Google Android to provide EA games to Mobile Phones

T Mobile will be the providing the first phone to use Googles Android platform to host 3 of EA’s games; Tetris, Monopoly and Bejewelled will be available in November.  These are the first games released, there are more in development, and EA is also developing games for the iPhone.

This sees google delve further into the games world, further to it’s acquisition of Lively.

EA’s comments at the London Games Industry Event Games 3.0 reinforce the thinking that that the Internet is going to be the major platform for gaming in the future.    EA’s UK Boss Keith Ramsdale said to the conference  “The next wave in gaming is to understand the trend, make sure that games are directly accessible to consumer on the internet – and key to us will be retaining those consumers once they come into our space. Whether that’s a brand or a franchise space, we need to hold on to them. The way to hold on to them is to deliver them great, ongoing content.”

Web based games, and mobile technology, and google’s platform look to be the ingrediants to a method to reach millions of people, at home, work, travelling.  Opening up the Games Market to millions more people and potential players, and presenting games developers and designers with potentially unlimited opportunities.  It’s going to be an exciting time!

Truck Orders Plummet

Volvo and Scandia, two of the largest suppliers of trucks, have seen orders plummet from over 40,000 to just over 115 in Europe.  Despite there being nearly 20,000 orders, cancellations and adjustments to previous orders have effectively wiped this out to only a small gain.

Volvo cited a number of reasons, including the economic slowdown, increased costs of raw materials, and new environmental legislation.

“In Europe, customers are continuing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude to the ordering of new vehicles and equipment,” Johansson said. “Moreover, they have increasingly opted to cancel already placed orders. For our part, we have made sure to diligently go through and cleanse out orders in order to secure the quality in our order books.”

The early months of this summer saw record diesel prices, with prices reaching £1.50 per litre.  The HGV trucks cover between 8 and 10 miles per gallon, therefore price increases of up to 50% mean that operators have to question every choice that they make with regard to their vehicle base.

This is a very real example of how changes in fuel prices can totally influence companies decisions to expand, grow and capital expenditure spend.  In Fantasy Couriers, players will need to take account of the these real and frequently changing fuel prices.  When the price of oil goes up, players margins are going to get squeezed, so it is vital that players are going to need to pay particular attention to their pricing, monitor closely their costs, and consider carefully plans to purchase new vehicles in the current ecominc climate.

Teaching Kids that Money Matters

As we go into the recession, and every family is feeling the financial pinch, the government announces the launch of an £11.5m scheme to teach children how to manage their finances.

 

The Populus poll of 1,000 parents and children, aged seven to 15, at the end of August found

·         70% were discussing money more than at the same time last year. A third of families had opted not to take a holiday this year,

·         62% had stopped having takeaways and meals out.  

·         36% of parents had already switched to doing their weekly shopping at a value supermarket, with a further 19% planning to do so in the future.

·         Over half (56%) had stopped trips to the cinema and other entertainment-related trips.

 

These decisions are noticed by the children, and although 77% of parents said they would normally try to avoid exposing their children to money concerns, the present economic climate means that things that children have grown up taking for granted are becoming more of a luxury.

 

Almost a third of parents try to avoid the topic of money at home and a quarter of these said that was because childhood should be a carefree time.   However maybe involving children in these discussions helps them to understand the context of their parents decisions and choices, and that the “pester power” that marketing companies rely on for so many sales may be replaced an gradual awareness that money doesn’t grow on trees, and that choices must be made.

  

The My Money programme will be rolled out to primary and secondary school pupils, covering topics such as how money is used and debt. A survey commissioned to mark the launch suggests children are becoming more aware of the credit crunch as parents discuss finances more openly.   Chief executive of the Personal Finance Education Group (that Charity that will be implementing the My Money programme) Wendy van den Hende said: “The spending changes that many families are making can actually provide an opportunity to get conversations started at home and talk about practical ways of managing money. “

 

Older children should have some concept of money, and that financial decisions are not in fact carefree.  One of the discussions which has come out of the Credit Crunch is that the UK society is a spend now society, looking for that instant gratification from consumer goods and spending with little thought or regard as to whether or not that spending is affordable.  The current situation is a good one to grasp, and to show the children a good practise, and to put into place the sensibleness which we need to teach.

Surviving Recessions – The Media’s Responsiblity

The BBC have run a story about AE Harris, a Birmingham company that have survived an amazing 10 downturns, including recessions and even the great depression.

The company started 128 years ago making Jewellery and now made laser cutting and tool making equipment and software.

Company Chairman, Russel Luckork said “I sincerely hope that I will not have to reduce my workforce this time and I will be fighting tooth and nail to make sure that doesn’t happen. I think we have enough irons in the fires with our customers to make sure that we keep all our people in employment.

I don’t believe that it will be a deep recession, I think it will be a shallow but I think there’s a danger of talking ourselves into a deeper recession.”  ”My advice to companies that are struggling at the moment is to draw in your horns. You have to cut salaries, remuneration and costs. However ruthless it may seem you have to stay in business. The good times will come again. In my experience when there have been bad times, there have always been good and very lucrative times just round the corner. You just have to survive and stay patient”

Russell story highlights a number of important points.  In the recessions and even depressions up until the 1970’s most people got their news from either the daily newspaper, a daily edition of the news on the television, or maybe both.  Meaning that the news that was reported had happened, usually the previous day.  The 1980’s brought with it the “news updates”, and satellite feeds,  which meant that news was reported as it was happening.  Most people will remember the Iranian Embassy Seige as the turning point for the “live” reporting. 

Now we have 24 hour news channels, that have 24 hours to fill with news each day. And this means that the media now fill most of this with speculation.  They no longer report on the press release that has been made, but instead discuss, speculate and even interrogate people on the expected contents.

We will all have known about stories & situations where the media only reports the negative, the doom and gloom, and Russells fears that the media may worsen the recession through continued negative reporting is a very real risk.

Markets are volatile things, as is business confidence, and that is just the key to it all – confidence.  Businesses, investors, buyers, employees need to be able to build up that confidence, that things will get better, that things are getting better, and so we need a media that can bring confidence and good news back into the arena.

The media will argue that they report what people want to hear, so do we really want to hear only the doom and gloom stories.  Some news stations have been running “redundancy totalisers” this week, to show the numbers of jobs lost.  Can we lobby these stations into running the same kind of stories when the economy starts to pick up again?

Fantasy Couriers has commissioned a poll of UK small business to find out what the real situation is, is it all as bleak as the Media are portraying, or is it just that old chestnut that bad news sells more copies than good news.

We will keep you updated.

Top tips for Surviving a Recession.

Here are our top 10 tips for families surviving a recession;

1. Face your demons.  Don’t shove brown envelopes upopened in drawers, open, read, digest.  Pull them all together and look at them properly.  Sleepness nights and money worries frequently stem from panicing and worrying about the unknown.  So deal with facts, draw up a list, add them all up, look at the payment dates and the interest rates, and get a plan together on how to deal with them.
2. Make up a household budget, there are lots of sites that will help you here, particularly Money Saving Expert .  Go through all of the standing orders and direct debits and cancel any that you don’t think are really important right now.  Cancelling a few subscriptions etc could give you an extra £100 per month – that’s probably the equivalent value of the electricity bill.
3. Talk to an Independent financial advisor, particularly if your mortgage is reaching the end of a fixed or discounted period.  Talk to an independent financial advisor too if you are just worried.  Many people have endowments, and will be receiving scary letters telling them that the value of their endowment or pension has fallen, together with a valuation of what it’s worth if cashed in today.  The same thing applies here as with property, you don’t make any losses on shares until you cash them in.  If you’ve a pension, or a shares ISA with a lot of years left to run, then remember that you are currently a buyer.  And this is probably a very good period to be scooping up share units.  This month, your contribution will be buying 1/3 more units than it was last month.  If your pensions or endowment is due to mature within the next few months then talk to an Independent Financial advisor about your options.  There are lots of options and lots of financial products, so talk to someone with the right knowledge about them.  You should also talk to a financial advisor if you find that after you’ve drawn up your list of bills, and your budget you know that you’ve got a shortfall.  Don’t call some random number off the telly, talk to a proper financial independent advisor and they can pass you onto the right person to deal with your situation.
4. Don’t worry about your property’s value, as long as your mortgage payments are affordable, and you have no intentions of selling, declining property values have no real impact on you.  It’s scary to hear that property prices are falling by x%, but you don’t make a loss until you sell something, until then the valuation is just a theoretical number.  So don’t worry about it.
5. Be proactive.  Talk to your bank manager, or credit companies, electricity & gas companiesor anyone else that you have bills with that you think you can’t afford.  Talk to them before you can’t afford afford the payment, and this way you can avoid defaulting, which will help your credit rating going forward.
6. Be sensible.  Odd treats now and then are one of those things that we like to lift our souls.  But be sensible about the big expensive stuff.   Most people don’t really NEED a lot of the purchases that they make, but marketing, big companies, supermarkets etc lead us into thinking that we do.  Be aware of all those retail marketing tricks that are out there to seperate you from your money.  Our biggest recommendation is a simple one, don’t go shopping unless you need something.  Window shopping when you’re watching the pennies is not good for the spirit.
7. Don’t buy ahead for Christmas.  This applies to food, drink etc.   When you’re shopping at the supermarket don’t fall into their trap of buying things for Christmas early.  In lots of instances the sell by dates will have expired before the big day.  It leads people into over buying, it doesn’t seem much when you buy a few items each week for the next 9 weeks, but if you do that every week then you’ll end up with cupboard loads of food and drink that you’ll end up binging on, or throwing out after the festive period.  Instead, but the cash in a jam jar, or a seperate savings account, and the go out and buy what you need when you know exactly whose coming and where you’re going over the holidays.  It will also stop you eating it before Christmas, and then having to buy it all over again!
8. Do buy ahead for Christmas.  Buying a few Christmas presents every week can help spread the cost.  We recommend strongly though that you write a list of who you’ve got to buy for, and that you write next to it what you buy, and you keep this in your purse/wallet.  This way you know that you don’t end up buying twice for some people, and you avoid the “i’ll give this to someone, haven’t worked out who yet” situations.  Remember that everyone is facing the same pressures on their wallets and bank accounts, so probably friends and family would appreciate a sensible limit on christmas spending, you’ll not just be making it easier on yourself, but on them too.
9. Redundancy.  This is the big one that everyone fears, and it’s also the one that individuals have least control over.  If you have been working for your employer for more than 2 years then you should be entitled to a redundancy payment.  Redundancy deals can be negotiated, so don’t blindly accept the first offer.  Take advice from ACAS, its free, and it’s the most knowledgable source for employment advice.  Bear redundancy in mind if you are changing jobs, realise that as last in you are likely to be first out, and that you are likely to get no redundancy payment.  Read your contracts and find out what provisions etc are made.  Redundancy can have huge implications for your family, but face them with your eyes open.  If you have an income protection policy look it out and find out how long it is before you can receive any benefit, contact anyone that you have trouble paying and explain that in a few weeks time you will be better placed to pay the bills.   If you don’t have any such cover then your employer may provide support, particularly if the number of redundancies is large scale.  If your employer has no such support for you then contact your local benefits office who will show you the way through this.
10. The hardest – stay happy!  Recessions can be tough, and some families or businesses can find it much harder than others.  But if you’re getting through it then be proud of yourself, and your efforts.   When times are hard people tend to retreat inwards, and this can be bad in families, particularly if one partner has a habbit of carrying the financial responsibility alone.  Share the burden, share the treats.  Explain to the children that things are a bit tight at the moment and so you’re saving the pennies for Christmas or whatever.  Keep communicating, and make the most of the free things in life.