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Video Game Publishers in Damnation Shocker
Despite the linking of Interplay and Titus, and the steadily increasing list of triple A products, no one was really going to believe that Virgin was back in the top league of publishing until they'd had one of their commercials banned. Cue their new UK print ads for Shiny's Messiah, complete with a doctored picture of the Pope taking a drag on a "hand-rolled cigarette" with the tag line 'What on Earth Possessed You?' Which funnily enough is exactly what Future Publishing and Dennis were thinking when they banned the ad from their magazines. It is thought that the consequent marketing rethink could delay the game slightly from its proposed December launch, although it is likely that censored versions of the ad will be run in the short term at least. Still, at least now none can doubt that Virgin are back in the big time. It's a pity that they'll have to spend an eternity in hell as a result, but then you can't have everything. SCi are another UK company in danger of spending their afterlife attached to Beelzebub's sharpest pitchfork. They've already lost a couple of million Brownie points publishing the ultra-immoral Carmageddon series, but now they've gone a step further and bought a license to create a game based on the Great Train Robbery. The 1963 heist of £2.6 million ($4.16m) from a Royal Mail train was the biggest of its day, and earned extra notoriety after ringleader Ronnie Biggs escaped to South America. SCi have enlisted the services of Biggs, and his cohort Bruce Reynolds, for the game, as well as buying an option on Biggs' latest book. Apart from the fact that crime isn't supposed to pay, this whole business is made all the more unpleasant because the train driver in the original heist was killed. Understandably, his son isn't too happy about the prospect of a game based around his father's murder, and SCi are bracing themselves for a full-on burst of media outrage. You can't help but feel they deserve this one though. With all this news of blasphemous and otherwise immoral games, it is rather amusing to note that the British government chose this week to lobby developers and publishers to create entertainment software with more of a focus on learning. Michael Wills, the Information and Technology Minister at the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) has asked games companies, particularly those in the console market, to have "less reliance on motor neuron reflexes and more focus on the use of strategy." Apparently there have already been positive responses to this plea from ELSPA, Sony, and Sega. So who knows, maybe next year we'll have Tomb Raider V: Adventures in Long Division. More likely wily school kids will use this as an excuse to have a Dreamcast and Playstation at school: "But Miss, learning how to plan the Great Train Robbery is an invaluable aid to developing my strategic and problem solving skills. If I do really well I can avoid caving that bothersome train driver's head in and escape to South America scott free." The always-angelic Bruno Bonnel was back in the news this week with the rumor that he'd made a $200 million bid for GT Interactive. Apparently senior officials from French super-publisher Infogrames have been flitting between New York and Paris in an attempt to finalize the deal. They have plenty of rival bidders, in the form of Hasbro, Microsoft, Acclaim and finance outfit Blackstone, but Infogrames' generous cash offer is thought currently to be choice number one with GTI's share holders. If the deal goes through, it will complement Infograme's earlier acquisition of Accolade, and almost instantly give them the sizeable American presence they have so long sought after.
There seems to have been a price war going on in the UK for pretty much the whole year, with all the High Street stores attempting to offer the best deals on new video games, particularly Playstation titles. The war reached what many hope to be its nadir (or zenith for you ordinary folk) with Dixon's recent refusal to stock any Playstation title with a RRP higher than £34.99 ($55.99) - which included blockbusters Final Fantasy VIII and Dino Crisis. Following this decision, EA announced that it was dropping its trade prices for new releases, including that for FIFA 2000 - EA's latest soccer title - and the favorite for the Christmas number one spot in the UK. The new standard price for EA titles will be £29.99 ($47.99) and most other publishers are expected to follow suit for any subsequent new releases. Sony, however, are still refusing to move prices on titles that they themselves publish. Although how long they can hold out against the tide of discounts remains to be seen. As with the FIFA titles, the major difference between each year's new Tomb Raider title seems now only to be in the size and complexity of its marketing. After a summer-long poster and TV campaign with sports drink Lucozade, Lara has now joined up with Nike for the Christmas season: the lovely Ms. Croft will cameo alongside Micheal Jordan in a series of new 60-second commercials. The ironic thing being that in most of Europe, Lara will actually be considered more famous than the gazillion-dollar-earning Jordan. That's life in the global market for you. Whatever the effect of this new commercial, though, Eidos Interactive's latest sales forecast for Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation stand at 700,000 in the UK alone. Which is going to generate a lot of extra Christmas presents for Eidos execs' children. |
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