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Take Two knew they were going to have a hit on their hands with their new game.  The strength of the Grand Theft Auto brand, and increased market expectations caused by development delays, insured it.  The expectation was already set for a record breaker.  The question was – by how much would the bar be raised?  Microsoft’s Halo sold $300m in its first week on the market and was available for just one console (Xbox 360).  How much bigger a return could GTA IV do with the added PS3 audience?  And to follow up on that: on the Richter scale of gaming, would it be enough to impact Electronic Art’s pending take-over offer? Would it push them past the more than 60% trading pricing premium in their original offer? Looking at it by the numbers:

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The video gaming industry and the movie industry share a lot of common ground – narrative techniques, visual style, entertainment – but no factor is more influential to either industry than the importance of good titles.  It’s a little like the line from the movie “Field of Dreams” :  “If you build it they will come.”  If you have good quality games, you draw audiences and build money making franchises.  But if you make a dud? Revenues are sure to slump.

Game makers Midway and THQ haven’t been able to find the working formula and missed with earning as a result.  Activision seems to have it locked in.

Thanks again to a surging game industry and phenomenal sales from the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty game franchises, Activision turned in stellar financial results Thursday.

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There are a handful of surefire ways to know you’ve become a pop culture (or geek culture star): a major magazine cover shoot, being spoofed in a movie or TV show, or even playing yourself in a commercial.  Computer programmer Shawn Fanning can check all three off the list. From jokes that he stole the concept for the original Napster in 2003’s The Italian Job to a recent VW commercial, he’s had it all.

What he hasn’t had is an entrepreneurial home run; a company that’s succeeded. The original Napster file sharing service shifted the course of the music industry but as a business it wilted in the legal crosshairs of the music world.  Fanning’s follow up project Snocap was hyped to be a sophomore step up with its business to business music services.  That too, however, fell victim to tough times; a casualty of the antiquated DRM encryption environment that enveloped digital music sales.   Snocap sold out to iMeem officially in a fire sale last month.  The deal was reported back in February.

For all the efforts, the music industry just wasn’t proving a treasure trove for Fanning.   In his third startup, he shifted to gaming and now it looks like the adjustment may finally get him some entrepreneurial credit to go with his pop culture status.

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There have been a lot of evolutionary changes in how people use the Internet and computing technology but when it comes to direct forms of human interaction, things have moved slowly.  Despite advances in touch screens and voice automation we still rely principally on the decades old technology of keyboards and mice. We still do most of our web interaction through browsers.    Despite the vast increases in processing power when it comes to machine interaction, we’ve only moved in small steps.

The lack of innovation isn’t because existing technologies were perfect, or without need of improvement.  It’s just that technology changes faster than peoples habits.  When it comes to communication, we move slowly.  The QWERTY keyboard, after all, was invented by Christopher Sholes in 1874.  Click to Read More

Mogul David Geffen probably isn’t readying himself for a foray into the gaming world, nor is he likely to lend his name to something video game related.  That makes him the odd man out among the elite three who lent their initials to form Dreamworks SKG when they founded it.  Geffen’s peers, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg both have ties to gaming.  In fact, both each had gaming related news Tuesday.

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When you talk about, even think about, digital content stores, Apple’s iTunes is the natural selection.   It’s the dominant, mainstream store in the market.  Amazon’s MP3 and video store pops up as second mention.  Amazon being synonymous with retail.   Microsoft is hoping to change that, or at least join the party.

The “Xbox Live” environment for gamers has been growing steadily.  Microsoft has put money into original content and licensing. Still, that’s a niche market.  In October, they went more mainstream and begin selling videos in their Zune Marketplace. The offerings at the time, however, were limited. Now, the Zune Marketplace is expanding a little more. 

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The Superhero business is booming.  Marvel Entertainments first self produced movie, Iron Man, dominated the weekend box office earning an estimated $201m in global receipts in its debut.  At the same time, on Wall Street, the company didn’t fare badly either.  Marvel posted better a better than expected quarter and raised 2008 guidance. These numbers are only a small part of a bigger story.

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