Happy New Year! 2010 already?

It seems like forever since I last blogged. That can be explained. From Carlsbad to Redwood City, it has been a busy time since joining Xfire’s marketing and business development team in June. Xfire is an interesting company located in Menlo Park and situated at the forefront of video game marketing. We run targeted advertising campaigns and events. I write and publish website data, content, and create post campaign analytical reports. These past couple months we’ve been getting ready for a gameplay video contest like none other- the “Video Capture Awards,” a gameplay video festival uniting gamers and publishers in an unprecedented “machinima” competition.

Confirmed. Sony is launching a new ad campaign surrounding the PS3.

The Choice is easy?

Today Microsoft announced they are cutting the price of the Xbox 360 Elite to $299, signaling the beginning of a mini price war. The announcement comes on the heals of Sony’s PS3 price cut a week ago in Cologne, Germany.  Effective Friday August 28, the $100 price cut puts the PS3 slim and Xbox 360 in a position to vie for gamers this holiday season and marks the first time this console cycle that gamers will be able to choose between equally priced consoles. As part of the price cut, however, Microsoft will no longer offer an HDMI cable. Online play remains free on the PS3 and $50/year on Xbox Live.  360 slim rumors were denied.

Eugene, OR- I’m packing my bags, yes I am. For the Summer Games are on!*

As competitive sports video gaming continues to grow, video games are spilling back over into sport, creating interesting mutations. Combining e-sports, brain games, and athletic events under the moniker of “Team Sports,” law students from the University of Oregon are having one last summer bash before classes begin. Friday marks the beginning of the Summer Olympics 2K9, a curious two-day social event that fuses gaming and physical competition.

Introducing LudoGrind Arcade, entertaining escape from pixelated boredom.

A few months ago, I got to thinking it would be nice to have an arcade on the site featuring Filler, one of my favorite flash games. In an attempt to make that happen, installed a few plugins, ran it by SimianLogic and voila, ludogrind is flash compatible! 

Filler 2 by SimianLogic: The object of the game is to fill 2/3 of the screen with filler balls. Click to expand a ball. If a ball collides while you are expanding the ball, it will burst and you will have one less ball. Easy at first, addictive always!

Play It Now!

Do gamers risk poor health?

G4 reports that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has taken a look at the health hazards associated with playing video games and found that addicts are fat and sad. Emerging Health Threats suggest that the hazards of playing video games are not limited to children. The CDC has found a correlation between gaming and health risks in a sample of 500 adults living in the Seattle-Tacoma area. However, correlation does not mean causation as Dr. Primack points out in the study, “people’s lifestyles are getting more sedentary, but maybe games are an effect rather than a cause.”  But why then have people become so much more inactive?  If TV and video game entertainment is not to blame, what role do video games play as coping mechanism? How do we explain the positive and negative affects of video games and their exploding popularity?

Cologne, Germany- 30-30-30. As anticipated, Sony has slashed the price of the PS3 gaming console $100 from $399 to $299, effective immediately. Sony has also introduced a new slimmer, lighter, cheaper, more power efficient PS3, retiring the 80-GB model once sold out. The new model comes with a 120GB hard drive, launches September 1st and will be 36% lighter, 33% slimmer, and 26% cheaper. In an interview with Gamasutra, Eric Lempel, Sony PlayStation Network operations director, explains that a number of changes were made to make the system more affordable.

As dust continues to settle from this year’s E3, analysts’ price-cutting speculation is giving way to a bundle of retail clarity: Sony remains bullish on its stagnant profit strategy amid mounting losses and cost cutting initiatives. Publishers are growing weary. While time reveals all, the PS3 will probably not see a price drop until end of summer at the earliest. Instead, recent leaks from Best Buy and Game Stop reveal a mediocre bundling strategy coupled with an aggressive Experience Playstation Now project aimed to educate and communicate to consumers the inherent value of the powerful, but expensive, sleek, but game deficient $399/$499 priced, black glossy console. Supposedly, Best Buy will receive a “limited edition” 80GB SKU including two games at $399. Game Stop is rumored to offer a limited time Final Fantasy VII Blu-ray 80GB bundle priced at $399.

In recent years, there has become an increasing reliance on metacritic scores as the executive bar of success in the video game industry. There is no question that these scores are transforming the way games are judged and marketed. Not surprisingly, there is ongoing gunslinging between manufacturers, publishers, and developers over which games and platforms are the best in terms of these scores. This is a question that we are very interested to answer, both qualitatively and quantitatively here at LudoGrind. While scores vary tremendously by platform, genre,  publisher, and a plethora of other segments, I figured it would be good to start at the top in terms of overall average scores by platform. On May 1, I took a snapshot:

Via Raph Koster comes word that a gang of Internet café bullies in China have been convicted of cyber extortion surrounding major Chinese web portal, Tencent. Accused of stealing Tencent QQ coins valued at 100,000 yuan ($14,000), the court ruled that the virtual goods, since purchased, constituted a legitimate case of extortion. The ring leader got three years in jail while the three accomplices received fines.

Koster notes that this is not surprising given the substantial size of the industry in China, estimated to be 25 times the size of the US market. See link for report and slide show.