This time it is called Wii Sports Resort, a collection of sports oriented mini games on the Wii. And it is selling something like a million units a week, in the dog days of summer. It will go on to become one of the best selling games of the year. How do they do this?
Universal appeal. I would not be ashamed to be seen playing this. But it would be a lot of fun for an 8 year old too.
Surprise and delight features. It takes imagination to come up with these, but they really add to the player experience. We need more of these in every game.
Polish, polish and polish. Why can’t other game developers and publishers do this? It doesn’t cost a lot of money, it just costs time. This really sets Nintendo first party apart.
Easy to get into. All great games are simple to start with. Chess, card games, scrabble and all the great classics do this. It is no good ramping the difficulty curve too steep too soon, you put off too many people. Think pick up and play accessibility, Nintendo do.
Difficult and rewarding in the higher levels. So it is worth putting time and effort into it. Just like chess etc etc.
Huge potential user base. There are about as many Wiis out there as there are Microsoft Xbox 360s and Sony Playstation PS3s put together. A lot of people who want good games to entertain them.
Build a brand, own your own IP. This is the obvious sequel to Wii Sports, itself a massive seller. Nintendo can milk this franchise forever. And they will.
Bundle with hardware that genuinely adds to the gaming experience. Wii MotionPlus takes Wii play to a higher level.
All the above is not rocket science, yet how come so many publishers still get it so wrong so often?
You may say that all the application stores thus far have been for a proprietary platform and that the PC is an open platform. This does not mean that a store won’t work. Just look at the way Handmarket has beaten the sloth like Microsoft to creating a Windows Mobile Application store for proof that the store owner doesn’t need to own the platform.
If you were a PC owner an application store would be fantastic. You could go and browse a massive range of stuff to see what takes your fancy. Then within seconds it would be working on your computer, wherever you are in the world. Just like the Apple App Store some stuff would be free and some available for purchase over a secure system.
For the developer it would also be fantastic, a one stop shop to being published with all the admin done for you and 70% of the revenue coming back to you. And with the explosion in netbook usage there is a new untapped market.
This was actually very good marketing. In fact better than some legitimate MMOs manage. The thing they did wrong is not to have a King of Evony competition as well.
“The developers of Evony, UMGE (United Multiplayer Gaming Entertainment) have come up with an exciting, yet novel competition called the ‘Queen of Evony’. The Queen of Evony Photo Competition quite simply, is an offering to the Evony gaming user base, plus new arrivals to the MMORPG game the opportunity to submit a photo of a pretty Queen with the words ‘Evony’ displayed realistically (not super imposed) on the photo of the lovely maiden.”
I just had a chat with a 12 year old who has been playing Runescape for a couple of years. Currently, in his summer holiday, he is playing it for about 50 hours a week. He has tried other MMOs. Free Realms, for instance, is too childish for him, just like Maple Story. He very much likes the latest upgrades to Runescape, especially the animation pack (except for the abyssal whip). So I asked him who plays Runescape, and this is his opinion:
20% Fat short bald men.
50% College/university nerds.
5% Kids like him.
2% People with illnesses and mobility problems.
23% The rest
The marketing community will love his demographic classifications!
Firstly you may well have heard that most console games make a loss and it is only the occasional hit that pays to keep the industry going. I have to tell you that this is absolutely true. Here are what the problems are for these games:
What you pay for the game doesn’t go to the publisher. The retailer and distributor take their margin (say 40%), the platform holders want their license fee, the actual plastic and cardboard of the game have to be paid for, there is the cost of shipping and finally there is the tax man’s share. I haven’t done the maths recently but you can see that the publisher is going to end up with between a quarter and a third of the money. Out of which they have to pay the developer, the marketing costs, their staff, etc etc.
This generation there has been a massive jump in the amount of content in games. Part of this is HDTV, part of it evolution and part of it bragging rights. Game content is ridiculously labour intensive and therefore expensive. This has rapidly brought us up to movie level budgets.
Also this generation, Sony and Microsoft both moved to completely new CPU architecture. This put game development on a very expensive learning curve. And many development assets that had been used in previous generations of console had to be replaced.
Whilst the current generation of consoles are powerful, they still can’t run the sort of middleware needed to really simplify game development.
Unlike movies games only have one revenue stream, the sale of the plastic and cardboard item. Movies have cinema income, rental, pay per view TV, non pay TV, in flight movies, DVDs, etc etc. A whole plethora of revenue streams some of which go on for ever.
When you buy a game you aren’t just paying for your use of it. You are also paying for the use of it enjoyed by the person who buys it secondhand off you, and the person that buys it off them. And so on. The initial purchase has to compensate the publisher for all the users of the game. And each of those users can’t complain because they get part of their initial purchase price back.
Piracy. Currently only the PS3 isn’t cracked. On PC piracy levels for boxed games are 90+% and at times it gets just as bad for console games. So the honest people have to pay for the thieves.
Currency fluctuations, these have been massive over the last year or so. If your costs are in euros and your income is in dollars (for instance) then your business has changed completely and a healthy profit could well have become a substantial loss.
Marketing has become difficult as the media has fragmented. Television advertising is no longer the universal panacea. Now there are a huge number different media that have to be used. And used properly. This takes a huge jump in the skill and knowledge required of a marketing department. Which can lead to far higher costs.
Against this background we have the release, this autumn, of Modern Warfare 2, developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. This looks like being the defining game of this generation of consoles. Surpassing Grand Theft Auto, Bio Shock, LittleBigPlanet, Halo, Braid and everything else. The level of anticipation out there is beyond belief. Activision have done a brilliant marketing job.
Now, Activision are in business to make money, so this is an opportunity to make shipping containers full of the stuff. And they are doing some clever stuff to make sure they get every cent possible. Activision aren’t the biggest game publisher in the world by accident. Her is some of what they are up to:
They have looked at the price elasticity of demand and realised that Modern Warfare 2 has such a high perceived value that they can charge a premium price. They would be fools not to because they won’t lose any sales. In fact it would be very interesting to know the price/demand curve for this game because I reckon that the most profitable pricing point is even higher. This game is a must have purchase to so many people.
Which is exactly why Activision are selling three different editions at three different price points. They call them Standard, Hardened and Prestige. In reality they are Premium, Super Premium and Super, Super Premium. This is clever stuff.
Finally, why just make a profit with the software? As is the fashion these days they are making a hardware peripheral to go with the game. This time it is night vision goggles, which are bundled with the Super, Super Premium version of the game. Activision could make a lot of money from selling millions of these.
This is fascinating stuff. The reaction out there in the community is begrudging acceptance. They know they have no option but to buy the game and the extra price over a “normal” game is not too high a price to pay. Activision have been extremely clever in challenging the industry pricing norms. Too many marketing people are guilty of “me too” pricing without ever really thinking about what they are doing.
Brutal Legend from EA is being marketed as the funniest video game ever. A very interesting marketing idea. Here are some videos so you can get a feel for it.
