Publisher Electronic Arts and ESPN are releasing a new 1-hour pay-per-view Madden football series special that will describe the newest features of this year’s game and interview some of the creators and most skilled and famous players along with NFL players featured in the game. This video’s cost will be $20.

The game sold 1.7 million copies in the first week last year, totally selling more than 3 million copies. By this moment, the Madden games have earned over $2 billion.

This year’s version is planned to release on August, 22. The pay-per-view campaign starts on August, 4.

Such campaigns started with the release of Halo 2. The Microsoft company ran trailers in motion picture theaters in 2004. It also started an alternate reality game that hooked fans and kept interest piqued in the game without forcing Microsoft to leak any details about the plot or gaming experience.

Colin Sebastian, Senior Research Analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, said: “Video game publishers are following the eyeballs. There’s been a core shift - especially among the core 18-35 demographic - from traditional media consumption to other fields. It’s a challenge to find the right people and generate sales off of that marketing”.

For details GO HERE

[tag] The Madden Football 2006, series, video, Microsoft, Halo 2, Electronic Arts, ESPN, NFL [/tag]

The video-download service is planned to start in August and it is going to feature a subscription service for movies and TV shows.

The service, which is known as Amazon Digital Video (or Amazon DV) has changed over the past year from a music download to a video based one, according to production-studio and TV-network executives briefed on the plans. The reason for it is that at the moment Apple already holds such a large share of digital-music sales that Amazon felt it would be very complicated to break into the market.

The service will require users to install special software on their computers to allow them to buy videos. The executives at lots of TV networks claim they have been working with Amazon and hope to be on board at launch, but at this moment ABC company is not on the list.

Amazon’s change of the plans and tendency to switch to video also hints at a reluctance to take on not one, but two behemoths battling over online music sales. iTunes holds over 67% share of music sales, Microsoft plans to create new service, called Zune. Microsoft is thought as the only possible competitor to iPod & iTunes combo. At the same time, the Microsoft player is developed by J. Allard, who successfully placed Microsoft at the gaming market previously held by Sony and Nintendo.

To read the full story GO HERE

[tag] Amazon, Microsoft, iPod, iTunes, Microsoft player, Sony, Nintendo, ABC, Apple [/tag]

The most popular corporate IT workers by 2010 may be the ones with no deep technical skills at all.

The programming and support jobs will have become less highly-paid in the U.S.A. or abroad. Instead of this, IT departments will be occupied with “versatilists” - people with a technology background who know the business sector inside and out, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.

That is the colclusion to which three research groups that have studied the IT workforce landscape for 2010 arrived at. What is causing these changes? They include changes in consumer behavior, an increase in corporate mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, the proliferation of mobile devices and growth in stored data.

Here is the list of the planned Hot and Cold business skills by 2010:

Business Domain:

Hot:

• Enterprise architecture
• Project leadership
• Business process re-engineering
• Project planning, budgeting and scheduling
• Third-party provider managers

Technology Infrastructure and Services:

Hot:

• Systems analysis
• Systems design
• Network design
• Systems auditing

Cold:

• Programming
• Routine coding
• Systems testing
• Support and help desk
• Operations — server hosting, telecommunications, operating systems

Security:

Hot:

• IT security planning and management

Cold:

• Continuity and recovery

Storage:

Hot:

• Storage administrator

Application Development:

Hot:

• Customer-facing application development

Cold:

• Legacy skills

Internet:

Hot:

• Customer-facing Web application systems
• Artificial intelligence
• Data mining
• Data warehousing

Business Intelligence:

Hot:

• Business intelligence
• Data warehousing
• Data mining

For details GO HERE

[tag]  U.S.A., 2010, Cold & hot skills, Business domain, technology infrostructure & services, security, storage, application development, Internet, Business intelligence [/tag]