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Counting Rupees: The Network is the Platform

Jeff Engel — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

"The Network is the Computer" - John Gage, Sun Microsystems, 1984

When John Gage said this in 1984 it was a fairly controversial statement. Computers were getting smarter and more powerful and seemed to be moving away from the DUMB terminals of the past to more application-oriented, personal computing. At the time, most people probably weren't considering that an incredibly powerful, pervasive, interconnected web of servers and computers allowing for petabytes of data all over the world to be stored, accessed, manipulated and interacted with, would be used by more than 20% of the world's population, and nearly 75% of the US population. Looking at where we are today, his words seem fairly prescient. Not that the technology and power in computers hasn't also been improving at an astonishing rate, but there's certainly been a shift in how people use computers as internet penetration has increased. After all, would things like the iPhone or EeePC or Mini 12s or email terminals really serve much of a purpose if not for their ability to connect to a network?

So, what does this really have to do with gaming? Well, there's certainly been some interest in creating web games, ranging from incredibly simple but fun diversions like Desktop Tower Defense, to more complex first-person shooters like Fallen Empire: Legions or the Quake 3: Arena remake, Quake Live. But this is really just the start.

Recently, people have been mostly puzzled as to why Microsoft would continue to try and keep "Games for Windows Live" alive when it was so unpopular when it launched. Indeed, people were not very interested in paying for services that they were already used to getting for free. A few months ago, Microsoft had to scrap the idea of making people pay for the service and now, more recently, it has launched a new client for it. Judging from the response, it doesn't seem like most people care about the service. What's Microsoft thinking here?

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Counting Rupees: The Network is the Platform originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Gaming the economic crisis

Jeff Engel — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

The markets have plunged thousands of points, credit is tight, unemployment is skyrocketing, and all you want to think about is what's going on with the gaming industry? Don't worry, I understand. After all, people need something to do when they're not looking for a new job, right? So, with that (depressing thought) in mind, I've decided to speculate a little on how the current economic conditions are going to affect each aspect of the industry, from the publisher to the developer and, of course, the gamer.

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Counting Rupees: Gaming the economic crisis originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Feeling used

Jeff Engel — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Features, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Bungie audio director Marty O'Donnell recently made some controversial remarks regarding used game sales. To quote, "It seems to me that the folks who create and publish a game shouldn't stop receiving income from further sales." Of course, this seems laughable to all of us who have bought and sold used games for years. It's my property, I can do what I want with it, right? This doesn't have any place in the industry, does it?

Legally, perhaps not. According to the first sale doctrine in copyright law, copyright holders are expected "to obtain all financial benefit for the article or product embodying the intellectual property at the time of the sale, and prohibits placing limitations on purchased items." This basically means that, once you purchase an item, the intellectual property cannot prevent you from doing whatever you want with the item so long as you don't violate copyright (by, say, copying it and then selling it -- otherwise known as pirating).

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Counting Rupees: Feeling used originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Sustainable Indies

Jeff Engel — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:09:00 EST

Filed under: Features, Microsoft Xbox 360, Puzzle

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Braid was released just over two weeks ago to critical raves and a few complaints regarding its slightly higher than "standard" price of $15. Despite Jonathan Blow, the creator of the game, having to defend the price for essentially a full week bracketing its release, Blow has now confirmed via his blog that his Braid will probably make back enough money to allow him to work on his next game. This is certainly great news, as Braid is one of the best games to be released on Xbox Live Arcade, or if you use Metacritic, the 8th best game to be released so far on the Xbox 360. Jonathan Blow certainly deserves the chance to follow up his brilliant effort, but something about his post regarding the success of his game actually revealed a warning sign to me for indie games overall.

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Counting Rupees: Sustainable Indies originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: E3 lives!

Jeff Engel — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:30:00 EST

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Last week GamePolitics editor Dennis McCauley declared in his weekly Joystiq column that E3 was dead. He is certainly not alone in his opinion. IGN's Craig Harris also pronounced the show dead on his blog, and EA CEO John Riccitiello said that he "hates E3 like this," vaguely threatening to simply have the publisher put on its own show in the future. And of course, the always reliable 3D Realms said that it wasn't attending E3 this year because it was "irrelevant".

A lot of people were disappointed with this year's E3, perhaps even more so than what most considered a horribly executed 2007 E3. As someone who has never been to E3, I suppose I don't have any personal experience to draw from to tell you how much worse this year's E3 was than the ones from 2006 and before. However, as someone who has anxiously awaited and followed E3 for many years, I wonder whether a lot of this reaction is overblown.

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Counting Rupees: E3 lives! originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Bust Blox

Jeff Engel — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:30:00 EST

Filed under: Nintendo Wii, Puzzle

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Boom Blox seemed to have everything going for it. EA, one of the biggest and most successful developers and publishers, was creating it. The massively famous and successful director Steven Spielberg was directly involved with both the concept and the design of the game on an ongoing basis, and his name was featured on the cover art. Its simple and intuitive family-oriented concept seemed like a perfect match for the wildly popular Wii, where simple and intuitive family-oriented games thrived. And in the end, it debuted to relatively good reviews (and even a few outstanding ones) which should have ensured at least a positive word of mouth.

Apparently, there were not enough word-spreading mouths to begin with, as it only sold 60k copies in its debut month (which includes almost all of May, since it launched May 6^th). Despite what EA's CEO said, this was probably not what EA had hoped for with a game it had collaborated on with the most profitable director in the world. So, what happened?

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Counting Rupees: Bust Blox originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: The MMO-TV hybrid

Jeff Engel — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, PC, MMO

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Can a game spin off into a successful TV series?

Many of us still remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to catch the latest episode of "Captain N: The Game Master" or rushing home after school to watch "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" (or if we were lucky enough to be watching on a Friday, "The Legend of Zelda"). While these shows weren't exactly something to write home about, it was certainly exciting to see some of our favorite Nintendo characters come alive in the form of a cartoon. In the last few years the wildly popular Pokemon games have spawned a long-lasting TV show and more recently, a Viva Piñata TV series was launched side-by-side with the game, in what was a moderately successful cross-marketing strategy (the kid's show is still running today and the game posted slow but steady sales, developing somewhat of a cult following). Clearly, there's some precedence for games to become the basis for a TV series, but these have all lacked one basic element that all the games required: interactivity.

So it is with some interest that the LA Times reports that Sci-Fi channel is teaming up with Trion World Network to create (simultaneously!) an MMO and a TV show based on it. Sci-Fi channel president Dave Howe says that it's the "Holy Grail". A subscription-based MMO and a successful television series that are able to successfully leverage each other could certainly be a potential windfall. However, while the details are somewhat scarce at the moment, from what I can glean, there are some major hurdles that this joint venture will need to overcome.

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Counting Rupees: The MMO-TV hybrid originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Digital Rights Madness

Jeff Engel — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:30:00 EST

Filed under: PC, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

When EA announced that Spore and Mass Effect (PC) would have a DRM program that did performed online verification every 10 days, it generated a massive backlash amongst the gaming community. Many people, who were originally excited about Spore and Mass Effect, now claimed that they would not purchase the games, solely because of the DRM. To be honest, I'm no fan of DRM either. It basically treats all legal customers as potential criminals, and seems futile anyway, as anyone with an internet connection can typically find ways around the DRM. The only people it probably deters are those with little technical savvy and who just want to share a game they bought with their friends and family. The amount of actual sales that would be lost to this is probably pretty limited. With all that said, I'm glad that EA has backed off this new DRM and scaled it back to just an initial online verification. Given the current state of PC gaming as well as the traditionally more "accepted" versions of DRM (like the initial online verification), however, I didn't find this new DRM to be all THAT much worse, particularly with some slight improvements to it, such as allowing a manual verification and extending the timeframe for re-verification slightly (say, to 30-60 days instead of every 10).

The reason for this has a lot to do with what's been going on with PC gaming in the last few years. While the "death" of PC gaming has been talked about for years, it isn't quite here. The landscape is just shifting. While the total NPD sales for each year has been decreasing, other avenues of making money have been developed. For instance, subscription-based games (mostly MMOs, but also games available on GameTap), cheaper more casual downloadable games (eg, PopCap Games), and even free, ad- or feature-driven games (eg, Dungeon Runners, Battlefield Heroes, Quake Zero) make up an ever increasing portion of PC-based revenue. Thus, the actual retail sales are taken up mostly by a few casual games, MMO starter kits or expansions, and maybe the occasional shooter or RTS game. Take, for example, the most recent NPD PC numbers for the week of May 4-10:

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Counting Rupees: Digital Rights Madness originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 26 May 2008 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: GTA IV vs. Iron Man

Jeff Engel — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:56:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

According to several "analysts" last week, the successful launch of Grand Theft Auto IV threatened to sink the box office returns for Iron Man. The thinking went that since the game and the movie both target primarily the same demographic (males 18-29), that demographic would stay home and play the game instead of going to see the movie. While it's impossible to declare with complete certainty, as Variety did, that GTA IV had absolutely no effect on Iron Man's opening (with $104.2M in domestic receipts, $201M worldwide, and a release date for a sequel already announced), whatever effect it may have had was clearly not enough to significantly impact the movie. But clearly, many had predicted that the game could adversely affect box office receipts. It makes me wonder -- have we ever seen this sort of effect before?

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Counting Rupees: GTA IV vs. Iron Man originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 09 May 2008 11:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: The WiiCube

Jeff Engel — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:25:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

In my last column I suggested that, if Microsoft is to make a Wii-like controller, it should still continue to focus on the "traditional" types of games that have so far made the 360 a success, because Nintendo had already basically wrapped up the "casual" crowd. I also mentioned that the only Wii games that are apparently selling are Nintendo games and some casual games. And with that in mind, the New York Times published an article on Monday detailing that, while the Wii hardware is selling well, even seemingly popular Wii software still has some trouble continuing to sell to the Wii audience.

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Counting Rupees: The WiiCube originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Will the real Wii60 please stand up

Jeff Engel — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:28:00 EST

Filed under: Features, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Peripherals

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

With the Wii's apparent runaway success this generation, there's no doubt that both Sony and Microsoft are trying to figure out just what they can do - either in this generation or the next - to tap into the formula that's worked so well for Nintendo. Sony, in a seemingly obvious attempt to blunt the impact of Nintendo's newly styled controller, added motion sensitivity to their controllers before the PS3 launched. More recently, there have even been rumors that Microsoft may be prepping their own version of the Wii Remote to launch later this year for the 360. Is this really the answer Microsoft is looking for to combat the Wii?

There are a lot of problems with this, although the common "doomed console peripheral" theory actually may be the least of them. The success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band has proven that, at least when bundled with an attractive game, console owners are just fine with buying new controller peripherals for their systems.

No, the biggest problem for Microsoft here is simply a matter of audience. Microsoft has been working hard on wooing the "casual" audience, and has only rarely succeeded. Even a "hardcore" game like Halo 3 probably wouldn't sell 7.5 million copies without some "casual" players. But a quick look at the top-selling software for each system makes it extremely obvious how different the audiences already are for the two systems.

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Counting Rupees: Will the real Wii60 please stand up originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Battle of the brands

Jeff Engel — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Nintendo DS, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Rhythm, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

When Guitar Hero 3 launched last year it was an immediate success, selling out at a fairly quick pace throughout the holiday season. Following just behind it was Rock Band, selling very well, but not nearly as quickly as Guitar Hero. So far, all versions of Guitar Hero III have sold about 9.1M copies, versus just roughly 1.5M for Rock Band. Of course, part of the discrepancy lies in the fact that Rock Band launched on two platforms while Guitar Hero 3 launched on four, but that is about to be remedied with Harmonix's recent announcement of Rock Band for Wii. While Rock Band was a more ambitious game and representative of an evolution of the music game, it did seem like Activision may have made the right choice in buying the Guitar Hero publisher (and thus the Guitar Hero brand), but not the developer. With so much brand awareness already built into Guitar Hero, was there any way that Harmonix could possibly top the original creation that it no longer owned the rights to?

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Counting Rupees: Battle of the brands originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: The year of the PS3

Jeff Engel — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Apparently, 2008 is the year of the PS3. After what most consider a very shaky first year, the media is abuzz with a comeback for the company that was once king of consoles. EGM's March issue proudly proclaims on its cover that it's "The Revenge of the PS3". EDGE's December issue was entitled "The Empire Strikes Back" and even Joystiq's PS3 Fanboy has given us 10 reasons why the PS3 is back in the swing of things. Some analysts have proclaimed that the PS3 will do at least as well as the 360 in 2008, and others have the PS3 edging out the 360 by 2010 or even the Wii by 2011. Clearly, everyone is pointing to 2008 being a turning point of sorts for the Cell-powered beast. But is it actually true?

Let's focus on, at least initially, Sony's battle against the 360. Certainly, the PS3 has a lot of things going for it. Blu-ray has officially won the next-gen DVD war; upcoming games, such as Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2, and LittleBigPlanet show tremendous potential; and it has seemingly found a price point that people are willing to pay (as they did originally for the 360). In the US, at least so far this year, Sony has managed to outsell the 360 according to January and February NPD figures. But will it be enough?

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Counting Rupees: The year of the PS3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Counting Rupees: Royalty Screwed

Jeff Engel — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:25:00 EST

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks alternate in contributing Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Gamers were outraged in recent weeks by a rumor that Xbox Live Arcade royalties were being cut in half for developers; in fact, some developers were reportedly considering moving development from XBLA to the PlayStation Network because of the cuts. It was less clear why Microsoft would do something like this: At first glance, it appears to stifle independent game development and reduce the overall quality of XBLA as a platform. Clearly, Microsoft is just being greedy, right?

Perhaps, but it's certainly not as clearcut as it seems at first glance. Although any changes to the royalty structure will mean changes -- and potentially significant ones -- for XBLA, they may still be beneficial in the long run for some people, possibly even increasing indie development.

As is often the case with rumors, there's more to the story than a simple royalty cut. Let's think first about what the costs and benefits of the changes are to both developers and Microsoft, after which we can decide why the action might have been taken in the first place and what it all means to us as gamers. From a developer's perspective, the cost is pretty clear: Up to 35% of the total revenues of a game. Does the developer receive any benefits? Yes, some: As reported, developers will no longer have to pay for features like worldwide ratings or localization, which both reduces costs and potentially provides access to a larger international market. And from Microsoft's standpoint, the costs and benefits are essentially reversed: It no longer has to pay the royalties, but it does need to provide some additional services.

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Counting Rupees: Royalty Screwed originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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