Entries from January 2008 ↓

His name is Kevin McCullough and this is the article in Townhall.com. Here are some extracts:

“It’s called “Mass Effect” and it allows its players - universally male no doubt - to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to “engage” and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game “persons” hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.”

“ But it IS marketed for the X-Box 360, perhaps the most visually stimulating gaming system ever made. The software for such allows the blending of DVD video, component graphics, and the manipulation of actual pictures so that an alternate reality engulfs the fifteen year old boy playing it without much objection.”

“If a pre-teen, teen, young adult, or adult male plays such a game in which the women DO submit without choice, are made to appear as Barbie streetwalkers, and perform whatever act can be imagined, what’s to stop that same male from assuming that the women in his “other world” shouldn’t be forced to do the same.”

As you can see his article is actually far more filthy than the game, also he is factually wrong in just about everything that he writes. He does not seem aware that his child should not be playing an adult rated game. Does he let his son watch XXX porn films as well? 

This is a huge problem for our industry when ignorant, self-publicist Luddites can reach huge audiences with a pack of lies. It is essential that Electronic Arts and Microsoft sue him all the way to penury. An apology is not enough when someone with so much power has wielded it so evilly.

Codemasters currently have a recruitment advert for Director, Community paying £90,000 PA. This is interesting to me because I had to fight like mad against strong political opposition to create this department at Codemasters. Not that I invented community liaison. All I did was to take something from our MMO department (where it is essential) and adapt it for boxed console and PC games. So it is nice to see that it is now accepted and warrants it’s own senior management. It ought to be because, quite simply, it is the second most cost effective marketing tool (after Public Relations).

From a marketing point of view the internet is either a fantastic opportunity or a fantastic problem, it is up to you. It offers you something immensely powerful that has never been possible before, the potential to have a two way interactive relationship with every customer (or potential customer) in real time. This is just immense. And nobody has worked out how to get the best out of it. Yet. In the meantime your community liaison team are the people who wield this incredible marketing tool.

You will notice in the preceding paragraph that the term two way is used. A lot of people forget this. Community liaison is a dialogue. And you had better be listening. It is for this reason that I always wanted to involve the people in community liaison in wider marketing discussions. Because they have the immense input that they know what the customer is thinking and saying. Far better than your market research people do.

Another wonder of community liaison is that is so cheap to do that it can be done for every game, even if the game is only on XBLA. And it isn’t just for publishers. This is something that developers can do. They can do it to increase the value of the games that they make and they can do it to improve the profile of their company. Every game should have a development blog and a forum as an absolute minimum.

As you can see this is a new, exciting and rapidly developing area. So it is easy to become enthused. And quite rightly, with a good attitude community liaison can give you a great marketing advantage.

Trade organisations are peculiar entities. They exist on the basis that the members have sufficient problems in common to overcome their natural competitive attitudes towards each other. I was involved in setting up the first UK microcomputer trade body, the Computer Retailer’s Association, in the late 1970s and in the 2000s I was the Codemasters contact with ELSPA working with them on issues such as political lobbying and anti piracy.

ELSPA is peculiar in that it isn’t what it says it is. It isn’t the European Leisure Software Publisher’s Association. Firstly because it is British based and British in it’s actions and secondly because many of it’s members aren’t European, they are American and Japanese. The main business that ELSPA concerns itself with are political lobbying and anti piracy.

Near to whereI live is Wellesbourne Market, one of the largest open air markets in Britain. It is an Aladdin’s Den of counterfeit, fake products. Louis Vuitton bags, Armani jeans, Gillette razors, Gibbs toothpaste, Chanel cosmetics, music CDs and film DVDs. You would wonder what trading standards are up to, the market would be less than half the size if it only sold legitimate goods. Yet in all the times I have been there I have never, once, seen a counterfeit computer game. This is testament the excellence of the ELSPA anti piracy unit when it comes to physical piracy. When it comes to online anti piracy, however, they don’t even scratch the surface.

The political lobbying is something they seem more prepared to boast about. They say they spoke to X and told them Y. But they are wasting their time because the current government and the opposition do not understand games. This lack of understanding manifests itself in something far worse than antipathy. Where ELSPA should be spending their time is in getting the right public perceptions and attitudes. Public opinions are something that politicians have far more respect for than lobbying trade organisations.

The big problem in Britain is that most print and broadcast media are massively under-serving their customers when it comes to computer games. They haven’t kept up with reality. They still think that games are played by a small minority of adolescent geeky schoolboys. They don’t realise that gaming is now mainstream and that their customers are gamers. The Queen like to play with a Wii. It is about time someone told them and it is ELSPA who should be doing that job.

It is a scandal that the culture sections of most print and broadcast media do not cover games. They cover theatre, ballet, opera, television and film. But why not games? Games are now a far bigger part of popular culture than most of what they do cover. Yet they continue to fail their readers and ELSPA fail to prevent this. It is scandalous that the BBC still report video gaming under technology.

Solve the media problem and you solve the political problem. It is obvious really.

The following is just speculative fun. But it is based firmly in reality.

The Microsoft Xbox 360 is very, very well designed. Part of this design genius is ease of manufacture and potential for cost reduction. So I see this console as having a ten year life. This should easily see it up to 2015.

This year Microsoft will use their manufacturing cost advantage to use the price mechanism to build market share in the face of Sony’s AAA game releases. This will leave headroom in the market for them to introduce a new premium console giving them a two model range, just as Sony have had for a few years now. It will also make the 360 a cheap mass market machine which will have the effect of growing Xbox Live enormously. And this is the most important thing for Microsoft. It is the online platform which, ultimately, will be the main event.

The new premium console (Xbox 3) will feature a gesture interface and probably integration with a new handheld game console.
Microsoft have a great incentive to go for this two model (plus handheld) strategy sooner rather than later because Sony are currently too weak to respond. So it would be a knockout blow that could give them market supremacy.

The new Microsoft handheld will be son of Zune with iPhone and Nintendo DS features. This device looks pretty inevitable and will give access to Xbox Live anywhere and everywhere and with it’s integration to Xbox 3 it will bring a whole raft of new capabilities to the consumer.

Another factor to remember is that Nintendo will have to do something about the Wii. This machine is really Gamecube 1.5 with a gesture interface. It’s old technology will find it out. So Wii2 cannot be too far away. And it is something that Microsoft must have an answer for.

So when will we see Xbox 3? The normal console cycle is for new models every 5 years. Which would put availabilty at the end of 2010. I can see Microsoft bringing this forwards a year to 2009. The current year year is too soon as they still have to build the market position of the 360.  So next year it is then! And rememeber that for just about every new product area that Microsoft has entered it is their third generation of that product that gives them world domination.

Welcome back to the regular news spot for a new year. Things have understandably been quiet over the last couple of weeks, but now some important stories are emerging.

• Wii Fit sells a million units in it’s first month in Japan. And it was almost certainly supply constrained. Yes, Nintendo have done it again. This could be the biggest grossing “game” of 2008. I can’t see what will beat it. It will also be a massive system seller worldwide.
• Xbox Live has ten million users. And membership numbers are running six months ahead of Microsoft predictions. This is the real long term battle, the online platform. It is where Microsoft can show their superiority because they are a software company, not a consumer electronics company or a toy company like their competitors. Upgrades to Live this year should improve the social networking aspects.
• Leaked Microsoft memo demonstrates their lead in the US. Using NPD data for the year to the end of November Xbox turnover for hardware, games and accessories was over $3.5 billion. This is $2 billion more than for Playstation 3 and $1 billion more than for Wii.
• BT ties-in Microsoft for internet TV push. This UK deal is important as it shows how Microsoft are entering into strategic alliances that make the Xbox 360 into a powerful entertainment hub.
• BlueBay could soon own majority of Infogrames. If/when they convert bonds into equity. They are buying it cheap and, as an investment company, they will have an exity strategy. So expect more industry consolidation. This should be a very good move by BlueBay as Infogrames have kicked out the worst of their senior management and own a vast mountain of good IP.
• Warners back Blu-Ray. It looks like Sony may well be about to achieve their first new industry standard since the three and a half inch floppy disk, despite multiple attempts. It will be a very hollow victory though as flash memory and online largely replace rotating memory in consumer devices.
• Take-Two has announced the acquisition of Mafia developer Illusion Softworks. Yet more industry consolidation. But how long will it be before Take Two are themselves acquired? They do look like a very juicy M&A target.
• State Senator seeks videogame tax. More crass stupidity from the uninformed and ignorant. Hilary Clinton is anti games too. And so are the current British Labour government. And the boss of McDonalds. The sooner these Luddites retire and the gaming generation come to power the sooner we will see some sensible views from those at the top.

2008 will be, quite simply, the best ever year for video games in the whole history of the industry. The success of gaming has brought a lot of money into the industry and that money is being converted into games. We are also at that sweet spot in each console generation where we are still getting new IP whilst this generation’s version of established IPs are starting to appear. So we are getting Assasin’s Creed and Halo 3 at around the same time, for example.

It takes a few years into each generation for development teams to master the new capabilities of each machine. So the technical quality of games will go up a lot this year. Especially for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which has a more easily understood architecture, better development tools and has been worked on for longer. The Nintendo Wii is already mastered from a graphics and programming point of view because it is just a souped up Gamecube, the advances here will be with innovative uses of the gesture interface.

The installed base of the DS is now so massive that it can be very profitable to address niches. So expect all sorts of oddball games for this machine. Increasingly the DS will be used as an educational tool so expect more titles in the vein of Brain Age to appear. This will be the thin end of the wedge of what will grow to be a massive industry. Education by playing games.

Game genres will mainly continue as before on the hardcore front. However beyond that there will be a lot of new family entertainment. The Wii has changed the market for ever.

On the publishing side we will see the continuation of existing trends. Big publishers will get bigger because they have huge advantages of scale. Small publishers will be taken over or go out of business because they lack these advantages. The exceptions will be niche players and online publishers. Remember that Jeff Minter is a global developer and publisher with two members of staff. Xbox Live Arcade allows him to bypass traditional publishing constraints. This must be a warning to the global media giants like Warners who are muscling into gaming. It could be that the business model they are buying into becomes obsolete.

Overall we live in very exciting times and it will be fascinating to see the year unroll with so much that is new. Some of it expected and much of it not.

Of the 3 current generation consoles the Nintendo Wii is the only one that is not HD. This has brought them several advantages. The consoles are cheaper to manufacture so they can be sold at a profit, unlike the HD consoles from Microsoft and Sony. In addition the Wii can have games developed for it far more quickly and cheaply because a far smaller number of pixels are being manipulated.

HDTV puts about four times the number of pixels on the screen compared to the conventional TV standard we have grown up with. When consumers see this, it is such a huge leap in performance that they want it. But at the moment there isn’t much true HDTV content of any kind so people are generally unaware of the capabilities. They are buying HDTVs mainly for their large screen size and the convenience of their flat form.

However this situation is changing every day as more HDTV is broadcast and more people get HD DVD or Blu-Ray players. Games thus far on the HD consoles have come nowhere near delivering the full HDTV experience. Over 2008 this will gradually change. When it does the results will blow you away. Once people routinely watch broadcast HD television and watch HD videos they will not want to go back to inferior quality. The same will apply to gaming. Once people are fully HD literate they will not want to go back.

So what is key to the life of the Wii is how long it takes for people to become fully HD aware (they are not there yet) and how long it takes the games industry to make the best of HD graphics. These will not be sudden things. They will ramp up gradually over the next couple of years.

Wii is an amazing creation of Nintendo and has a fantastic but short future ahead of it. Imagine if someone brought out a console that only displayed in black and white because that is what televisions used to be. This is the situation Wii will be in by Q4 2009. Nintendo are not stupid, they know this, so new product announcements are inevitable.