Mike Butcher

Here are two fascinating posts from VCs:

“The fact is that watching video on the Internet is superior in many ways to traditional television, even with a Tivo. You can’t engage with TV delivered via a set top box. How do you email a TV show to a friend with a set top box? How to you comment on it? How do you favorite it? How do you subscribe to it? How do you embed it on your myspace page, blog, etc?”

“Set top boxes – no need for those in the future. PCs will be connected direct to TVs…. The notion of ‘Channels’ disappears… Timeshifting appliances – VCRs, DVDs, PVRs – these relics of the channel model will also go… As broadband networks improve satellite will be priced out of the market… Payment models – … The content part will, if I am right, splinter into lots of different pieces… Getting advertising to work in this world will be challenging”

I wrote an article for The New Statesman on the business and economics of the video games industry, and one on Alternate Reality Gaming. It’s in this week’s edition, but there is also a free download PDF of the supplement the articles appeared in here. It was a huge pleasure to be commissioned by former NS Web guru Kathryn Corrick and to appear alongside some other writers whose work I greatly respect, including Bill Thompson, Becky Hogge and Dave Green.