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Game Developer's Top 20 Publishers, 2006
Year formed: 1933 Nintendo’s DS portable has come into its own during this year’s considered period, moving the company into second place with increased software revenues and nearly double the number of releases. The incredible mass appeal and resulting sales of the company’s Nintendogs, Brain Training, and related titles, as well as the company mainstay’s latest foray, New Super Mario Bros., more than made up for its continually sliding console-game revenues. The DS stands as the company’s clear focus—as far as portable games go—for the immediate future. By introducing a revised DS hardware piece, the sleek DS Lite, Nintendo further boosted the handheld platform’s popularity. Additionally, sales of Game Boy Advance titles have been steadily declining, as further evidence of the transition. E3 2006 saw Nintendo unwrap its next-generation console, now known as Wii, which looks to boast the same bold design sense and philosophy of mass appeal as the DS hardware. If the new console can manage to reach an audience similar to that of the DS, Nintendo’s position near the top of our list will likely be solidified for next year. The company continues to maintain excellent relations with third-party publishers and external developers as well, and received the highest scores for producers and milestone payments out of any company via our anonymous survey.
Year formed: 1979 Knocked down to third place from last year’s second by Nintendo’s powerhouse DS push, Activision retains a place near the top thanks to its Call of Duty and Tony Hawk franchises—Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty: Big Red One sold extremely well across many platforms. Activision’s release count declined over 2005, but a higher average review score and favorable developer survey ratings helped the EA rival maintain its footing in our list’s top three. The most artful work we’ve seen from Activision on the business side has been to carefully secure intellectual properties and licensing agreements to sustain its projects for years to come. The company struck agreements that gave it licenses to produce games based on the Spider-Man and Transformers movies, four additional new Dreamworks pictures, Mattel’s Barbie toy line, and the potentially lucrative James Bond franchise, taken over from EA. Guitar Hero’s brisk sales led Activision to purchase the game’s publisher RedOctane in May, yielding an original IP for the publisher—but the company’s number one original IP in 2005 was Gun. Activision has not proved to be immune to the sorts of legal threats that have faced its competitors, specifically EA and Take-Two. As of this writing, the company faces two separate lawsuits: one over its labor practices and another over allegedly backdated stock options. At the same time, the company has tightened its belt for the generational transition by reducing its workforce by seven percent back in February. |
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