Entries from November 2007 ↓

We are living at a time of enormous and profound change in video gaming. You have heard it all before, possibly on here. Our former audience of hardcore single young males playing in their bedrooms is being replaced by the whole family playing in the lounge. Or so the mantra goes. We need to be concentrating on games like Wii Sports and Super Mario Galaxy.

Yet despite the accepted wisdom good hardcore games are selling better than ever before. And one of them, Halo 3, has set launch turnover records for entertainment IP in the USA.

So it is interesting that research company BrandIntel says that Halo 3 generated significant awareness and engagement among casual gamers leading to it over achieving in that market. They also found, unsurprisingly, that Halo 3 was a system seller.

So what does this tell us? Certainly not that our new casual audience is about to go hardcore. More likely that if any game is good enough and marketed well enough it will find some audience amongst casual gamers. Which makes sense. So maybe hardcore has a slightly better future than some were thinking if it is done right.

But most of all it shows that our future will be very much in niches. Because the installed base of platforms will be so much bigger and more all encompassing than ever before it will be possible to make games in all sorts of genres that wouldn’t have worked in the past. This wide range of genres is exactly what happens with books and film. And as with these, a game from any genre can transcend from a narrow audience into a wide general audience if it is good enough and sufficiently well marketed. This is precisely what happened when the Star Wars trilogy became mass audience films despite their roots in the narrow genre of science fiction.

• UAE government buys into Sony. Another $500 million for the Sony war-chest. Added to money from the recently announced sell offs as they cut back to their core businesses. Sony are gearing up for a serious console war. The next two years are going to be fascinating as they try to claw back the Microsoft lead and make some impact on the runaway train that is Nintendo.
• Piracy drive threatens Nintendo DS. Like all technology wars this could suddenly take off and in just a month or so decimate software sales. Nintendo could have put more and better protection into the device. This makes your DS behave like an iPod for games.  The good news is that at least Nintendo make a profit on the consoles, unlike the business model of their rivals.
• New Kuju studio focuses on digital downloads. Regular readers will know that this is exactly the thing to do right now. Distributing games using cardboard and plastic is silly. But digital downloads offer new opportunities so creating a studio to make the best of them makes a lot of sense.
• DS sets new UK sales record. 191,000 units in one week, more than any other console in history. Maybe it is because the games are free now!! Seriously, it is a great piece of kit with some fantastic games on it. In some sectors of our society it is already almost ubiquitous. American sales of both the DS and the Wii have been equally spectacular. Nintendo have done a superb job all round.
• MTV’s next game moves to a whole new realm. With $500 million to spend, a hit with Rock Band behind them, a global brand and huge marketing horsepower they are the new nobility in game publishing. The old established publishers should be looking over their shoulders with trepidation because the big media companies are gearing up to overtake them. Now is a good time to sell out or merge.
• Consoles are a grown ups toy. 42% of 25 to 34 year olds want a console for Christmas compared with just 30% of 16 to 24 year olds.  And still the console manufacturers will not allow adults to have adult games. The Wii is the second most craved after object of desire behind HDTVs. Overall it is amazing how important technology toys have become and how mainstream video gaming now is.
• Eco warriors in desperate bid for publicity. Greenpeace have no credibility since Brent Spar. Now they put Nintendo at the bottom of their green ranking just because they couldn’t find the information that they wanted. Only the gullible would believe this stuff. The Wii uses less materials in it’s manufacture than it’s competitors and both the DS and the Wii use far less power than their competitors. Which points to greenpeace being wrong once again.
• Need For Speed not number one shock. Not many would have predicted this. EA’s annual chestnut always enters the charts at the top. More shockingly it is being kept off the pole position by the first iteration of an original IP, Assassin’s Creed. Which even less people would have predicted. Exceptionally well done all round by Ubisoft. This Christmas sees the biggest glut of AAA game titles ever. As a result titles that would have been very good game releases at any other time of year are in serious danger of flopping.

For the last two weeks the PS3 has outsold the Wii in Japan. Now a lot of this is down to Sony introducing a cheaper version of the PS3. But the biggest factor must be stock availability of the Wii. Nintendo just cannot make enough to keep up with worldwide demand. And with Super Mario Galaxy just out and being proclaimed by many as the best game ever that demand is just going to get worse.

The last production figure that Nintendo released was 1.8 million units a month but, confusingly, they say they are shipping an extra 3.5 million units worldwide for christmas. Which could make a total of 7.1 million units over November and December. And they will easily sell them all.

The situation in the UK is close to manic. A lady I know put her name on several shop waiting lists and was finally only allowed to buy one if she bought six games at the same time! There are website that tell you of stock availability, but as soon as they say a retailer has some that retailer’s website crashes under the demand. Amazon sold 1,400 units in just ten minutes and secondhand Wiis fetch increasingly higher premiums on Ebay.

These are amazing times and they are the consequence of Nintendo making gaming fun for all the family instead of the niche demographic that video gaming has traditionally catered for. The annoying thing is that the industry could have made this massive leap years ago. But lacked the will and ability to do so.

Of course this represents a fantastic opportunity for game developers. But they cannot produce the games that they produced before. The audience and it’s expectations are different now. I have posted this development guide before and it is very relevant:
1) Don’t do shovelware. You are just damaging your brand(s).
2) Write Wii specific titles. Don’t port. You have to respect the interface difference.
3) Understand that most Wiis live in the lounge. And most other consoles live in the bedroom.
4) Polish, lots. Then polish some more.
5) Realise that you have to provide entertainment for the population at large. FPS titles are not a good idea.
6) You need to market completely differently. PR in women’s magazines will work a lot better than adverts in game magazines.
7) Talk to your wife/girlfriend. They understand the Wii better than you do.

It will be extremely interesting to see what happens after Christmas. Maybe the Wii is a seasonal gift item and sales will fall flat. Or maybe the release of system seller titles such as Wii Fit will keep the demand going.

So have you got yours yet?

I have said before that gaming needs more celebrities. It is just so obvious that people relate to other people far better than they relate to anything else. So by making a person and a product synonymous you can gain huge marketing advantages. It is something that Peter Molyneux has done to great effect for many years. And he has the sales to prove it.

It is something I have always tried to do with my computer game marketing. Eugene Evans at Imagine and the Darling brothers and Oliver twins at Codemasters are the ones that spring immediately to mind. But over the years I have put a lot of game development people into magazines and on to television. It has worked so well that I am amazed that more game marketeers don’t do it.

So it is very, very nice to see that the Ubisoft marketeers have made a celebrity of the producer of Assassin’s Creed, Jade Raymond. She even has a fansite. Obviously it helps that she isn’t unattractive, but that is true of most things in life. What also helps is that she is coherent, telegenic and obviously intelligent and so communicates very well in the media.

Of course this has attracted some negative publicity. But this goes with the territory. It is absolutely inevitable that if you have a public persona, no matter how good, there are some that will advance their own agendas by taking a swipe at you. It is the price you have to pay and something you just have to learn to live with. But the upside is so massive that it is easy to ignore the denigrators.

Which brings us to Jeff Minter. His recent game Space Giraffe has been outsold by Frogger on Xbox Live Arcade. And he is not happy. To the point where he had a massive late night rant on his blog. And the power of celebrity is such that this created a lot of worldwide publicity. Which will certainly have helped sales of Space Giraffe.

So are you a marketeer and do you use celebrity?

I remember a time when people didn’t buy consoles. They bought home computers made by firms like Atari, Commodore and Sinclair. These were great general purpose machines that had a wide variety of uses, including game playing. Unfortunately it was extremely easy to copy any commercial software, so everybody did. Thus dooming these devices.

Then came game consoles. Initially, using ROM cartridges, they owed their success to just two main advantages. Firstly games were not easily copied, thus making game publishing a viable business again. Secondly they were much easier to use, just plug the game in and go. Unfortunately the industry became complacent in it’s security so when piracy became rampant again at the end of the original Playstation generation a lot of companies were very badly hit.

Now we live in the age of broadband and games can be transferred on the interweb quickly and easily. And so they are, with companies making a revolutionary switch over to digital distribution. But the pirates got there first, for some time now it has been the distribution method of choice for these thieves. We are potentially getting ourselves into exactly the same position that we were in with home computers and with the original Playstation.

And it is not just us. The film and music industries are suffering very badly. They have reacted in very clumsy ways with Digital Rights Management (DRM) and by totally disproportionate punishment of individuals making illegal downloads. It is a very messy situation. What should be a straightforward transition to a far more elegant distribution model is being ruined by thieves and the industry reaction to those thieves.

Earlier this year we were in France during a general election when the hidebound older generation were relegate to history, to be replaced by a dynamic new regime led by the charismatic President Sarkozy. It is a breath of fresh air as he sweeps through French public life, dragging the people, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Interestingly he was personally unpopular in pre election opinion polls, but people voted for him because they realised that he would bring the medicine that they needed.

And so it is, he is the new Margaret Thatcher and France is a very interesting place these days. So it was really impressive to see his solution to online IP theft. He has created a very powerful anti piracy body to oversee a totally new philosophy. ISPs will now be responsible for monitoring traffic and warning pirates, disconnecting them if they persist. In return the IP owners will work towards getting rid of DRM and excessive persecution.

This is so pragmatic and has a very good chance of being the solution that works. The level of traffic created by illegal IP traffic is immense, cutting it off has got to stop the theft. This will give the IP owners the confidence they need to progress into the exciting new age of digital distribution that will benefit everyone. Except retailers.

IP pirates are fundamentally stupid. If everybody steals then who is going to pay the wages to provide them with the IP that they want to use? It is the pirates that killed off home computing by destroying the business model. And they could just as easily decimate the modern games industry precisely at the moment when we are finally becoming mainstream. So the French move is something we should study with care and replicate worldwide if it is a success.

Meanwhile it is nice to see the pirates squealing.

Please add any comments you may have below.

One of the grand old names of computer gaming (their logo even appeared in the film Bladerunner) seems to be in a terminal condition. With Q2 losses of $7.7 million on turnover of $13.3 million, following on from a Q1 loss of $11.9 million, they are obviously in an unsustainable position.

Recent changes to top management and selling off all remaining development assets to retain liquidity both look like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

For part of the time that I was at Codemasters we used Atari for our North American distribution and they were good. Good enough for us to get a US PC number one with Operation Flashpoint. But the problem they face is they are too small now to have the economies of scale of a large publisher. So they are uncompetitive in just about everything that they do. Which, to me, spells the end.

Of course Atari’s position is complicated by their relationship with Infogrames, who themselves are not in the rudest of healths.

Atari say that their strategy to recover includes casual games, on-line sites, and digital downloading. The problem with these is that they take years to build. And Atari doesn’t have years.

What they do have is their brand, but even that is being tarnished and so devalued by the day. The way forwards seems to be a close-down of operations and a sell off of the brand to someone who can better use it. Because continuing as they are they are just digging a deeper and deeper hole.

So what do you think of this unfortunate situation?

• Sony improves PS3 development tools and reduce devkit costs. About time too. The PS3 is the most difficult console to develop for, ever, and Sony have not looked after the development community anywhere near as well as they should have. As a result all formats titles come out on the PS3 last, giving a huge advantage to the competition. That is when they even bother with a PS3 version.
• Microsoft steps up family focus. Who isn’t now that Nintendo have proven that there is more money to be made from games than everyone’s wildest dreams? More interestingly is the rumoured gesture controller. If true (likely) and done well (likely) this could force Nintendo to bring out son of Wii sooner.
• Play.com to launch huge consumer show at Wembley. With the right marketing an ambitious event like this has the potential to create an immense buzz and do us all lots of good. Another step on the road to being accepted as mainstream. So it is well worth everyone supporting it.
• Former Barbie boss joins EA. All you have to do is look at the crashes at Acclaim and 3DO and the management upheavals at Infotari and Take Two to realise that some of their quality of management was below optimum.
  EA are the number one publisher, by miles. And the main reason for this is that they hire top draw professional management. People are everything, with the right people you can get everything else.
• The golden times roll on. Ubisoft first half sales figures are up by 50%, Gamestop has a 283% increase in Q3 earnings and NCsoft Europe to double in size by 2009. These are the best times ever for video gaming. With platform proliferation and new found audiences we are making that final, much anticipated, breakthrough into mainstream. And whilst the rest of the economy jitters on the brink of recession we have the added bonus of knowing that we are above such economic worries.
• Zune and 360 will one day be unified with a common online platform. This will come as no surprise to regular readers here. To Microsoft online is the platform, the bits of hardware are just ways to connect to it. The platform will have ever increasing capabilities till it becomes the centre of our lives. Other companies like Apple and Sony are just playing round at the edges in comparison. Microsoft’s greatest days lie ahead of them.
• Hillary Clinton sticks her oar in. She’s got an election to win so grabbing stupid populist ideas is the way to go. But she ought to look at books, they have no age rating. Or film where the age ratings are far more lenient than they are for games. She won’t though because she understands books and films but when it comes to games she hasn’t the faintest idea what she is talking about. How do these people get so much power?
• British government spend taxpayer’s money developing computer game. Only this is pretty much labour party propaganda. So it should have an 18+ rating. It is also pretty dire and of no possible use to anyone. Which is what we have become accustomed to with this government.