Crunchyroll dominates the world again, Hulu hands on, plenty of video game news, and the Last Airbender rides a screaming, flaming Sky Bison into the pits of failure! It's must-know geek career news!
Career:
io9 has a humorous, but thought-provoking look at careers to let you make the future less of a dystopia.
Economics/Geekonomics:
Personal Bankrupcy filings up 14% in the first half of 2010.
A look at employment/unemployment statistics. Still not a pretty picture.
Geek Law:
Apple and AT&T sued in a class action suit over various issues. Everyone surprised, raise your hand – then slap yourself for not seeing this one coming.
Anime and Manga:
Wow. CrunchyRoll and Bitway have a Digital Manga Initiative. More details are needed, but it sounds interesting – American company, Japanese digital manga company, some mutual support, and Crunchyroll world domination continues. Considering what Crunchyroll has done in anime, they could bring that sensibity to manga – and with Bitway's connections, they could well undermine competitors.
Comics:
It's official, DC is folding web imprint Zuda into their other online comic initiative. No surprises, though I'm curious about what policies about new talent and such may survive or be used. Digital comics changes a lot of the rules – including risk, payments, etc., which means talent recruitment and chosing what title to release changes.
Movies:
The Last Airbender film opens to dismal reviews. I'm serious,really dismal. The repercussions of this are going to take some time to figure out – and some analysis – but I'd say M. Night Shyamalan has put the nail in the coffin of his geek credibility, and those running the Avatar franchise have some tough decisions. I don't think this'll cut down on remake-mania, but it may serve as a painful object lesson. Damn it, why did this have to happen to Aasif Mandvi?
Science:
Clean Tech investment is up worldwide. Might be time to look for that career in solar, biofuel, etc.
Video:
Hands-on with Hulu Plus. Sounds decent, if a bit underwhelming for now.
Video Games:
Video Game sales down 5% in may apparently due to mobile devices. This also suggests that how gaming sales are calculated may need to be re-evaluated.
Helios Interactive releases it's own cross-platform dev tools. An interesting and fun story – for an 8 person company owned by a transport business this is pretty good. Hmmm, wonder if Helios is going to expand any time soon, or if you may want to use their tools.
iPhone game company Tapulous acquired by Disney. They have a good reputation, and it appears that it's a good, solid integration. Wonder if they'll be hiring anytime soon – you may want to check it out. Also shows Disney's continuing expansions – and I didn't know they had a stake in Playdom.
Sony's PS3 is now profitable. No price cuts likely, however. It appears Sony's endure-through-it-all strategies have worked.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: So, Last Airbender, Um . . . . so what's next for the movie franchise? The franchise itself?
– Steven Savage