New Games TV Show Launches On Bravo

With casual gaming showing continued revenue and traffic strength compared to its console video games older brother, it should be no surprise an upcoming TV show is focusing on just that demographic.

Game Face is a new game TV show just launched on Bravo in the UK, and its key audience will be those gamers who play from time to time, either on a console, an iPhone or a PC.

MCVUK reports:

As well as working with partners such as Bravo, Ginx TV describes itself as being the first international 24/7 TV channel that turns video gaming into mainstream entertainment TV .

By taking the rich production values of many games today, using the story line or game objective, Ginx creates a TV production from a TV viewers point of view, [said programming head Peter Einstein].  We feel this concept provides a fun, entertaining TV event which is appealing mostly to the casual gamer.

Based on the segments we’ve watched on Bravo{link no longer active}, the show has a very G4 vibe to it that.  That doesn’t exactly corroborate going for a non-hardcore audience, but we’ll see how the show develops over the next couple of months.

Nintendo CEO Disappointed By E3 Presser

E3 is the biggest video game show in the world, but the days right before the conference are the most important for a number of larger publishers.  The pre-E3 media briefings are the first opportunity these companies have to really show off the goods, and it seems one company in particular was disappointed in its ability to wow the crowd with its wares.

From GoNintendo: {link no longer active}

[Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata:] As for the media briefing at E3, of course we had many internal discussions after that. Honestly speaking, none of us at Nintendo thought that our presentation at E3 was as good as it could have been. It is apparent that we could not fully convey the charm of our products.

In the past, Wii Sports and Wii Fit were naturally able to convey their appeal on stage since it was something no one had ever seen or imagined before. People seemed to capture the appeal of Wii Sports instantly and although there was some initial confusion with Wii Fit, its appeal did get through to the audience afterwards.

This year, however, with the New Super Mario Bros. Wii, four people lined up with Wii Remotes was not a scene that no one had ever seen. Those who actually had the chance to play understood how the game would change with four people playing simultaneously, but we could not address that fun sentiment at the media briefing.

Now we strongly feel that we need to look into finding a better way to demonstrate the products appeal better at E3 in these times where more people are watching it online via web cast not only in the U.S. but all around the world, than the number of audience who actually watch it in the theatre.

Too often, the video game industry markets to its own audience, its own peers, and the usual suspects.  Nintendo is admitting some guilt to allowing this bubble mentality to affect its pre-E3 performance last year, and we should see some significant changes next year so its wares are marketed a lot more effectively to the consumer at home.

To their credit, Sony and Microsoft have both launched E3 hubs with downloadable video and select demos from the show floor in an effort to bring the show to their consumers, and we expect that marketing trend to continue.

Twitter’s Audience Isn’t That Young

If you’re looking for an audience predominantly under 25 years of age to market to, Twitter may seem like today’s obvious choice.  Only one problem: it isn’t.

For all the hype the microblogger gets, only 16 percent of U.S. visitors to Twitter were under the age of 25.

Business Insider posts an interesting chart (shown right) showing how, in general, Internet sites average 25% in that age category, with Twitter showing weakness in that valuable demographic by 36 percent.

Video Of The Day: Guitar Hero Rubik

Today’s video of the day comes to us from YouTube, where an intrepid Guitar Hero player wants to show off by playing Ozzy Ozbourne’s “Mr. Crowley,” on Expert level, while solving not one but two Rubik’s Cubes.

We can’t even do one of those things alone.

Video Of The Day: EyePet In Action

Today’s video of the day focuses on Sony’s EyePet, an alternate-reality game hitting shelves later this year.  Developed by Sony’s London Studio, the game takes advantage of the PlayStation Eye camera to insert a virtual pet in your real-world home.

We didn’t think they’d pull it off, but prepare to see the future of gaming.

{video link no longer active}

Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Actually Limited

From Joystiq:

The gaming community really throws the word “limited” around with little thought of its meaning. Walk down the Xbox 360 aisle of any GameStop — there’s more Halo 3 Limited Collector’s Editions than there are stars in the sky. However, it sounds like Infinity Ward’s upcoming blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will have a limited edition worthy of the adjective — no additional copies of the Prestige Edition of the game will be made following the title’s release.

Activision is so serious about keeping this edition to a limited run, it is denying requests from retailers to create more.

“We’ve already been asked by retailers to up the production numbers due to demand, which we immediately denied,” Community Manager Robert Bowling told IGN in an interview].

Nice to see a retailer stick to its guns and allow an extremely marketable special edition to stay special (much to the chagrin of ATVI shareholders).

Microsoft Using LittleBigPlanet Music For Xbox?

From Kotaku: {link no longer active}

That theme song wasn’t written for the game. Dubbed “Get It Together,” it’s a instrumental pop tune by British band The Go! Team, but it has become linked with the game […]

The undeniable connection “Get It Together” has to LBP hasn’t stopped Microsoft from using the tune in this recent ad.

The video for your viewing pleasure:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uwu0gExNVuw
Catchy tune, huh So why the hell did Sony just let it get licensed by their biggest competitor in the hardcore space, an audience that is very familiar with the tune in the first place? Just odd.

Life Without Twitter

Popular microblogging platform Twitter was down for several hours yesterday due to a heavy DDoS attack from as-of-yet unknown sources.  Since that affects significant parts of our marketing plans (and daily communication with friends, customers, etc.), Mashable took the time to explain what DDoS means:

The goal of any Denial of Service is to take out a specific online resource and make it unavailable to its users. Targets are typically hugely popular destinations with a lot to lose, and with Twitter’s explosive growth comes its emergence as a juicy target for hackers and miscellaneous enemies or pranksters.

DDoS attacks often involve sending a flood of external communication requests to the site that at first glance may appear just like legitimate traffic. The intent is to overwhelm the service s resources to such a degree that it can’t respond to real requests for real users, effectively rendering the site unreachable or so slow to respond as to be impossible to use for some period of time.

DDoS attacks have happened for years now, targeting sites small and large, including Yahoo!, Amazon and more.  Facebook was also reporting a slowdown in its service, though a connection to the Twitter attacks wasn’t confirmed.

So if you were wondering why your Twitter feeds weren’t showing up, now you have some more knowledge to give your audience.

Video Of The Day: Mario And Princess Peach Sex Tape

The geniuses at CollegeHumor have been video game fans for as long as we’ve known them, creating funny original videos that usually deal with the 8-bit antics of Mario and crew.

This time, they’ve gone too far, and we love the result. Turn the volume down a bit and enjoy today’s (NSFW) video of the day.

{video link no longer active}

EA CEO: Console Price Cuts, Please

From IndustryGamers: {link no longer active}

Today, on the EA conference call following the company’s Q1 results, EA CEO John Riccitiello commented, “We try not to comment too much on plans that others get to decide and implement, but it’s our view that we’re at a particularly interesting point in the [console] cycle. We’ve got approximately 75 million consolidated installed base against the major platforms in Western markets, where the total installed base on last gen was about 125 [million]. So we’ve sold a lot more at high prices than we did in the last cycle, and we think pricing will move hardware. We anticipate price cuts at some point and we’d like to see them later in the year. We can’t really speculate except to say it would be welcomed in the marketplace. In terms of our own guidance, we take knowledge that we glean under NDA but we can’t disclose that in our call.”

What started as a request seems to be all but confirmed with his taking that knowledge we glean under NDA and giving guidance based on that.

Price cuts all but confirmed by the end of the year   And what do you think, are prices that important to hardware and software adoption, or is it nothing some good marketing can handle   (When was the last time you saw a good PlayStation 3 ad )