Category: Content

Content

NPD Group: Online Console Games Exceeded US$1 Billion Sales in 2003

2003 saw a 182% increase in the number of online-capable console titles sold in the US, and we think this demonstrates that the market is finally taking off.

Predictably, the majority of the sales have been first person shooters (FPS) and sports games. Sports games, such as EA’s Hockey and Football offerings are immensely popular in North America, much more so than in Europe and the rest of the world, and so they claim 69% of the market. FPS games, with 22% of the online console game market, have long been popular online (or at least on corporate LANs) ever since the early days. This is because they are easy to pick up and play and appeal to the demographic who are buying most of the games – there is an easy shift for those brought up playing multiplayer Marathon and Doom on PCs and Macintoshes to picking up a console FPS.

Role-playing games (RPGs) take up only 4% of the online console market as they are more traditionally in the realm of the PC: requiring a hard drive, a huge commitment to learn the rules and world involved, and, of course, absolutely all of your spare time. Not many publishers have taken the risk of investing in online RPGs – Final Fantasy XI and Everquest Online Adventures being notable and popular exceptions.

Racing games are currently worth 15% of the market – but watch this change dramatically when an online version of Gran Turismo finally hits the shops.

Almost all console games currently on sale with online components can be played offline – it’s a brave publisher who will make a console game that cannot be played off line, and the aforementioned Everquest Online Adventures is the only exception we can think of. This will change as consumers get more used to the idea.

However, not all games with online functions are bought because of that feature: Richard Ow, senior industry analyst, The NPD Group comments: “It’s important to note that the increase in sales for online-capable games does not mean that the masses are moving to online gameplay, in some cases, consumers aren’t necessarily aware they’re buying games with online capabilities, but whether they’re aware or they aren’t, the onus falls in the laps of the software developers to provide games with multiple playability features.”

Now, Nintendo – why is it just about impossible for us to get the broadband adapter for the GameCube in the UK? Think we’re going to play Phantasy Star Online on a dial-up?

Online games at X Box Live

Sony Central Station

Warp Pipe – getting your GameCube online

Sony Launches Hard Drive for PlayStation2 in US

Sony have finally launched the PlayStation2 hard drive in the US, some might say a little late into the console’s life cycle. The drive is identical to the one that has been shipped with the Linux kit for the last 18 months – but then the drive in the Linux kit wasn’t compatible with game saves or downloading content.

So why now? The hard drive is needed to play Final Fantasy XI, the first online iteration of the baffling (hey, only if you don’t play it) role-playing game, and sales of the FF series more than justify marketing a $99 peripheral that was already in production. The drive comes with FFXI pre-installed, and players will be able to sample the game free for 30 days – but will have to cough up $12.95 a month as a subscription to keep going.

But that’s just one game – there will be a huge range of downloadable content and media available for subscribers: new levels, music, perhaps even full-length films. Given that the average game save is about 200kb and you could fit roughly 200,000 of those on the new disk. Sony obviously have a lot planned – and if the peripheral takes off, suddenly Sony has a potential installed base of more than 70 million broadband-enabled, game playing media hubs in living rooms and bedrooms around the world.

We’ve been quite looking forward to the hard drive, the endless fiddling about with memory cards is annoying: one card for RPGs, one card for all our EyeToy pictures, and Bahamut help me if I lost Sesame’s card with her Grand Theft Auto and Silent Hill saves on it.

Sony’s press release

“But your chocobo just squashed my level 76 Beastmaster!”

 

CeBIT: Digital Camera Market Expanding Rapidly

The digital camera market has expanded rapidly in the last five years. In Europe alone, CAP Ventures estimate that sales will from from 14 million sold in 2003 to 26.3 million in 2008 – and by then the market will be worth some €20 billion. Digital photography has already changed the market – Kodak will stop making non-disposable film cameras and concentrate on fun film cameras and digital devices. It won’t be long before other manufacturers follow.

Kodak and Olympus used CeBIT to launch new additions to their digital ranges. Kodak is showing off the Easyshare LS743 and LS753, with 16mb x 4 megapixel and 32mb x 5 megapixel resolutions respectively. Olympus are demonstrating their ì410 camera – this new camera features TruePic turbo which they claim improves image clarity, contrast and colour.

The growth in digital cameras has created a demand for peripherals, services and consumables – photographic printers, inks, memory cards, online services, and special papers to name just a few.

Photobox

The ì410

Digital Photography Review on Kodak’s LS753

T-Mobile Introduce Mobile Jukebox, Unleashes New Music Format on Unsuspecting World

T-Mobile have partnered with Sony Music and Unversal Music to provide a somewhat unique entry to the mobile music market. Called “Mobile Jukebox”, the service allows subscribers to download music clips to their mobile phones.

So far, there are 200 tracks available to choose from – but the real killer is that those tracks are between only 90 and 120 seconds long.

We think this one might have launched a bit early – with only tiny number of tracks currently available, and even those are brutally short, this has an air of “So what?” about it. T-Mobile intend to offer more tracks later in the year, and full length ones too – but will that be enough?

Thomas Gewecke, Senior Vice President of Sony Music Digital Services explained: “Mobile Mix enables music fans to download a 90 to 120 second excerpt of a song in just a couple of minutes, allowing them to get a feel for the music almost instantaneously, and takes the mobile music entertainment experience to an entirely new level.”

Mobile phone users tend to be young and demanding, and require quite high standards form their entertainment, so surely they want considerably more than just to listen to a music clip? It maybe that T-Mobile have misjudged their market here, or were just keen to get some sort of music product out as soon as possible.

T-Mobile on Mobile Mix

Microsoft’s’ iPod Killer – Bigger, More Expensive

It had to happen – although Microsoft have had mixed fortunes in the hardware market, it was inevitable that they would release a competitor to the iPod and other personal media players out there.

This new gadget will have functionality not seen in iPods so far: video playback and picture display, and it will run MS’s Portable Media Centre (PMC) OS. “We think this is going to be one of the hot devices for Christmas 2004,” said James Bernard, product manager for PMC. The hardware itself is basically a Creative player with a 20 or 40 gb hard drive. Sizewise, it’s about three times the thickness of an iPod and twice as long.

The device will play MP3s, so won’t be completely tied to Microsoft’s own Windows Media Format. As previously reported, MS have content deals in place with Napster and EMI.

Pricing in the in relevant markets varies, but is estimated to be US$750, €550 (Denmark, Sweden) and UK£399.

The impeding release can only increase speculation that Apple will retort with a video iPod at some point next year.

Slashdot — “LOTS OF SHOUTING”

Reuters

CeBIT: Sony’s European Music Launch

Sony have announced at CeBIT that they’re launching a new music service in Europe in June. The initial countries on the list will be UK, Germany and France. The service will comprise of some 300,000 tracks form Sony’s catalogue, and they will be available for the usual €0.99 per track.

Now for the bad news. The tracks won’t be MP3s, they won’t be AAC and they won’t be Windows Media Format. They’ll be ATRAC3 (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding 3) – and customers will have to use Sony’s Sonic Stage 2.0 software.

We’ve used Sonic Stage in the past, and it’s a bit of a pig: getting tracks onto devices is relatively simple, but getting them off again can be a nightmare – we hope that some changes will be made to the platform to make the whole process considerably less painful.

This is also a bold move for Sony – by providing Sonic Stage as the engine and selling ATRAC3 music, the service will only work with Sony devices, considerably narrowing their market reach at the expense of copy protection. With Napster and iTunes launching in Europe later this year, it won’t take long to see if this was a good decision or not. We’ll keep you posted.

US Service “Coming Soon”

OD2 Allows Users to Pay for Music Through Mobile Bills

Companies offering digital music downloads have long had a problem with getting revenue from their core market – as many music buyers are under 18, they won’t have a credit card. However, a quick glance at the top deck of any bus, or inside a chip shop, will clearly demonstrate that most of them have mobile phones.

On Demand Distribution (OD2) the company that supplies the music service behind sites like Virgin and Freeserve, has come up with a scheme that will allow purchasers to charge the cost of music downloads to their mobile phones. The system, developed by MChex and launched on March 22, is simple: purchasers send an SMS with a code to a premium number and the cost of the message is then charged to their bill.

Paul Smith, OD2’s UK marketing manager, said: “This payment option opens up our services to a much wider demographic. It will allow younger fans to control their own music spend, without having to hijack their parents’ credit card.”

Of course, this wheeze is just moving the payment stage one step further down the ladder and may cause problems for parents who pay their children’s mobile bills, if they’re not on a pay-as-you go plan.

On Demand Distribution

BMG License Tracks to P2P Network

Wippit has added to its repertoire with 10,000 tracks licensed from BMG. Interestingly, the tracks will only be available to subscribers in the UK and Ireland for the time being. This could be seen as a stop gap until iTunes launches in the UK and Europe.

Wippit charge US$54 (UK£30) for unlimited downloads, and subscribers are allowed to swap tracks and burn them to CD. With the EMI deal we reported on earlier, Wippit now offer music from over 200 record labels.

Paul Myers, CEO and Founder of Wippit says, “We offer music from 200 great labels already and having BMG join us is fantastic for Wippit and music lovers alike. BMG have made available a wealth of world beating talent for Wippit subscribers to download, with an emphasis on quality.”

Wippit

Chrysalis Mobile Offers MP3 Downloads Straight to Mobile Phones

Chrysalis Mobile, a standalone business unit within the Chrysalis group of companies, has launched a service designed to bring music to mobile phone users, in various forms.

Chrysalis are offering the service on a “white label” basis – third parties will be able to contract the service and have it branded with their own identity. The service is comprised of hosting, content creation, billing and even royalty payments.

Available for download will be MP3s of real songs, ringtones, short edits of real songs (for alarms, tones and fun use), and images.

Chrysalis are pushing the CRM aspect of the service to potential customers – they’ll know who bought what and when, allowing effective management of campaigns and promotions.

Chrysalis Mobile

iTunes Sells 50 Million Songs; Hewlett Packard-branded iTunes Launches

Apple announced on Monday that they’d sold 50 million tracks through its iTunes music service. They’re not including free songs redeemed through the Pepsi promotion running at the moment, just tracks which users have paid for and downloaded.

The service is now selling 2.5 million songs per week – that’s an annual rate of 130 million tracks per year, and it’s increasing. Steve Jobs said “It’s increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes.” He may have a point: there’s no denying that the service has completely changed the face of the music industry, with many other companies are trying to get a slice of the market – though many other offerings (such as myCokeMusic) are considerably inferior. We’re looking forward to iTunes belated launch in Europe in the Summer – and hope that this will prompt Apple to do a bit more work on their slightly shoddy Windows client for the store.

Apple also partnered with Hewlett Packard to offer a special HP-branded copy of iTunes.

Oh – and what was the milestone song sold this time? “The Path of Thorns” by Sarah McLachlan.

Apple on the milestone

HP iTunes