Trade body’s new CEO says she is focusing on the Digital Charts as a matter of priority
LEADER TAKING GREAT PAINE
SURPRISE news as we went to press: Nintendo’s Dawn Paine is to leave the firm next month to take an important role at Universal Pictures. The move says plenty about about how drawn to games other forms of entertainment have become.
Hugely popular brands with mass appeal across all age ranges? Yep, sounds like there’s plenty Universal Pictures can learn from the many achievements Dawn brought about at Nintendo. Her departure doesn’t spell bad things for the format holder. Clearly, as you can see opposite, there’s still plenty going on in Nintendo land. She’s built an excellent team who will keep pushing at the elusive non- gamer and mass-market audience she helped tap into. But certainly, Nintendo will be losing a key member of staff when she goes. MCVrarely says this, but this is one of the few instances where a Hollywood firm can claim to have won something away from video games.
CAPCOM'S UNDEAD SERIES NOT FORGOTTEN JANUARY isn’t even over and already we’re looking ahead to what this Q4 will bring.
by Christopher Dring
UKIE’S new boss Jo Twist has pledged to ‘change the tone’ of the trade body.
The former Channel 4 and BBC exec has laid out her immediate strategy for UKIE, which includes making it relevant to small digital creative businesses and developers, promoting the industry to future talent and launching the first PC digital download chart.
“I want to change the tone of UKIE. I don’t want us to be a grey and purple faceless place,” she told MCV. “We are passionate humans who care about this industry and only want to do the best for it. That’s our shared priority. We play games. I am putting posters up all over the place, so that people know who we speak up for as soon as they walk through the door. “One of the big projects that I will be focusing on is
the delivery of the UKIE Digital Charts. “To understand the direction that we should be travelling in, we must be able to measure the size of the market, to benchmark and to understand what success looks like. This
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I don’t want UKIE to be a grey and purple faceless place.
Jo Twist, UKIE
has now gone beyond mission critical and has to be a priority for the industry. UKIE is ready to create the first digital chart – we have a beta running with the data that we have – but we still need more input from the industry. We need your data.”
Check out our Jo Twist interview on page 19.
Chatter about new formats aside, little else has changed. Everyone’s expecting the usual big guns – FIFA, CoD, Assassin’s Creed(see page 6), and whatever EA’s 2012 flavour of shooter is – plus games like BioShock Infinite, and maybe even GTA V. Technically, none are ‘confirmed’, their release not blessed by any official PR yet. But make no mistake: these games are locked into the forward plans for many. Now a new name is in the mix – Resi 6. The shock announcement that this is due for November propels the game straight into the Q4 superleague. Unique difference here was the unveiling itself. Last week was the start of a proper marketing campaign, not just a debut at a Japanese event none of us were invited to. It ran across social, outdoor, online video and even mobile. And it made everyone feel included. Sponsored tweets, a YouTube
takeover, billboards boasting viral teasers –my phone even chirruped on Friday morning with a direct alert from O2 suggesting I watch the trailer while on the train. Such nimble activity might, just might, help pull the rug out from those Q4 incumbents that were expecting an easy ride towards the end of 2012.