April 1st, 2008 Seth Killian
A dramatic battle of corporate strategy could be developing over at the MTV Multiplayer blog.
Or not? Read up for the full story, but it seems Jeff Karp, EA’s head of North American publishing, has some different ideas about product longevity than those recently voiced by Capcom’s Christian Svensson in his own recent interview on the Multiplayer blog (which he expanded on here).
Exciting snippets include:
“A good chunk of EA’s business is annualized franchises and expanded content.”
Cue the dramatic music! And this one:
“With Spore, EA already has plans internally to develop new content for at least 10 years.”
Maybe that’s a different strategy, or maybe a 10-year development time requires a 10-year recoupment plan? *Zing*!
Obviously EA are masters of successful franchising, and any way you slice it this is great reading for gamebiz nerds everywhere. Check it out.
Posted in MTV Multiplayer Blog, Behind-the-scenes | No Comments »
March 27th, 2008 Seth Killian
**This article is currently an update to yesterday’s update of Christian Svensson’s original interview with Patrick Klepek at the MTV Multiplayer Blog. There is a ton of new material so if you saw it before, check it out again. It is important to note that:
1) this is now officially out of control (in the best way possible)
2) I am jealous of Klepek’s industry-leading haircut.
–
Patrick Klepek recently got to sit down with our own Christian Svensson (The guy who cures all your burning itches by answering questions in our Ask Capcom forum) for an interesting interview for the MTV Multiplayer blog. This wasn’t your typical interview of the, “How did you make Final Fight: Streetwise so awesome?” variety. Instead, the article focuses on the sales side of the gaming industry and all the behind the scenes action that you generally never hear about.
“The sales life cycle of a product is shrinking,” said Svensson. If a game undersells its first month at retail, it’s finished at retail. Often, though, it’s quicker: if a game underperforms its first week, it is more than likely “dead on arrival.”
Predicting how well a game will sell is an extremely difficult, yet extremely important aspect of the business.
Capcom keeps a warehouse of additional units in case a game has a surprisingly strong launch or sudden surge in sales. They have extra “Devil May Cry 4″ inventory just sitting around in case a retailer calls up and says they need another 30-40,000 units.
If they don’t have those units immediately available, the retailer may just cancel the order entirely and move onto the next big game. “Demand may not be there [anymore] if a request goes a week ignored,” said Svensson.
The beauty of working here is that I can go directly to the source, and as I was typing this up, Christian just happened to wander by my cube. Usually I would beat him off with unopened copies of Streetwise, but this time I let him stick around because he offered to fill in a bit more information here on the Capcom blog.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in MTV Multiplayer Blog, Sven, Interviews | 1 Comment »
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