Tech Stories - Nov 20 2008 9:49AM

By: Bruce Thursday, November 20, 2008 9:48 AM

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90% of PC games are stolen. Which is why most publishers have given up on boxed PC games, it just isn’t worth investing resources when most people will just steal the results. Videos and recorded music now have broken business models. We must work hard to make sure this doesn’t happen to gaming. In the long run nobody wins from game piracy, not even the thieves.
The mainstream press are beginning to notice just how recession proof video gaming is. This from USA Today: “Overall, sales of console game systems, software and accessories rose 26% compared to October 2007. Portable game sales dropped for the one month period, but total sales for the year are 7% ahead of 2007.” The video games industry grew an impressive 18% year-over-year in the first month of the critical fourth quarter,” says NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “With ten months under its belt, the video games industry is still poised to top $22 billion in annual sales in 2008? — which would set another annual sales record.”
Everton football club to use the game Football Manager to help them with their scouting. I’m a bit disappointed with this story, Sega could have explained more. At Codemasters we made a similar game, LMA Manager, and it involved us tracking a high percentage of all the professional footballers in the world. Not just their names, but also their strengths and weaknesses. So this is a fantastic tool for Everton to be able to use. Their manager, David Moyes, has a reputation of gaining outstanding results on a miniscule budget. With the Football Manager database he should be able to do even better.
Nintendo say that 3rd party publishers don’t “get” the Wii. They think that a publisher’s best output should be on the Wii. Maybe, when they make it as capable as the 360 and PS3.
Midway shares drop in value again and quite rightly. Soon people will be paying you to take them off their hands! This is a company seriously in need of some M&A activity.
National Geographic get into video games. This should come as no surprise to readers here. The industry is heading towards being a ubiquitous media like, say, books. But far better.
Google shuts down Lively. Mainly because nobody knows what it is. This is a failure of marketing, which really does seem to be Google’s big weakness. They keep introducing products that nobody knows about which is why search is still the vast majority of their business.
Sony admit own stupidity. They say LittleBigPlanet would be number one at any other time of year. So why not launch it at any other time of year? This November congestion is bound to lead to products failing in the market. The stupidity of some game industry management is amazing.

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