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By
David Jenkins
Gamasutra
March
13, 1998
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 News
Analysis
Eurospeak
Pay
and Pay and Pay, then Play
The major
problem with the Internet, outside of the US, is that local calls are
not free in any other major country. A lot of the time it seems that online
game services are oblivious to this trifling little detail - which
pretty much guarantees that any casual Web surfing will be tainted by the
flow of cash leaving your own wallet and entering some evil telecommunication
giant's vault. Speaking of which, British Telecom (BT) has announced something
rather interesting, nay revolutionary, for put-upon Internet users. Not,
unfortunately, a new pricing structure, but an attempt to eliminate online
gaming latency and slash download times. Announced last week at an extravagant
London launch, BT is proposing a new system that allows 2Mb per second
download times. The new system replaces the need for a modem by plugging
itself directly into a PC card slot, and works by sending digital signals
down existing copper wire telephone lines. BT claims that the system could
be up and running nation-wide by early next year, with trials this summer.
There's no words yet on their plans to license their technology, but they've
never been shy about doing such things before.
Meanwhile elsewhere in the BT world, Wireplay, their beleaguered online
gaming service, is making another attempt to woo publishers into supporting
them. Not surprisingly this comes in the form of bribery. Publishers will
now get a commission for every new customer who registers via any Wireplay
client software distributed in a boxed retail product. They claim their
main reason for doing this is to prevent publishers from signing exclusive
deals with other online services, most of which aren't available in the
UK anyway. This used to include Mplayer, but not any longer. The US service
is gearing up for a European launch, and has already garnered the support
of Eidos Interactive. Mplayer should be up and running in Europe this
summer and can already guarantee the exclusive use of Myth, Joint
Strike Fighter and Daikatana.
A rather sad trend of the last few weeks has led to the demise of a couple
of long standing UK publisher/developers. Tiny independent softcos 21st
Century and Adventure Soft have both bitten the bullet, fired by
the barrel of multinational domination. 21st Century is most famous for
producing an apparently infinite series of (in truth not particularly
good) pinball simulators, most prominently Pinball Dreams. The
company will perhaps be best remembered though as the brainchild of industry
veteran Andrew Hewson, publisher, via his first company Hewson, of 8-bit
classics such as Uridium and Paradroid. Adventure Soft
has a rather shorter history, with a slightly lacklustre series of LucasArts-style
adventures such as Simon The Sorceror and The Feeble Files.
No doubt Adventure Soft's Mike Woodroffe speaks for both companies
when he says that "changes in the PC market have made it impossible for
the small independent publisher to compete".
One publisher that is certainly not in financial trouble and indeed is
neither tiny nor independent, is Eidos. They've just posted their third
quarter results with sales of over £80 million ($128m) and profits
of £30+ million ($48m). The UK uber-publisher's CEO Charles Cornwall
took the news with his customary complacency by saying "there is considerable
scope for further improvement". One area of development that he clearly
doesn't see much scope for improvement in though, is high-end flight sims,
of which the company has published several recently, including Flight
Unlimited II and Joint Strike Fighter. Perhaps because of the
lack of success for these and previous such products, flight sims will
no longer be featured prominently on the Eidos release schedule. This
has lead Surrey-based sim specialist Simis, who were one of the first
developers bought up by Eidos in 1995, to organize a management buyout.
The split is said to be entirely amicable with Simis preferring to return
their original status as independent development studio, with their hotly
tipped new sim Team Apache being published now by Mindscape. Eidos
meanwhile claim they want to concentrate more on their core development
teams such as Core Design and, what used to be, DoMark, a statement which
doesn't appear to preclude further such streamlining of periphery titles
and teams.
Virgin Interactive loves Europe, and Europe loves Virgin Interactive.
Probably the most reliable publisher brand, from the consumer's viewpoint
at least, Virgin has made a rather bold move to expand into the previously
off-limits Central and Eastern European markets. Infogrames' bride to
be (if they have their way) has now established a presence in the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Russia, Slovenia, Croatia, and the Baltic States, which
isn't bad going really, even without any serious competition. In fact
Virgin actually used to publish for EA, MicroProse, and Edios in these
territories until recently when they quit the distribution business for
other companies. Former Vision boss Nick Pendrall, has now been hired
to head up all Eastern European operations for these countries and will
be responsible for all sales and marketing of Virgin and LucasArts products.
"These are fast-growing markets", says Pendrall, who cites massive piracy
problems and low wages as the major obstacles to Virgin's success. For
some reason the only Eastern European country Pendrall is not responsible
for is Poland - which makes any WWII-style invasion jokes impossible.
So instead we'll try a story about Sega...
The phrase "rats leaving a sinking ship" is often used when describing
the seemingly weekly departure of senior staff from Sega and their affiliates.
The latest escapee is Jo Bladen, Sega's UK Marketing Director. What makes
the departure slightly surprising is that Bladen was already of aware
of Sega's recently announced marketing budget for the Saturn 2 in Europe.
Coming in at an impressive $100m, the same as the US budget, one might
have thought that she'd think the launch next September was worth waiting
for. Clearly she didn't though, and has gone off to work for Disney. Whether
anyone else, except the Japanese, will be interested in the launch remains
to be seen. But earmarking that sort of marketing budget seems to indicate
that Sega will at least go out with a bang.
David Jenkins works with British Telecom's Wireplay, an online gaming
service. He also contributes to Develop, Europe’s premier
newsletter for computer game developers and publishers, and CTW,
the weekly trade magazine. He has also been involved in the organisation
of the Develop! and Online conferences in London.
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