…Now spelled “wii”, thanks to Nintendo’s marketing team.

I’m just not sure what to think. The reasons for the name change sound good when they’re spelled out on paper. So why can’t I supress the urge to roll my eyes? Oh well, I fully admit that I’m no product-naming expert. I personally preferred “Revolution”, though.

Update: …and, the inevitable zinger from Penny Arcade.

• The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft may acquire Massive (in-game advertising company) for $200M - $400M.
• Programmers and EA reach a $14.9M overtime settlement, and the identity of the “EA Spouse” is finally revealed.
• Prediction: Report: China’s Video Game Market to Reach $2.1B in 2010, driven in part by the casual game market.
• Via Digg, yet another visceral example of why the Nintendo Revolution is going to rock. (It helps if you like Star Wars.)

Phil Gee, University Relations Manager for EA, was good enough to answer a few of my questions about the EA internship program — by far the largest (and probably oldest) program in the industry, excepting perhaps the console manufacturers. On to the interview:

How long has EA’s college internship program been active?

If my memory serves, almost 10 years to this day.

When the program first started, how many interns did you accept (and in roughly what proportion: engineers, artists, production, business, etc?) How many interns do you accept now?

I’ve only been here for 3.5 years, but from conversations with early alumni of the internship program, I can tell you it was rather small. We had roughly 20-30 interns during the summer, working predominantly at EA Redwood Shores. A little over half (let’s say 60%) worked in game development (art, engineering, production) and the other half were on the corporate side (marketing, finance, IT). Today, our program is a global one; we host approximately 274 interns (fiscal year 2006) with close to 70% of them being in game development.

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• In the OMFG! category: some Korean mothers are helping to power-level their children’s online game characters, to free up time for school work. Falling behind in games can apparently result in real-life ostracism by peers. I’m thinking there are worse things than ostracism… :-/
• Joystiq has published a list of confirmed titles that will showcase the abilities of the Revolution controller. It isn’t a long list, but it is very interesting.
• Viacom (MTVN) has acquired Xfire for $102M. Xfire is an IM client and community portal for gamers — I interviewed them back in March.
• 4Kids Entertainment (which produces cartoons such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon) will manage global merchandising for the Xbox brand.
• It’s good to be king: EA CEO Larry Probst took home $12.6M in total compensation in 2005.

The current console business model has been established for long enough that most of us take it for granted. Develop great hardware, sell it near or below cost, then generate profit by taking a cut of the revenue from all future game sales. If nothing else, this gets consoles into more homes, which benefits everyone in the long-term. But what would happen if the model were somehow disrupted?

I started thinking about this when I found out that the EU had voted to ban printer manufacturers from forcing consumers to buy their own-brand refills. The business model for printers is very similar to consoles: sell the printers cheaply, then profit from ink sales. (The major difference is that console makers don’t completely lock out third parties; they just exercise quality control and take a big cut of profits.)

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• Prediction: India’s online games market to top $200M by 2010. IMO, it’ll be a billion not too many years thereafter.
• MMOGCharts has updated its subscriber census data for many of the MMOGs on the market (the data is a few months old, but still interesting.)
• Neat videos of Bodypad, a product that tracks the movement of your arms and legs and enables you to play fighting games with your entire body.
• Not many WoW players who reach level 60 are actually taking frequent advantage of end-game raid content. Should developers de-prioritize (but not eliminate) that kind of content, or would any reduction demotivate a small but influential segment of the community?
• A sign of times to come: true mass-market video game advertising.

Gamasutra has reprinted an analysis by Jason Kraft and Chris Kwak that challenges the merits of an episodic model for AAA games. Jason and Chris ask some good questions, but I disagree with much of their analysis. Let me quote their key arguments and assumptions, tackle each as best I can, and see where that leads us:

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• Nice article by Tony Walsh on using game-like systems to make boring jobs more interesting and make employees more effective. Example used: airport security screening. I agree with a comment on the post — Tony’s design is probably over-engineered, but the idea is, in principle, quite promising.
• Danc of Lost Garden explains why he left the video game industry. A confrontational post, to say the least, but well-written as always. To summarize: he faults the industry for its low wages, long hours, lack of innovation, and poor project management policies and systems. I believe there are many developers that are making strides in these areas, but I hear where Danc’s coming from and respect his position. (I’ve recently flagged a few of these issues myself.) Btw, if you can’t read enough about the evils of crunch time, here’s a pretty thorough article on the subject.
• Next-Gen posted a list of the 100 most successful studios, based on game sales in the UK in 2005. (I’ve linked directly to the top 10). The UK’s a large market, so the list is interesting, but of course games like Madden don’t register quite as much as they obviously should.

I’m currently under assault by four very cute, very intense little cousins, so my blog writing will probably cease for a few days. If they manage to snap any of my limbs (or my spine), the downtime may prove more extensive.  :-)

Speaking of my cousins — Alexandra (age 7) has discovered Sonic the Hedgehog via a free flash-game website. She really enjoys it (and why shouldn’t she? Sonic rocked!)

Watching Alex play has further strengthened my belief that many more women would be “hardcore” gamers today, if only the industry hadn’t alienated them with utterly male-centric marketing in years past. That’s starting to change now, and I think the results are going to (positively) surprise everyone in the not-too-distant future. It’ll mean a lot more money for this industry!

Back in January, Henry and I gave a talk at the Economics of Open Content Symposium on “The New Economics of Gaming”, which is basically a vague, grandiose way of saying “a talk on user-generated content and the video game industry.” A video clip of the entire session was recently made publicly available here.

On a fast connection, the video quality is great. Otherwise, you’ll get nothing but chop, but at least the sound quality remains consistently adequate throughout.