You know a social thing I would be all over though? Replays. Let me record a session and upload a file that someone else can play and it will recreate all the in game conditions. they have this for rts and not action games. I'm sure the coding for action games is a lot harder but how hard? Tekken 4 did it and that had a lot going on in screen, destructible terrain and everything. Say what you will about its terrible gameplay, this style of replay is independent of that.
Then make it something easily accessible and shareable by others.
Being able to just give someone the replay for a difficult boss when they are having trouble would be worth its weight in gold.
Ditto with easily being able to explain game mechanics for new people without laborious video recording and editing.
And being able to pick out the replays of high scores in leaderboards to see what the hell they actually did to get that score! Using it to improve your skills by watching people better than you. Damn I'd be all over that.
TF2 has that style of recording come to think of it and there's tons of stuff going on in a round.
TF2 (and all Source engine games) does have demo recording, but it's not exactly ideal as you have to know beforehand that you want to record and is hidden to the average player as it has to be accessed through the console.
Call of Duty: Black Ops does replays really well. Replays of all multiplayer games you play are automatically saved, there's a really easy to use tool for editing replays and they can either be shared in-game or saved as a video for easy uploading to Youtube. I believe the console versions will also let you upload to Youtube directly from within the game.
All the replay features you could possibly want already exist, just not in a lot of games.
Today, Telltale Games is announcing an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to develop videogames for the comic-book series Fables, and an exclusive worldwide agreement to develop and publish a series of videogames based on the AMC cable network’s zombie hit “The Walking Dead.” It’s also working with Universal Pictures on “Back to the Future” and “Jurassic Park” games.
Today, Telltale Games is announcing an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to develop videogames for the comic-book series Fables, and an exclusive worldwide agreement to develop and publish a series of videogames based on the AMC cable network’s zombie hit “The Walking Dead.” It’s also working with Universal Pictures on “Back to the Future” and “Jurassic Park” games.
What the fuck? Glorious, glorious Telltale. I love those guys to death.
PolloDiablo on
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Today, Telltale Games is announcing an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to develop videogames for the comic-book series Fables, and an exclusive worldwide agreement to develop and publish a series of videogames based on the AMC cable network’s zombie hit “The Walking Dead.” It’s also working with Universal Pictures on “Back to the Future” and “Jurassic Park” games.
Today is the day of reposting old news it seems. :P
You know a social thing I would be all over though? Replays. Let me record a session and upload a file that someone else can play and it will recreate all the in game conditions. they have this for rts and not action games. I'm sure the coding for action games is a lot harder but how hard? Tekken 4 did it and that had a lot going on in screen, destructible terrain and everything. Say what you will about its terrible gameplay, this style of replay is independent of that.
Then make it something easily accessible and shareable by others.
Being able to just give someone the replay for a difficult boss when they are having trouble would be worth its weight in gold.
Ditto with easily being able to explain game mechanics for new people without laborious video recording and editing.
And being able to pick out the replays of high scores in leaderboards to see what the hell they actually did to get that score! Using it to improve your skills by watching people better than you. Damn I'd be all over that.
TF2 has that style of recording come to think of it and there's tons of stuff going on in a round.
TF2 (and all Source engine games) does have demo recording, but it's not exactly ideal as you have to know beforehand that you want to record and is hidden to the average player as it has to be accessed through the console.
Call of Duty: Black Ops does replays really well. Replays of all multiplayer games you play are automatically saved, there's a really easy to use tool for editing replays and they can either be shared in-game or saved as a video for easy uploading to Youtube. I believe the console versions will also let you upload to Youtube directly from within the game.
All the replay features you could possibly want already exist, just not in a lot of games.
I know they exist. They're just not well integrated in the majority of cases and there's no focus on it as a social sharing thing. And it's extremely rare in the first place. Games that have it are the exception.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
You know a social thing I would be all over though? Replays. Let me record a session and upload a file that someone else can play and it will recreate all the in game conditions. they have this for rts and not action games. I'm sure the coding for action games is a lot harder but how hard? Tekken 4 did it and that had a lot going on in screen, destructible terrain and everything. Say what you will about its terrible gameplay, this style of replay is independent of that.
Then make it something easily accessible and shareable by others.
Being able to just give someone the replay for a difficult boss when they are having trouble would be worth its weight in gold.
Ditto with easily being able to explain game mechanics for new people without laborious video recording and editing.
And being able to pick out the replays of high scores in leaderboards to see what the hell they actually did to get that score! Using it to improve your skills by watching people better than you. Damn I'd be all over that.
TF2 has that style of recording come to think of it and there's tons of stuff going on in a round.
TF2 (and all Source engine games) does have demo recording, but it's not exactly ideal as you have to know beforehand that you want to record and is hidden to the average player as it has to be accessed through the console.
Call of Duty: Black Ops does replays really well. Replays of all multiplayer games you play are automatically saved, there's a really easy to use tool for editing replays and they can either be shared in-game or saved as a video for easy uploading to Youtube. I believe the console versions will also let you upload to Youtube directly from within the game.
All the replay features you could possibly want already exist, just not in a lot of games.
I know they exist. They're just not well integrated in the majority of cases and there's no focus on it as a social sharing thing. And it's extremely rare in the first place. Games that have it are the exception.
Replays are something I'm surprised companies haven't used more for social networking.
Example is Starcraft2 or even SF (and recently MvC3). They have replay's but not useful ones. I want to be able to load the game and check out my FRIENDS most recent games / replies and watch them. Load up the most recent tournament and watch it unfold, share comments about the matches etc.... Let me search for replay's of top players and check out their most recent games. Currently at best we have youtube but finding these things manually makes far less then ideal.
We have great games, but the experience outside the games leave alot more to be desired. Doesn't have to be using Facebook exactly, but learning alot from what makes facebook successful (sharing data among friends in a very convenient matter). We have the data, now lets get the most useful parts out (leading to why google the search engine is awesome)
As for the Zynga style facebook games, I could easily see more games leaning in that direction. Imagine all our future games being FreeToPlay "MMOs". Play the game, chat with your friends a pay a little if you want a little more. DLC partially covers that niche but lacks the social integration part that is intrinsic with "MMOs"
Lastly, the entertainment industry's are all at competition with each other. They're competing for your time. The millions of hours people spend on facebook games (or whatever) is less hours spent on the games we (as in the gaming enthusiast as I like to phrase the PA crowd) care about. Less hours in the industry typically means less money for that industry.
Its also the reason why piracy hurts the industry at large very badly. Sure its not a direct lost sale, but all the time someone spends (freely) playing a pirated game is time (and money) not spent somewhere in the industry.
Mgslee on
Hit me up for SSF4 games! (Xbox Live mgslee)
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Lastly, the entertainment industry's are all at competition with each other. They're competing for your time. The millions of hours people spend on facebook games (or whatever) is less hours spent on the games we (as in the gaming enthusiast as I like to phrase the PA crowd) care about. Less hours in the industry typically means less money for that industry.
Its also the reason why piracy hurts the industry at large very badly. Sure its not a direct lost sale, but all the time someone spends (freely) playing a pirated game is time (and money) not spent somewhere in the industry.
You are setting up a false dichotomy with these two arguments that results in a gross generalisation.
The first is that all a given gamer can do with their time is play facebook games OR play normal games, and if not doing the one must be doing the other.
The audience for facebook games definitely overlap with normal games, but it is not a one to one thing. You will have people who do not ever play facebook games, no matter how much money they are making. And you will have a large percentage of the people playing facebook games who will never touch a normal game.
The second false dichotomy is the implication that a person can freely play a game OR buy a game, and if not doing one must be doing the other. Again, this is not necessarily the case. A person may only ever play pirated games. If the piracy option is taken away, that person may not ever actually buy a game, they may move on to doing completely different activities. Similarly, a person who only ever buys their games may, if they cannot buy games or decide not to buy games anymore, go and do a completely different hobby.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Lastly, the entertainment industry's are all at competition with each other. They're competing for your time. The millions of hours people spend on facebook games (or whatever) is less hours spent on the games we (as in the gaming enthusiast as I like to phrase the PA crowd) care about. Less hours in the industry typically means less money for that industry.
Its also the reason why piracy hurts the industry at large very badly. Sure its not a direct lost sale, but all the time someone spends (freely) playing a pirated game is time (and money) not spent somewhere in the industry.
You are setting up a false dichotomy with these two arguments that results in a gross generalisation.
The first is that all a given gamer can do with their time is play facebook games OR play normal games, and if not doing the one must be doing the other.
The audience for facebook games definitely overlap with normal games, but it is not a one to one thing. You will have people who do not ever play facebook games, no matter how much money they are making. And you will have a large percentage of the people playing facebook games who will never touch a normal game.
The second false dichotomy is the implication that a person can freely play a game OR buy a game, and if not doing one must be doing the other. Again, this is not necessarily the case. A person may only ever play pirated games. If the piracy option is taken away, that person may not ever actually buy a game, they may move on to doing completely different activities. Similarly, a person who only ever buys their games may, if they cannot buy games or decide not to buy games anymore, go and do a completely different hobby.
In the strictest sense you are correct, but when you look at the overall picture the "overlap" that exists between any of the two effect the other. I would wager that overlap is far from negligible. I feel you can't look at it from a person to person perspective but you must look at it from the big picture.
An example (and a terrible one) is the recent TSA scanners. You have 1 in a million chance of getting cancer from these xrays. An individual is likely not be affected, but if you have over a billion people going through those scanners, you just gave 1000 people cancer.
Mgslee on
Hit me up for SSF4 games! (Xbox Live mgslee)
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Lastly, the entertainment industry's are all at competition with each other. They're competing for your time. The millions of hours people spend on facebook games (or whatever) is less hours spent on the games we (as in the gaming enthusiast as I like to phrase the PA crowd) care about. Less hours in the industry typically means less money for that industry.
Its also the reason why piracy hurts the industry at large very badly. Sure its not a direct lost sale, but all the time someone spends (freely) playing a pirated game is time (and money) not spent somewhere in the industry.
You are setting up a false dichotomy with these two arguments that results in a gross generalisation.
The first is that all a given gamer can do with their time is play facebook games OR play normal games, and if not doing the one must be doing the other.
The audience for facebook games definitely overlap with normal games, but it is not a one to one thing. You will have people who do not ever play facebook games, no matter how much money they are making. And you will have a large percentage of the people playing facebook games who will never touch a normal game.
The second false dichotomy is the implication that a person can freely play a game OR buy a game, and if not doing one must be doing the other. Again, this is not necessarily the case. A person may only ever play pirated games. If the piracy option is taken away, that person may not ever actually buy a game, they may move on to doing completely different activities. Similarly, a person who only ever buys their games may, if they cannot buy games or decide not to buy games anymore, go and do a completely different hobby.
In the strictest sense you are correct, but when you look at the overall picture the "overlap" that exists between any of the two effect the other. I would wager that overlap is far from negligible. I feel you can't look at it from a person to person perspective but you must look at it from the big picture.
An example (and a terrible one) is the recent TSA scanners. You have 1 in a million chance of getting cancer from these xrays. An individual is likely not be affected, but if you have over a billion people going through those scanners, you just gave 1000 people cancer.
You are talking about probability there, in which case you are making a statistical argument about gamer populations. Generally you would require some kind of statistics when making a statistical argument.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
FarmVille maker Zynga is reportedly in investment discussions that value the company at close to $10 billion.
That's according to the New York Times, which says the firm's games attract more than 275 million users every month on Facebook, making it a major contributor to the social network's revenue.
Last October, Zynga was valued at $5.51 billion, compared to EA's $5.16 billion and Activision's $13.9 billion.
Activision "abused" Guitar Hero - and there's no reason that, in the right hands, the series cannot continue.
That's the heated opinion of Kelly Summer, former CEO of RedOctane - the company which teamed up with Harmonix to create the original Guitar Hero games.
RedOctane was acquired by Activision in 2006 and (yep, you guessed it!) was shut down in February last year.
Speaking to weekly UK trade bible MCV, Summer didn't sound too chuffed to see his series share the same fate:
"[Activision] tried to get too much out of the franchise too quickly. They abused it," he said. "There's no reason why Guitar Hero cannot continue. It's a great product. My gut tells me there is still a significant market for Guitar Hero.
"Not every game can be a billion dollar franchise, but maybe that's what Activision wants," he added. "I'd be surprised if they sold the brand as it'd prove to the world there is still a market for this product and show them up.
"Look at how Take-Two has handled GTA. They haven't thrown products out there. They've nurtured it for over ten years and it is still a strong franchise."
Summer's comments echo those of M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon, who said last week that Activision had driven Guitar Hero into the ground.
Think of how much fun WoW would be if Ironforge bank dancers had to actually physically dance at home.
Also, Guitar Hero wasn't abused. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the franchise would get tired eventually. Activision wanted to cash in while the plastic guitar craze was still on a high.
Longtime Capcom producer Ben Judd will be heading a new Japanese base of operations for talent agency Digital Development Management.
The agency, whose video game and digital entertainment recruitment operations have until now centered on Europe and the U.S., now wants to expand into Japan to help developers there work with North American and European employers.
Judd will be lead agent for DDM's Japan operations: "Ben's breadth of publisher experience in Japan combined with our ever-expanding client roster allows DDM to generate and facilitate projects for publishers, brand and license holders, and investors now on a worldwide basis," says DDM founder and managing partner Jeff Hilbert.
Judd's new role will involve helping client developers meet publishers, along with negotiating deals and finding outsource opportunities for companies' individual projects.
As a producer at Capcom, Judd worked out of Japan on such major franchises as Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Bionic Commando and Mega Man.
DDM says Judd was ideal for the role because he's worked both with Capcom's Japan head office as well as its U.S. branch, and international negotiation skills will be central to his new responsibilities.
Digital Development Management was founded in 2005 by Hilbert and agency president Joe Minton, aiming to provide talent management services focused on video games and interactive entertainment.
It counts 15 studios in its global roster, and it helps connect license holders with publishers, investors and sales services, among other relationship-building work as needed. It has locations in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, Stockholm and Northampton, MA.
You can't check your emails or make phone calls with a plastic guitar.
Speak for yourself!
But seriously, you only need one pocket device that plays music or checks email, whereas you might want multiple Guitar Hero games in order to have more content. New iDevices typically don't provide any new content.
But I guess you also don't show off your copies of GH to all your friends at school and make them jealous, either.
Then I guess we can assume Nintendo ought to come out with small incremental upgrades every quarter and they could sell as much as Apple, huh? Because it's hardware, not a game, and thus immune from oversaturation?
I'm just trying to suss out the difference between the markets. Is it a matter of each revision not having enough differentiation from the last, i.e. each new iPod was just enough improved in order to sell like crazy, and GH didn't offer enough of an upgrade? Or is it the timely arrival of competition, saturation from other sources - Rock Band and others just confused consumers and made them give up, but Apple's branding kept them centered even as smaller competitors swarmed?
I want to know why people keep buying eggs every week, but only seem to buy a house very rarely.
But this is a comparison with a logical and easily explained answer. Eggs are cheap, disposable, and as a food product, one of the necessities for life. Houses are one of the greatest expenses anyone will have and are meant for long term use.
So what is the logical difference between GH and iPods? I guess I don't see the need to throw up our hands and say "WHO KNOWS TOO DIFFERENT." There's a reason consumers keep buying one and stopped buying the other.
Your comparison also highlights the question nicely. An iPod is a house, non-disposable, an expensive product that you keep for years. Guitar Hero is an egg. So why would we see the opposite of what you'd expect, people quit buying eggs and started going through houses like crazy?
Why are we comparing Guitar Hero to iPods, and not, say, Call of Duty?
Looking at the games which solidify their success each iteration (assuming reasonably consistent quality), a lot of them are driven by linear experiences. You play through them, you get to the end. You can do it again, but it loses something on replay, so you want another.
This is usually paired with a strong online presence, which provides a functional self-obsolescence mechanism: sure, you can still play Modern Warfare online, but if everyone else is playing Black Ops, you need to get that to join in. Singleplayer establishes a critical mass, multiplayer solidifies it.
Guitar Hero is different. Instead of diminishing returns on further playthroughs, you get increasing returns. Familiarity leads to learning the subtleties of the game, and you have favourite tracks you try to master. New games add very little in terms of gameplay to the previous games (apart from the step up to full band), so it you don't have an itch to play the next one. There are enough songs on a given game to provide more than enough variety to have a few favourites and always have songs which are just out of reach, so you don't run out of content. Furthermore, whilst there's an online aspect, that's not the draw: it's just far more conducive to living-room multiplayer, which means community size is irrelevant - you never get caught up in the wake of everyone else's progression.
What makes it worse is that the game design is so simple and transparent (to the experience it's trying to emulate) that attempts to enhance the gameplay, adding bells and whistles, tend to get in the way, meaning iterative improvements actually end up being reviled instead of appreciated.
edit: Guitar Hero isn't an egg. It doesn't get consumed in that way. Eggs here are linear singleplayer experiences: Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Uncharted. Eggs will sell yearly iterations.
iDevices, if you must know, are fuelled by a different business model: particularly in the case of iPhone/iPad, a combination of early adopter hype, platform requirements, and (most importantly) mobile network upgrade cycles instilling an expectation of new technology every 18 months.
I'm just trying to suss out the difference between the markets. Is it a matter of each revision not having enough differentiation from the last, i.e. each new iPod was just enough improved in order to sell like crazy, and GH didn't offer enough of an upgrade? Or is it the timely arrival of competition, saturation from other sources - Rock Band and others just confused consumers and made them give up, but Apple's branding kept them centered even as smaller competitors swarmed?
Well, I believe there's some of that. Small improvements plus the Apple faithful will assure initial sellouts. Past that, I've read that people switch cell phones every year and a half to two years, which makes sense given cell phone plan upgrades. iPods probably have a longer cycle, maybe 3 to 4 years? It's not like most consumers buy every version, and mobile devices in the same category now provide more expansive functionality than GH.
Sony would probably be the best bet to compete as a device with access to PSN/Qriocity/PlayStation Suite/Android could provide a wide variety of functionality like Apple's offerings. I just doubt they'll ever get there.
This highlights the question nicely. An iPod is a house, non-disposable, an expensive product that you keep for years. Guitar Hero is an egg. So why would we see the opposite of what you'd expect, people quit buying eggs and started going through houses like crazy?
Guitar Hero is a premium product for a single purpose. The iPod is a premium product with multiple purposes at this point.
That, and there's not much you can do to make Guitar Hero better. Gameplay is mostly fixed. Adding complexity makes it worse. Rock Band and its network was probably the pinnacle of what could be done. The Pro Guitar was crazy niche, and once a consumer has all the instruments, they're probably not going to purchase them again.
After that, your money needs to be made on DLC songs.
Then I guess we can assume Nintendo ought to come out with small incremental upgrades every quarter and they could sell as much as Apple, huh? Because it's hardware, not a game, and thus immune from oversaturation?
Yeah, if pretty much all the games still played on them all.
Then I guess we can assume Nintendo ought to come out with small incremental upgrades every quarter and they could sell as much as Apple, huh? Because it's hardware, not a game, and thus immune from oversaturation?
Yeah, if pretty much all the games still played on them all.
Not at all, I don't think. There are two big differences between consoles and phones (disregarding the sales model, which is a huge factor in people replacing their phones periodically): firstly phones are still an emergent market, where features are more important than a common platform, and secondly how they're marketed. Nintendo machines are something to use; iDevices are something to have. Very savvy marketing from Apple, very difficult to successfully replicate.
Activision "abused" Guitar Hero - and there's no reason that, in the right hands, the series cannot continue.
That's the heated opinion of Kelly Summer, former CEO of RedOctane - the company which teamed up with Harmonix to create the original Guitar Hero games.
RedOctane was acquired by Activision in 2006 and (yep, you guessed it!) was shut down in February last year.
Speaking to weekly UK trade bible MCV, Summer didn't sound too chuffed to see his series share the same fate:
"[Activision] tried to get too much out of the franchise too quickly. They abused it," he said. "There's no reason why Guitar Hero cannot continue. It's a great product. My gut tells me there is still a significant market for Guitar Hero.
"Not every game can be a billion dollar franchise, but maybe that's what Activision wants," he added. "I'd be surprised if they sold the brand as it'd prove to the world there is still a market for this product and show them up.
"Look at how Take-Two has handled GTA. They haven't thrown products out there. They've nurtured it for over ten years and it is still a strong franchise."
Summer's comments echo those of M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon, who said last week that Activision had driven Guitar Hero into the ground.
Them using the term abused makes the PA comic which used the word diddled so much more funny and wrong.
I didn't know Sony was also coming out with a tablet.
So, as it stands, Sonys making a Playstation Phone, a Playstation Tablet, and an actual Playstation handheld.
The Xperia Play is an Android Gingerbread (2.3) Phone with game controls built around the PlayStation Certified branding and the PlayStation Suite. From the Sony Ericsson group.
The S1 is reportedly focused around Sony's streaming content service Qriocity, but will run Android Honeycomb (3.0) and also be PlayStation Certified. No game controls though. And it's being made primarily by the VAIO group with input from others.
The NGP is a pure handheld console (no Android), with the added benefit of being able to run titles built for the PlayStation Suite.
Different niches serviced from different Sony brands. The real middle ground between them would be an iPod style PMP with Android, a button slider, and PlayStation Suite. So... an Xperia Play without the phone.
I'm just trying to suss out the difference between the markets. Is it a matter of each revision not having enough differentiation from the last, i.e. each new iPod was just enough improved in order to sell like crazy, and GH didn't offer enough of an upgrade? Or is it the timely arrival of competition, saturation from other sources - Rock Band and others just confused consumers and made them give up, but Apple's branding kept them centered even as smaller competitors swarmed?
Well, I believe there's some of that. Small improvements plus the Apple faithful will assure initial sellouts. Past that, I've read that people switch cell phones every year and a half to two years, which makes sense given cell phone plan upgrades. iPods probably have a longer cycle, maybe 3 to 4 years? It's not like most consumers buy every version, and mobile devices in the same category now provide more expansive functionality than GH.
This right here. It's not just iDevices... the cell phone industry more or less trains people to buy a new cell phone every two years, thanks to free/cheap upgrades.
And, to be fair, the tech for cell phones has advanced greatly over the last five years, meaning that, on average, a smartphone out now is much, much better than smartphones released two years ago on average. Better to the point that Joe Average would notice.
So, Zynga. I know they're making money hand over fist, but the absolutely insane rate they're growing at makes me think trouble's ahead for them. Unless they have some ridiculously sharp management, that is.
It's all smoke and mirrors, they can tout "150 million users!" but how many of those people sign up and never play the game again? The number has to be staggeringly high I'm sure but they'll never cop to that.
It's all smoke and mirrors, they can tout "150 million users!" but how many of those people sign up and never play the game again? The number has to be staggeringly high I'm sure but they'll never cop to that.
Loads, probably. Then again, that number is more than offset by the dedicated players who spend an insane amount on microtransactions.
I think the bigger dangers are Zynga stretching itself too thin among all the acquisitions, and the company not being quick enough to keep up as Facebook games continue to evolve.
This is from a little ways back in the thread, but there was some discussion of highly rated games on the Wii and other consoles that flopped due to a lack of marketing and promotion.
I was wondering if there are recent examples of games that have had a large marketing budget that have really flopped*. Discounting MMOs, I really can't think of any, but I'm sure the thread has a far better memory than I.
*Yes, I know the definition of flopped is different for Atlus and Activision, but I'd rather hear more examples than fewer.
I think that the internet has been for years on the path to creating what is essentially an electronic Necronomicon: A collection of blasphemous unrealities so perverse that to even glimpse at its contents, if but for a moment, is to irrevocably forfeit a portion of your sanity.
Xbox - PearlBlueS0ul, Steam
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
EA CEO John Riccitello has spoken about the publisher's continuing embrace of digital distribution and new business models, which have been a response to the company 'dropping the ball' during the transition to the current console generation.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference yesterday, the CEO admitted that EA had not initially adapted well to the "PS3 generation", but has now formulated new strategies which have lead to it being the "one of the fastest growing businesses in the industry today," with the digital sector being the fastest growing part of that, forming around a quarter of EA's business.
"Through this last transition to the PS3 era, Xbox 360, Wii - for a whole bunch of reasons that aren't worth getting into in a short answer, I think it's fair to say we dropped the ball," Riccitello told listeners. "Our IP deteriorated, our costs went up, and we didn't really have an answer for the rise of digital.
"Over the last three years, we've made a dramatic number of changes, which can be described as part turnaround, part transformation. The turnaround has been cutting our title slate in half and dramatically strengthening our intellectual property portfolio. I think we have the strongest IP portfolio, by far, in the industry today.
"At the same time we have been managing costs aggressively and we have built a leading position, a broad base, in digital gaming. Whether it's mobile, strength in social networks, microtransaction-based services, game services. This past year, we recorded over $700 million in purely digital revenue streams."
However, Riccitellio still sees the core console market as incredibly important to EA's business model, fostering new IP which can then be transferred to other mediums.
"The core market for high definition gaming is a huge and fast-growing one," Riccitello believes. "It's a great business, it's growing, and it's where IP is created that spreads out onto other platforms."
Riccitello also talked about the allure of microtransaction models helping the company to find its feet after a few years in the wilderness, calling the 'play first, pay later' method "a very compelling idea".
However, the company still obviously has faith in its forthcoming MMO Star Wars The Old Republic, and although he has the utmost respect for market leader World of Warcraft, he doesn't see its hold on the subscription model as unbreakable.
"It's one of the greatest products ever invented," Riccitello said of Blizzard's MMO. "It's probably the most profitable individual entertainment property ever built. Um, we're going right at it. We want to take a share; we want a leadership position here. And our product is innovative in a number of ways.
"I'm not expecting to sort of knock them over but you know, they've got 12 million subscribers in the Western market and a big chunk of business in Asia that counts them up to that 12 or 13 they keep talking about. We want to take a big chunk of that."
When I found that, I also found another article that gives more info on what EA said at... uh... some meeting or another:
The dedicated hardcore gamer is under-served in the mobile market, as developers assume handsets are purely for casual gaming experiences, according to EA.
Setting out to bust a number of myths about mobile gaming, Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios at Electronic Arts also told the DICE Summit today that although handsets are an item users carry at all times, almost 50 per cent of players experience games when at home, not on the move.
"Dead Space 2 targeted the core gamer and that surprised a lot of people," he said of the recent hit release. "And if you're targeting the at home player you can have a bigger file size."
The myth that mobile players are experiencing games "on the run" is wrong, said Boatman. 47 per cent play when at home, 14 per cent at work and only 12 per cent whilst commuting.
The idea that mobile is only for casual gamers is wrong said Boatman. "There's a hungry market looking for different games experiences. It's not just casual, core gamers are under-served in mobile market."
He also said that porting content between devices was important, and developers shouldn't just focus on one system such as Apple's iOS.
Using the Kindle as an example, Boatman said his company's Scrabble game for the system was a massive success, outselling all books and other content for the device.
"It has a great digital distribution method. Most [developers] think they can't push the technology, but the experience on a Kindle is awesome.
" It's a unique and fascinating experience to sit in direct sunlight and play Scrabble. When we put the game out it outsold everything. Everyone wants to play games. Is it important to port games to other devices? Yes."
The final myth - that current technology is offering the best games experience on mobile, is also wrong, said Boatman.
"Is this is as good as it gets? I don't think it ends here. We're in a place where there's a lot more room to go. I don't think the industry stops here. The young developers of today grew up with this stuff. Think about how they are attacking the space."
"We're on the cusp of something great. In three years you won't be able to recognise the state of the mobile games industry," he concluded.
Edit: Alt, Blur was a recent and high-profile flop that had ads all over the place. As in, the game didn't even crack six figures of sales, if I remember right.
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From two years ago, still as relevant as ever.
TF2 (and all Source engine games) does have demo recording, but it's not exactly ideal as you have to know beforehand that you want to record and is hidden to the average player as it has to be accessed through the console.
Call of Duty: Black Ops does replays really well. Replays of all multiplayer games you play are automatically saved, there's a really easy to use tool for editing replays and they can either be shared in-game or saved as a video for easy uploading to Youtube. I believe the console versions will also let you upload to Youtube directly from within the game.
All the replay features you could possibly want already exist, just not in a lot of games.
What the fuck? Glorious, glorious Telltale. I love those guys to death.
Today is the day of reposting old news it seems. :P
Also...way too many dance games in the top ten.
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I know they exist. They're just not well integrated in the majority of cases and there's no focus on it as a social sharing thing. And it's extremely rare in the first place. Games that have it are the exception.
You know how fast this thread goes? :P
Anyway, sorry about that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEzPaUBptxg
Replays are something I'm surprised companies haven't used more for social networking.
Example is Starcraft2 or even SF (and recently MvC3). They have replay's but not useful ones. I want to be able to load the game and check out my FRIENDS most recent games / replies and watch them. Load up the most recent tournament and watch it unfold, share comments about the matches etc.... Let me search for replay's of top players and check out their most recent games. Currently at best we have youtube but finding these things manually makes far less then ideal.
We have great games, but the experience outside the games leave alot more to be desired. Doesn't have to be using Facebook exactly, but learning alot from what makes facebook successful (sharing data among friends in a very convenient matter). We have the data, now lets get the most useful parts out (leading to why google the search engine is awesome)
As for the Zynga style facebook games, I could easily see more games leaning in that direction. Imagine all our future games being FreeToPlay "MMOs". Play the game, chat with your friends a pay a little if you want a little more. DLC partially covers that niche but lacks the social integration part that is intrinsic with "MMOs"
Lastly, the entertainment industry's are all at competition with each other. They're competing for your time. The millions of hours people spend on facebook games (or whatever) is less hours spent on the games we (as in the gaming enthusiast as I like to phrase the PA crowd) care about. Less hours in the industry typically means less money for that industry.
Its also the reason why piracy hurts the industry at large very badly. Sure its not a direct lost sale, but all the time someone spends (freely) playing a pirated game is time (and money) not spent somewhere in the industry.
You are setting up a false dichotomy with these two arguments that results in a gross generalisation.
The first is that all a given gamer can do with their time is play facebook games OR play normal games, and if not doing the one must be doing the other.
The audience for facebook games definitely overlap with normal games, but it is not a one to one thing. You will have people who do not ever play facebook games, no matter how much money they are making. And you will have a large percentage of the people playing facebook games who will never touch a normal game.
The second false dichotomy is the implication that a person can freely play a game OR buy a game, and if not doing one must be doing the other. Again, this is not necessarily the case. A person may only ever play pirated games. If the piracy option is taken away, that person may not ever actually buy a game, they may move on to doing completely different activities. Similarly, a person who only ever buys their games may, if they cannot buy games or decide not to buy games anymore, go and do a completely different hobby.
In the strictest sense you are correct, but when you look at the overall picture the "overlap" that exists between any of the two effect the other. I would wager that overlap is far from negligible. I feel you can't look at it from a person to person perspective but you must look at it from the big picture.
An example (and a terrible one) is the recent TSA scanners. You have 1 in a million chance of getting cancer from these xrays. An individual is likely not be affected, but if you have over a billion people going through those scanners, you just gave 1000 people cancer.
You are talking about probability there, in which case you are making a statistical argument about gamer populations. Generally you would require some kind of statistics when making a statistical argument.
I know, I was just messing with you. I posted old news yesterday too.
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http://www.computerandvideogames.com/289665/news/activision-abused-guitar-hero-says-ex-boss/?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-General-RSS
Also, Guitar Hero wasn't abused. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the franchise would get tired eventually. Activision wanted to cash in while the plastic guitar craze was still on a high.
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They put out 16 games in the series in 4 years.
Maybe it would have died out eventually, like everything does, but they absolutely, without a doubt, abused it and killed it as quickly as possible.
Sure, there are outside factors, but most of the blame has to be levelled at Activision on this one I think.
Or did Apple start to go down that road and they've cut back quite a bit since those early iPod days?
Speak for yourself!
But seriously, you only need one pocket device that plays music or checks email, whereas you might want multiple Guitar Hero games in order to have more content. New iDevices typically don't provide any new content.
But I guess you also don't show off your copies of GH to all your friends at school and make them jealous, either.
(They are totally different products with totally different markets).
Then I guess we can assume Nintendo ought to come out with small incremental upgrades every quarter and they could sell as much as Apple, huh? Because it's hardware, not a game, and thus immune from oversaturation?
I'm just trying to suss out the difference between the markets. Is it a matter of each revision not having enough differentiation from the last, i.e. each new iPod was just enough improved in order to sell like crazy, and GH didn't offer enough of an upgrade? Or is it the timely arrival of competition, saturation from other sources - Rock Band and others just confused consumers and made them give up, but Apple's branding kept them centered even as smaller competitors swarmed?
But this is a comparison with a logical and easily explained answer. Eggs are cheap, disposable, and as a food product, one of the necessities for life. Houses are one of the greatest expenses anyone will have and are meant for long term use.
So what is the logical difference between GH and iPods? I guess I don't see the need to throw up our hands and say "WHO KNOWS TOO DIFFERENT." There's a reason consumers keep buying one and stopped buying the other.
Your comparison also highlights the question nicely. An iPod is a house, non-disposable, an expensive product that you keep for years. Guitar Hero is an egg. So why would we see the opposite of what you'd expect, people quit buying eggs and started going through houses like crazy?
Looking at the games which solidify their success each iteration (assuming reasonably consistent quality), a lot of them are driven by linear experiences. You play through them, you get to the end. You can do it again, but it loses something on replay, so you want another.
This is usually paired with a strong online presence, which provides a functional self-obsolescence mechanism: sure, you can still play Modern Warfare online, but if everyone else is playing Black Ops, you need to get that to join in. Singleplayer establishes a critical mass, multiplayer solidifies it.
Guitar Hero is different. Instead of diminishing returns on further playthroughs, you get increasing returns. Familiarity leads to learning the subtleties of the game, and you have favourite tracks you try to master. New games add very little in terms of gameplay to the previous games (apart from the step up to full band), so it you don't have an itch to play the next one. There are enough songs on a given game to provide more than enough variety to have a few favourites and always have songs which are just out of reach, so you don't run out of content. Furthermore, whilst there's an online aspect, that's not the draw: it's just far more conducive to living-room multiplayer, which means community size is irrelevant - you never get caught up in the wake of everyone else's progression.
What makes it worse is that the game design is so simple and transparent (to the experience it's trying to emulate) that attempts to enhance the gameplay, adding bells and whistles, tend to get in the way, meaning iterative improvements actually end up being reviled instead of appreciated.
edit: Guitar Hero isn't an egg. It doesn't get consumed in that way. Eggs here are linear singleplayer experiences: Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Uncharted. Eggs will sell yearly iterations.
iDevices, if you must know, are fuelled by a different business model: particularly in the case of iPhone/iPad, a combination of early adopter hype, platform requirements, and (most importantly) mobile network upgrade cycles instilling an expectation of new technology every 18 months.
Well, I believe there's some of that. Small improvements plus the Apple faithful will assure initial sellouts. Past that, I've read that people switch cell phones every year and a half to two years, which makes sense given cell phone plan upgrades. iPods probably have a longer cycle, maybe 3 to 4 years? It's not like most consumers buy every version, and mobile devices in the same category now provide more expansive functionality than GH.
Sony would probably be the best bet to compete as a device with access to PSN/Qriocity/PlayStation Suite/Android could provide a wide variety of functionality like Apple's offerings. I just doubt they'll ever get there.
Guitar Hero is a premium product for a single purpose. The iPod is a premium product with multiple purposes at this point.
That, and there's not much you can do to make Guitar Hero better. Gameplay is mostly fixed. Adding complexity makes it worse. Rock Band and its network was probably the pinnacle of what could be done. The Pro Guitar was crazy niche, and once a consumer has all the instruments, they're probably not going to purchase them again.
After that, your money needs to be made on DLC songs.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
So, as it stands, Sonys making a Playstation Phone, a Playstation Tablet, and an actual Playstation handheld.
Them using the term abused makes the PA comic which used the word diddled so much more funny and wrong.
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The Xperia Play is an Android Gingerbread (2.3) Phone with game controls built around the PlayStation Certified branding and the PlayStation Suite. From the Sony Ericsson group.
The S1 is reportedly focused around Sony's streaming content service Qriocity, but will run Android Honeycomb (3.0) and also be PlayStation Certified. No game controls though. And it's being made primarily by the VAIO group with input from others.
The NGP is a pure handheld console (no Android), with the added benefit of being able to run titles built for the PlayStation Suite.
Different niches serviced from different Sony brands. The real middle ground between them would be an iPod style PMP with Android, a button slider, and PlayStation Suite. So... an Xperia Play without the phone.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
This right here. It's not just iDevices... the cell phone industry more or less trains people to buy a new cell phone every two years, thanks to free/cheap upgrades.
And, to be fair, the tech for cell phones has advanced greatly over the last five years, meaning that, on average, a smartphone out now is much, much better than smartphones released two years ago on average. Better to the point that Joe Average would notice.
Loads, probably. Then again, that number is more than offset by the dedicated players who spend an insane amount on microtransactions.
I think the bigger dangers are Zynga stretching itself too thin among all the acquisitions, and the company not being quick enough to keep up as Facebook games continue to evolve.
I was wondering if there are recent examples of games that have had a large marketing budget that have really flopped*. Discounting MMOs, I really can't think of any, but I'm sure the thread has a far better memory than I.
*Yes, I know the definition of flopped is different for Atlus and Activision, but I'd rather hear more examples than fewer.
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-02-16-riccitello-ea-dropped-the-ball-during-generational-transition
When I found that, I also found another article that gives more info on what EA said at... uh... some meeting or another:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-02-10-ea-core-gamers-under-served-on-mobile
Edit: Alt, Blur was a recent and high-profile flop that had ads all over the place. As in, the game didn't even crack six figures of sales, if I remember right.