The latest reports are in and no surprise game sales in 2009 were off by around 2 billion. Rather than regurgitate the stats of said report lets think about think about this. The sales for last year come in at around $19 billion. Two billion down may seem like a big deal but guess what? Nineteen billion is still a lot of money. It’s always amazing to think that so many of these reports will look at this as a bad thing when in fact when you have an industry like ours that consistently performs well, even in a down economy. They use words like “plummeting” and “disappointing sales.”
Disappointing? How many people would complain if their business made that much in a recession? Sure the software and hardware isn’t selling as much but it doesn’t take a 20 page report to figure out why. Last year we had a truckload of peripheral games which by themselves cost at least half the price of a console. And as we’ve talked about before, the console makers are trying to make their machines go beyond that 5 year benchmark before breaking out some new gear. Also no surprise is that Nintendo continues to do well and make money in sales on the DS and the Wii — they’re the “everybody” consoles with games that anyone can play. The marvel and wonder from this report was that Activision jumped in at the end on the year and cleared more than 8 million units of Modern Warfare 2. One game can make a difference.
So with full year of blockbuster releases on the calendar and technology that we are all anxious to see revealed there’s a strong possibility that the industry as a while will do well this year.
When Activision starts printing money they'll use this logo
The the Twilight: New Moon movie was supposed to break all kinds of records when it came out and impressively it made $120 million during it’s first weekend. COD:MW2 or MW2 made $550 million — in its first few days!
Let that settle for a minute.
It’s a recession, millions of people are unemployed and yet a videogame which retails at $60 made all that mad cash? Ridiculous? Yes when you consider we’re talking about a videogame and not a movie. But if you break it down and look at a ravenous fan base that was still playing the first game matched with a Kraken size marketing campaign what you get is one of the biggest video game launches ever and once again a top-rated, top selling game that outshines it’s predecessor in every way shape and form.
Rolling back to the success of the first game which continued to pull impressive numbers even 4 months after its initial release you can see where this thing started.
The Breakdown
Not very long after Infinity Ward’s home run in a box Call of Duty: Modern Warfare another COD was released called World at War … but this was not a sequel to modern warfare. Decent game, yes, but a follow up, no. When we finally got wind of what the real MW2 was going to look like well — then it was on.
Right from the onset of this marketing blitz we got to see how PR in the right hands can not just get people excited about a game but actually get the game to sell even more.
A Twitter page asking fans what they want to see in the game? Check. What better way to get every possible suggestion you could give credence to or toss? Then take that same page and use it to give the same fans an inside look as the game is being built. Can we say Pavlov?
It’s all about the branding
So to really give this game that “stamp” the used Infinity Ward used the branding of the developer and the game’s logo and sold that as the iconic image in all their E3 signage and marketing material. The minute you saw it, you knew what it was — like seeing that Marvel comic flip at the beginning of their comic book movies. A simple, clean presentation with a clever countdown date, a lot of buzz and very little intel to go on. Then slowly but surely things began to take shape. Okay so maybe the viral video promoting the game in a fake YouTube PSA called Fight Against Grenade Spam (F.A.G.S) wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but it did get people talking about the game.
But the trailer — oh that first trailer — what a way to get people excited about something in November besides football and turkey. Well executed and replete with all the things you would expect to see from this game it started a buzz that would eventually develop into a boom. When the game launched, Xbox live users logged in more than 5.2 million hours of multiplayer time. Keep in mind the game had a midnight release so we’re looking at a full 24 hours of people buying the game and then playing it incessantly.
Also know as Call of Duty: Cash Cow 2
Big Marketing Budget = Big Success
Let’s pull back the curtain though on these impressive numbers in sales and fan glorification though. How were they able to pull this off? Basically Activision allegedly spent more money on promotion, distribution and marketing than they did on developing the game. A little less than a quarter of the estimated $200 million budget was for development. What does that mean? It means that the marketing budget gave them coverage in print, on television and the web with a heavy push the last month before release. It means that they wouldn’t run out of copies come game release day when they opened the doors for midnight sales. It means that they could also offer special edition packages and the mammoth 250 gig special edition Xbox 360 console as well and still sell them because people wanted to get those night vision goggles or that one of a kind console. It means that they spent money — to make money.
What we have here is a strategy that was mapped out, knowing that the cash cow was going to produce golden milk as long as they took extra special care of it no matter what the cost. Did it work? If making more than double what you spent on this title in a few days counts as success then yes. The beauty of it is that after all the hype (and controversy) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was an unparalleled success and all this right at the beginning of a holiday season where word of mouth and success translates into a hot ticket item.
Well done to Activision and Infinity Ward for making lightning strike twice. The bar hasn’t been raised, it’s been given an elevator ride 12 stories up.
As promised here’s the follow up to last week’s first post featuring the sensation who loves Legos and classic videogames. In this video we get to see the Lego reproduction of some stellar titles like Dig Dug, Centipede and the one that started it all — pong. Enjoy.
Over the years we’ve seen a tremendous array of superhero games. Some were good (Marvel Ultimate Alliance), some were decent (Spiderman) and some were just horrendous (Superman, Iron-Man, every Batman game ever made and of course Aquaman). This year though we got a chance to see what a good superhero game should be and in the case of Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum, you have the making of an excellent superhero game.
The Not So Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The big issue with a lot of the bad superhero games is that so many of them were either terrible attempts at siphoning off the momentum of a movie (good or bad) or for the original titles, sorry excuses for a video game. They either tried to make the game too broad and cover too much of the character’s mythology or in the case of the movie-tie in they often times tried the make a playable version of the movie to often ridiculous results. Take for example the Iron-Man or the Fantastic Four games that were released to tie into the films. Both films did reasonably well (Iron-Man even more than reasonable) but the videogame counterparts were terrible. In an attempt to expand the movie experience the developers of these games ended up making a playable but not enjoyable version of the film that did nothing to enhance your experience of the movie or the characters themselves. Instead you ended up with some wrote reproduction of key points in the movie, clunky game mechanics, substandard graphics and all around unsatisfying gaming experience you wish you could get back (as well as a refund).
yes this was a game
the epitome of suck
superstink
While technically not a superhrero, the recent G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra videogame tie-in to to the movie is a shining example of this. Calling it a craptacular game would be giving it too much praise.
For the titles that were not connected to films, you get the same situation except in those instances, developers didn’t spend enough coming up with a game worthy of the character’s depth or source material. Granted it’s fun to run around as the Hulk smashing buildings but then to sneak around doing missions as Bruce Banner – not so much.
The Hero Rises
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2-- Ready to Rock
This year though we have had two titles already and one upcoming title that stand to break stigma attached with most superhero games and finally give some of these popular and iconic characters a chance to shine in the videogame world. Earlier this year Activision delivered up the movie tie-in to Wolverine: X-men Origins and not only was this game outstanding in it’s game play and action, it gave gamers a chance to really get into the claws of this character. Mixing back-story with present day action and throwing in nods to the origins of one of Marvel’s icons, this game did exactly what it should have done – be a quality game that wasn’t hinging it’s success on the marketing efforts of the film.
Jump ahead to late summer and we get what without a doubt will file into the ranks of one of this year’s best games, Batman: Arkham Asylum. Anybody who has played a Batman game prior to Arkham Asylum knows the agony and frustration that went with having expectations of playing a great game but instead playing what amounted to a set of pixels pretending to be a videogame. Arkham, has broken the curse on the Batman videogame franchise by providing a moody, visceral, exciting experience that really gives you a sense of what this character is like, how he operates and just how much of a badass the Dark Knight can really be. With a combination of stealth/RPG and some intense action/fighting this game delivers on several levels. The setting and mood is as creepy and intense as 2k’s Bioshock and while we essentially are confined to the asylum and it’s surrounding areas, it’s more than enough for a deep journey through the mind of a mad Joker and a flawed hero who does his best to thwart him. Here is an example of where they tapped into an arch nemesis, picked a set piece that people really know nothing amount and then build a solid story around that. Putting aside one major flaw of disappointing boss battles, Arkham Asylum is a shining example of how to make a superhero game the right way.
Soon we’ll have a chance to see what Activision’s Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 brings to the table but from all early reports things are looking great. So it’s with a welcome sigh of relief that we are hopefully ushering in a new era of the superhero video game and hopefully get more outstanding titles and less of the craptaculars.
Two weeks ago — I wrote this right after NPD released their dour statistics about videogames having a mega drop in sales …
Speculation is also out there that this decline may spark another price drop from the big three. There has already been buzz about the PS3 unveiling a slimmed down version of their console much like Microsoft did with their non-hard drive model last year – published 8/14
So guess what? — PS3 had their price drop officially announced last week and now Microsoft, surprise surprise, has just announced a price drop on their Elite 120 gig model. The new price — $299.
In fact the old 20 gig models may not even be available anymore and they’re definitely phasing out the pro (60 gig) as well. This news was so big it even made it to the blips of CNN’s Headline News. Where’s my props CNN?
Interesting timing don’t you think? For one thing this once again evens out the pricing model with Sony and it then comes down to getting a gaming console with a great social media/online gaming element versus a really good blu-ray player and gaming console. Either way you’re getting a good deal if you’re just jumping into the market for buying a console. For the owners of older 360s that have suffered hardware failure time and time again, getting a replacement of the original 20 gig model, it seems, will no longer be an option. How will this work remains to be seen. Will they just keep sending out refurbished models?
The bigger bonus for both Sony and Microsoft though is with cheaper consoles going into the fall season both companies stand to garner a whole new customer base from gamers who will gladly pay a lower price to get more memory and less RROD or in the PS3’s case an affordable blu-ray player/gaming console.
Does this mean we’re looking at a good old fashioned console war that we haven’t seen the likes of since the last generation of machines? Possibly. With graphical capabilities pretty much the same on both systems and more and more non-exclusive titles (minus the Halos and the Resistances) outside the clear difference in terms of what these machines do, it’s really a matter of personal preference.
Where does Nintendo fall into all of this? It may not be a factor at all. Well the Wii was already the cheapest. Considering that the Wii is still not serving up the kind of games its two competitors offer in terms of depth and graphical quality, for all intents and purposes it becomes the family/kid/starter console. In the last round the Gamecube was a strong competitor on the gaming level but the Wii has yet to deliver a Gears of War or Uncharted that makes it a true challenge to what Sony and Microsoft have on tap. So for now we’ll have to wait and see if these price drops will spark a rise in console sales which have not been strong all year and how this will play into consumers then going out and buying all the new releases to play on their more affordable machines. Stay tuned
