Microsoft Launches Xbox Promotions: New Platform on the Way

Microsoft announced on Tuesday its Xbox 360 Christmas and holiday bundles, one with Kinect, one without.

The first bundle contains an Xbox 360 with a 250GB HDD, Kinect, the games Kinect Adventures and Carnival Games: Monkey See Monkey Do, plus 3-months of Xbox LIVE Gold for a suggested retail price of MRP $399. Microsoft bundles

The second bundle is equipped with a 250GB HDD, Fable III and Halo: Reach, plus 3-months of Xbox LIVE Gold for a suggested retail price of MRP $299. New platform

Video Games Move to General Purpose Platforms

Dedicated game-playing units still are popular. But these days the biggest growth might be gaming on mobile and other devices.

Video Game Sales Hit Lowest Level Since 2006

August 2010 console video game sales fell to their lowest level in four years, according to NPD Group. The belief that sales had begun to recover, based on numbers from late spring and early summer, has proved to be wrong.

U.S. video game sales dropped 10 percent to $1.6 billion compared with August of 2009, according to NPD Group.

One has to wonder whether mobile and online gaming is starting to displace some amount of demand for console games. It would be easy to blame the recession, which undoubtedly has had some effect. But the popularity of games in the Apple App Store, if any indication, suggests people now are spending more time with simpler games they can play on the go.


According to the NPD Group, 20 percent of the U.S. population ages six and older reports having played a game on a social network in the past three months.  That suggests 56.8 million U.S. consumers were social gamers in the quarter.

About 35 percent of social network gamers say they are new to gaming, never having  participated in any other type of gaming before they started playing games on social networks. Females and older age groups are more likely to be new gamers than other groups measured in the study.

Interestingly, despite the perception that social network gamers are primarily females, the study finds that social network gamers are fairly evenly divided between genders, at 47 percent male, and 53 percent female.

"Although 35 percent of social network gamers are new to gaming, it's clear that a lot of existing gamers have been drawn into the social network gaming arena as well," said Anita Frazier, Industry Analyst, The NPD Group. "This impacts both the time they spend with other types of gaming, as well as the amount of money they’re spending on gaming. As more players are drawn into these games, the entire games industry is going to feel, and have to adjust to, the impact."

While you can play these games for free, it is worth noting that 10 percent of social network gamers have spent real money playing these games and 11 percent indicate that they are likely to make a future purchase.  Social network games are also impacting spending on other types of gaming activities as gamers report spending 20 percent less on gaming overall since they started playing social network games.

Video Game Sales Hit Lowest Level Since 2006

Game-Capable Mobile Sales to Swamp Game Consoles, Handhelds

Sales of game consoles and hand-held gaming devices will be swamped by sales of game-capable mobile devices over the next four yeas, according to analysts at iSuppli.

That probably does not mean that mobile devices will displace the existing game console market, anymore than tablet PCs will replace laptops or smartphones will replace laptops. More likely is the creation and growth of new use cases for mobile devices that extend gaming, but in ways adapted to the form factor and user interface a mobile offers.

Natal Now is Kinect

Kinect, formerly Project Natal, uses a camera for Xbox 360 that tracks a game player in three-dimensional space, tracking 48 points on a body and providing a more-realistic gaming input capability. The infrared camera improves the quality of input to a game program in somewhat the same way that a Wii controller does.

Think of tracking user response to a volleyball lob, for example.

What Is Xbox 360 Kinect?

"Bulk Up or Sell" Key for Telcos, Media

The big global media and telecom companies face very similar business issues in some of their key lines of business. International calling rates are getting so competitive that only large players with scale will have the mass to make a go of it, says Stephan Beckert, Telegeography head of research.

Likewise, media comapnies such as like Vivendi, Time Warner and News Corp. are investing very heavily in gaming. In fact, some observers suspect that gaming will grow to be the biggest media business in time, and will and supplant older media to a significant degree. That is sort of the same position telephone companies find themselves facing with their core voice businesses.

Gaming is set to grow 40 percent in two years, many project. And bulk really confers advantages in game publishing, which has massive scale economics. A publisher that can guarantee over a million sales, with global distribution and quality marketing, has an immense advantage over a publisher that struggles to get to half a million sales.

Much the same sort of thing is happening in the U.S. competitive local exchange carrier industry as well, where scale has started to assume a key role as well. Basically, every executive has to decide whether to be a strategic seller or buyer.