Latest Gamer and Mobile stats

The long awaited report by Nielsen Entertainment Video Game Benchmark Report
I’ve mentioned this report before, and discussed about some other stats. For those of us who don’t have a dream researcher budget, ACTeN provide some more stats:

* Wait and See: Many active gamers appear to be in a holding pattern, before making a purchase decision on next-generation consoles, with nearly 50% of active gamers stating they will likely wait until both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are released before making a final decision

* Xbox 360 vs. PS3: While most are taking the wait and see approach, those that own and prefer Xbox are more likely to buy Xbox 360 than those that own and prefer PS2 are to buy the PS3

* Moving Online: 57% of active gamers have played online with free casual online games the most used and a notable 21% having played MMO games

* Women are Playing: While online-enabled console, MMO and gambling gamers are disproportionately male — 76% vs. 24% — casual gamers who play free online games such as puzzles are just as likely to be women as men, 49% vs. 51% respectively

* Good Scores on Mobile Gaming: 18% of active gamers have downloaded a game to their cell phone, with nearly two-thirds (63%) rating their experience from good to excellent

* Jock Games Rule: Traditional Sports is the most preferred game genre followed by Role Playing and First-Person Shooter

* Men of Opportunity Value: Males 25-34 and Hispanics represent the most valuable emerging market for video games with high entertainment budgets and higher potential than other segments for increased video game spending

* Dominating Leisure Time: Nearly 25% of a gamer’s leisure time is spent playing video games, with males playing 12 hours per week on average.

There is also the Nielsen Entertainment’s Mobile Entertainment Consumer Benchmarking Study, which ACTeN have been generous in supplying the following:

* Turnover Equals Opportunity: 52% of mobile phone users will buy a new phone within the year with 37% claiming additional features will figure prominently in their decision making process

* Mobile Atop Media: On average, active mobile phone consumers report spending 17 hours on their phones per week, 13 talking and 4 on data services, surpassing music, video games, movie going and home entertainment

* Mobile Girls are over TVs: Young females are on their mobile phone 23.5 hours per week on average, more time than the 20.9 hours they report watching television

* Following the Money: Topping all entertainment expenditures for share of wallet, mobile phone users spend $57.50 each month on their phone and related services

* Mass Market, Mass Medium: 85% or 144 million 13-54 year-olds are mobile phone users

* Cutting the Cord: One in seven mobile phone users have no home landline and 35% consider their mobile phone to be their primary phone

* Nickels and Dimes: Of the mobile consumers polled, 60% said they pay for text messaging; 48% for custom ring tones; and 22% for games

* Music Madness: One in five (21%) teens downloaded at least 10 ringtones in the last three months, including one in eight (12%) who downloaded 15 or more

* Multiple Dominant Brands: Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and LG are cited as top hardware providers while Verizon, Cingular, Sprint Nextel and TMobile are cited as top service providers

Gamers Agree: Women and men share the preference to play board, card and puzzle games on their mobile phones.

Top Ten Mobisodes

** This page obsolete: now see my Mobile Drama Round Up **

Okay, I’m putting together a list of the Top Ten Mobisodes; only problem is, there isn’t that many, so it isn’t really a top ten, but a list of ten mobisodes that have been made. The following are not necessarily mobisodes that are ONLY delivered via mobile, and not necessarily original content (they’re repurposed or part of a franchise). They are not in order of revenue, as I don’t have that data. Because there are not that many I’ve included ones that are about to come out too. I also haven’t included location-based games or mobile gaming. If you know of any I left out and where I can get some more data:

  • 24: Conspiracy, Fox Entertainment Group, 2005 (worldwide)
  • Random Place, iconmobile, 2005 (Aus)
  • Jong Zoid, Media Republic, 2004 (Netherlands)
  • FanTESStic, Endemol, not out yet (worldwide) [press release]
  • TXT MS C, Switchfire Ltd , 2004 (UK)
  • V-girl, Artificial Life, 2004 (USA) [not sure about this one, I think it qualifies as a mobile game more than a mobisode]
  • The Simple Life: Interns, Fox, 2005
  • Forget the Rules, Jim Shomos and Paul Baiguerra , 2005 (Aus)
  • Girl Friday, Kylie Robertson, not out yet (Aus)
  • Love and Hate, Twentieth Television, not out yet (USA) [article]
  • The Sunset Hotel, Twentieth Television, not out yet (USA) [article]
  • PS I Luv U, [Singapore Television station], not out yet (Asia) [article]
  • Flatland (Timothy Shey, Ruddy Morgan Organization production, 2005/…) [added 12 March 06]

These are TV shows that have been delivered on the mobile phone (separated into bits, mini eps):

Interactive Entertainment Conference: Day 1a

I’ve been at the Australiasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment being held in Sydney this week. There is still one day to go but I feel compelled to *download* my impressions before the final blast of input and then distraction of catching-up on delayed duties. The attendees are computer science students working with game technologies, interactive narrative and game technologists and designers, iTV researchers, industry, media studies and cultural theorists. There is an impressive selection of international presenters, established local academics and emerging ones. Although an academic conference, the papers have an industry focus. I’m really enjoying this conference: a happy and eager bunch of theorists and practitioners who all share a passion for the area. We’re all keen to learn from each other and extend our own research with unusual linkups. There is alot I’d like to say about the this conference, but I’ll start with a blow by blow overview of the talks I attended:

The conference was opened by Professor Sue Rowley, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) of the University of Technology, Sydney. Rowley made some refreshingly critical comments about the phenomenon of cross-fertilised content (comics influencing films and so on). Much that is being produced, she said, is not cutting-edge, ‘banal’, ‘derivative’ and ‘ideological’. Although I keep a keen eye on the intermingling of genres, arts types and media affordances, it is great to hear that other people are finding the plethora mimic-art beyond cool.

Mark Pesce, famous for founding VRML but has done a stack since then, including being a fellow mentor at LAMP. Mark gave the keynote speech, The Telephone Repair Handbook, for the conference on mobile phones: their usability issues and potential social uses. In the style that Mark is renowned for, the presentation was delightful to the ear, so much so that I dubb mark a ‘suited cyber poet’ (also due to his talks being more inspirational rather than academic or industry). The podcast is online, as well as the pdf.

I went to see Jens F. Jensen’s talk, Interactive Television: New Genres, New Format, New Content, but he didn’t show for some reason. His paper is in the proceedings (we were given the full proceedings at the beginning of the conference, which ensures informed question times and means I can read up on who I want to chat to).

The aim of this paper is to discuss some of the main issues associated with interactive genres, formats and content in the context of interactive television (ITV). First, a set of new forms or categorizations of ITV will be presented. Second, the suite of interactive genres, formats and applications that currently constitutes ITV will be introduced and discussed. And third, some general conclusions concerning interactivity, television and the interactive user/viewer will be drawn.

Next, I was really looking forward to a talk by Lori Shyba: Opening Doors to Interactive Play Spaces: Fragmenting Story Structure into Games. Unfortunately, Lori spent more time describing her product than discussing how story is fragmented. her product is a theatre experience in which the audience interacts with actors who themselves interact with projections on walls and play specially designed screen games. She calls the form “integrated performance media” (which is developed from “integrated media”, an industry term in Canada and is related to “integrated marketing”).

Someone made a comment during one of the talks about franchises not being about art but about money. I keep forgetting that people see alot of cross-media not as an artform but as a marketing technique. Cross-media is often derided under this pretense. I couldn’t help thinking of an alternate perspective: the utilisation of multiple media for the delivery of a creative work has been the privilege of conglomerates, but with the ability to broadcast from personal media (a mobile phone or home computer rather than cinema) cross-media delivery is suddenly an option for everyone. Sure, many products are created with the sole intention of making money, but to claim that the employment of multiple media is the domain of commodification is to underestimate the democratisation of publication that the Internet has enabled.

Anyway, the final talk I saw on day one was by Robert Grigg. This is the exciting talk: it is about a particular sub-area of CME: episodic gaming. I’ll be giving a generous post about this very soon.