“Older games feature pixel-based graphics that can look fuzzy on modern televisions and can be frustrating to play for even experienced gamers. Yet in 2016, Nintendo released a NES Classic Edition console and sold out all 2.3 million of them in just three months. The company made more and began selling them in June 2018.” A pair of media psychologists explain why Gen-Xers in particular remain so fond of dear old Mario and Sonic.
Category: media
Univision Sued Over Its Part-Purchase Of ‘The Onion’
Financial firm GCA Advisors claims that The Onion had engaged it, for a $2 million base fee, to assist in a potential “transaction,” and then didn’t pay up when Univision later acquired a 40.5% stake. Now that Univision is selling The Onion, GCA wants its fee.
Streaming Services Are Inadvertently Recreating The Cable TV Model
The digital landscape is already fragmented, and it’s continually fragmenting further, as content creators choose to become content providers. In the process, it’s beginning to resemble cable television. Each new app or content library looks like a different channel to consider, and each one is essentially a premium cable offering that requires a separate subscription to view. Services that previously acted as content aggregators are losing outside content with the launch of each new service. Instead, they are creating their own content to maintain value in a crowded marketplace.
Cause For Concern: When Tech Companies Ban Beyond Alex Jones…
It’s a serious mistake to frame the debate about content moderation around right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars and not around the thousands of other moderation decisions that have been made by such online giants as Apple, Facebook, Google-owned YouTube and Spotify.
Big Public Radio Merger
Minneapolis-based Public Radio International will merge with PRX, a Boston audio technology company, the firms said Wednesday. The combined organization will reach an audience of 28.5 million people each month in broadcast and online, and have 56 million monthly podcast downloads.
MoviePass Is Re-Enrolling Customers Who Cancelled – Without Asking Them
August 15 is the effective date for the troubled company’s revised subscription plan, which limits customers to seeing three movies per month and excludes certain hit films. “Some fed-up users who decided to cancel their MoviePass subscriptions are receiving confusing emails that suggest the company has enrolled them in its new, modified plan without their consent.”
Farewell To Sharknado, ‘The Silliest Movie Franchise Ever’
It’s here: The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time. Stuart Heritage offers a valedictory, if that’s the word: “[The first Sharknado] had an irresistibly silly premise (a tornado made of sharks threatens America), a knowing line of stunt-casting (Ian Ziering and Tara Reid) and a big fat wink instead of any emotional stakes … As tends to be the case with successes like these, sequels were greenlit that only helped to diminish the punchdrunk silliness of the first film. Slowly, the films began to eat themselves.”
Can We Irony-Saturated Smart-Asses Of 2018 Still Understand Ingmar Bergman?
“While the majority of Bergman’s movies are available for streaming (largely thanks to Criterion) and cinephiles will always be viewing and discussing them, most audiences today know about his work only through parodies of The Seventh Seal” — the one about the medieval knight who plays chess with Death.
Once Censored In China, Peppa Pig Is Now Headed For Chinese Movie Screens
The cartoon character, aimed squarely at young children in Britain, somehow got a “gangsta” vibe in China, thanks to meme-minded internet users with Photoshop. The Chinese Communist Party, disapproving of gangstas, blocked the unfortunate ungulate on several large websites this year. Now the film unit of Alibaba (China’s Amazon) is reclaiming Peppa Pig for wholesomeness with a New Year-themed movie for kids.
Netflix Is Creating Content At A Furious Pace. But It Still Needs To Offer Other Content (This Could Be A Problem)
The aggressive move toward original programming is having a palpable effect on content available to subscribers and reflects Netflix’s ambition to dominate Hollywood. The Los Gatos, Calif., company has already upended traditional distribution models and is now lessening its reliance on content from competing studios to fill its direct-to-consumer pipeline. But this change could also pose challenges for Netflix as it licenses fewer of the popular titles that have played a crucial role in retaining subscribers.