Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Dark Knight vs Halo 3?

I guess I’ve have been a really bad blogger for a while. I remember being told that if you want to be a good blogger you have to be consistent above all else. Well I did pretty well to start, but you know even bloggers have to have breaks. It’s not that I have faulted in my quest to improve my digital knowledge, in fact if anything I have learnt more than ever before. We’ve been experimenting with a lot of new digital interactive campaigns at the Bank. Soon we’ll go live with our very own avatars in a rich media campaign for Cellphone Banking for Business. Our Webworx team has established three different Facebook sites now, two branded YouTube sites and a marketing intranet. So it has been a really busy time with lot’s more stuff to come.
Today I learnt something really interesting about trends in digital interactive media. Games are one of the fastest growing media channels in this sphere. We don’t have much local information to go by, but if we look to North America where there is massive growth, the insights are indeed fascinating. Contrary to what everyone believes statistics in Northern America show that typical game players are not 22 male year old students, but are increasingly female stay at home moms. Wow, that floored me. There's also a huge boom in mobile games which appeal to a broad range of audiences. Companies are using mobile games to market their brands to customers. Taco Bell has enjoyed great success with this, giving their customers games which involve defending their food. Games are the new entertainment powerhouse. Case in point, is comparing the launch of Halo 3 with the launch of The Dark Night. This blockbuster delivered $ 158.4 million last weekend, an an industry record, but pales against the launch of Halo 3 which grossed US$300 million in its first week. (Wikipedia). More than one million people played Halo 3 on Xbox Live in the first twenty hours. As of January 3, 2008, Halo 3 has sold 8.1 million copies and was the best-selling video game of 2007 in the U.S. Games are becoming movies, like the Prince of Persia and now fans can download high definition dvd's onto their Xbox consol.
This is the digital world and it continues to amaze!

2 comments:

Colin Daniels said...

I bought and played Halo 3 on the Xbox as soon as it came out.

I still haven't seen The Dark Knight!!!

Not sure what this says really...

Emily-Rose Sloane said...

you are clearly not a fan of batman...