Entries from November 2007 ↓

These days we have an information explosion and it is difficult to keep up. In fact it is remarkably easy to totally miss something of importance to only find out months later. To help there are metasites like Google news and Digg that sort through everything to tell you what is important.

But now we have a further step up the evolutionary tree, a metasite of metasites. With a load of other important sites thrown in for good measure. It is called popurls and it really is rather neat.

Now this can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. It is a good thing in that you can get a view of the web in minutes that previously would have taken possibly hours. The bad thing is that it presents you so many juicy stories, so many opportunities for knowledge, that the temptation is always there to drill down for more detail. And then you find that you have lost a day!

The second site is something we have desperately needed. Basically the rate of change has become so fast that many people you work with have missed out on various whole lumps of technology. Countless times I have had to explain what a wiki is, or a blog, or bluetooth or whatever. And of course there are gaps in my own knowledge. And I don’t know where they are until, embarrassingly, I need them.

So  Wired Magazine’s Geekipedia is a brilliant idea. They describe it as: People, Places, Ideas and Trends You Need To Know Now. I wish this had been around to get people to use in the past. And reading it has certainly filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. This really is something you can point the people you work with at so that everyone is up to speed.

So do you know anything as useful as these. If so why don’t you use the comments to tell us?

The piracy at the end of the PS1 really tore the heart out of the video games industry. At Codemasters we had massive redundancies. So when Operation Flashpoint came along we didn’t have much of a marketing budget. Liz Darling and her team of marketing creatives produced a superb visual brand, as always. This combined with a really special game gave us something to work with.

So the main marketing thrust became PR and online, especially the community side of online. There was nearly zero advertising. And the game went to number one in every market with a chart, including the USA, where it was, and still is, Codemasters’ only ever number one.

Now we have another PC number one that has gone down the PR route. Football Manager 2008 from Sports Interactive is one of the top ten fastest selling PC games ever in the UK. With a “cash free” media blitz they have proven, once again, that brains work just as well as money when you want to reach your potential customers.

I think a lot of marketeers buy advertising out of habit. Or to get rid of the budget. Or because they don’t know any better. Or, as I have seen, all three. It is still very true that many avenues of marketing are relatively lightly trodden by the games industry. Perhaps part of this has to do with our historic obsession with adolescent boys. Part to do with the fact that game magazine advertising teams have always been one of the most professional parts of the industry. But there is no real excuse for such bias in the marketing mix.

So are you a gratuitous spender on advertising, or a stealthy manipulator of the marketing mix? Post your comments below.

According to iSuppli  looking at software sales, Nintendo moved up to number one in Q3 with $1.2 billion, Sony were down at number two with $1 billion and Microsoft were still at number three with $317.8 million.

This possibly tells us a number of things:

• The Wii attach rate is going up. Some analysts say that the Wii will have a low attach rate because of the more casual nature of it’s usage. There is a contrarian view that Wii will ultimately have a higher attach rate because there are more likely to be several family members using the same console.
• Nintendo 3rd party publishers can get big sales if they make the right games for the platforms. In other words fun for the broadest possible demographic. Wiifying something designed for another platform is a bad idea.
• Sony are still milking it from PS2. PS3 and PSP can’t be giving them much turnover. The PS2 has such an immense installed base and a high percentage of users are holding back on upgrading because of the uncertainty in the market. As these customers gradually upgrade PS2 volumes will slowly decrease.
• Sony have a huge problem getting PS3 volumes up. Too many former exclusives are now multi platform and too many publishers and developers have moved assets away onto other, more lucrative, platforms.
• In Q4 Microsoft may well double (or more) their Q3 figures with a string of AAA titles including Halo 3. They seem to have Sony well beaten in the HD console stakes simply by having more and better games, a situation that seems set to continue.

This generation of console wars is panning out as the most interesting yet. How long will Wii sales hold up? Can Sony recover the PS3 disaster? Will the Microsoft machine continue to steamroller itself up the market? What do you think?

A week with a lot less going on. Just managed to scrape together the 8 news items.

• PS2 reaches 7th birthday and 120 million sales. If the PS1 is anything to go by it still has three years left in it. And with all the costs amortized Sony must be really milking it. Many publishers are mad  rushing for the new platform at the transition when the old platform is only half way through it’s life. As an industry we could make a lot more money if we properly supported two overlapping generations of console simultaneously.
• Sony predict game losses to double. To 100 billion yen ($875 million) for the financial year. When you consider how much profit the PS2 is making, then the PS3 must be doing horrendously for their business. Will we ever see a PS4? By seeing their platform as a strategic Trojan horse for cell and Blu-Ray Sony have lost sight of their customers.
• Microsoft gaming division makes first quarter’s profit. It has probably taken them far longer and cost far more money than their worst case scenario. Obviously this was achieved with a single title and there isn’t a Halo 3 every quarter. But they have proven it can be done and they will beat Sony this generation. Nintendo is a new and far more complicated target.
• LucasArts And BioWare Partner For ‘Mystery Project’ . An “interactive entertainment product” to “push the boundaries of the gaming market.” Sounds like an MMO done better. But it does show the growing convergence of film and game. A convergence forced on the film industry because gaming is technically better with it’s interactivity, connectivity, non-linearity etc.. Gaming will be vastly bigger than the film industry so they are hitching on for the ride.
• Casual games industry grossing $2.25bn.  And growing 20% PA. I brought casual gaming to the attention of Codemasters management several years ago which resulted in the Funsta brand. This is a no brainer as anyone and everyone wants to have a bit of fun and ubiquitous PCs are the tool for the job. This news just reinforces the lessons that the industry is rapidly learning from Nintendo.
• 40GB PS3s have 65nm Cell processor. And the GPU will make the same transition soon. Just because a platform looks and behaves the same during it’s life doesn’t mean it is the same inside. The manufacturers continually strive to reduce costs. This PS3 update has the added advantage of reducing power consumption, and therefore heat, by about a third. The 360 made the same move earlier and in this case the cooler running is said to have enhanced reliability. Something the 360 needed.
• Montreal game development workforce grows 177 per cent in two years . On the back of illegal (WTO) handouts. The British government say that they are going to complain. I hope that they do.
• DS to do more than games. One in six Japanese own a DS. There are already over 4 million in the UK. Certainly it is heading to be the most popular gaming console ever. But it has a feature set that could do so much more. Nintendo would be fools to ignore this and the potential income streams. This and other moves prove that they are doing everything they can strategically to reinforce their number one platform owner position.

Use the comments to say what you think of any of these stories. Or to add any that I have missed.