Destiny: Rise Of Iron review – nothing new under the sun #6

Destiny: Rise Of Iron review – nothing new under the sun  
http://metro.co.uk/2016/09/27/destiny-rise-of-iron-review-nothing-new-under-the-sun-6154989/





This article is reviewing Destinys new £24.99 expansion 'Rise of Iron' and claiming that its the same old stuff with a new name... this article also goes on to talk about the mechanics of the new game which isnt really relevant...

- initial release 2014 with target of $1billion

-supposedly reached $500 million overnight...

- Each of the 4 dlc's sold for over £20

This article touches upon a heated debate in the gaming community. Companies such as activision are criticised for being profit driven and tend to split games up and sell some of that content later on as a dlc. This not only makes the initial release of the game shorter but means players are paying for a new game each time content is released for the same game. Personally i  quite enjoy the dlc which came out last tuesday but are fed up with spending a lot of money for something meant to be part of the original game in the first place.

New EU copyright rules could boost media groups #5

New EU copyright rules could boost media groups

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/14/eu-copyright-rules-media-youtube-google-news-facebook

This article talks about the new laws the EU are implementing to make online sites such as youtube fairer for musicians to earn a living for their music, it involves youtube updating technology to catch music being played without the creators consent. this is being done as many people in the musci industry and others began complaining about sites such as google for a loss of revenue because things like piracy tend to go un punished on youtube.

-“Innovation and partnership – not subsidies and onerous restrictions – are the key to a successful, diverse and sustainable news sector in the EU,”

-Musician Zoë Keating earned $808 from 201,412 Spotify streams of tracks from two of her older releases in the first half of 2013

I happen to agree with this article as it isnt fair that the content creators arent getting paid fairly for their work and believe it is a good idea to introduce new copyright laws, although it'll make it a little more fairer piracy will always happen on the web and content creators will never get paid fully the right amount. Although, it is important to realise that youtube have been trying to control piracy and keep things fair prior to the new laws. 

who has benefited most from news changing in last 20 years...

In the past 20 years NDM has changed the way we as an audience see the news but also how institutions coped with this change. Audiences have mostly benefited from this change as audiences have a wider array of sources to get their news from eg, the mail online one of Britains largest online newspapers. Moreover, in the past 20 years social media including facebook and twitter have gained a significant amount of followers, many of which use this as a platform for news meaning audiences can have their own opinions and share their own stories (citizen journalism). However, citizen journalism can affect institutions in a bad way.

Moreover, institutions haven't benefited as much from a change in news in the last 20 years. Because of citizen journalism many journalist have lost their jobs because not as many people read the news from traditional mass media institutions. Though, the traditional mass media institutions continue to thrive online.

Overall, traditional mass media institutions have suffered more from the change in news in the past 20 years. As NDM has become more widely available news has shifted online and working in the audiences favour.

Call of Duty XP Wrap-Up: eSports, Laser Tag, and Zombies #4

Call of Duty XP Wrap-Up: eSports, Laser Tag, and Zombies

http://www.shacknews.com/article/96649/call-of-duty-xp-wrap-up-esports-laser-tag-and-zombies

This article sums up 'codxp' event which is the second time Call of duty/infinity ward have held such an event. They showed off their new game 'infinite warfare and cod4 remastered' and allowed members of the public to play it. They also held one off events including nuketown paintball and laser-tag zombies. The article also weighs up the pros and cons of the event and was it all worth it. Some people criticised the fact that a story mode demo for the game wasnt available.

-Team EnVyUS won the world championship after the final match against British team Splyce and took home the $800,000 prize on Sunday.

-As of May 14th, 2016, the site reports that there have been only 30,455 copies pre-ordered for Xbox One and 33,014 copies pre-ordered for PlayStation 4.

-The initial infinite warfare trailer has over 3.2 million dislikes which puts it in the top 5 most disliked videos on youtube of all time.

I believe that the event was a success for generating better publicity for the game especially after the abysmal preorder rate and amount of dislikes on the trailer. Despite this the codxp event was hailed a success and i can agree with that as video sharing sites allowed youtubers to share this content and raise greater awareness of the game. Social media also helped as call of duty have their own account on instagram and twitter which helped to hype the event up.

Senior News of the World staff 'misled' Parliament over phone-hacking, committee finds #3

Senior News of the World staff 'misled' Parliament over phone-hacking, committee finds

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-staff-misled-parliament-a7298251.html

This article is talking about how former news of the world editor collin Myler was in contempt of the house for answering questions falsely. Following the news of the world phone hacking scandal lots of editors had been called up by select committees and they must tell the truth but Mylers had lied during his questioning.

. Celebrity public relations agent Max Clifford agrees to drop his lawsuit against the NoW for a payment of more than £1 million.

-The trial was very costly, approximately £100m 

-Private investigator 'mulicare' was being paid £100,000 per year to intercept voice mails for news of the world.

I believe that the editors of the news of the world are further disrespecting the public by giving false answers to the committee.  

News institutions research

The Scott trust are a British company owning two major news outlets, The Guardian and the observer.

Rupert Murdoch also owns several UK newspapers including the sun, the times and the sunday times. He has a lot more influence in Australia. 2014, owned a 1/3 of uk newspaper market.

Channel 4 television corporation owns and operates channel 4 as public service provider, though it is commercially funded (mostly).

• 2,062

Daily Mail/The Mail on Sunday (dailymail.co.uk)The Sun/The Sun on Sunday (thesun.co.uk)Daily Mirror/Sunday Mirror (mirror.co.uk)The Guardian/The Observer (theguardian.com)The Daily Telegraph/The Sunday Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk)The Independent/The Independent on Sunday/i (independent.co.uk)The Times/The Sunday Times (thetimes.co.uk/thesundaytimes.co.uk)Daily Express/Sunday Express (express.co.uk)Daily Star/Daily Star Sunday (dailystar.co.uk)Daily Record/Sunday Mail (Scotland) (dailyrecord.co.uk)

010,00020,0002,5005,0007,50012,50015,00017,50022,500

This graph is showing monthly readership for newspapers of the uk. The papers owned by Murdoch dominate this graph with the highest monthly readership.

BBC 1Channel 4ITVBBC 2Channel 5ITV 2Channel 4+1More 4DaveITV+1E4BBC 4Film 4ITV 4ITV 35*ITV 2+14sevenSky 1E4+1

05101520253035404550556065

This graph shows the Quarterly reach of the leading 20 TV channels in the United Kingdom (UK) as of 1st quarter 2016 (in millions). BBC was rated number one channel for news with 34% of adults in the UK saying this is where they go to. 

1) Google have have been a major contributor into the decline of the media (newspaper) business because they have been 'siphoning' off billions of dollars in classified advertising revenue from newspapers.

2)“It’s uncanny, therefore, that of the $60 billion plus of potential annual ad sales that print publications seem to have lost, Google had grabbed about $44 billion by 2012, from virtually nothing in 2000. That two-thirds of slice of the spoils is about equal to the company’s market share of the online search business.”

3) The steepest decline can be seen from around 2006-2010 when figures fall to below half from their peak in 2000.

4) The amount of money lost by newspapers is quite significant but google operated so well because people wanted to use that rather than newspapers and journalists, its difficult to completely blame google as people like to keep up with new technology and google thrived because of this.

5)Sorry, you didn’t convince me. So what if they didn’t invent the Internet. They did figure out a good way to advertise on other people’s content without sharing anything with the people who did the work. They could have built a system that actually paid the content creators. They could have tossed in a microcent every time someone clicked on a search link. But no, they kept ALL of the money for themselves. And they still do it. They seem to think that Google News is a service. It’s just a leech on the hardworking reporters.

To some extent i agree with this comment as it wouldnt be impossible for google to have shared some of the money with the content creators, nevertheless on youtube ( a google application) people can monetize videos via advertisement. Also google capitalised on the opportunity that was just waiting there.

PS4 Pro: A generational leap or misstep?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37302049

This article talks about the release of sonys new console the 'PS4 PRO' which is an upgraded version of the PS4. The article debates whether this is a mistake factoring in things such as its main rival microsofts xbox just releasing an upgraded version of their latest console, and the fact that the in several more years the PS5 is scheduled for release.  The article goes onto praise the ps4 pro for offering higher frame rates and higher resolutions. But there is still the debate of how different it actually is compared to the one that came out 3 years ago.

-Since it first went on sale in November 2013, Sony has sold more than 40 million PS4s.

-That's the case with Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty: Ghosts, The Witcher 2 and Thief. It's even more evident in Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition where it's 60fps on PS4 vs 30fps on Xbox One.

I believe that the ps4 pro is a step in the right direction as it is keeping up with other technologies like tvs which are offering better graphics which at the time of the original ps4 release wasn't available. But i would also say that for gamers already on the original system it might seem a waste of money as the original system works fine.

BBC responds to claims about how it's going to detect people using iPlayer without a licence

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-tv-detection-vans-data-private-wi-fi-networks-iplayer-licence-a7177396.html

This article is in response to the recent changes the bbc have made to now only grant access to bbc-iplayer to those who pay a tv licence. This has been criticised by the media because people arent sure how the bbc will know if people are actually paying a tv licence. The techniques the bbc are using to acquire this data isnt explicitly revealed which makes people question whether they are accessing our personal data to find out if we are paying for a tv licence. Although in the article a bbc spokesman assures the audience that they arent accessing our personal data...

 -Tv licence £145 per year 

-3 billion programme requests on bbc iplayer in 2013

-a 104% increase year on year in bbc i player requets from tabets 

-400,000 thousand households avoiding paying tv licence by watching i player

I believe that the BBC shouldnt allow access to bbc i player for people paying a tv licence only, as tv licence ownership is falling anyway and theyre in competition with free i players such as itv and 4 on demand. Despite having very desirable shows the bbc would restrict these shows only to those who pay a tv licence, and without revealing how they are controlling this it makes people suspicious.