|
5#

楼主 |
发表于 2008-9-11 14:11:18
|
只看该作者
Why Casual Is Smart
One of the new markets involves subscription-based online offerings. The beauty of these games for CFOs is that they help to smooth the industry's notorious sales peaks and troughs around the lifecycles of traditional consoles. "This has been a super-cyclical industry, and the thing CFOs want the most is predictability," says Jason Mauricio, an analyst at Arete Research in London. "They don't want surprises, they want smooth earnings. Some of the newer developments coming up in the video game industry are allowing that to be more of a reality." For its part, Activision Blizzard generates more than $1 billion in revenue and more than $500m in profit from subscription businesses, thanks largely to its ownership of the Blizzard-developed World of Warcraft, an online game with some 9m monthly subscribers. EA, meanwhile, also sees this as a growth area, and expects online revenue to rise by some 50%, to more than $285m, in the year to April 2009.
Another new focus is what gaming execs call the "casual" market. It's a loose term covering simple games that anyone can pick up and play, such as sports simulations played with the Wii console's motion-sensitive controller. The market has introduced new consumers to the industry. Casual gamers might be put off by the array of buttons on a normal console controller but, as Tippl says, "everybody knows how to swing a tennis racket." Activision's hit here is Guitar Hero, a franchise it acquired when it bought publisher RedOctane in 2006. Players press buttons on a plastic guitar (sold with the game) in time with on-screen prompts. The franchise has brought in more than $1 billion of revenue, and this year the company released a new title in partnership with rock group Aerosmith, as well as a version designed for Nintendo's handheld DS console.
Casual gaming has also been a hit at Ubisoft, a 22-year-old, |
|