| Western MMO Market Worth A Cool Billion
Researchers Screen Digest have just finished up looking at the MMO market, and have some cold, hard numbers for us. According to their research, in 2006 the Western MMO market topped $1,000,000,000 for the first time ever. That is a lot of money. Actually, considering the relatively low number of high-profile MMOs, it's a fuckton of money. And the lions share is going to Star Wars Galaxies...no, really it's Blizzard. WoW accounted for nearly half the market's total worth, with annual revenue of $471 million. $471 million. Console publishers must look at those numbers and weep despairingly into their pillows. Next in line was daylight, followed by Runescape. SD also chance their arm at predicting the future, and believe the market will be worth $1.5 billion by 2011, with over 10 million MMO subscribers.
Success in MMOGs: Careful Planning Vs. Wildcat Drilling
Next month DFC Intelligence will be publishing its latest research on the massively multiplayer online game (or MMOG) market. This is a well-established, but often misunderstood, segment of the interactive entertainment industry. The success of World of Warcraft (WoW) from Vivendi Universal Games is leading to interest and investment in the segment that is far above what its current market size and usage can support. Therefore we feel it is critical to look at some of the factors that could separate the handful of winners from the many losers. Perhaps the most important point to note is that there will be a great deal of money lost. Since the emergence of the current MMOG market, which we pegged as 1997, there have never been more than a handful of hit products in a given market at the same time.
Vyyo names Wayne Davis chief executive
NEW YORK (AP) - Vyyo Inc., whose technology helps cable companies boost their network bandwidth, named Wayne Davis as its new chief executive and hired cable industry veteran Jim Chiddix as vice chairman, the company said on Monday.
Davis, 53, replaces Davidi Gilo, who will stay on as chairman.
Chiddix most recently served as the chairman and chief executive of OpenTV Corp., a maker of interactive television software. He also spent 15 years as Time Warner Cable''s chief technical officer, and helped develop optical fiber technology for cable TV. Chiddix, 61, was "deeply involved with nearly every new technology embraced by the industry, including local ad insertion, video-on-demand, cable modems, and digital set-top boxes," according to his biography.
Davis served as executive vice president and chief technology officer at Charter Communications Inc., the cable operator controlled by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, from 2003 until 2006.
|
