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 Features
Why Bother With Episodic Games?
 The Biggest is the Smallest
There are over 230 million PCs in use in the United States alone, and PCs are present in 78% of homes according to the Computer Industry Almanac. There are 100 million video game consoles in U.S. households according to The NPD group, with a penetration of 40%. So the PC is, bar none, the most pervasive system on which to play games.
Odd, then, that PC game revenue at retail is estimated at $1.0 billion in 2005, while console game revenue hit $4.6 billion. Even adding in the money generated by digital distribution (MMOs, downloads, etc.), estimated at about $720M in 2005 (and rapidly growing), console games still make nearly three times the revenue.
I doubt that the PS3 and Wii are going to do much to help the picture for PC game software, but perhaps episodic games can. This is especially true if you believe that digital era consumers are looking for bite-sized entertainment, and that less up front time and money commitment on the part of the game developer will result in more risk taking.
To look at it another way, perhaps episodic gameplay affords PC developers a blue ocean opportunity. For two years we have been listening to Nintendo talk about broadening the games market. Their solution for this in the living room is a next gen platform with last gen features with a gimmicky controller that is less expensive than other next gen systems. All their rhetoric about broadening the market feels more like a justification for a product that competes with the PS2 for quality but loses to it for catalog of games and price.
The Wii, Nintendo's 'blue ocean' strategy.
To be honest, I like my Wii. Wii Sports is fun, and there are a lot of Wii games I’m looking forward to. But at the end of the day, Nintendo is still selling $40 dollar-plus software that requires a fairly expensive piece of consumer electronics to run it. I’m not sure how much that does to help the industry.
Buying any next gen (or last gen for that matter) platform isn’t cheap, and game software ranges from $40 to $70. The vast majority of American households already have a computer, and a game episode can cost as little as $8.95. Any console requires a dev kit and certification and first party approval, PC development requires none of the above. On top of that, the proliferation of digital distribution outlets is making it easier to find places to market PC titles, and the ongoing cost dive for bandwidth makes it possible to create direct sales channels like Telltalegames.com or Legacygames.com.
I'm not suggesting that episodic is the silver bullet to save the PC games industry. The truth is, episodic development is still an unproven way to create content. There also aren't nearly enough distribution vehicles designed to take advantage of the strengths of delivering content episodically. The effort to create and deliver episodic games is still in its infancy, but when you look at the strengths of the PC and the episodic format, this model seems like a pretty solid blue ocean opportunity.
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