TV \ Console

The teaser campaign is part of an elaborate marketing plan for Wrigley 5 gum. Wrigley introduced the brand in 2007 to try to bring teens and young adults back to chewing gum. The company was acquired by Mars Inc. in 2008. The gum maker's game, dubbed "The Human Preservation Project," claims to be recruiting players to take part in virtual experiments to save the human race by maintaining sensory experiences.

Interactive TV games company, PlayJam, has launched a global games service on Samsung Smart TV's and Blu-ray players. The service, which is now live on Samsung's 2010 product range, is "a social and casual games network, available at Samsung Apps--the world's first HDTV-based application store offering about 640 paid and free apps globally that help people connect to their various passions," PlayJam states in its press materials.

A new report from market-watcher Flurry Analytics finds that while Nintendo is still the dominant player in the portable gaming market, its marketshare is being rapidly eroded by the growing popularity of Android and Apple's iOS platform. According to Flurry, sales of Android and iOS games now account for 34 percent of the portable gaming market-and much of that growth comes at the expense of Sony's PSP and (to a much greater extend) Nintendo's portable gaming platforms.

Rally Marketing Group is acquiring PassionFruit Games, a developer of casual video games aimed at female gamers. The agency points to importance of female shoppers to its client base as one reason as well as the growing numbers of casual female gamers. Female fans make up 40% of all video game players, according to the Entertainment Software Association, with women over the age of 18 representing a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33%) than boys age 17 or younger (20%).

As the Microsoft Kinect full-body controller for Xbox comes to market this week, the kids from Redmond are beside themselves with high expectations. The company had been projecting a very optimistic sales target of three million units sold in the final quarter. But based on pre-orders and retailer orders, they raised the forecast to 5 million.

There are a lot of futuristic things we're still waiting on: jet packs for the entire family, self-driving cars and time-travel, to name a few. But one new, pretty darn amazing bit of technology has finally come to fruition, thanks to the folks at Microsoft.

The Sony PlayStation Network has signed on Ford, Electronic Arts and the U.S. Air Force to sponsor the second season of the video game reality show, The Tester.

Ion Television, a general entertainment network that claims to reach over 98 million US households via cable, satellite and the TV stations of its parent company, Ion Media Networks, has launched an interactive microsite to accompany the primetime crime drama series, "Without a Trace."

(Media-Newswire.com) - Espoo, Finland - "Heroes" creator Tim Kring and Nokia today unveiled Conspiracy For Good ( CFG, www.ConspiracyForGood.com ), an inaugural movement that blends online and real-world tasks to effect social change through audience participation. CFG combines Kring's original storytelling ( www.ConspiracyForGood.com/about ) and Nokia's Ovi platform ( www.ovi.com ) to create a dramatic, fictional experience using interactive theatre, mobile and alternate reality gaming ( ARG ), music and physical participation to do good in the world.