Nintendo is set to release its next-generation console in the U.S. on November 18. The Wii U proves that Nintendo has more than just videogames in mind for its future.
“It has always been our goal to maximize consumer value with what we include in the hardware purchase,” says Reggie Fils-Aime, president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America. “It’s not just a high-definition console that will change the way people play. Wii U is the only game console with a seamlessly connected, fully integrated second screen.”
The Wii U will include the Nintendo TVii service, which is “akin to Microsoft’s efforts in program discoverability on the Xbox 360” in that users will be able to stream programming from Netflix, Hulu and other services to their TV, including live streaming with a cable subscription, explains Variety.
“The service will be the most useful for those who continue to pay for cable or satellite TV, along with other on-demand services, making it very comparable what Microsoft’s Xbox provides today,” explains AllThingsD in a related report.
All of this will be managed through the Wii U tablet-like controller, which functions as a second screen online device once programming has started.
The Wii U’s GamePad can be used as a second screen device. “Additionally, short video segments, or thumbnails, can be viewed from the device, which can be shared with friends via Twitter, Facebook or the Wii U’s social network called Miiverse,” writes AllThingsD.
Nintendo will launch two version of the system. The Basic will cost $300 and the Deluxe will cost $350.
Apple’s new iPhone 5 features an 8-megapixel camera that also shoots 1080p HD video. The camera touts an LED flash, face detection and can take wide panoramic shots.
According to Businessweek, this makes the iPhone camera equal to many available point-and-shoot cameras.
But it goes beyond that, offering “the things people care about — sharing photos, using filters, and having a device by their side at all times,” which “trump most of the features and settings camera makers offer with their standalone products,” suggests the article.
In other words, the point-and-shoot industry may be in even more trouble than before.
“The introduction of a stronger camera in the iPhone 5 and the new iPod touch — which comes with a very camera-like wrist strap, just to drive home the point Apple is making about how they think people will use that device — is just another step on the point-and-shoot’s accelerating journey to obsolescence,” writes Businessweek.
“In the near few months, Apple will see sales of its iPhone soar, and in record numbers. In the longer term, Android will not be affected all that much and we’ll likely see the platform pulling closer to 60 percent market share or greater,” writes blogger Scott Webster for CNET.
“Less expensive phones, more hardware options, and a wider variety of carrier options will see that Android continues its growth. In other words, it’s the same today as it was in 2009.”
Although he admits that the iPhone 5 adds some noteworthy improvements to Apple’s handset line, “there’s nothing in the iPhone 5 that puts it far above the competition,” Webster suggests. “The larger 4-inch display and 4G LTE connectivity are two of the biggest, and only improvements over last year’s model, yet it’s still a matter of catching up to the industry. Android users have enjoyed these features in one capacity or the other for the better part of two years now.”
Apple has already seen a drop in the smartphone market share, but still continues making record profits. Unlike previous iPhone launches where Apple “was able to extend its reach to new markets, carriers, and consumers… there’s very little room to grow and tap into a new segment of customer,” notes Webster.
On the other hand, other smartphones are becoming more competitive with rich features, improved interfaces and low price tags, the post states, noting that Android phones even offer things that the new iPhone 5 doesn’t, like NFC support or quad-core processors.
“I didn’t see anything that would send an Android handset maker scrambling to respond,” Webster concludes. “Along those lines, I’m hard-pressed to find someone who saw something in the iPhone 5 that will have them defect from Android.”
Despite early mixed reviews of the iPhone 5, Apple reportedly sold out its initial inventory of the new handset within an hour of preorders opening.
The device is set to launch September 21, but after an hour of accepting preorders, Apple’s website explained to customers that new orders would be available to ship in two weeks.
Carriers are also taking orders for the new iPhone, but so far have not changed their shipping dates, suggesting they may still have sufficient inventory for the demand.
The iPhone 5 is an expensive endeavor for carriers and some have experienced a dip in revenue projections. Apple, on the other hand, saw its stock again soar to a new record, $696.98.
“The iPhone 5 is critical to Apple’s continued success,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Not only have the phones powered Apple to become the world’s largest company by value, they have become the bedrock of the company’s mobile-device strategy. Software in the iPad tablet computer is shared with the iPhone, largely intertwining the fate of both devices.”
“Apple is charging $199 for the cheapest iPhone 5 if customers sign up for a new two-year contract with their carriers,” notes the article, adding the rollout is Apple’s most aggressive to date, with plans to reach 100 countries by the end of the year. “The company is also selling a version of its year-old iPhone 4S for $99. The iPhone 4, launched in 2010, is being offered free.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Spencer E. Ante met with Google co-founder Sergey Brin to try out Project Glass, the augmented reality glasses that have drawn a lot of media attention and recently graced the runway at a Diane von Furstenberg fashion show.
“The glasses were ultimately disappointing because the software isn’t finished,” Ante reports. “Much of the basic functionality that Google is building toward for the first commercial release later next year wasn’t working.” However, “I could see their long-term potential,” he adds. “The device fit well.”
Google Glass uses a battery on the side of the frame to power a tiny camera and “heads-up display” that projects data into the user’s field of vision via a small screen over the right eye. “It was cool to see the information there in front of my right eye, though a little disorienting. I kept closing my left eye, which was uncomfortable,” Ante writes.
He notes that taking pictures without pulling out his smartphone was a nice feature, one that Brin frequently uses when playing with his kids.
“I have always disliked the feeling that with technology I am spending a lot of my time and attention managing it,” Brin told WSJ. “The notion of seamlessly having access to your digital world without disrupting the real world is very important.”
The project still has a long way to go before it is fully functional and ready for next year’s initial release to “hard-core fans who shelled out $1,500 on pre-order.”
In addition to lowering the cost, Ante wants to see Google make the software open to developers in order to build apps.
“We definitely like to make things open but right now we are working hard and fast to make something reliable we can get in the hands of users and developers,” Brin said. “I expect lots and lots of people will be using technology like this in years to come.”
As DVD sales continue to slump, Hollywood looks for ways to monetize digital movies. A new product called M-Go is the latest hope.
M-Go, set to launch later in the fall, is a “cloud/locker app/service backed by DreamWorks Animation and Technicolor, that will be part digital storefront, part digital discovery service,” reports AllThingsD.
Last week, the company announced distribution deals with Sony, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox. The app is pre-installed on a number of Samsung and Vizio products, along with Intel Ultrabook computers, and will work on most Internet-connected devices.
“Consumers will be able to use M-Go to purchase movies (and eventually TV shows, and perhaps, one day, music) and watch them wherever they’d like — on connected TVs, PCs and mobile phones,” explains the article.
M-Go will be compatible with UltraViolet, another of Hollywood’s hopefuls trying to solve the same problem. It’s worth noting that Disney is currently not a part of M-Go or UltraViolet, and is pursuing its own Keystone technology to address the issue.
UltraViolet may have found what it needs to set itself apart from competitors: Dolby Digital Plus audio encoding, which will be a staple feature of its Common File Format.
“A newly ready development kit lets producers feed the multichannel sound to hardware and apps that can recognize it, including Web-based avenues like Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming, Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming and MPEG’s DASH,” explains Engadget.
Dolby is taking care to ensure that the “audio codec’s implementation truly spans platforms,” notes the post.
“A new era in entertainment has begun with UltraViolet, and Dolby is working closely with the content community to ensure that consumers of UltraViolet content can enjoy optimized sound no matter what content, service, or device they choose,” said Ron Geller, vice president of worldwide content relations at Dolby.
“We don’t know how soon movies will take advantage of the upgrade, but the Dolby addition lends weight to a fledgling format that might have as fierce a battle in home theaters as it does on PCs and tablets,” concludes Engadget.
DirecTV has expanded the distribution of its Audience Network to the iPad, “allowing subscribers to access the channel both inside and outside their homes,” writes FierceCable.
The top satellite TV provider also “pushed cable programmers to give it rights to allow subscribers to access live programming on mobile devices,” according to the article.
It already allows live programming from 60 networks from within customers’ homes on TVs and sometimes on mobile devices within the home, but rarely if ever outside the home.
“While DirecTV faces challenges obtaining out-of-home rights to programming, the company is already developing products such as the Nomad place-shifting set-top that could be used to deliver programming to subscribers wherever they are,” reports FierceCable. “And it filed a trademark application for the brand Grab & Go for use in mobile video and DVR products on August 30.”
DirecTV plans to expand its live video distribution of Audience Network to the iPhone in October and to Android devices by the end of the year.
Local retailers in California anticipate an exciting development Saturday, as Amazon customers in the state will have to begin paying sales tax on purchases.
Customers in Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia, Indiana and South Carolina will all pay taxes on Amazon purchases by 2016.
To counter the loss of this competitive advantage, Amazon plans to build million-square-foot warehouses in these states to minimize shipping times and convince customers to continue to shop online rather than locally.
Customers in Washington, New York, Kentucky, North Dakota, Kansas, Texas and Pennsylvania already pay sales tax on Amazon purchases.
The warehouses will allow Amazon to cut shipping times to one day, but Amazon still hopes to reach same-day shipping at some point. Amazon faces the challenge of improving shipping times while also staying profitable.
Currently, Amazon makes less than a penny for each dollar in sales, so it will need to make its fast delivery efficient if it hopes to make any profits.
At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted at a search function for Facebook, leaving attendees with the “impression that Facebook thinks it has a bigger role to play in how we seek out information online,” writes Wired.
Zuckerberg said he believes there’s a significant market out there for people to use Facebook as a search tool.
“Search engines are really evolving toward giving you a set of answers,” he said. “It’s not just like ‘I’ll type in something and show me some relevant stuff.’ It’s, ‘I have a specific question, answer this question for me.’”
“Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have: ‘What sushi restaurants have my friends gone to in New York in the past six months and liked?’ ‘Which of my friends and friends of friends work at this company I’m interested in… so I can talk to them about what it’s like to work there?’” explains Zuckerberg.
“Zuckerberg also made clear he sees another big opportunity in mobile,” reports Wired. “He said Facebook believes it can make more money on mobile than it does on the desktop, and that mobile users are more likely to be active every day than desktop users.”
The mobile market continues to expand. According to research from Gartner, there will be nearly 46 billion mobile app downloads this year alone, nearly doubling the 2011 total of 25 billion.
“Among those downloads, free will continue to reign supreme: 89 percent of those downloads worldwide will cost nothing. That is also appearing to have a knock-on effect on apps that are sold for a price: 90 percent of paid apps will cost less than $3,” reports TechCrunch.
And those numbers are only predicted to increase. According to Gartner, by 2016, there will be 310 billion downloads, with 93 percent of those offered for free.
The Apple App Store is predicted to stay atop the mobile market in the years to come, even as its numbers somewhat dominish, according to the research.
Gartner’s research also indicates that third-party app stores like Amazon and Facebook could become “powerful competitors.”
“The opportunity now for anybody on a connected platform to build a business to compete with the big guys is just amazing,” says Andrew Stalbow, North American general manager for ROVIO.
At the Silicon Beach conference at USC, Stalbow discussed how the playing field has been leveled, enabling anyone to build a worldwide brand quickly, just as ROVIO’s “Angry Birds” took off across the globe.
Although most associate ROVIO with the widely-adopted “Angry Birds” app, “we don’t want to be a mobile games company,” Stalbow notes. “I think we’re an entertainment company.”
He explained that games are at the core of what they do, just as movies are at the core of Disney. But like Disney, which has built out theme parks and retail and more, ROVIO has many other aspects to its business, such as consumer products, retail and animation.
He also said that the company has built itself on a business model of ubiquity. He criticized the Hollywood business model for being built around scarcity, saying it is “very challenged” with rights and window schemes. “I think the business model needs to evolve,” he suggests.
“The power of these new connected devices hasn’t really been realized yet,” believes Stalbow, suggesting there is opportunity in the entertainment industry to more efficiently use new media.
Moreover, these connected devices and new platforms can create a new forum for marketing. “In an app ecosystem, you’re actually connected [to your fans],” he says. “The people who create the content and control it will have the opportunity to tell their audience about their other [ventures].”
Stalbow contrasts this environment to that of the traditional entertainment industry in which content is provided or distributed by third-party channels.
ROVIO spends nothing on marketing, Stalbow claims. Instead, it leverages its apps and other products to inform its customers about the company’s various offerings. Also, working with NASA for its “Angry Birds Space” app or Disney for its “Rio” app, allowed for a cross-pollination of promotion, showing how one can use media in new ways to push a brand.
From TV ratings to what happens to your digital content when you are gone, panelists at USC’s Silicon Beach conference discussed how media distribution is changing — and how Hollywood is tackling those changes.
YouTube’s Mitch Feinman, Qualcomm’s Liz Gasser, Mitch Singer of Sony Pictures and David Wertheimer of Fox Broadcasting talked about where they see entertainment heading.
One obvious change has been the decline of physical media as VOD and online services have taken away the friction of renting from brick-and-mortar stores. People have also moved away from building libraries of physical media while not entirely trusting the purchase of digital media stored in the cloud.
Hollywood’s UltraViolet initiative looks to dispel consumers’ concerns about the cloud and meet the demand for content in this digital world.
Wertheimer discussed multiplatform products that inherently incorporate various content — long and short form video, TV programming, interactive media, etc. — instead of merely having one type with supplementary adds-ons. “What kind of new storytelling experiences can we create with new technology?” he asks.
Feinman spoke about YouTube’s focus on making multi-screen viewing seamless by allowing devices to interact with one another. Similarly, Gasser talked about connectivity and how devices are moving beyond communicating with users and other devices — to interacting with real world places and things. Such a revolution requires people to rethink how content is owned and managed, she suggests.
This topic will surely be debated in the coming years as people reevaluate ownership and licensing rights, Singer points out, adding that related laws will need to be revisited.
The panelists also discussed how software and user interfaces have become more important than the hardware itself, in addition to the benefits and challenges of an a la carte distribution model.
Still, one thing remains true. “All the technology in the world has not changed the fundamental premise: people want to watch great content,” Wertheimer concludes.
Social media continues to revolutionize communication, while technology enables more sophisticated electronic devices, and media consumption is being rewritten by new distribution methods.
Aber Whitcomb, CTO for the Social Gaming Network, and Drew Baumann, CTO of the YouTube-oriented business Fullscreen, spoke about these changes — and how Los Angeles is where it all comes together.
According to Baumann, Silicon Beach is the place for media technology companies. The more established media companies in the area are intrigued by new technology-powered media ventures.
There is an assumption that technology comes from Silicon Valley and entertainment from Hollywood, Whitcomb agrees. But actually, there is a convergence of the two spheres, even more so in Silicon Beach.
The norm today is to “consume content on multiple screens and people expect to be able to do that,” Whitcomb notes of the new distribution philosophy. This also applies to gaming; his company works to provide seamless transitions between devices and platforms.
“The media business has been around for a hundred years, but it’s evolving,” Baumann explains. Brands and media companies are awesome at creating content, but don’t really know how to use new distribution methods, like YouTube, to their full potential.
“The video distribution business is really being disrupted right now and I’m excited to see what new businesses it creates,” he says.
Both panelists believe this is an exciting time to be in the industry, especially in Silicon Beach — even though the next chapter is difficult to predict.
Media professionals gathered at USC yesterday for the all-day Silicon Beach conference.
Sandy Gould, vice president of recruitment at the Disney-ABC Television Group, and Kevin Winston, founder of Digital LA, spoke about how Silicon Beach in southern California is changing the professional environment and approach to entrepreneurship.
We’re accustomed to a stiff corporate structure, but “now we live in a time when actually we should be driving the change,” Gould notes.
No longer are job titles or responsibilities static, he suggests. Flexibility is really important in applying for jobs as well as pitching entrepreneurial ideas — “go where the opportunity is strongest.”
“It’s a great time to experiment with what you want to do,” Winston agrees. While flexibility is key, commitment is also very important. “Follow up, see your passions though,” he recommends, adding that you shouldn’t hold off on pushing your idea forward. “Get it done; people want to see that you’re committed.”
The intersection of entertainment and technology makes Silicon Beach a great place for start-ups, the panelists said. Los Angeles is open to creativity and flexibility in addition to having big names that can boost your start-up’s reputation.
Also, with the expansion of digital and social media, “there’s so much more capability, power and influence in the hands of the community,” Gould points out. This makes sharing your idea and creating a user base easier. Established companies are leveraging the power of community to shape their own ideas — for example, using public forums to aggregate ideas for show episodes.
The panelists talked about the universal value of telling your story — of being able to excite people about your ideas or yourself. “You have to have passion in what you do, have creativity in an idea and then tell people what you do,” recommends Winston.
