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Gaming Trends

The Monopoly Revolution – Circular Monopoly Board. WTF?

For its 75th anniversary, Monopoly’s getting a massive update, pitting brazen and new against proven and old: Circular board or quadrilateral? Cash currency or fake credit cards? This is the stuff of ruined relationships.

In the monopoly wars, I’m imagining there will be two camps, not four. there will be people who are OK with the circular board and the switch to digital currency, and people who are fine with neither—the purists and the pragmatists. There will be a middle ground in this fight, but it will be drenched in blood.

I think I might be one of the purists. I get that the new design makes a bit more sense, and that giving players credit cards is less trouble than managing a bank full of cash. But you know what would be even less trouble? A video game.

Monopoly Revolution will be out in Fall, for $35. And don’t worry—you’ll still be able to find old-style boards, too.

Monopoly is one of those things that is such a timeless classic you can’t really tamper with too much. But they have. Will be interesting to see the take up on this.

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Cool Gaming Infographic Trends

Infographic: Video Games By Numbers

A few interesting facts:

Average gamer age is 32.
26% are over 50.
80% of Wii gamers are female
On average 18 hours are spent a WEEK playing video games
The Xbox 360 is 10 times more likely to fail in the first 2 years than the Nintendo Wii.

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Cool Gaming Retail Social Media Twitter

Heralding a new era of social gaming..

I noticed this rather bullish full page advert from Microsoft in a recent issue of MCV and it struck me that we’re now entering in to a new era of social gaming. The potential is limitless.

Before it’s even available for gamers to try out today, the functionality with Twitter and Facebook on the 360 is being talked up, and talked up it should. This cannot be underestimated. It’s bringing social networking in to your living room and on your TV.  It’s also a huge USP for the Xbox 360 in it’s ongoing and bloody battle against the Playstation 3. The launch of the PS3 Slim was timely met by Microsoft with a price cut of their own and puts the ball back in Sony’s court.

For social networking to now be a selling point on a games console shows how far it’s come. This is great news for Facebook and Twitter (perhaps more so for Twitter) because it takes it to another level, that bit more mainstream. Everyone uses Facebook, Twitter is still a nice communications tool. It might help more people understand it and ‘get’ it.

Little is known how they are going to look on your TV screen and how they are going to connect to your gaming experience and whilst I hope my feeds are not going to be spammed by friends who have just gained achievement X on game X, it shows that gaming is no longer something that’s done by a stereotypically aged male in a darkened room. They are now the entertainment hubs, in your living room and providing fun for all the family.

Social Gaming