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Forget Web 2.0.  Think twice about Internet video? Is gaming the next big frontier for investors and entertainment media companies alike?  It’s sure starting to look that way; even for those late to the party.  From Venture Investors to Big Media, gaming seems hot all over.

The sector has been hot for a while but in the past few months the temperature continues to rise.  Retail sales of consoles and games are returning consistently impressive results well ahead of the holiday season.  More than 68m people played a console game in June worldwide.  According to a report released Tuesday from market research firm DFC Intelligence, the cumulative worldwide “interactive entertainment industry” is on track to grow about 9% per year to reach $47b by 2009 (from $33billion in 2006).  Other market data firms are similarly bullish: Gartner has predicted mobile gaming revenue will hit $9.6b by 2011.  IDC predicts Internet connected consoles will generate revenue upwards of $10b by 2011, up from $981 in 2007.

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After spending eighteen months in “stealth mode,” and burning through a chunk of $17m in funding, a little Texas startup called Ripcode Monday came out of hiding with a bang.  The company, which has been developing a network appliance for encoding video data streams, formally introduced their product and also announced they’d signed a whale of a first customer: MySpace.

For every well run startup there is always one question, one market problem that they are aiming to fix.  For Ripcode it’s been about efficiency and cost effectiveness.  Their question was how can an enterprise which hosts Internet video re-encode the files in a cheaper and more efficient way. Click to Read More

In early August the NY Post ran a story citing “sources briefed on the matter” saying that rival NY paper, The Times would discontinue their paid subscription service Times Select.  The rumor fell into the category of “more likely true than not” but for the last month it languished without update or official comment. Now it’s official. Times Select is done. Effective midnight Tuesday Times Select will cease being selective and revert to freely available, publicly accessible content. 

The Select service began two years ago as a value added service. They charged $49.95 a year (or $7.95 a month) for online access to the work of some columnists.  Click to Read More

In digital music retail there is Apple in one corner and then there is everybody else.  Apple’s iTunes store accounts for approximately seventy percent of the market.  The runner up, eMusic, has less than ten percent. This week eMusic’s hoping to get a few more customers, especially from older demographics, with the introduction of audiobook downloads starting Tuesday.

eMusic’s book formula will follow the same recipe the company has used for songs.  The books will be sold via subscription in an unrestricted MP3 format (e.g. free of digital rights management encryption) at lower than average prices per title.   The absence of DRM technology will insure their offerings Click to Read More

More and more well funded startups seem to be aimed at creating portals for internet video.  Brightcove, one of the best capitalized of video centric startups, is going the other way and distancing themselves.   While the company has been running their own video site for the past year, today it was reported they are shifting internal resources to instead focus on greater development of their technology platform and distribution services.  Their video portal, which has been up for a year,  will remain at Brightcove.TV as “something that runs itself” said Brightcove VP of marketing Adam Berrey but the company is “not trying to become the next YouTube.”   The companies priorities are elsewhere.

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Every month gaming analysts wait for retail sales statistics like others sit anxiously in wait for interest rate news from the Fed. Thursday, they got their monthly relief when NPD, North America’s primary source of game-retail statistics, released its sales figures for August. As seems to consistently be the case, and the story for the year, the numbers handedly beat expectations and continue to validate projections that the industry is growing revenue at an astonishing rate.

For August, Nintendo continued its reign as king of the consoles and portables. Click to Read More

Around industry a number of financings have closed in the past week.  Tallying it up and presenting them all at once, here’s the round up of who got cash:

Kewego –a European video sharing site based in Paris raised $6.9m in a second round led by Banxei venture Partners and CDC Enterprises.  The company has local video sharing sites in 10 European countries. They also provide digital signage, enterprise video syndication and advertising services.

Audiokinetic – a company providing game developers with software tools, notably middleware, for creating audio soundtracks for video games raised Click to Read More