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If you have a young niece or daughter, you’ve almost certainly seen her puttering with Zwinky, the pop-eyed cartoon avatar-based social network– sort of a cutesy MySpace for kids, run from a browser toolbar interface. Techcrunch just reported that InteractiveCorp, the company behind Zwinky, will launch […] Read more »

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The debate over the value of advertising in the metaverse just got a lot more interesting. Earlier this month, I noted a survey which suggested that real world marketing in Second Life wasn’t working. That still seems largely true, but now a new study from Seattle-based […] Read more »

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The debate over the value of advertising in the metaverse just got a lot more interesting. Earlier this month, I noted a survey which suggested that real world marketing in Second Life wasn’t working. That still seems largely true, but now a new study from Seattle-based […] Read more »

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In an announcement that shouldn’t surprise regular GigaOM readers in the slightest (warning signs emerged as far back as last February, and reached crescendo pitch in November and December), Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. just announced that CEO Ken Kutaragi, the “father of the Playstation”, will leave […] Read more »

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In an announcement that shouldn’t surprise regular GigaOM readers in the slightest (warning signs emerged as far back as last February, and reached crescendo pitch in November and December), Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. just announced that CEO Ken Kutaragi, the “father of the Playstation”, will leave […] Read more »

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By the middle of last year, it was attracting half a million unique visitors monthly; fast forward to last month, and that number is two million. It’s not a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft; it’s not a social game like There; it doesn’t originate from […] Read more »

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By the middle of last year, it was attracting half a million unique visitors monthly; fast forward to last month, and that number is two million. It’s not a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft; it’s not a social game like There; it doesn’t originate from […] Read more »

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As a gamer, Roger Ehrenberg is a fan of the Xbox 360; unfortunately for Peter Moore, however, his day job is President of a Wall Street analysis firm. And the investor’s perspective is decidedly at odds with the gamer’s. To wit, as he writes on his […] Read more »

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As a gamer, Roger Ehrenberg is a fan of the Xbox 360; unfortunately for Peter Moore, however, his day job is President of a Wall Street analysis firm. And the investor’s perspective is decidedly at odds with the gamer’s. To wit, as he writes on his […] Read more »

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In the future, everyone will be in the virtual world business for fifteen minutes. UK game industry pub MCV reports that Atari, the venerable company that launched the videogame industry, is now developing a user-created online social world of its own. With Atari’s announcement, there are […] Read more »

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In the future, everyone will be in the virtual world business for fifteen minutes. UK game industry pub MCV reports that Atari, the venerable company that launched the videogame industry, is now developing a user-created online social world of its own. With Atari’s announcement, there are […] Read more »

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As part of some restructuring within the Giga network, this blog is going on indefinite hiatus. Fear not, however, because the GigaGamez team will continue covering the business of games in the broadband era. In the next week or two, look to GigaOM for that coverage, […] Read more »

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This week, the Wii’s Internet Channel became fully operational, boasting improved features like manual zoom and collapsible toolbars, powered by Opera; judging by gamer site commentary, the reception from Wii owners is largely positive, with the only major gripe being it doesn’t (yet) support all the […] Read more »

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This week, the Wii’s Internet Channel became fully operational, boasting improved features like manual zoom and collapsible toolbars, powered by Opera; judging by gamer site commentary, the reception from Wii owners is largely positive, with the only major gripe being it doesn’t (yet) support all the […] Read more »

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Last week, the Hamburg-based research firm Komjuniti published the first extensive survey of Resident attitudes toward real world marketing in Second Life. It’s been a long time in coming: a British branding agency established a forward operating base in SL back in early 2004 (and for […] Read more »

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Last week, the Hamburg-based research firm Komjuniti published the first extensive survey of Resident attitudes toward real world marketing in Second Life. It’s been a long time in coming: a British branding agency established a forward operating base in SL back in early 2004 (and for […] Read more »

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This week, New York City was the white hot center for discussing the business of marketing in online worlds. I wasn’t able to attend, but I’ve been following the copious notes of Mark Wallace, who live blogged many of the sessions at 3pointD. Personal highlights after […] Read more »

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Can a realistic space exploration roleplaying game inspire an interest in the real thing? Last week, NASA announced they were calling for proposals to develop an MMO for the young that would be “the front-end of a larger synthetic environment”, with a budget approaching three million […] Read more »

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The metaverse has finally imploded in on itself. Starting tonight – right now, actually – the official European release of the Playstation 3 is being touted in Second Life, on a couple of virtual islands owned by an Italian marketing firm, in conjunction with two bigwig […] Read more »

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That’s the word from the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, reporting on FlowPlay, a Seattle-based startup from Derrick Morton, formerly an exec with RealNetworks. Aiming for a public launch in June, FlowPlay is described as a virtual world centered around casual games. The PI’s John Cook notes that Philip […] Read more »

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… and the Web 2.0 marketing mash-ups keep coming! To promote her latest video, the Internet celebrity who rose to fame almost entirely through her insanely popular MySpace page is becoming a Second Life avatar next week. This according to an announcement I just got from […] Read more »

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Kudos to Mitch Wagner of Information Week for blogging my morning SXSW panel, “Web 2.0 to Web 3D” in the space of several hours— it’s a nice summary of the conversation, with lots of nuggets of insight from Robert Scoble, Susan Wu, and Electronic Arts designer […] Read more »

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That’s the case made by Susan Wu, a venture capitalist with Charles Rivers, and when Susan talks, you should listen. A rare synthesis of VC and hardcore techie/gamer (she was both the CMO for the Apache Software Foundation and a competitive Quake player), Susan was a […] Read more »

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Wanna look like Lauren Conrad, the Orange County blonde and burgeoning fashion designer? Your kid sister probably does— but the question is how much she’s willing to pay. MTV’s semi-reality television show Laguna Beach has a virtual world analogue built on Makena Technology’s There by metaverse […] Read more »

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Just in time for GDC, the GigaGamez surge is on! This week, Om and I are bringing on three more regular bloggers, a couple of them selected in part from our open audition. It’s an impressive roster of seasoned writers who know the business of gaming, […] Read more »

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There’s been a lot of buzz recently over this trailer for HiPiHi, which purports to be a Chinese version of Second Life. The dialog is all in Mandarin, which I don’t speak, so I’ve been holding off on commenting until I could get a translation/summary from […] Read more »

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I haven’t heard much lately about Rupture, Shawn Fanning’s now-in-Beta social network for World of Warcraft users, but two excellent insights on it just came across my desktop. Tony Walsh at Clickable Culture thinks The Armory, Blizzard’s new searchable database network of WoW items and players, […] Read more »

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According to VGCharts, there are now 4 million Playstation 3s on the market, while just 1.8 million of them have been sold. More than two million PS3s sit forlorn on store shelves. That coupled with another recent set of sales figues suddenly made me realize the […] Read more »

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… or if that doesn’t grab you, how about World of MyCraft, or even Third Life? A new start-up called Kaneva is gunning for the market somewhere between online worlds and social networks with an avatar-based space now in closed Beta. Read more »

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Next week, my man Jason McMaster will be reviewing Crackdown from GigaGamez’s unique point of view. Meantime, here’s an interesting comparison of trailers for the highly anticipated, sci fi-tinged, gangsters-versus- mercenaries slugfest for the Xbox 360 out this week. There’s a number of versions on YouTube, […] Read more »

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So here’s a fun but totally unscientific next gen console survey you can try doing on Google over the year, just like I did a few minutes ago: Search “defective 360″: 2810 returns Search “defective PS3″: 1570 returns Search “defective Wii”: 931 returns Therefore, unless someone […] Read more »

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John Carmack has talked about building one, Asian gamers already have one, but unless I missed the memo, Second Life is the first established, US-based 3D online world accessible by cellphone. This technology comes not from Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, reports Reuters, but […] Read more »

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First it was “Sell an M-rated game, get fired“, now it’s close to becoming “Sell an M-rated game, get fined“. According to Next Gen, an Indianapolis Senate committee just overwhelmingly passed a law that would impose $1000 fines on retailers caught selling games rated Mature or […] Read more »

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I’ll never understand why game developers are so unwilling to stay true to the spirit of their non-game IP. Easily the most anticipated movie of the season, Frank Miller’s 300 is a highly stylized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which several hundred elite Spartans […] Read more »

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So here’s your fascinating factoid of the day, taken from a study by Synovate, a market research firm, which recently conducted a broad survey of Europeans between 18-24: Of those interviewed, 25 percent use social networks. And 19 percent play MMOs. Talk about upending common assumptions! […] Read more »

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I’m still not sure if this is the weirdest Web 2.0-era marketing gimmick to come along, or the most brilliant: Burnout Band Slam 2 is a contest for unsigned bands on MySpace to win a demo recording contract with Virgin and a slot on the soundtrack […] Read more »

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In the future, everyone famous will have their own world for 15 minutes. Not exactly a favorite of gamers or geeks, supermodel Tyra Banks has nonetheless joined the metaverse business via a virtual studio linked to her Warner Brothers TV show. If you had been lucky […] Read more »

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If initial reports hold true, that’s the prediction I’m inclined to make. A couple days ago, Destructoid.com quoted a source at a manager’s meeting at GameStop, the world’s largest videogame retailer. From now on, Destructoid’s unnamed source said, GameStop would fire any staffer who sold an […] Read more »

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