With big movies like Breaking Dawn, The Amazing Spider-Man and Conan scheduled to bring Hollywood stars to the annual convention, fanboys and girls won’t have to seek refuge in another city next year for Comic-Con 2012. The Con is staying in San Diego through 2015. “Firefly’s” Nathan Fillion, who’s promoting “Castle” at Comic-Con 2011, talks about TRON and video games in this exclusive interview from last year’s convention.
Despite a recent string of down months in U.S. video game sales at retail this year, a new report from research firm Gartner paints a very rosy picture for the global video game industry. When adding in revenues from burgeoning online, mobile and digital gaming sectors, Gartner estimates that worldwide spending on the gaming ecosystem will exceed $74 billion in 2011, up 10.4 percent from the $67 billion spent last year. By 2015, spending is expected to reach $112 billion.
Driven by a pronounced change in marketing and promotion strategies as well as price declines and an increasing availability of content, worldwide shipments of 3D TVs will catapult by a spectacular 463 percent to reach 23.4 million units in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli research. The strong push from Sony Computer Entertainment in the 3D video game arena with hit franchises like MLB 11: The Show, Killzone 3 and SOCOM 4.
According to new research from IHS Screen Digest, Nintendo’s strategy of promoting the connectivity and local networking features of its newly released Nintendo 3DS handheld gaming system in the United States will help drive rapid adoption of the device this year—but won’t allow it to match sales of the previous-generation DS platform. Check out the Nintendo 3DS in action in this exclusive video below.
Oscar-winning director James Cameron is set to return to Pandora. The director has confirmed that he will begin filming Avatar 2 and 3 in late 2011. Twentieth Century Fox is targeting December 2014 and December 2015 to release the 3D movies. Cameron talks about working on the original Ubisoft Avatar 3D videogame in this exclusive video interview.
The 3D TV market will spend the next couple of years establishing itself and accumulating a base of content and devices -- both TVs and Blu-ray players. According to ABI Research, market growth will start to accelerate in 2012 with shipments of 3D TV sets approaching 50 million in 2015.
