Good piece on DigitalMedia Wire today about the increasingly explicit consumption trend towards interactive entertainment and gaming platforms. Puts the recently announced studio layoffs into perspective. Worth a read.

Also interesting to note that in Microsoft’s earnings report today, Xbox was one of the few money-making business units.

Because FCC rules stipulate you cannot use “Jesus Christ” as an exclamation unless the deity himself is present.

This and other fascinating insight into Seth MacFarlane, his Family Guy empire, his creative relationship with Fox, his Google deal and perhaps most importantly, what the future of digital entertainment (i.e. why it pays to take risks and create edgy, even offensive content) comes from an excellent Fast Company article from November ‘08.

Take an hour out of your life and watch this important video. It’s an excellent overview of the evolution of new media’s impact on human interaction. It highlights the role that YouTube is playing in the development of Fan Fiction (a somewhat inaccurate yet my current preferred euphemism for User Generated Content). If you’re short on time, skip to the conclusion at 45:15 and listen to Lawrence Lessig’s take on the cultural inflection point that we have communally reached due to the connectivity and access provided to us through digital distribution.

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Brent,

I expect that yesterday’s Gemini Division release was a highly anticipated and frenetic moment for you and the web-at-large and wanted to make sure that my message wasn’t misconstrued in the noise that surrounded it. (more…)

Pricing is one of the most interesting and yet misunderstood components of digital distribution.

I don’t mean pricing in terms of end-user costs, although that’s a fascinating discussion in its own right. I mean pricing in terms of the value of content interactions that an intellectual property owner should look to extract when selling their content.

In other words, if I’m a content owner, I want to license my show at a variable price which will maximize the value of each interaction that said show will generate. How do I do that in the current state of the digital world? (more…)

A few pics from Comic-Con. Then I’m going cold turkey.

Our Xbox Original Content panel filled the conference hall, drawing an overcapacity crowd of 800 fans. Admittedly, I was nervous as to the reaction we’d get when we showed the trailers. There might not be a more discriminating mob than a packed Comic-Con crowd. When you’re partnering with the Imperial Microsoft and half of your audience is dressed as Jedi Knights with the intergalactic obligation to uphold the standards and practices of the Rebellion, you don’t know what to expect. Much to my relief, the crowd embraced the shows and the filmmakers. It was a great event. (more…)

Today, Safran Digital went public with the details of our partnership with Xbox. In particular, we’ve announced the directors for our slate of original web video pilots, which launch this fall to coincide with Xbox’s user-interface redesign.

The directors involved include James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence), David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), James Gunn (Slither), Lucky McKee (May), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th).

I’m extremely proud of the filmmakers and their camps, the deal we’ve put together and what I believe it represents for the future of digital content economics. (more…)

NPR’s Claude Brodesser recently asked Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson for his thoughts on the size and effectiveness of movie marketing budgets. Claude suggested that the new Indiana Jones movie was so highly anticipated, had such awareness and pedigree that despite opening to over $311 million worldwide, Paramount must have overspent in its $100 million plus marketing campaign. Right?

Nobody knows anything.

Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman’s famous dictum about Hollywood starts to answer the question, Chris Anderson completes it. (more…)