Nov/079
Games Trail Music in iTunes style Revenue Model
B-Side reprinted this article on 5 Alternative Revenue Streams for the Music Industry. (I'd link to the original article, but B-Side "cited" the source without a link, so I can only link to their repost.)
In any case, the article outlines 5 revenue models for the faltering music industry. They are:
- Free (ad or sponsor supported)
- Pay What You Want (donations)
- Pay By Popularity (price increasing with popularity)
- Subscription (Rhapsody style music services)
- Music Tax (ISPs add tax to offset industry losses = bad idea)
The article puts forth these revenue models after asserting that "iTunes isn't the answer," but I'd say that it's a darn good start. iTunes was at least partially responsible for weening me off music pirating entirely (kids and declining music savvy also deserve credit). And while some of us in the game industry like to snicker at "old media" such as music and its antiquated business practices, the game industry is behind the music business in at least one way:
The iTunes model hasn't been applied to games yet.
We're still out there trying to get people to buy the whole album, rather than just the tracks they want. Services like Steam and episodic games like Sam and Max are great steps forward for the industry, but neither one allows consumers to instantly purchase and enjoy only the portions of the game they desire, like iTunes did for music.
One way to stop people loading up their Nintendo DS's Revolution R4 card with 100 pirated games from BitTorrent is to give them all those games "for free" and charge a capped micro license based on which games they play and for how long.
For instance, if I play 10 minutes of Pokemon, 2 hours of Touch Darts and 50 hours of Puzzle Quest*, I would then be billed something like 10 cents, $1.20 and $20 (or whatever the cap for PQ would be). Couple that with electronic distribution's removal of COGS and you're right back to the same profit margins you already enjoy (on titles that cap out), with the added benefit of monetizing lesser played titles that would otherwise have been pirated.
While this may be new for traditional AAA games, casual games already have a fledgling version of this model courtesy of Double Trump's Micro License scheme. Their PlayOn Arcade site has the details, for those interested in creating an iTunes-esque service for big budget, retail games.
* These are actual figures. I finished Puzzle Quest. 
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Oct/073
EA CEO Predicts Demise of $60 Retail Game Due to Rise of Free To Play
From a Fortune article, EA CEO John Riccitiello had this to say about the free to play business model and how it will affect traditional retail games.
Riccitiello says the $31 billion gaming industry will suffer if it doesn’t start to reevaluate its business model. Game executives at Sony (SNE), Microsoft (MSFT) and Activision (ATVI) must answer some tough questions in the coming years, like how long they can expect consumers to pay $59 for a video game. Riccitiello predicts the model will be obsolete in the next decade. [Ed: emphasis mine]
“In the next five years, we’re all going to have to deal with this. In China, they’re giving games away for free,” he says. “People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt.” As more publishers transition to making games for online distribution, Riccitiello says he expects EA will experiment with different pricing models.
As a colleague just said to me in an email, "It's encouraging to see they (EA and big publishers as a whole) recognize the issue".
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