Friday, March 27, 2009

Interesting business development

Our society glorifies entertainment. We're told we deserve to be happy. And we can only be happy when we're being entertained. Many people work to earn enough so they can retire and play. Their ultimate goal is a life of leisure, rather than look for ways to contribute and build society.

Gary Cross says this is a big problem with men. He wrote the book Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity. His main message is many of today's men listen to the popular culture and continue to play with childish things well into their thirties, and beyond. Video games are huge about single men, many of whom are living with their parents. Many men won't settle down, get married and raise a family. And those that do, often continue to check out. Like Peter Pan they refuse to grow up.

With that as the setting I find Qualcomm backs game console for 'next billion' a fascinating article:

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A startup called Zeebo Inc. is betting that people in emerging markets want to play good video games just as much as people in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan do.
Zeebo plans to launch its "video game console for the next billion" in Brazil next month for $199 and other countries later in the year for $179. It was developed using the cell phone technology of Qualcomm Inc., the San Diego company best known for its mobile phone chips.
The Zeebo unit is light, and a little larger than the Nintendo Wii. But instead of playing video games on disks, the Zeebo will use digitally downloaded games -- distributed through cell phone networks that players don't even have to subscribe to.
The console is not meant to directly compete with the latest, powerful devices like Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, or the Wii.
Rather, said Zeebo CEO John F. Rizzo, it is targeted at consumers in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil and Eastern Europe who generally can't afford the latest high-end consoles, or the games published for them. In many of these countries, cell phone service is more readily available and cheaper than wired broadband.

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On one hand this is a cool idea, turning phones into video came devices. On the other hand I'm concerned we're exporting a destructive trend to other parts of the world.


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