Los Angeles video game publishers Activision Blizzard Inc. and THQ Inc. have a new console to develop titles for.

Nintendo Co. stole the show at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo last week with the announcement of a new device, Wii U, which will feature a touch screen controller and better graphics than were on the original Wii.

Patrick Sweeney, a video game attorney with Reed Smith in Century City, said the new console will present new challenges to publishers and game developers.

“It should spur some creativity on the game design side,” he said. “They’ll have to spend a lot of time designing specifically for what the Wii U system can do.”

The three-day E3, June 7 to 9 at the L.A. Convention Center, featured the usual flashy displays and costumed characters as the industry touted its latest wares.

But if you came looking for a sign that the industry is responding to the growing trend of online and mobile games, you would have had a hard time finding it.

Some traditional game companies touted new digital products at the expo, but the focus was largely still on games for consoles that customers will buy at retail outlets. And developers of casual games for social networking sites and smart phones were noticeably absent from the event.

Some event attendees said that’s a sign that the industry still looks to console and computer games as their main business.

“It’s still primarily a retail show,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with Janco Partners in Denver. “All the companies have digital revenue streams, but that’s only 10 percent of the opportunity.”

Activision Blizzard, which has helped lead the industry’s digital frontier with its massive multiplayer online game “World of Warcraft,” announced the week before E3 that there would soon be an online subscription option for its popular “Call of Duty” franchise. When the next version of the game goes on sale at retail locations, online players will also have the opportunity to pay a monthly subscription fee for access to extra content and downloadable features. The company has not disclosed how much the subscription will cost.

Activision executives discussed the new subscription model during E3, but at the company’s booth, the biggest buzz was over the release of game titles for traditional consoles.

There were some online game companies that showcased at E3, including El Segundo’s Nexon America. Sweeney said it’s a sign that the industry is moving in a digital direction.

“This is a show that, five years ago, wasn’t for them at all,” he said. “The show was so retail focused and that’s obviously changed.”

Digital Double

Image Metrics Inc., the Santa Monica company behind facial animation in numerous video games and films, is looking to move into the consumer market with a new technology that lets people create virtual avatars of themselves.

The company is marketing its new product, PortableYou, as something that developers or online entertainment and social networking companies would license and integrate into their websites.

A digital avatar from PortableYou could also be used in an e-card or virtual world, but the company hopes to find a large market for the technology with the growing popularity of games played on social networks, said Robert Gehorsam, chief executive of Image Metrics.

“The timing seemed right with everything that’s going on in social gaming,” he said. “And from a business perspective, the company can grow faster and larger by offering its technology to consumers.”

To use PortableYou’s technology, a person starts by uploading a photo of his or her face. The software then automatically generates a digital replica of the face that the person can customize with different hairstyles or accessories such as glasses. That head can be attached to a body in social games, for example, and played as a character in the game.

In the future, the company could release a mobile phone application version of PortableYou that it sells direct to consumers, Gehorsam said. He added that PortableYou could also find a market with independent game developers who don’t have the technology to create digital characters on their own.

Image Metric’s primary business is animating the heads of characters in video games such as “Red Dead Redemption” and movies such as “Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

Video Funding

Movieclips.com, a Venice website that offers video clips from more than 1,400 different films, has raised $6 million in a recent funding round.

The company, which had previously raised $3 million, was launched in 2009 by co-founders Zach James and Rich Raddon as a database and search engine for popular clips from studio films. Movieclips.com works with most of the major Hollywood studios, including Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, which provide the film footage.

The company also released a product last year called Movieclips Mashups that let users make montages of scenes from films.

Lead investors of the funding round and purpose of the financing were not disclosed.

Staff reporter Natalie Jarvey can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.