Microsoft Launches New Media Safety Education Campaign For Parents

Microsoft and several partners launched Get Game Smart, a new public service campaign providing families with resources and incentives to rules and guidelines for media use at home, particularly with video games on Xbox 360 and PC.

The campaign seeks to encourage parents to to practice healthy, balanced, and age-appropriate media use with their children. An official site was launched with information about parental controls tools, tips, and resources on how parents can make safer gaming choices.

The site features a blog designed to tackle issues such as “reducing family friction when it comes to video games” and to inform parents of trends to anticipate with video gaming and online safety.

As part of the campaign, Microsoft is looking to recruit parents and teens as Get Game Smart Ambassadors to help educate their peers on video gaming and media choices. Parents and their teens are invited to submit a brief video showing their family’s approach to a responsible digital lifestyle with video gaming rules.

A panel of judges including ESA president Mike Gallagher, WiredSafety.org’s Parry Aftab, and several others will select the finalists, while the contest winners will be chosen by popular vote through Get Game Smarts site.

The winners will receive prizes like an Xbox 360 system, family-friendly Xbox 360 games, Zune media players, Insignia digital cameras, and more. Additionally, they will become Get Game Smart Ambassadors, joining Microsoft and “other influential voices” in a new forum designed to maintain a dialogue on gaming safety.

Families can also enter the Get Game Smart Family Challenge Sweepstakes, completing activities related to smart video gaming and media use. One grand-prize winner will receive a $5,000 Best Buy gift card, while 100 winners will receive Best Buy gift cards for amount worth up to $250.

Microsoft’s partners for the campaign include Best Buy, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the Entertainment Software Association, Entertainment Software Rating Board, GetNetWise, iSAFE Inc., National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, National Institute on Media and the Family, National Urban League, NetSmartz Workshop, Parents’ Choice Foundation, StaySafeOnline.org, Web Wise Kids, What They Play and WiredSafety.org.

“I’m a dad, and I know how important it is for parents to get involved with their children’s video gaming and media experiences, not to mention feel equipped to make sure those experiences are as fun and safe as possible,” says Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division president Robbie Bach.

“Get Game Smart demonstrates Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to this effort and complements the award-winning Family Settings tools we built into our products like Xbox 360 and Windows Vista. These offerings allow families to get the most enjoyment out of today’s digital entertainment.”

CES: Microsoft’s Bach Talks Xbox’s Plans For 2009

 

At Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer-presided CES keynote, Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division head Robbie Bach discussed the state of Xbox 360, trailing the Xbox Live Primetime online game show service and LittleBigPlanet-like Xbox Live Community Game Kodu(formerly called Boku).

As part of the CES keynote, which also discussed Windows Live and Windows 7 in some detail, Microsoft’ Bach re-iterated the recently revealed key statistics about Xbox 360.

The company claimed an 84 percent jump in online consumer spending on the service, and Bach noted: “With 28 million consoles sold worldwide, an active online community of 17 million members, and more than $1 billion spent on Xbox Live since the launch of the Xbox 360, it’s clear that consumer demand for these great entertainment experiences has never been higher.”

Elsewhere in the presentation, Bach trailed the two Halo titles shipping this year, with a demo of Ensemble-created RTS Halo Wars confirmed to appear on February 5th, ahead of the game’s March 3 U.S. debut. Later this year, there’s also Halo 3: ODST from Bungie itself.

Bach also threw out some notable statistics on Halo as a franchise, revealing that the franchise has now sold over 25 million copies, and that the average Halo player has dueled for more than 150 hours on Xbox Live.

In addition, the E&D president reaffirmed the date of “this spring” for the launch of the Xbox Live Primetime channel, described as “bringing together the best of TV and gaming.” The previously delayed channel will debut with an online version of the popular TV show “1 vs. 100″ that enables thousands of gamers to play together with real hosts and compete for real prizes.

Finally, Bach highlighted the achievements of Xbox Live Community Games to date, with over 100 Community Games available thus far since the November launch of the Xbox 360 service.

He particularly showcased an upcoming Community Game called Kodu, which is launching in the spring, and “designed to help anyone from age 7 to 70 create their own video games.” 

The Microsoft Research-created application, previously covered by Gamasutra when it was called Boku, appears to “bridge the gulf between Microsoft’s more complex XNA Game Studio language and the user-created content of games like Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation 3″, as we noted in our earlier report.

Bach’s demonstration of the application, with a 12-year old girl invited on-stage to demonstration her Boku-created application, may have been intended to counteract the more ‘core’ announcements about the Haloseries, and ended the Xbox-related discussions on a family-oriented note.

Report: Sony’s Cell Dev Cost $400 Million, Aided Microsoft Tech

The development of the PlayStation 3’s much-discussed Cell chip cost Sony and its partners five years and $400 million dollars — and Microsoft then worked with IBM to snag some of the development fruits and none of the failures for its own console’s processor.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new book by two leading figures in the Cell’s design, David Shippy and Mickie Phipps.

In the book, ‘The Race For A New Game Machine,’ the two recall how they did double agent duty for both rival console manufacturers during the Cell’s development.

Sony, Toshiba and IBM first partnered in 2001 to develop the Cell in time for the PS3’s target launch. But during the same period, Microsoft approached IBM, which was doing the lion’s share of the Cell engineering, and asked to have their own chip for the Xbox 360 built around the Cell’s core.

The agreement between Sony, Toshiba and IBM didn’t preclude the eventual sale of the Cell chip to other clients, but more importantly, there was nothing preventing IBM from selling components of the incomplete tech to Sony’s direct competitor.

In the book, Shippy said he felt “contaminated” as he worked with Microsoft engineers on the technology, bringing them all of the fruits and none of the failures of the research and development that Sony was funding.

In other words, the authors claim that Microsoft may have peripherally benefited from Sonys R&D spend, in a time when Sony’s inability to cut the PlayStation 3’s hardware price is credited in part to the high costs of the Cell chip.

- Microsoft Claims Black Friday Victory Over PS3

Microsoft says sales of the Xbox 360 have resulted in the company’s biggest U.S. Black Friday ever, beating the PlayStation 3 three-to-one.

Analysts recently suggested that the Wii was the most popular platform over the key sales weekend, with the Xbox 360 hardware bundles and software title such as Wii Fit, Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War also selling strongly.

Microsoft now claims that sales for the Black Friday weekend are up 25 percent on the previous year – when the company claimed a two-to-one victory over the PlayStation 3. No specific sales figures were given for this year, but 2007’s results were put at 310,000 hardware units.

According to Microsoft, the best-selling first party software titles were Gears of War 2, Fable II and Lips – maintaining an attach rate for the Xbox 360 of 8 games per console.

Although Black Friday is conceptually not a part of European retail tradition, Microsoft also says that sales of the Xbox 360 have surged worldwide since the September price drop. The company says hardware sales have nearly doubled year over year in Europe, and that the Xbox 360 is outselling the PS3 “week over week”.

“We entered into the Black Friday sales period with cautious optimism, knowing that dollar for dollar, Xbox 360 offers more social entertainment value than any other console on the market,” says Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment business.