A spring fling for gamers Who says gamers love repetition?When the organizers of e3, the videogame industry's biggest trade show, announced last year that they were going to dramatically scale back the size and glitz of their annual spectacle, the gaming business quickly rebooted.Now instead of focusing on e3, the industry has turned its attention ralph lauren uomo maglioni to the annual game developer's conference. The gdc used to be a geeks only gathering for those involved in the technical creation of games programmers, artists and testers.But now that gdc is the largest event in the games business, it's undergone a bit of a makeover:The crowd, once dominated by the chinos and polo shirt set, is now peppered with mohawks and rainbow colored tresses.The suits or more accurately, guys in jeans and blazers have shown up as well, strolling the conference halls for meetings with potential advertising partners and funders. The content of the show is changing too.Traditionally companies have come to gdc to roll out tools for game development.But this year demos of consumer applications and games are taking center stage. Modeled this strategy during on wednesday during gaming exec phil harrison's keynote address.Harrison told the developers in the crowd they'd soon have free access to a set of playstation 3 tools called playstation edge.Typically, tools for a console system cost thousands of dollars. But harrison ralph lauren online store spent most of his time demonstrating a new virtual world and social network available this fall to playstation 3 owners with broadband access.The home service looks a lot like the popular 3 d universes of linden lab's"Second life"And vivendi universal's "World of warcraft,"Which boasts 8.5 million ralph lauren uomo maglioni paying subscribers. Within home, players can create highly customized, realistic characters.These characters can then buy real estate like in"Second life"And furnish an apartment or club house.Players can add their own decorations and video content to their hangouts, or they can pay up for d designed by sony. Basic access to home is free, but sony hopes to cash in on micro transactions for virtual goods, as south korea's sk telecom has done selling virtual trinkets in its cyworld.But sony hasn't left advertising out of the home service:Floor to ceiling banners and enormous video billboards are positioned in prime locations. Harrison didn't update gdc attendees with information on the playstation network the online system sony introduced a year ago at this ralph lauren uomo roma same conference.But last week Announced that xbox live, its online network for the xbox 360, had grown to 6 million gamers by the end of 2006.The company hadn't expected to reach that number until june 2007.Those gamers have downloaded 135 million games and add ons from the network. Sony has a lot of catching up to do with microsoft, both on and offline.As recently as december sony said it would sell 6 million ps3s by the end of march 2007.Analysts estimate that sony had sold about 2 million by the end of 2006.Harrison did not give an update to that figure on wednesday.With more than a year's head start, microsoft had sold more than 10 million xbox 360s at the end of 2006. , with its easy to learn and somewhat affordable Wii console, is poised to outsell Microsoft and Sony this year and next, according to research firm IDC.Nintendo senior managing director shigeru miyamoto will speak to the gdc crowd thursday, but that wasn't soon enough for the crowd here. Just before harrison's sony keynote began on wednesday, a bunch of eagle eyed attendees spotted reggie fils aime, president of nintendo of america, trying unsuccessfully to remain incognito he had turned his id badge backward.His cover blown, he chatted up attendees, who stood in line to pose for photos.

Related Articles:

Linked Articles

http://akira0327.safablog.com/post/19

http://akira0323.skyrock.com/3255947756-kardashian-christian-louboutin-womens-sandals-did.html

http://akira0214.mw.lt/__xt_blog/__xtblog_entry/10678809-accessories-michael-kors-sale-australia#xt_blog