We Have Moved

Pixel-Love is now at: pixellove.wordpress.com

A copy of the content remains here so links don't break, but everything is ported, so if you want to look through the archives we suggest you head over to the new site.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Not long before iGames

Hollywood was apparently paying attention last year, which was the first year that the worldwide video game market's revenues (US$24.5 billion) exceeded revenues from movie box office reciepts. Of course, various Hollywood players have tried unsucessfully to break into gaming before, but this time it's serious. Mercury News is reporting that multiple Hollywood studios are now trying to get into gaming in one way or another, e.g. buying development houses, or starting their own game development houses.

Turner Broadcasting Systems has hit on a novel approach to making money in games (also covered here), an approach that builds on Ted Turner's own experience with Turner Classic Movies. TBS has licensed over 300 PC gaming titles from 17 different publishers, and will offer them via a download services called GameTap. The idea is that you subscribe to GameTap for a flat fee, download games, and play them until you either get bored or your subscription runs out.

GameTap's launch lineup hasn't yet been released, but it will apparently be made up mostly of "classic gaming" titles, like Pac-Man, with a smattering of newer titles thrown in for good measure. The service will then add a few games per week as a way to keep people signed up. (TBS's decision to base the initial iteration of the service older gaming titles that are out of circulation is a classic example of a company taking advantage of "the long tail.")

This sounds like a great idea, as long as the DRM isn't too crippling to use. I could see this service easily eclipsing a single-company service like Valve's Steam, which was beset by legal and technical problems at launch. The TBS approach has a number of advantages, first for consumers, because it provides more content for your subscription dollar than a single-studio service. Game studios would benefit, too, because they wouldn't end up competing directly with their own offline distributors, as was the case with Valve. Finally, smaller game studios would have an easy way to reach a large audience, if TBS decides to carry their titles. And I don't see why TBS wouldn't carry more obscure gaming titles alongside bigger ones, because it doesn't cost them anything extra the way it would an offline retailer.

One niche that could benefit greatly from TBS's online distribution approach is Mac gaming. Outside of an Apple Store or the odd MicroCenter, it's tough to find Mac gaming titles. While GameTap is Windows only, if they get the DRM, distribution, and pricing issues right, then they could either move into the Mac market themselves or provide a good model for a Mac gaming imitator.

No comments: