NEWS
Life in fast lane beckons for Ubi
Publisher gears up for more Driver instalments LEADER LOSS-LEADING AT ITS SMARTEST
IF YOU think it’s hard getting games to stand out amongst the Christmas blockbusters of FIFA and Call of Duty, try being a retailer. Each year there appears to be another outlet or two trying to muscle in on a market already crammed full of competitors. This year
Bee.com is getting its first, full Christmas, while
GameStop.co.uk is determined to make its mark. Both join a raft of stores desperate to secure a slice of that ever-decreasing boxed games pie. Loss-leading is a way to grow market share. Yet, the discounting that took place for Deus Exlast week was far from lazy retailing.
GameStop.co.uk’s eye-watering £20.97 deal only lasted hours. But
it grabbed headlines, boosted the firm’s Twitter followers and was the most popular offer onHotUKdeals. It was a marketing triumph.
“The UK may be No.1 in unit sales, but it’s places like Germany that are more profitable.”
by Michael French
A NEW Driverfinally makes it to store shelves today – five years after Ubisoft spent $24m buying the brand and its studio. But it’s just the first step in Ubisoft’s plans for both the re-engergised franchise and the driving genre, says CEO Yves Guillemot.
Driver: San Franciscotakes the series back to basics with high-speed road races, but adds a gameplay ‘shift’ gimmick that lets players take over neighbouring cars. The multiformat game arrives today (Friday, September 2nd) and has already scored 8/10s from IGN,
VideoGamer.comand Eurogamer. Driver was devised by Newcastle-based Reflections, which has worked on every instalment of the game over the last decade. And there’s more to come from the brand, Guillemot told us. “We are working on the plan for what happens to Driver next,” he told MCVat Gamescom. “Reflections is a great studio and as part of our global studios network is already working on its next project. The goal is to make
www.mcvuk.com
sure this one is an event release for us. The multiplayer aspect is new and fresh so we hope it will do well.” The firm is spending considerable sums of money on its UK marketing
campaign, which you can read more about on page nine.
“
Reflections is a great studio and is already
working on its next project.
Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft
Guillemot said there’s still plenty to mine from the driving genre, despite it falling out of favour with publishers after the likes of Split/Second and Blureffectively killed their UK studio creators. He explained: “What you need to do is make sure you have many activities in the game, give players plenty to do – we have done that and are working on that even more for this genre. You have to raise the amount of potential things to do in these games otherwise people lose interest.” Ubisoft: 01932 578000
Tesco offered Deus Exfor £30, as long as customers pre-ordered an upcoming title. Not only would it boost the grocer’s advance order numbers, it promoted the fact Tesco is now accepting pre-orders in the first place. Loss-leading at its smartest. Yet the side-effects of a price war are starting to show. Consumers now expect to pay less, publishers are being asked to reduce their prices, margins are squeezed right across the supply chain and specialists are forced to focus on pre-owned. Konami’s Kunio Neo was a man of few words during our interview, but one mention of the UK set him off. Our country may be No.1 in unit sales, but it is territories such as Germany that are proving more profitable. For years UK publishers have been arguing that price wars devalue the market. And now, in 2011, those arguments are being proven out.
CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY DEUS EX represents far more than just another hit game to retail. It has been an atrocious summer for games. Only two weeks ago UK games retail was worth £9m.
Square Enix’s new shooter represents the end of that bleak period. Today there’s Driver: San Franciscoand Bodycount, the week after Resistance 3(backed by a £3m marketing campaign), next up Gears of War 3(read more about that on page six), then F1 2011, FIFA 12– the hits just keep on coming. The Q4 retail sales boom has started early.
Christopher Dring September 2nd 2011 5
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