For those not aware of its background; Redbox was initially created by McDonald’s as a test of kiosks carrying a wide variety of convenience items. It later changed focus to copy DVDPlay’s successful, but underfunded, model of low cost nightly rentals distributed from kiosks at supermarkets, and Coinstar, who already possessed a significant footprint in desirable locations, took ownership. Read More »
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Dan DeMatteo is certainly correct in his assessment of used game buybacks supporting new games sales, and if every (or any) publisher were only a publisher, with no developer component, that would definitely get more traction with them. There are a couple of psychological issues that somewhat negate the value of his argument for publishers: Read More »
Techcrunch is highlighting a startup called Baseshield that’s created a marketplace for software that downloads into a virtual environment, protecting the user experience and keeping them safe from malware, etc, and ensuring compatibility. It does look like a well executed initiative, and I hope that it ends up being significant, but Techcrunch seems unaware that that there have been similar technologies around for about ten years. Exent, Yummy, and Into Networks all have/had their own versions, and I’m sure there are a few others that escape me at the moment.
Blockbuster today announced that it’ll be launching a new initiative allowing download of movies to a proprietary settop box (similar to Netflix’s Roku). It has been noted that there are getting to be a lot of awfully similar boxes out there trying to claim the living room (Roku, AppleTV, Tivo, and to some extent the game consoles). I don’t believe that Blockbuster’s entry is meaningless, though, as their audience is not that of Apple or Netflix, so, if this can work, it will probably be incremental to that market. Read More »
A friend read my article proposing a standardized feed of downloadable games, and suggested that I jumpstart that concept with creation of a database feed highlighting all available online games, with links to transactions for each of them. He proposed that that could serve as a proof-of-concept allowing the full range of Twitter/Steam/xfire-like applications and customized web functionality. -Lacking, however, the embedded transaction model that’s central to the business concept, so it’d be very much limited to proof. He’s a pretty smart guy, maybe the sharpest in looking at just this sort of content, so I was actively regretting that I’m already a bit too overloaded with projects to start on that one immediately. Read More »
As more diverse boxes come into the living room, not least those supporting Netflix streaming service (of which 360 is but one), and PC content creators show themselves significantly more agile in adopting new models for game content, the question of what next generation game consoles will look like only gets more interesting. Some recent optimism about the current PC gamer marketplace is probably overstated, but it’s a curious time right now. -Especially compelling to ponder after the latest add-on to games’ subscription model leviathan. Read More »
Andrew Chen posted some generally useful information the other day on how to assess ad campaigns driving to game content. I don’t disagree with any of his statements, and largely think his is an excellent primer, but it’s important to emphasize that conventional online advertising has somewhat limited use for those promoting games. And, while the conversion numbers in his grid may have been simply for demonstration purposes, they were overoptimistic for most conditions, and this is worth noting. Read More »
I don’t know a lot about Macrovision, aside from the fact that most games and movies distributed on physical media use their DRM protection, and that this technology is at the core of their value. –they’ve been doing this since VHS, and last year, they acquired the DRM technology used on Blu-ray disks. This puts them at the very center of a business that will likely plateau sometime in the next few years. Read More »
Silly new Brazilian console sounds like old silly American Console, but not quite as hopeless. -Cheaper to build, cheaper to buy, and probably didn’t manage to waste $73 million on the way to (not) releasing it. Interesting that, historically, Phantom did go through a semi-but-not-really credible stage, where actual game industry folks commissioned creation of a sorta neat lapboard/keyboard and perhaps (although I doubt it) streaming technology, and now Phantom seems to be sort of releasing these as products. A problem with Phantom from the start was that it wanted to be a premium device, but always consisted of elements that had already been better enabled by other entities. Hence, the threat was that if Phantom actually launched, and succeeded, a competitor could be put together with an afternoon of phone calls to vendors (Exent, Alienware, Alphagrip, hmm, what else…)
Everyone in tech journalism seems jazzed about it; and, at least the poker actually is reasonably good, especially compared with the rest of their product, which tends to be reskinnings of the same weak gameplay with differing weak creative. Just look at the competition in their (primarily FaceBook/MySpace) space: Youplus has better creative and execution than Zynga, SGN is more inventive. And Playfish has more interesting approaches to social play (which still doesn’t come close to the cleverness of iminlikewithyou).
This is very interesting to me, because Capps is saying that in response to used sales, not piracy, Epic will be looking at code activations. -And used sales means the console side of things, because it doesn’t exist for PC titles. I know that developers have stronger feelings on used product than publishers (although publishers aren’t that big on it either), and users never seem to love activations, so this may go nowhere. But it’s interesting to hear as major a player as Epic propose it.
Second Life is a brilliant sandbox, and there are some real opportunities that Linden could have taken to make it something beyond a fairly limited community. They may be too late now, but they have little to lose in trying:
SL has always been a lousy game environment, but that’s largely because Linden refuse to focus on the opportunity and optimize a set of servers for it (enabling some level of pre-caching). If they did do so, it could be an intriguing platform for free-to-play games. And, not only would it work for conventionally developed games. It could include an integrated marketplace for user-generated content that would leverage the most accessible tools for 3D creation, and a significant existing developer base. Questions of game balance and style always come up when discussing expansive approaches to in-game content, but this can be resolved either with structurally or societally enforced rules within each game environment. [I co-founded Gameflood to do something like this, but left it as it became something modder-centric, as a result of just this debate.] Read More »
Interesting to see that EA doesn’t care for casual as a category so much these days, and are rolling that initiative into their more meaningful non-core titles. I think creators are beginning to understand online play, and that casual, as we understand it today (free demos with 2% conversion to paid, or simple ads), is a transitional category. Everyone who wants games, wants to play games that are actually worth paying for (by free-to-play or whatever), or at least worth trading attention in a meaningful advertiser interaction (i.e. Neoedge).
Three obvious truths about frontline downloadable game sales are generally ignored by the existing industry players:
- Inventory Means Nothing –Limitations on retail availability unnaturally hinders sales of digital product. It may help a lousy retailer, but does nothing for the creator or publisher (even if the retailer is the publisher).
- The Store Metaphor is Played Out -There are no limits to how you attract and keep customers of digital product except the limits of your imagination.
- Great Games are Currently Sold on Lame Websites-The elegant implementation of interactive entertainment in games is in stark contrast with the archaic implementation of retail download/commerce sites. Read More »