Rapid fire Wednesday (Weekly roundup)
So the world is obsessed with Avatar and the 3D movie revolution. I can tell you from experience one group of people who are not finding the revolution that great: those who already wear glasses. Twice now (for movies Up and Avatar) I have endured - and paid substantially extra for - a 3D experience that admittedly is impressive, but is definitely uncomfortable. Sure some people can wear contact lenses, but my eyes disagree with them. So unless I want to be the black sheep of the flock when my friends go to see Spaceships Blowing Up Stuff in 3D, I will have to endure the discomfort. And don’t get me started on 3D TV!
Nintendo settled out of court yesterday with a young man from Queensland who admitted to uploading his accidently-sold-early copy of Mario Bros for the Wii to the Internet. He apparently agreed to pay 1.5 million dollars in damages to Nintendo. The kid lives at home with his parents. Where is he going to get 1.5 million dollars from? Birthday money perhaps? More importantly, why are Nintendo caring so much? This is not like downloading a movie or album – to play a pirated Wii game you have to get your console hardware modified. Those that have gone to this effort are doubtful to pay for games in the first place. So yes, more people will get the game for free, but I don’t see how Nintendo’s profits would be affected in any way. Regardless of what this kid did, Nintendo claim that the title has sold 200,000 copies in Australia and was the first to do so on any format.
In similar news, ARIA has released their sales figures for 2009 which signify the first increase in sales since 2003. Despite the decline in sales of physical media – simply a sign of the times and customer shift to easily portable music formats – the report headlines that “Digital sales continue to increase, delivering return to growth for recorded music”. According to the report, digital album sales have increased over 60% - and this is the important bit – “more than offsetting the relatively modest decline in physical sales”. Relatively modest? That is hardly the doom and gloom stories we hear every day, and I believe the same rationale as the Mario Bros game can apply here – the majority of those that download music would not have bought it in the first place. How can you determine a loss of revenue on something that was not a guaranteed purchase in the first place? In fact, some studies have shown that users who download music illegally are 10 times more likely to pay for music.
Don’t forget that Facebook changed their appearance again which everyone supposedly hates, and Google unleashed their new toy Google Buzz, a mash-up of your Gmail and Facebook-like status updates.
