Its hard not to be impressed by the Halo 3 launch - as we said when Halo 2 came out, big video game launches are the big event in entertainment these days. But compare the $252m opening week sales for Halo 2 with the $150m sales for the opening of Spiderman 3 - and then think about how much more profitable a game is versus a film - and whilst a film revenues dip dramatically after opening a game can keep selling at full retail price for months. That's real money.
So we were interested to read about Electronic Arts new approach to pricing. At the Royal Televison Society conference the EA CEO John Riccitiello announced that they were moving to a model where games are given away free - with revenue coming from micropayments for extra content bought online. In Korea they trialed this approach with Fifa;
“We gave the Fifa disc away free, but, instead of
charging people for software, we charged small payments within the game: 5p
for injury updates, 10p for a new strip. We found that 10 per cent of all
Korean households downloaded Fifa online and the consumer paid us more
online than they would have done buying the game in a store.
Riccitiello also said that lots of current games are too complicated - and future growth would come from simpler formats such as puzzles and word games played on mobile and handheld devices.
We see real opportunities for brands here - games get people attention and advertising is increasingly proven as a funding model (Look at the success of Wild Tangent - in whom MindShare parent company WPP has an investment).
The brand that develops the next big game for BlackBerry could do very well - BrickBreaker is seriously addictive.
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