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Game makers eye young girls with “Boogie SuperStar”
If “American Idol” and a modern fairy tale combined to create a video game, you’d get “Boogie SuperStar” — Electronic Art’s latest game for the Nintendo Wii system.But instead of finding Prince Charming, the goal of the game is to beat rival players’ singing and dancing skills to earn the grand title of Boogie SuperStar. Players are “discovered” and whisked away in a stretch limo to an island where they hone their skills for the competition.
Electronic Arts created the game specifically for female teens and pre-teens, or tweens, a demographic often overlooked by video game publishers.
In the United States, 38 percent of all gamers are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
“We knew this was an amazing audience to go after and to take what (tween girls) love — fashion, music, dancing — and create a video game for these girls to show their self-expression,” said John Buchanan, marketing director for EA’s Casual Entertainment division.
Girls — and boys too — can choose their own character and customize its name, hairstyle and outfit for their performance. They then pick music from a playlist of Top 40 pop songs, including hits from Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and Kanye West.
Unlike other popular music games such as “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero,” players of the new game dictate how their character — or avatar — moves on screen.
The game includes a microphone that measures players’ vocal fluctuations. The motion-sensing Wii controller records their dance moves.
EA says the game promotes “self-expression, creativity, and empowerment for girls worldwide,” but some female gamers say “Boogie SuperStar” is yet another girl-targeted video game based on unflattering stereotypes.
“I don’t think anything using pop-stars with ‘issues’ that revolve around scandals can create any kind of positive self-empowerment,” said Didi Cardoso, managing editor of Grrlgamer.com, a video game review web site produced by women.
Cardoso said many girl-targeted video games on the market center around themes such as cooking, pets, makeup, fashion or babies. Sandlot Games’ “Cake Mania” game, for example, challenges players to help the main character bake as many cakes as she can to save her grandparents’ bakery from closure.
French video game publisher Ubisoft Entertainment SA developed its “Imagine” line just for tween girls. Yet some of the line’s titles perpetuate the well-worn themes, such as “Fashion Designer,” “Animal Doctor,” and “Babyz,” a game where girls face babysitting obstacles.
Another upcoming girl-targeted game for the Wii, Sega’s “Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek,” will also be released in October 2008 with “Boogie SuperStar.”
Analysts and critics in the gaming industry say both “Boogie SuperStar” and “Nancy Drew” Wii games are a positive step for video game publishers and will help double their consumer base.
“If you can provide a form of entertainment for members of the whole house, you’re well positioned,” said Michael Hickey, a video game analyst at Janco Partners.
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LG Display Q2 seen surging but LCD outlook dimmer
South Korean flat screen maker LG Display Co (034220.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and two smaller Taiwanese rivals are set to post profits for the second quarter that more than trebled thanks to strong demand for TVs and tight supplies of PC panels.But a global economic slowdown that threatens to depress consumer spending and falling prices of liquid crystal display panels will slow growth in the coming quarters.
“Earnings have peaked in the second quarter,” said James Kim, an analyst at Lehman Brothers. “Demand to replace TVs with flat-screen models is still there, but fewer consumers are buying large-size TVs because of the weak economy.”
Analysts had widely expected a downturn to hit the sector at the end of the year, but they say that slowdown could come sooner and lead to a longer-than-expected slump.
Taiwan’s top LCD makers, AU Optronics Corp (2409.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (3009.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), are considering cutting output to stabilize prices, the Commercial Times reported this week.
Drastic investment cuts last year helped the LCD industry enjoy strong earnings in the first half of this year, as tight supply kept pricing stable at a time when sales are usually slow.
But demand from the United States and Europe has slowed due to the weakening economy, although smaller sizes remain popular in emerging markets such as China.
And even in China, recent disasters such as heavy winter snow and the May earthquake have hurt sales and disappointed some who had expected the entire nation to snap up sleek LCD TVs ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
LG Display (LPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s second-biggest LCD panel maker, is forecast to report next Wednesday a 752 billion won ($725 million) net profit in the second quarter to June 30, according to 10 analysts surveyed by Reuters.
That would mark a sharp increase from 228 billion won earned in the year-earlier period and higher than 717 billion won in the first quarter.
Second-quarter sales are expected to come in at 4.38 trillion won, up from 3.36 trillion won a year earlier, according to Reuters Estimates.
The company’s average panel price likely fell about 5 percent in the second quarter from January-March, analysts said. Average panel prices fell 2.6 percent in the first quarter.
LG Display trails domestic rival Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) but ranks ahead of AU (AUO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the world’s No. 3.
AU is expected to post on July 24 a second-quarter net profit of T$24.61 billion ($810 million), up sharply from T$5.99 billion a year ago, according to Reuters Estimates. The estimate is lower than T$26.99 billion earned in the previous quarter.
Smaller Taiwanese maker Chi Mei is set to report on July 31 a T$14.99 billion net profit for the April-June quarter against T$3.39 billion a year earlier, Reuters Estimates showed. Chi Mei posted T$15.29 billion in net profit in the first quarter.
FALLING PRICES
Reflecting weaker demand, LCD panel prices began sliding in June and analysts say inventory is building up.
“Key clients such as Dell (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Acer (2353.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) stopped making new orders in June,” said Lee Min-hee, an analyst at Dongbu Securities. “Price falls will be even deeper in July.”
Further weighing on the sector’s outlook, some nine new production lines from leading LCD makers in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are scheduled to start operating next year.
“The industry downturn should continue over the next year,” Lehman’s Kim said.
Research firm iSuppli expects the market for large-sized LCD panels, used in TVs, monitors and notebook computers, to grow 19.9 percent this year to $88.9 billion, but the forecast is far slower than a 37.5 percent increase in 2007.
Meanwhile, LG Display is expected to more than double its net profit in 2008 to 2.94 trillion won, Reuters Estimates showed. While the figures are still positive, they could very well be revised down as concerns grow over the second-half performance.
Shares in LG Display, worth about $13 billion in market value, fell 11.8 percent in the second quarter against a 1.7 percent loss in the broader market as the industry’s outlook dims.
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Court order on YouTube user data fans privacy fears
A U.S. judge’s order to Google Inc to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc sparked an outcry on Thursday from privacy advocates in the midst of a legal showdown over video piracy.Viacom, owner of movie studio Paramount and MTV Networks, requested the information as part of its $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the popular online video service and its deep-pocketed parent, Google.
Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google on Tuesday to turn over as evidence a database with usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched when, and users’ computer addresses.
Privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post the order “threatens to expose deeply private information” and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 federal law passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental habits were revealed.
Representatives of both companies said they were looking to work out how to comply with the court order to share video data while ensuring personally identifiable information is secure.
Viacom responded in a statement that it needs the data to demonstrate video piracy patterns that are the heart of its case against YouTube. But it sought to diffuse privacy fears, saying it had no interest in identifying individual users.
“Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user,” Viacom said.
“Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain … will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.”
Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said her company was looking to resolve the issue quickly in a way that balanced Viacom and other plaintiffs’ need for evidence in the case while “carving out some space for user privacy.”
Lacavera said her company was pleased the court’s decision had put limits on evidence discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom access to YouTube’s search technology or to users’ private videos on the site.
But the Google attorney called on Viacom to allow YouTube to anonymize user data — in other words, redact rows of data containing usernames or unique computer Internet addresses.
In closed-door hearings ahead of the ruling, Google attorneys had argued against turning over such data without eliminating personally identifiable information.
“We are disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history,” she said. “We will ask Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”
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Google in deal with Brazil to fight child porn
Internet search company Google signed an agreement with Brazilian public prosecutors on Wednesday to help combat child pornography on its social networking site Orkut, an accord that the company believes is the first of its kind internationally. Under the agreement, Google will use filters to remove and prevent illegal content on Orkut, which has about half its users in Brazil. The company will also facilitate evidence gathering under judicial order in suspected crimes against children and teen-agers on Orkut without the need for international legal accords.
Google will also preserve for six months access logs of users being investigated for illegal conduct.
Google said it was the first such agreement that the company had signed and the firm believes it is the first internationally. Alexandre Hohagen, president of Google in Brazil, told a congressional committee, “It’s an historic day not only for Brazil but for the Internet in the entire world.”
Initially, Google had refused to work with prosecutors, saying it was subject only to U.S. laws, said Prosecutor Sergio Suiama. The company denied this, saying it had always been willing to cooperate with Brazilian authorities.
Brazilian prosecutors say 90 percent of illegal Internet content being investigated in Brazil involves Orkut. The site has 60 million users, half of them in Brazil.
Of 624 investigations by federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo state through the end of last year into human rights crimes on the Internet, 420 involved child pornography on Orkut.
“Orkut was lawless,” said Suiama.
The accord was signed during a session of a congressional inquiry into paedophilia and follows legal battles since 2006.
Under the deal, public prosecution withdrew a lawsuit against Google, a company spokesman said.
The committee, which under Brazilian law has some police and judicial powers, ordered the investigation of 18,000 Orkut photo albums accused of harbouring child pornography.
Google has more than a 60 percent share of the Web search market, according to industry figures.
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Microsoft seeks allies for new Yahoo move: report
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is preparing a new bid for Yahoo Inc’s (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) search business and has approached other media companies about joining it in a deal that would effectively lead to Yahoo’s breakup, the Wall Street Journal said. Microsoft has already held talks with Time Warner Inc (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and News Corp (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research), among others, the newspaper quoted people familiar with the discussions as saying.
The talks are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo, the paper said.
The Journal said that two weeks ago, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer called Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock to suggest they meet to discuss a new idea involving other partners.
The meeting was subsequently canceled by Microsoft, which Yahoo took as a sign that Ballmer’s efforts to find a partner have so far failed, the paper said.
Neither Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner nor News Corp were immediately available for comment.
Yahoo rejected a $47.5 billion takeover offer by Microsoft, and earlier this week questioned whether the software maker was ever serious about a full-scale merger. However, Yahoo remains open to discussing any proposal from Microsoft, the paper said.
In the meantime, Yahoo investor Carl Icahn is running a slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s board and has called for the removal of Chief Executive Jerry Yang ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting to be held in Silicon Valley on August 1.
The activist shareholder has said the company should still offer to sell itself, though Microsoft has said it is no longer interested in a full buyout.
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