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Gametap is in deep trouble (update: their fate revealed)
cloudeagle
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There was a mention of this in another Gametap thread, but apparently it got buried.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6195542.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;7
tl;dr: Gametap is facing serious layoffs, and the owners plan to sell the thing.
Yikes. This is a pretty big blow to online gaming on demand. Yeah yeah, Steam Steam lol. But Steam doesn't really have a large mainstream following, and Gametap did. (Put it this way: the average Gamestop customer is much more likely to recognize Gametap than Steam.)
For a time, it appeared as if online game-rental service GameTap would establish itself as a major player in the gaming-enthusiast scene. However, not a year after stocking up on a number of veteran game writers, the Turner Broadcasting-owned Web site announced that it would be pink-slipping its editorial and video teams in an effort to refocus on its game-distribution offerings.
Now the service itself is about to be unloaded by Turner. Buried away in its second-quarter financial results released earlier today, Turner parent company Time Warner said that it took an $18 million hit to its bottom line due to the "decision to sell its online video game business." Turner debuted GameTap in May 2005, saying that it had support from 17 publishers and equating the service to a "cable box for games on your PC."
"There is considerable marketplace interest in the GameTap business and brand," said a Turner representative to GameSpot in a statement. "We are considering various strategic options but have reached no final agreement as yet. When there is a resolution, we will announce it."
GameTap currently claims to offer more than 1,000 retro console, arcade, and PC games. The service also plays home to a number of high-profile original episodic-gaming series, including Telltales Games' Sam & Max franchise and American McGee's Grimm, the first episode of which went live last week.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6195542.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;7
tl;dr: Gametap is facing serious layoffs, and the owners plan to sell the thing.
Yikes. This is a pretty big blow to online gaming on demand. Yeah yeah, Steam Steam lol. But Steam doesn't really have a large mainstream following, and Gametap did. (Put it this way: the average Gamestop customer is much more likely to recognize Gametap than Steam.)
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They haven't done anything to advertise themselves to mainstream America; Gametap has. Dunno if Europe's any different.
But I mean, Steam is probably more stable than Gametap despite less of a public notice. The public are fickle, Valve fans aren't I guess.
PREPOST REALIZATION: Wait, this is the Steamish one and not the "order by mail and you can get as many as you can handle a month" one? Huh, I was gettin' worried over nothin'.
So uh, I thought Gametap was only getting bigger and better and more successful. I remember when they first launched it appeared they had just classic titles, maybe a few current ones, and as time went on their advertising focused more and more on recent games.
Nice illusion there I guess.
That's very true, and Gametap has been crippling itself by refusing to go 64-bit. Still, stable =/= popular, and I've been baffled by Steam's refusal to advertise.
Anyway, Gametap. Considering how high-profile it is, I'm afraid its failure might slow down the move to digital distribution elsewhere in the industry, at least on PCs. The PC market has been anemic enough as it is; the failing of a very visible service might cause developers to lose their nerve and go to the 360/PS3/Wii instead.
I could be wrong about these worries, but I get the feeling that the reverberation of a potential Gametap failure could be big.
You're about 4 years late on that - Steam is bad-ass-ly awesome now.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
They really overextended what they offered. There was really no need to add episodes of shows, reviews, music information, etc - they should have just stuck with the core games and left it there.
It's not my opinion,it's just what I hear from basically everyone I know.
User-reviews and ratings are all they ever should or could need.
Now, if they lost money because of the actual gaming side of things also...well, that may not bode well for this or similar attempts in the future.
Exactly. A bad example. "Welp, there's no money in PC digital distribution, guess we'll stick with X."
That's my concern.
I was thinking bad example too, only more in the way of, "Okay, what did those Gametap guys do wrong?"
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Until you play CS for 30 seconds, just long enough to be called a racial slur and have your limp body teabagged by the TKer with the autosniper...
More than likely, it's because GameTap advertises on adult swim and other Turner stations and probably get's a larger non-core (is that the term now) gamer crowd than the "you'd only know about it if you heard about it at a LAN party" Steam.
Well Steam has plenty of games on there for a wide range of tastes, but unfortunately they need some sort of content / rating filtering. I could see Steam being pre-installed on PCs if there was some way to prevent games of a more mature rating being viewed / downloaded by kids.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6198139.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;2
Huh. Okie-dokie. Soooo, anyone ever use that Metaboli thingy?
"By now we've all probably heard that Turner is merging its struggling GameTap online service with France-based Metaboli, which basically does the same thing in Europe.
But just what the hell is it? And how will it work? I talked to Metaboli CEO Pierre Gaudet, who will be CEO of the merged company, to get some insight. For those who didn't read my article in tomorrow's Daily Variety, or did but want even more details, here are the key facts direct from the horse's mouth, so to speak:
-Turner will own a minority share in the new company. It will be the largest minority shareholder, but still a minority. So what does that mean? That Metaboli is worth more, since it's shareholders (mostly a group of VC firms) get the majority of the merged firm's equity. Turner is essentially giving GameTap to Metaboli, letting Metaboli management run the thing, and hoping that a sizable minority share in the Gaudet_pierre_2merged entity will eventually be worth more than GameTap is on its own. (How much is that? We can't be sure, except that it's $18 million less that Time Warner used to think, since that's the size of the write-down the conglomerate took last spring)
-Gaudet plans to take two key features that have worked for Metaboli and apply them to GameTap. The first is a greater focus on download-to-own games (he described his company as a "baby iTunes" for games). The second is "white label" services, which essentially means running Metaboli for another company that puts its name on it. So right now Metaboli runs a game service for Orange and T-Online, two of the big Internet providers in Europe. Gaudet said the majority of its subscribers come from such partners, not people who go directly to Metaboli. So don't be surprised if in a year or so, you start seeing GameTap-like services from your local ISP, or maybe Yahoo or MSN or AOL. Secretly, they'll be powered by GameTap.
-The two companies will merge their libraries to provide an even bigger library to subscribers on both continents.
-GameTap will remain the consumer brand on this side of the Atlantic, Metaboli back on t'other.
-While he didn't explicitly reject the idea, Gaudet wasn't too excited about publishing original games, as GameTap has occasionally done with "Grimm," "Sam and Max," etc. "We are not doing that in Metaboli and for the time being it's not in our plans," he commented.
-What does he think of GameTap overall? Why has it not been successful for Turner? Here's his take: "The GameTap team has done a very impressive job, but the business they are in is quite different than the rest of what Turner does... The gaming industry requires expertise and specialization and that's what we are doing." "
I checked out the Metaboli website. They have vastly fewer games than GameTap (250 or so compare to 1k+) and they have two subscription levels - Lame mode where you get the lame games and Expensive mode where you get the games you might actually care about. On the plus side, they have more new stuff than GameTap does - I noticed Titan Quest & Assassin's Creed there, for example. On the negative side, they're vastly more expensive than GameTap: GameTap is $60 for a year ($5/month) whereas Metaboli is £12.95/month for the full access subscription or half that for the partial access subscription. The initial news release of the partnership/sale says that there are no plans on changing GameTap's subscription rates, but I'm more than a little worried.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Sounds like a certain Tv channel I know of! *looks at G4*
Well Gametap has had Titan Quest for a few months, but that's not the point I wanted to make. I think Gametap's Achilles heel was it's business model, personally I was able to get pretty much all the fun I wanted to get out of Gametap in about 4 months and paid a total of $2.
The 99 cent free month with another month offered when you tried to cancel before moving up to full price was nice but it's understandable why they're in the state they are. On the other hand if they didn't have the 99 cent thing I doubt I ever would have tried the service in the first place. So I don't really know what they could have done do make things work
GameTap has Titan Quest for purchase. Metaboli has Titan Quest as a free download if you're a member. Big difference there.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,