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“Through our years in the used business, we have learned that the second-hand user is a value-oriented consumer. The average price of a used Xbox [360] game is twenty dollars, so we don’t believe that a ten-dollar add-on piece of downloadable content is compelling to a used-game buyer.”
“We are encouraging publishers to offer add-on content for new titles at a higher price and then a lower-price option for used games. In fact, publishers can participate in our used business by offering add-on content for the most popular used titles, creating a win-win situation for publishers, retailers and consumers.”
“GameStop will also assist in expanding the sales of DLC as we can market and and execute the sale right in our stores to the millions of customers coming through our doors.” – GameStop COO Paul Raines
This whole statement tells me that GameStop is worried that plans like “Project Ten Dollar” will hurt their used game sales.
Additionally, the part in bold makes no sense at all and only seems to benefit GameStop’s used game sales while at the same time driving down the number of new game sales.
Link
-Justin
I sat and thought about this very question this morning while watching TTWO trade. Take-Two’s development cycle leaves a lot to be desired and all the rumblings about their working conditions is troubling. But what this article mentions and what was on my mind this morning is that Take-Two is looking to be in the same position that they were when EA tried to pick them up 2 years ago.
I didn’t pull the trigger today but I’ll most likely find myself thinking about it again tomorrow morning.
Read the article here.
-Justin
MPs to answer questions from the videogames industry
London, United Kingdom, 17 March, 2010 – With the general election on the horizon, the videogames industry is kicking off the campaign trail with a special industry event. On the evening of the 29th March, the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) is hosting a political Question & Answer session with the representatives of the three main political parties. Tom Watson MP will be representing the Labour Party; with Hon. Ed Vaizey MP and Don Foster MP attending for the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats respectively.
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“Today’s a hard day at IGN. We’ve had to reduce the size of our organization and are eliminating roles today in every part of the company. We are making every effort to be compassionate and fair to the people whose roles we’ve eliminated.
“We’re doing this to reduce costs. While we’ve been doing well — we’re profitable and our audience continues to grow — we’re still feeling the effects of the economy, and we need to make sure we can invest where there is opportunity. Over the past couple of years, we have been focusing IGN on areas where we can not only grow, but be best in the world: serving gamers online, and serving advertisers looking to reach men. To do that successfully, we have to be as efficient as possible in our core businesses. The difficult actions we’re taking today get us to where we need to be.
“We are losing colleagues who played an important role getting us to where we are — #1 in games and men’s lifestyle, and growing 40% over last year in the total size of our audience. We are deeply grateful to our colleagues for everything they’ve done. We as a company are absolutely headed in the right direction, and while today will be hard, it won’t stop us.
“We’ll have an All-Hands meeting later today to discuss this, and give you a chance to ask questions. Greg will be sending out a note with the exact timing, please be on the lookout for that.
“It probably goes without saying, but please keep this absolutely confidential to IGN. If you are approached by any member of the press, please direct them to Kris Sharbaugh. – Internal IGN memo
No official word yet on who was let go, I have seen a rumor that mentioned Chris Roper as one of the cuts but that is unconfirmed.
We will post up more info on this as it becomes available.
Link
-Justin
Click to read the rest of the story
GDC 2011 RETURNS FEB 28TH-MARCH 4TH
SAN FRANCISCO – Mar. 15, 2010 – UBM TechWeb Game Network’s 2010 Game Developers Conference® (GDC), the world’s largest industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of interactive entertainment, has announced an all-time record of 18,250 game industry professionals attending San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center for the March 9th-13th event. Surpassing last year’s total of 17,000 attendees, the event brought together experienced game developers, publishers, deal makers, industry aspirants and working press for more than 400 lectures, panels, summits, tutorials and roundtable discussions.
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“I think if you have great partners, great film makers, a great movie, a great movie story and the development time that you need to make the game, then yeah, you can make excellent movie-based games. And they’re out there. Obviously as gamers and games press we’re much more critical of movie games than the average consumer that goes out, sees the movie, gets really excited and wants to extend their experience with the film. They’re far less critical than we are as hardcore gamers. But the fact is I think if you were to really look at the aggregate scores of most Activision movie games compared to a lot of other companies, you’d find that they’re actually at the forefront of making better movie games than almost anybody out there pretty consistently for the past few years.” – Activision producer, Jason Ades
Part of the problem with the quality of movie based games comes from very short development cycles in order to release with the film in question but the bigger issue is that quality does not necessarily equal sales when it comes to these games. The biggest contributing factor in a successful movie-tie in game is how well the movie does at the box office. With that in mind it doesn’t pay to invest a lot of time and money into the development of these titles.
Link
-Justin
“Signaling their intention to set up a new deal soon, Vince Zampella and Jason West, the recently fired heads of the studio that produced the blockbuster video games Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, have agreed to be represented by the Creative Artists Agency.” – LA Times
Doesn’t sound like they are all that interested in starting their own studio. Anyone else think EA is getting a couple new offices ready?
Link
-Justin
“At Square Enix, in anticipation of the appearance of next generation platforms, we’ve started development on a new generation game engine for competing beyond the level of the strong developers throughout the world, and are presently seeking a lot of talent.”
Link
-Justin
Sources have told Kotaku that Activision has been withholding regular royalty payments for Modern Warfare 2 to Infinity Ward employees in order to keep them from leaving the company.
I have some serious doubts about this rumor, mainly because it just seems too crazy to be true, but if this is in fact correct this is pretty low.
Link
-Justin
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