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Sony serves up more Move stats, with spin
Microsoft is waging the Great Motion Gaming Wars of Holiday 2010 with a half-billion-dollar war chest -- we're talking Jimmy, Ellen and Oprah money right there. Sony, on the other hand, has taken a more subtle approach: Enter the good ol' fashioned "stats" sheet.
MadWorld places relationship between online hype and actual sales in doubt
Analytics firm OTX Research seems to already be making a name for itself after announcing intentions last month to track game sales. Speaking at the LA Games Conference, OTX's Nick Williams explained the surprisingly weak connection between strong online awareness of a game versus actual, hard sales numbers, citing Sega's recently released MadWorld as a striking example. Noting the game's top position among IGN.com's games with the "highest level of unique interest," MadWorld came in at a paltry number 41 using OTX's "GamePlan" metric, a system that measures "1,000 gamers on a weekly basis, tracking 400 games at any given time." This translates to a bleak eight percent of Wii owners having even heard of the title, much less purchasing it (that's .32 percent according to April's MadWorld sales data compared with the 20 million Wii owners in the US currently). Hmm, we wonder what that data would look like for Grand Theft Auto's recent foray onto Nintendo's massively popular handheld! It took an awful lot of numbers right there to explain an idea we've all quietly agreed upon for so long now -- hype and marketing in the "hardcore" gaming world doesn't necessarily equal copies moving at retail. Now, if you'll excuse us, we'll be over here playing BlazBlue.
OTX planning box office-style tracking of games market
One more sign we're moving towards a world where marketing for all media is intrinsically tied together? OTX Research today announced plans for video game market tracking, firing a warning shot over the bows of GameSpot's Trax service and IGN's GamerMetrics, not to mention NPD and EEDAR. Rather than offering various metrics based on target audiences (in the case of IGN and GameSpot) or retail sales numbers which exclude a variety of alternate purchasing options (in the case of NPD and EEDAR), OTX plans to track online retailers and has brokered a deal with GameFly and AERS (eBay data handler). "We range from people who spend three hours a week on Yahoo Games to people who spend 50 hours a week on Xbox Live," OTX's director of gaming Nick Williams told The Cut Scene, referencing the company's data gathering methods. OTX has been interviewing large sections of folks that play games, mirroring the model used by the film and television industry. OTX also says it's looking to move into other media, combining the research found in games with film and television to predict sales trends across multiple entertainment mediums. "You can look at that model and say, 'Don't launch game X when movie Y is opening.' Because all these things are interconnected now." Or at least they will be, Mr. Williams. These things do take time, after all, so you'll excuse us if we don't hold our breath.
