Microsoft’s Massive announced today it has won multi-year contracts to provide in-game advertising to Activision Blizzard. In doing so, it has landed the big kahuna of the video game business. In separately arranged deals, Massive will provide ads to both Activision’s line of games as well as the Blizzard Entertainment division. Massive’s deal with Activision will cover 18 games, including Guitar Hero: World Tour, James Bond: Quantum of Solace, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and Tony Hawk. Massive, which is holding its annual partner event in New York today, also said that JJ Richards, general manager of platform services for...
I guess they should rename the company Blizzard Activision. In any case, Activision Blizzard scored big time with the launch of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Published by Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard Entertainment division, the online game expansion for WoW players sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours. That’s a big chunk of WoW’s 11 million subscribers, which suggests an unusually high enthusiasm for the game, nicknamed “Warcrack” because of its addictiveness. Activision Blizzard said this makes the expansion pack the fastest-selling PC game in history. The previous record was set in January 2007, when Blizzard...
CBS Drops Moblogic; network stops creating new episodes; host Lindsay Campbell is still under contract with CBS, but evaluating new opportunities. (Moblogic: MediaMemo; Campbell: Beet.TV) Netflix on Xbox Missing Sony Movies; omission not because of ill will between competing game console makers, rather Netflix didn’t get the proper licensing work done. (CNET) Adconion Buys KTV Digital Media; acquisition will be used to create branded entertainment division to make content for advertising partners. (TVWeek) Queen Rania of Jordan Receives YouTube Visionary Award; the queen honored for her work encouraging youth to overcome stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs. (Variety) NBC Kicks Off...
Kathy Vrabeck has resigned as head of Electronic Arts' Casual Entertainment division, GameDaily reports, just 18 months after taking on the role during a massive reorg. Vrabeck is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, and her division, which was created to oversee the development and maintenance of properties like Pogo.com will be folded into the EA unit that handles The Sims franchise. Rod Humble, EVP and head of The Sims label, will lead the new combined unit, which also now includes oversight of EA's relationship with toy-maker Hasbro. Meanwhile: —Chip Lange will continue to head up the Hasbro division...
Sling Media, the place- and time-shifting device company that is now owned by Echostar (NSDQ: SATS), is launching something that seems counter-intuitive on the face of it: a free, ad-supported online video portal aggregating video from various professional sources like TV networks, studios and other independents. Sling.com will launch as a video portal on Nov 24. Anyone can use the site—they don't have to be a Slingbox user/subscriber, though if they do have it, they can plug that into Sling.com site, and watch live TV through their own TV boxes (like they do now through their online accounts, only in...
As we well know, Tony Fadell, the former exec in charge of Apple’s iPod division, has stepped down for personal reasons and Apple has hired Mark Papermaster, the PowerPC chip guru in IBM’s hardware business. We’ve been discussing the move and there are a few reasons for choosing someone from IBM to lead what is, in reality, an entertainment division. First, iPods are now essentially mini computers and devices like the iPhone and the Touch are running homegrown hardware - basically stripped down ARM chips made popular by PDAs from the turn of the century - and containing communications...
Earlier this morning, Rich Greenfield, the scary smart media analyst at Pali Capital, slashed his price target on News Corp to $20 from $27, citing big concerns over slowing advertising revenues for newspaper and television stations. And since this is a global problem, there is little room for News Corp to hide. He is forecasting a 1.5 percent decline in revenues for News Corp.’s newspaper business, a 9.5 percent decline in its TV revenues and a 7.8 percent decline in revenues at its filmed entertainment division. Greenfield cut his earnings and overall revenue estimates on the media behemoth as well....
The original “Starcraft” is one of the most successful video games of all time. The sci-fi real-time strategy game debuted more than a decade ago and had sold more than nine million copies as of the spring of last year. No doubt the sales would have been even bigger if the game had global distribution from the start. With years of experience in China behind it, the game publisher now looks like it will be aggressive about launching the game early in China. Now the time is nigh for the sequel from the Blizzard Entertainment division of Activision Blizzard. The...
Playboy Enterprises, one of the oldest names in adult entertainment, is having a hard time coping with the glut of online porn and the grim economic environment. "[It] has been and will remain a difficult year," said Christine Hefner, chairman and CEO, in a statement. Just how bad is it? The company posted a net loss of $2.1 million in the second quarter, down from a profit last year. Playboy's entertainment division posted a modest second-quarter profit of $1.8 million, down from $7.3 million last year; and entertainment-based sales slipped by $10.6 million to $41.2 million. The company still...
Just recently, we talked about Yahoo’s unceremonious end to their DRM servers for music downloaded via the service. Today, though, they announced that they’re taking another step forward towards openness and releasing an API for their music service. The music API gives any web application developers the ability to access the metadata associated with their artist catalog, as well as a host of other bits of played-music history data that is associated with individual user accounts. The API is REST-based (like the Twitter API, for example), and returns XML, JSON and RSS data, depending on developer preference. Don’t think...
The funeral for the DVD is going to have to be put off for a bit longer. Sales slumped last year, for the first time ever, and the decline was supposed to accelerate in 2008. But Netflix (NFLX) just turned in a nice quarter and says it can't see any slowdown ahead. And Pali Research's Rich Greenfield, who's been (loudly) bearish on the business for a while, now says he's wrong: Earlier this month he upgraded his FY estimate from a drop to "flat". Now he thinks that number is too conservative (reg required). What's happened? Part of it, Rich...
Apparently Netflix is closing down their Red Envelope Entertainment division. It had invested in more than 100 films including “John Waters: This Filthy World,” “Sherry Baby,” and “The Giant Buddhas” (which we just saw and highly recommend.) Over 75 employees will lose their jobs because of the change. One of the reasons we dig Netflix is because they feature Indy films, so maybe we can deluge the company with e-mails and save them. Tags: independent movies (T), indy film (T), movies (T), netflix (T), red envelope entertainment (T) Read More | Hacking Netflix...
Is Kazu Hirai, CEO of Sony’s Computer Entertainment division just bullish on the future performance of his own products or is a recent statement of his a case of wishful thinking? Interviewed by the Financial Times, Hirai said his vision for the PS3 is to outperform the PS2 sales-wise by 2015. So far, the PS2 (released in 2000) has been sold over 140 million times world wide. The Playstation 3 made its debut in America and Japan in 2006 and found 14.27 million buyers worldwide after 20 months. However, in order to fulfill Hirai’s dreams Sony would have to sell...
Shopflick Gets $7 Million; the shopping site gets Series A led by Panorama Capital and Venrock and is no longer in private beta. (TechCrunch) Babelgum Gets the Beeb; BBC Worldwide to provide clips from shows like Tribe, Top Gear and documentaries from David Attenborough. (Babelgum Blog) SAG Still Angling for Better Deal; despite the studios’ stance on their final offer, the two sides resume talks today. (Reuters) Flywire Wireless HDMI Gets Pricing and Availabilty; device wirelessly transmits uncompressed HD video and audio, will cost $1,000 for multi-room unit available in October. (CNET) Velocix Launches P2P+; company says the technology blends...
