games

[itvt] has just published the latest edition of Rick Howe's regular column, "The iTV Doctor Is In!" This week, Sangita Verma, founder and CEO of TAG Networks, explains how that company's interactive TV games channel on Oceanic Time Warner Cable is beating major linear programming networks in terms of average daily viewing minutes. (Note: [itvt] would like to thank Rick for moderating the highly praised panel, "The iTV Doctor Is In!: The Operating Room," at the TV of Tomorrow Show last week.)

DISH Network announced Wednesday that it has launched Tetris TV, a subscription-based interactive TV games service from cross-platform casual games company, Oberon Media, which licenses the rights to the Tetris format from The Tetris Company. Oberon, which plans to roll out Tetris TV with additional partners worldwide, says that DISH Network is the first company to launch the service in North America. DISH Network customers can subscribe to the new service, which is priced at $2.99 per month, via the satellite TV service's interactive TV portal, DISH Home, and via interactive banner ads.

Because the [itvt] editorial team is busy working on The TV of Tomorrow Show (March 3rd-4th in San Francisco) and on our new EBIF Intensive event (March 5th in San Francisco), we will be covering most stories in summary/round-up form over the next few weeks. Here is a round-up of recent news in various categories:

[itvt] has just published the latest edition of Rick Howe's regular column, "The iTV Doctor Is In!" This week, GW Shaw, executive director of AT&T U-verse marketing, discusses AT&T U-verse TV's interactive TV apps strategy, and how that strategy has been shaped by what it has learned from its customers since launching its first ITV apps back in 2006.

TAG Networks--an interactive TV games company that has developed a games-on-demand channel, called TAG, which it says integrates with existing VOD infrastructures (note: the company has a history of working closely with ActiveVideo Networks and is involved in the latter's deployments with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision)--contacted [itvt] Tuesday to let us know that new TNS data, measuring daily time spent viewing per set-top box, show that the TAG channel topped 43 linear channels available through Time Warner Cable's Hawaiian arm, Oceanic Time Warner Cable, for the most minutes viewers spent watching.

Paris-based interactive TV games company, Visiware, announced Wednesday that its ITV games are now available on Telus Satellite TV in British Columbia and Alberta. The company says that customers can subscribe to its games packages through authorized Telus dealers, by calling 310-MYTV, or by going to telus.com.

The Visiware interactive TV games packages that are now available to Telus customers are:

Helsinki-based interactive TV company, Icareus, contacted [itvt] Tuesday with an update on its trading activities for 2009. In spite of the ongoing recession, the company claims to have ended the year with "positive feelings": "Despite the world economy being as cold as the winter in Finland, we at Icareus are quite satisfied with the year 2009--both our turnover and results improved and we have been able to build new promising customer relationships," Icareus managing director, Toni Leiponen, said in a statement emailed to [itvt]. "Furthermore, the new year looks better then ever before, so we are eagerly looking forward, into the future."

The BBC announced last week that its online catch-up service, the BBC iPlayer, has achieved a new monthly record, having for the first time generated over 100 million requests. The service is now available on over 20 devices, and the BBC says that the last two weeks of December saw a huge increase in the number of people accessing it through a games console: according to the corporation, one in eight of all iPlayer TV show requests is now coming from either a Nintendo Wii or Sony PS3 console, representing a 74% increase over November.

In an interview posted on a Verizon blog, Wednesday, Verizon FiOS TV executive, Maitreyi Krishnaswamy, provided some insight into the service's interactive TV widget plans for 2010.

According to Krishnaswamy, the service will roll out more widgets for multicultural audiences, more sports widgets, a wider choice of widgetized games titles, and various program-specific widgets, including widgets for reality TV shows and other series.

Cloud-based interactive TV specialist, ActiveVideo Networks, announced last week that it has expanded its relationship with its long-term partner, TAG Networks, in order to extend enhanced gaming experiences to broadband-connected consumer electronics devices.

[itvt] has just published the latest edition of Rick Howe's regular column, "The iTV Doctor Is In!" This week's column features Peter Flood, head of business development for North America at Playcast Media, discussing how that company's technology enables video games--including sophisticated console games--to be played on legacy set-top boxes.

Five companies in the interactive TV and online games/gaming space--Accedo Broadband, Betfair, PlayJam, RallyPoint and Two Way Media--announced Tuesday that they are establishing a new forum for the development of games on connected TV. The companies say that online games are a major driver in the multiplatform digital entertainment arena, attracting 38% of Internet users and generating billions of downloads via mobile and digital TV platforms, and that they believe such games will act as a "prime motivator for consumers to connect their TV's to the Internet."

Google has filed a patent application that appears to describe a method for collaboratively creating interactive games on top of videos on YouTube.

Accedo Broadband--a Stockholm-based provider of interactive TV applications and content for IPTV and broadband-connected consumer electronics devices (note: the company, which was founded by telecom and media entrepreneurs, Michael Lantz and Fredrik Andersson, offers a range of applications, but is best known for its games)--said last week that it has launched an interactive TV games service on Colombian telco UNE's IPTV platform.

Paris-based interactive TV games specialist, Visiware, announced Tuesday that its Playin'TV games are now available on Infostrada TV, a Microsoft Mediaroom-powered IPTV platform operated by Italian telco, Wind Telecommunications.

According to the company, six games from its Playin'TV catalog that have been adapted for the Mediaroom platform--"Solitaire," "Reversi," "Tactic 2 Vitamin," "Twin Match Ocean," "Tweezle Lab" and "Buzzbee"--are now available free of charge in Infostrada TV's "Extra" section.