Is the future of gaming on the PC? (Thank you Dino for contributing this one)

Note St. John's comment in the article below: “… if the low end of the PC market, the mass market PCs that everybody buys did not come with these crappy graphics chips on them and was not burdened with a fat OS, then the PC would be a larger contiguous gaming platform than all the next-generation consoles combined."

http://pc.ign.com/articles/861/861239p1.html

Gameasure data suggests that the PC, despite this, is still more preferred than any of the current gen consoles.

Trends in Casual Gaming & Advertising

This article is an interesting interview with Dave Williams, Senior VP of MTV Networks' Shockwave.com and Addicting Games:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006068&src=article2_newsltr

Mr. Williams argues that advertising in video games is increasingly moving towards in-game casual, borne out by eMarketer's projections of where in-game advertising will be spent over the next 4 years. They predict that growth will be concentrated in web-based video games (many of which are casual). Intriguingly, eMarketer's figures show that video game advertising will total $1B by 2012 (in today's dollars, not the greatly devalued dollars to come - but that is an economics not a market research story).

Who we should hire to make a movie for Interpret ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC0sR5_NTFo

Double Fusion's Thoughts on In-Game Advertising - Appear to be heavily influenced by our Casual Gaming White Paper

Double Fusion (DF) is a good client of ours, and intriguingly the CEO of DF has just been interviewed by GameDaily on the subject of in-game advertising:

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/my-turn-the-second-wave-of-ingame-advertising/?biz=1

In it he argues that in-game advertising is about to begin phase two of leading the way in the casual gaming space. Perhaps he was inspired by our recent casual gaming white paper? Advertising will have a greater impact in casual gaming because it is increasingly essential to the business model of giving such games away for free. Seen in this way, in-game advertising is 'an entirely new opportunity to build the gaming audience'.

More signs of Hollywood moving towards Video Games (contributed by Dino)

Genius Products Moves Into Game Publishing

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/genius-products-moves-into-game-publishing/?biz=1

Pirates of the Caribbean Director Gets Game

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/pirates-of-the-caribbean-director-gets-game/?biz=1

Posted by Dmitriy (Thank you Dmitriy!) - EA has partnered with IMG

EA announced a multi-year strategic partnership with IMG, a licensing, marketing, and media company. IMG plans to extend the EA sports brand into innovative businesses on a global scale. IMG plans to use the license from EA to create a variety of new products and apparel with EA sports on it. Expect to see EA on footballs, hats, and of course… on athletic supporters.

http://www.ea.com/article.jsp?id=easimgfeb1408

Thank God for the EU? Microsoft gets nailed.

At least one government has the wherewithal to stand up to the monopolistic beast that was Microsoft. Unfortunately it may be a little too much and certainly too late. The damage has largely been done, but this decision should loosen what remains of Microsoft's stranglehold on creativity and computing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080227/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_microsoft