Penny Arcade Expo East: Nothing small here
Believe it or not, there were crowds gathered on Friday doing something else besides waiting for an iPad 2. About 60,000 people swarmed Boston for Penny Arcade East, a major convention for video game fans on the East Coast.
PAX doesn’t garner as much media attention as industry shows like E3 in Los Angeles each summer, where major games companies announce new products. While there aren’t as many reporters or or executives in attendance, PAX EAST is still a big event for gamers- the hoards of people who help make the $60.4 million video game industry bigger than Hollywood.
It’s for people like Andrew Hydrusko, a 23-year-old student who drove from Delaware with four friends so he could dress as his favorite Mega Man character, Protoman, at the show. He donned a poncho, bullets and a painted motorcycle helmet reminiscent of a power ranger, as he waited to play Guild Wars 2, an upcoming MMO game from NCsoft.
The publicly-traded Korean company lured people away from the main hall to a neighboring hotel so fans could fully immerse themselves in their game. With a raffle, an open bar and hors d’oeuvres promised, the lines got just as crazy as anything on the show floor next door.
Randall Price, senior vice president of global business at ArenaNet, which develops MMOs for NCsoft, says while PAX East isn’t as high-profile as some other shows, it’s his chance to interact one-on-one with passionate players of Guild Wars, which has sold 7 million copies since 2005.
“PAX is huge for us. This is where our fans get to tell us face-to-face what they are thinking about our game and what they want to see,” Price says.
Photo: Main show floor at PAX EAST by Liana B. Baker
GlobalMedia-Gaming giants differ on mobile, social games
Much of the buzz in gaming these days revolves around two small but fast-growing areas: social games and mobile ones played on smartphones. But two titans of the video game industry have decidedly different takes on those markets.
There are already tens of thousands of game apps available for the iPhone and competing Android smartphones, and tens of millions of people playing free games on Facebook.
Still, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick (pictured) sounded less than enthusiastic about those markets when he spoke to the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York on Tuesday. And that represented a stark contrast from what Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said just a day earlier
Kotick on apps: “We don’t view the App Store as a really big opportunity for dedicated games.”
On tablets: “I think it is a different device than a mobile device, but from a gaming perspective it is probably not a big opportunity for us just yet.”
On social: “I don’t think there is any question that people are playing Facebook games. The hours speak for themselves. But monetizing those hours is very different than just serving up free games… I think you will see a lot of investment there, continued investment there. But that is different. There is a different question, assessing it as a business opportunity. I think right now we don’t see an opportunity for us to participate in that market.”
Contrast that with the words of Riccitiello, who spent plenty of time in his summit appearance making the case that the future of gaming — the expansion of the customer base — would be fueled in part by mobile and social.
When gamers hit Toys R Us and other tales of Black Friday
Sprinkled among the snaking lines of parents at a Toys R Us in New Jersey on Black Friday were diehard gamers. Many had no children to spoil. Nor were they particularly happy to be in the Toys R Us; but with gaming hardware fast selling out across the region, they followed the scent of the deal.
The Kinect moved especially fast, if early anecdotal evidence is any measure. Brisk sales of hardware like the PlayStation3, Xbox and Microsoft Kinect on the nation’s biggest annual shopping spree also bode well for software sales, says Mike Hickey, a Janco Partners analyst.
But which games were enticing fans to shell out on Black Friday?
“ We’re seeing strong sales of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft), Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft), Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard), Red Dead Redemption (Take-Two Interactive), Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda), Gran Turismo 5 (Polyphony Digital) and Donkey Kong (Nintendo),” Hickey said.
Many of the hottest video items weren’t even on sale. The Microsoft Kinect, which was not discounted at any retailer on Black Friday (in fact, the price got jacked up on many secondary sellers’ websites), was out of stock both in stores and online at WalMart, Target and Best Buy.
GameStop also weighed in on Friday morning, telling Reuters about the traffic at its 800 US stores which opened at midnight, which were helped in part by the interest in the Kinect. “Preliminary reports from our stores record a lot of excitement,” said GameStop’s president Tony Bartel,” and there were many customers lined up at 5 am when the rest of the stores opened.
NPD analyst Stephen Baker said video games were “one of the better categories this holiday,” but low-priced televisions and aggressively priced laptops were the biggest sellers on Black Friday.
Cloud gaming service OnLive coming to the TV
OnLive, the closely-watched startup that is aiming to change the way people buy and play video games, officially launched last June. But the company says that was a mere warmup for the main event, which begins in a few weeks.
OnLive emerged from years of stealth development in 2009 with a somewhat audacious plan to offer so-called “cloud gaming”: instant, on-demand and lag-free access to video games stored remotely on servers in data centers.
The service started last June but was only accessible through a PC. But starting Thursday, OnLive began taking orders for its $99 “microconsole,” which connects easily to a TV and which will be delivered starting Dec. 2. Using the console, users can access a catalog of games that will grow to 50 by the end of the year, including big-name titles such as “Borderlands” and “NBA 2K11″
OnLive poses a threat to traditional home consoles such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3, but only if it works as advertised and there are no stutters or hiccups in the game stream.
OnLive Chief Executive Steve Perlman said the carefully managed launch for PCs last June was to ensure that the company’s network could indeed handle the demand. But he said PC gaming only represents around 10 percent of the market, and that TVs are where the real action is. He won’t divulge OnLive’s user base, but said it has already hosted more than than 2 million game sessions.
“We’re up against quite a bit of skepticism, so we knew that if we made any misstep at all people would dismiss us out of hand,” Perlman said. “PC gaming was basically a test.”
The company is launching a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, just in time for the holidays. Perlman said his expectations for OnLive — whose investors include Warner Bros., Autodesk, Maverick Capital, AT&T, British Telecommunications and The Belgacom Group — are “much higher” than last summer.
E3 gameshow + NBA finals = traffic headache
As if the world’s most important video game trade show weren’t enough to snarl the already migraine-inducing traffic conditions that Los Angeles is famous for, the NBA Finals intruded on Tuesday to make things just a little bit more aggravating.
The E3 Expo brings all the leading lights of the gaming world, plus thousands of media types and fanboys, into downtown LA for a week of revelry. The event takes up residence at the LA Convention Center, and the show floor opened to predictable excitement at noon on Tuesday
Right next door to the LACC is the Staples Center, site of Game 6 in the series between the LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics, which drew an additional 19,000 or so purple-and-gold clad fans into the area ahead of the 6 PM start.
With all the activity, already snarled traffic got even worse, slowing transportation around the gameshow to a crawl. LA is famously not a pedestrian-friendly city, and E3 is certainly not designed with walking in mind. Attendees are forced to shuttle from venue to venue around town to watch the separate presentations from the likes of Microsoft, Nintendo, Electronic Arts and Sony. This in a city where going 5 miles on the freeway can easily take an hour.
(Video: The crowd (and one canine Lakers fan), outside of the Staples Center, just yards away from the throng of video gamers at the convention center)
E3: Ubisoft teases (again!) with Michael Jackson
Somebody at Ubisoft must be a big fan of the films “Jaws” or “Predator,” where the title characters do not materialize until late in the movie. Or maybe it’s the play “Waiting for Godot” they admire — Godot never shows at all.
Why else would they — for the second year in a row — devote a chunk of time at their E3 event to a highly anticipated video game, and not show any footage from the game?
Ubisoft ended its show on Monday with a wonderfully loud, energetic, amped-up dance routine featuring six of the talented performers from Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” concert rehearsal documentary. They were giving us a taste of what we can expect from the game Ubisoft is developing in conjunction with Jackson’s Estate (due later this year on all major platforms.)
Or at least we assume it was a taste — they didn’t show any actual game footage. Just dancers.
Don’t get me wrong, the dancers were amazing and the show-us-more-game-video loving crowd lapped it up. But I left wondering, wasn’t this just like last year, when big-giant-huge title for the holiday season “Avatar” was teased, but not shown, by Mr. Avatar himself, James Cameron?
Of course, “Avatar” — the movie at least — went on to be a mega-hit at the box office, and “Beat It” is like my favorite Jackson song, so I am stoked for a sing-along, dance-along, title. Maybe there is something to this anticipation strategy…
Black Friday sprint begins for video game industry
Black Friday marks the beginning of the most critical time of the year for video game makers, as customers jam stores on the day after Thanksgiving to pick up games and consoles as gifts.
As a brutal 2009 winds to a close, the gaming industry is hoping that a strong six weeks of sales in the United States, the largest market, could help them salvage something from the year.
Nintendo said Monday its Wii home console — the long-time U.S. champ that has been struggling lately — sold more than 550,000 units in the U.S. during Thanksgiving week. To put that in perspective, the company sold around 500,000 Wiis in all of October, according to industry tracker NPD.
Not to be outdone, Sony announced Tuesday that demand for its PlayStation 3 console over the Thanksgiving week “was at an all time high.” The company said it sold 440,000 units for the week in the U.S.
Both Nintendo and Sony have recently slashed prices on their consoles, as has Microsoft with its Xbox 360. The PS3, which is more popular with hard-core gamers, has seen plenty of momentum since the price cut. At the same time, Nintendo has set up holiday kiosks in malls across the country to give consumers the opportunity to play its casual and family-friendly games.
A more complete picture on who turned in the best Black Friday performance will come later this month, when NPD releases its November sales data.
Activision’s Kotick: Game prices are OK; demand will come
Video game executives are some of the most optimistic you’ll ever meet. But you have to think they dream of the good old days (of only one year ago) when the industry was called “recession resistant”, thanks to the idea that “cocooning” consumers would, ad infinitum, plop down $60 for games.
Those days may be gone — just ask Nintendo. Now game makers are eyeing the holiday shopping season, with a lot on the line. Still, many are upbeat. Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick, for one, says that at its core, the industry slowdown is about the wicked recession, not a shrinking appeal for games.
Reuters: Has the appetite for games dwindled? Kotick: I think the reason why the take-up rates over the last 6 or 7 months have been what they have been, as compared with where they were, has much more to do with macroeconomics than fatigue in the category. Once you are getting to that gift giving (season), my sense is that you are going to see a change in consumption.
One thing you won’t see this the holiday season: a drop in prices from the standard of $60 and up for top shelf games such as Activision’s highly anticipated “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ and “DJ Hero Renegade Edition” ($199). Kotick says that the price is right, given the rising cost of development, and the fact that that prices have been steady for a long time compared to that of other entertainment forms.
Reuters: Any chance for price movement? Kotick: Not that I’m aware of. If you look at the cost of development ten year ago to today and the cost of marketing, our ability to hold prices firm over ten years (is worth noting). If I told you that we had a 4x increase in 10 years in production expenses and even more than that in marketing and selling, we are still holding firm on those low price points.
Reuters: So prices could have been even higher? Kotick: Yes — (even) if you just added some inflation adjustment. We have tried to maintain no-price-increases and making sure that the products we are delivering are always the highest quality.
stock is falling now, hope it falls to below $9.5, then i’ll be buying, sales in 2010 will be amazing. SC2,wow:C,diablo3 all triple A titles pretty sure SC2 alone will cause a 200% increase.
i’m saving every penny to invest in atvi and i’m hoping that it will the best investment i ever made.
Sony’s PlayStation chief: We’ll get iPod game dabblers
So what happens when the Apple suggests your handheld game device is sub-par? Out of touch? Passe? ‘Dems fighting words, right?******That’s what I asked Sony’s PlayStation boss Jack Tretton during a recent interview. His response? Keep talking, Apple — you’re only creating more future PlayStation users.******A little background: Earlier this month, Apple’s Phil Schiller said this about Sony’s PlayStations Portable (PSP) and the Nintendo DS, which have together sold more than 150 million units around the globe:***
When these things came out they seemed so cool. But once you play a game on the iPod touch, they don’t really stack up anymore. They don’t have this amazing multi-touch user interface. The game are kind of expensive. they don’t even have anything like the Apps Store to find great games and titles. And they certainly don’t deliver a media experience like the iPod that is built into the iPod touch.******But worst is the buying experience. Having to go to the store and trying to find a hot new title is not a lot of fun.
***Not long after, Apple CEO Steve Jobs piled on to the New York Times, saying that the new lower price for the iPod Touch would draw in gamers.******Tretton, whose full title is CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, counterpunched:***
The gaming heritage and the home of gaming is PlayStation. Dabbling in gaming is nice and ‘thank you’ for getting people interested in gaming — because they are going to end up with us.******Its sort of like saying, I got my drivers license and my first car was a beat up Subaru, but if you are ultimately going to be on the track, you are going to be driving a race car, and not something that’s basic transportation. So if you are going to be seriously interested in gaming you are going to end up a PlayStation consumer.
***Tough talk between two consumer electronics giants.******Personally, I have played games on all three devices — but not the same games — so I can’t testify to an apples-to-apples comparison. But I’ll say this: Poker and Tetris on the iPod Touch? Fun. Super Mario Bros on the DS? Cool. FIFA Soccer on the PSP? Wicked.******(Photo: Sony’s Jack Tretten at E3; Reuters)
I for one think that while casual gamers will enjoy the iPhone – eventually most casual gamers turn into full blown gamers that want a little bit more than just 5 minutes of fun.
Cloud-gaming service OnLive opens up
OnLive, the “cloud-based” gaming service that generated plenty of interest when it was announced in May, is opening itself up.
The company is aiming to challenge game console makers Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony with a bold and ambitious service: on-demand, lag-free access to graphically rich games, which can be played on any TV and nearly any PC, even budget netbooks.
Analysts say such a product could fundamentally change the economics of the multibillion dollar video game industry. The only question is how well OnLive works, and some have expressed skepticism. Since its splashy introduction, little has been heard from the company, which was busy testing its service internally and installing servers in its data centers to handle traffic. OnLive delivers games run on servers in the cloud, rather than locally on a PC or a console.
The company is now opening the OnLive beta to testing from outside gamers, said Steve Perlman, the company’s founder and CEO, in a blog post. Perlman is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur who helped launch WebTV, which Microsoft bought in 1997. You can sign up to test OnLive at http://www.onlive.com/beta_program.html.
“One of the key challenges that OnLive technology addresses is providing a high-quality, fast-response gaming experience over a wide range of situations: different speeds/locations/types of broadband services, a variety of different PC and Mac configurations, several kinds of input and display devices, etc. So, a major focus of OnLive Beta is to test as many of these different situations as we can,” Perlman said in his post.
OnLive has been in development for seven years. It already has deals in place with 10 publishers to provide new game titles, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Take Two. The company has said it expects to launch its service in the winter of 2009.
