Whyos

Today, Dean Takahashi wrote up a new game distribution technology, called OnLive, that’s announcing at the Game Developers Conference this evening. He feels that it has the potential to destroy retail, with a new technical model of games executed on the server side, enabling gameplay (video) instantly streamed back to the player. This may be a valid threat to retailers, and it’s a danger I’ve warned retailers about for years. Specifically, I first warned of it because PS3’s cell technology seemed focused on the fast video decompression necessary to this sort of system. But, despite the breathless adoration of Venturebeat, I would point out three things: Read More »

Last week, there was a pretty specific analysis of GameStop’s used game business in the WSJ (with the slightly annoying flaw that the writer seems to have conflated “gross” and “net” in the sentence emphasizing high gross margin on used games vs. single digit retail expectations).

I like the Gears of War 2 model that’s mentioned, of including in new games a single-use code for a map pack download with value approximate to the discount the user would get from buying the title new. This should be quite good for the publisher and the retailer. For the publisher, it simply feels fair, as the game that’s bought, played for a week, then sold back to GameStop has a value that’s slightly diminished, in proportion to the lower re-sale price of the used title. -The newer used title is still $5-$10 cheaper, but it’s diminished by $5-$10 worth of content. The publisher/developer still doesn’t make money on the used product sale, but this has to feel better for them than having the exact same title at retail, costing less and providing no revenue to them. Read More »

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 »