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Quantity Matters, Quality Doesn't The video games industry is a curious place. Despite publishers bringing joy to millions and forever claiming that their products are the "future of interactive entertainment," it's often painfully clear that many working in the business just really don't care. Have you ever noticed that whenever a game does well, its success is simply put down to a successful marketing campaign and clever scheduling? On the other hand whenever an eagerly awaited title fails to perform it's because "the bubble has burst" on that particular franchise or simply that enough moolah wasn't pumped into its TV ads. Very rarely is a game's success attributed to whether it is actually any good or not.
Take for example Pokémon Stadium - its release last week in Europe has been an enormous success with 36,000 copies sold in the UK in two days, creating a 32% rise in N64 console sales. Curiously though, this outstanding success is being simply attributed to the fact that "Pokémon: The First Movie" has been released at the same time and loads of children have been on half term holiday. The argument against would be that you could sell a Pokémon version of Space Invaders and still expect similar success. Except that by luck or judgement, that hasn't happened yet: all the Pokémon games released so far have actually been rather good and, especially when you look at other more shallow fads, thoroughly deserve their success. Presumably this sort of cynicism happens in other media, and for once a comparison with the music industry is more relevant than for cinema. In music awards, as with games, whatever is currently number one is almost automatically assumed to be good. Thus The Spice Girls and Boyzone constantly win all the big awards and more serious, but less popular, fare is largely ignored. At least with music awards there is at least an unconscious admission as to what is short and long term, and what is good and what is not. With games, all third-rate tripe like Tomorrow Never Dies has do is sell a couple of million on the Playstation and it is venerated as a god. In short, there never seems to be any distinction made between quality games and shovelware in a publisher's eyes: if a game sells then it must by definition be good. Too much of anything is never healthy, but it'd be nice to see some publishers actually show some pride in their work, rather than just in the number of sales or sequels they can wring out of it. We hear a lot about "surprise hits" in this business -- perhaps they wouldn't be so much of a surprise if publishers actually played their products before deciding how to market them. Sega Aren't For Changing The big question in the European biz of the last few weeks has been whether Sega's plans to give away Dreamcasts for "free" in the US will be repeated over here. Of course, paying $21.95 a month in ISP bills is hardly what most people would call free, but it's a nice idea all the same and could easily work to attract a rather different audience to the still rather insecure Dreamcast format. Cleverly, Sega Europe have kept mum during the whole debate, thereby not letting on that there isn't actually any European online plan to be keep secret about. Presumably this apparent shrewdness is all in the mind because last week Euro big cheese JF Cecillion let on that no such deal would be occurring on his turf. Speaking in trade mag CTW he said, "For US users it's a win-win situation, and if we could do it in Europe it would be compelling. But there's a key difference in the markets, in that US customers are used to paying a subscription charge for Internet access, which obviously isn't the case here.… With the current telecom regulations in Europe it's not financially viable for Sega to do this. But who knows? Regulations can change."
Well actually, probably a lot of people were hoping that you'd know JF, but never mind. So it seems that yet again Europe is getting stiffed on both new console and Internet innovations. With still no online games active here until the release of Chu Chu Rocket in May (and not a lot after that), Sega's marketing slogan of "up to 6 billion players" is becoming more laughable all the time. I'd Buy That For A Dollar! The other big question at the moment in Europe (apart from whether the X-Box really is worth bothering about) is what the heck is going on with the pricing on Playstation games. Many retailers have been pulling their hair out at the thought of selling PSX games with an RRP of less than a tenner, while publishers seem split on whether this is a good idea or the beginning of the end of times. Such has been the kerfuffle that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe head Chris Deering has had to make yet another formal statement, this time in trade mag MCV, assuring one and all that "We're trying to move to a wider audience. We just want the market to expand, we're not trying to squeeze the profitability of the business or mess up the economics of software development for premium titles." Deering went on to indicate that SCEE itself would not be selling PSX games at lower than £19.99 ($32). How much this will help to placate the various worriers is open to debate, especially in the light of Midas' insistence that it will be going ahead with a super low PSX budget range priced at £7.99 ($13). There was some talk that Sony would block the proposed range from ever reaching the High Street, but Midas MD Jeremy Cooke is adamant that things will go ahead as planned for a launch in June. Cooke has hinted that the majority of the titles on sale will be re-releases from the beginning of the Playstation's life cycle, which could well mean that there'll be some quality titles on sale for such a price. Although considering some of the drivel that was released for the Playstation in it's first few years, maybe not. David Jenkins (david.jenkins@dial.pipex.com) is a Web editor working at gameplay.com in London, England. He has previously worked as a freelance writer on a number of prominent industry publications and has also been involved in the organization of the Develop! and Online Games conferences. Thus far he has collected 103 Pokémon; Rodney is still his favorite. |
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