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POPSWii Sports Is Best-Selling Game Ever Wii Sports is obviously a big deal. But these record-breaking numbers have a lot to do with the ever-expanding market for video games -- consumers from kindergarten kids to senior citizens are playing games now. Credit Nintendo and the innovative Wii for much of that expansion -- but understand that in the grand hall of fame of gaming, Wii Sports isn't even on the same shelf as Super Mario Brothers.
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POPSNet-Zero Gas Tax Well-reasoned argument for raising gas tax by $1 while gas is cheap and reducing FICA taxes by $14 a week. Revenue neutral to Fed gov, saves the planet and we starve enemy oil producers of revenue.
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POPSWii All Wanna Scream This is a riot -- clearly this child has been feeling socially deprived by his lack of Wii. But just think: if Mom & Dad could charge just half a penny to everyone who watches their video, the kid could of had his Wii (and then some) for free......
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POPSReal Gaming Losses Hardly recession proof any longer, video game makers are feeling the impact of the downturn. Hardly a happy holidays story.
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POPSGlobal R&D Money Flows I've always wanted to know where corporate R&D dollars are going, how much is kept in the country of the profits' origin and how much is "exported" to the developing world. Now Booz & Co has produced this in-depth report and created a terrific PDF chart that maps these flows.
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POPSGoodbye DSL, Hello HSI (High-Speed Internet) In this WSJ story about one of Verizon's CMO's retiring, I found this nugget telling: Verizon is substituting the term "high-speed Internet" for DSL in its marketing because it sounds zippier. (DSL stands for "Digital Subscriber Line" -- easy to understand, but not very exciting.)
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POPSiTunes Eats Amazon's Lunch Even though Amazon's mp3 store isn't making much money, don't expect it to fail or go away -- record labels want viable online retail alternatives to iTunes, so Steve Jobs can't tell them what to do.
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POPSCheaper Lab On A Chip Geneticist George Whitesides at Harvard has come up with a carefully designed piece of paper to do simple blood work for less than the cost of an expensive lab machine.
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POPSWhy A Microsoft Zune Phone Won't Matter Here's a smart take on a relentless rumor. There's chatter again that Microsoft plans to launch a cellphone utilizing technology from its Zune media player. This writer argues that even if this is true--and there is no real evidence that it is--we are likely to be disappointed by the emergence of a Zune phone. Microsoft needs to go bigger than a single product to surprise people and win mindshare, she says.
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POPSInternet Growth Slowing, Warns The Economist Internet traffic is growing 50-60% per annum, down from 100% (a few years ago), says a University of Minnesota computer scientist. The danger: the slowdown could ding ISP revenues and innovation, generally. The article also says the exaflood is passe. Next up: the zettaflood!
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POPSNewly Refinanced Mortgages Go Bust Home loans modified earlier this year are showing a 58% default rate six months after the refinance. This shows something is going terribly wrong in our efforts to keep homeowners in their homes.
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POPSIn-Game Advertising Picks Up Most in-game ads appear virtually the same way they would in the real world -- like a billboard on the side of the road in a racing game. But if advertisers really do see positive results from these ads, expect to see them in more creative formats: * Mario wearing Nikes * Master Chief pounding down a Red Bull * Sonic The Hedgehog eating at a Sonic drive-through
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POPSThieves: You'll have to pay to play movies, games Valve Software has used a similar system to prevent the piracy of its computer games--its games will not work unless they are first "turned on" by its central servers. It deters folks from distributing copies of the game before it is officially on sale and ebbs the number of cracked copies finding their way onto peer-to-peer networks. Did Valve's security measures influence the Entertainment Merchants Association? I also foresee a lot of customers walking out with "dead" copies--just like we walk out of stores with active security tags.
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POPSNo Bleak Friday for Xbox 360 Recession or not, consumers can not stop buying videogames. What better way to survive the upcoming year or two of gloom than by surviving the virtual 50-hour post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 3?
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POPSRedstone finished with Midway "Mortal Kombat" may be one of videogaming's iconic franchises, but it is not hot enough to keep Midway Games afloat. The company has struggled the last few years to rebuild its brand--unsuccessfully--and reported a loss of $75.9 million during its third quarter. The New York Stock Exchange has even threatened to de-list the company's stock, which last traded today at 33 cents a share. It is unsurprising that Redstone decided to dump Midway and run. The real question is what its new controlling owner--Mark Thomas--plans to do with the company. My guess: He'll move to sell off any Midway licenses that are still worth anything (except, of course, for "Mortal Kombat") and then relaunch Midway as an online gaming company--the same path fellow coin-op dinosaurs like Acclaim and Atari are following.
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POPSPownce Closes Down More evidence (not that we needed it) that the "Web 2.0" bubble has burst. Pownce was hugely buzzed before it launched, but users never seemed to care about it.
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POPSSee 10,000 iPhone Apps All At Once OK, this is kind of a gimmick. But click through the second link above and you'll see a mind-bending mosaic of icons representing close to 10,000 iPhone apps. As some astute blogs have reported, Apple's App Store doesn't currently contain 10k apps--more like 9,700. The 10k figure is the number that have debuted.
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