Game companies such as Nintendo are thriving through the global recession while stalwarts such as Panasonic and Sony struggle (Sony's diversification and PlayStation sales haven't helped recently) with huge corporate hierarchies and a dearth of new "must have" products.
What's interesting about the growth of Japanese game play is that it'… Read more
Danc at the Lost Garden blog has written up an excellent analysis of why Flash games are great, but represent "the ghetto of the game development industry" in terms of revenue generation.
Compared to the number of players it serves, the Flash game ecosystem makes little money, launches few careers, and sustains few developer owned businesses.
There is too much reliance on advertising and not enough on sustainable paid methods, or "offers" such as subscriptions, in-game consumables, and level un-locking to encourage people to pay--and create an actual business.
There is no need to limit yourself to any single one revenue stream. There are lots of different types of players and each player values something differently. Some players may be willing to buy a t-shirt. Others may want 5 stackable subscriptions. Others may just want a pretty new character with a panda head. When you restrict your game to a single revenue source, you miss out on gaining money from all the different types of customers that would have paid you if you had just given them the right offer.
Hit by the economic downturn and fluctuating exchange rates, worldwide IT spending is expected to drop 6 percent this year, according to a new Gartner report.
Spending will likely settle in at $3.2 trillion for 2009, compared with $3.4 trillion in 2008. Last year, IT spending had actually surged by 6.2 percent over 2007.
Due to the ongoing recession, the projected 6 percent spending decline is greater than Gartner's original forecast of a 3.8 percent drop, which the firm made in March.
"While the global economic downturn shows signs of easing, this year IT … Read more
Net neutrality advocates got a boost of support Wednesday from the Obama administration when it released grant guidelines for spending the government's $7.2 billion broadband stimulus package.
Companies winning grants to help build new broadband infrastructure will have to follow the Federal Communications Commission's Internet Policy statement, which prohibits companies from deliberately blocking or slowing Internet traffic on their networks.
Proponents of that concept, Net neutrality, have been pushing the government to pass laws or set stricter requirements to ensure that consumers get access to content they want and that competitors are not run out of business … Read more
Worldwide cell phone sales fell in the first quarter of this year, but smartphones continued to grow, despite a deepening recession, according to a report published by Gartner Wednesday.
The news shouldn't come as a big shock. Cell phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, had reported disastrous earnings for the first quarter. But the growth in smartphone sales, which were up 12.7 percent compared to the first quarter of 2008, provides some hope for the industry.
Touchscreen devices seem to be leading the pack in terms of device growth, with Apple's iPhone 3G doubling its market share in … Read more
Correction: Virgin Mobile began selling its $50 unlimited plan in April after the first quarter had ended.
Competition in the prepaid cell phone market is heating up, making it more difficult for companies, like Virgin Mobile USA, to hold onto subscribers in an increasingly crowded market.
Virgin Mobile USA, a longtime player in the prepaid cell phone market, reported Monday it had lost a total of 133,292 net customers during the quarter to end the period with 5.2 million subscribers. Even though subscribers were up 2.8 percent compared with last year, the company's losses during the … Read more
Sun Microsystems shareholders have filed three separate class action lawsuits to block a $7.4 billion acquisition by Oracle, the company revealed in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The lawsuits allege Sun's board didn't live up to its fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders when it accepted Oracle's acquisition offer, saying "the consideration offered in the proposed transaction is unfair and inadequate."
Personally, I don't think these issues will block the deal. If it really has to, Oracle has the cash to up its offer or settle with the shareholders before it gets nasty (if the suits actually have any merit). And in another wrinkle, Oracle probably already knows that Sun may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
That's right: Sun also disclosed Friday that it may have violated the act, which bars American companies from bribing or engaging in other unethical activity with foreign officials. This can often be difficult since some foreign governments, to put it charitably, don't have the same hard rules against government bribery. Potential contractors can be put in the no-win situation of either paying off local officials or losing out on a lucrative contract. That's not to say that's the situation Sun is facing. It's not clear what Sun executives believe may have happened, but they have hired outside lawyers to look into it.
But as I already said, I don't think these new revelations are deal-breakers, even if FCP violations can carry potential penalties that include fines, criminal sanctions, and a ban from doing business with the U.S. federal government.
What does this tell us about the Sun/Oracle deal itself?
Oracle execs must believe that they can work out a deal with the dissenting shareholders (or, again, maybe they think their suits have little merit). And Oracle execs probably aren't that worried about any lingering government-related issues. This isn't the first time Oracle's acquisitions have come with legal question marks. The database king successfully fought a government antitrust suit against the eventual takeover of software rival PeopleSoft several years ago. Many pundits thought fighting the suit was folly, but Oracle did it anyway. … Read more
New research commissioned by Savvis shows that infrastructure outsourcing and cloud computing efforts are being taken very seriously by CIOs. IT leaders appear to be more oriented to reduction in infrastructure spending, where other industries such as media and retail, focus on staff reductions.
67 percent of all IT leaders are under pressure to do more with reduced budgets. (I would have expected an even higher percentage.) 52 percent of IT executives noted that the greatest cost savings will emanate from reducing infrastructure costs, reducing staff levels (49 percent) and a virtualization strategy (44 percent) 72 percent of IT executives believe cloud computing will play an important role in the future of IT in helping companies gain efficiencies and reduce cost.One immediate way IT execs could save money on infrastructure costs would be through the use of open-source alternatives, but the research questions were geared toward outsourcing and not software alternatives. Interestingly, financial services respondents reported that virtualization would provide their biggest cost savings.
Top cost savings in 2009 by industry:
Financial services--virtualization strategy Media--reducing staff levels Health care--reducing infrastructure costs & standardizing IT infrastructure solutions Business & Professional services--standardizing IT infrastructure solutions Retail--reducing staff levels Manufacturing--reducing infrastructure costs Public sector--infrastructure consolidationSkilled technologists tend to be able find jobs in economic downturns, even if they don't find their ideal positions. But getting a raise in a down economy is a tough trick to pull off. The good news is that jobs in open-source software and niche application skills actually saw pay increases, according to research from Foote Partners.
Foote Partners tracks pay for 371 certified and noncertified IT skills, and its first quarter research shows that pay for noncertified skills in Linux rose by more than 28 percent, while Apache and Sybase noncertified skills saw 25 percent increases in pay. … Read more
They're calling it "the offer," and if you're part of a video game development team looking for a financial boost, it might indeed be hard to refuse: up to a year's free rent in a riverside building in beautiful Savannah, Ga.
The initiative was the brainchild of Brenda Brathwaite, a longtime developer and a professor of game development and interactive design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). She says as the recession kicked in and she saw layoffs affecting everyone, including friends and colleagues, she asked herself what she could do to … Read more
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