On Monday, May 3 I will be a panelist at the Digital Hollywood Media & Valuation Symposium at 10 am. Description of the panel below:
MEDIA VALUATION SYMPOSIUM will focus on how the painful recovery from the Great Recession is affecting broad swaths of the media & entertainment sectors, including revenue growth, public and private market values, sources of capital and which sectors are likely to recover first.
I'm looking forward to the panel as everyone else on it has a very extensive background in finance or entertainment business, though mostly not games. Still, should be a cool experience.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Mar 2010 NPD Recap
To celebrate tax day in the US, NPD conveniently released March industry sales data and the usual websites (such as IndustryGamers) were kind enough to publish the basic results. To recap, here is the top ten from March 2010:
As reported, here were key facts NPD released:
Observations:
1) As with Feb 2010, no PSP title made it into the March 2010 top 10 titles. No surprise here and this will probably the last month I mention this.
2) March has become a key Pokemon release month.
3) Four of the Mar 2010 top 10 slots are PS3 titles, including two first party games (God of War III and MLB '10: The Show).
4) The concentration ratio (formerly "concentration percentage"...see last month's wrap-up) for March 2010 was 31% vs. 25% for March 2009. In other words, the 10 ten video game software title unit sales in March 2010 were 31% of total video game software sales, compared to 25% the year prior. Interestingly, March 2009 had a similar good showing from core titles, mainly in Resident Evil 5, Halo Wars and Killzone 2 whereas March 2010 had God of War III, Bad Company 2 and Final Fantasy MMXIII (or possibly just XIII). Combined with the lower showing for Wii games in general, this gives another indication that the core gamer is leading the growth in the games sector right now, especially without much noise coming from the guitar and music category of games lately.
5) As with March 2009, no Call of Duty game appeared in the top 10 for March 2010. This is important because is another small indicator that the now annualized Call of Duty brand, despite alternating between developers Infinity Ward and Treyarch, the sales decay curves are somewhat similar for each iteration in the series once out of holiday. Modern Warfare 2's first two months (Nov/Dec 2009) were larger than the launch of Modern Warfare, World at War and Call of Duty 3 combined, but dropped immensely in January and stayed flat into February. While sales of MW2 are now declining its still going to clear hundreds of thousands of units across all platforms for at least another month and have a long tail larger than just about every game this generation, at least until the next CoD game this fall.
But so what? This gets us to the bigger question of what is going to happen to the Call of Duty brand given what's happened with the Infinity Ward studio heads getting fired and then forming Respawn and subsequently attracting over a dozen of IW's key talent. Call of Duty is the one of the most powerful brands in the industry and each year millions of gamers buy it on that brand name (and supporting marketing) alone. The IW shakeup probably will not negatively impact Treyarch's Nov 2010 release in the series. We'll never really know anyway, but the big question is what happens to Modern Warfare 3 which most people assume the remaining Infinity Ward will release in November 2011. Without the core design team from recent Call of Duty games, the probability that the next game will be as good is slightly lower. It's not guaranteed to be bad, but those staff losses can potentially hurt. If Treyarch's game this year sells worse than World at War, the brand overall will lose some momentum.
However, the biggest obstacle the Call of Duty brand will face outside of organic brand fatigue will be direct competition, particularly from whatever Respawn creates. While it is possible Respawn could come out with a game for holiday 2011 to compete directly with Modern Warfare 3, it is more likely their first game will take a little more time to create given they are just getting their studio off the ground and are going not going to rush a game out. The risk for Modern Warfare 3 will then merely be the thunder Respawn will steal away when the announce something. Most likely Respawn and its publishing partner, EA...erm... Partners, will understand that given the current core gamer sentiment favoring Jason West and Vince Zempella and general vitriol for Activision over what has happened, they will have an easy time finding sympathetic and interested press to cover what they are up to in any and all ways. And when they do ship a game, consider that Jason and Vince have attracted the all the design leads from IW, some of whom date back to Medal of Honor and all them at least to Call of Duty 2. Given that this group of designers has yet to make a bad game and now they will have even more freedom to make the game that they want, there is a very, very strong chance it will be excellent. That is the biggest long term threat the Call of Duty brand will face.
As reported, here were key facts NPD released:- Total industry sales (HW+SW) grew by 6% to $1.52 billion. Nice.
- Software sales grew by 10% to $875.3 million
- Hardware sales fell by 18% to $440.5 million
Observations:1) As with Feb 2010, no PSP title made it into the March 2010 top 10 titles. No surprise here and this will probably the last month I mention this.
2) March has become a key Pokemon release month.
3) Four of the Mar 2010 top 10 slots are PS3 titles, including two first party games (God of War III and MLB '10: The Show).
4) The concentration ratio (formerly "concentration percentage"...see last month's wrap-up) for March 2010 was 31% vs. 25% for March 2009. In other words, the 10 ten video game software title unit sales in March 2010 were 31% of total video game software sales, compared to 25% the year prior. Interestingly, March 2009 had a similar good showing from core titles, mainly in Resident Evil 5, Halo Wars and Killzone 2 whereas March 2010 had God of War III, Bad Company 2 and Final Fantasy MMXIII (or possibly just XIII). Combined with the lower showing for Wii games in general, this gives another indication that the core gamer is leading the growth in the games sector right now, especially without much noise coming from the guitar and music category of games lately.
5) As with March 2009, no Call of Duty game appeared in the top 10 for March 2010. This is important because is another small indicator that the now annualized Call of Duty brand, despite alternating between developers Infinity Ward and Treyarch, the sales decay curves are somewhat similar for each iteration in the series once out of holiday. Modern Warfare 2's first two months (Nov/Dec 2009) were larger than the launch of Modern Warfare, World at War and Call of Duty 3 combined, but dropped immensely in January and stayed flat into February. While sales of MW2 are now declining its still going to clear hundreds of thousands of units across all platforms for at least another month and have a long tail larger than just about every game this generation, at least until the next CoD game this fall.
But so what? This gets us to the bigger question of what is going to happen to the Call of Duty brand given what's happened with the Infinity Ward studio heads getting fired and then forming Respawn and subsequently attracting over a dozen of IW's key talent. Call of Duty is the one of the most powerful brands in the industry and each year millions of gamers buy it on that brand name (and supporting marketing) alone. The IW shakeup probably will not negatively impact Treyarch's Nov 2010 release in the series. We'll never really know anyway, but the big question is what happens to Modern Warfare 3 which most people assume the remaining Infinity Ward will release in November 2011. Without the core design team from recent Call of Duty games, the probability that the next game will be as good is slightly lower. It's not guaranteed to be bad, but those staff losses can potentially hurt. If Treyarch's game this year sells worse than World at War, the brand overall will lose some momentum.
However, the biggest obstacle the Call of Duty brand will face outside of organic brand fatigue will be direct competition, particularly from whatever Respawn creates. While it is possible Respawn could come out with a game for holiday 2011 to compete directly with Modern Warfare 3, it is more likely their first game will take a little more time to create given they are just getting their studio off the ground and are going not going to rush a game out. The risk for Modern Warfare 3 will then merely be the thunder Respawn will steal away when the announce something. Most likely Respawn and its publishing partner, EA...erm... Partners, will understand that given the current core gamer sentiment favoring Jason West and Vince Zempella and general vitriol for Activision over what has happened, they will have an easy time finding sympathetic and interested press to cover what they are up to in any and all ways. And when they do ship a game, consider that Jason and Vince have attracted the all the design leads from IW, some of whom date back to Medal of Honor and all them at least to Call of Duty 2. Given that this group of designers has yet to make a bad game and now they will have even more freedom to make the game that they want, there is a very, very strong chance it will be excellent. That is the biggest long term threat the Call of Duty brand will face.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Apple: the new 1st party
Apple is now a de facto 1st party games publisher. While it is not the same kind of publisher as Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft, it is time we recognize it for what it is. Last week at the iPhone OS event at Apple headquarters, Apple CEO Steve Jobs re
ported that to date the company has sold 50 million iPhones and 35 million iPod Touches. Given that some of those sales were upgrades of earlier versions to later versions, and the fact that a small percentage of the audience actually owns both an iPhone and an iPod Touch, the total install base in terms of people is probably a little less than 85 million. Even if we are over conservative and peg the estimate at 80 million, that is still at least a highly respectable and at most a ginormous market.
But comparing Apple to the traditional "Big Three" 1st parties isn't exactly apples to apples. (Yes, I realize the pun.) iPhone games are largely lighter fare limited in features, depth, interface and graphics. You can't effectively play World of Warcraft, Mario or a Call of Duty game the way you can on a PC, Wii or 360/PS3 due to the interface, screen size and slowlness of 3G compared to a hardline. (WiFi is okay but not always availble to everyone).
From a financial perspective, despite having 80 to 85 million consumers as an audience, iPhone games simply don't generate upside scale the way a major blockbuster game does on a traditional platform.
However, iPhone games don't cost nearly as much to produce. That may change to a degree with the iPad, but until millions of gamers start buying the iPad, don't expect it to seriously increase the average cost of the collective iPhone/iPad game development cycle.
Take the Call of Duty: Zombies app on the iPhone. This is an excellent extension of the Call of Duty brand to another platform that in reality did not cannibalize sales of Modern Warfare 2. Unlike most non-free apps that sell in the $1 to $2 range, Zombies was priced at $9.99 since releasing on Nov 16, 2009 and for several months has been one of the most successful iPhone games.
Just how successful was this game? In a recent survey I worked on with DFC Intelligence we asked US, UK and EU computer and console gamers about game ownership and crossover with iPhones and specific apps. We found that 31% owned an iPhone or iPod Touch. (We'll just group them as "iPhone" from here.) Of those, 24% indicated they had purchased the Call of Duty: Zombies app. Since MW2 has sold roughly 15 million units world wide by now (quick, is it already up to 20 million?) let's take pause to do some estimates.
Pretend 31% of Modern Warfare 2 owners actually have an iPhone. (Seriously?) That's 4.65 million MW2 owners who own an iPhone. Hmm...really? Suppose 24% of them bought the Zombies game. That's 1.116 million sales to the MW2 audience. If this gorilla math is accurate, that's a gross revenue of about $11 million. If Activision gets 70% of that...we're talking nearly $7.8 million. How much did it realistically cost to make that game. I've played it. It's good. Is it worth $10 bucks? That's a matter of opinion it's definitely a successful product so besides having the right brand attached to it, it did something right.
But that's just gorilla math. Let's say the actual sales of the Zombies game were closer to 10% to 15% of the estimate above and Activision revenues were really closer to $1 million. Again, how much did it cost to make that game that had only one map in the original release? (Let's forget about the additional maps/content you can buy for the app.) Whatever the actual numbers are, there is a compelling business case for it as a product.
So for a brand like Call of Duty, releasing an iPhone version of your game that is intentionally less complex but still delivers some portable fun was a good idea. This is perhaps one of the best examples of a major game brand extending itself to the iPhone platform in a way that did not cannibalize sales of the console/PC games and in fact probably sold quite well to those same gamers who also own an iPhone.
All the time we have been talking about numbers, zombies and and gorillas, Apple was counting their monies. As has been suggested by Nintendo and others, it's not like Apple is going to pass Nintendo in gaming related revenues. If we think of the iPhone as a console, it will probably generate in the $100 million to $200 million in gross revenues per quarter in 2010. If that is actually to low an estimate, then we could guess the iPhone games software market on the order of $500 million to $1 billion for 2010. If actually high, then the annual total comes crashing down to around a quarter billion dollars. Either way, Apple is making money and so are successful developers for the platform. (Certainly not all iPhone game app developers are becoming the new rich.)
Nintendo, who has been openly critical of the iPhone and iPad as a gaming platforms, is definitely threatened by Apple simply by the fact that kids everywhere are getting exposed to iPhones and they are playing with them. (I've said this in past blog posts.) But that doesn't mean immediate doom for Nintendo. You still can't play Pokemon and Mario and Mario Kart on an iPhone in the same way you could on a DS. They are better experiences on Nintendo's platform simply due to the interface. But kids are playing with the iPhone for iPhone, not DS, gaming experiences. Many of these are throw away games where you play for 60 seconds, get bored and play something else. Or they are playing the same game 50 times in a row like the way my 5 year old nephew falls asleep while playing skiball on my sister's iPhone. It's the same game of skiball over and over but he doesn't care. Even if the games are more involved, they simply aren't as big of an investment in terms of time or money as compared to DS games.
And that's the threat to Nintendo, even if it forever has better games that are worth spending more money on. Apple is allowing for a dilution of gaming to simpler elements that, for better or for worse, is attracting consumer attention and dollars. Apple's total control over distribution and access to the iPhone market is staggering compared to traditional 1st party publishers of their respective markets. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all have to deal with retailers, disc manufacturers and beyond for their software businesses. Apple can do all that from their headquarters in California since their distribution is all digital. In fact, Apple is better suited to support its platform given it has a dedicated retail presence that already makes money without the iPhone software market.
If our definition of a 1st party is a company that manufacturers a hardware platform and controls what content can go on that platform while taking a percentage of every piece of software sold on it, then Apple must qualify. The problem some people have with this is admitting that these pieces of software are, in fact, games.
ported that to date the company has sold 50 million iPhones and 35 million iPod Touches. Given that some of those sales were upgrades of earlier versions to later versions, and the fact that a small percentage of the audience actually owns both an iPhone and an iPod Touch, the total install base in terms of people is probably a little less than 85 million. Even if we are over conservative and peg the estimate at 80 million, that is still at least a highly respectable and at most a ginormous market.But comparing Apple to the traditional "Big Three" 1st parties isn't exactly apples to apples. (Yes, I realize the pun.) iPhone games are largely lighter fare limited in features, depth, interface and graphics. You can't effectively play World of Warcraft, Mario or a Call of Duty game the way you can on a PC, Wii or 360/PS3 due to the interface, screen size and slowlness of 3G compared to a hardline. (WiFi is okay but not always availble to everyone).
From a financial perspective, despite having 80 to 85 million consumers as an audience, iPhone games simply don't generate upside scale the way a major blockbuster game does on a traditional platform.
However, iPhone games don't cost nearly as much to produce. That may change to a degree with the iPad, but until millions of gamers start buying the iPad, don't expect it to seriously increase the average cost of the collective iPhone/iPad game development cycle.
Take the Call of Duty: Zombies app on the iPhone. This is an excellent extension of the Call of Duty brand to another platform that in reality did not cannibalize sales of Modern Warfare 2. Unlike most non-free apps that sell in the $1 to $2 range, Zombies was priced at $9.99 since releasing on Nov 16, 2009 and for several months has been one of the most successful iPhone games.
Just how successful was this game? In a recent survey I worked on with DFC Intelligence we asked US, UK and EU computer and console gamers about game ownership and crossover with iPhones and specific apps. We found that 31% owned an iPhone or iPod Touch. (We'll just group them as "iPhone" from here.) Of those, 24% indicated they had purchased the Call of Duty: Zombies app. Since MW2 has sold roughly 15 million units world wide by now (quick, is it already up to 20 million?) let's take pause to do some estimates.
Pretend 31% of Modern Warfare 2 owners actually have an iPhone. (Seriously?) That's 4.65 million MW2 owners who own an iPhone. Hmm...really? Suppose 24% of them bought the Zombies game. That's 1.116 million sales to the MW2 audience. If this gorilla math is accurate, that's a gross revenue of about $11 million. If Activision gets 70% of that...we're talking nearly $7.8 million. How much did it realistically cost to make that game. I've played it. It's good. Is it worth $10 bucks? That's a matter of opinion it's definitely a successful product so besides having the right brand attached to it, it did something right.
But that's just gorilla math. Let's say the actual sales of the Zombies game were closer to 10% to 15% of the estimate above and Activision revenues were really closer to $1 million. Again, how much did it cost to make that game that had only one map in the original release? (Let's forget about the additional maps/content you can buy for the app.) Whatever the actual numbers are, there is a compelling business case for it as a product.
So for a brand like Call of Duty, releasing an iPhone version of your game that is intentionally less complex but still delivers some portable fun was a good idea. This is perhaps one of the best examples of a major game brand extending itself to the iPhone platform in a way that did not cannibalize sales of the console/PC games and in fact probably sold quite well to those same gamers who also own an iPhone.
All the time we have been talking about numbers, zombies and and gorillas, Apple was counting their monies. As has been suggested by Nintendo and others, it's not like Apple is going to pass Nintendo in gaming related revenues. If we think of the iPhone as a console, it will probably generate in the $100 million to $200 million in gross revenues per quarter in 2010. If that is actually to low an estimate, then we could guess the iPhone games software market on the order of $500 million to $1 billion for 2010. If actually high, then the annual total comes crashing down to around a quarter billion dollars. Either way, Apple is making money and so are successful developers for the platform. (Certainly not all iPhone game app developers are becoming the new rich.)
Nintendo, who has been openly critical of the iPhone and iPad as a gaming platforms, is definitely threatened by Apple simply by the fact that kids everywhere are getting exposed to iPhones and they are playing with them. (I've said this in past blog posts.) But that doesn't mean immediate doom for Nintendo. You still can't play Pokemon and Mario and Mario Kart on an iPhone in the same way you could on a DS. They are better experiences on Nintendo's platform simply due to the interface. But kids are playing with the iPhone for iPhone, not DS, gaming experiences. Many of these are throw away games where you play for 60 seconds, get bored and play something else. Or they are playing the same game 50 times in a row like the way my 5 year old nephew falls asleep while playing skiball on my sister's iPhone. It's the same game of skiball over and over but he doesn't care. Even if the games are more involved, they simply aren't as big of an investment in terms of time or money as compared to DS games.
And that's the threat to Nintendo, even if it forever has better games that are worth spending more money on. Apple is allowing for a dilution of gaming to simpler elements that, for better or for worse, is attracting consumer attention and dollars. Apple's total control over distribution and access to the iPhone market is staggering compared to traditional 1st party publishers of their respective markets. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all have to deal with retailers, disc manufacturers and beyond for their software businesses. Apple can do all that from their headquarters in California since their distribution is all digital. In fact, Apple is better suited to support its platform given it has a dedicated retail presence that already makes money without the iPhone software market.
If our definition of a 1st party is a company that manufacturers a hardware platform and controls what content can go on that platform while taking a percentage of every piece of software sold on it, then Apple must qualify. The problem some people have with this is admitting that these pieces of software are, in fact, games.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Apple's OS 4 and the new Game Center
Engadget has the live feed from Apple's iPhone OS4 event and Steve Jobs revealed the iPad has sold 450,000 units through today. So it's going well. Also, 1/3 of all iPad exclusive apps are games just in case you hadn't heard. Of course that is a lower % compared to the iPhone, but it is the highest single category on the iPad. On top of that they announced Best Buy is out of stock and 600k iBooks have been downloaded with 3.5 million iPad apps downloaded for an attach ratio of 7.78.
As for the iPhone, the first news is that Apple is now reporting 50 million units sold since the initial launch and on top of that another 35 million iPod Touches have been sold. That's a big market for a device that can play games.
But the big news is iPhone OS 4 that should be coming out this summer. Lots of interesting things for both developers and consumers, however Mr. Jobs highlighted seven of what he calls "tentpole" features:
1) Multitasking. It was hard to see on the website how well this worked, but it was inevitable that Apple would do this since Apple's competitors are all embracing multitasking as an essential smartphone ability as this class of devices is a defacto mobile computer. For gaming, this is essential to be able to automatically freeze your game when you take a call or check an email and then go back to where you were in the game. For some games this isn't really a problem, but others would reset when you left the app. They highlighted background audio which is really more music, such as being to continue to play Pandora radio music when switching to other apps. Nice if you use your iPhone as an iPod for music, though for video I suppose you could hear the audio from it but since it is video you'd probably want to stop so you don't miss it when you switch away to check something. Then for voice over IP things like Skype will work better for free phone calls. Wait, it's a cell phone... Anyway, they then talked about background location so for example, if you are getting turn-by-turn vocal driving instructions from a navigation app you could be in another app and still hear the audible prompts. That's neat. There were a few more examples of how this will be a benefit, but let's move on.
2) Folder. This applies to the pages of apps you collect. Counting all the apps in my iTunes that I have taken off my iPhone but still own, I probably have 10 pages worth of apps. Maybe more. Folder will allow you to put groupings of apps into folders so you can group things like games, social networking, media etc. I have to admit that is pretty sweet to be able to organize my sea of apps and especially all the games.
3) Unified mail inbox. Not really a benefit to gaming, but you'll be able to organize emails by thread like in gmail and open attachments using actual apps instead of the mail viewer. There are some other things for mail as well. Pretty clever.
4) iBooks for your iPhone. Nothing revolutionary here. They're taking what they did for the iPad and putting it on the iPhone. Nice, I guess.
5) Enterprise. Basically there are some new features for enterprise use of iPhones.
6) Game Center. This is the big one. Essentially Game Center is a gaming social network within the iPhone game universe. Apple showed a slide comparing the iPhone to the PSP and DS for number of gaming/entertainment apps with iPhone at 50,700, DS at 4,321 and PSP at 2,477. Yes, comparing games between the portable consoles and the iPhone
is not apples to apples, but Apple was obviously proud to point this out, even if some of those 50k apps include farting and paper tossing apps for 99 cents else free. The best way to describe Game Center is that it is like Xbox Live or PSN: you can invite friends, do matchmaking, see leaderboards and, yes, track achievements. Think about that last one. Remember the Xbox Live achievement gold rush back in 2005, 2006 and even into 2007? The fervor over achievement scores isn't what it once was, but it is still is important in online console communities. It's huge in Warcraft mainly because when you get an achievement everyone around you and everyone in your guild hears about it and you often get "gratz" messages to you. Indeed that is a little emotional boost that does a lot. How this will exactly work on the iPhone wasn't fully explained, but it is safe to say it will be a lot like Xbox Live achievements. Mark my words, this will have a big impact on the iPhone gaming market and Apple is very smart to do this.
7) iAd. This feature will be built into OS4 and will allow developers to integrate ads into their apps that when clicked on, don't take the user out of the app to Safari. It's because of that issue that so many in-app (and yes, in-game ads) don't get clicked on because you leave the app. iAd will allow interactive audio/video ads to appear and then close that don't take the user out of the app. So the ad displays entirely within the app. Apple will sell and host the ads and keep 40% of revenues generated from the ads. The ads themselves can be very interactive and allow users to make purchases from within the ad, making them more like apps within apps. Mark my words, this will have a big impact on the iPhone gaming market and Apple is very smart to do this.
As for the iPhone, the first news is that Apple is now reporting 50 million units sold since the initial launch and on top of that another 35 million iPod Touches have been sold. That's a big market for a device that can play games.
But the big news is iPhone OS 4 that should be coming out this summer. Lots of interesting things for both developers and consumers, however Mr. Jobs highlighted seven of what he calls "tentpole" features:
1) Multitasking. It was hard to see on the website how well this worked, but it was inevitable that Apple would do this since Apple's competitors are all embracing multitasking as an essential smartphone ability as this class of devices is a defacto mobile computer. For gaming, this is essential to be able to automatically freeze your game when you take a call or check an email and then go back to where you were in the game. For some games this isn't really a problem, but others would reset when you left the app. They highlighted background audio which is really more music, such as being to continue to play Pandora radio music when switching to other apps. Nice if you use your iPhone as an iPod for music, though for video I suppose you could hear the audio from it but since it is video you'd probably want to stop so you don't miss it when you switch away to check something. Then for voice over IP things like Skype will work better for free phone calls. Wait, it's a cell phone... Anyway, they then talked about background location so for example, if you are getting turn-by-turn vocal driving instructions from a navigation app you could be in another app and still hear the audible prompts. That's neat. There were a few more examples of how this will be a benefit, but let's move on.
2) Folder. This applies to the pages of apps you collect. Counting all the apps in my iTunes that I have taken off my iPhone but still own, I probably have 10 pages worth of apps. Maybe more. Folder will allow you to put groupings of apps into folders so you can group things like games, social networking, media etc. I have to admit that is pretty sweet to be able to organize my sea of apps and especially all the games.
3) Unified mail inbox. Not really a benefit to gaming, but you'll be able to organize emails by thread like in gmail and open attachments using actual apps instead of the mail viewer. There are some other things for mail as well. Pretty clever.
4) iBooks for your iPhone. Nothing revolutionary here. They're taking what they did for the iPad and putting it on the iPhone. Nice, I guess.
5) Enterprise. Basically there are some new features for enterprise use of iPhones.
6) Game Center. This is the big one. Essentially Game Center is a gaming social network within the iPhone game universe. Apple showed a slide comparing the iPhone to the PSP and DS for number of gaming/entertainment apps with iPhone at 50,700, DS at 4,321 and PSP at 2,477. Yes, comparing games between the portable consoles and the iPhone
is not apples to apples, but Apple was obviously proud to point this out, even if some of those 50k apps include farting and paper tossing apps for 99 cents else free. The best way to describe Game Center is that it is like Xbox Live or PSN: you can invite friends, do matchmaking, see leaderboards and, yes, track achievements. Think about that last one. Remember the Xbox Live achievement gold rush back in 2005, 2006 and even into 2007? The fervor over achievement scores isn't what it once was, but it is still is important in online console communities. It's huge in Warcraft mainly because when you get an achievement everyone around you and everyone in your guild hears about it and you often get "gratz" messages to you. Indeed that is a little emotional boost that does a lot. How this will exactly work on the iPhone wasn't fully explained, but it is safe to say it will be a lot like Xbox Live achievements. Mark my words, this will have a big impact on the iPhone gaming market and Apple is very smart to do this.7) iAd. This feature will be built into OS4 and will allow developers to integrate ads into their apps that when clicked on, don't take the user out of the app to Safari. It's because of that issue that so many in-app (and yes, in-game ads) don't get clicked on because you leave the app. iAd will allow interactive audio/video ads to appear and then close that don't take the user out of the app. So the ad displays entirely within the app. Apple will sell and host the ads and keep 40% of revenues generated from the ads. The ads themselves can be very interactive and allow users to make purchases from within the ad, making them more like apps within apps. Mark my words, this will have a big impact on the iPhone gaming market and Apple is very smart to do this.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Stimulate this!
This week I wrote a column for DFC Intelligence that appeared on IndustryGamers the March 30 release of DLC for Modern Warfare 2. While predicting that the "Stimulus Package" map pack sales would be measured in multi-millions is like Lebron making a layup, it was nice to see that Activision itself verified that in less than a week it has already sold over 2.5 million units.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thoughts on the iPad...
I've been getting a lot of questions about the iPad, mainly asking me to forecast the date in which it will revolutionize gaming, reasoning that since the iPhone revolutionized gaming the iPad will certainly do it, too.
First of all, the iPhone did not revolutionize gaming. If anything, it legitimized mobile phone gaming because before it came along mobile gaming was at best a mediocre experience that few people in the US participated in and even fewer actually paid for. Sure, in Europe and Japan where cell phones have always been ahead of the US, mobile gaming was more popular but by no means was it a multi-billion dollar industry.
So the iPhone comes along and somewhere in 2009 the buzz about gaming on the platform reached to the point where consultants' heads started spinning about how may trillions of dollars per nanosecond consumer would spend on gaming apps. While it is true that of the nearly 200,000 iPhone apps ever created (current actual number is about 196k as of 4/6/2010), roughly half of them are games. But there is a ton of piracy on the platform and consumers aren't spending quite as much as we would have hoped, given that many of them only dip their toes in paid apps.
Let's put spending question aside and for now, focus on actual usage. The iPhone essentially allowed consumers to play games in all sorts of places that they simply could not before. Before you argue about the DS and PSP, think for a minute about the overlap of DS or PSP owners and cell phone owners. The former are mainly used by kids and teens, respectively, and they are less likely to own cell phones (erm...younger teens aren't as likely). For non handheld gamers, or at least those who don't carry their portable systems everywhere, you can bet they are much more likely to take their cell phones with them wherever they go. So by this rough logic the iPhone has allowed consumers to play games in places they normally had not in the past such as: waiting rooms, public transportation, weddings, funerals, piano recitals, board meetings, the 405 freeway in Los Angeles and most of all...on the toilet.
In other words, the iPhone is extremely portable and you'll take it everywhere anyway. And you can hold it in one hand and play with one thumb, even though most people hold it with one hand and play with a finger on the other hand.
The iPad, however, lacks the same degree of portability and physical usability due to it's weight. When I finally got to try it out over this week the 1.5 pounds felt much heavier than I had expected. Sure, it is way lighter than my laptop, but compared the iPhone it is much more cumbersome and really requires more strength to hold and operate. Along with the larger screen size, this makes the iPad a much different gaming platform than the iPhone, and that does not necessarily mean it will be better.
What it means is that gaming on the iPad will be somewhat different than on the iPhone. With that consider the following:
1) The iPad is less portable so you won't use it in as many places as your iPhone. Yes, you may take it everywhere but you simply can't use it in as many places.
2) Wi-Fi dependency and luxury class cost of 3G access (forget about the hardware cost of the 3G bersion) will inhibit use where internet is not accessible. Think of this as a constraint, not a line item veto. People will still take the iPad to wherever but not having internet access will make the device slightly annoying. This will make gaming on it just slightly, slighty annoying
3) iPad-only games better take advantage of the screen size and processing power. Can we get some clever 3D games and not just mostly 2D with 3D-esque games like on the iPhone? I'm not talking about 3D movie style 3D, but thinks like Doom and Quake 3D.
4) True first person shooters will still be pointless on the iPad, just like they are on the iPhone due to lack of buttons and physical controls. Sure you can hook up a wireless keyboard and mouse, but serioiusly, if I am going to game on it I'm not really going to want to do that since I already have a computer and I might as well play that RTS or MMO game on that and not the iPad.
5) RTS games, while requiring some retooling, might actually be interesting on an iPad. You'd need to rethink the controls but the top down mouse controls from the PC could be converted in some innovative touch interface. Blizzard, I'm looking at you to bring Warcraft III to the iPad.
6) While shooter games will probably still suck, perhaps 3rd person action games could be interesting on the iPad given the larger screen size might allow for enough screen area for innovative controls that are not possible on the iPhone.
7) Purse manufacturers will start making iPad friendly designs. One example: http://www.padster.net/padster___iPad_bag.html I don't know how this will impact gaming but it is worth mentioning.
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