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Industry scuttlebutt is that Three Rings, the casual online game studio behind the cult hit Puzzle Pirates, is about to storm into the user-created MMO space, to compete against players like Second Life. This is big news, because the inventive scallywags of the SF-based Three Rings have mastered the tricky goal of creating low-budget online worlds which appeal to casual gamers, as evidenced by Puzzle Pirates, which boasts 2 million registered accounts as of mid-2006.
But what exactly is Three Rings planning, and when will it arrive on the horizon? I checked with Daniel James, Three Rings’ co-founder, to find out. Continue reading over at GigaGamez.
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Written by Wagner James Au on February 8th, 2007 with no comments.
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Last Friday, Slashdot’s Zonk confirmed rumors that eBay was delisting RMT items from their service. Short for “real money transfer”, RMT is a gray market means for gamers to buy and sell an online world’s precious items. GigaGamez has more details.
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Written by Om Malik on January 30th, 2007 with no comments.
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There might be something fishy about Neuronet and the organization behind it. We have not heard back from them for a while now, and there are others who are raising questions about the organization, IAVRT. GigaGamez posted an update, and points to Sven Johnson who is doggedly investigating IAVRT.
It was only minutes ago that I got the heads up on a new network devoted entirely to virtual reality worlds. Before I could start writing the post, Jason over on GigaGamez beat me to the punch.
This new network, called the Neuronet, will be the world’s first network capable of meeting the data transfer speed requirements to allow for real-time immersive gaming and cinematic experiences.
The International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies (IAVRT) is helping build out this network, which is slated to go live in 2007, and will interconnect regional virtual reality and gaming R&D consortiums.
A lot of this seems like science fiction stuff, but the recent progress made by projects like Internet2 show that higher capacity and faster speeds can lead to new applications. National Lambda Rail for instance has been working on ultra fast storage networks. Purdue University has developed technology to transmit video that is eight times more detailed than HDTV over these ultra-fast networks. Imagine virtual reality at that speed and resolution. Okay, I am getting carried away, but as you might have guessed, I am excited with these developments.
Back to Neuronet, a little dose of reality: the first consumer applications based are not likely to show up until 2009. IAVRT will also start pre-registration of Neuronet domain names which can be used to create next second generation, consumer-accessible Neuronet applications. I am currently seeking more details on this, and will update the post accordingly. There are a ton of questions on how this thing is going to work, and what are the economics of this project.
Written by Om Malik on December 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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At a fundamental level, all money is virtual. (If it’s no longer tied to a precious physical product like gold, that is– but then, what currency is, nowadays?) At root, its worth depends on the value a group invests in it, whether it’s made of paper, metal– or binary code. That fairly abstract principle is becoming more apparent to people, and ironically, it’s taken the growing popularity of online worlds to make it a practical reality.
And a genuine concern for the Chinese government, which now fears that the QQ is deflating the official yuan. “QQ” is the virtual currency created by Tencent, China’s largest instant messaging platform based in Shenzen. Originally, Tencent sold QQ as a fun way for customers to purchase online games, greeting cards, and so on, but as the service became more popular, many started treating it as an alternative to the yuan, using it to, for example, bet in gambling games and (of course) purchase online sex. (For a wild time in Shenzen, you can now IM a “QQ girl”.)
The expanding trade in QQ so worrisome to Chinese officials, they’re issuing warnings against its unauthorized use. “The QQ coin is challenging the status of the renminbi [yuan] as the only legitimate currency in China,” the Asia Times quotes public prosecutor Yang Tao.
As with China’s virtual gold farms, it’s easy to see this as a future international trend in the making. All three next gen consoles– Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Sony PS3– include microcurrency systems, and like the QQ, are designed for purchasing games and other products from their online networks. But with tens of millions of players who find value in these virtual currencies, what’s to stop them from using it for purchasing other goods and services from each other? And given the volatility of real money, should they be stopped?
(Via Salon.com’s How The World Works, an invaluable blog for understanding the future of global business, as explained by my good friend Andrew Leonard.)
Written by Wagner James Au on December 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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So the ad campaigns have been launched, the lines have been formed, and the products (most of them, anyway) have been shipped. With holiday shopping in full roar, there’s little Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft can do now to help the prospects of their next gen consoles, but wait for the market’s verdict. Here at GigaOM, we’ll be doing the same, waiting to see which console gamers spend their often capricious dollars on.
That said, the number of the week is 10 million. That’s the number Microsoft is sticking with; on second thought, make that 10 million plus change. Based on current market demand, that’s how many Xbox 360s that Peter Moore, the company’s gaming ubermensche, claims they’ll sell by the end of this year, worldwide. Next Generation also reports that Sony expects to have 2 million Playstation 3s on the market, and Nintendo, 4 million Wiis.
For those scoring at home, this means (assuming all of those units ship and sell), the world’s next gen market will break down like this at the end of the year:
Xbox 360: 62.5%,
Wii: 25%,
PS3: 12.5%
Previously I had predicted that Xbox and Wii would split the market evenly, with PS3 far behind, but looking at the numbers that way, I have to say, only the last part appears on target.
Microsoft’s lead seems unbeatable now, fueled by a one year head start, the raging success of Gears of War as 2006’s killer app (it’s already become Xbox Live’s most popular multiplayer game), and most recently, a blitzkrieg of promotion for Halo 3, scheduled for 2007. (The game’s ultracool teaser ad is now causing collective squeals of geek delight.)
Written by Wagner James Au on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Online gaming just might be the next source of revenues for carriers. A few months after Verizon announced its plans to offer a special gaming service over its fast FiOS connections, now Comcast is saying that it loves to game. Today they are making their GameInvasion.net available nationally.
Game Invasion was previously available only to Comcast’s High-Speed Internet customers and is now being made available to consumers everywhere at www.gameinvasion.net. Comcast’s 8Mbps High-Speed Internet subscribers will continue to receive the added value of a free membership to the IGN Founders’ Club, a premium gaming package.
Comcast has partnered with Major League Gaming (MLG), and will also distribute MLG’s television show, MLG Pro Circuit, on GameInvasion.net and on Comcast’s ON DEMAND service. Comcast as you remember bought TechTV and rebranded its as G4 TV, with a heavy focus on Games.
Verizon’s Jason Henderson had told us that “gaming is a leading activity for over 75% of broadband users, and since we have over six million DSL subscribers, we had to develop a portfolio of services built for the preferred product models of each.”
Written by Om Malik on December 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war… — Richard II
Pardon the college sophomore Shakespeare citation, but the latest news in the next gen console wars brings out my sense of the tragic. (As it did last week.) “The Father of the Playstation” and the “Gutenberg of Video Games”, Ken Kutaragi, has just been nudged from his position as president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), hereby replaced by Kaz Hirai of SCEI’s US wing.
In one of those lovably surreal corporate moves, Kutaragi is actually being promoted, while losing day-to-day control over Playstation development.
(Moving up while moving out?) According to KBC analyst Hiroshi Kamide, bringing Harai into the position is a way to repair relations with all-important third party developers of Playstation games, since Harai is better equipped to communicate with them. (While Kutaragi, according to Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal, was slow to return their phonecalls.) Another Japanese analyst even goes so far to speculate that this move means the end of Sony’s days as a console maker; no Playstation 4, in other words, with the company instead shifting to become, like Sega before it, a mere game developer.
Once a rising star, last year Kutaragi was demoted, with the Playstation 3 seen as his chance to redeem himself. This latest move almost certainly confirms that this redemption has failed, and that Sony is acknowledging (belatedly, or perhaps far too late) that their status as console king is in grave peril.
“For a while, Kutaragi seemed untouchable at Sony,” a former Sony executive in digital music and entertainment tells me. “In fact, we all heard he was on the shortlist for head of the company (if a bit of a bad-boy darkhorse), before [Howard] Stringer was confirmed. This seems like quite a fall, becoming emeritus and what seems like minister without portfolio (i.e., no direct ownership or control of Playstation that isn’t vetted by the board)… unless I’m reading too much between the lines.”
Almost surely not. So let us sit on the ground and recall the days when Kutaragi was king, for God’s sake. For all the grand mistakes and missed opportunities made in bringing the PS3 to market, let us remember the time when Kutaragi ruled. His Playstation 2 ranks as one of last great technologies of the 20th century (or if you prefer, the first great device of the 21st), a console that helped make great gaming a true mass market phenomenon. An elegant, beautiful piece of hardware, it finally made videogames seem grown-up, cool, even sexy, and I will remember Sony’s legendary E3 parties of yesteryear (thousands of Los Angeles’ most gorgeous in attendance, some of the greatest rock bands from Sony’s labels performing live, all lit up in the company’s trademark electric neon blue) as emblematic of the Kutaragi era. With Microsoft’s ascension to the console throne, those golden days may never come again, but never forget that Kutaragi was the man who helped create this worldwide empire of gaming we all live in now.
Written by Wagner James Au on December 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
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Shawn Fanning has raised seed money for a social network for online gaming called Rupture, reports Heather Green of BusinessWeek (scroll down to third story). Fanning, creator of Napster, had most recently tried to make friends with the music industry through his startup Snocap. Rupture sounds a little more fun.
Green reports Rupture’s first focus will be World of Warcraft, where Fanning is an avid player:
Rupture taps into the game to automatically pull together character names, profiles, and resources, and publish them on a personalized site. Rupture will also pull together stats to create individual and guild rankings and provide a place for guilds to organize their playing. As Rupture tracks each member’s playing over time, these personalized profiles evolve. And players will be able to chat in groups or with other individuals and download other addons and game demos.
Rupture, whose investors include Ron Conway and Joi Ito, will be ad-supported.
Update: GigaOM resident gaming expert Wagner James Au says “If I’m reading it right, his service might run afoul of Warcraft’s terms of use:
2 C. You agree that you will not (i) modify or cause to be modified any files that are a part of a World of Warcraft installation; (ii) create or use cheats, “mods”, and/or hacks, or any other third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience; (iii) use any third-party software that intercepts, “mines”, or otherwise collects information from or through World of Warcraft;
Update 2: TechCrunch reports a Rupture spokesperson says the product will comply with WoW’s terms of use. We’ll let you know if we get any more specific information than that.
Written by Liz Gannes on December 2nd, 2006 with no comments.
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If you want a glimpse of the future of work in the broadband age, you can find it, of all places, on MTV’s website. To my knowledge, their recent gaming news segment, “Is Mining Virtual Gold Exploitative?” features the first video footage shot inside Chinese gold farms, those gray market companies which collect and sell virtual gold (primarily from World of Warcraft) to wealthier gamers in the developed world. (The New York Times filed a story on the phenomenon last year, but company managers were considerably more leery to speak on record with that reporter.)
Drawing from an fascinating upcoming documentary by UC San Diego grad student Ge Jin (YouTube clip from his film here), the MTV segment features interviews with workers and managers of several gold farms, which resemble a cross between a 24 hour LAN party and a very shabby college dorm. By the segment’s estimate, an astounding half million Chinese now make a living - about $100 a month - from the acquisition and sale of WoW gold to US and EU gamers.
Why is this is the future of work online? Consider the numbers, youth, and low wages of the gold farmers, and the growing interest in outsourcing tasks online. Amazon recently launched a non-game application for this, known as the Amazon Mechanical Turk.
In Second Life, a Hollywood production company is outsourcing its Second Life projects to its Vietnamese branch, where highly-skilled workers can create professional 3D environments for a fraction of the cost, were it done here. It’s easy to see how the Chinese farmers of Warcraft might evolve into the blue collar workers of the 3D Internet.
MTV producer Matt Sunbulli put us in touch with Ge Jin, and we asked him about this phenomenon, and sought his own thoughts on its relation to the future of work online.
How did you locate these gold farms?
Ge Jin: I have a friend who had been operating a gold farms in Shanghai since 2003. So his gold farm is the first one I visited. My friend’s gold farm closed in 2005, so did most gold farms in Shanghai. Many of them migrated to smaller cities with lower housing and human resource costs.
So I contacted other gold farms through my friend’s old network… I was lucky enough to find several gold farms that were open to me in Jinhua, Nanjin, Lishui and Hangzhou. Again I was lucky to win their trust. It’s probably because I’m from the same background as many gaming workers (many gold farm owners were former gaming workers.)
Were gold farmers afraid the Chinese government would shut them down?
GJ: The ones that allowed me to film there were not afraid because they are located in cities where local goverments are tolerant of this industry. There is no national policy regulating this new industry yet, so it’s up to the local governments to judge.
Most local governments have no motive to shut down these gold farms, as they reduce unemployment and even reduce the crime rate by reducing unemployed male youth on the street. Some gold farms refused my visit because they don’t want to pay tax and choose to operate underground, or they are worried that their labor practice is problematic…
What does WoW gold farming suggest about the future of work?
GJ: I think these gold farms indicate that the game platform has the potential to engage more people in Internet-driven economy. The gaming workers in China don’t have skills like English, software or graphic design to participate in other forms of Internet-driven work, but they can communicate and navigate in a 3D game world whose tools and routines they are familiar with… So if more social and economic activities happen in an accessible 3D game world, people who don’t have access to other culture capital but gaming knowledge will be more likely to be included in global interaction.
Written by Wagner James Au on November 27th, 2006 with no comments.
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There’s got to be a great story behind the rise and precipitous fall of the Sony Playstation, once the industry’s dominant console, but now in its latest incarnation, the PS3, an overpriced also-ran struggling to keep up with the Nintendo Wii and trailing far behind the Microsoft Xbox 360.
From all signs, it’ll be a tale of corporate hubris worthy of Greek tragedy, performed in kabuki masks. And fortunately for us, there’ll be more than a few talented journalists from big publications who will write that tale.
In last cycle of consoles, when you wanted to follow the latest news, you had little option but to read gamer sites and magazines, and try to cull bits of legitimate info from acres of PR hype. (You did somewhat better by visiting non-commercial gamer sites or insider-heavy online forums.)
But that was four-six years ago, and since then, the mainstream media has invested far more resources to covering the game industry, with a lot more prominence and seriousness. Which is a great thing for the business and for consumers– but not so good for flailing game companies that seem hellbent on disaster.
Take two stories in recent days; last cycle, they were the kind of thing that you’d have to find on a industry gossip site or fan board– but now, they’re showing up in Newsweek, or on the front page of the New York Times website.
Which is where I discovered Seth Schiesel’s devastating review of the Playstation 3, merciless in its specificity of the system’s many failings, from its difficulty of setup to its inability to multi-task (you can’t download files or play music while gaming), to its cumbersome online services, and more. By all appearances, Schiesel isn’t a befuddled journalist writing about the Playstation merely because his editor assigned him the task, but a passionate, knowledgeable gamer who knows first-hand how poorly the PS3 performs, especially compared to Xbox 360.
Then there’s the jaw-dropping report from the Newsweek blog of N’Gai Croal, which answers the burning question, “Why is the Playstation 3 debuting with so few exclusive titles?”
As it turns out, it’s because PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi never got around to asking for them. Top publishers Ubisoft, Take-Two, and its studio Rockstar Games (whose Grand Theft Auto III effectively became PlayStation 2’s killer app) were interested in creating exclusive titles for the PS3, reports Croal. But Kutaragi just wouldn’t pick up the phone in time.
“PlayStation’s Japanese headquarters was effectively radio silent,” Croal writes, “and without Kutaragi’s signoff, the normally independent American and European branches had no authority to reach agreements on the exclusives they believed could be valuable to the PS3 cause.” Meanwhile, with Microsoft executives constantly pleading at their door, all three developers made exclusive deals with the 360.
It’s an astounding behind-the-scenes story, especially coming from a reporter as well-regarded as Croal. Who knows what is to follow, but the story so far has been worthy of television series.
Written by Wagner James Au on November 25th, 2006 with no comments.
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Connected consoles might be the theme this year, but as the Wii and PS3 go on sale, their promised online services, including web browsing, aren’t fully up and running yet. Because the Xbox has been out a good long year, Xbox Live has the most features and services out of the three — except for web browsing. With the console wars in full roar, here’s a brief cheat sheet to which online capabilities are available for the consoles.
Wii online:
Connection via
- Wi-Fi supports standard protocols
- Bluetooth
- USB 2.0 (two ports)
- LAN Adapter
Expected Online Services:
- WiiConnect24, automated download and update service; full availability TBD
- Virtual Console, game download service; service expected beginning January 2007
- Wii Channels, Nintendo-branded Internet portal with news, shopping; features expected to begin rolling out December 20; also comes with photo editing and avatar creation software, available now
Web browsing:
Yes, via Opera (availability TBD)
PS3 ONLINE
Connection via:
- Bluetooth
- Wi-Fi (with Premium system only)
- USB 2.0
Online Services:
The PlayStation Network Platform, with matchmaking, and score ranking; upload and download services; friends list; text and voice-driven chat and messaging; subscription services and pay-to-download area.
Web browsing:
Yes, browser comes installed with the system.
XBOX 360 ONLINE
Connection via:
- 100BASE-TX RJ45 ethernet port
- Wireless network adapter
Online Services:
Xbox Live, with content delivery, friend network, multimedia messaging, video/audio chat, microcurrency, reputation system, Live Marketplace for downloading video, games, etc.
Web browsing:
No, but Microsoft is currently taking a user survey to determine desirability of that and other potential features.
Costs:
Two-tiered service, Silver (free), Gold ($29.99 ESRP for 3 months, $59.99 ESRP for 12 months)
Written by Wagner James Au on November 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
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The big story of last week was the launch of the two new gaming consoles, Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. With the launch of these two platforms, the gaming generation upgrade is near complete. So far, Nintendo is being viewed as the unlikely winner, and PlayStation 3 as the big loser.
Regardless of who wins, the proliferation of these new kind of networked devices makes you pause and think about the overall strategic implications of these devices, especially for the new-fangled Web 2.0 services.
Huh? Well, that would be my reaction, but hear me out. Both Wii and PlayStation are now shipping with internal browsers. Several other devices (PSP, Mylo, Nokia E and N Series phones) have almost fully featured browsers. In other words, we are transitioning from PC-as-browser-base to “browsers everywhere” reality.
The increase in the number of browser end points means more opportunities for companies that are offering web services – everyone from Google, Yahoo to Microsoft. A Meebo IM client designed specially to run on the Wii? Flickr slideshow application for Sony PlayStation 3, or a tiny widget for Yahoo Music for music playback?
Note from Liz: This week I stopped by Yahoo to meet with Patrick Barry, who directs the company’s digital home group. Barry talked about the thinking Yahoo has put into “the lean-back internet,” on a TV screen 10 feet away and accessed with the limited tools of a remote.
Barry toggled between a few DVR and media center setups, which included TV-ready Flickr slideshows and video search, saying everything but Yahoo groups, message boards, and shopping might find a life on the big(ger) screen. While most of the interfaces for these things are pretty terrible, the coolest mashup of TV and web services is for Yahoo’s popular fantasy sports leagues on Intel Viivs. Stats and league standings run alongside a sidebar, with chat (“smack talk”) coming in SMS-style. The idea is for sports fans to “leave the laptop out of your lap and eat your chips,” says Barry.
These web-based services (or widgets) can especially shine on connected devices like Wii and PlayStation 3. This is a thought I just cannot shake off! If you would like to share your thoughts, let us know.
The post first appeared as part of GigaOM Weekly email newsletter dated November 19, 2006
Written by Om Malik on November 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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Now come the days when gamers unleash their inner Cartman, lining up outside department stores and murmuring “Kehm-ON!” every few seconds through gritted teeth as they wait to buy the Nintendo Wii (in US stores on the 19th) or the Sony PS3 (hitting US shelves tomorrow) or both, camping there if necessary, occasionally enduring drive-by shootings, and even hiring the homeless to wait in line.
Over the last few months, I’ve already made my take on the next-gen console wars fairly plain: Xbox 360 will perform strongly, fueled by its one year headstart, while the Wii will roar; after an all-too-brief crush of purchasing by Sony ideologues, the PS3 will fall far behind in sales, and meet disaster, relative to expectation. If I had to guess the next-gen install base in the US by the same time next year, right now I’d say it plays out this way: 360 and Wii taking some 40% of the market each, and PS3 with a partly 20%.
Rather than editorialize any further, I’ll turn over the microphone to three top game industry analysts, to get their own take on the season. After the break, valuable insights on the hard numbers behind the waiting lines, from a trio of gentlemen who know the economics of gaming from the inside.
* * *
David Riley, Senior Marketing Manager, NPD
The playing field now:
Install base (units sold in retail) through October ‘06, according to NPD:
PlayStation 2 - 35 mm
Xbox - 15 mm
GameCube - 11mm
Xbox 360 - 2.9mm
This season’s forecast:
It’s too early to tell until we have definitive shipment numbers but it goes without saying that we can expect both the Wii and the PS3 to fly off the shelves this holiday season. However, don’t let the buzz around the two new consoles detract your attention away from the Xbox 360, which has several factors working in its favor. Beyond the fact that it’s Live service is phenomenal, it’s had a year to mature in retail, working through various hardware issues and building an impressive library of titles. All of this should help boost its install base in the U.S. significantly.
* * *
Alexis Madrigal, DFC Intelligence
This season’s forecast:
The Wii and PS3… will be in fairly limited supply and the key goal will be creating “buzz.” With the Xbox 360 the system has built a solid library of software and there is a real opportunity to continue building on the installed base. In that sense, I don’t think any one system will be the strongest. If you are looking at buzz it is the new products, if you are looking at a new system with a big software library and an established track record it is Xbox 360. Throw in the PS2, DS and PSP [handheld consoles] and consumers have a great deal of options to choose from this holiday season.
Mistakes and missed opportunities:
It would be easy to point to the PS3’s limited launch shipments and delay in Europe, but that will most likely be pretty minor in the scheme of things. The biggest potential missed opportunity would be if this holiday season Microsoft failed to capitalize on building a lead on the PS3 before it gets a chance to really get rolling. However, we won’t know if that occurred until next year.
The long view:
We try not to speculate on the whole market share and winners-versus-losers game. By November 2007 market share among the three major players will probably be a pretty meaningless figure. It probably will not be until 2008 until we can make some meaningful judgments about the long term position of the different systems.
* * *
Billy Pidgeon, Program Manager, Consumer Markets: Gaming, IDC
This season’s forecast:
While the PS3 will be number one on the wish lists of most core gamers, short supply will be snapped up quickly, leaving latent demand unfulfilled until 2007. Microsoft Xbox 360 will benefit from PS3 shortages and strong software support of titles such as Gears of War to provide a solid alternative to PS3 for those who must have a new high end console.
Due to pricing, novelty and a stronger supply than PS3, the Nintendo Wii will practically be an impulse buy this holiday for core gamers looking for a new kick and for family households. The Wii will be the hot gift this year. Sony’s PS2, PSP and Nintendo DS will also provide alternatives for loyalists who can’t get the PS3 or Wii they wanted.
Mistakes and missed opportunities:
Microsoft could have used more strong titles staggered from launch into holiday 2006 to keep momentum into the end of the year. Gears of War is a system seller and there are great titles like Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter and Rainbow Six, but 360 needed a stronger library sooner. Halo 3 would have done the trick, announcing the beta release was a smart move.
Sony’s PS3 launch run-up was a train wreck abetted by the media. The press wanted to give Sony a smackdown, and Sony gave them every opportunity. Sony was overconfident in PS3 production planning, and the worst mistake made was the one Sony had the least control over: poor yields due to component defects led to extremely limited supply. Sony should have been pushing PSP and PS2 harder as backup. PS2 still has great legs with mass market titles like Guitar Hero II.
The long view:
Supply constraints will skew the market share for the current console generations. Sony cannot make enough PS3 to take first place, but can be a front runner in 2008. Xbox 360 and Nintendo will be able to build strong installed bases with impressive libraries by fourth quarter 2007. This time next year we’ll see a real competition for market share.
Written by Wagner James Au on November 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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Not to get overly political, but Sony Computer Entertainment’s management is starting to remind me of the Bush administration. Despite constant dire warnings from so many experts (including an editor with the official Playstation magazine) that the PS3 is careening toward a disastrous launch, the company seems doggedly hellbent on staying the course, dismissing the resourcefulness of the competition, and in the face of mounting criticism, even going so far as to hire writers to post sunny good news about the PS3 on a “semi official” blog.
You keep hoping that Kaz Hirai will suddenly show up on a podium and announce a drastic rethinking of PS3’s pricing, or release schedule, or its online/download services, or its exclusive game line-up, something, anything, but the moment never comes. If the chart above linked to below doesn’t break through their cocoon of optimism, nothing will.
Created by jvm of Curmudgeon Gamer, it’s a comprehensive listing of videogame consoles released over the last 30 years, arranged by date and graphed according to their absolute price (cost on date of release), and relative price (current cost adjusted for inflation).
See the chart posted here. Even at a quick glance, it’s easy to draw some conclusions: the consoles that tend to succeed most in recent years are priced within the $225-350 range, in today’s numbers, while some of the biggest disasters (3DO, CD-i) are priced two or three times that.
At between $500 or $600, the Playstation 3 skews toward the danger zone, and has a price point comparable to the fairly disastrous Sega Saturn of 1995. (And by today’s dollars, it’s $150-250 more than the Playstation 2, released back in the day when it seemed Sony could do no wrong.) Priced at about $250, the Nintendo Wii seems best situated in the chart’s retail sweet spot.
Kudos to Curmudgeon Gamer for crunching the numbers. Maybe they’re too late in coming for Sony’s good, but they’re something. Then again, maybe Playstation has such powerful brand loyalty, millions of gamers will miraculously rise up next week to acclaim the PS3, despite the high cost. But from where I’m sitting, that’s about as likely as 150,000 troops being enough to secure the peace in a Middle Eastern country which… well, in a post-election spirit of national reconciliation, I’ll leave it at that.
Hat tip: Anthony J. Siino III.
Written by Wagner James Au on November 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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So now we pretty much know why Microsoft is doggedly pushing ahead with plans to make a Halo movie, even after two studios balked at the budget, and the unlikelihood of such a movie making any money at the box office. It will almost certainly be the topline content for Xbox Live Marketplace, the new ITunes-style movie/TV download service for Xbox 360 owners announced yesterday. Last month I speculated about “Halo movie trailers and excerpts downloadable only on Xbox Live”, but clearly I wasn’t thinking big enough. No, Xbox commandant Peter Moore is looking forward to a time when millions of Xbox Live subscribers will download the entire movie to their 20 gig hard drives, either in standard TV resolution, which will take up a fifth of the drive, or in HDTV format, which will suck up most of that space, and take up half the day, to acquire.
That last point is probably the biggest stumbling block to Xbox Live Marketplace succeeding:
With just 20 gigs in the console’s standard hard drive set-up, you’re talking about 10 TV episodes, or five movies, or one high definition movie 10 high definition TV episodes or five HD movies. Most gamers can churn through that content in days. Then comes the painful decision of deleting several movies or TV shows you paid $1.99-$5.99 to download onto your hard drive (Microsoft is still mum on the pricing, except that it’ll be competitive with existing services) to make room for more.
That’s not to mention Microsoft’s past history with digital rights management extremism with the Xbox, already onerous when it comes to ripping music files, which will surely grow even more strict, when the MPAA brings its attorneys into play. A service that isn’t as seamless as ITunes (of for that matter, YouTube), is destined to failure.
All that to one side, it’s still a strong move on Microsoft’s part, beating out the other consoles on that front, even catching them flat-footed. “We haven’t announced any content besides games,” a befuddled-sounding spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment America told the Times, when asked to comment on the news, “but all the executives have said that downloading other entertainment content is something the Playstation 3 capable of doing.” (As a statement, it’s on a par with the kid who watches Tony Hawk pull off an amazing stunt, then asserts, “I could do that, I just don’t want to.”)
A Sony statement sent to Next Gen is somewhat more measured, but about as, well, desperate, playing up the fact that Xbox 360 is sold in both non-hard drive and hard drive configurations. “We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn’t buy the top of the line system”, the peculiarly self-righteous announcement sniffs. It’s always unseemly when an international corporation apes the language of the civil rights movement– especially when PS3’s price point of $599 doesn’t exactly make it the Rosa Parks of consoles. And we’re about to find out just how much Xbox Live Marketplace drives consumers to buy the hard drive configuration. My guess is, it’s a deal-sealer.
Update, 4:56pm: Corrected an estimate of Xbox 360’s download capacity. Also, GigaOM reader Kevin C. Tofel sends along word that there will be no Zune support for new Xbox Live Videos. (Zune is essentially Microsoft’s answer to the iPod/iTunes.) “Got the official word from Microsoft and this surprises me,” he writes. “HDTV and movie content over broadband to your 360: great! No re-encoding and transport to Zune: not so great (unless you’re Apple)! I’d bet a Zune player that this will change inside of 60 to 90 days.”
Written by Wagner James Au on November 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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The latest New Yorker has a nice long profile of game designer Will Wright and his upcoming game, Spore; coupled with last month’s Wright/Spore profile from New York Times Magazine, it’s the strongest possible cultural affirmation of Wright as one of the world’s top artists in any medium. (Something gamers have known for decades, though it’s taken awhile for the rest of the world to catch up.)
These profiles are also part of a gathering storm of interest over Spore, Wright’s truly groundbreaking “god game” in which your goal as player is to shepherd your custom-designed creatures up the evolutionary ladder, from protozoa all the way to space-colonizing civilization.
Set for a mid-2007 release, it will almost certainly be a masterpiece, and expand the potential of computer games beyond measure. That plus Wright’s track record with the The Sims and Sim City games is why Spore publisher Electronic Arts has invested so much money and promotional effort on this one title. It’s also because, as The New Yorker notes, the company’s stock has declined by 30% since April, and has seen a 20% drop in overall sales from last year. In plain terms, as the article puts it, EA is “counting on Spore to help shore up its bottom line”.
That’s the strange thing, and I hate to be the first one to ask, but here goes: why is Electronic Arts risking so much on a game with so little chance of selling well?
Of course Spore will be a bestseller, easily moving hundreds of thousands of copies on the strength of Will Wright’s name alone. But EA seems to be hoping it’ll spawn a blockbuster franchise that’ll become a key revenue source for the company, the same way Wright’s Sims games and expansion packs have earned them $129 million in revenue. And it’s just implausible anything like that’s going to happen.
The Sims became a phenomenon because its dollhouse-style gameplay was immediately accessible to people outside the gamer dude demographic; it was popular especially with women and girls, and older “casual gamers” who rarely play in-depth simulation games. Spore, by contrast, involves bizarre, blobby creatures running around on alien landscapes, often killing and eating each other. (Check this video of Robin Williams riffing off it during the last E3.) And instead of being set in a suburb, or even an identifiable location, like Wrights’ SimCity, it’ll take place in prehistoric miasmas and far-off galaxies, in a gameplay arc inspired, Wright says, on Charles and Ray Eames’ famous but esoteric (1977) movie “Powers of 10”.
Revolutionary game design, sure, but sound like something you can see your kid sister or the casual gamer in the accounting department playing?
The New Yorker’s John Seabrook more or less puts this question to Electronic Arts’ chief executive Larry Probst by asking, “[H]ow do you convince a casual gamer, who is just looking for distraction, to play a game that is about evolution, city building, conquest, and interstellar travel? Probst’s answer, “You tell people it’s a Will Wright game,” does not inspire much confidence. Almost by definition, a casual gamer hasn’t heard of Will Wright, except perhaps in relation to The Sims, which Spore is decidedly nothing like. Just as worrying is the game’s lack of any true multiplayer component; instead, players will upload copies of their creatures to a central database, where they can be downloaded and enjoyed by other players. A wonderful idea to foster hardcore modder-type fandom– but again, it’s hard to see a demographically broader community of players emerging from that. (A smart move would be to re-position the game for the educational/family market, and hope it becomes a kind of Bionicles Online for boys.)
The Sims sold 3.2 million copies in the US, and about as much worldwide, but if I were to guess, Spore will ultimately sell far below those numbers– somewhere between Black and White, Peter Molyneux’s similarly-ambitious (and quirky) god game (530,000 units sold in America) and Wright’s Sim City 3000 Unlimited (1.1 million copies sold). Let’s say 750,000 units. Which would make it a giant bestseller, to be sure, but certainly not the savior of the company’s market valuation that Probst imagines it to be. Whether those numbers would financially justify the game’s 7 year production cycle or the tens of millions spent during that time, or the millions spent by EA to promote it, is hard to say, as well.
This is one prediction in particular that I hope I’m utterly wrong about. I’d love to see Spore become the first game that’s a crossover cultural phenomenon, played by everyone from kids to college professors, and Electronic Arts get rewarded for gambling its fate on one of pop culture’s few undisputed artists. But right now, at least, I’d have to say the chances of the game dominating are about as likely as a Spore creature with no teeth and stubby legs making it to the stars.
All game revenue and sales figures from Next Generation’s indispensable guide to The Top 100 PC Games.
Written by Wagner James Au on November 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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Kermitt Quirk, consult your accountant quick!
Online world entrepeneurs and gold farmers dodged the tax bullet only a couple weeks ago, when an American policymaker announced there’d be no taxing of income earned by activity in virtual worlds and MMOs. (At least any time soon.) Turns out their sighs of relief were premature, because the Australian Tax Office just laid down the law to its own country’s citizens: “If you are getting a monetary benefit then it’s not treated any differently– normal rules apply.” The ATO spokesperson even went so far to single out Second Life’s official currency by name. “The real world value of a transaction may form part of your taxable income, even if it is in Linden dollars.”
(Stop a moment and take in the full strangeness of that statement: a government official from a leading G20 nation just declared they have a taxation policy on a currency that only exists in a virtual world inhabited by subscribers from around the globe.)
Anyway, this is where Kermitt comes in, because the green-haired lizard is the Second Life avatar of Nathan Keir, a New Zealand programmer now living in Australia– which is where he created Tringo, a Tetris-meets-Bingo mini-game in SL that became so popular there, it soon dominated the culture. (Nice YouTube video of Keir demonstrating Tringo here.) It became so popular that he sold the non-SL rights to an American media company, which then went on to convert Tringo into a Gameboy Advance title. (SL subscribers retain the IP rights to their in-world creations.) There’s even talk of Tringo, the game that began in a virtual world, being turned into a TV show.
Of course, the last two spin-offs involve deals with real world companies and exchanges of actual money. The real question is what will Australian-based Second Life players like him do, now that they’re on the Ozzie taxman’s radar?
By Keir’s own estimate, he’s sold about 300 copies of Tringo for the L$ equivalent of $50– meaning a windfall of $15,000 that he’ll somehow have to figure out how to itemize on his next tax return. He’s not the only one: according to a recent article, at least 3,000 Second Life subscribers are making over $20,000 a year from their in-world activities; my educated estimate is that 5% of those earners are from Australia, which would mean 150 very confused people down under during tax time.
What happens then is anyone’s guess, but you have to think the tax boards of other developed nations will be watching what happens in Australia, and taking notes. It may actually be a boon to the economic growth of virtual worlds, to confer governmental legitimacy on their internal activity. Then again, it’ll also be a headache for the private companies that own these worlds, because when the first audit of a virtual world millionaire happens, it’ll be their server records that’ll get subpoenaed.
Written by Wagner James Au on November 2nd, 2006 with no comments.
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If you want to see how the game industry regularly acts as its own worst enemy, try and download the demo of a game that interests you. After getting several enthusiastic word-of-mouth recommendations for THQ’s Company of Heroes, a new WWII-themed real time strategy game, I went looking for the playable demo– only to find several barriers of hype and greed blocking my way.
Because downloading the demo means going to the official THQ site, and being bombarded with a loud Flash-animated action video that’s not even representative of Company’s gameplay, then clicking to the download page– and getting assaulted by another Flash barrage.
And when you finally get to the download section, you’re still not ready to get the demo, because that page directs you to three external download servers run by gamer sites, CNet’s Gamespot, and IGN’s Fileplanet and 3D Gamers.
Which would be fine, but after clicking any of those links, you’re still not able to get the demo yet, because like web pornographers, CNet and IGN have a subscription gate waiting for you there, so you can pay for the pleasure of using their precious servers.
To be sure, you can find the Company of Heroes demo on a free download server, if you look hard enough and you’re willing to wait in a server queue. But what happens if you give up before then?
As we know now, THQ probably loses a sale. Because according to a new study by leading market research firm NPD, playable demos are the key to selling games.
While company and gamer sites inform consumers and advertising is a factor, NPD told GameDaily Biz recently, “they are less important when the consumer gets closer to making the actual purchase decision, when other factors such as being able to take the game for a ‘test drive’ at an in-store location, online, or at a friend or relative’s house, matter much more.”
But the thing is, the experience I described with THQ is totally typical. Instead of making demos freely and immediately available, publishers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing and promotion, and develop effects-heavy sites– while treating distribution of the actual demo as a pale afterthought they outsource to gamer sites, which in turn use it as marketing for their own revenue streams.
“While various means of allowing consumers to test drive games have long been an important part of most publishers’ marketing mixes,” NPD’s Anita Frazier told GameDaily, “the findings of our study now show that it is of particular importance for attracting the broader gaming audience.”
That’s an understatement. Smart publishers should think about drastically cutting their advertising budget, and invest that cash where it really matters: developing quality games and quality demos of their games, and just as key, paying for cost-effective, broadband solutions that don’t require subscriptions or several hoops to jump through. Because far as I can tell, the only people who benefit from the way things work now aren’t the game publishers or their gamer customers, but media companies like CNet and IGN, who also charge publishers millions in advertising– then charge gamers when they try to download the games featured in their ads and advertorial. In the era of broadband, they’re an unnecessary middle man charging tolls that don’t need to be paid.
Written by Wagner James Au on October 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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Unless you’re a hardcore gamer, you’ve probably never heard of Guild Wars, and that would be strange, because after World of Warcraft, it’s arguably the biggest success story in MMORPG gaming. Its 2.5 million player base makes it second only to Warcraft, but it’s not even listed on MMOGchart.com, the online world tracker that’s become, if only by default, the industry standard. Guild Wars isn’t strictly an MMO (the publisher, NCsoft, refers to it as a CORPG, for “competitive online role-playing game”), and that might partly explain the relative dearth of attention: the industry isn’t sure how to categorize it. Then again, the lack of monthly subscriptions is probably another part of the problem: the industry isn’t sure how Guild Wars makes money, or is nervous that they do.
But how exactly can a company profit from a game with millions of players online, without charging regular fees? That’s something I wanted to know too. To get that answer, I talked with Robert Garriott, CEO and President of NCsoft of North America (and brother to Ultima creator Richard “Lord British” Garriott), and asked.
Guild Wars from the Server Side
When NCSoft acquired Arena Net, Guild Wars’ developer, Garriott and his team discerned an audience not being served by the traditional subscription-based MMO. (“There’s a large number of people who don’t want to pay 15 dollars a month”, as he puts it.) Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to capture that niche, with community and help tools that minimized the need for frequent customer service– a key money sink for MMOs. By Garriott’s estimate, Guild Wars incurs 80% less support costs than NCsoft’s more traditional MMOs, like their Lineage series. There are no Game Masters in Guild Wars, wandering around the world settling disputes and helping players—and charging NCsoft by the hour.
The other cost-saving feature comes from economy of bandwidth. MMO players know all about long download times, when a game has an update, with patches that often exceed 100 megabytes, and thousands of players simultaneously piling on, to get it. (“It can cost us a million dollars for an update patch,” Garriott says of other NCSoft MMOs. “You peak when you release a giant download.”) By contrast, Guild Wars streams its updates in small chunks, depending on what part of the world you’re in. “Instead of having peaks of bandwidth usage… [the update] streams it evenly over time, so the costs don’t peak.” Numerous areas and quests in the world are “instantiated”, meaning specially created only for a small group of players, and that also minimizes bandwidth, since it means tracking less player data across the wider world. Garriott estimates 100,000 people play Guild Wars across the US and EU at any given time, and 1.5-2 million total every month—and still, connection costs remain manageable.
MMO as Book Series
But how does NCsoft make money without monthly subscriptions? Here, Garriott likens the Guild Wars revenue model not to other MMOs, but a series of fantasy novels. The game comes with numerous sequels and expansions, which add to the world and the larger narrative. “You buy one book, you buy number one, number two… We figure people will read all of the chapters.” The risk is that a player buys just one, but, says Garriott, “If we can provide a compelling enough game, people want to play through the whole game.” As of a few months ago, 2.5 million people have bought Guild Wars. (The next standalone edition, Nightfall, goes on sale this week.)
Guild Lessons
So far, most MMOs based in the US/EU are monthly subscriber-based and adhere fairly closely to design elements innovated by early online worlds like Everquest and Ultima Online. Robert Garriott’s fear is too many developers are rushing to recreate World of Warcraft, and will end up with twenty imitations that don’t grow the market. “People should be taking risks to do different things and try to expand the market and business model and game design,” he says. If Guild Wars keeps succeeding, they may have to.
Written by Wagner James Au on October 27th, 2006 with no comments.
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So it looks like Master Chief will have to keep waiting in the lobby a bit longer. The gruff cyborg hero of the Halo series (the crown jewel of Microsoft’s Xbox consoles) was set to star in a film adaptation produced by Lord of the Rings auteur Peter Jackson, in a deal Microsoft signed in 2005 with both Fox and Universal Studios.
(In a display of adorably geeky charm– or total ballsy arrogance– Microsoft put their approved screenplay up for bid by sending copies through couriers dressed up in Master Chief’s gleaming battle armor, who’d then sit uncomfortably in the studio foyer, waiting for executives to finish reading the script.) In a statement released last Friday, Microsoft reported that Universal wanted to renegotiate financial terms, and rather than do that, Microsoft trudged out of the deal altogether, sniffing (with a hint of hurt peevishness), “We are already in discussions with potential partners who recognize the value of the ‘Halo’ brand.”
That Universal balked is no suprise: with an estimated budget already pegged at $145 million, the project would have to earn over $350 million at the box office, to break even. (Rule of Hollywood thumb: a movie needs to gross 2.5 times its budget, to become profitable.) The economic track record for game adaptations is unrelentingly mediocre (except for the first Tomb Raider movie), and the Halo movie’s closest precedent, 2005’s Doom, took in a pathetic $55 million worldwide.
The real mystery is why Microsoft is still plowing ahead. Has anyone bothered to tell them a Halo movie must be one of the most ill-inconceived film projects ever?
I say this as someone who still enjoys playing the PC version of the first game, but as a movie project, the plot is basically Aliens slapped on top of several Star Trek: Next Generation episodes (just with cooler, Biblical-sounding names), and little appeal outside its hardcore fanbase. And that’s not even the worst of its problems, to wit: The protagonist is a faceless killing machine with no personality who wears an opaque helmet through the whole thing. It’s as if Microsoft decided that basic, time-tested Hollywood storytelling rules don’t apply to them. (For example, that a hero should be likeable, sympathetic, and someone that an A list star would want to play– which usually involves, you know, being able to see their face.)
There has to be an explanation for Microsoft’s stubborness, other than a desire to go Hollywood (a common affliction among game developers, many of whom secretly yearn to see their work cross over into the more respected, glamorous medium.) The most likely explanation, I think, is that box office success is not Microsoft’s main goal with the Halo movie; instead, they need the movie to promote the Xbox 360.
Think about it: Set for release in Summer 2008 release, the Halo movie would come out a few months after Halo 3 (scheduled to go on sale in the 2007 holiday season), with the DVD available just in time for the 2008 holidays. All this would come at a time when Xbox 360’s current head-start advantage in the next generation console wars had long ended. A Halo movie would keep the Xbox momentum going at that most crucial time, while providing promotion and content throughout. (Think Halo movie trailers and excerpts downloadable only on Xbox Live, the Halo movie DVD packaged with Halo 3, and so on.)
If that theory is right, it doesn’t matter that much to Microsoft if the only people who watch a Halo movie are Xbox gamers, and it loses money at the box office. For the most part, the console market is already a loss leader competition; all Microsoft has to do is find a studio gullible enough to help them fund and distribute it. That, and an actor who’s willing to wear a face-obscuring outfit for a cult sci-fi project with limited mass market appeal. I’m thinking John Travolta.
Written by Wagner James Au on October 24th, 2006 with no comments.
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The other chainmail shoe finally dropped. After years of wondering when this moment would come, the United States government has officially turned its giant head toward the cottage industry of “real money trading”, the exchange of virtual goods and services in online worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life for real cash.
News of this was first reported over the weekend by Reuters’ Adam Pasick– who is also, appropriately enough, chief of Reuters’ new bureau in Second Life– and it quickly spread through the MMO/gaming blogosphere. After all, gamers and game academics have long been waiting for this moment to happen, when the government finally realized that thousands of people were making some or all of their real life living from the buying and selling of virtual currency, “power-leveled” characters, and other goods and services that make life in an alternate online world worth living.
“Right now we’re at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise — taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth,” Dan Miller, the senior economist for the House of Represenatives’ Joint Economic Committee told Reuters. This is quite a leap in sophistication for a government official; only a year ago, technology journalist Julian Dibbell visited his local IRS office to ask them how he should pay taxes on the money he’d made on eBay selling magic items from Ultima Online, only to have the flummoxed tax man respond with, “That’s so weird.”
But now, the House’s top economic expert is speculating that “the law has fallen (behind) because you can have a virtual asset and virtual capital gains, but there’s no mechanism by which you’re taxed on this stuff”, and that’s no abstract concern to, say, the several thousand Second Life residents who make $20,000 or more annually by selling virtual goods and services for the in-world currency of Linden Dollars, which they trade on the open market for US$. (Especially since many of them make that through Second Life casinos and betting games, which the government could conceivably see as an end-run around the recent law against Internet-based gambling.)
Are their tax-free days about to end?
Enter Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ) to the rescue. In a follow-up posted Wednesday, Reuters notes that the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee has declared that “the goal of the forthcoming JEC study is to help lawmakers understand the issues involved and head off any premature attempt to impose a tax on virtual economies” [emph. mine.], and went so far to publish a press release on the House of Representatives’ site, “Virtual Economies Need Clarification, Not More Taxes“.
Maybe Rep. Saxton is just pandering to the all-powerful gold farming lobby during an election season, but even the initial report left ample hints that there wasn’t too much to worry about, any time soon. Reading between the lines, I tend to suspect House economist Dan Miller is secretly a hardcore gamer (”[he] became interested in the issue when he began exploring some of the virtual worlds in his free time”), and understandably wants to incorporate his off-hours fun with his otherwise dry occupation. Most other staffers, he admits, “have trouble wrapping their head around [the topic]”. So given the glacial pace of democratic deliberation, I’d wait a few years before itemizing your Elvish armor inventory in Turbo Tax.
Written by Wagner James Au on October 20th, 2006 with no comments.
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When I first wrote about Steam, the broadband distribution and gaming network of Valve Software, I described it as an alternate approach to traditional game publishing, avoiding as it did the war for retail store shelf space, and the painfully outdated approach of burning data on a CD, mummifying it in that annoying cellophane wrapper no one can take off, and cramming it into a big cardboard box.
That was in July, and at the time, most of the games available through Steam were Valve titles (with a smattering of independent games.) Without any large publishers selling their games for download via Steam, it seemed destined to remain a Valve operation and for that reason, the industry seemed tremendously short-sighted and unwilling to let go of obsolete distribution models.
Since then, however, things have been rapidly changing.
Publishers are now jumping on board the Steam train, with casual publishing giant Pop Cap launching a raft of titles there a month ago, joining smaller hardcore game publishers like Strategy First, Monte Cristo, and Majesco, all of which now have titles on the network.
And reported last Thursday, they’re being joined by Activision, one of the oldest and most renowned publishers in the industry, home to blockbuster games like Pitfall, Doom, and The Movies. Starting later this month, Activision will put titles from its enormously popular WWII-themed Call of Duty series on the Steam network, most of them at discount rates.
That Activision is doing this at all represents a small milestone in the game industry’s slow, peevish entrance into the era of broadband. It’s just strange (and a little frustrating) that it took so long.
“Digital distribution has become commonplace in just about all forms of entertainment,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi tells me by e-mail, “so it’s only natural that gaming be a part of that movement– what’s surprising is that gaming wasn’t first. That aside, we’re delighted to be working with all these companies and welcome others who’d like to give Steam a try.”
What’s more, says Lombardi, “[A]t least two more large publishers will be announced by end of the calendar year.”
Written by Wagner James Au on October 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, Chuck E Cheese, and more than a dozen other game-related ventures (including many lovable duds like AG the Talking Bear) plans to open the first of his game-themed restaurant outlets called uWink Bistro in Woodland Hills, California this morning.
Bushnell spent $10 million over 4 years on building the chain and technology, which is a group of restaurants where customers play games and order food from touch-screen tables, which are all connected over a network. It sounds a little too Max Headroom 80’s-style for me, but what would you expect from the guy who created Pong — and who could have predicted huge mechanical rats could sell so much pizza?
Bushnell no longer owns any part of the publicly-traded Chuck E Cheese — he left when it was in bankruptcy - and now is a profitable restaurant chain traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Perhaps this is his way to get in on the missed action. I interviewed Bushnell earlier this year for Red Herring and he said uWink emerged out of his belief that games can ease social interaction. He thinks games are such a cure-all he plans to open game-themed schools in low-income areas (really, no joke).
He’s also one of my favorite entrepreneur interviews ever — he has one crazy idea after the next, his ideas are completely nontraditional and unfundable by VCs, and yet he has had a few large successes. He sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for $28 million. Though he also told me he regrets selling Atari too early and seems to miss out on the pay outs of the really big wins. I have a feeling uWink won’t be one of those massive hits, but if anyone in the area has a chance to check it out, send us your thoughts and photos.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on October 17th, 2006 with no comments.
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The last time we saw Marvel Comics and game developer Cryptic Studios in the same sentence, the former was suing the latter, on the fairly dubious grounds that Cryptic’s popular, caped crimefighter-themed City of Heroes MMO supposedly encouraged copyright infringement. (Since its subscribers could create characters similar to Captain America, the Hulk, and other titans in the Marvel pantheon.)
But IP lawsuits are so 2004, and after an undisclosed settlement agreement last year, the latest news is win-win for both companies, announced just last week: Cryptic will be the developer for Marvel Universe Online, an upcoming MMO for Vista and Xbox 360 that’ll incorporate characters, settings, and storylines from their vast comic library.
At first glance, the project’s success seems like a sure bet. With a huge, generation-spanning readership, and several blockbuster movie spinoffs, including Spider-Man and X-Men, how could an online game version fail?
Trouble is, it can. In fact, I’d be very skeptical, because the track record for MMOs based on non-game IP is pretty dicey. Star Wars Galaxies performed moderately well at first, with a few hundred thousand subscribers at peak– but before its 2003 launch, experts predicted it could be the first US-based MMO to break the one million subscriber mark. (And does anyone even remember Matrix Online, let alone play it?) The fundamental stumbling block seems to be a mismatch of medium and desire.
If you love the heroes of a film or comic franchise, then you probably want to be them, or at least interact with them on a regular basis. But doing that’s simply not feasible in an online game played simultaneously by several thousands of people– especially if you’re trying to capture both an audience of hardcore gamers who enjoy roleplaying in the game’s universe for long stretches of time, and more casual players who just want a quick, action-oriented experience.
Sony Online Entertainment learned this the hard way with Star Wars Galaxies, and a game based on Marvel comics is sure to endure similar (insurmountable?) challenges. Can you create a superhero game where everyone wants to be Wolverine, but no one wants to be Wolverine’s apprentice claw sharpener?
Written by Wagner James Au on October 2nd, 2006 with no comments.
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As blogged a couple weeks ago, the Nintendo Wii will support Web browsing via Opera, with Nintendo’s Perrin Kaplan suggesting that users would “download an Opera browser using Wii points and surf the webâ€; since then, the story’s gotten even sweeter. The Norway firm behind Opera just announced that their browser will be free for Wii owners until next June.
Videogamesblogger even posted a cool YouTube demo of the Wii-powered Web in action, while reporting that “[t]he Wii remote control will also be an integral part of browsing, allowing users to intuitively control the Web with their Wii remotes.” This is confirmation to a specific point I had speculated on earlier, that the wand-like Wii control could help usher in a new era of the Web as a medium, moving beyond the mouse-and-keyboard controls that have been the standard for over 10 years, and toward something like a 3D Web.
(Why just point and click on an Internet that looks like disparate pages of data, when you can wave your wand to explore a Net that looks more like, well, a videogame? And wouldn’t a generation raised on games prefer that over a PC-driven Web, anyway?) Nintendo has promised more information on Wii’s Web capabilities closer to the console’s November launch, and I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see how much (or how little) the console drives the future of Web development.
Written by Wagner James Au on September 27th, 2006 with no comments.
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Wii serves a million in its first month; Sony admits defeat and sells its game division to… Microsoft? I’m writing this from the old town square of Warsaw, Poland, where the cobblestone courtyard puts you in mind of a World War II movie — and the throughput on the wireless hotspot nearby is better than decent. I’m still debating the social value of always being connected, even from a former communist country so recently impoverished. Still, it does let me track the latest developments in the battle to become the next generation console of choice — and by default, the dominant broadband interface for the world’s living rooms.
And from where I’m sitting, it’s still not looking good for the Playstation 3. According to Ars Technica, Nintendo plans to have one million units of their Wii console on the shelves for their November launch. This is in marked contrast to the 300,000 units of the PS3 that Sony plans to have out the gate. In further contrast, Nintendo expects to make a profit on each sale, while Sony’s console comes with the expensive Blu-Ray and last-ditch discounts that’ll keep it in the red for some time. So grim do Sony’s prospects look, that an analyst pseudonymed “Evermore” has blogged a detailed and tightly-reasoned case that the company will soon find itself forced to sell its game division to Microsoft.
Generally I’m reluctant to give much credence to an anonymous blogger on a girl gamer site, but Evermore offers an extensively-sourced argument. And even more key, since her post has been Slashdotted, there’s a definite likelihood that it could become, through the wonderful feedback loop of the Web, received wisdom among gamers. Perception becomes reality, and the bottom line, and a significant number of them pass on picking up a PS3 this year.
Then again, I am blogging this from the heart of a city devastated by the Nazis and ravaged by the Soviets, but now has wireless Internet and a burgeoning economy, so it’s a place where anything seems possible.
Written by Wagner James Au on September 26th, 2006 with no comments.
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If three instances of a phenomenon equals a trend, then the unstoppable trend of the PC game business today is broadband distribution — from Valve’s Steam and distribution of episodic gaming, to niche/indy game downloads through Manifesto, to the recent entrance of telecom colossus Verizon into this space, with their Games on Demand service, and their PlayLinc gamer network (in partnership with Super Computer International.)
It’s a long time in coming, but it’s as if the industry suddenly scratched its collective head a few months ago and asked, “Why are we spending so much money and effort burning our content onto plastic disks and cramming them into cardboard boxes and begging capricious-but-powerful retail giants to carry them on their shelves?” Not to mention trying to convince game buyers to spend an hour or two driving to a store, when more and more of them can often just download the exact same game in the same amount of time.
Verizon is among the latest and largest to capitalize on the logic of broadband-based game distribution, which probably makes that business model’s ascendance unstoppable. The games-on-demand model is also a way for Verizon to coax subscribers onto its fiber network. All that in mind, I recently fired off some questions to Jason Henderson, Verizon’s Games Product Manager with Verizon, to get his take on the company’s entrance onto the playing field.
Tell me a bit about Games on Demand.
Jason Henderson: [It’s] like Netflix; I pay a flat fee and get unlimited access to PC titles. The Unlimited package ($14.99/mo) has all genres, all kinds, so there’s everything from Unreal Tournament to Bejeweled, including all the kid titles– it’s the all-you-can-eat package. Family Place ($7.99/mo) is a “safe garden” of only kid-appropriate games and games rated E… then there’s Quick Pack, $4.99/mo for unlimited access to the kinds of casual, lunch-break games. Games on Demand is a rental model, for those who prefer that over purchasing, as at Verizon Arcade, where we sell casual games.
Give me some background on the infrastructure Playlinc uses, in terms of bandwidth, concurrency, and server hardware.
JH: PlayLinc uses a proprietary server-launching technology that allows us to create thousands of dynamic game instances on one computer at a time. It’s a new, different model from the most common model, where static servers go up and take network resources constantly.
Is there any particular advantage to having Verizon broadband before getting PlayLinc, or vice versa?
JH: For accessing hosted servers and playing multiplayer games, you should have a great experience even if you access it by the last mile from another ISP. So you can use PlayLinc and get your broadband from Time Warner. In fact, we want cable users.
But if you’re using Verizon, you’ll be closer to the network so you may have less hops, and we pride ourselves on speed and reliability, which are key requirements for gamers.
Certainly if you have FiOS there’s a benefit in hosting games. Hosting a game relies on upload speeds– how quickly I can send information back to my players. So if I’m hosting a PC or console game on my own machine through GAN, which allows me to have a LAN party across the Net, the much-higher upload speeds on FiOS (2mbps, typically, compared to 720kbps) will create a better gaming experience.
What demo