News

Rejuvinating trading cards

Written by Olivier Adam on Sunday, 22 March 2009 03:42

A recent article in the New York Times discuss how Disney (now the proud owner of Topps, major player in the baseball trading card business) is planning on revitalizing this dying industry. The current market is a fifth of what it used to be at its peak and Disney hopes that by using technology, it can re-invigorate this industry with added interest from the fans. How is it planning on doing so? By using a special code, very similar to a bar code, that once shown on a web cam, adds on top of the card a 3D image of the player on the screen. The user can then turn the card around to see it under different angles and can select which move he wants the player to be doing. Our feeling? This will be a short lived idea and will boost sales only temporarily as after seeing it a few times, casual users will loose interest while the more hardcode users will not care for this feature.

[Full article at The New York Times]