Week of February 16, 2009

Next Generation of the PPM

Friday, February 20, 2009

Arbitron's new CEO, Michael Skarzynski, publicly discussed plans for the next generation of PPM technology. He called it a software-based solution which would make the technology even more portable. Instead of embedding it into the current pager-like device, the next gen PPM would be able to be embedded into various devices, including televisions, laptops and the Holy Grail of portable devices, the mobile phone.

The most important part of Skarzynski's statement is that the technology could be ready for a pilot test within 12 months. This is big news and a welcome development. Many people feel the PPM and other electronic measurement technologies will not reach their full potential until they can be used in mobile phones.

Rock Band to Dramatically Expand Download Catalog

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Although the Guitar Heroes series to outsold the Rock Band franchise in 2008, the latter has announced an ambitious expansion of its download catalog. As of the beginning of the year, there were more than 500 tracks available for Rock Band, but the new plans are for a library of 5000 tracks by the end of 2009. This would give Rock Band a tremendous advantage; Guitar Hero currently offers less than 100 songs.

Video Game Sales for 2008

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

As mentioned yesterday, video game sales totaled just under 300 million in 2008, good for $11.7 billion in revenue. The top 4 games accounted for 5% of total sales. And the winners were:

• EA's "Madden NFL 09": 5.25 million units
• Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto IV" (GTA IV), 5.22 million
• Activision/Red Octane's "Guitar Hero World Tour" (GHTW), 3.4 million
• Harmonix/MTV/EA's "Rock Band 2" (RB 2), 1.7 million

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  Music Sales Rose in 2008...No, Seriously

  Tuesday, February 17, 2009

  Music sales were up in 2008, compared to 2007. Unfortunately, unit sales increases for downloads didn't nearly make up for the drop in album sales. Overall, unit sales were up 10.5% in 2008 to 1.5 billion, according to NPD Group. Also, measured in units, album sales surpassed video game sales last year:

  • 297.6 million video games
  • 430 million million albums
  • 362 million CDs

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  DVD Sales Fall Dramatically

  Monday, February 16, 2009

  Add DVD sales to the list of media crises. The Digital Entertainment Group released a survey which showed a 32% drop in DVD shipments in Q408. This is the biggest drop since the DVD survey began in 1997. Reasons for the drop go beyond the general economic woes. DVD sales have been softening for some time. Here are some of the suspects:

  • Growth of Blu-Ray (since it won its format battle with HD DVD in early 2008) - However , Blu-Ray has not come near replacing the lost DVD sales.
  • Growth of legal downloads - New initiatives from Netflix, TiVo and others are making downloads a viable option for consumers to rent or own movies and TV shows.
  • New online sites like Hulu - The NBC Universal ad-supported video site, which may have reached the tipping point with a series of ads in the Super Bowl, has given consumers a high quality, easy to use option for viewing programming on demand.

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