Top 10 Gaming Trends 2000 - 2009, Top 10 predictions for next 10 years

So it's the last day of the first decade of the millennium. Er...wait. The millennium actually started Jan 1, 2001 so the last day of the first decade would be Dec 31, 2010, but since we like years that end in 0, why not do a top 10 gaming trends of the past 10 years. In the 1990's, the biggest development in gaming was the advent of 3D (not the James Cameron presents James Cameron's Avatar...by James Cameron kind of 3D but the Doom/Quake 3D graphics kind). So what were the big trends and developments in the gaming industry from 2000 to 2009?

Here they are in no particular order:

1) Microsoft formally enters console gaming market (Nov 2001)
With the launch of the original Xbox by the largest business software publisher, video games increasingly got the attention of mainstream and business news outlets such as the NYT, WSJ and Forbes. While gaming still had the (mis)perception of being a teen male anti-social basement activity, Wall Street's sudden increased interest in the gaming business contributed to the blossoming of the industry in the first half of the decade. And when the industry maintained its growth through the 2001/2002 recession, the industry was dubiously dubbed "recession resistant."

2) Grand Theft Auto III (Launched Oct 2001)
A month before Microsoft unzipped the fly on the Xbox, Sony and Rockstar launched the biggest brand re-invention in the history of gaming. While GTA I and II had a good following, GTA III was the start of the action/driving hybrid genre and to this day is the genre's dominant brand. For a long time any other game that tried to copy its gameplay was dubbed a "GTA clone." Comparatively, early first person shooters after Doom were dubbed "Doom clones," though the genre grew so fast that new brands were considered new FPS games, not just clones. In the action/driving genre however, the "GTA clone" label stuck for a very long time since no other brand has been able to surpass it. GTA III set the bar for M-rated controversy, depth of story telling and cinematic writing and acting, particularly with 2008's GTA IV. The brand's impact on popular culture is clear, even if that impact has been portrayed as largely villainous and corrupting of youth. It has a huge global following today, though it does face challenges in terms of development costs and consistent revenue capture.

3) Sony's PlayStation 2 (Launched Oct 2000)
Unlike the Xbox launch in 2001, Sony's launch of the original PlayStation in 1995 didn't get quite as much mainstream media attention, though it probably should have since the PS1 was obviously in the top 10 gaming developments of the 1990s. But the PS2 was another huge force in the rising of gaming the last 10 years, and a major reason had nothing to with games. The machine played DVDs right out of the box. You didn't need to buy an extra remote (though many people did) as was required with the Xbox DVD player. Many people even used the PS2 as their first and primary DVD player. But the other thing Sony got right was games. Lots of games. Lots of good games. While the Xbox was mainly about the Halo franchise and some other shooters, the PS2 had huge successes in many genres. It was a truly mass-market platform and it established Sony as the king of gaming as well as provided the bulk of the corporate profits to the massive Sony empire.

4) World of Warcraft (Launched Nov 2004)
Back in 1999 when I worked in the CPG-food business as a financial database developer, one of my more senior colleagues was able to get two extra PCs in his secluded cubicle for "systems development." The I.T. guys didn't know one was outfitted with a high end Voodoo card so he could play games. The reason he did this was so he could play EverQuest as much as possible. I didn't understand why he was so addicted to it, as I was strictly a Half-Life / QuakeIII / Unreal Tournament gamer and the concept of role playing that didn't require fast reflexes and 3D spacial reasoning in the same way as a shooter did was about as interesting to me as Lord of the Rings is to my wife. But World of Warcraft changed all that. Its completeness of vision, depth, open ended story and beautiful art design finally snagged me some time in 2007, years after it launched. Today I have a level 80 toon who is now in semi-retirement.

Before WoW, a leading MMO (such as EQ) could sustain perhaps 400,000 subscribers, with a monthly subscription curve featuring a growth period that lasted roughly a 12 to 18 months, then stabilized for a few years, then slowly declined. After WoW cemented itself in the MMO landscape by late 2005, no other game could come close to its numbers and the typical MMO subscription curve fundamentally changed to (a) very rapid uptake as users flocked to the free trial followed by (b) very rapid drop off as a large portion of the users went back to playing WoW and (c) a long plateau period that had a gradual decline, ultimately leading to (d) closure of the game. WoW didn't just sustain more than a million subscribers, it sustained multi-millions in each of North America, Europe and Asia. Popular belief is that it peaked at around 12 to 12.5 million worldwide users, however the 2009 operator changeover in China led to a months long outage that definitely impacted the total. Even so, because subscribers in China pay only a small fraction of what NA and EU users pay, the profitability of the game for Activision-Blizzard hasn't been hugely impacted. In short, WoW redefined what an MMO could be and will probably be the permanent gold standard in MMO execution.

5) Transformation of PC gaming
This is a bit of a misleading trend because PC gaming has always been under constant flux given the constant growth of underlying hardware capabilities combined with its open architecture for indy, underground, mod, exploratory and experimental game design. It is also directly connected to a few of the other trends listed here. The biggest PC gaming sub-trend of late is the frequent squabbling about whether PC gaming is dying. Certainly retail game sales of box PC gaming product has been on the decline due to (1) growth of consoles in general, (2) more specifically the acceptance of shooters on consoles (thank you, Halo), (3) piracy and (4) digital distribution. But the decline of retail PC games sales does not mean PC gaming as a business is declining. World of Warcraft and most other MMOs are played exclusively on PCs and they generate huge collective revenues. Major PC brands like Half-Life now generate more revenues from sales on Steam than they do at retail stores. Downloadble PC gaming content provide more revenues, as well as virtual item purchases. Let's also not forget black market MMO gold farming; it doesn't contribute to publisher/developer revenues, but certainly it is a cottage industry on the fringe of gaming. See trend #10 below for more...

6) Nintendo's Wii (Launched Nov 2006)
By now it's clear that major gaming trends are often tied to platforms, which should make sense because what do we picture when someone says "video games?" We often think of the physical hardware we actually use. The Wii was the biggest transformation in terms of how we play and who played. It is not the first gaming system to feature motion sensing (remember the Nintendo PowerGlove?), it's just the first to matter. Perhaps it didn't exactly inspire Microsoft's idea for Natal, but it certainly proved you don't need to have ordinary controls to have extraordinary platform success. As for the content itself on the Wii, that's a different problem and as of now, Nintendo is per usual the strongest publisher on its own platform.


7) Rising Costs of Traditional Game Development
While blockbuster games like Halo 3, Modern Warfare 2 and GTA IV generated hundreds of millions (even billions) of dollars of cumulative global sales, they also cost up to $100 million each produce. And then there is the marketing cost. For MW2, the global launch budget was said to be over $200 million. The problem in the industry, particularly in the era of the PS3 and Xbox 360, is that the minimum quality bar for creating content for these platforms for traditional shooter, action, RPG and most other major gaming genres is now so high that an ever increasing number of games will not be profitable. They simply can't sell enough units to cover their fixed costs. Team sizes have grown, research and development has become more in depth, technology and infrastructure costs have grown accordingly, and then there are the licensing fees that so many publishers have to pay to get all those movie, music, TV and sports games made... There is a reason why there has been so much consolidation and publisher/developer closures. Back in the 80s a few people in a garage could build a complete game in a couple months. Now typical PS3 or Xbox 360 games take two years and a team of over 100 developers, and that's if everything goes smoothly which rarely ever happens.

8) Death of mobile phone gaming and birth of iPhone gaming
Early this decade when mobile phones in the US started getting color screens, big research firms made the tour through the mobile phone service providers with those graphs that said how mobile gaming would generate $186 billion per second per user and grow at 50% per year up through 2015. Okay, maybe not that much but all the arrows on the charts shown to industry executives pointed up, figuring that mobile phones would eventually saturate teens and everyone from Wall Street traders to soccer moms to high school druggies would play games on their devices. But what they didn't understand was that the devices were way behind the curve compared to devices in Europe and Japan where they were seeing higher mobile gaming penetration rates. And oversees much of mobile gaming occurred on trains and buses where commuters were actually able to play, whereas we're too busy driving and talking or texting rather than playing. Finally, there were too many phones with different operating systems, screen formats, keypad interfaces and other differences to make porting a game feasible. In fact, porting a game to a plethora of platforms (which were constantly changing anyway) cost more than actually producing games. Despite the problems, publishers like Electronic Arts made major moves in the space such as acquiring Los Angeles based mobile publisher Jamdat for $680 million in 2006. But mobile consumers simply weren't playing, much less buying, for all the reasons stated above. So much for the charts.

The mobile game industry transformed when in June of 2007 Apple released the iPhone. With a revolutionary touch screen interface that was actually easy to use, connected to iTunes and very slick marketing, the product delivered and essentially fixed every single issue of the fractionalized mobile handset market. By the end of 2009 roughly 130,000 iPhone apps have been released to be sold to over 30 million iPhones. Roughly one third of the apps are games with many more classified as entertainment apps with high crossover between them.

The iPhone will have a huge long term impact on gaming, though it may not necessarily compete direct with DSi and PSP gamers, or so the thinking goes. Initially most analysts believed the iPhone would be a separate market from traditional gaming handhelds which were mostly targeted at kids and teens. A sophisticated mobile device like an iPhone with Internet capabilities would be more than most parents would spend on their children. As a gamer and iPhone owner since Nov 2008, I believe I have personally spent at least $50 on a variety of iPhone games, some only 99 cents, some up to $6.99, and many that were free. Has it cannibalized my gaming on other platforms? Probably a little, though I don't know if it has yet cannibalized my spending on those other platforms. But there is data that suggests the download volume on iPod Touches was significantly higher than on iPhones on Christmas day and the day after, implying that the iPod Touch was a very popular gift this year. The buzz I have heard is that every kid now wants an iPod Touch (or in fact, an iPhone) mainly for the gaming capabilities. That alone implies the platform is an increasing threat to the DS and PSP markets. There is much more to discuss about what the iPhone has done and how it will continue to shape the market, but let's leave it at that for now.

9) Guitar Hero (Launched Nov 2005)
Top line gaming industry revenues grew significantly from 2007, even more so in 2008. On the hardward side, the majority of that growth came from sales of the Wii and DS. On the software side, almost all of the growth came from the Music/Dance games. The genre saw the single biggest two year growth of any genre in the decade going from less than $100 million in the US in 2003 to nearly $2 billion in 2008. Once dominated by the niche DDR games, Guitar Hero ushered in a new way to experience music that made simulated guitar accessible and enjoyable. Now everyone could get a taste of what it is like to be a rock star even if they had no musical talent whatsoever. Trust me, I fall into that category. While Guitar Hero's growth exploded and enticed a very worthy competitor in the Rock Band franchise, it was the original brand that tapped into the hidden rock fantasies of millions of gamers that created the phenomenon. I find it more interesting that it gave non-gamers a reason to take notice of gaming as medium to become something they are not likely to become in real life. This is the same thing "core" gamers experience in an RPG or shooter or a sports game or a racing sim and so forth. In essence, Guitar Hero helped to grow gaming by bring in more gamers who would have never touched a controller.

10) Digital Distribution
This trend was covered a bit already in #5 above. As stated, Steam (launched in Sep 2003) had a huge impact on PC gaming drawing the vast majority of digital distribution dollars. Developers that have published their games on Steam that are not Valve have suggested that Valve has such a stranglehold on the PC digital distribution market that Steam should really be divested from it to prevent a conflict of interest. While that may be debatable, the significance of Steam and other digital distribution platforms is not. PC gaming shelf space at retail has shrunk to very small levels. The big question is when and how this will impact the console market. Already you can buy arcade games, older catalog games or otherwise "small" games on Xbox Live, PSN or the Wii store...and even the DSi and now the PSPGo. Sure, only Xbox Live has had any significant success and it's possible the PSPGo may even "fail" as a platform. The problem with digital distribution on consoles is bandwidth and local storage size. With high end games consuming as much as 10 gigs or more (and maybe beyond the capacity of a single BluRay disc) storing all that data on console hard drives is a huge concern, not to mention the time it takes to download and the fact that not all consoles are connected to the internet. But multi-gig games such as Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft are available in download only form on the PC with clever "background" download capabilities via Steam etc., so we know that it is possible on a console assuming the space issue is solved. The next decade is poised to see a viable hybrid model between retail and digital distribution for all platforms. And if we go back the iPhone, it is a defacto gaming platform with exclusive digital distribution because the bandwidth and storage issues were solved before the platform was even released.

And now to the predictions for 2010 through 2019. These will be brief:

1) On the heals of #10 above, digital distribution will take off on console, aided by not only ever increasing roll out of broadband, but the advent of terabyte sized solid state hard drives for gaming consoles. This won't really happen until around 2014.

2) By 2011, on-demand gaming (Gaikai, OnLine, Otoy, etc) will deliver what it promises (at least for simpler games) but business models will be tough. Things like WoW and Call of Duty will face big technical hurdles that won't get resolved until a few yeas later, if at all.

3) In 2010 the iPhone will get accessories that make console like controls for FPS and Action games feasible. True cannibalization of traditional console gaming will follow though it won't be as crushing as some people fear.

4) More standardized development tools will emerge to help drive down costs and contribute to a true indy games movement akin to what happened to indy films in the last decade. This will be a slow process but necessary if the industry is to survive.

5) Natal will be very popular when it hits in late 2010, but it won't be as amazing as everyone thinks it will be. Sure it will be fun and offer new gameplay, but people will still want to play games using their existing controller. Take a lesson from Tony Hawk: Ride on that one.

6) Brazil and India will become huge mobile gaming markets once the iPhone and Google phones take off there.

7) HTC will become a strong second tier mobile platform behind iPhone by mid 2011. There will be a few solid games but iPhone will still be the mobile gaming platform of choice.

8) A movie based on a video game property will will a technical Oscar and at least a nomination for writing, acting or directing by 2017. (Wow, did I just predict that?)

9) World of Warcraft will slip to a mere 8 million global users by late 2012 and go flat at 6 million until 2014 when Blizzard has its next MMO ready.

10) A major presidential candidate in 2016 will have a history of playing online shooter and MMO games in the 1990s.

Best Bundles of Fun

So 2009 is going to be a bad year for video games, at least relative to 2008. I'm sure other industries are playing tiny violins given the amazing overall industry growth since 2000 with CAGR since then somewhere close to 12 or 13%. Ok that number may be down by year end to something like 10% or less, but still that's not bad. In the long run (ie, hopefully 2010) things will turn up, even if an ever increasing percentage of sales goes digital and away from retail. We (DFC) made some interesting forecasts about exactly that.

Meanwhile, every holiday season retailers offer bundles of consoles and game products specifically manufactured by 1st parties. For example, this November saw the release of exclusive Xbox 360 Elite Modern Warfare 2 bundles that was coceived of in a partnership between Microsoft and Activision. This year also saw a PS3 Slim with both Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank games. The consumer is used to these official bunndles at specialty gaming and big box retailers like Gamestop and Best Buy.

Then there are the distribution retailers - meaning retailers that buy through distributors rather than directly from manufacturers - that make their own bundles. This means they get games, get consoles and somehow bundle them all together with shrink wrap, duct tape, glue or whatever. When the Wii was new, many mom and pop type retailers were selling Wii consoles with an extra Wii-mote plus five or six games for an incredible price of over $1000. That's like Ebay pricing. As time went on and the high markup aftermarket for next gen consoles died off, these absurd bundles disappeared from stores, too.

But all along some larger distributor retailers, particularly Fry's on the West Coast, continued with their own custom assembled bundles though with reasonable pricing where the bundle might actually make sense to buy. Best Buy, however, always went with the official manufacturer offerings and only offered the standard bundles.

That is until now.

In the days before Christmas in Best Buy I discovered all three 1st party manufacturers had custom bundles held together by big rubber bands. Each of the first party had at least one bundle and for Best Buy, this looked a step closer to the distribution retailer type "at store shrink wrap" variety of bundle. I'm sure Best Buy funded these and probably got official backing from each 1st party to do so, but it's just interesting that this is the first time I've seen the leading electronics specialty store do this. At the right you can see the Xbox 360 retailer bundle offering an extra controller which was also offered at other retailers. The only difference here was that Best Buy was throwing in a $50 Best Buy gift card. To most gamers or games shoppers this is as good as cash. Also notice that the start of the bundle is actually an official Microsoft manufactured bundle of an Xbox 360 console with two games, LEGO Batman and Disney's racing game Pure.



Next up is a Sony PS3 bundle. In the next photo we see a new PS3 Slim (120gb) combined with a second DualShock 3 controller, an HDMI cable and a Rocketfish PS3 Wired Headset...all for only $389.96. The flyer even tells you you will save $15. Hmm...that doesn't sound like the greatest of savings considering to really utilize this you would need (1) a high likelihood of a second person playing next to you, (2) a high definition TV with HDMI inputs and (3) a need to play online multiplayer games where you want to talk to the other players. So this implies the ideal consumer of this bundle is either (a) a sports gamer or (b) someone with enough money to have a good enough television to support HDMI or (c) someone who is really into online shooters...or possibly sports...again... In any event, would saving $15 persuade you to buy this bundle? If you are really a cost conscious PS3 shopper - and if you are considering buying one at this point in the PS3 life cycle you are a defacto cost conscious PS3 shopper - then you might take pause at reading how you can save $15 with the bundle and instead consider you could save more if you un-bundle what you don't need. If you don't ever play with anyone else in the same room on the same console, the extra controller is useless and negates value of the bundle for you right there. Or if you don't have an HDMI capable TV, same thing. The good thing about this bundle is that it would not be hard for Best Buy to simply remove the rubberband and sell the individual items as originally intended. If the items were shrink wrapped together it would be tougher but still not impossible. If this were a pre-packaged bundle in one box, Best Buy would be hosed.

Sticking with Sony, we have an "old school" PSP bundle. Forget the PSPGO, this bundle contains a PSP3000, a car charger, a travel case and a Rocketfish screen protector...all for $199.96. You save a whoping $12. Like the PS3 bundle, there are no games included. Hmm...another bundle with no games that includes a Sony system. If I am investing in a system for the first time, I'd sure want at least a game to play with it. Why would bestbuy not include any games? Maybe they figure you'll use the savings from he bundle on additional purchases, ie, the games?

Also interesting his how Rocketfish had a product in this Sony bundle like it did with the Best Buy's PS3 bundle.

Last up is Nintendo with a DSi bundle pictured below. In this rubberbanded-ed package you get a DSi, a case, a Rocketfish screen protector and a Rocketfish PowerPack...all for $195.96 which saves you an astounding $5. Seriously, Best Buy, is that enough value? And again, no games.

MMO deals to attract and new and lapsed players

About a month ago I received an email from Blizzard to come back to World of Warcraft with a 7 day free pass. My cousin, who stopped playing WoW around the same time I did many months ago, received the same email. So no doubt Blizzard wanted us back, as they did with many other lapsed subscribers. This isn't surprising, as it's been done before and has some predictable rates of success.

But recently I became aware of a new twist in the battle over MMO retention rates. On Dec 14 Funcom announced:

"a unique holiday offer for its [MMO] Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Anyone who downloads, registers, and starts playing the trial before January 1st 2010 will be able to enjoy all of level one to twenty – the entire Island of Tortage experience – without ever having to upgrade to a full account or pay a subscription fee. This unique Unlimited Free Trial campaign is only available until January 1st as a special holiday offer to anyone who wishes to experience the sexy and savage world of Conan."

Basically they are trying a type of freemium pricing where you can play the lower levels of the game as much as you want for free forever, but if you want to advance beyond a certain point you must subscribe.

Then on Dec 16 EA & Mythic Entertainment announced a "Warhammer Online Reenlistment Campaign" where, similar to the recent Blizzard offer I received about coming back to WoW, lapsed Warhammer Online players could come back to the game for 10 - count'em: 10 - free days of play with in-game rewards and "other" bonuses. But the big catch was that the reactivation had to happen between Dec 16 and Dec 23. As with Blizzard, EA/Mythic is hoping that for those who kicked the habit, a little free taste will be enough to get them back in the game indefinitely.

These "come back to WoW/WAR/AoC etc" campaigns aren't new in concept, it's just that three major games are all making offers around the holidays and putting out press releases about it. As far as I know, Blizzard is the only company running major TV ad campaigns in the US around its MMO game in general. The current WoW ad features a new Mr. T spot about his Night Elf Mohawk grenade. Also, these are different offers than the standard 7, 10 or 14 day free trial for new subscribers that MMO games generally always offer. These are different campaigns aimed at getting people back or hopefully addicted enough to unlimited low level play to go for the ultimate glory of reaching level 50 or 60 or 80 or whatever the level cap of the game in question is...while paying the monthly fee.

But for me, the kicker is that I tried the 7 day "come back to WoW" offer and a few days into I received a 60-day WoW subscription card to keep playing. Oh man, my wife is going to hate this but at least someone else will pay for the next 2 months of access. Maybe then I'll get hooked again and starty paying Blizzard myself? Time will tell...

Meanwhile, a truely double edged type gift is a subscrption card to your addicted friends who kicked the MMO habit. Maybe Blizzard and etc. should run adds like the following:

Got friends you only sort of like? Did they recently give up an MMO game? Why not buy them a time card to that game!!! Then when their loved ones yell at them, they can think of you!

Assassin's Creed: Among Thieves

I finally got around to playing Assassin's Creed II this week. The first game in the series was a huge hit despite its low 80s metacritic and gamerankings score. It's not that composite average critical review scores always correlate with sales, but the game was a bit flawed in some ways and brilliant in others. I played that game for a few hours and I was one of the people who found it less enjoyable. The absurd genetic memory technology story angle made no sense to me and felt unnecessary to the point of distraction. The gameplay, an interesting mix of third person action, stealth and open world gaming, actually bored me to death after only a few hours. Perhaps I just didn't get the pacing, or maybe the distracting high tech story component just ruined it for me.
In any event, when I heard ACII scored in the 90s on metacritic/gamerankings and heard that some of the issues in the gameplay I didn't like were fixed, I became excited to play it.

But now that I'm playing it, the intro playable setup piece set in the present day is making me want to play something else. There are a lot of reasons why, but the main reason is the voice acting.

You play as Desmond Miles, a young man who is somehow connected to the Assassins of old who has these genetic memories like the guy in the first game...it's not worth explaining except he is voiced by none other than Nolan North, the same outstanding voice actor who voiced the voice of Nathan Drake's voice in the absolutely outstanding Uncharted series on PS3.

And he sounds exactly the same in Assassin's Creed II. Of course, Mr. North has lent his acting skills to many video games besides the Drake's series. But in ACII I kept picturing Nathan Drake every time the Desmond Miles character spoke, and when he dropped his frequent F-bombs I somehow felt disappointed that the general PG-13...er...T-rated adventure-romp fare of the Uncharted series was being polluted. And hence I simply got a bad vibe about ACII only 20 minutes into playing it.

The sad thing about the AC series is that what attracts me to the concept of it is being this baddass assassin in somewhat faithfully realized historical settings that haven't been explored much in video games. The Renaissance period of Italy has a certain Galilean steampunk potential that both Prince of Persia and God of War (and Uncharted 2) sort of allude to, but none of those games obviously fit. So ACII has this unique setting that has no need for the high tech, present day plot angle. If they had just done away with that I think the games would have been better.

But going back to Nolan North, his amazing work in the Uncharted series actually spoils his ACII performance for me.

What I really want to see is an Uncharted movie with actor Nathan Fillion playing the role of Nathan Drake with his voice dubbed by Nolan North. Below is Drake from Uncharted...


...and next is actor Nathan Fillion. I am obviously not the first person to suggest this but when the movie execs and the game execs meet, please do consider this option.
I am fully aware that this subtopic about acting/voicing Drake in an Uncharted movie has been discussed to death in many PS3 and Uncharted related forums on the internet, but I couldn't help but blog about this once I played ACII.

Bleeding at Blockbuster

Over the weekend I popped into a local Blockbuster store on a terribly rainy Saturday. It was just after a workout class and I stunk, was sweaty under my jacket and outside my jacket was wet from rain. Inside the Blockbuster it was even more unpleasant as everything in this location was being liquidated. While the DVDs were disorganized, many of them without a case or in a generic yellow/white/blue Blockbuster DVD case, the state of the leftover games for sale was even worse. Everything was picked over and the 30% discounts off used games prices weren't worth it unless you just had to play NHL 2k8 or similar product.

But one thing caught my eye, The Beatles: Rock Band bundle on sale for $89.99. The common retail price had dropoped to $150 (down from $200 at launch in Sep this year). A ten year old kid and his mom were looking it over:

Mom: "Look at that price. We should get it."
Boy: "But if it breaks we probably can't return it here since the store is closing."
Mom: "It's 90 bucks. We're never going to find that price anywhere else. And they have it on Xbox."
Boy: "Ninety bucks is still a lot for a game."
Mom: "It's the Beatles."

Interesting role reversal from the typical mother/son video game shopping dynamic.

Anyway, it makes me wonder if at some point a similar fire sale will happen at GameStop due to eventual digital distribution. It killed most of retail music sales, and combined with Netflix/Redbox/etc. it should kill off Blockbuster entirely. Gaming is a different animal but we're all watching, waiting and prognosticating...

Discounts at Target

I manged to sneak out to Target today for some holiday related shopping, and of course skimmed through the video game section. Interestingly there were "temporary" discounts on quite a few popular titles. First up are two very popular Xbox 360 shooters, Left 4 Dead 2 and Halo 3 ODST:


For shooter fans (who happen to buy their games at Target?) looking for something else besides Modern Warfare 2, this might pose a tough choice, else be the opportunity you were waiting for. Or maybe mom/dad doing holiday shopping will finally give in to their kid's demands...


Next wee see three price price drops in one image. First, UFC 2009 seems to have "gone on sale" dropping $20. Another THQ title in the lower right corner of the same image is the brand new MX Reflex, is also on sale but only discounted by $10. UFC is a great and very popular game, so maybe THQ/Target was looking for a large unit boost with the price drop. But MX Reflex already dropping to by $10 doesn't bode well, especially after mediocre reviews. Compare that to the "temporary price cut" on NBA Live 10 in the same image. Interesting.


Keeping up with the THQ theme, Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 was on a temporary price cut by $10. (See below). That's a lot of THQ titles "on sale" or on a temporary discount. Curious if this was THQ's channel management at work or Target's. Probably THQ's. Now it's not the biggest deal that several of THQ's titles are all on sale or a price cut but it just caught my eye while blitzing through the video game section. Hmm.....I'll leave some white space for you to think about that.









So now I will bridge beefy men in spandex to Tiger Woods via the next image below. As for the b.s. about him on every news channel 24/7, I don't care even if it's all true. Why? Because I have been under the assumption for years that most/all male professional golfers have mistresses in cities all over the country. Right? You mean they don't and Tiger is somehow unique? In this respect? Or is it just that Tiger has so many more mistresses than other pro golfers due to his billions of dollars and stranglehold on the #1 golf ranking in the world? Or is it just the bizarre way this came out? Hmm. I'd still watch him play golf...

Anyway, I actually received Tiger Woods 10 on Wii with the super awesome motion control plus attachment as a gift back over the summer. The game is the best golf game I've ever played. Tiger's current situation doesn't change that for me, though interesting it's on a temporary price cut at Target:


And last but not least, let's not forget Wii New Super Mario Bros. Wii...on Wii. As much as I enjoyed TW10 over the summer, WNSMBW...OW is my current Wii game of choice. Actually it's my wife's choice. It's the only game she'll play other than Wii Sports when we have friends over and she's actually way better at it than I am. She was a pro on the old SNES version which is somewhere in our house stuffed in a box in a closet. Her decades old skill at the SNES version translated very well, a much better match for her than Super Mario Galaxy which she found cute but too difficult. Anyway this game will probably have huge retail legs, regardless of whatever Yahtzee says in his generally accurate review which, as usual, is more entertaining second per second than the game itself.

But if the red box isn't enough to get it to scream off the Wii shelf at Target, the red tag "as advertised price" of the MSRP of $49.99 is there to remind you to simply look at this game and take notice, thereby getting it onto your purchase consideration set. Keep in mind this isn't a sale price, just a big fat flashing (not actually flashing) red neon sign (nor is neon) to get you to recall that Nintendo makes the best games on Nintendo platforms and if you have a Wii and you don't buy this game, you're going to to be stupid because it's probably the best Wii game of the holiday.

And the numbers are public already...

NPD released its data to IndustryGamers already, and the news story is up showing top 10 titles for the month. Notice the totals for the Xbox 360 titles in the list, mainly Modern Warfare 2, and the forecast I published via DFC on IndustryGamers yesterday. (Both were 4.2 million.)

Today is data release day...

So the NPD data was released today. I can't comment on my own forecasts until NPD publishes their top 10 to the general news sites, but to review my Xbox 360 forecasts for Nov 2009 check head back to Industry Gamers.

Some NPD forecasts for Nov 2009

Tomorrow (12/10/2009) NPD releases Nov 2009 US retail data on video game industry sales. There is always great anticipation over what the data will show and many analysts give their predictions on software and hardware sales. For the first time I have issued my own forecasts (in conjunction with DFC and GamerDNA) of what some key new Xbox 360 titles will sell during their launch months. The big deal for November is the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launch. Check out Industry Gamers for the exclusive story which contains the following:

1. Charts on reach of GamerDNA audience of top games on Xbox 360 around the MW2 launch, as well as the GTA IV launch back in Apr/May 2008 for a comparison.
2. Selective Crossplay analysis on Xbox 360 of MW2 with Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed II in a few countries.
3. NPD forecasts for Nov 2009 Xbox 360 sales of key games launched in the month.

We'll see how my forecasts do, though I will only comment on the titles for which NPD releases public data on. Check back Friday!

The SGC blog is live...

I've decided to start blogging about video games, the business of video games and related cultural thoughts about games. And expect some non-gaming discussions taken from the perspective of a 25+ year gamer.