Google’s entertainment manager heads to Weve

Warren Mills will leave Google for a role at mobile commerce firm Weve at the end of the month.

Mills was Google’s industry manager for entertainment. At Weve, which is a joint venture between mobile operators EE, Vodafone and O2, he will assume the role of entertainment partnerships manager and will be responsible for gaming, music and film.

Speaking at London Games Conference last November, Mills revealed that video games is the second most popular category on YouTube. Which, Mills added, is in itself the second biggest search engine behind Google.

Digital is changing the game,” said Mills. We are seeing an incredible shift in how we define today’s modern gamer. Consumers are facing a competitive market place, which is testament to the amount of choice made available to them.”

Mills revealed that gamers are searching on Google and YouTube for upcoming games earlier and earlier. On average, gamers are searching for games 39 days ahead of launch, while 70 per cent of gamers are researching the game before they buy it. And those numbers are increasing year-over-year.

But the biggest growth area is in video. Mills pointed to the huge successes of Yogscast, Machinima (which has 42bn video views, says Mills) and the like for the success seen for video content on YouTube. He told the attendees at LGC that video views for gaming content is up 30 per cent year-on-year.