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Life in the City It looks
like Eidos' bubble may finally have burst. Except for Championship
Manager, every single one of their Christmas titles performed below
exceptions - even Tomb Raider 4 (relatively speaking). They can't
say nobody warned them though, as many in the industry were expecting
exactly this to happen.
As far as the City is concerned though, the whole thing came out of the blue and made them question the stock value of every videogames company under the sun, and just for good measure many .coms as well. Of course the fact that the wider business world doesn't properly understand the games industry is no more surprising than the fact that Eidos couldn't resist one more Tomb Raider sequel. The catastrophic fall of Eidos' share price from £63 before November to a meagre £25.70 will certainly ensure that Eidos execs think twice before pinning all their business hopes on turn-based strategy games (Abomination), David Bowie inspired RPGs (Nomad Soul), and the nth Formula 1 racer of the week (Formula One). Most observers expect Eidos to bounce back from this current trouble quite easily but it does rather prove the fact that publishers need to try a bit harder nowadays. Churning out sequels is all very well, but if the warning signs are there that the next one won't be so warmly received, you jolly well better do something about it, not just carry on regardless and hope for the best. The mid-price success of Championship Manager Season 99/00 (a "soccer" management title) proves that originality needn't just be in terms of gameplay (although that'd be nice) - it could just be in price point and marketing. To add a final ironic wrinkle to the story, a few more braces burst in the City when they saw Eidos' share price plummet yet again to just £6 in one day. This time the drop was due to a pre-arranged share split that was first mooted in December when the concerns were that the stock price was just too darn high. Oh the humanity of it all. Dreamcast: Fast Asleep While rifling through my company's games cupboard this weekend, a fact apparent to 71% of Games Domain visitors dawned upon me: there aren't any decent new games coming out for the Dreamcast. In fact there aren't any new games coming out at all. Sega's honeymoon period is now well and truly up and they're going to have to face the fact that they've shot their load too early. The DC may have had the best launch line-up in history but this does seem to have left a rather gaping hole in their release schedule ever since. Indeed, now that it's clear that Virtual Striker 2 is a bit of donkey, there really hasn't been a triple-A release since Soul Calibur in November. When trade mag MCV commissioned a survey of Games Domain users they proved that seven out of ten Dremacast owners where equally unimpressed with the state of affairs. With Shenmue still many moons away from a Western release (and according to many Japanese sources not that good anyway), all that we're left with to look forward to is the arcade conversion of Crazy Taxi, and the first Dreamcast appearances for the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil franchises. With hardware sales only 10 units ahead of the N64 in the UK (yes, that's one - zero) and similar statistics elsewhere in the world, one has to wonder how much life the Dreamcast has in it, considering the world is going to go PS2 crazy in just over two months. That persistent rumor of Euro boss JF Cecillon quitting Sega to go back to the music business is hardly a surprise. Of course Sega deny it all, but who ever believed anything Sega said? Don't Say 'Playstation'
Despite the fairly tedious collection of launch titles making some wish otherwise, there seems little doubt that the Playstation 2 will be anything less than a barnstorming success. Nevertheless, the giddy excitement of the forthcoming Japanese launch seems to have gone to Sony's head with the curious announcement that they are going to stop all unofficial magazines from using the word "Playstation" on their mastheads. Sounding like Nintendo at their eighties draconic best. Sony's UK marketing director Alan Welsman reckons that "We need to set rules," going on to suggest that "We have crafted a great relationship with the magazine publishers and have enjoyed an excellent two-way relationship." Presumably their enjoyment of said relationship is now over because all but Future Publishing's Official PlasStation Magazine are now desperately trying to find something sensible to call their magazines. Although one can, to a degree, understand Sony's recent crack down on third party peripherals, this latest move seems to make little sense. Not only will it severely aggravate all the magazines, but it is bound to confuse the hell out of most consumers. The European videogames magazine market is the largest and most exuberant in the world and responsible for a lot of Sony's early success, not to say sustaining it through the odd rocky patch. Sony had better not get too addicted to bullying people around or, like Nintendo before them, they'll find themselves short of friends should the salad days ever end. Top 10 Publishers of 1999 While Eidos may have had their worst Christmas since records began, recently released statistics reveal the not at all surprising fact that EA are still the world's biggest videogame publisher. According to figures released by ChartTrack in the UK, six out of every ten games sold made it into the shops via one of the top ten publishers. As you can see below, EA are still well ahead of hardware developers Sony and Nintendo and it doesn't look like anyone else has a chance of catching them. Infogrames are sure to give it their best shot though, and when one takes into account their recent acquisition of GT Interactive, they are already potentially at number three.
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News
Analysis 
