The Business of Computer and Video Games 2004

DFC Intelligence will release its latest report on the interactive entertainment industry, The Business of Computer and Video Games, in mid-March. This report looks at both historical and future trends and has an analysis of the major players in the video game food chain: hardware manufacturers, developers, publishers, retailers and consumers. This month we thought we would provide a brief overview of some key points discussed in the report.

Video Game Consumer Growth: Dire annual holiday warnings to the contrary, there has been a strong sales increase in the video game market over the past few years. The good news is that there is still plenty of room for growth. Household penetration of console game systems has not substantially increased in recent years. DFC Intelligence estimates that the number of U.S. household with a video game system has gone from 34 million in 1994 to 45 million today. On top of that, over 25% of video game households only own an older system. Therefore it seems clear that much of industry growth has come From increased usage with existing customers. There are still plenty of new customers waiting in the wings.

The Interactive Family: Sales figures indicate that there is clearly increased usage of game systems within households. Interactive entertainment is no longer just for the kids, it is now for the teenagers, and increasingly the parents, many of whom grew up with Atari and Nintendo systems. This means more households have several users, own multiple systems and have a tendency to purchase more software per system (higher tie rates). It also means that the system targeted to the broadest demographic may be the most attractive to the growing number of households with multiple users.

Worldwide Market Growth: For a company to be successful in the interactive entertainment business it must operate on a worldwide basis. Five years ago this was not the case, and some companies could do well focusing on a single market such as the U.S. or Japan. In recent years, the importance of the Japanese market has declined and much of the market growth has come from North America, Europe and emerging worldwide markets. Sony, with the PlayStation, was the first company to build a solid business in all three core regions (Japan, North America and Europe). Successful companies will imitate Sony's worldwide outlook. The next growth challenge for interactive entertainment companies will be to expand into emerging markets while maintaining growth in core markets. Emerging markets include South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, mainland Asia, Australia, Eastern Europe and others. Some of these countries like Australia and South Korea already have substantial interactive entertainment industries. In other emerging countries consumers have only been introduced to games for the personal computer or via illegal, pirated software. In the next few years, the console manufacturers are likely to make a major push to enter markets like China and Russia.

Soaring Development and Marketing Costs: The need to expand on a worldwide basis is critical because of the soaring cost of video games. Today's games have entire teams of programmers, graphic artists, game designers, producers and audio technicians. Many games have expensive licenses, utilize Hollywood talent and have high-quality soundtracks. Consumers now expect non-interactive introductions and cut scenes that feature movie-quality computer-generated graphics and/or video with live actors. To get consumers to notice these high-end titles usually requires a marketing budget that equals or exceeds the development budget. As an average game reaches development costs of $5 million, DFC Intelligence estimates the breakeven point is reaching 500,000 units. Unfortunately, only about 5% of SKUs will reach that level in the U.S. This means to be successful it is critical that companies 1) develop for multiple platforms and 2) release titles on a worldwide basis.

Consolidation: When DFC Intelligence started publishing reports on the game industry in 1994 almost all analysts were predicting major industry consolidation. At the time the U.S. console market was dominated by five publishers (Nintendo, Sega, EA, Acclaim and Capcom). Ten years later, the industry is as fragmented as ever. The names may have changed, but industry consolidation has not yet occurred as many predicted. Instead the recent trend in mergers and acquisitions has been for established publishers to buy small development boutiques. The big change of the past three years has been that Electronic Arts has replaced Nintendo as the perennial market share leader.
Retail Scene: As part of our research DFC Intelligence closely analyzes and personally visits over 20 retail chains. In our surveys over the holiday 2003 season we found that retail penetration of video game products has definitely expanded (see our December article) and price points have become very consistent. However, not all chains are equal. The biggest disappointment is powerhouse retailer Wal-Mart, which really surprised us with its poor selection and shoddy merchandising. In fact we were so shocked we visited several Wal-Marts, only to find them all consistently bad. In sharp contrast was mass merchant Target which had a solid selection and some excellent sales. Another big change we found was the improvement when retailers go from mall-based locations to strip-mall neighborhood locations. The leader in this area is GameStop (a merger of Babbages, Software Etc and Funco). We were also impressed with Game Crazy. Falling behind somewhat was Electronics Boutique (Target actually had a better selection), although we will say that the strip-mall based EBGames stores are a major improvement over the traditional mall-based locations. To summarize some of our findings we present the best and worst of U.S. video game retailers.

Best Selection: Amazon.com/ toysrus.com, Best Buy, Toys R Us, GameStop, Target
Best Prices: Costco, Amazon.com/toysrus.com, Target
Best Service: GameStop, EBGames, Game Crazy
Best Overall: GameStop, Best Buy, Costco, Target
Biggest Up and Comers: GameStop, Game Crazy, Costco, EBGames

Worst Selection: Sears, Sam Goody, Tower Records, K-Mart, CompUSA, Wal-Mart
Worst Merchandising: K-Mart, Wal-Mart, KB Toys
Worst Overall: K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Sears, KB Toys

Hollywood Part 3: Back in 1994, the interactive entertainment industry was undergoing its second major flirtation with Hollywood. This was the multimedia era and Hollywood studios were investing in anything interactive in a big way. The major studios, by and large, got burned and retreated from the interactive entertainment business in the late 1990s. Well in 2004, one of the biggest stories is "they are back." The difference this time is that the marriage between Hollywood and video games may actually be a long lasting, albeit turbulent one. Hollywood ways have become an integral part of the interactive entertainment industry. This includes expensive licensing deals, negotiating with agents, packaged deals for movies/TV shows to games and even vice versa, game soundtracks, star talent in games and of course trailers featuring computer generated movie-quality videos that add nothing to game play. Consumer spending has shown that, as video games go Hollywood, they can significantly expand their appeal. However, at the same time, it means a huge increase in costs, risks and potential pitfalls. DFC Intelligence predicts that while Hollywood may be here to stay, many of the game companies that flirt with Hollywood may not.

The Business of Computer and Video Games, scheduled for release in March 2004, is a detailed 500+ page report designed to provide users a comprehensive overview of how the interactive entertainment industry functions. Coverage includes:

• A historical analysis of the six major cycles of the video game industry.
• An overview of console, portable and PC-based hardware systems.
• A look at individual hardware systems of the past ten years.
• An discussion of the differences between different markets throughout the world.
• The top-selling games of the past ten years.
• A complete analysis of game genres.
• An analysis of what makes a game successful.
• Consumer demographics and profiles.
• The players in the industry food chain, including developers, publishers, distributors and retailers.
• A look at development issues.
• Detailed business models showing different break-even scenarios for developers and publishers. Scenarios are broken down based on sales level, publishing structure and cost of licensed content.
• A complete look at the retail chain, including analysis of individual retail chains.
• Results of retail chain price point survey.
• Marketing elements, costs and case studies.
• Analysis of major trends.
• A comparison of video games with other forms of media, including the music and movie industries.
• A discussion of emerging distribution channels.
As part of our ongoing research efforts DFC Intelligence is delivering free monthly briefs on hot topics in the interactive entertainment and video game industry. You (or a colleague of yours) have signed up to receive these briefs.

Posted by Jenova at March 1, 2004 11:58 AM