Video games have taken over the lives of both children and adults alike. However, many of the games have become so violent, that some parents refuse to let their kids play them. Many of today’s games feature blood, guts, war and drive-by shootings…and have many parents afraid of what those types of games might turn their children into.
Do these games pose a greater threat to creating a person who is more likely to go on and live a violent “video-game” lifestyle than say violent TV shows?
Recently at the Royal Television Society’s Cambridge Convention, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello bumped heads with ITV’s chairman Michael Grade over video-game violence.
Grade accused video-games of existing in a “moral vacuum”. Riccitiello vehemently defended the video games industry, saying the violence portrayed in games is no worse than in popular TV shows.
Riccitiello compared violent footage from hit shows 24 and CSI, films including Kill Bill and 300 and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto video game. Read.
Today George Harrison Senior VP of Marketing at Nintendo of America, announced his departure after fifteen years with the company. Reuters was told by Harrison that he had “confirmed to all employees” that he would “be leaving at the end of December. This announcement comes as Nintendo America is moving its offices from Redmond to San Francisco and New York. Harrison will not be joining them.
Harrison has been the lifeblood of Nintendo’s American marketing department for the past 10+ years and will not be easy to replace. He is one of the major reasons for Nintendo’s domination of the video game market. Will his departure open the door for Sony or Microsoft to become the new video game king? Read.
Blockbuster must really like the way 7 Eleven does business. The company announced that its chief operating officer will leave at the end of September and that they have brought in two more former 7 eleven big gulp big-wigs.
Keith Morrow has been appointed CIO and David Podeschi has been named Senior VP of merchandising, distribution and logistics.
Both men recently held similar positions at 7-Eleven, where Blockbuster’s current CEO James Keys was president and chief executive until the convenience store chain was sold in 2005.
From throwing parties at Howard University when he was just a pup, to interning at a record studio, to launching Bad Boy Records, to launching the hugely successful Sean Jean clothing line, …it seems like everything Sean P. Diddy Combs touches turns to gold.
Now the CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment is being credited with a different type of success. This time he’s being given credit for playing a major role in the successful turnaround of the once floundering Burger King fast food empire.
A multi-year deal between Combs and Burger King was announced in October of 2006 in which Diddy would be featured in a fresh ad campaign promoting Burger King’s new late night hours.
The result? Burger King’s sales rose more than 11% over the past year due to strong late night sales. And now the company has made an official statement crediting Diddy for being a major reason for the strong sales performance.
Diddy…You’re A Bad Boy.
As you can see from the above photo, Billionaire Mark Cuban is not afraid to get his freak on, on the dance floor. Now Cuban will reportedly take his dance floor prowess to the airwaves. The Dallas Mavericks owner is the latest celebrity rumored to be a participant in the next installment of the wildly popular ABC reality show Dancing With The Stars.
According to sources, Cuban’s dancing ability is not simply limited to doing the elcectric slide at the local bar…Cuban reportedly worked as a disco dance instructor when he was in college.
The show will also reportedly feature former 90210 star Jennie Garth, former Spice Girl Melanie Brown and singer Wayne Newton.
In a recent interview at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh TV Festival, joost co-founder Janus Friis discussed future possibilities for his company’s Web TV service including charging users and introducing adult content. He also tackled questions concerning the public’s perception that ISPs hate joost.
For those not familiar with joost, joost is a new way of watching TV on the Internet. With joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping…all within the cozy confines of the web.
Here are some interesting highlights from the interview with Janus Friis:
Friis said that Joost was “opening up” in a number of ways and that this flexibility meant that it “could add pay-per-view in the future” and would “not rule out” introducing potentially lucrative adult content “sometime in the future”. 
Later during the question and answer session, an audience member took Friis to task claiming that “ISPs hate joost” because of the added cost to deliver band-width sucking TV over ISP networks. Friis’ response was that “people running ISPs” are in favor but those within the ISP world developing similar products don’t like it. “It is a schism within ISPs,” he argued.
The audience member followed up by asking if in order to balance the extra costs of delivering TV over ISP networks, whether joost would offer up a slice of its ad revenue to ISPs?
“We are not negotiating to give up revenue,” said Friis emphatically. “That is a slippery slope”. Read.
