As dust continues to settle from this year’s E3, analysts’ price-cutting speculation is giving way to a bundle of retail clarity: Sony remains bullish on its stagnant profit strategy amid mounting losses and cost cutting initiatives. Publishers are growing weary. While time reveals all, the PS3 will probably not see a price drop until end of summer at the earliest. Instead, recent leaks from Best Buy and Game Stop reveal a mediocre bundling strategy coupled with an aggressive Experience Playstation Now project aimed to educate and communicate to consumers the inherent value of the powerful, but expensive, sleek, but game deficient $399/$499 priced, black glossy console. Supposedly, Best Buy will receive a “limited edition” 80GB SKU including two games at $399. Game Stop is rumored to offer a limited time Final Fantasy VII Blu-ray 80GB bundle priced at $399.

In recent years, there has become an increasing reliance on metacritic scores as the executive bar of success in the video game industry. There is no question that these scores are transforming the way games are judged and marketed. Not surprisingly, there is ongoing gunslinging between manufacturers, publishers, and developers over which games and platforms are the best in terms of these scores. This is a question that we are very interested to answer, both qualitatively and quantitatively here at LudoGrind. While scores vary tremendously by platform, genre,  publisher, and a plethora of other segments, I figured it would be good to start at the top in terms of overall average scores by platform. On May 1, I took a snapshot:

Via Raph Koster comes word that a gang of Internet café bullies in China have been convicted of cyber extortion surrounding major Chinese web portal, Tencent. Accused of stealing Tencent QQ coins valued at 100,000 yuan ($14,000), the court ruled that the virtual goods, since purchased, constituted a legitimate case of extortion. The ring leader got three years in jail while the three accomplices received fines.

Koster notes that this is not surprising given the substantial size of the industry in China, estimated to be 25 times the size of the US market. See link for report and slide show.

Ask and you shall receive. Via SimianLogic and Hollywood Reporter comes news that “Futurama” will be returning for 26 episodes over two seasons, on order from Comedy Central. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen have begun work on a new slate of episodes set to premiere mid-2010. The order comes after four recent feature length specials on DVD and Comedy Central. Borrowing a cancellation revival page from “Family Guy,” the announcement comes at a perfect time for the franchise, having built substantial momentum and audience acclaim over the past several years.

Los Angeles- Skateboards, rabbits, dresses and…air? Clearly the industry is taking a turn towards virtual reality of lost past, physical and social motion sensing connectivity an overwhelming theme thus far at E3, Hollywood media and film convergence a close second. Hype, it appears is not without a sense of gimmickery.

Here’s a list of game changing happenings thus far at E3 in order of press conference extraveganzas.

Activision-Blizzard (Sunday 5PM 5:16PM)
Rock music, safe harbor statements, making an entrance, and an appearance by Tony Hawk, CEO Bobby Kotick announced the market is large and growing to $55 billion by 2012 ($39 billion in 2008), revealing a powerful online monetization strategy. More people, more time, more money playing video games fueled by

In yesterday’s results call to analysts, Take-Two Interactive reported heavy fiscal losses for the quarter, underscoring Grand Theft Auto IV’s preeminence and proving just how important blockbuster titles are to the hit-driven publishing industry. Net loss for the second quarter was narrower than expected, reported at $10.1 million ($.13 per share), down by a factor of almost 10 compared to last year’s haul of $98.2 million ($1.29 per share). The loss was fueled by paltry year-over-year earnings, net revenue falling by 57% from $539.8 million this time a year ago to a mere $229.7 million. To make matters worse, Take-Two announced they have delayed the release of Mafia II and Red Dead Redemption until first half 2010, citing further development time needed to ensure quality and market performance.

This video I came across perfectly articulates how I have felt about the Simpsons for the past 9 years. It’s easy for me because I don’t have to write much, just use other peoples’ materials instead…. kind of like the Simpsons.

Great, now you are up to speed on the sound reasoning behind why the Simpsons suck. What I want to understand is why do people still defend it? Why do they watch it?

Introducing: LudoGrind, Entertainment Analytics, revamped blog and website concerning business intelligence from Hollywood to gamespace and around the synthetic frontier. As the interactive entertainment industry continues to expand, consolidation in game and film space is building momentum at an unprcedented rate. From unit sales and hardware launches to film criticism and game reviews, this space is grounded in ludotopian belief that games in all their forms make the world a better place!

At ludogrind, its all about the data and meaningful interpretation. The interpretation is key to decoding hit-driven entertainment.  I’ve got a lot going on at the moment, but some cool data sets are in the hopper. Once everything is up and running smoothly, I’m excited to really delve into what makes the industry tick and what just might rock the boat.

Started several years ago at UCI, the LudoGrind site has been in hybernation mode for too long.  The time away has provided a chance to do some exploring, from DVD Market Research in Century City and film festivals in Sonoma to conversational AI in Paris and San Francisco, its been a wild year and a half. While Distraction Economies are everywhere, however, I’m currently located in the sunny forested wetlands of Redwood City, California. This gaming life has finally reemerged!     

Pardon the dust as ludogrind evolves.

PS. Thanks to Andrew Mac over at SanTasti for the blog-o-assitance. By the way, Andre makes a great spokesman!

We call ourselves players– as opposed to “gamers,” a herd of junkies doing rather well squandering their time.

We see no connection between truly exhilarating flow and the cunning and calculation of the profiteers.

We consider the psychological Euro-American MMO-reward drama weighed down with needy apparitions and childhood greed– an absurdity.

To the synthetic frontier with its showy geography and to the mythification of Tolkien lore the players say thanks for the rapid territory transitions and the quests. Good … but disorderly, not based on precise study of locality and immersion. A cut above the psychological raid drama, but still lacking in foundation. A cliché. A copy of a replicant.

“Seeing these technoloiges and practices over and over in our popular culture, and particularly in cinema, we witness a scorn for the boundaries between the public and the private, between the interior and the exterior. And in doing so popular culture has created the sense that surveillance is normal–the aesthetic accompaniment to the end of privacy. Films that feature surveillance as a vehicle for spectacle, suspense, and violence demonstrate how we are no longer affected or unsettled by the video gaze or bodily intrusion. They have become ordinary images.”
-John Turner

Since the birth of cinema, film and cultural critics have noted the emergence of the spectacle as a challenge to traditional rituals of art – especially concerning the medium’s capacity to “distract” the masses. In 1936 Walter Benjamin famously warned of the loss of artwork’s so called “aura” in the age of technological reproducibility