Programming

Well no shit, it took them this long to figure it out? But anyway, here’s the full article. It’s from the folks who still haven’t realized that DVRs have impacted viewing habits:

LOS ANGELES, April 7 /PRNewswire/ — How are the demographics of gamers
evolving, how much do they spend each month on games and competitive
entertainment media, what platforms and genres do they prefer, what motivates
a purchase of new platforms such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP or next
generation hardware like Xbox2 and PS3, and what sources of information drive
awareness are among the questions answered in an industry-first benchmark
report, the first installment of this bi-annual study being released today by
Nielsen Entertainment’s Interactive Group.

    Among the key findings, evidence that:

     * Gamers are growing beyond the traditional 8-34 year-old male target;
     * Women, Hispanics and African-Americans are an underserved and emerging
       market for interactive entertainment;
     * For males, spending on games has become the 2nd ranked purchased
       category behind DVDs and in front of CDs, MP3 and music purchases;
     * Women and older adults are playing games in increasing numbers;
     * Graphics dominate as a significant motivation for purchase of specific
       titles and next generation hardware;
     * There is a strong connection between DVD and game consumption to be
       exploited in marketing and cross-promotion;
     * While Caucasians report spending the most money per month on DVDs,
       African-Americans and Hispanics report spending more money per month on
       games and mobile services.

    Andy Wing, CEO of Nielsen Entertainment said, “As interactive
entertainment aims to take a more central place in the ecology of the living
room, we will continue to monitor consumer awareness and purchase interest of
next-generation consoles, and more broadly, the ways in which all consumers
are responding to competing forums for their leisure time.”
    The report is a first for the interactive entertainment space, a medium
which has flourished among the young male demographic and has until today,
been guided more by instinct and technology than empirical data. The results
of this first study and the forthcoming second installment in Q3′05 will
assist developers, marketers and interactive entertainment sales executives in
strategy and planning decisions, in addition to providing the entertainment
industry more broadly with a clear picture of video games today and their
potential as a thriving entertainment medium in the not so distant future.

    Highlights From Video Game Industry Benchmark Report
    The Benchmark report found that nearly 40% of U.S. households own at least
one of the following game systems for game play — PC, home console or
handheld device. In terms of cross ownership, the study found that 23% of
gamers own all three types of gaming devices — PC, console and handheld;
among those who own a gaming device, 89% own a console, 65% own a PC, 36% own
a handheld, Among the respondents who own Playstation 2 (PS2), Xbox or
Nintendo GameCube — 8% own all three popular consoles. The report found that
among those who own one of these three consoles, 57% own a PS2, 39% own an
Xbox and 27% own a GameCube.
    Results from the report suggest that the use of video games as an
entertainment option is directly correlated to overall leisure time
availability: younger gamers reporting the most leisure time and are the most
likely to play games. The Benchmark report also found that 39% of gamers are
female and that nearly 24% of all gamers are over the age of 40.
    “While this reinforces the industry’s traditional targeting towards these
groups, women between the ages of 18 to 24 show relatively high entertainment
expenditure and time availability, suggesting there are opportunities for
publishers to target this consumer,” said Emily Della Maggiora, Vice President
of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment. “African American and Hispanic gamers
appear to be a potentially lucrative (and currently under-served) consumer
target for publishers as these gamers are spending more money to purchase
games and more time to play them compared to total gamers, in general.”
    Overall, active gamers typically spend approximately 5.2 hours playing by
themselves with a large proportion also being spent playing socially (3.07
hours per week with friends and family or online). Among females, the split
between solo and social game play is even more equitable with younger females
13-17 tending to play more with friends or family (54% of the time) and women
25-34 playing almost as much socially as alone. Males and females 45 and older
are markedly different, spending almost all their time (79%) playing alone.
Interestingly, platform-based analysis shows significant variation which is
reflective of Xbox’s emphasis on online game play and multiplayer games. Those
from the study that prefer playing on an Xbox spend as much time playing with
friends and family/online as they do alone (5.49 hours vs. 5.36 hours,
respectively).
    The Benchmark report explored consumer sentiment towards future next
generation devices such as ‘Xbox 2/Xenon’ and the ‘PS3′ home consoles. The
report found that at this point in time consumer response to next generation
consoles is lukewarm and only minimally heightened by decreasing price. Active
gamers who do express some interest in purchasing one of the next generations
consoles indicate that they are more likely to wait some time after release
before purchasing the system. Also important to note is that among the current
consoles, Xbox holds up slightly better than PS2 in retaining consumer
loyalty.
    NIE plans to field its next study in August with results available in
September 2005.

    Methodology
    Through a random digital dial frame (RDD) of over 1500 respondents –
collected in January and February 2005 — the 80-page report delivers key
information on:

     * Gamer demographics
     * Penetration figures for PC, console and handheld games
     * Cross ownership
     * Purchase behavior along with rental and usage behavior
     * Purchase motivators
     * Attitudes towards next generation hardware

    The report also includes special analyses on mobile phone related
entertainment, 2004 holiday purchase insights, and high potential consumer
targets as mentioned above, particularly Female, African-American and Hispanic
gamers.

    About Nielsen Entertainment
    Through custom research, consulting and the world’s most comprehensive
network of entertainment measurement systems and analysis, Nielsen
Entertainment delivers Actionable Entertainment Intelligence to clients
engaged in the business of selling entertainment and trading in the
marketplace of our popular culture.
    Nielsen Entertainment’s AEI products give clients unrivaled perspective
from which to steer business decisions, providing the measure and t
he
motivation in one package; comparing what the consumer says they do and what
they actually do, in any given environment including film, television, music,
books, and interactive media.
    Nielsen Entertainment is comprised of the following businesses: National
Research Group (NRG), EDI and EDI International, Television Services,
SoundScan, Broadcast Data Systems, Aircheck, Music Control, VideoScan, Market
Navigator, BookScan, BookData, and Interactive Entertainment, and utilizes the
full portfolio of sister companies including Nielsen Media Research
(television ratings) and Nielsen Net Ratings (internet usage) to deliver a
whole media point of view. Nielsen Entertainment is part of VNU,
http://www.vnu.com, and a global leader in information services for the media
and entertainment industries.

 

Here’s the best layman’s example of the various RAID drive redundancy levels I’ve ever stumbled across:

By now if you’re reading this post, you’ve already heard about the stunt that the tech gizmo blogging site, Gizmodo, pulled at CES this week. A doodad called TV-B-Gone had fallen into the dolt’s hands, and they had the bright idea to wander around turning off every TV in sight. Now at CES, that’s about every few inches (literally).

Now there’s no debate that CES is a big assed event, with bells and whistles all over the place, rather like the Oscars but for the high tech industry. It’s snobbish, and thinks very highly of itself. What shocks the hell out of me is how many people think that intentionally ruining presentations is a good idea (and in fact rather funny). I would have thought more of the tech community, but obviously perhaps the bloggers aren’t as mature as a community as they’d like to think themselves.

A number of postings all commented that it’s obviously not like pouring a drink over a keyboard, since there’s no physical damage that came from the act. However what they’re failing to see is that the point isn’t that a TV was simply turned off; the point is that people who’s jobs are on the lines (if not the presenters, then the techs who are already frazzled of keeping things running in that environment having system failures). The Motorola attack (yes, boys and girls, it was an attack) was during a press conference – which can directly impact revenues by reporters writing about the ineptitude of the presentation; that gets taken up by partners and clients, and decisions are made. Don’t they get that at it’s core, CES is about those kinds of impressions and deals.

The same people would [probably] have some pause at firing off an air horn at a wedding or a funeral, and this is hardly any different. So we’ve heard that CES will deny them access next year. I truly hope that legal action is also taken by one or more of the companies. This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to have a prescedent set for – Brian Lam should lose a good deal of money, and hopefully a house or two. Something that teaches him that he doesn’t get to pick when vandalism is ok, or endangering other people’s jobs is a good idea.

What would he even think if anyone does or did lose their jobs over this? Would he even lose a wink of sleep? If he’s got something against the CES brass, then have the balls to step up and be honest about it – stand out front and Picket the event, hand out flyers, whatever seems prudent to get his point across. Not hurting those people who’s very livelyhoods may hang in the balance with his stunt.

So, at CES there’s all those zillions of big pretty tv displays, right? Well, what happens when someone gets ahold of a universal IR blaster that turns any tv off and has a field day…

Video for what Gizmodo did at CES

I don’t think they’re going to be getting any more press passes anywhere for a while…

Well I’d really intended to blog as the day went along, but as you can tell it got a bit crazy and I never had a chance.

So, here’s some of the day in recap.

With every year, as you walk around you get a sense of a what the main trends for a year – what the focus is on by a number of companies, and what they’re feeling is going to be the next directions in the various tech industries. It’s often not unlike the french high fashion weeks, and similar to there, often times there’s really no real humans that’ll ever wear the stuff, but it’s cut/lines/colors do set in motion a cascading effect across all price points.

for a starter, let’s chat about a great little R2 unit – actually it comes in two sizes, a large and a small version. Both are fullly operational, move, and make all the expected sound effects. The coolness factor is that the smaller model carries a built-in wireless webcam, and the larger unit is a high definition projection tv unit.

The larger model

The remote for that one

And R2 doing it’s projection routine

Here’s the smaller model and it’s remote (the sabre)

So here’s something fun, this model is wearing a fetching pink force feedback vest (it also comes with a matching helmet) for use when playing first-person shooter games. Whenever you take a hit, you feel a pressure response in the outfit in the proper are of the body. Granted it’s not as severe as the one in the game, but it does add to the experience.

Yes, the alienware wraparound monitor is cool, but it should be noticed that it’s not a flat panel, it’s a smallish tube design, so while you get the cool, it’ll also take up some desk real estate. Theres an interesting shading at edging around the screen at the wrap points, but when you’re right in front of it, you don’t notice them at all. Note to self however, you need the best dual graphics cards to really run it without chop.

What doesn’t warm one’s heart like watching three girls hand some smack talking guys their asses at Unreal Tournament?

These are some of UbiSoft’s FragDolls all-girl pro gaming squad. While they didn’t blank the guys fully, it was pretty much a knockout in the 1st round with blood on the carpet. The girls didn’t even break a sweat. It was great.

Now this little number I just thought was cool, and it was one of a series of digital paintings..

What makes this spiffy is that the frame is emitting a bose sound field of your regular japanese spa sounds of wind and water in the distance very softly, and the brushstrokes of the plants on the image move gently along with it. It’s a simple gizmo, but rather effective.

Microsoft has been pushing their at home servers this CES in a big way. That’s fine, more power to them, but this little baby I found a stack of next to the microsoft booth, and somehow it just seems so wrong…

Capturing the hugeness and awe-inspiring beauty that’s the Pioneer 150″ plasma tv is just something I wasn’t ready for. It’s not just big, it’s elegant, and sexy as hell. Looking over the faces of the audience, you could see the Menfolk all twitching at their inner caveman wanting the bigger stick.
To get an idea of scale, the presenter fellow in the shot is right at 6′ tall. Price? Why worry about such trivial things when in the presense of such majesty. You wouldn’t haggle over the price of a picasso would you? (Note: the picasso would probably be cheaper)

It’s late, and I’m tuckered, but I’ve got to end this off with the most positively bitching (and positivly inspired) piece of tech I saw all day. Yea, there’s all kinds of things out there, but this.. this was just fuck’n awsome: That would be the DLP splitter technology being shown off by Texas Instruments. Unfortunately the pic I’ve got of it will just be a blur, but that’s the glory of it. Remember the polarized lenses that you can use for getting 3d effects on monitors? one eye sees one frame, then the other sees the other interlaced? Well this is such simplicity but sooo effective. They set up the tv/plasma/monitor/whatever (they were demonstrating it on a stock plasma screen), and interlace the signal from a game, with one player seeing one thing, and the other player seeing something else. They both see a perfectly clear, no distortion image, but of the game from their own point of view. The example here is of a car racing game, both players seeing their point of view alone. Think of the end of split screens, where players shouldn’t know what the other is doing. That can finally be accomplished on one screen. As an added kick, the presenter ended one of the players games and switched to watching a dvd movie. The other player was still playing along, but both people still seeing their own thing – the movie looked great, the car game also looked perfect. Think of no more fighting for who gets to watch what show, when you could both be watchin different things at the same time on the same screen. Sorry, but I think it’s just the best thing of the show.

I think that’s about it for now, and I didn’t even get into talking about the trending of the show yet. I’ll get to that tomorrow, or maybe the next day. I fly home tomorrow (wednesday) evening, but wednesday day will be filled with AVN. Yes, I’ll get pics. But they rather all look alike after a while.