Saturday, September 5, 2009
Weekend Update: 9.5.2009–One for the Kids
The week that took us from August to September was one for the books over at BoomTown, especially if you’re 12.
Kara spent Monday morning at Activision Blizzard, where they are pushing forward with the entire Guitar Hero line, even as the game industry faces a nearly 50 percent decline in U.S. sales this year. Kara got to play hero to several of the forthcoming releases, including previewing the much anticipated DJ Hero console.
If there was an over-arching theme for this last week on All Things D, it would have to be musical chairs.
Took ’em long enough. After weeks of rumor and speculation, Walt Disney Co. has finally taken a stake in Hulu, the video-streaming site operated by NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners. Financial terms and the structure of the deal weren’t disclosed, but sources say Disney’s stake in the venture will be 27 percent.
Welcome once more to Weekend Update! I’ll be filling in today for your regular host Beth Callaghan, who’s on vacation. And what sane person wouldn’t be, after the slew of Silicon Valley silliness inspired by April Fools Day this past week? Digital pranks were the name of the game, and Google and others heaped so many tepid hoaxes upon us that we wanted to call April Fold so as to quickly end this round of gags.
It’s been well over two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. To wit, a report this week from Credit Suisse that predicts YouTube will earn $240 million in revenue in 2009. Which wouldn’t be half bad were it not for the fact that YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009.
Reports of a Steve Jobs cameo at Disney Co.’s shareholders meeting today have proven greatly exaggerated. Earlier this afternoon, Marketwatch issued a news bulletin claiming Jobs, who missed Apple’s shareholders meeting a few weeks back, had turned up at Disney’s. A noteworthy event if it had been true, but it was not.
There’s got to be a joke somewhere in the fact that Macworld, the Consumer Electronics Show and the AVN Awards (the “Pornies”) all happen during the same week. Maybe even one that hasn’t been played out 10 times over. All Things Digital was too busy covering two out of three this week to think of one.
Electronic Arts is experiencing first hand what it’s like to be on an evolutionary downswing in one of its life-simulation games. Its stock dragged down to its lowest price in seven years Friday after scaling back its earnings forecast and announcing layoffs, EA is on a nasty downward spiral despite strong sales of videogame titles like “Spore” and “Rock Band 2.” And with a market value of about $7.2 billion–down from $19 billion a few years ago–there’s a chance the company may soon find itself cast as the prey to a larger rival’s predator in a nasty mergers-and-acquisitions turn on its Creatiolutionism game “Spore.”
With Apple’s much lauded iPhone having captured about 19.2% of the smart-phone market, expectations were high in advance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s keynote at the company’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. And Jobs did not disappoint, unveiling the iPhone 3G, which will go on sale July 11 for $199.
