An investigation into xbox live and the impact on people’s lives:
What impact does xbox 360 have on peoples lives:
It is ‘One of the most powerful advertising platforms available today, Xbox LIVE reaches more men ages 18-34 than The New York Times, ESPN.com, or Men’s Health.1 Additionally, with more family-friendly games like Guitar Hero and Netflix movies downloads, Xbox LIVE is broadening its audience base.’
2) a) Xbox LIVE has over 23 million members worldwide.1
b) Twenty-six percent of Xbox LIVE subscribers have household incomes greater than $50,000 USD
3) My secondary research has also found that microsoft have managed to catagorise people into 6 different types of gamer, Power gamer, social gamer, leisure gamer, dormant gamer, incidental gamer and occasional gamer.
(http://advertising.microsoft.com/gaming/xbox-live)
The 6 types of gamers:
6 different types of gamers
- “Power gamers” represent 11 percent of the gamer market but account for 30 cents of every dollar spent on retail and online games.
- “Social gamers,” 13 percent of the market, enjoy gaming as a way to interact with friends.
- “Leisure gamers,” 14 percent of the market, spend 58 hours per month playing games but mainly on casual titles. Nevertheless they prefer challenging titles and show high interest in new gaming services.
- “Dormant gamers,” 26 percent of the market, love gaming but spend little time because of family, work, or school. They like to play with friends and family and prefer complex and challenging games.
- “Incidental gamers,” 12 percent of the market, lack motivation and play games mainly out of boredom. However, they spend more than 20 hours a month playing online games.
“Occasional gamers,” 24 percent of the market, play puzzle, word, and board games almost exclusively.
This helps explain who the various types of target audience are and how the gaming industry tries to meet this demand.
www.techmeme.com/100326/p4
What my research has found:
1: most people who play xbox 360 spend most of their time playing games online.
2: most people play on the xbox 360 console for between 7-12 hours a week which breaks down to 1/14 (7%) of their time in a week spent on xbox live.
3: What improvements could be made to xbox live to make it a better experience?
4: everyone who thinks that the xbox 360 has changed their life say it is for the better. My research shows that half the people on xbox think it has effected their lives in a large way the other half don’t think it has
5: almost everyone agrees that the xbox live upgrades that have been made to xbox live since it was first launched have greatly improved the gameplay and connectablility
most people who play xbox 360 spend most of their time playing games online.:
7 out of 10 from my survey play xbox live online more than anything else.
Half my focus group also agreed with this and my interview also backs up this point.
most do it because they like to play with other people online and play a different gaming experience
Overall this cements the idea that the gaming industry is putting more money into online gaming abilities, my secondary research has shown the difference in expenditure in 2005 compared to 2010 Console online game software 2005 $0.26 billion Console online game software 2010 $2.95 billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 62.5% (http://theschwartz.wordpress.com/2006/10/09/shifting-gaming-demographics/)
What improvements could be made to xbox live to make it a better experience?:
1) the focus group all bar 1 agreed that xbox live needed to be free.
the 3 most popular improvments from the focus group and survey, from biggest to smallest: free xbox live, faster gameplay and turnover times and better miis avalible with a wider range of clothing ( make your xbox more personalised).
This is what both my survey and focus group said however microsoft have different ideas on the future of gaming, with an intergrated phone that can sync with your xbox all over the world
since the time of all the research undertaken was finished and the time of this being produced the kinetic has come out for Xbox allowing people to play games without a controller.
everyone who thinks that the xbox 360 has changed their life say it is for the better. :
1) From my survey i discovered that half the people who play on xbox say it has changed their life for the better, while the other half says it has not really effected their lives at all, while in my focus group 75% said it had changed their lives for the better while one person said it had not changed their life at all.
2) All bar 1 person from my survey like the various upgrades that xbox live has had made to it over the years, including the creation of mii’s and xbox live parties and the ability to constantly update the video games that are played either online or offline.
3) Most people feel that it has only benifited their lives, in the focus group they said that it helps them to make friends and be more social.
4) Of that 7% of time spent the majority of people on xbox live play fps’s (first person shooters) shortly followed by rpg’s and a wide variety of other game formats.
5) most people play on the xbox 360 console for between 7-12 hours a week which breaks down to 1/14 (7%) of their time in a week spent on xbox live.
almost everyone agrees that the xbox live upgrades that have been made to xbox live since it was first launched have greatly improved the gameplay and connectablility:
1) : Microsoft had obtained 150,000 users in the first week that played 5,000,000 games that first week, and logged over 1,000,000 hours of game play within the first week as well.
1) The Xbox 360 incorporated a new software into their consoles which is called true skill, this allows people to play against people of very similar gaming skills and is up to 89% accurate on who will win which fight based on the players performance, requiring only 4 to 5 games played before it can work it out. This allows for a much more competitive game play, allowing you to fight against people of virtually the same skill as you.
2) 9/10 people in my survey agree that the additions made to Xbox live are great improvements
These all reinforce the idea that the game industry has come a long way since the first launching of Xbox live in 2000. It also shows that Microsoft is doing a good job as 9 out of 10 people like it. However this is not definitive and needs further research.
The future of Xbox Live:
My secondary research has found that the future of xbox 360 is:
N.B. During the time period that I have researched this topic the xbox kinetc has been brought out by microsoft, allowing people to play without a controller.
ESPN channel will allow for live and on-demand streaming of up to 3,500 sporting events (Available in US only).
Hulu Plus service will offer commercially-supported streaming video of television shows and movies from networks such as NBC, Fox and ABC (Available in US only).
Windows Phone 7 integration, in a recent live chat Larry Hryb outlined some key features of Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7. These include ability to be signed in simultaneously on the console and phone, send and receive messages between console and phone, unique gamer points only available by purchasing the gaming title on the phone, etc.
Due to the nature of the gaming industry most companies are not happy about putting online all of their future developments so my research in places is lacking as the information is not available for anyone to access.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
evaliuation
Evaluation of Research
I found out quite a bit from my research. My secondary research was quite hampered, as the books that were available to me were not up to date enough, in the constantly changing gaming industry. My primary research was also drawn back due to the fact that I had only a very small number of people to both do a focus group for and for a questionnaire. However there were several things that have been found out such as the average age of a gamer is between 25 and 35 though there is a large growth amongst children and young adults. Also we could have found out that almost every person in my survey and focus group think that they play video games just enough or not enough, not many find that they think it is detrimental to their health.
Most of the secondary research books and many websites were not very helpful as they were not up to date or were old news articles about video games. Also the school computers blocked a large number of the websites that would have been useful to me but were instead categorised as games. This led me to spending a lot of time out side of lessons searching for the necessary and relevant websites. My secondary research was very methodical, I typed various different key words into several different search engines and I then searched the first 3-4 pages as the school blocked most Internet sites.
As anyone can write anything they want on the Internet I had to spend a lot of time corroborating various different articles by using the links they put up to the articles they got the information from. The secondary research was done first and it was better this way, it enabled us to ask our primary questions with the knowledge we had gained from the secondary research. There was also a large amount of reading that had to be done with all the secondary research sources that were available to me. However the time spent on the secondary research was too long and more time should have been allocated to primary research as it takes more time to gather the necessary information. There were to many Internet sources in my report, however it is the only research type available that is modern enough keep up with the constantly changing gaming industry.
The primary research was not very reliable as there were not enough people in the survey or the focus group. For my survey I needed Xbox players so I had to use friends from my Xbox live account to fill out the questionnaires, again for my survey group I needed Xbox live players and had to select 4 people in my class who played Xbox live regularly instead of a mix of ages. The questions however for the questionnaire were mainly closed and for the focus group and interview they were mainly open questions as I could get a lot more information from the other forms of primary research. If this were to be done professionally then there would need to be a much larger questionnaire group of perhaps several hundreds and the questions would have to be more detailed and in-depth. For the survey group again more people would be needed perhaps 20 or several sets of 20 from a broader age range who all play Xbox or who are given an Xbox for a certain period of time, also taking into account the new kinetic board.
However the answers given in the focus group were quite good but the method for recording them very poor, as I had to write it all as they were saying it. The answers were thorough and useful however again not enough people were asked to make it evidence of anything though the survey and the focus group did have very similar results. The focus group in my opinion did not last long enough and we did not get enough time or preparation for the task. The questionnaire was set out in a easy to read manner though it lacked choice in several places, however for the most part they were not required from the answers I was given. The questionnaire was sent out over the internet to 10 different friend’s email accounts on my Xbox live where they then completed them and sent the emails back to me. This way was fast and efficient for gaining the results in a fast manner. This method has only recently started to be used in the industry for fast and quite reliable method of gathering information. The demographics of my various different interviewees, focus group and survey were all noted and asked in the survey and interview while the focus group was easier as everyone in my class is roughly the same age and gender is also easy to note.
I found out quite a bit from my research. My secondary research was quite hampered, as the books that were available to me were not up to date enough, in the constantly changing gaming industry. My primary research was also drawn back due to the fact that I had only a very small number of people to both do a focus group for and for a questionnaire. However there were several things that have been found out such as the average age of a gamer is between 25 and 35 though there is a large growth amongst children and young adults. Also we could have found out that almost every person in my survey and focus group think that they play video games just enough or not enough, not many find that they think it is detrimental to their health.
Most of the secondary research books and many websites were not very helpful as they were not up to date or were old news articles about video games. Also the school computers blocked a large number of the websites that would have been useful to me but were instead categorised as games. This led me to spending a lot of time out side of lessons searching for the necessary and relevant websites. My secondary research was very methodical, I typed various different key words into several different search engines and I then searched the first 3-4 pages as the school blocked most Internet sites.
As anyone can write anything they want on the Internet I had to spend a lot of time corroborating various different articles by using the links they put up to the articles they got the information from. The secondary research was done first and it was better this way, it enabled us to ask our primary questions with the knowledge we had gained from the secondary research. There was also a large amount of reading that had to be done with all the secondary research sources that were available to me. However the time spent on the secondary research was too long and more time should have been allocated to primary research as it takes more time to gather the necessary information. There were to many Internet sources in my report, however it is the only research type available that is modern enough keep up with the constantly changing gaming industry.
The primary research was not very reliable as there were not enough people in the survey or the focus group. For my survey I needed Xbox players so I had to use friends from my Xbox live account to fill out the questionnaires, again for my survey group I needed Xbox live players and had to select 4 people in my class who played Xbox live regularly instead of a mix of ages. The questions however for the questionnaire were mainly closed and for the focus group and interview they were mainly open questions as I could get a lot more information from the other forms of primary research. If this were to be done professionally then there would need to be a much larger questionnaire group of perhaps several hundreds and the questions would have to be more detailed and in-depth. For the survey group again more people would be needed perhaps 20 or several sets of 20 from a broader age range who all play Xbox or who are given an Xbox for a certain period of time, also taking into account the new kinetic board.
However the answers given in the focus group were quite good but the method for recording them very poor, as I had to write it all as they were saying it. The answers were thorough and useful however again not enough people were asked to make it evidence of anything though the survey and the focus group did have very similar results. The focus group in my opinion did not last long enough and we did not get enough time or preparation for the task. The questionnaire was set out in a easy to read manner though it lacked choice in several places, however for the most part they were not required from the answers I was given. The questionnaire was sent out over the internet to 10 different friend’s email accounts on my Xbox live where they then completed them and sent the emails back to me. This way was fast and efficient for gaining the results in a fast manner. This method has only recently started to be used in the industry for fast and quite reliable method of gathering information. The demographics of my various different interviewees, focus group and survey were all noted and asked in the survey and interview while the focus group was easier as everyone in my class is roughly the same age and gender is also easy to note.
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