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There was an interesting story yesterday about BBC's Top Gear teaming up with Polyphony, the creations of the racing video game Gran Turismo. The deal involves Top Gear providing program content for the new Gran Turismo channel (I assume this is part of an extended TV network that Sony Playstation is building) and adding the show's unique test track to the Gran Turismo video game.

The channel will launch some time in 2008.

Clearly, it's an example of TV networks reaching out to ensure their content gets distributed as widely as possible. With certain audiences spending more and more time with video games, the seamless integration of additional content onto gaming platforms makes a great deal of sense, especially given the ability of the consoles to handle HD.

It's probably safe to assume that all kinds of media tie-ups will happen and be integrated into games, especially with the sports franchises sharing highlight reels and the like with their gaming partners.

It also suggests that brands might have the opportunity to generate more interesting content within and with video games than just placing their product in the game.


Posted by Ed Cotton In case you weren't aware, the World Cyber Games in Seattle just finished this Sunday, it's basically the Olympics of video games with competitions in Warcraft, Gears of War, Project Gotham Racing and more. In these games, contestants represent their countries. The tournament ended with USA on top of the medals table, followed by Brazil and South Korea. 

Here's a great interview with Geoff Robinson, a Team USA cyber athlete, who plays Starcraft for his country and claims his biggest challenges are getting his roomate to pay the internet bill and finding six hours a day to practice.

Sadly, the interview is cut a little early, just when Geoff starts to explain how he managed to take advantage of his dad's business trip to travel to a tournament.




Posted by Ed Cotton So much has been written on the Internets about Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer game, World of Warcraft, that it has acquired the appearance of ubiquity in America. We read that the game has 9 million "subscribers" and that its appearance on South Park puts the finishing touches on the game's march into the American mainstream. Last year, a new meme got started that WoW is the new golf because some set of people use it to network. We thought it might be fun to do an actual comparison between WoW and golf.

Golf is a fairly popular sport in the US, although nowhere near the level of basketball, football, or baseball. There are several estimates floating around out there, but we'll go with 26 million Americans who play golf at least once a year. That's about 8% of the US population, and among certain populations (cough, old white guys) the game's penetration is undoubtedly much higher.

How does WoW stack up to a true mainstream American hobby like golf? There are a lot of bad numbers about how many Americans truly play World of Warcraft. We scarequoted "subscribers" in the lead because it is a stretch of the definition to include Chinese players under that label. Chinese players use prepaid cards that do not recur like a subscription. This is important because the majority of WoW players are Chinese. Blizzard's Chinese partner, the9, stated on May 22nd that over 7.5 million Chinese accounts had been activated, although it's likely that a couple million accounts have lapsed. Because most writers and bloggers aren't digging into the facts, it lends WoW a purported popularity that stretches beyond its factual penetration.

So how many American players are there? Well, the best metric we've got is the number of people who bought the Burning Crusade expansion. Traditionally, expansions have sold to a very high percentage of a user base and very quickly. In its first month on the market, WoW sold about 1.8 million copies for North American regions. Let's assume that 70% of North American subscribers would purchase the expansion within its 1st month on the market. Doing the math, we arrive at about 2.6 million North American subscribers, or less than 1% of the American population.

No one disputes that what World of Warcraft has done is unprecedented in Western markets. WoW has about 5 times as many Western subscribers as any MMOG before it. But it's worth getting the facts right. At times, it has seemed that Internet media have talked up World of Warcraft like a Northeastern prep school newsletter promoting squash (500,000 players) as equivalent to football (18 million players). But let's be intellectually honest. According to the National Golf Foundation, there are more non-white golfers (3.4 million) in the US than total WoW players.

Blogs and other internet media can provide distribution to a wider variety of opinions than are normally expressed in the much-reviled mainstream media. But it's also possible that the echo-chamber effect of the blogosphere ends up promoting an equally narrow set of ideas, the same tired suit merely tailored for a younger, tech savvy audience.

But because I believe in replacing bad ideas with better ideas and I don't want all the Warcraft hordes to crucify me, let me update the golf analogy with a better one. WoW could actually be the new surfing. With a comparable number of American participants (2.8 million surfers), the sport's strangeness and popularity among a cool subset of the American population (young, male, high advertising value) has led it into the mainstream consciousness, if not mainstream usage. While remaining a niche activity (indeed, that's part of its branding), it has spawned a lingo and a fashion and a lifestyle, all of which it could be argued WoW is too. It's not a bad model: the 2006 surfing market was recently estimated at about $7.5 billion.

Written by Alexis Madrigal, a former gaming analyst who blogs at the rather excellent Consumer Conspicuous. Writer, producer, and consumerist, he is a product of Ridgefield, WA (pop. 3000) and Harvard’s English department. Trained as an analyst, he is interested in consumers with limitations—children, the poor, rural residents, housewives, the elderly, non-English speakers—and their uses of interactive entertainment. 

Posted by Ed Cotton Gaming is about to undergo a major revolution; the success of Nintendo’s Wii has woken publishers, developers and the console manufacturers to the potential reality of a genuine mass market.

Everyone loves to play, but for too long gaming has defined itself and marketed to the stereotypical teenage male gamer and missed out on the rest of the population.

John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA acknowledged this problem in a recent interview.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play.”

Here are a couple of interesting new gaming initiatives, including one one from EA.

1. Newsgames

Persuasive Games recently signed a deal with the New York Times to provide newsgames for the publishing giant. The first game, Food Import Folly explores the issue of FDA food inspections.

Gaming for Times readers, who would have thought?

2. User-Generated Fashion games

H&M and EA teamed up for The Sims to allow users to integrate H&M fashions into their game play. Instead of turning to Second Life, H&M turned to an established brand franchise to create an interactive experience.

With a branded Sims Pack, users also have the opportunity to see new designs, check out virtual stores and create their own designs, with H&M showcasing the best concepts in virtual fashion shows.  

H&M’s effort is a nice integration of user-generated content, brand experience and gaming.

Expect to see more innovation from the gaming world as it tries to broaden its audience base and as advertisers chase after opportunities to engage with consumers in new and more playful ways.



Posted by Ed Cotton Peter Moore, VP of Xbox, in a recent Bloomberg interview, higlighted the need to expand his brand's franchise.

``If we don't make that move, make it early and expand our demographic, we will wind up in the same place as with Xbox 1, a solid business with 25 million people,'' said Peter Moore, a vice president who oversees the Xbox. ``What I need is a solid business with 90 million people.''

The Wii has changed the gaming landscape and it's competitors are finally starting to pay attention.

It will be interesting to see if Nintendo can maintain its momentum, if Xbox can realistically re-position itself as a family machine, without alienating it's core audience and if Sony can get back into the race.

The game is far from over in this category.

Posted by Ed Cotton