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MTV Games Launches
Via Kotaku, the news that MTV Games has launched. The site already has a few features up, including a (juvenile) look at the next Tomb Raider title. At the moment, the site appears to be almost entirely a rebranding of Gamespot content, right down to the news feed.
..a vapid, annoying, extreme-poseur version of an MTV-style games entity, complete with useless "reality" programming that has nothing to do with the product in question, existed already as G4?
Ok, so here's the deal with MTV (as I see it).
Back when cable was new and fancy, cable channels were based around topics. MTV=Music, CNN=News, Discovery Channel=Science, etc. I think they did it this way because many cable channels were commercial free, so advertising demographics wasn't a real concern.
However, as cable TV has evolved, companies like Viacom (who own a whole bunch of cable TV channels) have starting selling ads, and have realized that it's easier to sell advertising when you have a clearly segmented market. Want to sell your [compact car|acne medication|mobile phone plan] to 12-28 year olds? MTV is just what you're looking for. That's why there are no music videos anymore...it's all programming directed at teenage/twenties/early 30s hipsters who care about Paris Hilton, extreme sports, and what car J-Lo is driving this week.
That's also why The Learning Channel has turned into the Home Improvement Reality Show channel (a.k.a the 18-34, married, middle-class channel). It's all about segmenting your market so that you have a consistent product (eyeballs) to sell.
I was thinking about MTV and the lack of dedicated video game programming the other day. G4 is starting to take steps to appeal to more than just non gamers (first with Anime Unleashed and now with Formula D, Street Fury and G4 Sports) which makes them seem more like the current MTV with every new program. The host of Street Fury comes off like a poor-man version of Xzbit and it's painful for me to listen to him talk. With the gaming market growing and pulling in large sums of the consumer dollar it seems natural for MTV to start heading in this direction at least in some form. It won't be long before we have an MTV game channel.
...and on a side note (off topic bit of info) Kevin Rose, Kevin Pereira, Sarah Lane and Brendan Moran make G4 worth watching. Watching/listing to Kristin Holt, Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb read back scripted lines about video games into the monitor remind me of extremely bad porno movie dialog. Give me more of the first four...or at least more people like them.
Look at the Xbox 360 unveiling... it will be happening on MTV and not the one channel that devotes almost everything to Video Games / Technology.
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
" MTV hasent played videos since the early 90s"
I don't know what the cable channel is doing these days, but the web site certainly isn't playing any videos. I followed the link in the story, and all I got were stacks of frames with broken quicktime elements. Are they using quicktime for serving ads instead of flash? Perhaps to get around flash blockers? If so, my hosts file has nixed that plan.
More music, fewer hits