The successful launch of the Nintendo Switch creates a new console model, and demonstrates the staying power and long term value of great franchises

Microsoft reveals the specification for Scorpio, but it won’t be enough to catch up to Sony. New franchises, and probably new leadership, will be the key to stopping Xbox sliding into irrelevance outside North America

Sony’s PlayStation 4 now exceeds 60m units worldwide, allowing Sony more freedom to publish a wide range of challenging creative console games, while VR games continue to gain momentum

Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media & Telecoms 2017 & Beyond conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 2 March 2017.

The day saw over 450 senior attendees come together to listen to 30 leaders and senior executives of some of the most creative and innovative businesses in the media and telecoms sector, and was chaired by David Abraham.

This report provides edited transcripts of the presentations and panels, and you will find accompanying slides for some of the presentations here.

Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

The temporary cool-off in hype around VR following a very buzzy 2016 is not reducing the flow of investment and talent into the industry, notably in video production utilising 360Video technology; setting the stage for the development of a truly new entertainment medium

Fully immersive interactive worlds will continue to be the mainstay of the video games industry, while video entertainment will exist in a multi-track environment, with some genres (news, documentaries , natural history) making 360Video mainstream well before long-form narrative-driven entertainment

2017 will still be a challenging year for consumer device VR roll-out and mass market adoption; Oculus, Google, and Sony continue to seed the market, providing large scale funding and equipment directly to developers and content producers

 

 

Despite a slowing of circulation decline in 2016, UK national newspaper brands continue to face profound structural challenges, with print advertising spend expected to be down at least -15% for the year

In digital advertising, tech and distribution platforms continue to dominate growth with newspaper publishers and other content producers competing for an increasingly small slice of the revenue pie

In this context, many publishers are turning to paid membership and content subscription models to generate online revenues; success here will require a radical shift in thinking to a retailer mindset that delivers high quality reader experiences through integrated execution of tech, data, marketing and design

In the UK, traditional broadcast television's future appears threatened, as technological developments increasingly allow people to access video content on demand, whether on TV sets or other screens, or from traditional broadcasters or online services.

This report examines the extent to which timeshift viewing, by which we mean personal video recorder (PVR) playback and viewing to catch-up services, has bolstered linear TV.

The linear schedule is still very relevant for both consumers and advertisers, maintaining television’s status as an effective mass medium for building brands.

Cable &Wireless Worldwide’s performance for the six months to September was weak but made to look worse by one-offs

Underlying performance continues to be hit by strong competition and loss of voice revenue, but the impact of this has been made worse by underinvestment in data centres and neglect of the wholesale and SME businesses

The outlook for the year to March 2012 is poor, in line with the June warning. Beyond that, further investment in hosting and related capabilities will be necessary, and we continue to expect modest growth

Openreach has announced large cuts in the prices of some important components of physical infrastructure access (PIA). A further substantial reduction in duct prices is possible as a result of an adjustment by Ofcom to Openreach’s regulatory asset value (RAV)

The reductions are helpful to the economics of bids by altnets such as Fujitsu for government funds to deploy rural next generation access (NGA), and to Virgin Media, as it expands its existing cable network footprint

However, the economics of NGA continue to strike us as challenging and we expect the impact of PIA on BT to be modest due to the remaining potential wholesale revenue, and BT Retail’s ability to use third party PIA-based networks

Nearly a year after rolling out Google TV in the US, Google has confirmed plans to launch its ‘smart TV’ operating platform in Europe and the UK by early 2012

To date, Google TV in the US has been a disappointment, with little broadcaster support and, until recently, expensive devices, resulting in low adoption

The content issue is likely to dog Google TV, both here and in other European markets; access to key broadcaster TV and video programming will be a major challenge

We have revised our central case forecasts of total year-on-year NAR (Net Advertising Revenue) growth in 2011 from 5% to 1%, as the advertising outlook has progressively worsened since mid April

2011 is marked by a further round of consolidation in airtime sales and a number of noteworthy channel and programming changes

Channel 4 Sales, and above all its flagship Channel 4, appears the most challenged of the leading market players, while we expect the ITV group to continue to outperform the NAR market in the rest of 2011 and 2012