Tag Archives: NFL

Verizon FIOS in Brooklyn

I was out walking around in Park Slope the other day and I noticed a huge group of people loitering on the sidewalk handing out flyers.  Generally, I try to avoid these things as I get annoyed very quickly with people wasting my time.  These people were dressed as the Verizon network people, wearing white coveralls and hard hats.  I went over towards them, and they promptly handed me a flyer explaining the benefits of FIOS over Cable.

I agree with these things.  I would get FIOS right now — IF IT WAS AVAILABLE!!!  Verizon has been advertising for over a year now that FIOS is available in New York City.  From what I can tell, its available in a very very limited amount of areas.

So, why is this group of 100-150 people being paid to advertise a service in a neighborhood that it doesn’t exist?  Wouldn’t it make much more sense to pay the technicians to install the hardware to make FIOS work in Park Slope?

This was a bit annoying to me, and really makes me question the logic of marketing.  I do call once a month and ask when I can get FIOS, and generally I am told the same, “Soon, we are working on it” canned statement.

Annoyances aside, I still will get FIOS the day it is available — but for a different reason than you might think.  Of course I am interested in the fast internet speeds, but it is the TV service that I am more interested in.  For one, I am anxiously awaiting the ability to watch NFL network again.  When I lived in Canada this channel was included in basic cable, and it was watched by my girlfriend and my self MOST of the time in football season.  I caught her watching it all by herself a few times actually — even when I was not home.  Secondly, because the Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC is such a piece of junk (crashes at minimum one per week) I looked into what box Verizon uses.  It seems that it uses the Motorola box, which has proven much more stable in my experiences.

Regardless, I will not be holding my breath for the service to be available any time soon.

Steelers sign Leftwhich to 1 year contract

As a former student of Marshall University, and and as someone who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I was particularly interested to see that the Steelers signed Byron Leftwhich to a 1 year contract this morning.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d809ea7d8&template=with-video&confirm=true

EA Sports to Return to PC

I read this article on shacknews this morning.  If you don’t want to read the article — it basically states that Electonic Arts (EA) is going to make sports games for Windows again in 2009 after taking a year off.

I am generally happy to hear this, but I hope they have really rethought their marketing strategy for the PC.  I really like playing games via the interenet on PC because there is so much more you can do than in a locked down environment like XBOX Live or PSN.  The other thing which is far superior on a Windows PC is the freedom to choose your controller.  I can use the great xbox 360 wired or wireless controllers perfectly on XP or Vista OR I can choose to play with a keyboard and mouse.  This is really where it is at for me and its why I spend more money on my PC.

I have to wonder what EA is thinking at this point.  Cancel the series…Bring it back….  I don’t get it.

In the past EA has half-assed their Windows versions of Madden.  They have left out control schemes, they have NEVER implemented force feedback, even though they natively support the XBOX 360 controllers, and they have used copy protection schemes that have rendered some of the games I have paid for unplayable in the past.  I think these reasons are enough to indicate why people may shy away from buying the PC version of Madden.

I hope they do a good job with the game and I hope people buy it, but I dont think people will and here is why.  We dont need to buy a whole new game every year.  It is just too expensive and after a new version every year since 1992, there isnt that much more to add.

I do have some suggestions for EA regarding Madden:

  1. Make a new engine every 5 years for the game instead of every year.  Use the model of First Person Shooters.  Build a really good engine that is tweakable year to year to take advantage of lessons learned.  This will lower some costs.
  2. Since you are now not reprogramming the game from scratch every year, dont sell a game every year.  Instead, make money from microtransactions.  ROSTER UPDATES are clearly something people will pay for.  I think EA could STILL sell up-to-date rosters for Madden 92 and some people would buy them.  I have never understood why this isnt supported and I really question the marketing people at EA for it.  You can sell other things too via live, psn, or even steam — skins for stadiums,  weather packs (fog, snow, hurrricanes, etc), new uniforms and many, many others.
  3. Here is another idea I have been toying with for Madden in particular.  I think it might make sense to not even sell the game (still DO sell microtransactions, of course), but rather give it away for free and support it via advertising.  The game is already riddled with adds.  Why not add internet conenctivity to these adds and deliver personalized or local adds during game play.  For example, say you are playing online and your opponent calls a time-out.  A commerical for Taco Bell could run full screen while players choose their play again.  At first people might find it invasive, but if the game was free, I dont think they would care, I for one would gladly trade some of my attention for a free game.

These are just a few of my ideas.  I certainly hope that EA reads this and thinks my ideas are good.  If not, well, I hope someone else does and uses the ideas first.  Compeition usually helps out the consumer.  If you are reading this, and you represent a game company or marketing company, please feel free to contact me.  I have alot more ideas as to how to make money using networking and video games.  I might jsut do some free lance work for you.