Film
The film industry is a constantly evolving division, in a century the way we view films has altered significantly. The first full length movie is considered to be ‘the great train robbery’ which was made in 1903 it was in black and white and featured no sounds, 100 years later saw the release of the last film in the lord of the rings trilogy ‘the return of the king’ which had spectacular effects. 620 films were released in the UK in the year of 2010 and the film industry accumulated a whopping 4.3 billion. The way we view films has gone from black and white to standard definition to high definition and now 3D television.
Advertising
Advertising has a major role in the media industry, it generates £6.2 billion annually for the UK economy, and advertisement is a way to attract customers and to inform them of a product or service. Advertising focuses on the punters to try and sell their product, advertising falls into four core departments I will explain them briefly below:
· Account services- this department communicates with customers and uphold their connection
· Creatives- this is the department that create the ideas and concepts for a project
· Production- this unit focuses on turning concept into reality, in other words this means they are responsible for putting the creative ideas onto your screens
· Media- This area organises where the campaign will be seen to create the maximum effect.
Animation
Just over 2000 people work in the animation area in the UK. You can find animated content on computer games, film, television, commercials and on some websites. It is an upcoming sector; to date it is one of the smallest segments with not much people working in it. The Animation Sector can be roughly divided into four main disciplines:
· 2D drawn or traditional
· 2D computer generated
· Stop and frame
· 3D computer generated
Computer Games
In my opinion one of the most important sectors in media, some popular computer games have been recorded to break records in sales for entertainment products. The computer game industry is firmly established as a major part in the UK’s modern-day media landscape. It consists of just under 9,000 employees, with approximately 220 business classed as game developers.
Interactive Media
Interactive media refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user’s actions by presenting content such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio etc. Over 48,000 people currently work in this sector, making it the largest sector in the audio visual industry. The most popular form of interactive media is the internet with 165,745,689 people involved and has access to it.
Publishing
Publishing is made up of a diverse group of industries including: newspapers, books, journals and magazines. This industry has some of the smallest companies 85% have under 25 employees. In the UK you are most likely to find company headquarters in London and the South east region.
Radio
Radio is a medium for communication, this industry has rapidly evolved, and it is the host of about 22,000 employees. There are three major categories:
· Publicly funded radio
· Commercial radio
· The community and voluntary radio
Television
By far the largest sector in media, television is going through an immense time of change and challenge; there are 5 main channels in the UK, BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Many more channels are being introduced through digital television which is portrayed as the future of television; by 2012 the UK would have gone through a massive turnover from analogue to digital television. The rapid growth of people utilising mobiles and broadband means television has to up its level in order to carry on being the main industry in media. Women are really well presented in the television industry as 45% of the employees are females.
Electronic Arts (EA) is one of the biggest game publishers in the world today; it was founded and incorporated by William 'Trip' Hawkins on 28/5/1982. EA is most notable for its sports computer published under its EA sports label.
The gaming industry has become very competitive seeing as many third party developers are releasing loads of quality games I would say EA's main competitor would be Activision seeing as they make similar games. EA games most recognised first person shooter would be Medal of Honour which could be seen as a competitor to Activision's all great Call of Duty.
EA started off as a privately owned company within its first 4 years it became the industry's leading supplier of entertainment software. To further fund its expansion, the company went public in 1989. It is a horizontal integrated multinational corporation as it manages production in many different countries to produce products that represent the Electronic Art label; I will show you some of the company’s main labels below:
· Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores)
· EA Los Angeles (formerly Westwood Studios)
· EA Montreal
· BioWare Edmonton
· BioWare Austin
· BioWare Montreal
· BioWare Mythic (formerly Mythic Entertainment)
· EA Digital Illusions CE
· EA Black Box (formerly Black Box Games)
· Maxis
· EA Phenomic
· EA Sports
EA has recently attempted to takeover Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive software Inc. The company made a bid understood to be within the region of $2 billion dollars, this bid was made days before the release of the largely anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV. Unfortunately for Electronic Arts the bid was turned down. EA also announced its acquirement of game developer Playfish for a total of $275 million, triggering a loss of 1500 employees a total of 17% of its workforce. This also led to the end of Pandemic Studios.
EA’s biggest source of income is from releasing computer games it has a lot of product diversity as it releases games for casual and hardcore gamers. The company creates a wide range of genres for the consumers to enjoy, so if you’re a sports fanatic, FPS shooter fan or you enjoy playing role play games then EA has a long list of games to gratify your desires. It also makes money off of sponsors; EA has many sponsors including Arsenal FC one of its most prominent sponsors.
The 2010 best game publisher’s awards saw EA come second, behind one of the worlds oldest and worldwide recognised Nintendo, and in third place came Activision which as I mentioned before is home to Call of Duty. These results come to show that Electronic Arts is very popular and its main competitors are Nintendo and Activision. One of EA’s objectives for 2011 would be to claim first place in order to do so they must really polish up their games to stand a chance against Nintendo.
