Significances of Proliferation in hardware and content

What are some of the significances of proliferation in hardware?

From having multiple choice in hardware the audience are able to pick and choose to what suits their personal needs best. The ability to sift through the positives and negatives of such consoles as Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo the client can decide which is most suitable.
Again, the audience will take assurance from the fact that there are different consoles on the market, in the sense of competition. The more choice in the market, the less monopolisation a company holds over the consumer hence the price shall be driven lower and lower.
Finally, with so much competition of hardware companies will be forced to find new niche's in the market. This should lead to technological convergence. This can be shown with the latest generation of consoles: The Playstation 3 has the ability to play Blu-Ray as well as browse the internet and the Xbox 360 users being able to access Windows Live Messenger.

A negative of having lots of hardware on the market, for the company, will be that they are forced to spend more on development and marketing to get their product out there.
For the consumer, the downside will be the complications they may find when coming to purchase a certain product. If they are new to the market they may encounter problems when trying to decipher which console will suit them best, putting them of all together.

What are some of the significances of proliferation in content?

With having a variety of choice within in the specifics of the consoles is very similar to that of hardware. For example the competition with promoting games and content to the target audiences results in companies spending large sums of money to enhance their status in the market.
With there being too much content on offer to consumers, this would benefit them in limitless ways. I.e competition would be so high that each distributor would be forced to drop prices. Not only this, but designers would be fighting to be the best in their market leading to a better game for all. Unfortunately this would inevitably result in a crash altogether of the market. A great example of this was in the 1980's when there was so much variety in the market that the market deteriorated and critics labelled the gaming era as 'a phase'. Companies would be spending so much money designing content they would later be forced to lower prices lower than that spent on production.
A challenge for companies can be to get their content on the forefront of the market. They can attack this with 'synergy'. This is the marketing of a product along with another product of a different industry. In 1982 'E.T' was released. Companies thought they would attempt to increase their game sales by releasing the E.T game within the hype of the film.

OnLive

5 Advantages:

• Bring gaming communities together eg. Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo.
• Easier for gamers to access games.
• With this, it makes it cheaper to produce games for the manufacturer and also the consumer.
• Less environmental waste.
• As consumers are forced to access games via the same website this is an opportunity for OnLive to monopolise on marketing.
  

5 Disadvantages:

• The awkwardness of PC game play. Every gamer knows the unfortunate controls that are given to us when we play a game via the PC or Mac. Unlike the major games consoles with specifically designed controllers when playing on the PC or Mac users are forced to use a joystick or keyboard.
• Internet connection is not consistent across the world.
• Would destroy the industry. Console manufacturers, designers, distributors, publishers are just some areas that would be affected.
• Socially the gaming community would be affected. Trading games, playing with friends, and borrowing each others games.
• The system would be liable to hackers, which could put the whole system down for a lengthy time.
  

Research:Key Terms

Marketing is the process by which companies determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relations in order to capture value from customers in return.

Viral Marketing is a branch of marketing as a whole. The idea of Viral Marketing is that the product shall be promoted via such media forms as video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. Mouth to mouth is another form of Viral Marketing.

Guerrilla Marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time and energy. The idea is to market the product in unexpected ways and places so that the product remains in the forefront of the public's interest.

Mainstream Press, or in other words, mass media is a section of media specifically designed to reach a large audience. In the modern world we see examples of this everywhere in the form of nationwide radio and televison and newspapers.

Specialist Press is the complete opposite for exactly what Mass Media stands for. It is the equivalent to a nationwide news program vs a regional news program. Specialist Press researches into the product and models itself around exactly what would appeal to the audience it was targeting.

Research into different gaming institutions

Zynga - mostly focus on games within social network sites, games such as zynga poker and farmville which are popular on sites such as facebook.

Capcom - is a Worldwide leading Japanese International developer and publisher of video games based in Osaka, Japan. It was founded in 1979 as Japan Capsule Computers, a company devoted to the manufacturing and distribution of electronic game machines. In 2008, Capcom was one of the fifty largest software companies in the world.

Xbox live marketplace - Braid (game) - Is a single player video game exclusive to xbox live. it is an arcade game that can be bought via the marketplace.

iphone Developer

RAGE - Rockstar Advanced Game Engine

before RAGE, Renderware engine developed titles on PS2, Xbox and PC of early GTA for example,

• Vice City
• GTA 3
• GTA:VC stories
• GTA: LC Stories

RAGE was built due to the competiotion with EA's Citrion.

rockstar advanced game engine, created by a small team. developed to facilitate the high technological needs of the PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Evolved from Angel game engine for use in 6th gen console era.

It was created by the 'rage technology group' with the video game developers : rockstar north, and san deigo. Rockstar integrated a few third party middleware components into rage, such as the Euphoria character animation engine and the open source Bullet physics engine.

callum + luke

Ello m8

the first game we ever played?

callum - the first game i ever played was sonic the hedgehog on my bezzie m8s sega megadrive

luke - the first game i ever played was Tetris on the game boy

what games did we like playing and why?

callum - i enjoyed playing crash bandicoot on the playstation, fifa, and james bond goldeneye. the best format i multiplayer with your bezzie m8s

luke - /i enjoyed playing crash bandicoot, fifa, spyro the dragon on playstation, also mario kart on the nintendo 64, and halo 3 on the xbox 360.

What games do you play now and what do you enjoy about them ?

callum - atm i play on the playstation and currently i am enjoying battlefield bad company 2 because of its online capabilities, obviousl fifa 10, and racing games have just died out really

luke - i like to play Call of duty mw2, and fifa 10

what consoles have you purchased and why?

callum - well my parents got me a playstation and then an xbox but i saved up for a xbox 360 and then a playstation 3. i purchased a ps3 because it is a different generation of gaming

luke - playstation, ps2, ps3, xbox 360, nintendo wii

do you play games online, if yes, what games and where do you play them?

callum - battlefield, cod, fifa. at home m8

luke - cod, at home and fifa 10 round mates.

da end.