Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, gratuitous use of chyrons, the scariest insect, or why my coffee beans are late, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
My tech writer friends and I were talking about brands that were powerful 10 years ago, but are dead or dying in 2011. Names like Dell, Nokia, and RIM came up. It wasn’t that long ago when Michael Dell advised Apple to shut down the company, Nokia was the leading high-end smartphone manufacturer in the world, and RIM’s BlackBerry platform was considered cutting edge. It’s crazy how much can change in a decade. These days Apple makes Dell look like a joke, Nokia is no longer a player in the high-end market, and RIM’s BlackBerry OS is considered an archaic piece of crap.
Other companies like Excite, Palm, and Yahoo! were discussed. I wanted to talk about gaming brands, but most of these guys don’t know anything about that world. That’s where you come in! Remember when the “big three” of gaming was Nintendo, Sony, and Sega?!? It’s crazy how Sega went from one of the biggest players in console gaming to a middling publisher.
What brands do you remember being juggernauts in 2001 that are dead or dying in 2011? Leave a comment and let me know (please)!
"gratuitous use of chyrons"
Headline News
"the scariest insect"
The cockroach. If you see one, you know there are many.
"why my coffee beans are late"
I know it's exciting, but have them see an OB/GYN before buying any onesies.
I was actually thinking of X-Men: First Class in terms of chyrons. I might do a random thoughts post on the movie. I know I'm LTTP, but it's SO all over the place!
I hear that…
But HN is like 85% Chyron and 15% video. That's pretty gratuitous.
Then there's the Weather Channel.
@ topic
Rare and Neversoft.
Another dinosaur from back then (and is now equally extinct) was Midway.
Is Acclaim still around? If not, that's a good one too.
Acclaim was revived by Dave Perry and a bunch of other peeps. It wasn't the same company that it was before and was quickly sold to Playdom.
Yeah… that sounds as good as dead to me.
It's a similar situation to Rare and Neversoft in that it was absorbed by another company.
But Playdom doesn't publish the way Acclaim did. They do Facebook and other social games. Although they are big players… it's a different arena. It's like when Michael Jordan decided to try his hand at baseball. Even though he was still an athlete, he wasn't the spectacle he was ever again. Other analogies include Elvis joining the army and Fonzie jumping the shark.
Therefore… Acclaim proper has gone the way of the dodo in my opinion.
The second version of Acclaim was focused on free to play.
Please forgive my analogies.
Motown Records started in Detroit MI. We all know the legacy of Motown… and the bulk of it was before 1972. Then came the second version of Motown when Berry Gordy moved the company to LA. Although they produced massive hits by groups such as DeBarge and the Mary Jane Girls… it was far from the same phenomenon.
5 or 6 years ago, they merged with Universal. This is the third version and where we start to lose track of their existence.
From what I'm finding out… they recently got in cahoots with Def Jam. What are the odds that 50 years from now when people think of Motown, they will in turn think of Russell Simmons? Will Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye be characters in the next Def Jam fighting game? (that would rule… I'd want to be David Ruffin)
Only people in the know think of Michael Jackson when they hear Beatles songs. The songs can be covered and the product is out there, but the Beatles will never play a show again. Know what I mean?
I understand all that, but the first two versions of Motown had way more in common than the first two versions of Acclaim. At least with Motown, Gordy and some of the Funk Brothers were still involved. Acclaim 2.0 had virtually none of the same executives and development talent.
Right… my point is that the essence that made people love Motown, Elvis, Michael Jordan, Happy Days, and Acclaim was now gone and moving on to new ventures at these respectable and notable points in history.
Maybe "dead" or "extinct" isn't as accurate of a term as "devolved" or "has their head in their ass", but it's at least metaphorically the same thing in terms of representation.
This is basically what we said last week wouldn't happen to Apple for some time to come.
Playboy.
Funny thing, a sub of playboy is my number 1 bday gift for most ppl.
I think it will be completely extinct within 5 years after Hef passes. Nobody else in the world has the eye that man has.
It's amazing the internet hasn't killed it completely already.
Playboy will become a vintage brand after Hef dies. There will be a good legacy (and a lot of people with a vintage tattoo of the iconic bunny), but the magazine won't be the same without him around. The iconic bunny image is actually one of the big reasons Playboy will become a vintage brand whenever Hef dies, that is image branding at it's finest.
It's amazing that it's still around considering that we are in the Internet age. I think Hef is still responsible for that. Have you ever watched a documentary and seen how he works? Its amazing how anal and correct he is.
I think there is at least one documentary about him on netflix that I want to watch, but have not seen it yet. He is definitely the only reason the magazine is still in print form only. It would be interesting to see how well Playboy could migrate to tablets in comparison with newspapers and other large magazines. I don't think that will be in Hef's lifetime though.
Technically, I think his daughter is CEO now and he's technically retired, but he definitely still has the clout.
When they did a shoot, this man would look over all the hundreds of pics the took in one shoot and narrow it down to between 5 and 10 (when the photographer was lucky) based on extremely minor details like a freckle or a light reflection in a certain place. Watching the process is stunning.
I actually see Xbox as a bleeding brand right now. Personally I'm hoping that isn't so, but I feel like Sony will greatly overtake Xbox in the next gen of consoles. Xbox won't necessarily die from this, but they won't be as popular as they have been in the past. This definitely isn't in the same ballpark as RIM or Nokia losing ground in the cell phone market, but I think next gen will be tough on Microsoft and Xbox fans alike.
I still wouldn't mind having a PS3 right now, but I don't like them that much. The xbox still feels like a better package to me.
Weird. I feel the same way about Nintendo.
-M
Yeah I would mostly agree, except for the minor detail of them being Nintendo. Even if I feel they could have trouble in the next gen, I just remind myself that they are Nintendo and they will survive and still sell millions of copies of their products. Regardless, next gen feels like it will belong to Sony.
I don't really like that, but it seems to be a reality. Sony has a lot of fans, but unless they do something drastically different I don't see myself becoming one of them.
What ever happened to 989 studios? I used to love playing their games.
It's not its own brand anymore, just part of Sony.
Ohhhh.
Ohhhh
P.T.I. Michael Wilbon just mentioned Olivia Munn as a possible girlfriend for Derek Jeter. I would absolutely hate that.
Lol
My friend Shon from Blizzard wrote, "AOL for sure. Other brands semi-related: Tower Records and Blockbuster."