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I am preparing a presentation about the future and when I thought about an explosion of content I thought about the 2011 YouTube hit with Coke & Mentos. Great community driven viral branding! 😉

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Feel free to watch my free webinar today at 15:00 CET or 09:00 A.M. New York time: How to Grow using free digital media like Blogger, WordPress, Twitter, Linkedin, Slideshare, Youtube, Google Analytics and more. Go to the event page: http://bit.ly/xTbT54

Basically it’s about me and how I founded BrandNewGame in 2009 and how I grew year after year with double digital grow in Turnover starting from scratch (literally)…

>Whenever I give real-life presentations during conferences, I often tell my audience about gaming ‘new’ platforms and gamestores. Steam is an initiative from Valve, the guys that made the hit series Halflife, but relatively unknown to non-gamers. I started using Steam about three years ago and it works really well. It has a fairly large community of 40 million users – of which about 3 to 4 million are continuously online, depending on the time you play your games.
One of the cool things I like about Steam is that you can make screenshots of your favorite in-game moments (kills, wins, leaderboards etc.) using F12. After your match, you can upload your pictures to the Steam cloud and share them on Facebook. This is yet another example how gaming is becoming more and more social. Of course within Steam you can also create various friend lists for your favorite games and see your trophies and achievements per game.
Steam is a 100% digital store, so you buy the games through their online store and download them. Since you account is ‘in the cloud’ you can always access your games from any PC as long as you remember your username and password (!). The fact that all available games are digitally available, you can also buy and play games that are sold out in real-life retail stores and load of ‘golden oldies’ from the back-catalogue. That is one of the smartest things of Steam: you can relive and replay those classic games you loved to play for weeks and weeks!

Well – that was just a small and personal description of Steam for non-users and non-gamers, now check out the rest of the facts in the info graphic below!

I guess the rest is stated below… 😉

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Awe…some…

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Buy-ology: does marketing communication work or … not really…?

>My webinar about growing your business through digital tools & digital media is scheduled for March 1st at 15:00 CET (that’s 9:00 a.m. in New York so bring your headphones to university or to your office ;-).

I haven’t figure out yet how I will tell my story, but most likely just from my living room in Amsterdam without any slides (my presentation is on Slideshare anyway)… just telling you my story of how I began in 2009 and where I am now in 2012 using free digital tools and digital media to promote me and my company BrandNewGame…

Be sure to tune in upcoming March 1st at 15:00 CET (9:00 o’clock a.m. in New York)!

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>Remember this commercial for the PlayStation…? It was EPIC!

Now check out this commercial for the PlayStation Vita:

It’s similar … 😉

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One of the funniest things that happened during the launch of PlayStation Vita was that the PR-lady introduced the new PSP saying: “I played with it last night and just couldn’t stop… it really felt great in my hands…” of course all 640 present nerds (me included) laughed out loud (LOL) and clapped their hands. This was one of the highlights of the presentation of Sony PlayStation.

I don’t want to make this posting a ‘hatemail’ because I love the power of PlayStation and really admire Sony, but during the presentation yesterday they tried to highlight ALL product features instead of picking just a few eminent benefits compared to modern smart phones, like the iPhone.
That’s what bothered me most I feel. To name one example, PlayStation claimed to ‘start the social gaming revolution’, but the social gaming revolution has already started thanks to companies like Zynga with all of their ‘social’ games on Facebook and Spil Games with all of their gameportals around the globe… and to be honest: Battlefield and Call of Duty with all of their multiplayer features are social as well and what about World of Warcraft where you have to slay dragons with hundreds of fellow gamers in epic battles….?

The intentions of the people of PlayStation was not to be arrogant I’m sure, but promoting the fact that the PSVita has a camera on the front and on the back and that it can be connected to the internet seem outdated Unique Selling Points in my opinion since my iPhone has both of these features…
To help you to an insight on the most stunning USP’s, I summed them up below in my comparison of the PSVita with my iPhone…

The advantages of PlayStation Vita compared to an iPhone:

+ Compatible with PlayStation 3 content: play anywhere and even play against PS3 players
+ ‘Scratch my back’ touchscreen controller for innovative gameplay
+ Physical controllers instead of ‘just’ touch-screen controls.

The downsides of PlayStation Vita compared to my iPhone:

– It’s a lot bigger than my iPhone
– Extremely high priced games compared to 90% of all iPhone games
– PSVita was lagging behind and now just caught up instead of setting a new barrier

Other features are Augmented Reality games and motion controlled features, but that’s just tech-shizzle and in my opinion seldom ads great fun to my game-experience. The fact that Microsoft has opened up to all programmers in the world also means they cannot think of enough sound and useful applications of the Kinect-technology. I keep saying that the only good example of Augmented Reality is Layers… but of course I am slightly exaggerating… 😉

So all in all I am really sceptic if Sony’s latest toy will be the big hit they need so much… I know great things will happen soon with the Sony Entertainment Network (formally known as the PlayStation Network), but until then – I don’t think the PSP Vita will meet Sony’s expectations… I guess Nintendo’s unique selling point of providing a safe gaming playground for children is why their Nintendo 3DS is still selling so well. They have a clear focused strategy which will probably help them through these tough years of play…

Now, the retail price for the PSVita is € 249,- which is fair I guess, but games will cost you in between 20 and 50 euro’s…

Please form your own opinion and check out the promotional video:

>Forget Play-Doh and stains on your carpet, on children’s clothing or even on your walls and ceiling!

Monobanda introduces interactive painting!

Check out the video and be amazed of the easyness and beauty!

Light Canvas from Monobanda on Vimeo.