Fergal Gara, SCE UK & Ireland MD, explains what makes Wonderbook so magical and what the release means for retailers
Wonderbook is Sony’s biggest release this
Christmas. Why? Wonderbook is an amazing piece of technology. It just lights up people’s eyes. In our demonstrations, we’ve seen kids play with Book of Spells with awe and wonder. I don’t think anyone has seen a game like this before. It has a real wow factor for kids. It is also a reading experience featuring one of the best loved children's authors, J.K. Rowling and it’s enjoyable to play and to watch people playing.
With just a few weeks to go until launch, what’s the priority for Sony? What has been important to us is understanding how you communicate those innovations. Tat is where our focus is. It doesn’t lend itself to just static advertising, but it does lend itself to demonstration on TV or on shopping centre tours. We are doing a lot of sampling and offering ways for people to try Wonderbook out. Showing the product live is where it really diffentiates itself.
What has the retail response been like so far? Te first thing people say is that this is great for families and children. And retailers have really embraced that this a product you need to demonstrate. Others have said it is a good counterbalance to the more
core gaming titles out there. So for family-orientated retailers, or customers looking for something for everyone to enjoy, it’s ideal – it’s something you can be confident in recommending and adds some balance to the range of games on the market. Plus, further on we have more Wonderbook products on
the way, including Digg’s Nighcrawler, plus books from Disney and the BBC including Walking with Dinosaurs. So this is the start of a great retail franchise.
DEVELOPER Q&A
London Studio’s Dave Ranyard, game director of Wonderbook, discusses where the idea came from and working with J.K. Rowling
Where does an idea like Wonderbook come from? You have to look at the London Studio’s heritage in technology and creativity. London Studio has a vision group within the studio that works on a lot of social and innovative experiences. Our studio is filled with super creative people with lots of ideas. We’re always thinking about the audience and who’s going to play these games. Across EyeToy, Eye Pet, SingStar and Wonderbook we have created games that anybody in the room can be involved with, it’s perfect to play with family and friends.
How has the technology moved forward since the first games on early devices like EyeToy? Tere’s been a road map of the technology required to realise our vision for Wonderbook. I’m sure we could have done something similar on PlayStation 2 but it would have been much lighter. We really wanted to build the best augmented reality experience that we could, and the maturing of the technology, plus new devices like Move have empowered us. Plus it’s been fantastic collaborating with the world’s leading creative, J.K. Rowling. What we’ve come out with is a big leap forward.
How has J.K. Rowling been involved in the project? About three years ago, Sony partnered with J.K. Rowling to build Pottermore, a website that lets readers experience more around her stories. Trough that partnership, we were able to show prototypes of Wonderbook to J.K Rowling. She was really inspired with what she saw. She had an idea of a spell book and so it quickly became obvious that the Move controller would be a wand. It was a true, collaborative creation. She’s now written loads of new material that has gone into the book, including stories and spell descriptions, histories of the different spells and how they were discovered and funny tales of how they’ve been used and so on. She was very pleased last time she came to see it. She’s played it with us. It’s been great working with her.