One problem is that domestic publishers are not participating in any meaningful way in two of the hottest parts of the global video game industry: subscription-based online gaming and trade-ins of used games.
Digiday argues that in the OTT industry, "subscriptions beat ads".
Across the industry, subscriptions are down, but the picture is more complicated than the overarching numbers suggest.
Some of the key points that drove the discussion included the "two music industries," subscription services, and the mixed blessing of social networking.
Last year Mr. Rogers, an Internet and music consultant who has worked on both sides of the business (for the technology company Nullsoft and for the Beastie Boys), distributed on the Internet a scathing condemnation of the industry's subscription services.
On September 17, 2007, The New York Times announced that it would stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight the following day, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.
Despite that, Doug Morris, chief executive of the Universal Music Group, is optimistic, predicting that the industry's subscription-based online offerings, which recently began to allow CD burning, will provide a lucrative source of secondary revenue -- enough to rival the sale of compact discs.
Not Your Father's Subscriptions: The industry continues to see "subscriptions" in terms that are far too simplistic.
And in an industry in which subscription sales are generally falling, the Met's have gone up for next year by 10percentt.
To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set.
