Monday 13 August 2007

Live blog - the beginning

Simon from BarringtonHarvey has jut greated us.

Chris Beary, the chairman has come up. (Spelling of course to be confirmed from the program). "The 5th year of the Edinburgh interactive basis. Its now the longest running event on the calendar on the games industry calendar on a continuous running basis. Its not just about games, about sharing the creativity in the air and the novelty and experimentation that pervades Edinburgh at this time of year.

Particular thanks to Nintendo who have sponsered every festival and are now enjoying well-deserved success." Everyone seems to be using the word SKU as in skew these days - see Slashdot for complaints. I'm surprised about the continous running

"MC for the day is Rod Cousens. 'The silver fox'. CEO of codemasters. "

Chris still speaking:

Since last Edinburgh festival - technology is moved on a generation. High definition. Improved AI. New "engagement levels" such as social communities. New types of input and output devices. Exemplified by the Wii but also e.g. Guitar Hero.

"Its important to be thinking about not only how these [developments] affect games, but how they affect other entertainment media".

(Aside: I think this is going to be a trend for the festival: integration of games and the wider media. Certainly the BBC, integration of motion capture and games etc point to that.)

Our first interactive section. These are multi-choice questions we get to vote on using the device we got to use previously.

Which sector of the global games business do you expect will enjoy the fastest percentage revenue growth in 2008?

I'm not going to list all the choices, just the answers for these, and any other interesting, surprising stats.

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