Family Games keep the Games Industry Bouyant

The UK Games Industry reports record sales for 2008 of £4.034billion per ELSPA (the games industry association). 

Leading the way in Games sale is the Wii, with it’s broad range of family based games titles, and innovative hardware.  “Videogaming is increasingly bringing families together with the introduction of so many outstanding family-based console titles,” said Michael Rawlinson, MD of ELSPA. “These have really opened up the market to those who may never have even considered playing a videogame before.”

And this is reiterated in the fact that wii sports has just become the best selling game of all time, selling now over 40million copies.  Undoubtedly the bundling of the game with the console will have contributed to the sales, but Wii Sports is the game that most people associate with the wii.

DS, Playstation and Xbox software all saw increased sales in 2008 over 2007.

Sony’s focus for 2009 is to get the PS3 profitable.  Which is a telling sign of the state of the industry.  Although there are big grabbing headlines telling of the games industry’s successes, more quietly there are the stories about EA’s scale down in operations and cessation of non-profitable titles, and publishers such as Midway fighting off bankruptcy.

Despite the increasing sales of both consoles and software, and the announcements that the games industry is “recession proof”, Sony are highlighting that it is only the profitable companies that will be able to take advantage of these circumstances, the recession harshly separating the wheat from the chaff.

EA Profits fall as Wii sales Climb

EA has issued a second profits warning, and is planning further jobs (in addition to those announced in October), on the back of disappointing sales of their console & computer games.

Rumours are also around that EA is considering closing it’s Canada Black Box site, which produces the racing games. Need for Speed is one of the titles which has shown disappointing sales levels, along with Mirrors Edge and Rock Band.

The biggest factor in all of this seems to be the Wii, the newspapers are reporting daily record number of Wii sales, and the popularity of the newer platform with the family market, taking gaming out of the teenagers bedroom and into the family sitting room.

Nintendo publish most of their own games, and have 4 titles in November 2008 top ten games, as opposed to EA’s single title in position 4; Left 4 Dead.

All in all, EA seems to be the weaker player, struggling for market share in a market which is growing, with an estimated 22% increase in console and game sales than 2007. Making the video games industry one of the few retails sectors to see year on year growth. But one thing that these figures are telling us is that the traditional video game market, of shot & slash is diminishing, and that the larger untapped family market is where the growth of the future appears to be.

EA must get online – says EA President

Electronic Art’s Worldwide President Frank Gibneau says that EA must continue it’s push into online based games.

“It is an absolute imperative for the company to go online as fast as possible, and the more projects we can do that have scale and quality the better,” he said at an EA event in San Francisco.

“That’s where, frankly, the head and the heart of the company are, is trying to get online in a really powerful way,” he continued. “It’s a key strategy for the company to drive our online businesses as aggressively as possible. It’s clearly the future, and the future is now.”

The challenge, and the rewards, for developers is developing games that can engage and entertain in a massively multiplayer environment.  The games currently taken online by EA include Warhammer, and Star Wars.

MMOG games have traditionally revolved around the fantasy worlds, with games such as world of warcraft, with its 10 million plus subscribing players creating whole online and offline communities.  The challenge now is to take other types of games into that massively multiplayer environment. 

Many previous console games revolve around a single central character who has a mission, these games are perfect for a single player, or a small group of players playing together in a single environment.  It will be interesting to see if these types of games can move into a MMOG environment.

It maybe that we see the growth of a whole new genre of games, with the traditional single hero player becoming a thing of the past.  The biggest selling genre of games historically have been the “shoot ’em up” type games, and this concept will need to be tailored quite heavily for a connected environment.

Some of the newer genres of games, those which have been popular with girls, women, and more maturer players will suit a massively multiplayer environment far better, picking up on the underlying social networking which plays a key part in an connected environment.

Although some of EA’s strongest games include the SIMS, and Sports games which will suit a “league” environment very well, many of their action genre games may struggle more.  Can you imagine playing Mercenaries with another several thousand mercenaries all playing head to head at the same time – you profit from Chaos, but too much chaos stops the fun.