Seth Gilbert, 07-11-2007
To date, Elevation Partners has been relatively slow in the deployment of their $1.9b private equity fund. That may be changing. Today, Elevation announced its second deal in as many months.
The media convergence focused private equity firm whose cofounders include Silicon Valley icon Roger McNamee and global icon, U2 singer Bono, announced an agreement to buy the SDI Media Group from fellow private equity firm Warburg Pincus (which acquired SDI in 2004)
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Seth Gilbert,
What’s wrong with this picture: it’s summertime, a humid, sunny Saturday afternoon. Father and son, Mother, daughter, the family, they all pack themselves in the car to fight traffic and parking headaches to go to that venerable of institutions – a professional baseball game. There, the Red Sox are beating the Yankees at Fenway, the fans singing Sweet Caroline. Seats vibrate from the collective noise. The Jumbotron scoreboard announces a birthday. The scent of roasted peanuts fills the air. The crowd does a giant wave. A fly ball goes just foul. Vendors chuck hot dogs and crackerjacks. Cheering kids have their gloves at the ready to catch a foul ball. And you, you’ve brought a video game console?
Video game console? Huh? I don’t remember that in the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." It’s sure not part of the father-son baseball outings I remember.
What it is, however, is a story about the kind of inventive product repurposing that professional product marketers dream about and just such a thing is going on.
Up in Washington, in Mariner country at Safeco field, Nintendo of America is running an experiment with its best selling portable console, the DS Lite. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert,
Way back in February, web retail giant Amazon entered the video download marketplace through a partnership with Tivo. Under the initial terms of that partnership, customers could go to Amazon.com, buy a feature video on the website and designate some combination of devices to download and watch the movie on. Downloads took about an hour (over average broadband connections).
Tuesday morning, Amazon and Tivo announced an improvement to the initial offering with a new version branded “Buy on TV.” This second generation Unbox video offering will bypass the computer. Now, subscribers will be able to buy movies with their TiVo remote controls – no computer needed.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-10-2007
The gaming industry is valued at $37.5b by some measurements and growing. The Asian Pacific market is expected to be nearly $19b by 2011. 81% of American youth play video games at least a month. Despite such staggering numbers, if you read the words of Electronic Arts CEO, all is not rosy. Games are becoming too complex, too involved and alienating the mass-market. Their producers are also failing to innovate. So said John Riccitiello in Yesterdays Wallstreet Journal where he was quoted commenting that the industry is "making games that are harder and harder to play" and that "for the most part, the industry has been rinse and repeat." And he’s right.
Statistics show the competition for leisure time and entertainment is incredibly fierce and even with convergence in hardware (which now include DVD players and Internet connections) helping expand the gaming marketplace in some ways, the same competition is requiring game publishers and developers to tread carefully; mistakes are costly. A missed opportunity to get a game to market (e.g. a gamble on the wrong platform) or a weak showing from a game with expensive development costs could be a heavy drag on revenues for months.
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Seth Gilbert,
Look out ESPN, forget baseball tonight….I’m making my own highlight reel.
Marketers are increasingly embracing new internet technologies and experimenting with new ways to build brands. Today, to coincide with the All Star Game in San Francisco, Major League Baseball is set to expand on marketers use of Internet video with the launch of a new interactive marketing campaign. The Internet home for the multimedia campaign will be a website called Actober.com, which is tagged with the slogan “You’re a fan, Act like one.” On the site, fans will be able use easy embedded tools to create their own highlight films.
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Seth Gilbert, 07-9-2007
In the wake of a week where Microsoft has been direct about manufacturing issues, Sony has been inconsistent about pricing. A rumor was reported as unconfirmed last week and denied. It’s now being widely reported again and being confirmed.
Sony, which has struggled to gain market-share for its high powered (and the industry’s highest priced) gaming console, will cut prices on its flagship PS3 platform. Effective Thursday, the price for the console will drop by $100 to $499. (It will be the same price as a previously discontinued 20gb model which was phased out in April as a result of poor sales)
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Seth Gilbert,
Peer to peer television over the Internet, a niche of so called IPTV, is an industry in its infancy. That hasn’t stopped investors from making huge bets on its future. So far, combined investments have climbed into the hundred million dollar range (Veoh has received more than $40m and Joost has received $45m). With such high stakes, the three early leaders, Babelgum, Joost and Veoh, are finding themselves in a heated race to capture marketshare as early, and as fast, as possible. Amongst this competition, exclusive content, the kind of “find it only here” video that might lure audiences from a competitor, and help separate the otherwise similar services, is revealing itself to be major part of strategy.
Today, The Hollywood Reporter reports Joost will announce a major exclusive content deal with Viacom’s VH1 sometime this week. According to the initial report, Joost’s 500k member audience will be able to watch the entire premier season of VH1’s new comedy series ten days ahead of the series Television broadcast premier.
The episodes will run with advertising to support them.
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