Video Games

Nintendo Wii gets catering channel in Japan

The new Japanese Wii Catering Channel (Demae Channel) lets you point and click your way to food delivery right from your Nintendo Wii.

There are categories for pizza, noodles, sandwiches, curry, burgers, chicken, and many other snacks, complete with visual menus that let you select toppings and save your orders for next time.

Food is a national obsession in Japan, but as far as I know delivery isn't as common as in other big cities, such as New York. I suspect Wii players will be able to easily rationalize ordering a meal to augment all the calories they burn … Read more

Next innovation? When in-game ads and virtual goods merge

In a recent report, research firm Screen Digest says that in-game advertising will hit $1 billion by 2014. Not bad, but nowhere near virtual goods, which may already be worth $5 billion in Asia alone.

Virtual goods have a low barrier to entry but a huge swath of virtual-world competition is trying to monetize users. Game play, branding, and the overall offering have to all mesh for virtual goods to sell well.

In-game advertising is complex and there are a few major players that control the games, consoles, and monetization, putting up some serious barriers to entry. To date, most … Read more

Crossing the Facebook border with social games

Social game company Playfish, best known for games on Facebook, has (finally) launched its popular PetSociety game on its own Web site. With nearly 11 million monthly users, Pet Society is an interesting case of Facebook's network effect allowing a third party to monetize users extremely well.

Using Facebook Connect, visitors can play directly on the Petsociety.com Web site, removing the the forced interaction with Facebook itself. You do still have to login, but you aren't forced to play games as part of the Facebook "experience"--rather you can interact with the game and other … Read more

Battle robots prepare to take over the world (video)

Take heed puny humans, our robot overlords are practicing and things don't look good for us. Videos of "Kondo Battle" show how Kondo kit robots fight to the death.

… Read more

Biggest sellers in the virtual world

Virtual goods are providing very high-margin sales for many internet companies. According to PaidContent.org, Chinese portal Tencent pulled in nearly $1 billion last year from the sale of virtual goods, while Facebook earns between $50 million and $100 million (your mileage may vary on these estimates). Recently Hi5 Networks made the move to include far more virtual goods as part of its social-networking site.

Obviously every site is a bit different, but there are two common threads of items that people seem ready to pay for:

Customization of the environment -- page decorations and other things that provide some kind of status in the game Enhancements to games -- if you can't beat them, you can just pay for items

Of course, there are many other possibilities--virtual gifts play a big role in Facebooks' revenue and I believe there is a huge market for goods such as baseball cards and other tradeable real-world/virtual world crossovers.

Looking at three of the top virtual goods companies, Rory Maher outlined how they make money. … Read more

EA to focus on PC games and digital distribution

If there is any market more confusing than enterprise software, it's the world of video games. Enterprise vendors are constantly trying to reinvent themselves to support new technologies to maintain their market positions and large game companies like EA are trying to evolve with the way consumers play games. And being the 800-pound gorilla in the space means that the company has a better chance than most in weathering a storm.

Accordingly, it appears that EA has begun to sound the death knell of game consoles, highlighting PC games and digital distribution as recent high-growth areas. Of course, this … Read more

Addicted: When gamers become gamblers

A new study suggests that video games are highly addictive, with game addicts showing more than half of the same traits as those addicted to gambling.

Researchers at Iowa State University and the National Institute on Media and the Family studied 1,178 American children and teenagers, aged 8 to 18, and found that addicted gamers played video games 24 hours a week, twice as much as casual gamers.

Some gamers have shown similar symptoms to those suffering from gambling addiction, including:

Lying to family and friends about how much they play games Using the games to escape their problems … Read more

Video game sales hit the wall in March

New March sales data from NPD Group reveals that video game sales are finally being hit (and hit hard) by the recession. Despite a strong showing through February, March sales across the board dropped by 15 percent to 18 percent year over year from 2008 to 2009.

As reported on Gamespot.com:

Although unnerving on their own, NPD's March numbers also signaled a more alarming trend. When taken into account, the month's numbers caused 2009's first-quarter game sales to go from solid growth to a near flat line. For the January-March period, the U.S. game industry … Read more

Second Life's economy is the envy of the real world

Virtual world Second Life is out with its Q1 2009 Economic Report and things are looking up. In fact, Second Life economics look much better than the real world.

Users are spending much more time on the site despite a drop in land ownership. In an interview with CNET News, Linden Labs CEO Mark Kingdon estimated "user-to-user monetary transactions in Second Life may hit $450 million in 2009, up from $350 million."

An overall mood of increasing optimism - A number of factors drove the growth in the Second Life economy in Q1 2009: an increase in active … Read more