DS
  • Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call

 

Mobile Game of the Year

 

  • 80 Days
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
  • Kingdom Rush Origins
  • Monument Valley 
  • Threes!

 

Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay

 

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
  • Destiny
  • Elite: Dangerous
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
  • World of Tanks: XBox 360 Edition

 

Outstanding Innovation in Gaming

 

  • Destiny
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Monument Valley 
  • Project Spark

 

Outstanding Achievement in Game Design

 

  • Dungeon of the Endless
  • Far Cry 4
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Titanfall

 

Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction

 

  • Lumino City
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Monument Valley
  • Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)
  • The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

 

Game of the Year

  • Destiny
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition
  • Far Cry 4
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor 

‘Backyard Sports’ Puts Kids In The Swing Of Things

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A few weeks ago, we reported on Day 6 Sports’ most recent title for the mobile game industry with its forthcoming Backyard Sports Basketball, which should be launching sometime within the next few months. For now, though, players can engage in a different gaming experience, as the company has launched Backyard Sports Baseball 2015 for iOS devices.

As with Basketball, Baseball 2015 enables players to take part in fun baseball sessions on a free-to-play basis, unlocking a number of Major League Baseball superstars in kid form. Players like Andrew McCutchen, David Ortiz, Mike Trout, Chase Utley and Buster Posey, among others, are available in the game, and can use their regular skills, along with special power-ups like the “Flamethrower Ball,” the “Vortex Line Drive” and the “Gopher Bunt” to drive in the runs. Many more power-ups and players can also be unlocked with supplementary purchases.

In addition, along with playing on a touch-screen, kids can also interact with the game using physical items that tie in with the Backyard Sports brand. First introduced at CES earlier this month, the Sonic Boom wiffle bat, which retails for $25, uses a built-in accelerometer and Bluetooth chip that adds to a player’s score each time that it’s used. This will not only make kids feel like they’re taking part in the game, but it’ll get them active — something sports leagues have been working on with their products as of late.

In addition, a Trick Pitch Ball, selling for $8, will also track pitches that interact with the game, using equipment built into the ball. Both of these items should be available for retail soon.

Finally, to coincide with the launch of Basketball, Day 6 Sports is working on a Mega Morph Sports Hoop, which will retail for $25. With it, players can interact with the game and perform plenty of slams and other shots, as they would using a real mini-basketball and hoop.

Players interested in Backyard Sports Baseball 2015 can download the game here.

New 3DS XL’s North American Launch Announced

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Nintendo announced the New Nintendo 3DS XL’s long-awaited North American launch today, with a release date set for February 13. The new handheld, expected to retail for $199.99, boasts a number of enhancements over past 3DS models including 3D ‘head-tracking’, improved WiFi, and a pre-loaded 4 GB microSD card.

“Different territories make their own business decisions regarding individual products and timing. We think New Nintendo 3DS XL makes the most sense for our market,” a Nintendo of America representative said to IGN about the gaming giant’s decision to bring the turbocharged handheld to the West.

Mobile gaming, stronger than ever before thanks to the ubiquity of high-powered smartphones, has established hardware manufacturers brainstorming new ways to retain their customer base.

Nintendo seems to view maximum customization — the sort afforded by add-ons like a microSD card — as their ticket to competing with mobile gaming, rising to the top worldwide with an install base passing the one billion mark last year.

Nintendo has not commented on their stance on mobile gaming, though they did announce a Mario-branded partnership with Puzzle & Dragons just this month amidst rumors of Game Boy titles making the jump to smartphones.

“If I was to take responsibility for the company for just the next one or two years, and if I was not concerned about the long-term future of Nintendo at all, it might make sense for us to provide our important franchises for other platforms, and then we might be able to gain some short-term profit,” CEO Satoru Iwata said in an interview with CVG. “However, I’m really responsible for the long-term future of Nintendo as well, so I would never think about providing our precious resources for other platforms at all.”

Core gaming is a top priority in the games industry, making Nintendo’s apparent move toward core handheld experiences an ambitious one that could pay lofty dividends if successful.