Pay Someone to be Your Avatar

This is an amazing development. In just a couple of years, outsourcing has come to games. Busy people with money are paying other less busy people to accumulate points - that can be traded for benefits, prestige, and sometimes real money. They are hiring people in China and elsewhere to operate their avatar or digital persona
while they pursue their career or other interests.

Digital serfs thus work to advance the interest of their liege lord, or employer. If many are hired, the digital organization takes on the appearance of a gang, or perhaps a medieval guild.

Casual Games for Women Exceed other gaming Experiences

Online Casual Game play becomes largest part of the game universe....also please note that 64% of those players are female.



Of the 117 million active gamers in the U.S., 56 percent play games online. Sixty-four percent of those online gamers are female, according to results of the survey, released by Nielsen Entertainment on Thursday.

The survey defined active gamers as those who are 13 years or older, own at least one game device, and play at least one hour of video games a week. Game devices include game consoles, personal computers and handhelds. Nielsen surveyed 2,200 active gamers online in July.

"The expansion of next-generation hardware and technology in the marketplace is simultaneously delivering new ecosystems of social exchange, interactive entertainment, media experiences and advertising models," Emily Della Maggiora, a senior vice president of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, said in a statement.

The survey found that while the casual game segment is growing, casual gamers tend to jump from one free demo to another with little sense of brand loyalty. While banner advertising provides a good revenue stream for the online game providers, gaining brand loyalty and getting people to spend money for subscriptions or downloads will be the key to growing the market, Nielsen researchers found.

Currently, casual gamers spend $9 a month on games. Those playing multiplayer online role-playing games spend an average of $26 a month, while Microsoft Xbox 360 gamers spend $35 a month, the survey found.

Futuristic Door Hugs the Body

Take a look at this futuristic door that hugs the body

Gaming Golden Age?

A golden age of gaming....according to a poster in slashdot.

Nintendo Projects Wii System will Find Success with Women and Seniors (Bloomberg)

Nintendo Says Women, Elderly Key to Wii Game Player
By Kyoko Suzuki and Kanoko Matsuyama

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co. (PK: NTDOY) said its new Wii game console, an easy-to-use player that can also trawl the Internet, may win over millions of first-time video gamers, helping the company reclaim the market lead from Sony Corp.

``We want to appeal to mothers who don't want consoles in their living rooms, and to the elderly and to young women,'' President Satoru Iwata said in an interview. ``It's a challenge, like trying to sell cosmetics to men.''

Nintendo's Wii will compete with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 for a bigger share of the $20 billion global game-console market, which the Kyoto, Japan-based company hasn't led since 1994. The Wii features a TV-remote-size controller that players can brandish like a sword or swing like a racket, with the movements replicated onscreen.

``Wii definitely could become the most popular console of all time,'' said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Tokyo-based video-game researcher Enterbrain Inc. ``Non-gamers can see how fun it is just by looking at people playing it, and that's very different from the PS3 or Xbox 360.''

The features may help the company win customers faster than its current offering, the Nintendo DS portable player, Iwata said on Sept. 14 in Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo. ``If we can do this, the Wii could break all the boundaries in terms of user rates for game consoles,'' he said.

Shares of Nintendo, the world's biggest maker of handheld game players, gained 0.5 percent to 22,460 yen at the 11 a.m. break in Tokyo. The stock rose 58 percent this year, beating Sony's 2.5 percent gain. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 0.9 percent in the same period.

Male Players

Some 62 percent of game players are male, the U.S.-based Entertainment Software Association said on its Web site. About 26 percent, or 31 million people, in Japan play video games, according to the country's Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association.

Nintendo will start selling the Wii, pronounced ``we,'' on Nov. 19 in the U.S. and on Dec. 2 in Japan. It will sell for $249.99, half the $499 Sony plans to charge for the cheapest PlayStation 3, which goes on sale in Japan on Nov. 11.

Microsoft's Xbox 360, released last November, retails for no more than $399 for a version with a hard disk. The company will begin selling a cheaper model without a hard disk in Japan for 29,800 yen ($252) from Nov. 2.

``We are not battling Sony or Microsoft,'' Iwata said. ``Our enemy is consumer indifference to games.''

Next-Generation TV

Nintendo has included a raft of features, including software that allows buyers to create characters resembling themselves by tapping a database of facial features. The player will provide weather information, news and an Internet browser, all of which may attract non-gamers to use the console, Iwata said.

"Wii is the first machine that has the potential to truly prompt people to use the Internet on their television," said Tokyo-based Nomura Securities Co. analyst Eiichi Katayama, who rates Sony "neutral" and doesn't have a rating on Nintendo. "It could turn into the next-generation television."

Nintendo lost the top position in the global gaming industry after Sony started selling the PlayStation in 1994, and its market share fell further with the debut of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox in 2002.

The PlayStation 2, introduced in March 2000, is the world's leading game machine, with 106 million units sold.

Still, Nintendo's DS and the slimmer DS Lite accounted for 63 percent of Japanese computer gaming sales in the six months to June 25, according to researcher Enterbrain. New varieties of software, including "Nintendogs," through which users own a virtual puppy, and the quiz challenge, "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!" prompted non-gamers to pick up the DS, Iwata said.

Declining Market

The new offerings from Nintendo and Sony may help revive the Japanese market for game machines, which fell for three straight years until 2004, when the DS and Sony's first handheld players were released. Japan is Nintendo's largest market.

Games for Girls a New Market

No girls allowed in gaming worldBy MIKE STEERE

They come packed with violence, guns, cars, and killing but are video games strictly a hobby for men?


A senior executive of video gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA) has said games are too focused towards men and the female market is being neglected.

Speaking at a conference in London recently, EA's chief operating officer David Gardner said the video games industry was failing to provide for women and missing out on billions of dollars by doing so.

"We are only reaching a small proportion, not only geographically but also genetically."

Gardner felt that the gaming industry needed to look at the film industry example.

"The movie industry doesn't just make films for boys ... Star Wars was the biggest film of all time until Titanic came along. Titanic became the biggest because women went to see it ... multiple times," he said.

If EA managed to break into the female market it "could add a billion dollars to its sales", he said.

Microsoft to Let Anyone Become a Game Developer

In a quest to create a community of games, uses, and gamer developers around the XBOX, Microsoft is releasing software that will enable almost anyone to develop games. According to Microsoft, "new blood" and "new ideas" are needed to create the next generation of games....(Seattle-Times)