Here’s a great piece by The Cut Scene’s Ben Fritz on why The NPD Group should start keeping tabs on downloadable content.

Journalists regard NPD as the ultimate authority on video game sales in the states, but right now the market research group doesn’t track the popularity of paid downloadable content. This is an aspect of the games industry that’s exploding this year — major releases like Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Call of Duty: World at War were all given fresh life with new missions and maps — but we only have a vague idea of how successful they are.

Publishers will sometimes boast of superior sales, but typically they guard the hard data. There’s no standard metric of how lucrative this trend is overall.

In a sense, this is just a matter of satisfying the curiosity of journalists, analysts and shareholders; if downloadable content isn’t doing well, we won’t see as much of it. But hey, the groups of people I just mentioned above isn’t insignificant. If publishers and console makers are willing to use NPD data for bragging rights, why stop at boxed content?

Business | No Comments »

If you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to stock this blog with regular updates now that I’m freelancing and trying to get myself out there a little more. But after a fun, if not rambunctious, weekend, I’m resigned to merely tossing you in a couple directions instead of gathering too many thoughts of my own. Tonights topic — one that’s obviously close to home — game journalism.

Last week I caught up with the Sore Thumbs blog, operated by former Electronic Gaming Monthly Editor-In-Chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu and Senior Editor Crispin Boyer. They’ve basically got a game journalism tell-all going on there, steadily revealing the kinds of corrupt practices that induce vomiting in most ethical media types. Part three of Shoe’s behind-the-scenes series, for example, details the many ways that PR representatives try to finagle higher review scores and how one method in particular led to Shoe’s departure from EGM.

But the blog post that’s getting the most traction from the blogosphere this week is actually a response from an anonymous PR representative. Basically, the rep admits to several tactics to ensure high scores for his client, but also casts stones at reviewers in general, accusing them of writing lazy or unfair criticisms. The fighting words:

The fact is game journalists – of which there are hundreds at the moment – are living off the blood sweat and tears of creative people who love games and regularly work 100 hours weeks. The fact they casually rip on a game gives others involved in the development and marketing process good reason to pissed.

As evidenced in discussions here and here, this sort of comment shifts the discourse away from issues of swag and corruption brought on by the PR machine and instead strikes at the general nature of game journalism — a cunning PR move, indeed. As I mentioned in Sore Thumbs’ comment section, I’d like to know if the laziness or unprofessional nature of some game journalists justifies the work of the PR man, which in this case is to secure high scores for his client’s game, regardless of whether it’s deserved.

Anyway, if you want to read some “game journalism” that’s actually, you know, journalism (reviews are subjective, which is a big distinction in my mind), check out Dean Takahashi’s investigation of the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death. Using anonymous and named sources, Takahashi reports, among other things, that Microsoft ignored warning signs that their new console was prone to failure and plowed ahead for that Christmas launch. For example:

Early reports on the problems were myriad. In an Aug. 30, 2005 memo, the team reported overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips from Infineon (now Qimonda), a problem with the DVD drive, and other things. At that point, the contract manufacturers were behind schedule and had only built hundreds of units. They were supposed to have been in high gear, making thousands every week.

So what’s the big deal if they’re still selling consoles? Takahashi notes that while Microsoft was investigating the problem in 2007, they froze production, chopped a million units off of their target sales and stopped heavily promoting the Xbox until they could figure out a solution. The Wii craze was in full swing, and Takahashi argues that Microsoft lost a huge potential customer base during this time. Not to mention that the company announced in mid-2007 that it would repair all defective consoles for free, requiring a $1.15 billion write-off. Takahashi calls that charge “one of the biggest liability glitches in consumer electronics history.”

Microsoft refused to confirm or deny any of the facts that Takahashi dug up, but an executive told him during an earlier interview that he still thinks launching earlier than Playstation 3 and Wii was the right call.

Xbox 360, Media, Business | No Comments »

I was catching up with a source yesterday, trying to get some San Diego game developer contacts, when he got me all excited over what sounded like a great trend story. The casual, downloadable games market, he said, is becoming less viable, and studios are looking to other means for distribution.

Fortunately, before I got too riled up, he revealed that he was recently quoted in a Forbes article on that very topic. Mary Jane Irwin does a pretty good job of explaining the “Casual Gold Bust.” It’s an end to the boom that arguably reached its peak two years ago, when small developers were cashing in by distributing their games through aggregation portals like Play First and Big Fish Games. Simply put:

Indeed, anyone with a little programming know-how can create a game and ship it off to publishers. As the glut grows, individual titles get less exposure, and it becomes more difficult to distinguish one title from the next. Competition from game developers outside the U.S. doesn’t help either. The result: Each title generates less and less revenue.

Given my general disdain for your solitaire clones and Diner Dash knockoffs, you’d think I’m not inclined to care about this predicament, but here’s the thing: a lot of good developers have found success in that market, either creating games that are unique in some way or selling out enough so they can work on that experimental side project. Moreover, there’s no indication that the casual gaming public even cares that the same shit is being shoveled their way over and over. Now, I say that based on Irwin’s pegging of Web-based casual game revenues at $1 billion last year. She doesn’t delve into whether the portals themselves will face a downturn.

If I’m not making any sense, Allen Varney crafted a perfect argument on why the Casual Gold Rush is bad for games in an article for The Escapist from 2006, titled “Attack of the Parasites.” The whole article is pretty brilliant, so rather than quote some of it I’ll just suggest you read all of it.

Notably, it appears that Varney has seen the Forbes article and is rightfully claiming, to paraphrase, “I called it.” Oh, and he sees another gold rush in the works, as the “exact same stupid story is playing out again right now on Facebook.”

Another forum member, KNau, responds: “The same thing is also being played out on XBLA and the iPhone. Dare I say, it’ll happen in the Flash game sponsorship market, too. You can’t stop a goldrush, even if you can predict one.”

Indies, Business | No Comments »