News and Analysis

Week in Review, 3/1/2009

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These days, it seems, it's all about streaming video. Those of you who make AMVs and encode them for YouTube are in luck, as the value of your skills is only going to go up in the job market.

Netflix announced it was going to offer streaming-only service plans. The Hulu vs. YouTube battle kept rolling on, and China decided it was time to come up with its own YouTube competitor.
Crunchyroll made news again, participating in Global Shinaki Day by streaming three videos. The company – which, by the way, also has a Japan branch – even attracted the attention of Editor and Publisher, trade journal of the publishing industry.

Elsewhere in anime/manga, though, things weren't so bright, as Viz announced a restructuring, including layoffs – an unfortunate effect of the bad economy, though not completely catastrophic

American comics, meanwhile, were busy having an impact in mainstream Hollywood, which seems to be going geek in a big way. The success of the Iron Man movie resulted in increased profits for Marvel, while Heath Ledger scored a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight and the upcoming release of Watchmen continued to grab mainstream attention, including a cover story in Entertainment Weekly.
Video games attracted moviemaking attention, with 50 Cent proclaiming that he wants to do a film based on Saints Row (apparently forgetting the fact that video games rarely make good films). And even board gaming got into the act, with an annoucement of a remake of Clue, which just had people asking, "WHY?"

Elsewhere in gaming, Electronic Arts was all over the place again, saying it was going to rethink its release schedule – a smart move considering that game sales may have been hurt in the past by numerous titles coming out at once. Details also emerged about the company's much-anticipated Dante's Inferno game, which sounds kind of like EA is trying to create its own God of War. They also mulled plans to develop their own music game (the company distributes Rock Band).

Sony announced a major management restructuring that seemed to include tighter integration of its game and media departments. It also announced big plans for the PSP, including the first-ever portable version of Rock Band and a Hanna Montana bundle that suggests Sony is reaching for a piece of Nintendo's non-tranditional-gamer audience. Rumors also surfaced of a new God of War game for the device.

But the biggest news in gaming was casual games – which may be a $1 billion industry by 2013 – and online MMOs. It was noted that the average player in Perfect World's free MMO spends $10 a month anyway, and gift card maker InCom reported strong growth in game currency cards.

Funcom was the exception to the online game boom, though, losing a lot of money due to the underperformance of Age of Conan, which may have forced the company's CEO to resign. Undaunted, however, they are introducing their game in Russia and Poland.

Things continued to be tough all over in publishing, with the Rocky Mountain News of Denver closing its doors and Computer Shopper going all-digital. Digital content was hot elsewhere in the industry, with talk of a Kindle 3 starting already shortly after the release of Kindle 2 (Hearst is already bringing out its own competitor to the device).

And finally, we leave you with a word to remember for the future: Netbooks. Small and cheap means big bucks on the computer market nowadays. So keep those Linux skills polished and downsize your thinking with computer screens, because these small wonders aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Links of the Day, 2/23/2009

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First of all, we'd like to point out that geekdom invaded the Academy Awards last night in a way it hasn't since the heyday of Lord of the Rings – La Maison des Petit Cubes became the first anime to win an Oscar since Spirited Away when it took the animated short prize, Steve Jobs' company Pixar took the animated feature Oscar with WALL-E, and the late Heath Ledger was named Best Supporting Actor  for playing The Joker in The Dark Knight. Couple that with the media blitz over Watchmen, and it seems that the geek audience is being taken very, very seriously by the mainstream film industry.

Video Games

Atlus Online will make its American debut with steampunk free-to-play MMO Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent, from a Korean developer. If more international online games come over here, that will definitely open up new job markets for localization teams, so this is a Good Thing.

Sony is closing its European PSP instant messaging service. More bad news for a platform that has struggled outside its native Japan.

More problems for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures developer Funcom, which lost a ton of money due  to the games's underperformance – but the company says it still plans to invest heavily in the game, launching Age of Conan in Russia and Poland. This looks like a case of "what not to do when your game is failing" in the making, and as such, is worth keeping an eye on.

Technology

In the Steve Jobs health watch, the Apple CEO is skipping the company's annual meeting for the first time during his tenure. We still think the company will continue to thrive with or without Jobs – based on the momentum of the iPhone and iTunes alone – so don't cross them off your resume list.    

In the insult to injury department, Microsoft announced it gave some of its laid off workers too-generous severance packages and is asking for its money back. And this is a lesson in "how not to gracefully let people go."

Netflix will offer streaming-only service plans, most definitely a smart move in the age of broadband video and a way to keep the company from becoming a dinosaur.

Women's publishing and advertising company is looking to make money off Twitter through micro-blogging widgets, such as one launched last night for the Oscars. This allows users to provide a steady stream of commentary on a sponsored site. We have a feeling this is just the first micro-blogging cash-in of its type we're going to see: Yammer, a Twitter-like service for businesses, is looking to broaden itself with a suite of new features. 

Publishing

Simon and Shuster reports sales decline: Definitely not a surprise given the catastrophic effect of the economy on book sales in general.

More newspaper bad news, this time from Pennsylvania: The parent company of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Phildelphia Daily News has filed for bankruptcy protection, as has Yardley, PA-based publisher The Journal-Register Co.  

Job Market

When the Search for a Job Becomes a Full-Time Quest: The Kansas City Star shadows one unemployed job-seeker. A portrait of what far too many people are going through right now.   

Week in Review, 2/22/2009

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This week proved that no matter how big you get, you can have your ups and downs, and they don't come any bigger than Microsoft.

Chief executive Steve Balmer said that the company was going to take a hit from the bad economy, and to add insult to injury, they were slapped with a lawsuit by a user who said she was charged a downgrade fee to convert a laptop to XP. However, the company's future in the burgeoning field of cell phones definitely looks bright – Windows Mobile 6.5 will feature an app store, as well as a new interface, according to preliminary reports.

It was a rocky week elsewhere in technology land, too. Facebook found itself dealing with user fallout from its end user license agreement changes – a brouhaha that was even featured on major network newscasts.
Bankrupt game publisher Midway pulled out of the Entertainment Software Association, and news emerged that one of the company's investors could benefit unfairly from the bankruptcy.
Konomi found themselves facing a lawsuit from Viacom/Harmonix, claiming their game Rock Revolution was an infringement on the patent for Rock Band.

With all this going on, you might imagine that some companies would be breaking out the survival plans, and that's exactly what Sega has been doing. The former-hardware giant-turned-software-company has a strategy that includes emphasizing its Sonic brand and creating more Mature-rated titles for the Wii. This may seem a strange contradiction until you realize that Sonic is now known to two or three generations of gamers, and Sega recently scored a success with the violent House of the Dead: Overkill.

Electronic Arts, meanwhile, is taking a much more curious path – as in, going outside the game industry completely. The company announced a line of children's sports equipment – no, not wireless devices designed to interact with titles like Madden, the real deal. It definitely seems like an odd choice for the recently-troubled game manufacturer, and it remains to be seen if they can make an impact in a totally untested arena. (Taking the "sequels are a sure bet" route, they also announced a followup to the popular game American McGee's Alice.)

As for Nintento, they had mixed news from the Nielsen company: They're getting a broader audience and less play, meaning a lot of people consider them their secondary console, not their primary one.

On the media end of things, satellite radio company Sirius/XM got a reprieve from bankruptcy, while tech-oriented cable channel G4 said it would be laying off people and cutting back. The G4 news raises the question of whether super-specialized programming may someday leave television altogether and go online, becoming, in effect, video podcasts. Definitely something to think about – the rise of streaming video certainly seems to point in that direction.

So with all that "down" going on, what was "up?" Cell phones, once again. In addition to the Windows announcement, Android made appearances in the form of a price cap on Android apps and British manufacturer Vodaphone saying it would offer a Google phone. And it's been rumored that Dell is about to throw its hat in the smartphone arena. (We might add that phones aren't a guaranteed road to riches for everyone, though, as Sprint lost more than a million customers.)

Good news in gaming: Acclaim announced plans to expand, the Square Enix/Eidos deal seemed to be moving forward, and, in a sign that even a shutdown could lead to something good, Bonfire emerged from the wreckage of Ensemble Studios.

And one very big-money segment of the entertainment industry that quietly flexed its muscles was the tween audience – Wizard 101, a free-to-play MMORPG aimed at this audience, passed the one million user mark. In the rush to create the next blood-soaked Grand Theft Auto, many people forget that this demographic group can mean heavy brand loyalty and big success – just look at Disney's entire teenybopper empire. It most definitely doesn't hurt to play to the High School Musical crowd.