Seth Gilbert, 02-5-2009
Operational efficiency is important for any well run business. It’s essential for those trying to work from struggle to success. The Tribune Co, still under the protective umbrella of bankruptcy, will try and get leaner by sharing resources across its properties. The first focus: entertainment.
A joint online entertainment news bureau, apparently to be called “the syndicate” is being created from assets at the LA Times and Zap2it.
According to the company, this new bureau will focus on expanded coverage of movies and TV. “It will leverage writers and reporters from across [Tribune] properties to bring readers constantly updated blogs and other multimedia news on more than 60 top TV shows,” Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 02-4-2009
Much as it seems a wild tangent from core focus, especially given recent financial performance, the news from Redmond today is Microsoft has set up a unit to create original short form video content for the Zune. Microsoft’s gone Hollywood.
“Cinemash,” the first planned release will launch on the Zune marketplace as an eight episode series in May. Crafted in partnership with MEAN Magazine, the program will feature TV and Film actors re-imagining classic Hollywood roles in three to five minute segments. All of the episodes will be free but ad-supported.
Microsoft says they will develop additional pilots over the next twelve months that range in focus from live action to urban and music programming.
Offering platform exclusive content is a strategy that works for selling video game consoles. Microsoft’s relied on it with the Xbox platform (the Halo series has driven sales), and even explored creating exclusive non-game video content for the Xbox Live environment.
Will using the approach here help stimulate demand for a portable media player? There’s no doubt assistance would be appreciated. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 02-3-2009
Amazon was a pioneer in e-commerce. Moving well beyond the books it started with, the company built a strong business around the efficient sale and delivery of most any kind of packaged goods. For its second act, the company now seems intent on achieving nothing less than similar success with the sale of digitally delivered merchandise.
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Seth Gilbert,
The game industry as a sector has been riding out the recession with reasonable success but the performance of individual companies within the industry has been less consistent. Some companies are faring well while others are announcing subpar sales. Electronic Arts announced its Q3 Fiscal 2009 results today and fell in to the category of the latter. EA’s performance was dismal.
Based on GAAP standards, the net loss reported for the quarter was $641m, or $2.00 a share, in the red. That compares to a loss of $33m, or 10 cents a share, for the same period a year ago. Sales, including deferred revenue, would have totaled $1.74b.
Excluding the onetime charges, EA said they would have earned $179m , or 56 cents a share. Analysts had projected 88 cents on revenue of $1.9b; both targets EA failed to hit.
The news wasn’t entirely a surprise. EA reset expectations in early December after Thanksgiving period sales turned out worse than expected. Even so, the shortfall was worse than many anticipated.
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Seth Gilbert, 02-2-2009
They say one person’s trash is another’s treasure. Case in point: Robert Ludlum licensing rights. Not that it is fitting to call the gaming rights for the book catalog of a bestselling author trash, far from it, but when Activision Blizzard decided to cast the rights off, rival Electronic Arts was all too happy to pick them up instead.
EA announced today that they’ve reached a multi-year exclusive license for all of Ludlum’s written works, including the Jason Bourne series.
Vivendi Games previously held the rights. Activision Blizzard, the company that resulted from the merger of Vivendi Games and Activision, decided to orphan its license in July.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-30-2009
Nintendo released its third quarter earnings this week (PDF). Unit sales over the holiday period were great but having to convert overseas purchases from foreign currency to Yen wasn’t. Profits took a hit. It was all largely as expected. Same as the last quarter, mostly. There was one surprise. Unexpectedly, the company made a million unit downward revision on Wii unit sales projections for the full fiscal year and other adjustments to software expectations (DS Hardware was revised upwards).
The downward revision on the Wii ? ….rewind…Holiday sales were record setting. Just a few months ago, in October, the company had upped sales projections for the year ending in March by a million units to 27.5m Wii units. In August they’d increased forecasts as well. The growth was sufficient enough that it prompted the company’s president, Satoru Iwata to say in October it was “safe to say strong game demand is intact despite all the talk about the financial crisis.”
Now carving back the guidance to the prior number of 26.5 million units, even though a relatively small adjustment, begs the question of why.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-28-2009
Last April, in a surprise announcement, Lions Gate, Viacom (Paramount) and MGM announced plans to launch their own, then unnamed, premium cable channel and video on demand service. Soon after, former Showtime executive Mark Greenberg took the helm and the joint venture, dubbed Studio 3 Networks, began to roll toward a planned Q4 2009 launch.
Little by little, details have trickled out about what’s planned. In November, it was regulatory filings that revealed some of the initial cost data. Last month, it was the brand name for the channel, Epix, discovered. This month, it’s more info on launch plans.
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