America’s entertainment software industry creates a wide array of computer and video games to meet the demands and tastes of audiences as diverse as the nation’s population. Today’s gamers include millions of Americans of all ages and backgrounds.  In fact, more than two-thirds of all American households play games. This vast audience is fueling the growth of this multi-billion dollar industry and continuing to make the video game industry one of the most lucrative entertainment genres. Below is a list of 10 entertainment software industry 2009 facts:

1. U.S. computer and video game software sales grew 22.9 percent in 2008 to $11.7 billion – more than quadrupling industry software sales since 1996.
2. Sixty-eight percent of American households play computer or video games.
3. The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.
4. The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 39 years old.
5. Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (34 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).
6. In 2009, 25 percent of Americans over the age of 50 play video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999.
7. Thirty-seven percent of heads of households play games on a wireless device, such as a cell phone or PDA, up from 20 percent in 2002.
8. Eighty-four percent of all games sold in 2008 were rated “E” for Everyone, “T” for Teen, or “E10+” for Everyone 10+.
9. Ninety-two percent of game players under the age of 18 report that their parents are present when they purchase or rent games.
10. Sixty-three percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives.

So you’ve got a business idea or maybe even for the most advanced in my readership, a business plan. You’ve heard a lot about your elevator pitch and the many ways in which to raise money. So the next step in your plan is to get mainstream buy in for your idea. Yet how do you do this if your idea is complex and new? You need to break down your idea into bite size and intellectually digestible pieces. The person you are pitching to must intrinsically get your business the moment after you pitch it or the pitch flat out was not worth it. So how to explain a tough concept? Why not spend a fair bit of dough (this was not entitled the “free way to get noticed”) and get some experts to help you tell your story. If you really want to go for the gold, how about the guys from Epipheo Studios who were good enough for Google, twice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwVX42Amcak

I’m not just talking about any group of talented individuals because if you need a guy who is awesome I’d just send you to Marc Lostracco, but if you need an agency who knows how to explain technology or even say Rosh Hashanah, go visit the kind folks at Ephipheo.

Rarely does a human being come along that changes a profession, industry or game the way that Michael Jordan did. The man invented the shoe deal, he is the reason you drink Gatorade and if you don’t own Michael Jordan To The Max you really can’t consider yourself a basketball fan. So here is my favorite YouTube video of the weekend that was a YouTube tribute to MJ.

Check out just one of many insane videos on YouTube -- and this is considered an “out-take” video…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDQClx7bT3c

Short post cuz the video pretty much says it all and I can’t take any credit here.

If you want to read the original post and get your hands on many of the sources as well as the stats go here. If you want to see a presentation (different authors) with very similar statistics on slideshare go here.

Grab some popcorn cuz its a few minutes but its good.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

If you haven’t seen this post by Engadget you missed a good one. Obviously Microsoft got caught with their pants down so to speak. I can understand using different agencies in different countries and thus not having continuity in your marketing from region to region – even though you should. I recommend using the same agency globally for a product and then if called for regionalizing the message. What I do not understand nor recommend is using Photo Shop to crop an African American’s head for a Caucasian person’s head! And let me take it a step further and say even if the designer was going to be that callus and insanely lazy, could they at least have taken the time to change the colour of the man’s arms – cuz he’s pretty tanned on the arms in the second picture, oh wait its the same body as the first…Insanity. Score one for Engadget and another for social media for spreading this post.

Click To View

Thomas Friedman wrote a brilliant piece in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago entitled “59 Is The New 30” – I don’t often post just to link to someone else’s work but this is really worth of some of your time. I won’t waste time talking about it and suggest you take a quick read. My favorite quote,

“Baseball, basketball and football are played on flat surfaces designed to give true bounces. Golf is played on an uneven terrain designed to surprise. Good and bad bounces are built into the essence of the game. And the reason golf is so much like life is that game – like life- is about how your react to those good and bad bounces. Do you blame your caddy? Do you cheat? Do you throw your clubs? Or do you accept it all with dignity and grace and move…Hence the saying: Play one round of golf with someone and you will learn everything you need to know about his character.”

“Throughout most of the Depression, Americans went assiduously, devotedly, almost compulsively, to the movies…the movies offered a chance to escape the cold, the heat, and loneliness; they brought strangers together, rubbing elbows in the dark of movie palaces and fleapits, sharing in the one social event available to everyone.”

At an average price of $.27 a ticket, movies offered a relatively inexpensive way to vacation from reality. Always popular, this sort of diversion was especially sought-after during the Great Depression. Now fast-forward to today, December 12, 2008 and I read an article that in the month of November video game sales closed in on the $3 billion (US) mark. According to the NPD Group US retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories jumped 110 per cent last month from a year ago which makes me wonder if in 2008 maybe we have turned to video games in the same way people turned to movies in the 1920′s and 30′s.

The times are not so different, people are losing jobs, money is tight and we are looking for some way to escape in a safe (i.e. not hitting the bottle) manner that still allows us to engage in some social interaction. While people may argue that video games are inherently anti-social, in fact if you look at the facts on the way in which people play these gaming systems they paint a completely different story. Most video game players actually play with another participant either in-person or via the Internet.

In thinking about the above parallels, I did a little research on the gaming industry and so I thought I would present you with 10 industry facts that I found particularly interesting.

• The video game industry (including hardware, software and accessories ) is expected to reach $22 billion in US sales this year.
• The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 13 years
• 65% of US households play computer or video games
• 97% of US Teens (99% male & 94% female) play games
• Nielson Media Research predicts the in-game advertising market to be $1 billion by 2010
• A computer and/or video game is sold every 9 seconds of every day
• 41% of Americans have purchased or plan to purchase one or more games in 2008
• The video game industry is a larger economic generator than the entire motion picture industry
• The video game industry stimulates complimentary product sales of $6.1 billion per year
• $73 million in HDTV sales are directly attributable to the Microsoft Xbox 360