Skylanders Giants

 SkyLanders Giants is the a sequel to SkyLanders: Spyros’ Adventure, Giants includes many new feature includong a whole new variety of differant characters, they are known as Giants. this game was released on October 17^th 2012 in Australia, October 19^th in Europe and on the 21^st October it was released in North America, and in November it will be released in South America. i believe this shows us the scale of popularity of this series as it is available and popular world wide. The popularity of this game can also be recognised as ACTIVISION sold over 31 million toys from the prequel Skylander:Spyros' Adventure. Skylanders Giants will be available on all the big platforms on release which is the Nintendo 3DS, Play station 3, the Wii, Xbox 360 and It is also going to be available for the new Wii U.

Skylander: Giants is available on Amazon for order. The Price of a starter Pack or booster pack which includes the game and one giant figure for the Wii it cost’s [£36.99], for the Xbox 360 [£39.99], on Play station 3, [£39.99]. For the price of one figure alone they are in the price range of [£17.00].

The most creative and inovative feature of Skylanders: Giants is the ability to purchase any character of their choice, place it on the 'portal of power' and watch it appear on the screen ready to play.

Skylanders Giants is advertised on the televison, youtube, games websites such as IGN, and the social networking sites ie Twitter. it is very cleverly marketed as certain aspects of the game are only accessible with a specific type of character which means that the consumer will have to go out and purchase another character for £17.00 if they want to access that part of the game. I belive that that aspect of the game is what is going to bring in the laargest amount of revenue as even if some one does not hav e the game they may still want to buy the figure.

FarmVille2

On 26 June 2012, Farmville 2 was unveiled.Farmville 2 was released in September 2012. it will have 3D features as well as a 360 degree rotating camera. It was heavily marketed on Facebook such as groups for people to like and talk about it to raise the hype of the game (this group has 2843617 followers). There were also adverts on the side bar of facebook as well as additional advertisements on other Zynga games as well as the origonal Farmville to try and keep their more loyal followers engaged in the product.

Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal

the entire gaming community counts more than 4 million gamers in the middle east 10 million in Russia 105 million in India 10 million in vietnam 10 milllion in Mexico 13 million in central and south America, 15 million in Australia, 17 million in South Korea, 100 million in Europe, and 200 million in China.

More than 10 million “hard Core” gamer's in the United Kingdom, France and Germany spend at least twenty Hours a week playing

Collectively, the planet is now spending more than 3 billion hours a week gaming.

Meanwhile, the scientific journal Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking reported in 2009 that 61 per cent of surveyed CEO's  CFO's, and other senior executives say they take daily game breaks at work

With all of this play, we have turned digital games- for our computers, for our mobile phones, and for our home entertainment systems-into what is expected to be $68 billion industry anually by the year 2012

Zynga

Zynga games are supported in two main ways. the first way is through dirtect credit card payments this is were people buy additional additonal content with their own money to recieve more credits and content. the other way is through partnerships with other compoanies. this is where zynga will team up with another company to recieve their experties in other fields.

Wii U

The Wii U is what will be the start of the 8th generation of video games consoles. It was first unveiled at electronics entertainment expo on june 7th 2011. It is schedualed to be released between november 18th and december 8th. Depending on the memory space you want the Wii U upon release will cost between £250.00 for the 8GB and £300.00 for the 32GB. some titles have already been confirmed for the console such as zombie U, mass effect 3 and arkham city. The Wii U will be unable to play DvD's however it still will be a mutimedia machine being able to run Youtube and Netflix. The Wii U will introduce a new controller that has motion senseing ability and a touch screen call the Wii U game pad.

Synergy and Synopsis

Synergy is when differant sectors of the same company collaborate together for a single Outcome.

Symbiosis is when differant companys collaborate for financial gain.

Rockstar Task

Rockstar Japan
2005-Present
Responsible for localization in Japan of Rockstar titles

Rockstar Leeds
2004-Present
Were Mobius Entertainment and based in Lower Wortley
Most recent work is the Microsoft Windowsa version of L.A Noire

Rockstar Lincoln
1999-Present
Previously known as Tarantula studio's

Rockstar London
2005-Present

Rockstar New England
2008-Present
Previously known as Mad Doc Software
based in Andover Massachusetts
developed xbox 360 and PC versions of Bully

MineCraft

Minecraft was released in alpha mode on May 17^th 2009 and since then has become one of the most successful Indie games of all time. The game was originally created by Markus Persson or ‘Notch’. Minecraft is what is called a sandbox game. A sandbox game is basically an open world game where the player chooses his/her own objectives and ultimately can do whatever they want. There is no aim to Minecraft other than to survive on the randomly generated world you are spawned in to using what you can find or what you create yourself from resources you have mined or farmed. It is because of this that the players can be as creative as they want and therefore will spend hours on building these massive projects.

Minecraft now though is known for its community which creates their own worlds and makes their own story’s which others can play by entering the worlds code or ‘SEED’. By doing this Notch and Mojang have to do very little to keep the community entertained as they are doing so themselves due to the sandbox nature of the game. Another influence that the community has added to the game is their seemingly endless supply of ‘MODS’ which again others can download which means that Mojang do very little to keep their audience engaged with the game.

Minecraft has broken 8 million sales on the PC .This is not counting all the free downloads from when the game was in Alpha. The XBOX 360 version is selling approximately 17,000 copies a day generating $340,000 every 24 hours.

Indie Games

'Indie' or independant games are not your usual AAA blockbuster game. Rather they are usually small scale games produced by either an individual or small team. As they are only produed by small groups they recieve no financial support from a publisher so everything is coming from the developers back pocket. The greatest upside for Indie games is their level of creativity Such as 'Minecraft' which has revolutionised the games community and has become superstar in itself with a fanbase just as large if not arger than any AAA blockbuster game.

Indie games have been growing in interest  since their spike in popularity in the late 2000's
The expansion of the internet has allowed Indie games to be purchased on platforms such as Steam, Xbox live arcade and onLive.

Notes : Indie Games



-Tentpole buisness model

when a recnt 'blockbuster' such as GTA funds a riskier, more creative product.

-The Hollywood model

is to contract out part of the games design to lower production costs.

e.g. scriptwriters, stunt teams, director of photography.

-Indie Games

small teams and individuals can create low budget get them distributed and make money.

aside from basic development costs conslole game developers are reqwuired toi pay fee's to license required software.

Modding-'Hot Coffie'

1. what was the 'Hot Coffie' mod
The 'Hot Coffie' mod was a mini game that was originally inaccessable for Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas
It was first found on pc on June 9th 2005 and latyer was found on playstation 2 and bo versions of the game. The mod was seual intercourse simulatewr featuring ther main character Carl Johnson and and his girlfriend

2. How did it affect the age rating.
following an investigation from the ESRB on July 20th 2005 the ESRB anounced that the agerating was being changed from a mature 17+ rating to a adult only 18+ rating.

3. Effects
the stakeholdes, developers and publishers lost money as the game was taken off shelves. the platform holders also got a bad reputation for allowing the game on their consoles