Atari Going Down

Atari is a legendary name in the gaming world. Started by former programmers at Activision back in the 70s, it has had a very roller coaster ride history having changed more hands that most people can remember.

Most recently taken over by French "giant" Infogrames towards the beginning of the century, Atari seemed like it was back to being a name to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately, Infogrames haven't really done much with the brand except acquire reputed developers and fold them into the Atari family.

Atari the corporation has recently been in the news for its sale of major studios to rival publishers in order to stay afloat financially. Of note are their sale of studios and franchises like Timeshift to Vivendi, Stuntman to THQ and in the last few weeks, Driver to Ubisoft.

Infogrames have a reputation for this starting with then they acquired GT Interactive and all it studios only to fold them. Some of the best known developers and publishers have been treated this way including Gremlin Interactive, Ocean Games, Reflections Interactive, etc.

Perhaps its time the shareholders of Infogrames reassessed the capabilities of Bruno Bonnell and his colleauges on the board of Atari.

Coming Zune?

Well, it is about time.

The technology world was wondering when Microsoft would announce it's entry into the digital music realm.

The Redmond based giant has just announced its digital music project called Zune. Its primarily being touted as a music and entertainment experience, but going by Microsoft's commitment to the entertainment industry, it would not be surprising if the Zune had some gaming capabilities built in.

Should Apple be worried? Not at this stage. Not since they have sold gazillions of iPods around the world. But then going by their work on the Xbox, Microsoft have never been worried about winning the war first time round.

But Microsoft getting into the game is enough reason Apple to come out with something new. Perhaps the posting of a job on gaming industry site Gamasutra is a sign pointing to Apple's interest in entering the gaming space. Add fuel to the fire are the news reports of nVidia chips making it into the next generation of video iPods. Also supporting the argument is the fact that Apple is investing in gaming development talent.

Perhaps the strongest sign that this is the way things are going forward is the fact that industry analysts American Technology Research have upgraded their Apple stock recommendations from "hold" to "buy".

Looks like everybody wants to get into the game...

AMD-ATI Acquisition

There have been rumours abound about a potential buy out of ATI by processor giant AMD.

At the recently concluded Computex in Taiwan, rumour had it that Intel was in the game as well. The Intel possibility seems to have died down and according to Reuters, AMD seem to be on the verge of a $5.5 billion acquisition of ATI.

What does this mean for the gaming industry?

Well, while ATI has been successful in being the leading supplier of graphics cards in the portable computer space, when it comes to desktops they have had to play second fiddle to market leader nVidia. A merger with AMD could see them increasing their market share in the segment and it could also give AMD a big boost in their market share of AMD powered portable computers.

Currently, notebook manufacturers have to source their CPUs and graphics cards separately, i.e. CPUs from Intel or AMD and graphics cards from nVidia or ATI. There could be huge cost savings in acquiring CPUs and motherboard integrated graphics cards from one supplier. This would also make it a more viable option for the notebook manufacturer who may have more reason to go with AMD power as opposed to Intel.

AMD has always been seen by the hard core PC gaming community as more efficient in the cost-performance ratio. Such a move will also see ATI being able to penetrate that community better.

Wii 3?

I had a few e-mails over the last few days wondering if the lack of my posting was because I was at E3. Sadly, I wasn't able to go this year for various reasons.

While I am not officially employed within the gaming industry any more, the miracle of the Internet allows me to keep abreast of whats happening at the Staples Center.

Having been there twice I can confirm that it is arguable the greatest show on earth. I cannot think of anything else, except a party at the Playboy Mansion, that could be better than being surrounded by the future of home entertainment. I have people who can vouch for it.

Back to the topic at hand, I must comment on the recent happenings at E3 and specifically the upcoming console wars.

For once, I felt that the press was appropriately more focused on the "issues" at hand i.e. console wars, as opposed to dedicating pages on the booth babes. Perhaps it was also due to the strict regulations handed out to exhibitors this year about turning the show into a skin fest.

The general opinion seems to be that our friends Nintendo stole the show. Having been monitoring the gaming press, especially those covering E3, it wasn't too difficult to stay abreast of whats been happening.

Nintendo have never been seen to be the company with the big marketing muscle. Sony and Microsoft have been going at each other so much for the last five years that they failed to noticed the under dog preparing for war. I hereby christen this year as World War Wii.

Nintendo has stolen the show by reminding gamers and mere spectators alike that gaming is not all about the eye candy and the console with the higher specs. Its all about having fun - and fun they had with the Wii's cool controller. From what I saw and read on the web of the lines that waited to get into the Nintendo booth to try out the Wii, I am impressed. The last time I saw people waiting 3 hours in line to get into a booth was at E3 2004 for Half-Life 2.

Sony seems to be struggling with their PR machinery trying to maintain face with their seemingly copy cat controller feature. In the meantime, Microsoft is trying to make the most of their lead in the new generation console war.

It remains to be seen:
- whether Microsoft's lead will prove good for Redmond and ensure it the top spot, at least in terms of number of Xbox 360s sold
- whether Nintendo's PR coup will eat into Sony's PS3 launch. Given the near simultaneous launch timing for both platforms, the only thing that matters now is the content. Who will have more compelling games for their system at launch and how many?

Another interesting thing that has come out of this E3 is the fact that very very soon publishers will have to stop publishing cross platform content, but rather develop uniquely for each one. Given that both the Wii and the PS3 have features which are not in the Xbox 360, we can definitely see them spending more money on the development side in terms of resources. The days of porting games from one platform are over or at least they will not be as simple anymore.

Development costs are definitely going to go up and only those developers & publishers who have geared themselves up for this in terms of resources - creative and technical - will come out winning. The rest will just be also rans.

In my next post I'll look at some of the games that made waves at E3 2006.

Till then, Viva Le Wii!!!

MGM's New Bond With Activision

In quite a surprising turn of events, MGM Interactive and EON Productions have signed a deal with none other than Activision giving the latter the rights to develop and publish games based on the James Bond franchise.

The former rights holders, Electronic Arts, issued a statement confirming the deal. The interesting thing is neither MGM nor EON mentioning why they decided to move the license to Activision. EA's only response was that it was part of their efforts to produce more original content and rely less on movie based games.

Considering that only a couple of EA developed Bond titles have received critical acclaim, the rest being also rans with a lot of marketing muscle, there are two potential scenarios that I can think of as to why this happened:

Scenario 1: MGM and EON believe that EA's creative department has run out of fresh ideas on scenarios for Her Majesty's most popular employee. This may be evident from the fact that EA's non-Bond fiction material like GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Agent Under Fire and Everything or Nothing met with only lukewarm success. EA then turned back and looked at popular Bond-lore and released From Russia With Love on multiple platforms which again has received a lukewarm response. Hence the decision to move the rights to a company like Activision who have had some success marketing large movie blockbuster franchises like Spider-Man, X-Men and animated series like Shrek, Shark Tale, etc.

Scnario 2: MGM and EON asked EA for more money for the privilege of publishing the Bond franchise in the interactive space. EA must've balked at the figure considering how they fared with Commander Bond in the past. To add to that, the public outcry over the choice of Daniel Craig as the new Bond might have helped EA make the decision to give up the rights.

All in all, I haven't heard anybody answer the actual question. Only PR fluff has been heard.

Madden for Wii

GameSpot had a chance to speak to John Schappert, head of EA Canada, about EA's ongoing development of the bestselling Madden football game franchise for the Nintendo Wii.

To summarise, EA will be developing a version of the next Madden game specifically for the Wii making use of the Wii's unique controller features, especially its ability to sense tilt and yaw. This could be a huge thing especially considering that in a game like Madden, you can imagine that players would love to be able to actually "throw" the ball like they would in real life.

As much as I don't understand American Football and gave up the first time I played Madden, I will be keeping my eyes on this to see how it develops.

Full GameSpot report here.

Will Wii Rock You?

Nintendo, the oldest surviving gaming company on the planet, has announced the final name for its next generation of video game console. The Revolution, as it was known till yesterday, is has now been officially christened Wii (pronounced as We).

Apart from the creative use of the alphabet, I can already see a lot of creative use of the name in its marketing campaigns.

Nintendo itself, having been mostly written off in the console hardware space because of its less than spectacular performance against the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, sounds upbeat in its mesage on the Revolution website.

Jokes of the different connotations of the word Wii apart, the house of Mario has been making news headlines over the last year, especially with their announcement of different type of console controller which looks and behaves more like a TV's remote control.

While most people are looking closely at the war between the upcoming PlayStation 3 and the recently launched Xbox 360, it would be unwise to count Nintendo out of the game.

The Wii has quite a bit up it's sleeve including the Virtual Console which will be the Wii's answer to backward compatibility but extending all the way back to the NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 families.

Will we see Wii at E3?

Constructing...

Command & Conquer, one of the biggest franchises in the computer gaming world, is coming back with Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.

The C & C series is considered one of the best in the real-time strategy genre of gaming. Starting with the original Command & Conquer through Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2, Generals and all the expansion packs that were spawned, C&C has held its head up high and can be proud to be acclaimed as one of the most fun products to come out of a game design studio.

Starting in 1995, the venerable series' gameography follows the following path:
- Command & Conquer (August 1995)
- Command & Conqure: The Covert Operations (April 1996)
- Command & Conquer Red Alert (October 1996)
- Command & Conquer Red Alert: Counterstrike (March 1997)
- Command & Conquer Red Alert: The Aftermath (September 1997)
- Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor (November 1997)
- Command & Conquer Red Alert: Retaliation (August 1998)
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (August 1999)
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Firestorm (March 2000)
- Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 (October 2000)
- Command & Conquer Yuri's Revenge (October 2001)
- Command & Conquer Renegade (February 2002)
- Command & Conquer Generals (February 2003)
- Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour (September 2003)

The above list does not include ports to the Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation.

The only title to deviate from the RTS genre in the series was Renegade which took advantage of one of the best loved characters in the series, the GDI Commando, and cast him into a first person world in Westwood Studios' home grown game engine. Renegade was not quite the success that EA hoped it would be and there seems to be no signs of it being revived.

It is probably a good thing that the C&C series stays close to its roots in the real-time strategy genre. Red Alert and Red Alert 2 are considered to be the best games in the entire series and even today people play the game and swear by it.

Command & Conquer was created by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle's Westwood Studios, now defunct having been acquired and absorbed by Electronic Arts corporation in 1998.

Back to the story at hand, for those who are not familiar with the C&C story, the plots are set in the future where the world is divided into two alliances known as the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod.

A good way to get acquainted with the series and the story is to pick up the recently released Command & Conquer: The First Decade - a compilation of all the main C&C titles.

Told Ya

Don't forget I told you so.

I love saying that. As predicted in my earlier post, the PlayStaion 2 price has dropped to US$ 129 just two-and-a-half weeks prior to E3.

What remains to be seen is if the price will drop even further, to a potential US$ 99, later this year.

Sony might do this as a spoiler tactic for the much awaited launch of the Xbox 360 at the end of the year. Watch this space...

Master Chief is the real Mr. Incredible

Further to my earlier post on the convergence of entertainment, I just came across an interesting article by renowned gaming columnist, Geoff Keighley.

According to Geoff's Entertainment Weekly magazine column, on 9th November 2004, Microsoft's Halo 2 for the Xbox raked in more than US$ 80 million in pre-order sales. These are US$ 80 million worth of copies of the game that were confirmed purchases by Xbox owners and Halo fans.

This more than any motion picture in history has earned in a single day.

If you are reading this and you are not thinking "Video Games = Future of Entertainment Business", then you are off your rockers. Now, I am not saying that every video game has this potential, just that it takes just one such game to highlight the potential of the industry.

Arguably, the leader in the industry in entertainment convergence has to be software market leader Electronic Arts. It was only a few years ago that EA embarked on moving their major creative talent to where the major creative talent are. Huh? What?

I'm referring to EA's moving of its major studios to Los Angeles at a spanking new facility, bringing their gaming talent close to the Mecca of entertainment - Hollywood. Not being satisfied with merely moving the team to LA, they went about hiring Hollywood scriptwriters, music composers, special effects experts and what have you to work on creating more believable, movie-like games.

As an example, lets go back a few years to the launch of James Bond Everything or Nothing. The script for the game was written by Bruce Feirstein, the same person who co-wrote the screenplay for Goldeneye the movie. If you don't believe me, check up his page on IMDB.

If that wasn't good enough, they went out and hired Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Shannon Elizabeth, Richard Kiel, Mya, John Cleese and Judi Dench. The music was composed by Sean Callery of La Femme Nikita fame. Casting for the game was taken care of by April Webster who has been credited for Mission: Impossible III and TV shows like Lost and Alias. As if that wasn't enough they went out and hired, in true Hollywood fashion, supermodel Heidi Klum, to play Bond girl.

Now if that is not Hollywood production value, then what is.

The point I am harping on about is convergence, convergence, convergence.

PlayStation 2 Price Drop: Maybe

Speculation is rife that Sony is planning to cut the PlayStation 2 console price by about US$ 20. Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a recent report that a price cut could be just weeks away.

How does this affect consumers in the Middle East? Well, for one thing, Sony's Middle East personnel will definitely look to match the price to the US market in order to counter the threat of parallel imports which are still the bane of a lot of businesses in the region.

Also, with the PlayStation 3 at least 6-7 months away and the Xbox 360 being top of mind for a lot of potential console buyers, Sony will need to put together some sort of price driven incentive to steal into potential Xbox 360 sales.

While Microsoft has not officially launched the Xbox 360 in the Middle East, the parallel market is doing quite well in retail sales of the 360. A fair chunk of core gamers will want to wait for the PlayStation 3 in end-2006/early-2007.

Sony may also choose to drop the price in order to acquire consumers who have been waiting for the console price to reach a more "acceptable" price point.

The Japanese company may also be coming under pressure from software publishers who may be complaining of dropping software sales. It is quite normal in the industry to see console prices drop about 3-4 months after the previous holiday season i.e. in this case, quarter 4 of the 2005.

All in all, this is potentially good news for those who haven't yet picked up the console or own another console like the Xbox or Nintendo's GameCube.

Entertainment Converging

In what looks like another move in the direction of convergence of entertainment formats, movie house Paramount Pictures has inked a deal with Microsoft to provide movie based content for Redmond-based Microsoft's Xbox Live service.

To kick off the arrangement, content from Paramount's two upcoming blockbusters Mission: Impossible III and Nacho Libre will be available to Xbox Live users.

Full Story Here.

Such deals are not uncommon in the industry with most major publishers signing deals with mainstream entertainment talent whereby their likenesses, voices and even characters from movies are integrated into gaming content.

With Hollywood box office revenues dropping, partly due to a large number of consumers spending more time playing video games, movie industry execs are now busy signing up strategic deals with major gaming publishers. Over the last few years, surveys of American households conducted by the Entertainment Software Association (formerly the Interactive Digital Software Association) have shown that more and more people are playing video games as opposed to going to the cinema. You can find a bunch of their survey results here.

A video game based on a movie is now commonplace as can be seen over the last few years with the likes of the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises. Even classics like The Godfather and the Star Wars franchise have all been turned into videogames giving people the opportunity to "live" the movie experience. In addition to commercially feasibility, movie related video games now compliment the movies as it allows the franchise owner to deliver a package of entertainment based on their IP.

Video games give writers to unfold a story in a way that is not possible with movies, books or any other form of mainstream entertainment. Add to that the explosive growth of video game technology and you have what many hail to be the future of entertainment.

I have been a strong advocate for the interactive nature of video games as a great medium for telling stories.

Product placement in movies is now a thing of the past. Its all about advertising in games now. That can of Red Bull in that scene from the Judge Dredd video game is one that comes to mind immediately.

Movies do not offer the same leve of replay value that games can. With most new games becoming more and more non-linear and with game worlds becoming more and more open the possibilities are almost endless.

In an earlier post, I talked about Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider franchise. This is an example of a great video game franchise that made it to movies successfully. Others that have done the same are Wing Commander, Bloodrayne and Doom.

On the anvil to be turned into video games are Superman and Scarface, among others.

XBox murder trial begins

Why do video game related crimes only seem to happen in the land of the free and home of the brave?

OK, some of you might point out this incident, but that's just one in the UK. The majority of video game related crimes seem to happen in the US.

Is it something in the water, air or just the culture of the place?

This is one of the recent ones to go on trial.

Video games are sold all over the world - Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Middle East, South East Asia - but almost all reported crimes seem to take place in North America.

Great topic for another Michael Moore documentary.

Lara Croft Breaks Into The Guinness Book

Everybody's favourite video game heroine, Lara Croft, who was most recently portrayed on the big screen by the gorgeous Angelina Jolie, has now made it into the Guinness Book of Records for being the "Most Successful Human Videogame Heroine".

Lara's new adventure Tomb Raider Legend should be hitting store shelves this week in the region.

Not many video game characters, save a few like Mario and Sonic, have made it into pop culture psyche like Lara has. She's been captivating gamers and men alike for over a decade now.




Once the game is out, I will try and find some links to reviews so you can gauge what the press is saying about Tomb Raider Legend.

Here's Gamespot's coverage of the Guinness Book of Records entry.

Bad Apple

I've met a lot of people in the games industry in marketing, sales, distribution, business development and quite a few who are involved in the actual development of the games themselves.

Once in a while an apple comes rolling out of the barrel making news headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Games Industry published this report on the latest happenings with Stefan Eriksson, an ex-Gizmondo exec whose car crash has turned into quite a story.

Latest story here.

How To Navigate Marketing's New World

John Gaudiosi, over at Next Gen has addressed the challenges of marketing interactive entertainment through a series of interviews with some of the leading publishers in the world.

Its interesting to read the common train of thought that seems to run through the industry.

Here's the full article.

hello world!

Computer and video games are probably one of the hardest commodities to market in the Middle East.

No matter what medium you choose to employ there's bound to be more cons than pros in the strategy.

The bulk of gaming marketing in the Middle East has been done through the use of print media. In the absence of accurate research and data into the reading habits of the populace of the region, it is more of a hit-or-miss situation.

Over the last few years, though, publishers have invested into other traditional media like TV, radio and even cinema.

Where TV scores above its non-visual but older cousin, radio, is the ability to reach out to a larger audience than any other, especially since TV is now a staple part of the entertainment diet of most people.

Radio is challenging when it comes to promoting video games, because games by their very nature rely heavily on visual communication of messages.

Cinema scores a point above both the above in that it is a captive environment. After spending AED 30 on a ticket, most people are likely to be in their seats at the appointed time. If your ad is placed close to the start of the movie, you are pretty much guaranteed exposure.

The problem with all of the three of the above media in the region is that advertisers have very little specific information about who exactly is watching or listening. They have a rough idea, but no specifics. Its difficult to split the audiences by nationality, age, gender, income brackets or any psychographic information.

Over the last couple of years, i have slowly become a strong advocate for internet marketing. However, my grouse with most advertisers who spend heavily on the internet has been that they never seem to spend enough time on the creative side of the online campaign. It almost always looks like an afterthought to the traditional marketing media mix.
"OK. Now give me a 468 x 60 pixel banner version of the print ad" is what i hear a lot.

What people seems to forget is that while a creative concept may work in print or radio or TV or cinema, it may not necessarily work online. Attention spans on line are much lower because of most web pages, there is lots of different bits of information as opposed to a TV show where you have one plot element on screen at a time - unless you're watching 2 shows at a time or some sort of split screen show. In broadcast media, the obvious danger is of the audience switching to another channel or switching off.

In cinema, they cannot switch off - either leave, go to sleep or close your eyes and ears during the commercials.

With the internet, advertisers have the opportunity to go very targeted because online technology allows you to do so.

In the US, Europe and other more developed markets, internet advertising is getting a bigger slice of the marketing budget than ever before, specifically in the games industry.

This is because most gamers are online savvy to some extent. due to the high perceived value of games i.e. US$ 40+ for new games, the consumer chooses to make as educated a decision as possible when it comes to purchasing.

Gamers are very interested to know what the gaming media thinks of the games they are considering purchasing. this has lead to the popularity of sites like Gamespot, IGN and Adrenaline Vault, to name a few.

The Middle East has yet to develop a good, professional gaming portal. several attempts have been made - Games4Arab, T-break and the now defunct GamesArabia.

I will not blame the site developers or owners because running a gaming site to the level of depth and professionalism of a Gamespot is tedious, cumbersome and time consuming.

Setting up a site is probably the easiest thing, but it doesn't stop there. you need good, qualified, experienced editorial personnel to keep the site alive, marketing to maintain and develop visibility, advertising revenue to sustain the commercial feasibility of the project.

My friend, Abbas J, at T-break has done a commendable job in maintaining his site's popularity by also covering hardware technology. His bulletin board is quite active and gets a lot of traffic especially from outside the Middle East. To top it off, he is a gamer with a passion for good games.

I won't comment on Games4Arab since i can't read Arabic well enough to be able to pass a judgment on its editorial.

The region also lacks good internet marketing companies. most of those out there are satisfied putting together websites, some nice flash animations and the odd banner design. There is little or no creativity in running an pure internet marketing campaign.

Hats off to the likes of Emirates Airline for investing in online marketing. I think Emirates has it easy in a sense that their online campaigns are a mirror of their print campaigns and the mechanics of the campaigns are the same - quite simple and straightforward. Coupled with one of the best loyalty programmes out there, they must be experiencing considerable success from their online efforts to continue to put money into it.