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"Sony's PlayStation 3 is targeting early adopters and gaming enthusiasts, while Wii is expanding the gaming market to reach out to families that might have never owned a gaming console before," Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming at Parks Associates told TechNewsWorld. "Another big factor was that during the holiday season, not many gift-givers will spend $600 to $700 on a gift."

"The gaming enthusiasts everywhere are going to just go out and grab those machines," Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming for Parks Associates, told TechNewsWorld. That's what happened when Sony released the new console in November in North America, Japan and other parts of the world that use the NTSC (National Television System Committee) color television standard...

"Service providers -- particularly in broadband access and television delivery -- view the deployment of Web-connected home applications as service differentiators and a means to promote customer loyalty," Kurt Scherf, principal analyst and VP at Parks Associates, told the E-Commerce Times...

The manufacturers are racing to deliver the most appealing chair. "I've heard that vendors are incorporating scent machines into the chairs, so the players get the feeling that they really are in the game's locale," said Michael Cai, director of broadband and gaming at market research firm Parks Associates...

In August 2006, Parks Associates fielded an online survey which found that among all of the key social networking services, only MySpace has a substantial base of unique users. Seventy percent of Yahoo 360 users, for example, also use other social networking sites -- MySpace in particular. Ditto for Facebook, Windows Live Spaces and Friendster...

Continued subscriber growth will be important to Blizzard Entertainment's success, but even if the company maintains its 8 million members going forward it is a huge accomplishment, according to Parks Associates senior analyst Michael Cai "Even if you just keep a subscriber fo...

As has been the case for two decades, computers became smaller, more powerful, more functional and less expensive. "Good news continues for consumers, as more-functional high-tech products continue to become more affordable," said Kurt Scherf, a vice president at market research firm Parks Associates...

WiFi has become the dominant method for building home networks. "Users are interested in WiFi because these products have been inexpensive to develop, easy to deploy, and popular among many vendors and resellers," noted Kurt Scherf, a vice president at market research firm Parks Associates...

Much is at stake this holiday shopping season in the U.S. gaming industry, which is worth more than US$12 billion, according to Parks Associates. Currently, there are about 15 million casual gamers. Seventy percent of the Internet-equipped households in the nation include at least one game-playing person. Half have at least one gaming console...

ASUS, Planex and QNAP are among the first CE manufacturers to implement the BitTorrent download manager into their digital home devices; in the U.S. alone, 30 million households will have an entertainment network by 2010, according to Parks Associates Seeking the Rosetta Stone...

In addition, coaxial cable has become quite common in the U.S. "More than 80 percent of U.S. homes have coaxial cabling, and it is often found in the rooms that users would want to string their video connections to: the family room, bedroom and home office," said Kurt Scherf, vice president at Parks Associates...

Opera has done a good job of transferring the Internet experience to mobile devices, but there is limited potential for Web browsing on a mobile gaming console, Parks Associates Director of Broadband and Gaming Michael Cai told TechNewsWorld "I'm still not convinced people wil...

The new system may very well have the potential to impact the overall game industry, but that potential hinges on the tools' ease-of-use as well as the difficult task of attracting a significant number of serious developers, Parks Associates Director of Gaming and Broadband Michael Cai told TechNewsWorld...

"I think this is definitely the wrong direction for the gaming industry," Parks Associates Michael Cai told TechNewsWorld, who said he sees more excitement around family gaming and less around dark content Laugh and Cringe...

Both Microsoft and Sony are expected to incur losses on their next-generation console hardware, with the hopes of making it up in games and other areas, such as online distribution and play, and in-game advertising, Parks Associates Director of Gaming and Broadband Michael Cai told TechNewsWorld...

Microsoft has been successful in delivering online play to its audience of mostly young male gamers, and the company's Xbox Live Arcade highlights the trend of players seeking old-school plug-and-play joystick and other retro games, Parks Associates Director of Broadband and Gaming Michael Cai told TechNewsWorld...

The number of U.S. households with a connected entertainment network will reach 30 million by 2010, according to a new report from Parks Associates A connected entertainment network is a network composed of either a PC connected to at least one consumer electronics (CE) device...

Wii's shipping date is not as important as Nintendo's larger strategy that focuses on design and content, agreed Parks Associates Director of Broadband and Gaming Michael Cai If Nintendo manages to ship the Wii early, he told TechNewsWorld, it will only add to the company's pr...

The Mythic acquisition takes the company into full fledged online gaming mode. The trend is made viable by broadband penetration. Forty-two percent of U.S. households have broadband Internet access, according to Parks Associates Despite EA's starts and stalls, Valve, the maker...

Nintendo's biggest challenge as it rolls out the Wii console is probably the fact that it will coincide with Sony's release of the PS3, Parks Associates Director of Broadband and Gaming Michael Cai told TechNewsWorld Reporting that the retail games market is not growing like t...