GamersCircle

How is Internet advertising faring in this bad economy?

andy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:31:05 +0000

So the news emerging this week from the Internet Advertising Bureau, which collects information submitted by surveys from members who sell advertising over the Internet in the US, is that the rate of growth in the ad industry has essentially flattened. According to IAB statistics, ad revenue among US-based ad dealers who are members (this should account for Google and AOL’s Platform-A, among others) grew to $5.865 billion for the calendar third quarter, up 11% annually over the previous year’s Q3.

It’s that 11% mark that’s not moving, as is indicated by the IAB’s explanation: “While double-digit annual growth continues, the quarter-to-quarter curve remains relatively flat compared to recent past performance.” It’s also not the 20% or even 25% annual growth rate that analysts were projecting for US ad sellers in 2006, for the four-year period hence.

How exactly does this break down? The only way we found this figure makes sense is if you account for US-based dealers whose platforms sell to US-based companies. In its fiscal third quarter ending last September, Google reaped a total of $5.35 billion in revenue from advertising worldwide. With just less than half of that revenue coming from the US, by Google’s estimates, about $2.5 billion of that revenue comes from US advertisers.

Granted that the calendar Q3 and Google’s fiscal Q3 are not in sync, Google alone still appears to account for 42% of IAB’s figures — this for a group that has some 375 members. Google’s own annual revenue growth rate is 31%. So if you take just one player out of the picture, revenues from Google’s market partners must be coalescing to bring that growth figure back down to 11%. And that indicates the proverbial glass be less than half-empty.

Source

7-Eleven Permanently Adding Videogames to Their Inventory

andy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:14:48 +0000

World of Warcraft players certainly don’t mind that 7-Eleven has been dabbling in the field of selling videogames. Thanks to the apparent disregard for street dates, WoW players were able to secure early copies (albeit not early access) of Wrath of the Lich King. The retail chain has announced that its recent sales of games like WoW, Halo, and Madden isn’t a temporary holiday cash-in — they’re planning on permanently adding videogames to their inventory (via Joystiq).

“This is not just a holiday promotion for us,” explained 7-Eleven category manager for gaming and electronics, “but a brand new product line-up that will be available year-round. We may not be a total entertainment destination … yet, but we’re hoping to expand our selection beyond the high-dollar, hot-selling games to include options for all budgets, like value-priced video games as well as DVD movies. For consumers wanting convenient one-stop shopping for at-home entertainment along with groceries and gas or who just want to avoid big-store shopping inconveniences, their local 7-Eleven store is open and ready.”

In addition to Wrath of the Lich King, 7-Eleven is planning on selling the Guitar Hero World Tour band kit, Fallout 3, Quantum of Solace, Gears of War 2, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009, and Call of Duty: World at War. They’ll also begin selling subscription cards for around 20 games and services ranging from Xbox Live to City of Heroes to Runescape.

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Twilight Pulls in $7 Million From Midnights

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:40:09 +0000

Summit Entertainment’s Twilight grossed more than $7 million in Thursday midnight shows, reports Variety.

At that amount, Twilight could exceed initial forecasts for a $50 million to $60 million opening weekend. Females, specifically tween girls and teenage girls, are driving the film, based on the best-selling books series by Stephenie Meyer.

But it’s not just younger females turning out, but older women and teen boys, too. Meyer’s series have sold more than 17 million copies worldwide.

ABC cancels “Pushing Daisies,” “Eli Stone”

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:31:58 +0000

ABC gave cancellation notices to “Pushing Daisies” and “Eli Stone” yesterday reports the Los Angeles Times.

The two series will not be picked up for a full second season and will end production after their thirteenth episodes. ABC president Steve McPherson informed both series of their fate in phone calls yesterday.

“He was very complimentary and thanked everyone for putting their first foot forward,” “Daisies” creator Bryan Fuller said. “He never said we’re canceled but that was the gist of it. He said they’re proud of the show and not ordering episodes at this time. I could read between the lines and interpret that the door could be open in the future but I think that the gist of that is that we weren’t going to be moving forward on ABC.”

ABC plans to run all the produced episodes of each series before bringing them to an end.

Fuller acknowledge that everyone who worked on the show will begin looking for new jobs, which would make it hard for the “door to stay open.” He already has his next gig lined up: returning to “Heroes,” where he worked as a writer in the NBC show’s first season. He also has begun thinking about turning his sweet fairy tale into a movie.

“It’s hard not to be disappointed but I’m walking away with a stronger feeling of pride and gratitude,” Fuller said.

ABC also delivered pink slips for “Dirty Sexy Money.”

The alphabet network will shuffle its schedule in January. As we previously reported, “Life on Mars” moves to Wednesday evenings following “Lost.”

Source

New Lost Trailer Has Hidden Message!

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:28:22 +0000

ABC has launched the new trailer for the fifth season of “Lost,” which features music from The Fray’s “You Found Me.” In the trailer at the 1:34 and 2:25 mark, the studio flashes the logo for a tie-in company called Ajira Airways ( AjiraAirways.com ). The trailer, which you can view below, consists of footage from last season as well as from the upcoming sewason.

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Star Trek Online producer confirms familiar races and locales

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:51:59 +0000

Bet you’d just about forgotten about Star Trek Online by this point, hadn’t you? There was a big explosion of information when Cryptic announced its iteration of the game in August, but since then, we’ve seen less and less information as time’s gone by. But lo! There has been an update at the officlal site! Turns out the executive producer, Craig Zinkievich, did an interview with Skewed and Reviewed.

It makes for a decent overview if you’re new to Star Trek Online, but there isn’t much in the way of new gameplay information except for some specific revelations about visitable locales and playable races. First of all, he confirmed that Deep Space Nine — the setting of the TV series of the same name — will be in the game. He also rattled off a few of the playable races (but not all, and remember you can create your own): “Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Orion and several others.” Trekkers / trekkies should be glad to hear that there will be no shortage of scantily clad green people or blue antennae.

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Red Alert 3 Demo Monday; Patch Details

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:49:02 +0000

Electronic Arts announces they will release a playable demo for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 on Monday, offering the chance to sample the recently released new installment in this alternate-reality real-time strategy series.

The single-player demo will debut GameSpot, where there’s a countdown time indicating 3:00 pm EST is specifically when to expect the release, and word on content is it includes the game’s entire seven minute opening cinematic, three interactive tutorials and one campaign mission from each of the Soviet and the Allied campaigns.

The announcement also says the game’s first major patch is to be released “later this year,” and will include WorldBuilder for map-making and game modification, enhancements to AutoMatch, balance fixes and a de-authorization tool to manage the game’s DRM authentications. They conclude promising: “More details on the patch will be made available soon.”

Source

‘Captain Marvel’ Gets a Director

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:23:17 +0000

Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. has signed Get Smart director Peter Segal to a three-year first look deal, which includes Segal directing a Captain Marvel film. Segal is currently working on a sequel to Get Smart for Warners. Segal will likely helm Liam McBain: International Tennis Star and Proper English Geezer before embarking on the Captain Marvel project.

But according to Variety, the Captain Marvel project was integral to signing Segal. Segal and his producing partner Michael Ewing began working on the Captain Marvel film two years ago at New Line. As part of the deal Warners has acquired the Captain Marvel script written by John August.

Actors’ union threatens to strike over Internet TV

andy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:47:28 +0000

Another work stoppage by SAG could hit by January. Among other things, the TV actors now seek union protection for all Internet-only productions, regardless of budget.

Source

Doomsday Attacks The CW Tonight

andy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:49:18 +0000

For those that didn’t catch last weeks episode of Smallville, Doomsday will be duking it out with Clark Kent tonight!

Source

Lich King Expansion Sells Record 2.8 Million On Launch Day

andy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:02:09 +0000

The second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours — making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, Blizzard says. The company also claims the previous record — 2.4 million copies sold on the January 2007 launch day of The Burning Crusade, WoW’s first expansion. Wrath of the Lich King received a simultaneous global launch in North America, Europe, Chile, Argentina, and Russia .

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Twilight Sells Out 2,000 Showings (Including 600 Midnight Showings)

andy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:28:41 +0000

Did you hear? A small film called Twilight is coming out this Friday. Despite my own feelings on the movie and subject matter, I knew when I went to Twilight’s Comic Con this year amidst the massive throng of screaming women that this film would be a huge success. When I saw the film this past Tuesday night, one could easily tell that the excitement for this film from the mom/teen demographic was approaching a fevered pitch.

According to Variety, Summit Entertainment’s new teen vampire flick, Twilight, has already sold out almost 2,000 showings, 600 of them midnight showings. Other sites like Collider are also reporting that Twilight accounts for a whopping 94% of Fandango.com’s daily ticket sales. Moreover, Twilight has broken into Fandango.com’s Top 10 Advance Ticket-Sellers list, beating out previous hits such as Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Spider Man 3, and Sex and the City (Don’t worry though, /Film readers: The Dark Knight is still still safely ensconed at #2…for now.) Here’s the full list as of today:

1. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

2. The Dark Knight

3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

6. Hannah Montana 3D

7. Twilight

8. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

9. Spider-Man 3

10. Sex and the City

Source

Bungie Advises Against Installing Halo 3

andy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:50:33 +0000

In the weeks leading up to today’s release of the New Xbox Experience, reports circulated on the impact of installing games to the hard drive. While most games a modest decrease in load times, Halo 3, strangely, was performing worse than it did when running off the DVD. Installing to the hard drive requires that you insert the disc of the game you want to play into the DVD drive for the purpose of verifying you actually own the game. The game disc, however, isn’t spinning like usual, so even if loading times weren’t impacted, you wouldn’t have to hear that noisy disc drive while you played.

As it turns out, those reports weren’t erroneous. Bungie is advising people to not install Halo 3 to their hard drive, as internal tests have shown that doing so can increase load times. Because of that, there’s the concern that increasing load times will negatively impact multiplayer games. Longer load times slow down the process of actually getting into games, which means people will begin quitting, which results in more waiting or in lame, unbalanced games.

The technical explanation of what’s causing this is fairly complicated. The full explanation can be found here, but essentially the reason is that Halo 3 already makes use of the hard drive in order to speed up load times by temporarily caching data. Even though the game is now located on the hard drive, it doesn’t know that, so it does the same process but is unable to simultaneously read the data from the hard drive and write to the drive.

Source

Avatar Clothing Packs Inbound

andy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:33:19 +0000

Those of you enjoying the New Xbox Experience may well be a little disappointed at the ammount of clothing options available for your Avatar. Well videogaming247 has received confirmation that over the next 6 months there will be a constant stream of new options.

Xbox Live product unit manager Jerry Johnson has confirmed that Avatar clothing will be constantly streaming onto the New Xbox Experience for the next half a year.

“We’re going to be continually releasing and unlocking clothes for the next six months,” he said. “They’ll be coming out in theme packs.”
There’s no word right now on whether or not you’re going to have to pay for this stuff, but don’t be hugely shocked if you will. NXE is now live! Go get it!

Score 1 for the Zombies

andy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:29:54 +0000

In February, Capcom was sued by a film company that claimed Dead Rising ripped off Dawn of the Dead. Now comes news that a judge has dismissed the case:

Last month, United States Magistrate Judge Richard Seeborg granted Capcom’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying that The MKR Group (the producer’s company) “has not identified any similarity between Dead Rising and any protected element of Dawn of the Dead. Rather, the few similarities MKR has alleged are driven by the wholly unprotectable concept of humans battling zombies in a mall during a zombie outbreak.”

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