Ubercool

Videogaming’s True Halo

You know things have changed when you tune into the evening news and see a senior citizen, ahem “active adult,” playing with a Wii videogame. The trend is called “Wiihab” and it’s casting a whole new light on an activity once reserved for trigger-happy teens.

The videogame wave is huge. By 2012, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts, video playing will be a $68 billion business. And companies riding the wave are scoring big. Last September, Reuters reported that Nintendo had become the second most valuable company in Japan behind Toyota, with a valuation of 10 trillion yen, or $85 billion.

In April, Nintendo announced it had sold a whopping 25 million units of its hard-to-find Wii videogame, which began shipping in 2006. By comparison, Microsoft has sold 15 million X-Box consoles, while Sony’s PlayStation 3 has only found 11 million global gaming fans.

The most cutting-edge trend in the $42 billion videogame industry is the growing reliance on videogames, like the the Nintendo Wii, which features an innovative ”haptic” interface, to help patients rehabilitate faster, a trend that is tongue-in-cheekly called, “Wiihab.”

The staggering figures help explain why, in one week last May, Grand Theft Auto IV generated more revenues than any movie premiere ever has, ringing up more than $500 million in sales. As of June, NPD says, retail sales of Grand Theft Auto IV in the U.S. have surpassed 4.2 million units.

That’s on top of the 70 million units the series, which one observed described as an “interactive Sopranos,” has sold so far. But Grand Theft Auto is no game for the timid. A few years ago, GTA caused an uproar when a hidden graphic of two game characters having sex surfaced to the consternation of parents and the amusement of players.

Will all this violence and sex negatively influence future generations? The evidence is contradictory, but a Psychology, Crime & Law study concluded that violent videogames affect juveniles in differing ways, based on the subject’s inherent personality. Here are key trends sweeping videogaming:

• Bigger than Hollywood – In 2007, the global videogame industry toppped $42 billion, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, far surpassing the global movie business, which reached a record high of $27 billion last year, according to the MPAA, propelled mainly by escapist titles, like Spider-Man 3.

Sony sold more than 120 million PlayStation 2s worldwide, but its successor, PlayStation 3, has garnered just 11 million in sales, proving that software is the name of the game.

• Wiihab – Nintendo’s Wii is fast gaining a major role in rehab therapy for patients recovering from strokes, broken bones, surgery and even combat injuries. The popular game console’s unique, motion-sensitive controller requires body movements similar to traditional therapy exercises, but patients become so engrossed they’re almost oblivious to the workout.
• Virtual Training – The trend started in 1998 with “Dance, Dance, Revolution” – a novel interactive game that had players losing weight. The May launch of the Nintendo Wii Fit is likely to take virtual exercising up to a new level. The popularity of Wii Fit has forced Nintendo to up its production of Wii consoles to 2.4 million units a month, up from 1.8 million. Already, New York’s Le Parker Meridien has added Wii Training to its repertoire. And Nintendo’s Brain Age game for the DS, which is designed to help fight memory loss, is a huge hit, with 17 million copies sold.
• MMORG – WOW stands for World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORG), that has attracted some 10 million subscribers, a Guinness record for paid, subscription-based games. But that’s nothing compared to South Korea’s Nexon, whose MapleStory has attracted some 85 million players globally. Nexon charges players anywhere from 30 cents to $25 for virtual “accessories,” from souped-up vehicles to wacky hairstyles, for their in-game characters. Closely held Nexon reported a $75 million profit on $230 million in revenue in 2005, the last year the company released sales data. Suffice it to say, Nexon earns a lot more today.

Nexon’s “MapleStory” is the world’s biggest online role-playing game with 85 million users globally, of which 5.9 million are registered in the U.S. MapleStory players assume identities of warriors, magicians and thieves and collectively fight monsters.

• Flattening demographics – The average Nintendo Wii owner buys only 3.7 games a year, compared with 4.7 for Xbox 360 owners and 4.6 for PlayStation 3 owners, reports Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter. That’s because the Wii has “flattened” the marketplace, attracting a broader-spectrum consumer rather than just hardcore gamers.

To see how tightly meshed the videogame world has become with reality, one has to revisit 2001, when a mysterious slogan cropped up that was lifted from a popular videogame. To this day, the odd, and grammatically incorrect, saying is regularly used in online discussion forums, “All your base are belong to us.” It does seem at times that all our bases belong to them, so buy a Wii today.

Ubertrends: Digital Lifestyle
Value Propellants: Entertainment, Experience, Connectedness, Immersion

2 comments July 10th, 2008

Memory Protection

On U.S. television, there’s a game called “Amnesia.” Object of the game is to recall as many details as possible of one’s past life. A Dallas-based outfit called Memory Technologies Institute teaches “Mnemonics, the science of memory.” Nintendo, meanwhile, has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide of its Brain Age videogame for the DS player.

Brain fitness is on its way to becoming a big business. Nintendo’s uber-popular Wii videogame console is now being used to help memory-impaired patients recover some of their lost mental dexterity. One facility offering this new form of therapy has dubbed the treatment, “Wii-hab.”

Since its launch in May 2005 Nintendo has sold 17 million copies of Brain Age, a Nintendo DS videogame created by Tohoku University professor Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.

In San Francisco, a new “brain gym” promises to exercise your brain. vibrantBrains claims its “Neurobics Circuit Training” enables participants to work on such skills as memory, reasoning, visual scanning, word recall and quantitative facility using games and exercises. Industry reports suggest that the “brain industry” already generated $250 million in 2007.

As 450 million baby boomers in the western world head into retirement, they’re confronted with something no generation has ever faced before: a massive collective memory loss. Culprits: faster living, multitasking and less mental exercise.

If you can’t recall the name Sarah Marshall even though you just watched a movie called “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” you’re not alone. Welcome to a brave new world of senior moments. Like millions of others, you’re suffering from MCI — mild cognitive impairment.

Scientists report that average scores on memory tests decline steadily after age 25. By midlife, memory erosion accelerates, with humans losing, on average, about 1% of their brain volume each year. A growing reliance on BlackBerrys, calculators and speed-dialing have reduced the need for mental exercises and remembering, causing the brain to deteriorate at a faster rate than ever before.

Another new-age problem may be multitasking. Research by psychologist Denise Park at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana shows that adults who juggle too many balls have more memory complaints than their 70ish parents.

National Institutes of Health research shows that older adults with mild memory impairment can benefit from cognitive training, although not in areas reliant on memorization. While memory training may deliver mixed results, the biotech industry is hard at work developing new drugs that can cure such serious diseases as Alzheimer’s, treatments that are bound to lead to the first “lifestyle” drugs to deal with forgetfulness.

We’ve dubbed this new category of wonder drugs “Memory Protection” — because like computers, which require memory protection to prevent crashes, human beings increasingly appear to be headed in the same direction.

Besides training courses and videogames, many books now deal with the memory loss phenomenon, including Martha Weinman Lear’s Where Did I Leave My Glasses?

At the biotech forefront is Irvine, Calif.-based Cortex Pharmaceuticals, whose Ampakine CX717 clinical trials have drawn widespread media attention. The memory protection market could produce the biggest lifestyle drug yet, because who wouldn’t want to stroll down memory lane faster?

Ubertrends: Digital Lifestyle
Value Propellants: Speed, Time-saving, Convenience

Add comment March 17th, 2008