Farmers Teams With Zynga Again

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Farmers Insurance launched a somewhat intuitive cross promotion with Zynga’s FarmVille offering “wither protection” by placing the Farmers Airship on their farm. It worked so well that they’ll be doing a multi-game integration with CityVille, Cafe World and Mafia Wars over the next four months.

“Millions of Farmers Airships were placed on FarmVille farms,” said Marc Zeitlin, Vice President of e-Business for Farmers Insurance. “FarmVille players were exposed to the Farmers brand billions of times, raising our Facebook fan base by more than 100,000 in the first week of the promotion. It was one of the most successful things we’ve done from a branding perspective.”

Also, Farmers announced they will reprise its “Win a Ride on the Farmers Airship” promotion. Between June 1 and 30, visitors to Farmers’ Facebook page will have a chance to enter for a ride on the Farmers Airship by indicating they “like” Farmers.

Netflix Resentment From Cable Industry

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TV is highly profitable right now, but there are opponents in all quarters including Netflix. Yet its clear to some people in the cable TV industry that they’re not impressed with how Netflix handles business.

Cheapness and what we re providing don t necessarily go hand in hand, said Michael Willner, CEO of Insight Communications. Netflix is probably the best example of an application that requires a fat [broadband] pipe … If they want to compete, Netflix will have to charge prices that are comparable to our services.

The idea of TV content being everywhere is one that most content providers thinks is coming soon. However, competition with online video sites has traditional TV programmers worried. There s a mystery about what Hulu and Netflix are, said Melinda Witmer, Chief Programming Officer at Time Warner Cable. They look to me like programmers My question is when are they going to ride on the set-top box

Netflix is just going to be another content opportunity that we re eventually going to give our customers, noted Allan Singer, Senior Vice President of Programming at Charter Communications.

Source: AdWeek

Nintendo Talks Online System For Wii U

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Nintendo took some flack this past generation for not offering a comparable online solution to Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata says, however, that the Wii U will have a flexible online system.

“Nintendo’s past console business has often included this idea of a set and fixed online structure,” said Iwata. “So, I think that, going forward, the question is really to what degree Nintendo can create a more flexible system for its consoles. And, what we found at this point is that, as we discuss the online structure with different publishers, the things that the different publishers want to do are in fact seemingly rather different. Our current direction is how we can take the desires of the third parties and create a system that’s flexible enough to enable them to do the types of things that they might want to do. But, what we’re not going to do is to consider as prerequisite conditions that every game includes features like that because obviously there are some developers who may not want to do that.”

Despite being down on social networking in the past, Iwata says he’s considering such integration now. “We’ve come to an era where it’s important to consider how the social graph of the social networking services can work in conjunction with something like a video game platform.”

“Once you hear what we’ll have to say, you’ll feel that Nintendo has a policy of adapting itself to changes in the network environment in a flexible fashion rather than the one of sticking to a rigid mechanism, or perhaps you’ll notice that we have found ways to take advantage of these types of features like VoIP and social networking, where our systems have been seen as being weak in the past, added Iwata.

Source: nintendo.co.jp

Official Website For Green Lantern Serves Up A Galaxy Of Engagements

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Surrounding the launch of the long awaited DC Comics adaptation of the storied outer space franchise, the official website for Green Lantern is chock full of engagements to bring together fans of all ages. A link to the animated series Emerald Knights {link no longer active} lets fans view trailers, sign up for updates and buy now. On iOS devices, fans can download an read digital comics in a dedicated app. Green Lantern Combat serves up three missions via a Facebook connected 3D brawler mini-game that the user can compete against three of the baddest Lanterns in the galaxy and hone their skills in battle. Use arrow keys to move, ‘x’ to use your shield and different key combos to form different constructs to use against an enemy. A global leaderboard tracks the progress of fans that compete. Fans can explore 3600 sectors on an interactive map and learn more about the Lanterns that protect them and also log in with Facebook to claim a sector to protect. After choosing a sector, the user can browse the galaxy to see who is protecting different sectors, their friends, Facebook users or other Green Lanterns. For fans that want to Join the Corps , a specialized engagement will allow them to login with Facebook, choose one of five Lanterns and then upload an image from a webcam or Facebook and replace their face on one of the Lanterns bodies. A simple toolset allows the user to rotate and erase parts of the image to ensure accuracy. The Green Lantern Character Creator allows fans to create their own Lantern from a selection of multiple body parts and assign them to a specific sector of the universe and render out wallpapers and buddy icons to be downloaded. Finally, fans can browse videos, photos from the film, download wallpapers, buddy icons and posters, check out and listen to the soundtrack, browse promotional partners and enter to win various sweepstakes surrounding the release.

Steam Gets F2P Titles

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Valve has announced that Steam will be letting free-to-play titles on the service, which will be supported by micro-transactions. The first titles will be Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms.

“The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam,” said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. “Free to Play games offer new game genres and game experiences for customers, while offering developers and publishers new revenue opportunities and the ability to reach customers in areas of the world where the traditional packaged goods model is less popular than F2P.”

Nintendo’s Iwata Says He’s Not Interested In Free-To-Play

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Free-to-play is an major emerging trend in gaming. However, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata indicated that they will not bring their games to other platforms and will not have a no pay model.

“If we were simply going to say okay, the only the way we could sell more products is by decreasing the price, then there wouldn’t be a bright future and the entire industry will fold, said Iwata. “I’m not interested in offering software for free of charge. That’s because I myself am one of the game developers, who in the future wants to make efforts so the value of the software will be appreciated by the consumers.”

“Yes, it is true. There are great examples of advertising and doing the microtranscactions, and several companies who have come up with that kind of system,” added Iwata. “But on the other hand, if you ask me, is this the system that can be sustained for the long time I don’t know the answer. And, my point is that I’m not willing to go that direction, as well.”

When you asked me if I’m interested in this kind of system or that kind of system, I have to say, ‘No I’m not. No, I’m not interested,'” he mentioned. “And, if we do something similar, we are going to come up with something completely different ourselves.”

Source: Wall Street Journal