- Good interview of Steve Allison, Midway’s Chief Marketing Officer. Some interesting anecdotes about concept testing, PR, and branding.
- The attach rate for Xbox Live amongst Xbox 360 users is now 60%, with 75% of connected customers using Marketplace, and 65% using Arcade.
- The University of California at Santa Cruz will offer a computer science degree tailored toward video-game design. Courses in art and narration will supplement technical classes.
- Ravi Purushotma, one of our graduate students, has some really neat thoughts on using properties like Neopets for educational purposes in Asia. He’s even found a way to make product placements (a big part of Neopets) work in an educational context.
- Mobile game market statistics:
- 53% of mobile games have been actively downloaded
- The most important purchase influencers are price, availability of demo, and familiarity with the game through other platforms. (Recall that Magid’s study of the non-mobile market found recommendations from friends to be far more important than game demos.)
