If you’re playing Burnout Paradise on your Xbox 360, and think you see “Obama for president” billboards, you’re not crazy. It has been confirmed that the presidential hopeful has bought advertising space in the game - presumably to try to appeal to the youth demographic.
NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire - January 7, 2008) -
NEWS FACTS
Strategic interactive agency Blast Radius today announced five of the many key launches that capped off a successful 2007. Blast Radius worked with prominent, global brands including Electronic Arts, Nintendo of America, Jordan Brand and Newell Rubbermaid to develop the strategy, design and technology that support the specific business needs of each group.
– Electronic Arts — The launch of EA Sports March Madness, www.easports.com/marchmadness07/, marked another year filled with successful launches for EA and EA Sports by Blast Radius. One of the outstanding site features is the home page media gallery, which is a combination of screen shots, videos and exclusive information, wrapped into a flexible media player that allows for sharing content quickly and easily into Facebook, Digg and de.li.cious.
– Nintendo of America — Blast Radius worked with Nintendo to launch a completely revamped Nintendo.com, www.nintendo.com. The new site marks a departure from the traditional hard-core gamer experience to one that is aimed at Nintendo’s expansion market, including the alpha moms and dabbler dads. One of the highlights of the new site is Gameguide, an interactive tool that enables users to explore all current and future Nintendo titles and filter them down quickly.
– The Air Jordan Flight Club — Flight Club, www.nike.com/jumpman23/flightclub/, is a members-only commerce site that sells limited edition Jordan footwear and apparel. Developing the design and strategy behind Flight Club, Blast Radius created a premium platform to reward Jordan Brand’s most loyal consumers with access to exclusive products.
– Melo M4 — As part of the Jordan Brand site — Jumpman 23, Melo M4, www.nike.com/jumpman23/m4, celebrates the launch of Carmelo Anthony’s fourth signature shoe. Blast Radius has developed the “Rise” concept as a way to share the story of Anthony’s rise from a rookie to basketball star. Blast Radius achieved this by creating a multi-dimensional environment with full screen video, rich product, and athlete photography.
– Newell Rubbermaid — Amerock, www.amerock.com, rolls out as an additional brand in the Newell Rubbermaid family, which began when Blast Radius launched Sharpie.com earlier in 2007. Because of the great diversity within its product lines, Blast Radius developed an eBusiness platform that enables Newell Rubbermaid to efficiently create additional brand sites on a common platform while each site can be customized with its unique feel and features that are most relevant to the brand’s consumers. Blast Radius has created Amerock.com with a site-wide content management system, an email campaign management tool and a complete site analytics reporting suite. Wrapping up 2007, the December launch of Galleria, www.galleriahardware.com, a sub-brand of Amerock, demonstrates again the platform’s highly scalable and customizable capabilities.
EL DORADO HILLS, Calif., Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ — For many people who get computer games this Christmas, the day won’t be so merry. Results from over 3.5 million user tests in the past two months show that 44.1% of the time, the person’s computer doesn’t meet the publisher’s basic requirements to run the most popular computer games.
Beside the disappointment of not being able to run the game, there is the shock that comes when a person tries to return the opened software and finds that most retailers do not accept returns of opened software packages.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Plus, it is fast and it’s free.
It is a special testing website called CanYouRunIt.com (http://www.CanYouRunIt.com) and it is a free service by System Requirements Lab, who developed the patent-pending technology behind the site.
“CanYouRunIt.com provides a simple, one-click solution,” said John Hussey, president of Systems Requirements Lab. “Users simply select the game they want to test, and hit the Can You Run It button. In less than 30 seconds a comprehensive report tells them if their computer can run it. If not, it displays what is wrong and exactly what is needed so the user can run the game.”
An amazingly large number of computers can’t run the most popular games being offered. This is because the graphic demands for games have outpaced all but the most recent personal computers’ and graphic cards’ capabilities.
CanYouRunIt.com was created out of the same frustration many people are about to experience this coming holiday season.
“Frankly, I was so mad, I was seeing red,” said Hussey. “I had just bought a new computer and I thought I’d treat myself to a game. After installing the game, it wouldn’t run. I spent two days on the phone with tech support and finally found out my graphics card wasn’t correct. I thought, ‘I’ve been in the software business since 1989, if I can’t figure this out, how is anyone else supposed to?’ I decided to make sure this never happened to anyone again.”
The result is the technology behind CanYouRunIt.com along with a pledge to provide this service free to all web users.
“The message is this, ideally, you should always check to see if you can run a game before you buy it. And if that doesn’t happen, always check it before you open the package, so you are able to return it,” said Hussey.
About System Requirements Lab
System Requirements Lab (http://www.CanYouRunIt.com) provides Instant Expert Analysis, a patent pending web-based service that was launched in summer 2005. Over 16 million tests have been performed for clients such as NVIDIA, AMD, Activision, CNET, Eidos, IGN, and Electronic Arts UK.
You know business is brisk when you consider pulling ads off TV. That’s right, Nintendo is doing too well with sales of the Wii, so it might hold off from advertising:
It said that holding back adverts until to 2008 would be a “responsible” move.
It now expects to have sold 17.5 million of the consoles worldwide in the year to March 2008 - up from the 14 million it had earlier forecast.
Nintendo is likely to use its advertising slots to promote its handheld DS console, analysts say.
Read more.
Music and video games are two of the only forms of media that are not free, ad-supported.
Should they be? GigaOm investigates.
As video game publishers begin to tip-toe over inserting in-game advertising, the common position by these is “it won’t affect the user experience”. That might be so, especially since nowadays, adding logos on billboards alongside a highway (for example) makes a game more realistic, but when you cross the next line and start to track user data, is that maybe puhsing it too far?
I think video game publishers and advertisers have a great opportunity in adding advertising without whoring the content or hurting the user experience, but if they get greedy and try to overdo it and push the enevlope too much, it might come back to haunt them.
Read more about Sony’s efforts to tap into in-game advertising by tracking user data here.
It’s a matter of time before all video games have ‘em, it’s true that the more realistic some games become, the more normal it is to have ads, right?
Well, that’s the argument here, by Neil Postlethwaite, Splash Damage’s Managing Director and one of the Producers on Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars:
Read more.
PLAY
