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	<title>Business &#38; MoneyCategory: Video Games &#124; Business &#38; Money &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Business &#38; MoneyCategory: Video Games &#124; Business &#38; Money &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Game Over? Why Video-Game-Console Sales Are Plummeting</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/02/11/game-over-why-video-game-console-sales-are-plummeting/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/02/11/game-over-why-video-game-console-sales-are-plummeting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Martha C. White</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies & Industries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nintendo Wii U]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Playstation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Xbox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Xbox 360]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=70257</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At a quick glance, it looks like it could be &#8220;game over&#8221; for the video-game-console business. Sales of consoles in the U.S. dropped 21% in 2012 to just over $4 billion, and figures from the manufacturers of the three top systems were lackluster over the crucial holiday season.  When announcing its quarterly earnings last month, Microsoft said its Xbox-division revenue dropped 29%. At Sony, lower PlayStation 3 and PSP sales were responsible for a 15% drop in revenue for its video-game division. Nintendo’s next-gen console Wii U also failed to generate as much interest as originally predicted. Last month, the company said it had sold only about 3 million consoles and that it would sell a million more through March, a sharp drop from the 5.5 million it initially anticipated selling. There’s less demand for the physical games these days too. According to research company NPD Group, game sales fell from a little over $11 billion in 2011 to less than $9 billion last year. Retailer GameStop says sales of new video games over the holiday season dropped by about 5%, and sales of used games dropped by 16%. “It&#8217;s tracking to be the worst quarter the company&#8217;s ever had in the used business,&#8221; Sean McGowan, an analyst with Needham &#38; Co., told the Wall Street Journal. Analysts blame a lot of the slump on timing. “It is a cyclical market,” says Lewis Ward, research manager of gaming at IDC. “The usual lifespan is 10 to 12 years for a console, and we are in a trough right now.” (MORE: Why the Next Hit Video Game May Be Crowdfunded) But the Wii U’s underwhelming sales illustrate that even the market for new consoles will be challenging, leaving the industry pinning its hopes on Sony and Microsoft. Sony is expected to unveil the next version of the PlayStation as early as this month, according to the Wall Street Journal, and start selling it some time later this year. Microsoft is also supposed to introduce its new Xbox this year, and analysts say the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=70257&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/companies-industries/video-games-companies-industries/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/wiiu1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">marthacwhite</media:title>
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		<title>Why the Next Hit Video Game May Be Crowdfunded</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2013/01/29/why-the-next-hit-video-game-may-be-crowdfunded/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2013/01/29/why-the-next-hit-video-game-may-be-crowdfunded/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Victor Luckerson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Companies & Industries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=68163</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How do you make a video game that no one seems to want anymore? Game developer Double Fine faced that conundrum at the end of 2011. The company wanted to make an old-school PC adventure game, the type that had made company founder Tim Schafer a game design legend in the 1990s with titles like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango. But the genre&#8217;s market had seemingly dried up in favor of more visceral experiences like first-person shooters. Video game publishers—the companies like Activision and Electronic Arts that provide the funding, marketing and distribution channels for most games you see on the shelf—had become increasingly uninterested in taking risks or appeasing niche audiences with their releases. Schafer and his studio decided to cut out the middleman. They launched a $400,000 Kickstarter project in February, asking video game fans to collectively fund not only a new adventure game but also a documentary that would chronicle the development of the product from start to finish. In his project video on the crowdfunding website, Schafer did not promise fans the greatest game of all time. He didn’t even guarantee the game would be good. “Either the game will be great, or it will be a spectacular failure caught on camera for everyone to see,” he says in the video. It’s definitely not the kind of pitch a designer would be likely to make to a group of executives at a big-name publisher. But it resonated with fans in a big way. The game, currently called Double Fine Adventure, reached its funding goal in eight hours and passed the $1 million mark in a day. By the time its 34-day funding period had elapsed, the project had amassed more than $3.3 million in funding from over 87,000 backers. Without writing a line of code, Double Fine already had a hit &#8212; and even better, they wouldn’t have to share the profits with a publisher when the game released. (MORE: Kickstarter Aims to Make Gadgets Less of a Gamble) While the project was a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=68163&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/companies-industries/video-games-companies-industries/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/dfa_logo_digital.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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		<title>Wrapped in Nietzsche and Gun Violence, Will Far Cry 3 Make It Under the Tree for Christmas?</title>
		<link>http://business.time.com/2012/12/24/wrapped-in-nietzsche-and-gun-violence-will-far-cry-3-make-it-under-the-tree-for-christmas/</link>
		<comments>http://business.time.com/2012/12/24/wrapped-in-nietzsche-and-gun-violence-will-far-cry-3-make-it-under-the-tree-for-christmas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Dec 2012 16:39:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Micah Kelber</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[far cry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[far cry 3]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jason Brody]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jeffrey Yohalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ubisoft]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://business.time.com/?p=65067</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If the success of past Ubisoft games written by Jeffrey Yohalem are any indication, millions of people will be spending Christmas afternoon sitting in front of their X-boxes playing Far Cry 3, or wishing they could. The game, after all, was released on December 4 and has garnered solid critical reviews and an impressive Metacritic score. But in the wake of the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook, Ubisoft &#8211; like Etzio from the company&#8217;s other recent giant success, the Assassins&#8217; Creed series &#8212; seems to be positioned atop a medieval tower, looking down at a pile of hay, wondering if it will survive the jump. The reason is that, in order to save his friends, Jason Brody, the player&#8217;s avatar in Far Cry 3, has to shoot his way through hundreds of island pirates, wild animals, and human traffickers. And with all the sadness and scenes of horror on the news, American gift-givers may have decided to give more tranquil gifts this year, choosing presents far removed from gun play, and images of blood and death. Complicating this dynamic, however, is an insistence by writer Jeffrey Yohalem that the game actually critiques meaningless violence and behavior &#8212; and even the meaninglessness of playing some video games. It remains to be seen if video game players will want to do all the shooting to get to the critique. Sandy Hook has hit the country hard. (Ubisoft declined to comment for this story.) (MORE: Far Cry 3 Review: Entertainment For a  Price) Whether or not players appreciate the critique, the game is not for children. Your character is surrounded by ample swearing, sex, and violence, including skinning bloody animals and permission from the bad guy that you can have your way with the caged natives &#8212; as long as you don’t &#8220;damage the merchandise.&#8221; All this should quickly tip the player off that the designers wrote the game for adults. As such, it has a complex adult message that doesn’t allow a player at the end to necessarily describe the game as having been “fun” &#8212; just as,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=business.time.com&#038;blog=31173800&#038;post=65067&#038;subd=timebusinessblog&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://business.time.com/category/companies-industries/video-games-companies-industries/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timebusinessblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/farcry241.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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