Media Production -

Analysing media products

and audiences.

LO1 - Part A Institutions

Microsoft
Microsoft is an American multinational technology company
headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures,
licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics
and personal computers and services. Its best known software products
are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office
office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers.
Founders of the company

Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on

April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for
the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal
computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the
mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows.
What category is the company?

The company is a mixture of different companies, multinational, cross

media and conglomerate. It sells a mixture of different merchandise and
products worldwide which will make it a multinational company. It also
sells mobile phones which adds to the cross media as it sells apps/music
and mobile ringtones that are linked to other brands/ companies.
What product(s) does it make, and what
purpose do they have?
Skype - Skype is an application that provides video chat and voice call
services. Users may exchange such digital documents as images, text,
video and any other
Microsoft Office Suite - Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications,
servers, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by
Bill Gates on 1 August 1988
Windows OS - Microsoft Windows (or simply Windows) is a metafamily of
graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by
Microsoft.
Xbox - The Xbox is a home video game console and the first installment
in the Xbox series of consoles manufactured by Microsoft.
Windows Phone - Windows Phone (WP) is a family of mobile operating
systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement
How do the different parts of the institution
interact to the needs of the products produced
and the needs of the audience?
Without production & distribution (Horizontal Integration) the
advertising & promotion (Vertical Integration) wouldnt work well for the
product being created/advertised. The main aim of a product is to make
money from it and both the Horizontal and Vertical integration is
required. In a scenario when a video game is being created companies
often create the game and create a physical copy and also a digital
download of the game, companies often involve games into a bundle in
order to get more money from the game itself. In advertising and
promotion some different types of advertising used for a game is the
Xbox store, the xbox website, phones (apps that help enhance the
gaming experience, skype through adverts, youtube adverts and tv
adverts.
Who are the company's competitors?
One of Microsoft's biggest competitors is Apple, the competition
between these 2 companies has been going on for over 40 years, Apple
has a revenue of $215.639 billion as of 2016. Where as Microsoft has a
revenue of $85.32 billion. This shows that Microsoft is given less money
during a specific period but is still able to compete with Apple.
What advantages and disadvantages
do the company have over their
competitors?
Windows PCs are manufactured by many different companies, resulting
in a huge selection of devices with a wide variation in prices. With
Apple, you have only a few choices with set prices. Overall, there is a lot
more software available for Windows than for Apple products.
Part B - Media Product
Xbox One
Purpose Of The Product
The purpose of the Xbox One is to provide entertainment to its users.
The Xbox Ones purpose is to also compete against other consoles such
as Sonys PlayStation 4 and Nintendos Wii U as part of the eighth
generation of video game consoles. The Xbox One is also marketed as
an all in one entertainment system.
Codes and conventions
The colour black that is the colour on the console shows the positive
traits of beginnings of playing games and also the endings after
completing them. Another convention is the comfort that the console
brings you after relaxing while playing or viewing content on this
console. A few negative connotations of the colour of the control is
sadness and negativity is often when players use the console in order to
makk themselves feel better after using the console after an extended
time period
Audience it is intended for - Primary
The console is used to entertain people as a primary audience and this
is the people in the age range of 10-18. The console is aimed at the
demographic of that the Xbox One is aimed at mostly teenagers as they
spend a lot of their spare time going on gaming consoles so Microsoft
make consoles to entertain teenages and young adults roughly around
the age of 10 into late 20s. The Socio-Economic group is that of a
student occupation or a young adult in education to pass the time by
which is Group E. The psychographics is mostly towards people who are
interested in playing games and learning new abilities through their
gameplay. The Xbox One engages with the audience as most of the
younger generations want to keep up with the latest console that is
currently out and in each console there are new games and also new
features included in the console, such as the Xbox One had the Kinect
which engages users to become fitter and more psychically active. Most
games that are released on the console have different storylines in and
Audience It Is Intended For -
The secondary audience age range is typically the 20-30 year old users
Secondary
who mostly use it for catching up on TV or watching Netflix. The
demographics for this audience is people who use the console to catch
up on TV or to watch movies, or in some instances to play games with
their family/children. The Socio-Economic Group that this console is
aimed at is for people in all areas of the socio economic group ranging
from group A to group E. As this explores a wide range of jobs which
users can have. The psychographic for the secondary audience can be
people that want to watch films with family and friends, with a positive
personality and a high interest in film watching and TV watching. The
secondary audience will be engaged in the console as it offers a variety
of different channels you can watch catch up TV and films on, examples
of this are, ITV/BBC IPlayer/Channel 4, the console also offers services
such as YouTube, Netflix and even Dailymotion so all users on the
consoles can choose what they want to watch and when they want to
Genre, form and style
The Xbox One genre is most typically known as gaming and a
competitive consoles but can also be seen as an entertainment system
as it offers alot of other different services such as Netflix, Now TV and
YouTube which are all entertainment services that have been
implemented onto the system. This is done to offer a broad range of
services so it will appeal to a broader range of customers.
Meaning
The Xbox One is called the Xbox Once as it combines lots of different
styles of entertainment into one console. It has video based
entertainment such as BBC Iplayer, Netflix and TV Streaming. It has
audio based entertainment such as Spotify for people that want to listen
to music and finally it has gaming based entertainment for users that
want to play games on the system.
Production Process
The Xbox One console was created by Microsoft developers and went
through different stages while creating the console. First the compared
the old console with their new idea of a console to see what the
creators could improve to make the console better overall while still
competiting with other creators such Sony (PS4) and Nintendo (Wii U).
Xbox Original (2002) - Advert
The advert I have used an example of is from the Original
Xbox which was released in 2002. It is showing a mother
giving birth to a boy and the baby boy going out the
window and rapidly getting older and older before
hitting a gravestone, with the Xbox logo at the end displaying text
saying Life is short. Play More The advert later got banned due to the
amount of complaints it got due to it being offensive, shocking and in
bad taste. The video generates meaning as it is basically saying Life is
going too quick, play games and enjoy yourself while you can The
editing that had to go through making this advert is a reasonable
amount, the boy went through rapid growth which required CGI or
multiple actors throughout the advert filming process, the props that
were used in the advert were pretty much identical from a Hospital room
and have relevant props within the building, the way the set was created