CDSA Chairman Frank Russomanno To Retire As Imation CEO

Imation Corp. announced that Frank Russomanno, its vice chairman and CEO, plans to retire following the storage media company’s annual shareholders' meeting on May 5, 2010. Russomanno has served as vice chairman of Imation since March 2009 and as CEO since April 2007. He also currently serves as chairman of the Content Delivery and Storage Association (CDSA). Mark Lucas, president and COO, will succeed Russomanno as president and CEO effective immediately following the 2010 Annual Meeting. Via Business Wire

GameStop CEO: Redbox Game Rentals No Threat

While discussing GameStop’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 financial results March 18, company CEO Dan DeMatteo said kiosk operator Redbox’s plans to expand its game rental program shouldn’t be a concern to stockholders.

Video On Demand Gets Its Day: Studios, Cable Companies In $30M Ad Campaign

Hollywood kept the video on demand business at bay for years while consumers built their DVD libraries. Now a consortium of studios is teaming with the nation’s largest cable companies to reintroduce the VOD concept to households. The companies’ $30 million TV, print and online campaign — themed “The Video Store Just Moved In” — will tout the convenience of the platform, as well as the day-and-date availability of many films on VOD and DVD. The campaign runs through early June. Coming from the cable industry, the campaign naturally makes no mention of the Internet VOD services offered by Netflix, Vudu, and others have already moved into many living rooms, via Net-connected videogame consoles and set-tops. For studios, cable VOD transactions carry significantly higher profits than both the new streaming services and traditional disc rentals. The New York Times reports that studios keep as much as 65 cents of every dollar that cable subscribers spend on VOD, compared to the 25 cents studios earn on every dollar consumers spend on movie rentals via Blockbuster. Yet VOD rentals accounted for less than two percent of the industry’s $53 billion in video revenue last year, according to analyst SNL Kagan (via the LA Times). Despite increasingly broad movie availability -- and now, greater marketing support -- cable VOD services still suffer from kludgy consumer interfaces, the LA Times report notes. Cable operators participating in the new campaign include Armstrong, Bend Broadband, Bright House Networks, iO TV, Comcast, Cox, Insight and Time Warner Cable. Studios include 20th Century Fox, Focus Features, Lionsgate, Rogue, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Summit Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros Entertainment. More details in the release via Business Wire.

Day one content: Bioware explains why it’s sometimes legit

Games are now supported long after they're released in retail stores, but some consumers cry foul when they buy a game, go online, and see there is already downloadable content to add to the experience. Why force gamers to go online to get the content? Why not just include the content on the disc?

We spoke with Casey Hudson, the project director for Mass Effect 2, at GDC. He's a man who knows a little bit about post-release content, and he explained it in a way that makes sense. The simple answer? It takes time to get discs into the hands of gamers.

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Sony: UMD Disc Format ‘Alive And Well’ For PlayStation Portable

Sony’s PlayStation Portable disc-based titles are not going away anytime soon. During a session at the Game Developers Conference last week, the company said its UMD format is “alive and well” and that all retail games will continue to be available on both a UMD disc and digitally on the PlayStation Network store. By IGN

Europe trashes ACTA as Obama praises it

Earlier this week, we noted that the major parties in the European Parliament had all agreed on a resolution trashing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the secret process that has been hashing it out. That resolution has passed Parliament by a huge margin—633 yes votes, 13 no votes, and 16 abstentions.

The Greens/EFA coalition praised the vote. Greens MEP Carl Schlyter of Sweden said that "ACTA risks becoming known as the Absence of Commission Transparency Agreement... The EU cannot continue to negotiate on ACTA if the people are not allowed to take part in the process. It is also a totally absurd and unacceptable situation if MEPs, behind closed doors, have to ask the Commission about the content of the agreements we are supposed to vote on."

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NPD: Game Sales Down In February, But Poised For Rebound In March

The NPD Group’s Anita Frazier “had expected the industry to perform somewhat better” in February, as “Bioshock 2” and other new titles only partially offset a 15% sales decline in the industry overall. But Frazier anticipates a rebound in March, led by the arrivals of “Final Fantasy XIII,” “God of War III” and Nintendo’s DSi XL device. By USA Today

Netflix Cancels Eponymous ‘Prize’

Citing the need to protect the privacy of its subscribers, Netflix March 12 said it would not hold a sequel to its widely publicized Netflix Prize following the settlement of a lawsuit and federal inquiries on privacy issues surrounding data used in the competition.

Game Sales Fall Again in February

Overall video game sales fell 15% in February, to $1.26 billion, compared with the same month in 2009.

etc: BuilDj is an experimental new build system for GNOME that uses a JSON project description format. If it gets adopted, GNOME might finally escape from autohell.

BuilDj is an experimental new build system for GNOME that uses a JSON project description format. If it gets adopted, GNOME might finally escape from autohell.

Read More: Alberto Ruiz

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  November 19, 2011

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